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6/11/2005
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KLB - Gangnam One More Time
The updates just keep coming lately. That's because John doesn't have a TV and the only thing I have to do is take pictures and post. Here are the last pics of Gangnam I took:
A fancy building and a Burger King sign. Hard to get a pic around here without some western fast food place in it. Just like America! Well, here are some better ones:
That day I was brave with the camera. I just stopped and took pictures of whatever. I love Korean street food and so it was nice to get some pictures.
Some place where people can eat the street food and drink soju (cheap Korean liquor) with it.
When I snapped a picture of the soju tent, the donut guy next door got jealous and asked me to take his picture too....
Another building. I guess it's not too special, but here it is anyway.
Another Gangnam subway exit/entrance. Another Samsung ad.
In Korea cellphones are for sale pretty much everywhere. Lots of nice ones here. As to be expected, all Samsung.
Back outside, more street food pictures. Here's a pretty young lady getting a plate of deok bokki (slimy rice cake thingies in firey red sauce). Good timing on the shot. Oh wait, that's someone else's hand, I think.
I guess these shots are out of order but I don't have much time to fix things. This is down inside Gangnam station again.
Back outside, more buildings. The big one further down is the Kyobo building. There's a gigantic bookstore on the bottom two floors.
I don't know how these guys get away with selling fake DVDs (burned onto DVD-R disks) in the middle of such an upscale area is beyond me. At $9 a pop they're a ripoff too.
Wow, more street food. I guess you're pretty sick of these shots by now...
Some side street near John's place. Not too exciting, but thought I'd throw it in for those who said they are moving here soon.
More westernization here. The ubiquitous McDs and some movie billboards.
The one thing about Gangnam is that all of the most beautiful girls in Korea (and maybe the world) live or hang out here. It drives you crazy, really. It's like Darwinism at it's best. And they don't like western guys either because, let's face it, we're poor English teachers - not rich Korean businessmen with nice cars and plasma TVs and loads of moola. I know a lot of you want to see pictures of the girls here, but come on, it's not easy to stand outside and snap picture of beautiful girls walking around. This was the best I could do before losing my nerve again and, as you can see, I didn't do a great job. Maybe in the future I could shoot a video - I guess that would make it easier, now that I think about it.
I haven't been to this club, but John and other people have said lots and lots of pretty girls hang out. The problem though is that it gets overcrowded and you can't even move.
Well, that's it. Check back again soon for an update. I'm leaving the country at 9:30 AM tomorrow. And I'm bringing John's camera!
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written by shawn matthews
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6/10/2005
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KLB - Goodbye Kids
This is Kelly, one of the most innocent, adorable kids I have ever had the privelege to teach.
My favorite boy, Sam, is a very nice, polite kid, too. Bye bye!
Another little girl. Korean kids are so damn cute. I want one!
Well, I am not so sure I will miss this little trouble maker...
I took this shot so you could understand what I meant by having a traditional drumming class right next door. I get to hear these kids whapping away on drums while I'm trying to teach all the time. Still, wish I had a cool class like this when I was a kid.
Kelly and Sam getting busy with the crayons. All kindergarten through elementary school teachers should thank God for crayons.
As I said before, my A class drove me nuts my last day there. You can see on the left C and D teams have the big black minus-star sign, which means I'll take stickers out of their books at the end of class. I guess you may also be wondering about that peculiar drawing...
Victor, Dean, and June - three little uncontrollable kids. I drew this picture to let them know how displeased I was with them, and also because I like making silly drawings on the board just because I can. Kelly and Sam got a kick out of this one. Believe it or not this kind of thing actually works. Kids hate when a teacher focuses the classes laughter on them.
Goodbye, Susie and Sarah, two sweet little girls I enjoy teaching.
Simon. This is one of those kids that drive a teacher crazy. An at-times off the wall trouble maker who is also one of your brightest students. You'll yell at him one minute, the next be blown away by his ability.
After awhile I got to be a seating-chart expert. Ideally I like two girls and one boy at every table. For some reason in Korea little girls are almost always good and little boys are almost always bad. This has been the case in every school I have taught here. This seems to change around middle school though, when all kids become a pain in the ass.
No, I don't make kids draw and color in every class, but on my last day there I took it easy. Simon was on his best behavior today, a little quiet as I have him sitting next to two little girls, hehe.
Bye, bye D class. There's Sarah on the right. She just keeps getting cuter and cuter and cuter. That boy there with the curly hair is Justin. Every sentence he ever speaks in English has something to do with me. Every story he makes is something like this: "Shawn teacher I home came. Shawn teacher me TV watched and fun. Shawn teacher the kind and fun teacher, funny haha!...(his English drives me bonkers). He has this weird obsession with me, always following me in the halls and outside to the bus. Then he even got a "Shawn teacher pama" (perm) as he calls it. Maybe he lacks a father figure at home or something. At any rate, he'll probably go on to be one of those creepy Korean guys that bother foreigners on the subway, but I like him.
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written by shawn matthews
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6/9/2005
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KLB - Ganghwa-do (3)
The last installment from our trip to Ganghwa-do, brought to you by KLB.
Nice shot of the temple here, ala John. Notice up in the left corner, way up there? Yes, that's right, the walkway and stairs go all the way up there.
A shot of me looking around in awe. This place was really nice. See, now what gets me is this. Look at that sky. You never see that kind of blue sky in Seoul. That's what is sad about living in a modern city, all the pollution. You convince yourself it's just haze and fog and humidity, until you get out and see this.
We hung around this level for awhile snapping pictures:
I'm probably committing some kind of sacrilege here, but it's a cool picture nonetheless. I always wanted a pet that looked like this.
OK, enough dilly-dallying, back to the steep climb. The hardest part is ahead.
Now here is where practices of old and new work in harmony. I've always admired the stone piles like these that you see around temples and trails, but I never knew what the significance was. Welp, back in the modern wolrd, fire up the computer, enter keywords in Google, and presto, the answer: "Along the trails in Korea you see piles of rocks. A prayer will be said as the rock is put on the pile. By attaching a stone to another rock's surface is a better chance of having your prayer answered. The stack of rocks can become very high." Wow, cool, so it's an ancient form of the game Jenga. So, what if you add a rock that causes the pile to tumble? I guess you're doomed to bad Karma for eternity.
And to think some of them start as small as this one. Ancient style Jenga was way cooler than the modern day version....
Here's John striking a serious photographic pose. Hi, Mom!
There's no perspective to this shot, but this resting Buddha figure was enormous.
Finally, up at the top, you come to this ancient stone Buddha sculpture. Again, no perspective, but it was very large and everyone was up here bowing and lighting incense and whatnot. Out of respect, we didn't take pictures of them.
I have no idea what this says, but I assume it says something very deep and meaningul.
You can see from this nice shot how far we climbed. Beautiful scenery. We really enjoyed the hike.
On the way down we stopped and, for a measly $10, we enjoyed the local dong-dong ju (unfiltered rice wine) and a few really delicious side dishes, the main being some kind of friend potato pancake that was awesome and very filling. We weren't hungry again until later at night. Apparently the rice wine from here is famous. It tasted really good and I ended up buying a jug for $5 before leaving the island, though it's still sitting in the fridge. It's not as much fun to drink with boiled eggs and tuna.
OK, I couldn't resist throwing in one shot of the flies infesting all the dried shrimp...that can't be healthy can it?
Anyway, we really wanted to continue exploring the island but unfortunately, there was one big drawback to the trip. The busses. For some reason we never did take any pictures of the gigantic lines, but the busses only came once an hour. We were supposed to go down to a famous beach, perhaps even take a ferry to another island, but after waiting nearly two hours in line, we decided we better get back on the bus from where we came. This was really too bad and we couldn't figure out why they wouldn't invest in better transportation on such a touristy island, especially what, with all the flub-dub in that video about how important the island is to Korea and the world!
John took a bunch of pics of the countryside through the door of the bus where we were squished like sardines.
Back to the ferry. That was one of the nicest parts of the trip anyway.
The cool breeze, the smell of the ocean, little kids throwing shrimp chips at seagulls.
If it wasn't for the fact that we didn't know where to sleep, and if it there had been a better public transportation system around the island (that was a real bummer baking in the sun for two hours waiting to be crammed on a bus) we may have stayed another night. But we stumbled upon a bus heading back to Seoul and decided to take it. While waiting in line we noticed a butcher shop across the street and mosied over. For only $7 we got a gigantic bag full of bacon-style pork which we were eager to get home and cook (coming next post).
And, finally, the last pic from our trip: a wonderful shot of the bus back to Seoul -and some happy looking ajumma.
Thank you for reading about our trip to Ganghwa-do. Stay tuned for more adventures, including a couple of pics from the last day at my school and information about where and what I will be doing the next month...
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written by shawn matthews
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6/8/2005
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KLB - Ganghwa-do (2)
Ah, the joys of keeping an online journal. You spend hours getting your pictures ready and writing your post, a little excited to share your adventures with everyone, hoping to bring some joy to your readers, only to wind up with comments like "You are gay! --Anonymous" or "Shut up loser! Nobody cares! --No Name Joe." Well, once again I don't have to worry about that anymore, so here we go. Back to the Ganghwa trip.
Oh, some of you were wondering how we decided on Ganghwa-do and where the hell is it, basically. We started by using this famous website among expats for travelling in Korea. Then I stumbled upon the Ganghwa-do page. We discovered it's not that far away and so we then checked the island's homepage. Next we watched the rather over-the-top, almost preposterous "cyber tour video" that you just have to see by going here and clicking on the link to the left. You'd basically think Ganghwa Island is the epicenter of the world after watching that, my favorite lines being, (you have to hear the narrator's dramatic voice and the background music to fully appreciate this): "It is a place full of hope for the future," and, "You can learn about the history of Korea and the origins of mankind!" No way! You got me sold!
Even though their directions to the island are horrible as they have you getting off the bus in the middle of nowhere, it's still a nice place, but man, that video is misleading! There was absolutely no English anywhere on that island. Even the tourist center woman in one of the bus stations couldn't speak a word! And, by sheer luck, we found another bus back to Seoul that made the trip in half the time and departed directly from the ferry terminal!
It wasn't until we left the next day that we had any idea what the hotel looked like. Well, turns out it looked kind of big and creepy. I forgot to mention in the last post that they turned off the power to the air conditioner and water tank during the night, so I woke up at 7 in the morning, sweaty and thirsty and had to drink warm water. I kept thinking maybe we blew a fuse so I went downstairs to complain. After waking up the ajushi, he acted annoyed and told me to open the window. "No air con!" I thought that was petty, but I guess most Koreans don't sleep with any kind of fan running, for fear of the infamous "fan death."
The sun was pouring in on that side of the building and there was no breeze. Fortunately, I did finally get back to sleep, though, and the guy was nice when we were leaving, giving us free maps and telling us where to go.
Walking down the side of the road, we got this picture of one of the many rice paddies. They are nice to look at, but this island must be hell with mosquitoes come August. That water is stagnant. Though, maybe it's all harvested by then, I have no idea.
We found our way to the bus terminal, pointed to one of the islands on our map and ended up on a bus.
Then we ended up on a ferry. The ferries were really cheap and convenient, coming every 15 minutes or so.
Ah, mountains and the ocean, this time up close. It was a really nice ferry ride, albeit short.
It was also hot that day, I was sweating even on the boat. This is kind of a nice shot though, with the mountain and the birds in the background. Hi, Mom!
After arriving in the middle of nowhere again we hopped on another bus and ended up here, in the middle nowhere.
Um, OK, I like fresh seafood and all, this stuff was still alive, but I hope there is more around here than this.
OK, over here: lots of old women selling stuff. Actually, this reminded me a lot of Koje Island.
Let's have a closer look. Hmmm, some dried baby shrimp, anchovies, mushrooms, ginseng and, well, weeds I guess. I decided not to post the picture of hundreds of flies buzzing about. John was telling me that flies poop through their feet...mmm! Fly poop!
What else is around here. Ah, lots of brown jugs. Can't get any more exciting than this...
I had to check. Yeap, all full of dwen jang, rotting in the hot sun. Man that looks good, and I'm not joking. I love dwen jang chigae. I wanted to buy this whole jar!
OK, at last we found the attraction. Lots of steps leading up into who knows where.
It wasn't an easy climb. It seemed to go up forever. That was half the fun, though, not knowing what we were doing or what we would see. So far we didn't do too bad. About halfway up we came across these nice temples.
Lots more pics of this place coming shortly, though I narrowed things down quite a bit. We left the island with a whopping 200 pictures. I think I will post about 15 or so more in the next update and end it there. Lots of other things to come too.
In other news, today was my last day at my elementary school, at least for the time being. It made everything a lot easier since I'm coming back (but you never know). The kids didn't take it too bad. In fact my A class was simply off the wall today. They really need to close the windows and get the air con working. It's just too hot in there for kids to study, not to mention much too noisy with kids playing and screaming outside and a traditional drumming class next door. I swear I couldn't wait for that class to end and I kept thinking I never want to go back there. That was until the next few class, when everything calmed down and the kids were much better. By the time D-class came I was sad. A bunch of the little girls started crying, and then I teered up myself. It would have been a rough day had they thought I wasn't returning - for them and me. Probably more so for me. I'm such a wimp with goodbyes.
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written by shawn matthews
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KLB - Misc Info
Day Date Page Loads Unique Visitors
Tuesday 7th June 2005 1,888 1211
Monday 6th June 2005 1,647 1080
Sunday 5th June 2005 2,090 1402
Saturday 4th June 2005 2,827 1998
Friday 3rd June 2005 2,089 1518
Thursday 2nd June 2005 1,654 1123
Wednesday 1st June 2005 1,624 1118
I'm not exactly sure why, but since Julie and I broke up the stats on my site have practically doubled. And, as to be expected, with the influx of readers comes the inevtible one or two internet stalkers (and John-haters) that love to leave all sorts of thoughtful comments under the guise of made-up IDs, for no other reason than to stir up trouble. I hate to do it, but my family and who knows who else reads this site, hence, for the time being, I'm going to moderate the comments section. So if you leave one and it doesn't immediately show up, you know why. I will approve any comment that isn't purposely abusive.
In other news: I will be leaving the country on Saturday for 3-4 weeks. Since I am just about out of copies of my book, and probably won't be getting more anytime soon - if at all - I've made both books available in PDF format through Lulu.com: (Click here for more info.) You can also order the paperback copies there, just not from me directly anymore, though What the Book? in Itaewon still had a few of the last IOF copies left, last time I checked.
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written by shawn matthews
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KLB - Ganghwa-do (1)
It was a three day weekend, something to do with the Korean constitution - I can never keep track of the many different Korean holidays. John and I woke up at around 3:00 PM on Saturday and decided to head off somewhere - anywhere. Just to get the hell out of Gangnam. In a mad rush we packed our bags and made our way to some island we never heard of. Gangwha-do.
We started on the subway. Here's John looking peculiarly shiny.
At the bus terminal we stopped and had some grub. I got dor sot bibim bap, rice and vegetables in a stone pot, yum!
John got ramyon noodles. This picture cracks me up. Look at the innocent expression on his mug...no, this guy didn't just rob a bank. No way!
*Disclaimer: no we are not gay, in case you were wondering. I'd better point this out to all the homophobic biggots out there, and my worried mother.
Here I am on the bus from Incheon to Ganghwa. I look happy. I'm happy as hell to get out of Gangnam. I hate it there, to be honest. In all my years in Korea it has been the least enjoyable place I've ever lived.
OK, so after a couple of long bus rides we finally got to Ganghwa-do, let off in the middle of nowhere at 10:30 at night. Think about that. We got off the bus in the middle of nowhere in Korea in the middle of a pitch black night. I mean it was desolate. So desolate and dark that we couldn't even take any pictures. We broke into hysterical laughter. It was the most fun we'd had in awhile.
After walking for about 45 minutes we stumbled onto a fried chicken/beer restaurant. Even in the middle of nowhere you can find these places. I was thrilled! I love fried chicken and beer. I love Korea! Yah!
After looking at a few really rundown "motel" rooms, we jumped into a taxi and made them bring us to the nearest decent place. This is where we landed. And we got the last room. We did "rocks, paper, scissors" for the bed and, as usual, I lost. Not the best sleep I ever got but not too bad either.
They even had a great selection of movies to choose from. I grabbed three!
Ah, after a few hours of wondering around Nowhereville, Korea, it was nice to finally relax. I really got into the movies. I can't deny it - I was into this trip and felt great! Who knows what tomorrow may bring!
John, too. Check him out...he's totally siked and into the movie...
A Bruce Willis film, can't go wrong. And wow, what a treat for my readers - a shot of my sexy leg! In all honesty, I felt good and alive and excited about the movie and the day ahead tomorrow. I love picking up and heading off to nowhere.
Have to throw in this shot I took of John's foot. I think he's been watching too much "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" as I have never seen such a groomed foot in all my life. I'd need a sand blaster to make my feet look anything even close to this.
Sunday morning! This is the scenery outside the hotel window. Ah, rice paddies, the ocean and mountains. Good riddens, Gangnam! We had no idea the night before where we were, so the view was a pleasant surprise. That was the beauty of the trip - figuring out exactly where we were and what we could do. Stay tuned - this is just the first of 4 or 5 updates to come...
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written by shawn matthews
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