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Friday Mar 1st,
Today I had to go to Iksan for a contract signing
ceremony, and orientation for the new students.
Because we had be at the ceremony for 10:30am, Kenji
and I met at the bus station at 8am! Way too bloody
eary . . .
The ceremony itself was weird, awkward and stressful.
Won Sool, Kenji and I were the only people from
applied music who had to do it this time around.
Everyone stands in a row, and the president comes in
and we all bow. Then one by one, he calls us forward
to present our certificate of employment to us. It
was quiet and tense for everyone there, but for Kenji
and I, it was nerve-wracking, because in addition to
all the ridiculous pomp and circumstance crap, we
couldn't understand anything that was going on! We
had to watch the other teachers carefully as they
accepted their diplomas, so that we would know when to
bow, when to shake hands, where to place our left hand
when we shook, and so on. After that, the president
had us all sit down with a cup of tea. More
awkwardness- no one had the guts to speak at all. The
president would ask a few questions here or there, but
the room was eerily quiet for most of it. The
president asked Kenji and I a few questions as well,
in Korean, fully knowing that we wouldn't be able to
understand him.
After lunch, all of our new students gathered in the
auditiorium, and Jae introduced all of the teachers
who were there. Korean students are overly
enthusiastic! They were yelling and screaming for us
like we were the Rolling Stones or something. Weird.
Then there was more waiting around, and finally, we
each met with our private students to organize our
lesson times. I'll be teaching 2 of my favourite
students from last semester, 3 other 2nd-years, and 2
1st year students-- not very many, but I have 6 jazz
choirs and 5 improv classes, so I don't have much
spare time in my teaching days anymore!
I was pretty antsy to get out of Iksan, because I had
been planning on going to Busan by KTX tonight, and I
was getting worried that I wouldn't get back early
enough for the train! But somehow, I managed to catch
the last train,I had really rushed to get to the train station, and I
pretty much had to run to get on the train (not good
for my foot-- it's going to hurt a lot by Sunday, I
suspect). But once I settled in on the train, I read
a little bit and had a nap. I could tell that the
Korean guy who was sitting across the aisle from me
was looking at me, but not in a creepy way, just in a
curious way. When he got off at Daegu, he said excuse
me to me, and handed me a little folded-up note. It
was a love letter he had written to me while I was
sleeping! He said that he was too nervous to talk to
me, and he was worried about his English speaking
abilities, but he thought I was beautiful and wanted
to get to know me. He left me his phone number and
email address. I'm not really interested, but the
whole thing was very sweet and very romantic, and I
know it took a lot of guts to do that, so I will
probably email him, just to say thank you. I got to Busan around midnight or
so. I met up with Ange and her friend Rachel (from
home) and we headed over to the bar where Ange's
friends were playing a gig. We were there for less
than an hour, and were about to move on to a different
bar, when Ange realized that her wallet was gone. We
turned the bar upside down looking forward, and
realized that it had been stolen right from her bag!
We think someone was scoping out potentials, and
sneakily jumped in for the very very brief window of
opportunity where Ange had placed her bag on a chair
for a moment. Inside the wallet: Ange's foreigner ID
card, Korean bank card, New Zealand bank card,
driver's license, credit card and 250,000 won in cash.
This event obviously kille the mood, and Ange and I
bailed right after. Conveniently, and coincidentally,
Ange's boyfriend happens to live in the same apartment
building, so while I was sleeping in Ange's single
bed, she went up to Rich's, and spent pretty much the
entire night on the phone with the credit card
people-- turns out that whoever stole racked up a huge
bill on her card within an hour of the theft. They
managed to max the card out on the 1st purchase, and
tried to make 3 more large purchases, but the card was
declined. Now let's think for a second-- where's the
only place in Korea that you can spend $1000 in the
middle of the night? I'll give you another hint-- the
name of the place that came up on the credit card was
"Da Love". Hmm . . . could it be a whore house? Yes,
that's right, Ange's stolen credit was used to finance
prostitution!
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Saturday Mar 2nd,
Ange spent most of the day at the police station
answering questions and what not. They weren't able
to locate Da Love right away, but they're on it. The
crime rate is so low in Korea, that generally the
police really have nothing to do! We're pretty sure
that it was a foreigner who stole the wallet-- most
Koreans are way too honest to do something like that,
and there were only a handful of Koreans there last
night. It's kind of sick to think that a foreigner
would do this other foreigners in a foreign country!
What an awfull thing to do! And it was obviously
pre-meditated . . .
Ange got back around 8pm, and we made it to the bus
station with Rich in tow about 2 hours later to go to
Ulsan. Mark and Miranda (ie the only people I know
from Ulsan) are leaving tomorrow morning, so tonight
was the big blow-out going away party! A lot of
people were up from Busan to say goodbye. We managed
to move a fairly large crew of people through 3 cool
bars in Ulsan. Unfortunately, tonight didn't go much
better for Ange than last night-- there was some drama
with Rich (not my place to talk about it here, but it
might be over already for those two), and Rich
actually ended up taking a TAXI all the way back to
Busan. Ange and I stayed out for the long haul--
after all, we've both known Mark and Miranda for a
long time (well, long in Korea terms), and we were not
about to ruin their last night with boy drama. We
stayed out til 5am (by the way, I was doing all of
this sans crutches, but I am feeling the pain now!
Damn it hurts!), had some kimchi jigae, and got on a
bus back to Busan in the wee hours of the morning.
I've decided that Busan and I don't really get along--
it seems like crappy things always happen when I'm
there, and coincidentally, I hurt my foot when the
Busan crowd came up to Seoul . . . maybe Ange should
just come to Seoul to visit from now on!
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