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Week 9 (April 24th to April 30th) |
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Sunday April 24, Today I had my first real misadventure in downtown Daegu. I was supposed to meet up with Matt and Barry, the two guys I met on Saturday who play in the band. They were going to meet me and take me to their gig. They told me where to meet them, and I didn't really know where it was (my knowledge of downtown is pretty limited), but they assured me that the cab driver would know, and they told me the Korean word to ask for. Of course, my cab driver didn't know where he was going. I wanted to get out and try
another driver, but my driver wouldn't let me out! He insisted that he could find the place, and he kept on driving around and asking people on the street if they knew where the place was. By the time he dropped me off, I was nowhere where I needed to be, and I was
totally lost (at least cabs are cheap here, because if it was anywhere else, I also would have been broke!). And of course, I had somehow managed to lose the piece of paper that had the guy's phone number on it, so I couldn't even call! By this time I was almost two
hours late to meet the guys, and my eyes were hurting so much that I could hardly see, so I just turned around and took a cab home, and called the guy from there to apologize. I felt so bad! I suppose it's just as well-- I was pretty hung over, and my eyes were killing me. So I'm going to have to wait a little longer to see some live music . . .
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Monday April 25th, My eyes are hurting so much! Carey and Sylvia took me the doctor today, because this infection is just not going to go away on its own. Here, doctors are always specialists, so I went specifically to an eye doctor, who told me within minutes of waiting that I have conjunctivitis, and prescribed some anti-biotic eyedrops for me. The whole thing took about 10 minutes-- can you imagine
spending only 15 minutes at the doctor's office in Canada? I couldn't believe how fast the whole process was. The only sucky part is that I'm stuck wearing my glasses instead of my contacts for 2 weeks. After the doctor, Sylvia and Carey took me out to dinner. We went to a place close to my apartment. They wouldn't tell me what we were ordering; they said that it was a surprise. So I was kind of suspicious, but I figured I would be a good sport and chow down anyway. Turns out that it was pig intestine . . . it's a good thing they wouldn't tell me, cause there's no chance in hell I would have eaten it otherwise! Jason's mom Cindy and her friend Estelle arrived today
to visit from Canada. They'll be coming with us to Seoul this weekend.
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Wednesday April 27th, I had my first salsa dancing class tonight. It wasn't so much a class as a bunch of people practising, and I couldn't understand what the instructor was saying anyway-- typical Korean style class; very disorganized! Anyway, one of the guys I
met last weekend, Jon, has been taking the class for a month already. So he taught me the basic moves, plus some more difficult moves, and then everyone went upstairs to the nightclub part to dance. It was an awesome time! After I got comfortable dancing with
Jon, some tall Korean guy asked me to dance�turns out that he's one of the best dancers in the club! It was really easy to follow his lead, and he taught me aton, even though he couldn't speak English. After the salsa club, I came back to Chilgok to meet
up with Jason and Evan and Cindy and Estelle, and we went to a noraebang (karaoke room). Now I understand why everyone thinks it's so fun-- when everyone is really drunk, we all grab mics and dance it up and make up backgrounds and just act silly and sing ridiculous songs. It was a total blast!
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Thursday April 28th, Today was International Day at work. All week, we've been working like crazy to prep for this day-- making pinatas, researching different conferences, decorating the rooms. The whole thing has been incredibly disorganized, as always, and it
shows in our work. I got really frustrated this morning, because Fran, the head teacher had wanted me to teach the kids a specific song that pertained to International Day. However, she completely neglected to mention this to me, and five minutes before the alotted song time, she said "Are you ready to teach the song?" Naturally my response was "What song?" and she got angry about it. This kind of thing drives me crazy. Of course I would have prepared it if anyone had bothered to ask me. But no one ever includes the foreigners on what's going on around here. How am I suppose to teach my kids effectively when I'm not being given all the information I need todo so? And then I find out at the last minute, that there are certain periods (specifically morning exercises, which all the kids participate in before first period) where I'm not supposed to be left alone with the kids. At these times, all 55 kids are in the room for morning exercises and there are supposed to be at least 2 teachers, 1 Korean and 1 foreign at all times. Funny, I've been doing the morning exercises on my own for the past month. This job is definitely starting to wear thin for me. My kids are great most of the time, but the environment is just ridiculous sometimes.
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Friday April 29th, We left for Seoul after work today. Korea recently developed a rapid train called the KTX, which gets us to Seoul from Daegu in one and a half hours. So we arrived in Seoul at around 9:30pm, and then took the subway to Itaewon, which is the foreigner district-- tons of people from every corner of the world and lots of English signs. In Itaewon, we got rooms at the Seoul Motel. The rooms are so funny-- they're really tiny, and most of them have a red light that you can turn on. I think it may be a love motel, which basically means a motel that is typically used to "rendesvous". I was so excited when we found a reggae bar in
Itaewon, so I managed to convince our whole crew that that was where we should go for dinner-- I've been missing West Indian food so much! I actually got to have jerk chicken. It was far from authentic, but hey, I'll take what I can get; plus when you throw in
some Bob Marley concert footage on the tv screen, I was a pretty happy camper. Jason's mom, and her friend are a blast! I guess I
didn't realize how much I missed having some girls around that I can really talk to, but it's great having them here. The Korean girls that I work with are nice, but only to a point. In fact, I think they're kind of suspicious of me, like they think that I'm going to steal away all the foreign men from them or something. It's kind of a weird vibe. So it's nice to have some girls to relate to for once!
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Saturday April 30th, Today was the Demiliterized Zone tour. It was really intense. The tour left at 7:30 am, so we had to get up at 5:30 am to make sure we would be on time. There are a lot of rules about clothing that must be adhered to, otherwise you won't be allowed on the tour-- no jeans, no casual shoes, no running shoes, no sheer clothing, no t-shirts, nothing tight, shirts must be collared, no mini-skirts-- there was literally a page of rules that had to be followed. We saw one couple get sent home because they were wearing
jeans. One of our tour guides told us later that the reason we can't wear jeans is because jeans symbolize America, and therefore capitalism in the eyes of North Korea. The bus drove an hour and a half north to the DMZ, and dropped us at Camp Bonifas, which is the closest American military base. From there we went to the Joint Security Area. This area is used by both North and South Korea for meetings. There are North and South Korean guard towers intermingled throughout the whole JSA, and one of the South Korean towers is surrounded by North Korean watchpoints on 3 sides! In the 80's, there was an attack over this tower which led to the axe murder of two American soldiers. In the JSA, the border is delineated by a concrete line on the ground (outside of the JSA, there are fences covered with barbed wire on either side of the border). There are five blue meeting buildings that straddle the border. These buildings were used in the original armistice in 1953, and are still used for meetings now. We got to go in one of them. Half of
the building is on the North Korean side, so technically, I have been in North Korea, as we were allowed to stand on either side of the building. These buildings are guarded at all times by UN and ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers, as well as North Korean soldiers. When we were standing in front of the buildings, we had rules about where we could stand, when we could take pictures, and most importantly, we were not allowed to make gestures of any kind. You could see the North Korean soldiers watching us from
their guardpoints, and there's the constant fear that any false move could cause an attack. Our tour guide, who is a UN soldier told us that the UN and ROK soldiers who are positioned in the JSA have a life expectancy of five minutes should there be an insurrection. The whole thing was really surreal. Just outside of the JSA, there is a town on either side of the border. These towns were built
symbolically to pass the message that the two countries could live side by side in peace. On the South Korean side, people who live there don't pay taxes and have subsidized modern housing, but must follow strict rules (like curfew) and always have soldiers guarding them. Nobody lives in the North Korean town. It's purely for show. They used to have speakers that were 3 stories high that were there
simply to spew propaganda directed towards Americans 24/7. These speakers were torn down last year. On the way out of the JSA, you can see lots of danger signs that warn of landmines. These forested areas are all fenced off, and many of them have 3 layers of
barbed wire. but there are other landmine areas that are only blocked off with a chain rope that anyone could climb. Our final stop for the tour was Tunnel 3. Four tunnels have been discovered that evidence shows were built by the North Koreans. One of the exhibit signs said that the UN believes that there are at least 17 tunnels that have been completed or are half finished. the tunnel we were in could push 30,000 North Korean soldiers to Seoul in an hour. So we got to go all the way down part of Tunnel 3. The tunnel was really intense, and incredibly creepy, but so surreal, because both sides have managed to take all of this tension and turn it into a capitalist venture that they can make tourist dollars off of. I mean, they have gift shops at the tunnel and at the JSA. The whole situation is so weird. By the time we were on our way back, we were all so tired! The tour lasted until about 2:30 pm, so we had
a really long day on next to no sleep. So we all crashed for a little back at the hotel and then went to dinner at a Canadian bar called the Rocky Mountain Pub. Kind of nice to have a reminder of home, but I don't understand why Canadians would come to Korea
just to hang out in a Canadian bar! We met some guys on the tour that knew about a big street party, and I was supposed to meet up with a friend of a friend, but the street party fell through, mainly because Koreans don't name their streets and 3 different cab drivers
couldn't find it. So Estelle and I branched off on our own, and checked out some places in Itaewon. I finally got to hear some live music. They were doing a soul-motown kind of thing. At the end of the night, we ended up in what turned out to be a pretty seedy bar, where two big Nigerian guys were starting to harass us. At that point, Estelle and I decided to call it a night. It's funny, cause Korea is so safe. This was the first time I've felt my personal safety being threatened in any form since I got here, and it was by a foreigner! In Toronto, there was a creepy guy incident almost nightly, but here men seem very respectful.
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