Stories, just stories.

Hello again my lovely readers! Hey guess what…I hit my 6 month mark on the 16^th of March! Woo! It’s downhill from here kids…

I think I’ll keep up my pattern of extreme motivation in writing my blogs for two days and then slack off for the rest of the month, what do you think? (rhetorical, haha) So I’ll be posting two blogs fairly close to each other. The first will be just little tidbits that I’ve found interesting/funny/appalling/ and just downright..well…Korean. While the second consists of the things I’ve been doing the past…month…yikes.

- Weddings: I am fortunate enough to gather a wealth of information from many of my students because I have to find SOMETHING to talk about for several hours a day with adults. If anything else, I’m becoming more talented at stretching a short conversation into a longer one. I get really tired of talking. Haha. Anyway, one such conversation was about weddings in Korea. Weddings are a big deal in every country, but in Korea, it may be the equivalence to a popularity contest. Weddings are almost more important to the parents than to the actual bride and groom. The parents invite ALL of their friends and acquaintances. The guest lists can be outrageous in number, the more people, the more impressive. What’s interesting is, if a set of parents don’t have very many guests, they actually HIRE people to come to the wedding. Say WHAT?! This isn’t really common, but amazed me nonetheless. Guests bring money as gifts and all of the money goes to the parents. Good luck kids for having any money to start yours lives with, it’s going to your mom and dad. Haha.

- Dog story told to me in class: “I wanted a dog when I was a kid. One day, I found one on the street and I took it home to ask my parents if I could keep it.” ~Mickey

“Oh, did they let you?” ~ Me

“My dad ate it.”~ Mickey

“Uhhh….I…umm….Let’s move on to the next question.”~Me

- Korean time: referred to several times since I arrived in Korea. I didn’t understand what it was at first…but basically…it’s a way of saying that Korean’s are almost always late. They joke about it…which is good. In a “bad habit” conversation once, several of my students said their bad habit was being late, and that they have tried to break that habit…but then they laugh…I can only assume it’s an impossible habit to break. I don’t judge, I was on Korean time before I even came to Korea.

-Olympics: I know they were several weeks ago, I’m SORRY, OKAY?! Kim Yuna, before the Olympics people in other countries’ response was “who?” when someone said (attempted to pronounce) her name, but as you now know; she’s the 2010 Gold Medalist in Women’s figure skating. Koreans LOVE LOVE LOVE her. No joke. Like…immortality level, love. Her picture was everywhere before the Olympics even started and she has so many sponsorships, I would be willing to bet that her salary has a near equivalence to Bill Gates’ (I don’t really know). Honestly, I felt pretty sorry for the girl. Koreans tend to develop an intense reverence for specific individuals who have the potential for greatness and success. There isn’t anything wrong with that, because Americans do it too, but when they put all of their hope in a 17 year old girl, she has to feel some sort of pressure. The last time they put their hope in someone was in 1998 when Female golfer Se Ri Pak won the U.S. Women’s Open, and golf became one of the most popular sports in Korea. Now, ice skating has become extremely popular with the rise of Kim Yuna and their extremely successful speed skating team. But, if Kim Yuna came home without the gold, she had the potential of losing millions of dollars in Sponsorships. Wow. Saying that, I admired the calm that she portrayed throughout her whole, and spectacular I might add, Olympic performance. It could be safe to say that she was pretty confident she would win.

As I highly enjoy watching the Olympics every two years, I was a little disappointed that it was difficult finding an English station to watch them. But I made due with listening to the Korean commentators. On the day of the Figure Skating semi-finals Holly and I were at the gym. We both decided that we wanted to watch the top five perform on the big screen upstairs in the main area, so when the time came, we dropped our weights and ran upstairs. What we found was amazing, there were about 30 Koreans gathered around the TVs., anxiously awaiting Kim Yuna’s turn. We watched in amusement while they cheered, gasped and clapped for all the other contestants, except her rival from Japan, she received…silence. Lol. Sad. Then Kim came on, and they were mesmerized. It was an amazing thing to experience, with the yells of excitement and everyone sucking in their breath while they waited for her to complete her flawless jumps. We couldn’t wait to watch it again in the final performance. So at the end of the week, we raced upstairs again, the only two foreigners in a sea of Koreans, but we cheered her on with them when she won, almost 17 points ahead of the silver medalist and set a world record. Amazing.

Also amazing is the rule that Korea has about winning gold medals in the Olympics. This rule only applies to the males of course, because they ALL have mandatory military service for two years. The rule? If you win a gold medal, you don’t have to go to military. So all the gold medals won this year, were an accomplishment for not only these men’s country, but also meant so much more. It meant that their mandatory (and usually dreaded) military service was negated. So, more than just a gold medal? I’ll say.

- Smiling on the subway…and other stories: Subway rides on the Seoul subway system can sometimes be unpleasant. Usually it’s quiet, and always a bit awkward. People are serious and seemingly always in a bad mood. They are usually doing one of the following things: watching something on a portable player, listening to music, reading, sleeping, or staring at someone (like, say, the foreigners). Sometimes you’ll be fortunate enough to get on a train with someone friendly or happy. I always enjoy those people. My favorite is when you spot an individual who’s watching a particularly funny show, and they will just be laughing to themselves. It’s great to watch them just crack up randomly, while everyone else continues with their humdrum attitudes.

I witnessed one day, a boy fall asleep next to his mother. As sleeping in an upright position tends to team up with gravity, his mouth kept falling open. This, apparently, was of great concern to his mother, because she kept reaching over and pinching his mouth shut with her fingers. Very, very strange.

A man, was asleep, with a newspaper tucked behind his head, and over his face. Hmmm.

On a particularly long ride, Holly and I watched (started out sneaky but we gave up and just obviously watched his screen, he laughed) a planet Earth documentary with a Korean next to us who had a dvd player. Soon, three or four more people were involved in the watching, after they saw our expressions (appalled AND disgusted) when a bug ate another bug...or something equally gross, they were curious. I laughed.

I rode from Dangogye (end of the blue line) to Oido (other end of the blue line) last weekend, unintentionally. 50 stops. I never want to do that again. Ever.

Germs, germs on the subway! AHH! A man sneezed, without covering his mouth, and it ended up all over the window. Oh my yuck!

One Saturday morning we got on the subway with an older woman. Later that night, we got back on the subway to go home...with the same woman. What are the odds...THE ODDS!?! Same time, same train, same car, same stop. Bizarre!

-“Tetris Event”: Lately, every time I walk into the office here at work, everyone is glued to the computer. Why I ask? It’s a Tetris event! And what does this mean? Well, after they finish the particular level they are on (because there is no pause button), they explain that a cheese company called Bellcube, has the game of Tetris on their website and if you get a high enough score, you win something. Something worthwhile? I didn’t get the chance to ask, because the next level had started.

One day, Cindy had been playing for 20 minutes, and was particularly proud of how far she had gotten. Then Mr. Kim called her phone to ask something. She successfully answered her phone AND put the long purple block in its place to create a full line, but then her concentration broke, thus ruining her game. She became angry, yelled something in Korean at Mr. Kim, hung up the phone, shouted “I hate him!” and restarted her game, in a very angry manner I must say.

Another day, the middle school boys who come here after school walked in while she was playing this very addictive game. They were being noisy, which wasn’t abnormal for them, and seeing that Cindy was preoccupied, I went out to try and see if I could get them to be quieter, without knowing any Korean, fat chance. Then I saw that they weren’t being their normal loud selves, they were actually in a fist fight, yikes. I started to say “Stop it! Guys!” and then realized how little that would do, so I went back to the office and said, “Uh, Cindy? They are…like…punching each other.” The first thing she did was quickly glance at the screen that shows all the cameras to see what was going on. There are 4 cameras here: main lobby, back classrooms, T.V. room, and in front of the elevator. She saw that they were fighting, and then she saw that Mr. Kim was just getting off the elevator with the other kids. Can you imagine what happened next? She said, “Mr. Kim will take care of it” and continued her game. It was funny. Usually she runs out of the room waving a metal curtain rod to threaten them within an inch of their lives. But right now, Tetris had her undivided attention. Oh Korea.

Love!