Photographic Adventures of Mattsimus

Today, a gift from me to you. Anyone who's been around me the last three years or so knows I've really been getting into Photography.  Here's the best of Korea (so far) in pictures. Most of them are in Wonju, Gangwon-Do. Some in Seoul from my weekend excursions. Spent a while compiling this slideshow, never mind the time taking the pictures and tweaking them.....So I hope you enjoy. Click on the little man, and follow the link for a bigger size slideshow. My dumb blog wouldn't let it be bigger without cutting off the images.  

Race and Korea

Before I begin it should be mentioned that these are, of course, merely observations and anecdotes from my time here. No surprise there, as this is what my blog is, anecdotes from my Korean experience - hopefully articulate and researched - but anecdotes nonetheless. This is a touchy subject of course, so with that disclaimer, read on.

As a caucasian in Korea, I am strongly in the minority. One of my texts on Korea rates the country as the most homogenous nation on earth, with over 99% being ethnically Korean. As a caucasian in a Provincial city, outside of Seoul, the minority reaches ubsurd proportions. Quite a shocker to go from the most ethnically diverse nation on earth to the least. When I went home for Christmas, the cornucopia of colours in the Vancouver airport was mindboggling.

The total number of foreigners I have seen in my neighbourhood in Korea, in SIX MONTHS, is wait for it, 2! And one was yesterday, so that barely counts.

I am definitely a stop and stare phenomena, which sometimes is cute if I'm in a good mood and it's cute kids, and sometimes is really annoying - like if it's seedy old men who want to hold my hand.

Even in Seoul there are plenty of stares to go round. One day I was like the Pied Piper walking to school, one of my students saw me, and all the school kids starting following me and I had like a crowd of 20 by the end.

As for the rascism part, as a natural offshoot of being so, um...undiverse, you are bound to run into trouble in this regard. If you are, by nature, so mono-cultural and focused on conformity (and Korea is ever so conformist), diversity and awareness of other cultures is not going to be a high value is it?

Anyone coming here from Canada would be in for a shock, (Though come to think of it, I was shocked by how non-diverse Southern Manitoba was as well). Anyway, here are some random anecdotes:

- I've heard stories from native speaking English teachers who are either Asian/black, I guess basically anything other than white, who have trouble getting a job because they don't look the part.

-One student of mine said a black guy in a book looked like a monkey....so I told him that was bad, and looked up rascism in the Korean/English dictionary. The translated version just got a collective "who cares""that's bad?" from the class....apparently rascist is not a bad thing in Korea.

- (not that I'm sad about this but.....) Rumour has it that foreigners aren't allowed in the Red light district of Wonju. Why? If the girls have been with a foreigner, the Korean men will have nothing to do with them.

- Rumour also has it that there are some dining establishments we are not welcome in in Wonju. This, I have not experienced personally, and it has purely to do with the behaviour of the visitors from the adjacent American Army Base and not that much to do with race. But still, you can't picture that going down in Canada can you? I can't.

- Intermarriage is really frowned upon. This is not a rumour. This is something I have talked to many Koreans about. Shame cause half white/half asian kids are always cute. Haha.

Seriously though, the consensus seems to be, almost all Korean grandparents would dissaprove of an interracial marriage. A lot of parents would dissaprove as well. This is changing and some of my friends say their parents would be happy if they were happy. But conformity (as mentioned) and bloodlines are so important here, it's why no-one in Korea adopts. This is a rabbit trail, but a worthwhile one, as it has become a national disgrace. Despite being the worlds 11th largest economy, and a prosperous nation, Korean orphans are adopted overseas by the thousands. Caring for someone who's not "blood" is just not a part of the mindset. Currently a national issue. Rabbit trail finished.

Foreign friends and dating foreigners seems to score a higher parental approval rating, presumably to give their kid a leg up in the world (i.e. learn English...). And young people are generally much more accepting and openminded when it comes to race. Still though, they all say having a foreign significant other puts one in a different category from the normal Koreans....my adult class couldn't agree on whether it was a good category or a bad one, so it appears to be a little of both...a mix of rich/special/powerful/cool and snobby/different/strange/unpatriotic

(and do keep in mind that different is not a good thing)

As a Canadian it is easy to find it all quite perplexing...I suppose race never really comes up at home...fully half of my high school grad class was non-caucasion and it never really was something that crossed ones mind. But if I stretch my mind, and I have to stretch it quite far mind you, I suppose it isn't hard to imagine that Canada was like that a generation or two ago. I suppose.

Who knew Bowling Lanes were Greased? And a blue weekend.

Not me apparently. Went Bowling in Seoul this weekend with friends and stepped into a vacant lane to try and get a good action photo. That trip lasted a fraction of a second. Don't think I've ever stood on anything with less grip than the bowling shoes/bowling lane combo (and yes that includes the ski boots/polished cement combo from the "incident" a couple months ago).  Me and my camera were introduced to the floor in a hurry. (Relatively) no harm done. 

"Bowling lanes are waxed, not greased" you say? Tell that to the oily greasy residue on the various parts of my bodily landing gear.  

Changing direction completely, this weekend I felt a big weight descend upon my shoulders, and I'm trying to figure out why. I'm hoping that I'm just exhausted from my multiple international flights of the last couple weeks and getting used to completely different classes again...but I'm not so sure. 

Not sure if it's hanging out with people who hate life here that's doing it, but it's not helping that's for sure. One friend in Seoul is on that kick now too.....and I came back to Korea to a fresh round of Kyle hating life here...his school is getting worse, his boss is getting lamer (she even rearranged the office so the foreigners weren't sitting together anymore), one foreign teacher is quitting, and another talking about it. I don't know if it makes me question my not hating it here, or if just, being who I am, I can't help but empathize, and feel some of that stress/flood of negative feelings that people close to me are feeling. 

The teacher that's talking about quitting happens to be the only other person in Wonju that I think I would actually be friends with at home. The only guy that I don't feel uneasy around, like I'm going to have to justify not going to the brothel, or why I'm not "sampling the locals" (as one friend so tastefully put it) or some other outing I'm not really into. So, it may have been all the talk about how I was going to survive in Wonju when Kyle and Amy and (potentially) Phil leave and I still have three months left. Yikes. 

Maybe their replacements will be cool, who knows. 

The halfway point of my contract is in a couple weeks, so maybe it was all the thinking I did about what to do after my contract runs out. My school is giving me (and Amy) the "we love you, the kids love you, can you please please stay?" trip. Which I think is genuine. I doubt they've ever had a happier environment at work, the kids do love us, we (for the the most part) love them, and we both like it at our school a lot. But it makes it hard....I can't see myself staying in Wonju if Kyle and Amy and Phil are gone, but to re-sign with a school in Seoul (where I have lots of friends and a great church) could be risky....since I won the lottery on my current school placement and many others aren't that fond of their schools. 

I could go home, but why? I won't go home for the sake of going home, unless I have something to go back for that I would love to do long-term. I'm not interested in going back and finding a random job for the sake of paying the bills for the sake of being in Victoria. I'd rather be teaching somewhere abroad. A photography job would do the trick, and I was talking with a friend about doing wedding photography together when I get back. That has potential. 

So a lot of future uncertainty is adding to this potent mix of blah feelings I suppose. Spending more time with Korean girls has made me have to think about whether I could seriously see myself getting involved in this sort of cross-cultural relationship or not as well. Another deep question to ponder. Not sure at this point. 

Evidence for the "exhausted" theory was given when I woke up today at 11am instead of the usual 8:30 or so....so maybe that's at the root of all this. In any case, whoever reads this will have a better look inside my head, and if no one does, than I've had an exercise in journaling and self-reflection, so, win-win. 

Going to see if working out makes everything better :P

Signing off for now.

장한솜 (Jang Hahn-Som) 

Which by the way, aside from sounding like handsome in Konglish, can potentially also be translated in two additional ways --> "best (one) cotton ball" or --> "best (Korean) cotton ball. I personally like "best korean cotton ball".  

Judas, Barabas and Tom.

So I returned to my school only to find that they had changed all of our classes around without consulting us. Big shocker. They never ask us about which kids belong in which class and which kids should move up and down a level etc. Kind of a joke if you ask me, cause gee whiz, who do think knows best if the kids can communicate in English? The English speaking teachers or the ones who teach their classes in Korean? Whatever. Sorry. Rant over. 

The point of this story was supposed to be the naming ritual, for the kids who don't have English names, I get everyone to contribute an idea or two and then we strike names off one by one until the kid ends up with a name he/she (hopefully) likes. 

Usually there's a few dumb ones (one girl was almost named "hello kitty" before I came to the rescue) ...I currently have a Harry Potter, a Rufus, a Yaya and an Mp3...usually I throw in a ridiculous name or two myself just for fun to see how far they get....anyway, this one new kid, had narrowed it down to three choices: Judas, Barabas, and Tom....I eliminated Judas, but the kid chose Barabas cause he thought it sounded like "rabbit".  I must admit to finding this whole situation exceedingly humourous.  

Later on in the day, another new kid had narrowed it down to Zeus (which sounds like Juice when Koreans say it), Poseidon and Phoenix (none of which were my contributions by the way). In the end he went with Phoenix. 

Notes on Learning Korean

If you didn't know, I've been tudying Korean pretty hard-core...most every day I do at least some studying, and I get my boss at work to tutor me a couple times a week....so I wrote up some notes on the experience. I tried to keep them low on the technical content scale...

A Different (intimidating looking) Alphabet

I guess this one is a no-brainer. However, though admitting this may take some of the wow factor away from the whole white guy speaking Korean thing, this is actually the least of my worries, it didn't take me very long to learn and I could teach it to you in three or four lessons. Really. I'm serious, to anyone. There's a reason they have the lowest illiteracy rate in the world. 

Nay means Yes

It would be bad enough for a normal English speaker since Nay is always associated with a negative reponse (voting etc.) But for me it's worse cause Nay means 'no' in Dutch and 'yes' in Korean. My first while in Korea it was really confusing....and when I was speaking Dutch at Christmas it was confusing in reverse

Two Sets of Numbers

Yes, you heard that right. They have two sets of numbers. For everything. One is inherited from China, and one is Korean. On top of learning the numbers themselves, one has to learn which numbers are used with which objects, because they are wrong with the other set of numbers. You would think they would understand no matter which word for "three" that you use. But they don't. The dumbest thing is telling time....hours and minutes use different number systems...so if you wanted to say 3:03 you would say    "three (chinese) hour, three (korean) minute"

Lack of Subjects. Korean likes to be logical and efficient, and leave out unneccessary information. For the most part it is logical...save for a few points (redundant dual number sytems anyone?) The lack of subjects however are confusing for an English speaker....as a general rule, subjects are omitted in Korean. So if you wanted to ask if Helga was going to the store you wouldn't say "is she going to the store?" you would just say "store go?" and leave everyone to infer who you are talking about. Therefore, the only difference between "I like cheese!" and "do you like cheese?" is your intonation, because in Korean they would both be "cheese like" either as a statement or a question. When my Korean friends leave out subjects I often find myself looking around to make sure I'm the only one they could be referring to...confusing as it sounds, it doesn't seem to be an issue for them.  

Verb Endings (shudder)

This language and culture is so saturated in politeness/respect for elders & superiors (i.e. Confucian hierarchical relationships) that you cannot say anything without first deciding how polite/formal/informal you wish to be...this affects every verb that you will use.....and it's really not cool to speak informally to superiors/elders/strangers that may possible somehow be your superior. So I always err on the side of caution. The politeish most common one is just -yo. So you add that to every verb.  The verb for go is 'ka' so if I asked my boss "odi ka?" (where are you going) without the 'yo' attached she would not be impressed. Likewise if I ask a kid, "odi kayo?" they would get really confused and blink at me.... 

Another example....what I'm saying in that picture is "congratulations" but the "합니다" part is an uber polite verb ending. 

I could go on to a discussion of how they don't have adjectives (they have adjectival verbs) 

Or how particles are the worst thing in the world...[gah, they have particles for everything...attached to basically every noun is a particle marking it as the subject of the sentence, the object of the sentence etc. ] 

But since I don't think many of you are linguistic nerds I will spare you further torture

To Canada and Beyond

If my next blog is entitled 'Food poisoning'  it's because of the tomato sauce I'm eating right now that tastes pretty funky. Just thought I'd throw that out there. 

So yes, it's true, as the title suggests, I was in Canada for two weeks from Dec 19th-Jan 2 (and I returned to Korea last night). Long story, but I managed to parlay my 5 days holidays into two weeks off and planned to surprise everyone in Victoria. If I talked to you about a conflict at work that I was upset about a couple

 months ago (i.e. Jill) that's what it was about and that's why I was all hush hush about it. 

I enlisted Rebecca (my sister)'s  help and everything went off without a hitch which is kinda of a shocker. It was 26hours of consecutive travelling from doo

r to door...which let me tell you is tooo long. 

It went something like this...

Taxi from Apartment to Bus Station 15mins

Bus to Incheon Intl Airport Seoul 2.5 Hours

Sit in Airport waiting for Flight 3 hours

Flight to Tokyo 3 hours

Sit in Narita Intl Airport 4 hours

Massage Chair 10mins :)

Flight from Tokyo to Vancouver 8 hours

Wait for luggage 75mins :(

Drive with friend from Airport to Ferry 45mins

Ferry to Vancouver Island bad weather route 110 mins

Sleep in Ferry Terminal waiting for Ride 1hour

Drive to Langford 40mins

Ugh. That was not fun. Amazingly, none of those transportation entries had problems. More good fortune, the next day the snow attacked and shut down the airports for several days.....I can't imagine how annoyed I would have been to have been stuck somewhere stupid for days. Somewhere between raging and tempestuous

All the snow kind of put a dent in my surprise tour, but it all worked out in the end. Nobody was expecting me at all, so props to me and Rebecca for secrecy and convincing deception.....

I appeared on our doorstep on the day appointed for tree decorating...and it was quite a special moment...kind of get choked up now that I'm thinking about it actually...must be the cheesy music that's playing right now....anyway....it was fun to see everyones face and that will be a good memory for a long time. 

I think the best reaction was Aunty Co's....though I have to admit I was hiding behind the door and then popped out....so maybe it was surprise and terror together :) Uncle Bill's was also amusing. I answered the door...with something witty like "hey". "hi" he says back not yet registering what's going on... "OH! Hi!" he says as he realizes....

I also got to be in my friends' wedding....Stephen and Alana....or Stalana as they've become known....which was a lot of fun. Bethany, my other sister was in it and so were a lot of friends. So it was quite fun. This is my favourite shot of mine from the day. Signing off to go meet Kyle and Amy at the cafe. Catch y'all later. Yes I said y'all. Deal with it.