Mind Garten

Korea, Day 75 A typhoon ate my umbrella. Or more specifically, it chewed it up and spit it back out at me. It seemed to be mocking me, humiliating me for buying that cheap $2.50 umbrella the day before with the realistic expectation that it would last at least 2 weeks. The typhoon made sure my umbrella didn't see more than one sunrise. I guess that teaches me for buying an umbrella made with metal-coated twigs. Sentient storms aside, yesterday was my last day at school. I spent the entire day with my classes playing a special edition of Jeopardy with "Insult Jacob" and "Jacob's Cat" as special categories. Of course, the goal of this game is to get them to make perfect English sentences. The content of the sentences is not that important. One of my favorite questions in the "Cat" category is, "How cute is Jacob's Cat?" Any answer other than "Jacob's cat is very cute" was counted wrong. I took pictures...

Korea, Day 72 I had a dream the other night about a consumer village. This was something like a retirement home crossed with Amway. You lived and breathed marketing, and you had discipline probes attached to your person that shocked you whenever you thought impure thoughts such as saving money. I was trying to convince somebody that they should leave the consumer village, but there mind had been so manipulated that it was futile to argue with them. This is probably a manifestation of my growing frustration with the malleable minds people have. Also, with my recent discovery that Amway exists in Korea . I don't know much about Amway per se, but I do know that they're one of those companies that depend on salesmen to utilize their friends and family and spend their life savings to initiate capital. I do recall that Amway got busted for a pyramid scheme in which only the people at the top got rich and everyone at the bottom lost money and their lives were ruined. So ...

Korea, Day 70 This weekend I was sick, again. I swear that I've been sick more times over 2 months in Korea than I've been in an entire year in the States. First I got some version of the flu that incapacitated and made me dizzy. That lasted for 3 days. Then I got a bout of diarrhea that lasted 2 days. Then I contracted an annoying rash that spread over my body and gave me a mild itch. That lasted about a month. Then I got more diarrhea this weekend which lasted about 3 days. What could cause so much sickness in such a short amount of time? Probably sanitation is to blame. Although Koreans are generally clean and live in a clean environment, I'm not always certain that the food would meet minimum sanitation standards in the States. Another thing to blame would be the tap water. Although I don't drink it, I wash with it. Plus, most drinking water is purified tap water. One can only speculate on how well the purifiers work. Then there's the street...

Korea, Day 67 I had a dream last night that I came back to America and went to my parents house and saw that they had got 4 more cats. That's 4 on top of the 4 they have already which equals 8 cats. A couple of them had 2 tails and did not like to be pet. So I had to learn all of their names and figure out what their personalities were like. What makes this ironic is that my parents said that they didn't want any more cats and even refused to babysit my cat while I was away in Korea. I think this is my mind's idea of playing around with me since I've been thinking of my own cat a lot lately. I gave out my test today. I didn't realize it, but I made it a lot harder than the last one. My last test was multiple choice, but this test had no multiple choice. To top it off, I disallowed having the story during the test which might have aided them. To be fair though, all the questions were pulled directly from the homework. If they didn't do the homewo...

Korea, Day 66 My day seems to be endless string of events sown together with intermittent madness. The toxic excitement of Korea seems to be wearing off, and I'm drifting into a hallucinogenic stupor. This happens to me sometimes late at night and prevents me from sleeping or doing anything productive. It does not prevent me from writing however. Thousands of helpless monsters run down a road, never straying from the destination, determined to reach the end. All the while they are constantly shelled and mortared, pounded to death by turrets and towers built by me. I am killing them. And I am doing this for fun. When they die by my hand, I get money. With the money, I buy more turrets and kill more monsters. It is a vicious cycle. This is a custom game for Warcraft 3 that I've been playing a lot lately. Playing Warcraft is not a rational action, but a mindless consumption of media drivel. I have found that my impulses tend to play the cooperative, modified g...

Korea, Day 65 My New Zealander friend approaches the counter after we've ordered our pizza. He clears his throat and adds, "One more thing." He abruptly puts his forearms together to form an "x" sign, and says firmly to the Korean standing behind the counter, who barely understands English, "No Corn!" This is the scene that repeatedly makes me laugh whenever I think about it. I only went to get pizza with him twice and both times he did this. However, we went to Dominos both times, and they don't put corn your pizza unless you order it, unlike all other Korean pizza parlors. I think it was his adamant disapproval of corn, and his repeated insistence that it not be on his pizza that makes me laugh. It's too bad I haven't seen him in several weeks. I've also been meaning to get the photos up on the web, but it's a painful process to do. I don't have my own computer connected to the internet, so I have to use other...

Korea, Day 64 Hello, my name is Jacob. Okay, goodbye

Korea, Day 63 I got home from my vacation yesterday and am settling back into my life in Pusan. School this morning was just like a typical Monday except I was a little more tired than usual. I totaled it up yesterday, and I calculated that I spent approximately 750,000 won on my 5-day vacation trip. This includes bus fares, food, motels, and buying stuff. To continue from yesterdays story, I was in the small folk village of Hahue, and I just found a place to stay at a "minbak" or homestay. The main occupant was an old lady of about 70 or 80. She did her best to keep us comfortable and offered to serve us dinner or breakfast for a small fee. The room I stayed in was a pretty traditional room with only a floor and no furniture. The blankets were laid on the floor and a mosquito net placed over the blankets. This was quite handy to keep out the bugs since there were so many of them in the countryside. The bathroom was simply an outhouse 10 meters away from t...

Korea, Day 62 The cheap motel room I was talking about 2 days ago turned out to be a very uncomfortable experience. Perhaps my brooding over all the shortcomings and the lack of ventilation contributed to my feeling of claustrophobia. The room was pitch black at night and the air was stale. I was worried that if I fell asleep, I might die from asphyxiation or something. It also contributed to a feeling of loneliness and depression that was difficult to shed. The television in the room was an unexpectedly welcome friend. After waking up very early at 3am and lingering until 7am, I left to catch my bus to Andong. I had one destination in Andong and it was Hahwae village about 25 minutes out of town. When I exited the bus terminal in Andong, I had an offer from a taxi driver to take me to Hahwae for the low low price of 22,000 won. It was quite preposterous, so I elected to take the periodic bus. I had about an hour until the bus came, so I strolled around the streets drag...

Korea, Day 60 This morning, waking up in Icheon, I took the bus to the Moga Buddhist Museum just out of town near Yeoju. This place was really out in the middle of nowhere. Lots of countryside, rice fields, and old buildings. The buddhist museum was basically a large courtyard filled with numerous sculptures and a large 4-story building containing more interesting statues and artifacts, along with a fully stocked souvenir shop. A lot of the exhibits were contemporary crafts made by the owner or several of his associates. There were many old-style crafts but also a lot of contemporary art which looked a lot more like postmodernism than religiously-motivated art. Of course, there were a couple shrines, one of which was devoted to the father of Korea, Tangun. It's common with temples that you are not allowed to take pictures inside. This is unfortunate for me since I'd like to show you what they look like. The museum also had its own restaurant which sported Buddh...

Korea, Day 59 I've been on the road a couple days now. I left Pusan 10:30pm Tuesday night. I headed for Kwangju and didn't get there until 3 am. The reason I went to Kwangju was not for sight-seeing, but I needed to go there first to catch the bus to Tamyang. The weather was pretty rainy and motels were nowhere in sight. I brought my new REI luggage case which was actually very large and cumbersome. It has wheels, but I forgot that there was an extendable handle beneath one of the zippers. As a result, I was pulling the thing around while hunched over to keep it on its wheels. Needless to say, this was very uncomfortable and doubly so because it was raining. The first yeogwan found was the one I stayed at. It cost 30,000 won for one night, no bed, and lots of blankets. It was a fairly fancy place even though it was small. The price was a bit inflated, but I suppose that's all you can find this close to the bus terminal. I hopped on the bus in the morn...

Korea, Day 57 I wrote up evaluations on Sunday, distributed them Monday, and gave the Korean translations today. Normally, report cards are only sent out once a month, and the foreign teachers only have a minimal involvement in the process. I felt it was necessary to give my own evaluations 2 weeks early since I wanted to see my kids improve, and I wanted to see them do it while I was still their teacher. Next week is my last week, and if I waited until the end of the month to give report cards, the effectiveness of those reports would seriously be damaged. So evaluation consists of 2 grades, followed by my own comments. Let me give you a couple examples. (Note: The English nicknames have been changed to protect the privacy of the students.) "Natasha is a good student and good at doing work, but she seems very unhappy and unenthusiastic in class. I have a difficult time getting her to participate in class, so her listening and speaking skills are not as good as th...

Korea, Day 56 Still raining. In fact, it's become quite cold. So cold in fact that I woke up with my blanket completely covering my body and shivering a bit from the fan. Of course, it's still a bit warm, but it's drastically more comfortable than it was a week ago. I've become quite used to taking cold showers. When I first moved into my yeogwan, the water was intermittently warm, but now it's always cold. I wonder if they gradually turned it off on purpose to conserve energy. Of course, the American in 201 can't complain since he doesn't speak any Korean. I don't really mind though. On those warm summer days when you're sweating up a storm, taking a cold shower is actually quite nice. It's a terrible relief from the sickening heat. This morning however was excrutiatingly cold. It's been cold and raining for almost 6 days now and that has drastically reduced the temperature of the water. So this morning I felt like I was...

Korea, Day 53 It's been raining now for about three days straight. Consequently we've received some much needed relief from the blistering humid heat. It's actually starting to feel a lot more like home back in Oregon. There we have lots of rain and lots of cold weather. I'm quite at home here, although I still don't think I could use my trenchcoat because I'd still end up sweating in it. I'm administering tests to my kids today. It's actually a very difficult test, but there's no reason why the majority of them don't get at least 90%. I basically took questions right out of the homework we've been doing for this week. I even told them that I'm giving a test based on the homework. Sadly, my average is about 70 with a few outliers scoring 10%. The people who get low scores are the ones who did not complete their homework enthusiasticly. "Enthusiastic" was actually one of our vocabulary words that about 75% of my ...

Korea, Day 52 In my English classes, kids always want to play games instead of studying. Although this may sound selfish, Korean kids generally study several hours a day, and asking them to do homework is not really possible. They first get instructed by the Korean teacher for an hour, then I step in and instruct them for an hour. A foreign teacher's hour is seen as a time to not work as hard and play around. Over the past couple weeks I have been giving them extremely difficult assignments to do with very little game playing. They whine to me nearly every day, but I've been told that's a good thing since they supposedly respect me as a teacher. I have this one class that has gone to great lengths to convince me to play a game instead of studying. The first thing they tried was tell me that it was one of their birthdays. Since that didn't work, they tried to claim that it was my birthday and that we should have a party. They've pressed me on this is...

Korea, Day 51 Okay, it's like 10pm now and I'm wasting my time away in the PC bang. Just a second ago a Korean voice jumped on everybody's computer speakers and said something unimportant. Quite eerie hearing it reverberate throughout the PC room from different speakers at different volumes. Right now I'm debating whether I should order some ramen or just skip dinner altogether and go to sleep. I'm up later than I usually stay. At 10pm I usually go to sleep, but right now its 10:11pm. I just started writing this entry, so I don't know how long that will take. Today I helped a poor newbie Briton adjust to life in Korea. He may end up working at our hogwan full time, but right now he's a temp. It's kind of fun actually. It makes me feel like I've come full circle. I've gone from the naive foreigner from America to the savvy street-smart English teacher. Really, there's nothing fancy about it, but it makes me realize how much...

Korea, Day 49 August 30 is my last day of work. My plane leaves on September 17. I have approximately 16 days in which to fill. Hopefully I can plan on doing a bit of traveling. Last week I investigated the possibility of traveling to North Korea, but alas, it was not to be. I had hoped to visit one of the last few true Marxist states and tour under the watchful eyes of the government. I wanted to see the other half of Korea that's been in isolation for 50 years. Sadly, North Korea is not issuing tourist visas to Americans at this time. What with Bush's "axis of evil" and all, this is a bit understandable. If I was Canadian or Australian, I probably could get a visa. Tours in North Korea are very interesting. At all times, you must be accompanied by a guide. Foreigners are not allowed to wander around aimlessly. They do their best to answer your questions and make sure you don't get into trouble. If anything does happen, its not you that gets...

Korea, Day 48 It was a hot and humid Korean summer day. I had extra bottles of water since I was loosing about a liter of water an hour in sweat. I stood there waiting, fanning myself vigorously, coming to the realization that my escort to the plane crash was not going to show up. In fact, it had been 30 minutes since our appointed time at the subway station, and he was no where to be found. I had been stood up by a New Zealander. A wave of disappointment came over me, quickly followed by a wave of relief. The temperature was about 33 degrees and with these humid conditions, it would have made my life very difficult hiking up the mountain to the plane crash. In fact, I would say that there could have been a serious risk for heat stroke, so I was not really that disappointed at all. I'll just have to find some other day in which to go to Gimhae mountain on my own. On Friday, I went and saw a doctor about a rash I have on my body. You don't make appointments in ...

Korea, Day 46 I am quite excited today. I discovered something really interesting that I'm going to see tomorrow. I'll give you a hint. What happened April 15, 2002? On April 15, a China Air plane was making its approach towards Gimhae Airport near Pusan. Instead of hitting the runway, it slammed into the side of a mountain with 166 people onboard. Only 30 odd people actually survived the crash and a few people were never found at all. After several days of looking for survivors and bodies, the search was finally called off and the site was abandoned. For almost 4 months now, the wrecked plane has sat their on the side of Gimhae mountain next to apartment buildings. No one has come to collect the parts or clean up the place. In the States, every piece of wreckage is confiscated and a 2-year investigation begins to discover the cause of the crash and how it can be prevented in the future. In Korea, I suppose they don't have the budget for such nonsense. ...