busan international fireworks festival

i am the type of person that can get really concerned about things. though i go through my life mostly looking up i can experience moments of worry, moments that can keep me up at night watching action movies to stay distracted. i can settle into a life and start new very easily but fragments of doubt can shuffle up to me quickly and without notice. i was the kind of kid that was happy but also had the potential for unmatched levels of moroseness. despite my overall state of mental well being here in korea, i have spent a few nights wondering if i was doing all i could here. to offset creeping notions i spent this weekend in busan with friends for the international fireworks festival. sadly angela stayed in daegu due to a nasty sickness.


dongdaegu station

click through for more!


the busan international fireworks is apparently a big deal in south korea. i hadn't really heard much about it and sort of assumed that when i did it was because i was just some westerner looking to appropriate some culture: with some "major" festival happening on a weekly basis around the country it can difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff: the onggi pottery show, for example, is coming up soon and is sure to be a hit. or not. but it sure is getting the shit advertised out of it. who knows? but when a foreigner hears of something like an International Fireworks Festival happening on the most popular beach in the country they sort of have to go. especially if they have awesome friends willing to put them up for free.


gwangalli beach, busan. before the crowds arrived in our area.

so ann, ryan, colin, kristen, sam, jesse and myself bought from a streetside vender a bunch of beach mats that look like the UV shields californians put in their parked cars: you know the type, foil on one side, vaguely padded, insulating. proud and feeling adventurous we took our newly acquired spacesuit material down to the beach. i was informed that there would be a lot of people there. what i wasn't ready for was the sheer amount of bodies. when i saw metallica many years ago i knew what i was signing up for. when i happily strolled into a crowd umpteen times larger and umpteen times more prone to exploding than that which was crammed into qwest field i was completely unprepared. we waded into the mob with another group of festival participants and got no further than 20 feet before we were utterly stuck in the quagmire. sam was up front and got thoroughly harassed and handled by a little old lady who seemed to have much more power than her hunched frame would have cared to admit. i was choking on my backpack and the five friends between us were beginning to lose their minds. the noise got louder and louder as those koreans behind us shouted to move forward and those in front of us shouted to move back. i cracked. screaming and panicked i turned around and tried to get back. more old ladies pushed me aside and i nearly fell over as the shoulder checks became increasingly violent. the last time i felt so enraged was 8 years ago when security guards didn't let me through the gates to see mudvayne. i thought those days were behind me but to my immediate horror they were staring me in the face, daring me to stand up straight and keep my knees from buckling.

eventually we all made it back out onto the street and were informed that down the beach a click we'd find a more open area. sure enough we found space to lay down our mats and then our bruised egos. it was 4:30pm. the fireworks wouldn't start for another three and a half hours.


close to show time, the space between individual mats becomes null

8:00. showtime.












from left: jesse, sam, kristen, colin, ann, ryan



so, am i doing all i can here? no. the answer is that simple. it will be impossible to do everything and get the sense of accomplishment that comes with living somewhere for years. i will never fully conquer south korea but as long as i make these efforts and spend time with friends and challenge myself there is no telling where the rewards end. maybe the notion of never being able to see everything is exactly what i need in my life, after all.And the rest of your post here

-e pics n' things!

the myriad difference between hospitals and clinics

well, it finally happened. today i went to a korean hospital for the first time. this, i guarantee you, is far less dramatic than it appears. here hospitals are called hospitals and clinics and walk-ins are called hospitals: there is zero differentiation between the two in discussion with koreans. you sort of realize you're not going to a hospital-proper when you're walking up a flight of stairs and a couple 13 year old girls in school uniforms are walking down, leaving their hagwon for the day.

after a lovely trip to neighboring gwangju, i managed to finally contract the epidemic that exists only in elementary schools. starting sunday morning i have felt like a dozen mice are running around inside my head. my nose won't stop running and it feels like my lungs are filled with soot. it doesn't matter if you teach at an isolated little town in the pacific northwest or a dingy metropolis on the other side of the world, you will get sick. this is why flu season starts. this is why doctors are rich and hated.

a note on the former. actually, a complete digression on the former: medicine here is cheap. and not cheap like insurance-cheap. i mean really cheap. i was resisting my co-teacher's attempts to get me in for a check up because i was afraid of the bill. i had seen angela go to the clinic and get treated for strep and she ended up paying about $80 USD for a pretty slick medicine drip (more on my costs later). as per usual, and being the cheap bastard that i am, it was difficult to get me to pay to pay for something i knew would just go away on its own in another few days. also i hate needles. they can just go sod off, thank you.

my co-teacher, mun su-eun (that's sue to you, by the by), finally got tired of watching me blow my sorry chapped nose and took me to a "hospital" today for a check-up. she asked if i had brought my insurance card and i told her that no, i wasn't planning on making a trip to the hospital today so i hadn't packed it with my lunchbag. "okay, no problem. just bring your ARC." from the time i entered the waiting room of the clinic, on the 2nd floor of a non-descript building on a non-descript street very close to where i live, to the time i was walking back out with a prescription notice in hand was less than the time it took for the battle scene on the bridge in mission impossible 3 to run. i was in and out in less than ten minutes and was informed that i wasn't as sick as everyone thought i was. it's tough to say i told you so sometimes. the doctor lady told me to take three and call her in the morning (actually quite literally), handed sue a bill and showed us the door. at the front counter i paid 3600won (just about $3.19 USD) and was out the door. there were no extended forms and liability waivers to fill out. there was no waiting for 20 minutes. dynamic korea comes through in a positive way here.

downstairs was the pharmacy. not across town like in the united states. apparently clinics and pharmacies work together in a federally-run health care system so that the crippled, or merely coughing, patient doesn't have to go on a vision quest halfway across the state to get their damned pills before collapsing in a heap on the side of the road due to exhaustion because they've run out of gas money and can't hitchhike because if they stuck out their thumb their crutches would fall out. i found this convenient. someone of more dire circumstance than myself might find this downright helpful. it took the people behind the counter less than 3 minutes to fill my prescription and for 9 doses of 3 pills each i paid 1700won ($1.50 USD). once again, no forms, no request of address, phone number, social security number, second piece of identification and the serial number of your first mountain bike. just in and out. later in the evening i would buy a pack of halls throat drops that cost more than my entire prescription.

as david sedaris so elequently put described his own habits while living in france, "now i can finally afford to be a hypochondriac."


...or maybe it's the air here?

-e pics n' things!

one of the best days/nights here: pt. I

to be in a country where everything is new and unusual it would be pretty special to have a day/night combo that would stand out. this is especially the case for me, a chronic optimist stuck in 5th gear because everything new seems to be, to quote a very special mexican friend, "really amazing. really, really amazing." jump for more...


\
nom.

so let's start with the andong mask festival. angela and i met up with good friends ann, ryan and kristan to take the 100km bus ride from here in daegu to andong. we started successfully enough by walking 15 minutes south to the subway, heading east for 20 minutes on the red line and then finally taking a 20 minute taxi ride north and west, effectively making a really nice looking circle around the busy part of the city. we found these directions and took them as read without doing any sort of research thus were led to spend 950won on the subway and 9000won for the cab. we ended up at the bukbu (literally "north area". buk: north. bu: area) terminal, a place only 10 minutes, and 3000won, north of my apartment by taxi.

the bus stations here seem to be easy to deal with. after being ruthlessly queue barged and cut-off a few times by citizens of dynamic korea i was able to walk up to the ticket counter and get two tickets to andong with relative ease. there are a lot of places in korea that look like they should not accept bank cards that do, the bukbu terminal being one of them. the tickets there were 6900won with buses leaving every 40 minutes. on a sidenote, there is something to be noted here about the architecture in south korea: while the city centers develop and become notably glassier, suburbs and outskirts become more and more derelict. many buildings here are eerily reminiscent of a time when this area, daegu specifically, sat on the precipice of the PROK war line. daegu was within the pusan perimeter so was never actually breeched by the communist forces in the korean war but was definitely under threat of siege or bombardment. the older buildings of the region reflect military architecture. most are grey tiled or concrete slab constructions, squat and void of any character.


angela enjoying some of the more edible snackyfairefoodz. can't go wrong with fried dough and sugar.

it seems the mask festival itself serves as a massive boon to the area's local market economy. as we approached the festival's center we had to walk through a huge row of vendors that were slinging wares and goods not often associated with traditional cultural events and celebrations. next to the fried dough/elephant ear/churro vendor was a booth selling tools and household hardware. a few booths down from them was a sale on cheaply constructed leather shoes. strings, electric wires and tattered canopies were strung every which way. pungent smells of wildly differing levels of appeal wafted in and out like listening to seven different versions of puccini's nessun dorma by a norwegian death metal band, sigur ros, 2PM, et. al: some were good, some were very, very bad. beware the fool that keeps walking while taking in a brainful of sweet dough smell because the boiling silkworms will sneak up on your blissfully unsuspecting olfactory receptors. it's like getting hit in the face by a 2x4. on fire. with a nail on one end. the end that his you, to be more exact.




a vendor selling bibimbap, a classic korean rice dish.



but there was a mask festival behind the thick curtain of strange korea fair food. a traditional mask festival that had a free beer wagon and a massive stage and a pop music concert replete with pyros and smoke. the grounds the festival was being held at appears to be a permanent installation. the shape of a stadium but about 10 times the size and without the bleacher seating, the andong mask festival was massive. there was a mask dance stage, vendors and mask making booths. the latter was probably the best part about the whole day for me. ann, ryan, kristan, ang and i bought a blank paper mache/cardstock mask for 3000won. with this we got a 5-color pack of floam, that stuff you had as a kid and always wanted to eat but if you had you would've died because the shit's probably more toxic than the columbia river near hanford.


raw materials.

the five of us were crowded around a small little workbench under an awning. the day was plesant and we spent an hour and a half on mask making and talking. i can't say i would have had a better time doing something else.


finished product.


playing in the bubbles area.



perhaps one of the strangest things we bore witness to over the course of the fantastic day was on the stage. the barbecued squid, the strange fair food, the green spiders the size of my palm, all of this was more or less expected. the day took a turn for the surreal, however, when we were in the main plaza area with our backs to the stage. i was procuring a cup of disgusting coffee while the other four stood in a circle contemplating our next move when we heard something, to understate the point, unexpected. not traditional korean chanting or pansori...



...but something totally different and, dare i say, perhaps not exactly the most true expression of the rich culture the land of choson has to offer. no, what we turned to see were korean elementary schoolers yodeling. i can't really offer any more explanation or vitriolic remarks to make that clever or, at a long shot, humorous. there was an oompa band consisting of a tuba, stand up bass and guitar, all played by the kids the same age.


stunned, i wandered away nursing my cup of wretched coffee.

more to come.

-e
pics n' things!

seoul for chuseok

an excavated river in city center.




admiral lee.


guard at gyeongnambuk palace.




lovers locks at seoul tower.

-e pics n' things!

alien registry; the wall in my apartment

Eight business days after applying for my Alien Registration Card (and four business days after Ang), I have finally become a perfectly legal and partially contributing member of Korean society.* Considering the nuts and bolts of the application process and the complications that can arise unless it gets briskly taken care of:

The ARC is your lifeline during your stay in South Korea. It is the next best thing to a Korean passport we can get and we can only get it if we are working in country. I can only compare the importance of the ARC here with the (relative) non-importance of having something of the sort while in England: much more so. For example: during my five months in England I was able to get a phone and internet service (separate from the university's) without the UK-equivalent to the ARC. One day I stumbled into an O2 store and, 15 minutes later, stumbled back out with a phone and a buttload of minutes and texts. I've seen some forums that say you can have a pay-as-you-go phone with just a passport but those plans tend to be exorbitant in price and leave you feeling like a penniless husk at the end of each call. Some would say But Elliott, they're great if you don't use your phone much! This is something I would agree with but if you don't use your phone much you're going to be broke and unable to use your phone because you ran out of minutes trying to re-up. Also you can't re-up on weekends. Also there are apparently something like 17 million cellphone stores in the country of South Korea but only 2 deal with pay-as-you-go-plans and they're located nearer the DMZ than the 18 year old kids patrolling it.** So then, for all practical purposes no card, no phone.

The same goes for both internet and TV. You don't get either of them until you've received your ARC. In England you don't get TV (legally) until you've payed the licensing fee (it was something like 150gbp/annum when I was in country two years ago). Here in Korea the licensing fee supports the Educational Broadcasting System and the Korean Broadcasting System (both public programming) and will run about 30,000won - roughly $30 - per annum and is billed through the electricity fees your home or apartment accrues. Easy. Though it doesn't matter if you don't have an ARC.

And, for those of us stuck paying US bills while overseas, the fact that you can't start a new bank account until you receive Precious Card can be particularly worrying. EPIK, our recruiting agency and the overarching governing body for English language in country schools, signed Angela, me and about 700 other green teachers up with an account at Nong Hyup Bank. Seems perfectly fine until you realize that the account has been set up with your passport and you can't get paid until you set up an account with your ARC (because everything here works on direct deposit and your schools don't actually pay you money until they see that you're a legal registered alien and not just a rubbish collector living in the woods scraping off the good people's hard labours). Also Nong Hyup Bank doesn't give your money to banks overseas which means that you can't freely transfer money between Korea and the States. The only bank that Angela and I know of that does cheap, easy international funds transfers is KEB Bank and to set up an account there you need an ARC, a lowly official passport and E-22 working visa being insufficient and simply insulting, thank you very much.

So, the moral of the story: without your ARC you will find yourself between The ROK and a hard place.

-e

p.s. Playstation 3 consoles seem to be very expensive here so consider this a distress beacon: SHIP MINE NOW TO *message garbled*.

* The whole not paying taxes thing is a bit of a bonus, it must be said.
** I didn't have time to fact-check this one. Pure conjecture.

pics n' things!

a bit of south korea

angela with new friends jesse and samantha.


my classroom!


classic korea.


re: this is why you're fat: double dipped corn-dog with more distinct layering than the cross section of a doug fir with french fry batter. ah, yes, traditional korean fare. (thisiswhyyourefat)


downtown on a slow night.


gogo with ted and ang!

-e pics n' things!

the night sky in trout lake

since i just spent nearly five whole weeks in trout lake looking up at the night sky i feel a bit obligated to share with you some photos i took of it.



looking directly at the galactic center, here. sagittarius A* is about 26,000 light years away in the center of the picture.


ursa major.


trout lake school.


langfield falls with angela. not the night sky but still beautiful and quintessentially trout lake. pics n' things!

stowaways

in jeonju, south korea and missing my luggage.

-e pics n' things!

fall city with the rude boyz

here are a couple snaps i took with my new g11 while riding with spencer, will, goudi and big ike at fall city.


spencer's kitchen/workshop


beers at the pump track


big ike


ill will.

-e pics n' things!

a sampling of images from the last few weeks

spencer and angela in ballard


best carnitas tacos at taqueria in hood river


shane and julie in hood river


at home in trout lake


brother gabe, aka doctor doolittle


brothers sherburne


back in bellingham

-e pics n' things!