Planes, Trains, and Wagons East

And now the rest of what I’ve been up to. Four weeks, four weekends, four fantastic destinations since my last pictured post. I’ve got a lot to say, so let’s get down to business. Clear your schedule, this’ll be a long one.


My first trip in Korea outside of Seoul was to Yongin, a city 30 minutes south of Suwon, and home to the Korean Folk Village. I was bored on a Sunday and decided to make the trip solo. The village is a re-creation for tourists, nestled on the side of a mountain, straddling a small river just across the street from the city. The dense fall trees made it seem like the real countryside.


I strolled around the pretty extensive collection of houses, took pictures, watched an old dude do some tightrope walking, and enjoyed the crisp autumn air.


The next weekend was Halloween. Of course, good ol’ Jon came up with an… interesting activity: a scavenger hunt around Seoul. About 15 or so people showed up to this thing. We met at Yongsan Station just outside one of the largest electronics markets in the world. Yeah, I was conflicted as to what I wanted to do: the hunt or the nerd’s paradise. I decided to go on the hunt. So we split up into groups of four to romp around the city, make fools of ourselves and embarrass white people everywhere. Here are some examples of what we had to do: (not my photos)

1.    Find a street vendor and cook the food for them. Yeah, I'm churnin' the ice cream.


2.    Drink a beer in the back of the bus. The one in the middle is Matt... I'll get to him.


3.    Wear a Korean traditional dress (Hanbok). BONUS: Male team member wearing a Hanbok. (my friend Irfan.)


4.    Take a picture of a Korean guy with a guitar


5.    Eat live octopus (I refused to do this one)

Fortunately for us, one of our group members (Matt) was dressed as a woman, which is apparently way out of the ordinary in Korea as he got stares from about ten thousand disgusted Koreans. Took some of the spotlight off me; I didn’t wear a costume. Halfway through the hunt, though, we all decided we wanted Falafel. So we ditched the list and found an amazing Jordanian restaurant in Itaewon (the international district).

The horse races run year round in Seoul. While that offers me the chance to see the horses on a whim, it also means that the crowd on a cold November day will be interested in betting and nothing else. The middle-aged men on a mission poured out of the subway and led my trusty companion Jon and I straight to the track. And what a track it is. There’s a children’s park in the middle, and it’s got a great view of Seoul to the left and the colorful mountains all around. It also has a foreigner’s lounge where they give out (half-assed) racing forms in English and teach you how to bet. As you might expect, I won my first bet on a 5-1 odds horse, but there was a glitch in the system and apparently I just traded in my 1000 won for a voucher instead of actually betting. Oh, I was pissed. Jon was betting to place on names alone and twice picked the horse with the lowest odds. One won, and one placed. It was a pretty exciting day. The two of us are actually hosting a meet-up event there this Sunday.

And now for the main event. The most recent event. This past Friday Jon and I took the train to Busan leaving at 11:30pm, arriving at 4:15am. This cross-country trip took only five hours; a much shorter ride than I’m used to. After getting in, we went to a Kimbap Kitchen (a cheap place to get good food), sat down, and had some Kimbap as we waited for the trains to start running to take us to our couchsurfer's place. We were trying to figure out what we could do until then.

Busan is a port city on the southeastern coast, jutting out into the South Sea. I thought we should try to find a beach for the sunrise. Jon remembered a place he'd read about in the Lonely Planet (Taejongde), but we didn't think we'd have time to get there. Just as we were paying for our food, a Korean lady working the kitchen asked us if we were headed to Taejongde. She must have overheard us. We said absolutely, and she told us the bus there stopped right outside the kitchen. 20 minutes later we were on the bus, and an hour later we were standing atop huge granite cliffs jutting straight out of the sea watching the sun rise in the distance over Tsushimia, Japan. Yeah, I saw Japan. Easily the most beautiful place I’d been in Korea. By 8am we were back on the bus to get the real trip started. (Resuming my photos)


We arrived at our couchsurfing accommodations, introduced ourselves, and left quickly to find our trailhead. Of course we were going hiking. Busan is home to Geumjeong Fortress, a huge fortress wall that we just had to climb, with a few gorgeous temples along the way. We took a cable car up the mountain to start our hike. We decided to head for Seokbulsa, a Buddhist temple, first. That walk took us immediately back down the mountain only to walk up another. What we found at the top was spectacular. It was a shrine carved into huge granite rocks jutting out of the top of the mountain with a gorgeous temple built beside it. I didn’t take a picture because it would have been disrespectful, but one shrine held the most Buddhas I’d ever seen.


Back down one mountain and up the other we went, following our route from before. Then we began a six hour trek along the fortress wall. Now, I didn’t sleep on the train. So I was running on fumes at this point. I also didn’t know how long or strenuous this climb was going to be. But the wall just kept going… and going… and going. We would reach the top of one mountain just to watch the trail continue along the mountain ridge, up another steep mountaintop.



Up and down, up and down, for six hours. Yeah, I felt absolutely horrible. Props to Jon for keeping me going and brushing off my complaints. But the views were pretty amazing.


At the end of the hike was one of Korea’s largest temple complexes: Beomosa. Unfortunately we arrived in the dimming light of dusk and in the haze of exhaustion, but it was still beautiful. I also surpassed my most-Buddhas-seen-in-one-room count there, yet, no picture. Respect, oh how I loathe thee.

After the hike we went to meet up with our host at Shinsegae Centum City. No surprise, Korea is home to the world’s biggest mall. This was it. And holy shit, how ridiculous this place was. It had an ice-skating rink. Inside. ON THE FOURTH FLOOR!!! Pure insanity.



Our host invited us to a couchsurfer’s outing in this place. Yet she made no effort to find us  and never did. I fell asleep waiting for her. Then, when we decided to leave, it took about 20 minutes to get out of this monstrosity of a building because there were only three elevators servicing all 15 floors. We went back to our place, tired, and angry. The next day we left without saying goodbye.

On the way home we rode the KTX train, the fastest train in Korea, for half of the trip. We topped out at 302 km/h, and I finally got a chance to see what lies between Korean cities. It really is a beautiful country, once you get passed all the metal and concrete.

Preface: I don't listen to Pink Floyd much, this title just happens to work well with the content. Still, I hope you appreciate my way with words.

Ok, time to play major catch up. For some reason I haven’t posted in a while because I thought I hadn’t done enough to warrant any updates. I was very wrong. Maybe that’s because I was cowering in the newcomer’s depression which had me by the throat after teaching started. The best way to describe it, as cliché as it sounds, is a wall. It’s not a wall that you hit, it’s a wall that exists from the moment you arrive, a wall you can always see and always feel. And no, you can’t climb it. Impossible. It’s too high, and it casts such a shadow in which you forever walk until eventually you begin to feel there is no other side. All you can do is charge head first and hope your mind is stronger than the brick before you. Now, I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think I have broken through that wall. And not only can I see life on the other side, but I can also look back through the hole that I left and see what was hidden, tucked away in that shadow behind me. So here’s what’s recently come into the light:

Forgive the lack of pictures. Only words for this entry. I could make a whole metaphorical and profound statement about pictures and shadows and light but fuck it, just read.

As you know, I was utterly exhausted from teaching, preventing me from hiking or getting much exercise of any kind (unless you consider straining my eye muscles to watch the West Wing an aerobic sport). To remedy this I bought a basketball and started to play most days after school on the sand court at a park near my place. One day I was joined by a sixty-or-so year old Korean man who was looking to get schooled by this hardcore baller. I tore his ass up. Not really. We just shot around for a while in the middle of this deserted park, as far away from the throngs of people as you can get in a Korean city, cheering each other on as best we could in our separate languages.

A different park, on a different day. Just passing through on my way to the Lotte Mart (Korea’s Wal-Mart without the employee mistreatment). Tune in my head, coming from a great night out with Jon in Anyang, looking to pick up some milk for breakfast the next day. 9pm, midnight black, Korea’s famous neon signs only a dim blur down the street. Three of my 6th grade kids pop out from the playground wielding chocolate sticks. Tomorrow was Pepero Day. November 11th. 11/11. The Pepero company decided to take advantage of this day by selling boxes of cheap and delicious chocolate sticks (because sticks look like 1’s) on that day, and only that day. Hence, Pepero Day. My kids offered me one of the boxes they had bought for the celebration. Of course, the day before I had finally become determined to stop eating junk food and start cooking for myself. A test, if you will, from the Korean gods. Whether I passed or failed is beside the point. My kids gave me chocolate. In a park. At 9pm, in pitch blackness.

There are no Korean Jews. None that I or any of my Jewish friends here have heard of. Yes, I’ve already met five other Jewish English teachers. I guess the wandering Jew phenomenon is real. That or we’re all in severe debt. But I digress. The point is there are no Korean Jews that I know of. But all Koreans read the Talmud. Everyone owns a copy. Mind-boggling.

In case you didn’t notice, I don’t do transition material.

Ever heard of Koreans playing Portuguese music? Well, I’ve seen it. I went to a concert with Jon and my new friend Sue put on by the Portuguese Studies department at Hanguk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. Needless to say I had low expectations going in, and the first half of the show lived down to my billing. The second half, however, was fantastic. One student sang one of the most incredible, passionate, and soulful songs I have ever heard. I don’t really know Portuguese music, but if it’s anything close to what I heard from him, I love it.

Random musings complete. Stay tuned, there will be a quick turnaround on my next entry. As I said, turns out I’ve done quite a bit in the last few weeks.

So, it’s officially five weeks into the Korea experiment and I’m just starting to get settled in. Routines are forming, new friendships are burgeoning, work is stabilizing (kind of), and home is starting to feel a little more like it. Oh, and I got paid for the first time last week, even more than expected. Payday makes everything better. So let’s talk daily life.

My apartment is… interesting. It’s the second floor in the back of this building, above a restaurant and below my Korean landlady.


We’ll start with the good. It’s free. Its also about a five minute walk to my school, a seven minute walk to a shopping center, a ten minute walk to the subway, a twelve minute walk to the University area, a 30 minute walk from a beautiful lake (reservoir) park, a one minute walk from a convenience store, and a two minute walk to several Wang Galbi (Suwon’s famous beef ribs) places.


Other than that it’s just a place to sleep. Which brings me to the bad. Well, I say bad, but it’s really just a question of adjustment which, after a month, is approaching normality. First, I have to turn on the hot water and let it warm up for 10 minutes before I use it… every time. That’s not too bad though, I’ve already got a system down. Second, there’s no A/C. That hasn’t caused my any problems thus far because it gets nice and cool at night. We’ll see how I fare in the summer. Last, the bathroom. My toilet, sink, shower, and washing machine are all within five feet of each other and all drain through the same pipe, the shower and washing machine water going through a drain in the floor. Yes, clogging is a problem. This was all a bit of a shock at first, and it’s taken some getting used to. Now, while it’s not my favorite room in the house, it’s become the norm. I should say, I don’t mind this kind of situation while traveling, but I’m just not used to staring down 6 months to a year of less comfort than I’m accustomed to. Which brings us back to the word of the day: adjustment.


My job is… growing on me. The first day was pretty awful. Not that the teaching was especially difficult, but I had no idea what I was doing and it felt like I was the one being taught. Not a good feeling when you’ve got 35 pairs of eyes on you the whole time. The next day and the rest of the week was infinitely better. I learned how to do the lesson after many repetitions and by the end of the week I felt much better about life. My second week was even better than the first. I started to loosen up “on stage” and I’m getting more comfortable acting like a fool, which my kids (4th, 5th, and 6th grade) just love. Also, I met my special class for the first time. The special class is a group of 20 students from all three grades who are especially advanced in the language. They understand my instructions and we can actually have conversations. The only difficult part about that class is that it meets for two hours a day, three days a week, so there’s a lot of lesson planning involved, and I have to take attendance using their Korean names which I never pronounce right. Oh, and they all try to steal the chocolate I give out as incentive when the class is over. So needless to say, I’m enjoying my job a lot more now that I was. Granted, I haven’t taught a full week yet. My first week was 22 teaching hours, the second week was 19, last week was 23, and I’m supposed to teach 34.


My school is… wonderful. My co-teachers are spectacular. They help me out immensely. My handler, Mi-ae, has taken me to the doctor three times, the immigration office twice, and gotten me faster internet, among many other things. She also took me out for the most amazing meal of King Crab last week. Joy (her English name) is a wonderful, strong woman balancing 3 young kids and her full time teaching job while her husband is living about 2 hours away working for a promotion. She loves talking to me and speaks great English. Mrs. Kim is soft-spoken and doesn’t speak English very well, but we get along fine and she helps out a lot with her classes.


My classroom is almost palatial. And the students come in every day at lunch to clean it for me. I’m a lenient taskmaster. Step into my office.



My social life is… growing. Kind of. I’ve met many foreigners through Meetup.com, a website designed to put people living abroad in contact with other people in their area. I’ve gone to a few meet-ups and met some interesting people. I’ve also met some nice people living around Suwon, and I’m making fast friends with the teachers at my school. My teacher buddy Jang and I went out for a hike and some galbi last weekend.


The problem is most days I’m too tired from teaching to do anything social. I just want to run home and collapse in bed. I’ve heard that’s how it is for new teachers… there’s a long adjustment period. Regardless, I’ve done at least one new thing every weekend since I’ve been here. I have not left the greater Seoul area yet, but that will happen soon. I’m planning a trip somewhere to be determined. It’s difficult because most of the things I want to do in Korea take more than a weekend. Traveling becomes something entirely different when you’re working as well. My goal is to find one thing every day that makes me say “wow, I’m in fucking Korea.” I’ve been pretty successful so far.