Episode 32: In Which DFM Climbs Some Cliffs And Scares Some Mosquitoes

It was the big climbing trip today.

I took the 45 minute subway ride over to Ace Climbing Center for a 9:00 AM meeting time.  We packed up our gear in the back of the gym's Hyundai mini-van, and then crammed seven adults in and set out on a 2-hour drive to the climbing crag.

It was the first time anyone from the gym had been to our intended destination, so we had to stop at a restaurant and ask for directions when we neared what the SatNav said was the end of the journey (I hate Sat Nav, but that's another post for another time).  It's tough to tell its  height from the picture, but the restaurant had this really cute puppy that couldn't have been more than eight inches tall.

Eventually we found the road-side turn out and set off on a hike to find the climbing site.

After one hour, we finally reached base camp and unpacked our gear.

Alvin and his wife and I were going to start warming up on some nice looking routes, but Choi (pictured above, testing a hold) kept tearing off the rocks on his harder route and told us this wasn't a good area to climb.

Instead we moved to a different part of the wall.  In the past I've climbed in the Canadian Rockies and the first bolts always seem to be around ten to twelve feet off the sharp boulder strewn ground.  Here at this crag though, the route setters placed the first bolts much lower, around six or seven feet off the ground, for which I was quite thankful.  Plus, the ground was sand, so even if we did fall before we made our first clip we had a nice soft landing.

Perhaps it was a result of less initial stress, or that I was now more experienced, but I found myself climbing much better than I have in the past outdoors.  I did not get a chance to climb any PB grades this time, but the routes I did climb were done smoother and easier than I've ever been able to climb before and at the same difficulty rating too.

There also seemed to be many mosquito nests on this cliff face too, but the mosquitoes knew better and stayed away from me, lest they make me angry... they wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Ji-Hyeun and Choi both made valiant attempts at this unconfirmed route that Choi estimated to be about 5.12b, but fell just short.  Click on the picture to blow it up and see how close Ji-Hyeun was to making it to the final chains (both she and Choi fell shortly after this point).

Eventually we had to head back and face a long, slow drive through rush-hour as what seemed like a thousand different Koreans all had the same idea to go to the same place at the same time.  Before we got to the car though, Choi picked a few choice rocks from the beach of stones that may eventually become set in clay and drilled onto the Ace wall as new climbing holds

Choi had planned to take the whole group out for dinner afterwards, but Alvin, his wife, and myself all had to teach early in the morning, and I still had to pick up groceries as I had completely exhausted my food supplies the day before in preparation for the move.  Furthermore, I had developed a head cold and lost my voice.  Teaching the children tomorrow is going to be a real battle.

Episode 31: In Which DFM Has A Fish Gnaw On His Finger And Gets A New Room

Today was a very busy day.  I woke up early in the morning and went with Nelson to see his new gosiwon.

This gosiwon is much much nicer than my old place with nicer walls, nicer hallways, nicer bathrooms/showers/kitchen, nicer everything.  The most impressive part though was the view from the sixth floor (the rooms for men are on the fifth floor).  The sixth floor is a roof for drying your clothes, but residents can also come up here to gaze at Namsan Tower... or throw themselves off if life gets too tough.

After viewing the gosiwon I had to go shopping for some new shirts for work.  Since Itaewon seems to exist only for North American tourists, nearly every store on the street was a "big sizes" store.  I did eventually find some nice shirts on sale and a store that sells only Crocs.

Nelson had put a reservation on a room for me, but I needed to wait until 4:30 PM when he would come home from work and translate the owner's Korean for me.  Since it was now only about 10:30 AM I decided to do some more sight seeing and visit the 63 Building, with its 63 floors.

On my walk over to the 63 Building I saw this silver car pull up onto the sidewalk and start driving into the oncoming pedestrians.  I'm not sure what surprised me more though, the fact that the car tried to drive on the sidewalk or that no one seemed to care.

In between dodging cars I would slow down to enjoy the cherry blossoms on the trees.  Spring is here and all the trees are starting to flower and bloom, which makes the few streets that have trees quite pretty.

The 63 Building is simply massive.  As you can see from this picture it dwarfs any building nearby.  The 63 Building is the third tallest building in Seoul.

Inside the 63 Building is an art gallery, an aquarium and an Imax theatre.

I thought the Imax theatre would play some neat nature documentary, but instead it just played a crazy cartoon about a little kid and a woman who travel through space on a train to follow an alien to one of Jupiter's moons and try to save Earth from global warming.  I thought it was rather... weird for a Korean cartoon, but the credits confirmed my suspicions that it was indeed Japanese, and that explained everything.  At least the aquarium had to be better.

After my experience in Busan, turtles are one of my new favourite animals.  This guy spent at least half an hour trying to get out of his pool onto the fake, painted rocks, but flippers aren't nearly as good for climbing as fingers or claws.

"Do you know what those are, Highness?  Those are the Shrieking Eels!

Pass that, Grandpa.  You read that already."

Actually, this is an electric eel, something I've been waiting my whole life to see in person.

I don't know what this is, but it's a nice picture so I'm putting it up.

Introducing the new Roomba for your walls!  I don't know how they do it, but sting rays are one of the most efficient creatures I've seen.

Nothing beats a shark though.  Not in the Encyclopedia DFMtannica anyways.

It's tough to tell from this picture, but this is a herring fish that is 8 meters long.  It has many names, but its name here was the King of Herring.  It is the longest bony fish in the World.

This was probably the neatest part of my aquarium experience.  Anyone who stuck his/her fingers in the holes had a free finger cleaning by dozens of tiny Doctor Fish who would swim up and start nibbling rapidly on any fingers they encountered.  The fish only eat dead skin cells, leaving the healthy skin free to grow, and are often used in Turkish Spas to renew the skin of patients with psoriasis.

There was an otter tank at the aquarium too, but otters never sit still long enough to have their picture taken.  I filmed these otters for roughly twenty minutes and finally was rewarded with this great clip of an otter going for a loop around his (or her?) rather unique tank.  It may have taken all of my camera battery's juice, but it was worth it!

After my 63 Building visit I went back home to buy my new room (my current gosiwon is closing down in a week).

My room's price was $250 for the month (plus an extra week), but because Nelson had already brought over three people from our old gosiwon the owner gave me a deal and I only had to pay $220.  I still get free rice and kimchi, but now I also get a desk, and I can even fit a chair in between my bed and the wall!  Oh, and if I spread my hands out I can straighten my arms and only my finger tips touch the walls.  I also have a TV that gets Discover Channel and televised Star Craft tournaments now (the lack of which being my only complaint about my old place).  Yup, DFM is movin' on up.

What wasn't nice though was the move over.  I have purchased many souvenirs since I first arrived in Seoul, and so my suitcase was stuffed full when I tried to pack everything in.  It easily weighed more than fifty pounds (it was forty-eight on the flight over) and carrying it up 5 flights of stairs was really tiring.

The was hard work, but tomorrow is my big climbing trip and should be a great time.  I can't believe the week isn't over.

Episode 30: In Which DFM Races Up Baegundae And Gets Some Money And Free Food

When I woke up, I had a nice shower at James' place.  It was nice to not have to worry about getting my clothes wet (at my gosiwon you have to hang your clothes up in the shower stall while you shower).  And then after my showerJames made me a grilled cheese and ham sandwich for breakfast.  I also had a bowl of rice krispies.  Rice Krispies aren't quite rice and kimchi like Koreans eat for breakfast, but as Richard Hammond would say, "am I eating rice?  Am I in Korea?  Then I'm as native and local as you."

I got a ticket on the cheap train back to Seoul and it was a way better ride than its $2.50 price would suggest.  The seats were relatively wide (although the guy beside me seemed to think that his elbows didn't need to stay on his side of the arm rest) and the train was no less smooth than the KTX.  In fact, if I had a whole day to spend, I'd take this train to Busan and finish a book on the way.

When I got into Seoul I rushed home and got ready to go hiking.  I had to hurry because I planned to meet Lee for an afternoon at the Sauna and then meet Nelson to see a potential new gosiwon, and then after that run to meet Hyeun A for some more Korean lessons.

I think that big mountain at the front is Baegundae.  It is 836 meters high, which makes it the highest mountain in/around Seoul.  The guide book said it was a 6 hour hike, but I figured the author  was working on Korean hiking speed, not DFM speed, so I was banking on less than four hours.  It had better be less than four hours because I still had an hour and a half subway ride back to meet Lee.

On the way up, some of the scenery was impressive, but it had nothing on the view as I got closer to the top.

One of my few complaints about Korea is the ever-present haze around Seoul that always seems to rob the amateur photographer from getting a good picture.  I think this picture does a good enough job though of illustrating just how mountainous Korea is.  There's a saying that if you ironed out Korea it would be the size of China.  I'm not sure about that, but it might just come close.

If you're traveling to Korea, take some time to learn the language before you leave!  I barely know but a few phrases, but on this hike alone I met three separate groups of people so impressed with my pronunciation that they gave me free food.  This woman on the right has a son going to the University of Texas.  He doesn't want to speak Korean though because he thinks it's uncool.  I told her that I thought her son was making a mistake.  She agreed with me and gave me a delicious ham and egg toast sandwich.  Later I met a woman who gave me some sting ray jerky and a man who called me over to share in some soju and kimchi with his friends and him.

Eventually I came to this gate in the fortress wall near the top of the mountain.  A quick turn left after going through the opening and I could scramble up on top of the wall and follow it up to the peak.

That can't be natural, can it?  He must have had a nose job.

I've poked fun at Korean hikers and their need to go way overboard when outfitting themselves for just about anything in the past, and it's like this for everything.  Want to rent a bike to ride along the river?  Better have a racing suit on.  However, I will say this - for a slope this steep running shoes just don't cut it.  The man at the top, taking pictures, was a mountain goat with his special hiking boots and I felt a knot in my stomach every time I saw him walking out on to the mountain side away from the safety cable to take pictures.  One slip would have meant certain death, but it did not seem to phase him one bit and he just trotted around on the 35 degree slopes and steeper as if he were on flat ground.

The peak of the mountain was very crowded and some brave hikers balanced themselves on top of boulders to get that perfect shot.

My favourite image from the day was of these rock climbers finally reaching the summit of a neighbouring mountain.  It made me excited for my climbing trip with Choi on Sunday.

I couldn't dilly-dally at the top after I reached Baegundae's peak, because I needed to get back home quickly and meet Young San.  I sprinted down the mountain as fast as I could, and made it back in a total time (up and down) of 2.5 hours - less than half of the advertised time.

My biggest success though, I felt, was that on the way to the National Park to hike the mountain I got a little brave and took a different bus than that which was listed in the guidebook, because I was fairly confident I had read the sign correctly and that it was going to the same place.  Additionally, I had my first real language break through and figured out that the phrase "anchuseyo?" (or something like that, I'm certain I don't have the write spelling) means "aren't you cold?"  I had taken off my coat and sweat pants and was in shorts and a T-shirt.  I must have been asked this question at least twelve times while people made mock shivering motions at me, and it felt good when I finally figured out what it meant.  I felt like I was developing the language abilities of the girl in my class who picked up "good job" from me.

I love the smell of money in the afternoon; it smells like pay day!  Lee called me over to his office to give me my salary for the week.  Now if only the Koreans had bills larger than 10 000 Won (roughly $10).

Actually, most of my plans for the evening fell through after this.  Lee said he would go to the sauna later, but fell asleep.  Nelson had to work overtime, and Hyeun A had to work overtime too.  However, Hyeun A worked at the same office as Lee and she gave me a quick lesson and some homework.

Lee and Hyeun A were impressed with my pronunciation and Lee told me "I'm not a fortune teller, but I think you will have a Korean wife."  He wasn't necessarily referring to Hyeun A, only that many Korean women are afraid of the language barrier between foreigners and themselves and so shy away from foreign men.  If I keep learning Korean there will be a 9:1 Korean:White Woman ratio, which is why so many White men marry Korean women when they're over there, I think.

Episode 29: In Which DFM Travels To Suwon To Meet A Man He Met On The Internet

In one of my earlier posts (Bar-barians) I mentioned a body-weight training website that had a great forum.  On this forum I met a former Canadian from Newfoundland, James, who has been teaching and living in South Korea for about 8 years now.  We had communicated numerous times, but today was the day we had set to finally meet in person.

I took the 1.5 hour subway to Suwon and met James at the train station.  After exchanging mutual disbelief at how an Internet forum could bring together two people from opposite sides of the planet, we went out for some lunch.

I told James that after my Busan pizza experience I only ate Korean food.  We found a Korean restaurant in the train station and I ordered some beef and octopus bibimpab, which is rice and a bunch of vegetables and egg all mixed together in a really hot stone bowl, plus the beef and octopus of course.

  

After lunch we went to a local workout park and demonstrated some of our pet skills.  James set a new PB today with 10 consecutive muscle-ups.  I made 27 dips - my highest number in about five years - and blistered up my hands quite badly, but I also held my best flag ever and skipped four rungs on the monkey bars.

After our workout James and his family took me out to a local restaurant where we had yet more Korean food.  This meal consisted of chicken slathered in hot sauce, some tteok, kimchi, and all sorts of other vegetables mixed together in a big frying pan at our table.  There were also some hard-boiled swallows eggs and other interesting articles in the side dishes that were delicious.

After the meal James took his kids to a nearby park, but James and I did most of the playing.  We tried to monkey walk up steep slanted poles and jump large gaps between different bars by swinging our legs to gain momentum and then trying to release our first bar and sail through the air to grasp onto the second bar with both hands simultaneously.

After we dropped his wife and kids off back home, James took me to the Suwon fortress where there were miles and miles of 16th century fortress wall on which you could walk.  The wall goes for at least a good 15-20 km, if not more, and wraps all the way around what used to be the city I presume.

Of course, we couldn't miss an opportunity to work out.  There were steep steps we would hop up on only one-leg, and then bear crawl down.  In this picture James is doing a handstand (it's tough to see, but he's in the bottom-right).

After a good 45 minute walk we went back to James' place where we watched videos of experts doing amazing body weight tricks.  James capped it all off by showing me a video of a man doing a one-armed muscle-up.  It is by far the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

I was going to head back on the late-night train, but James offered me a room at his place for the night and a ride to the station in the morning.

I even got my own dressing table, so of course I had to accept.

James and his family were great hosts, and I really can't thank them enough.  My trip to Suwon was better than I could have imagined.  Thanks James.

Episode 28: In Which DFM Gets Mothered By A Six Year-Old And Stains His Fingers Purple

Day 3 of my trial run as DFM Kimble...

Today the six year-olds were making "big" and "small" trees out of folded paper.  I taught the parts of the tree and also added some shapes and colours in as a review.  We were running out of brown and green paper, so that gave this girl a good enough excuse as any to make blue and pink trees.

Another class of six year-olds were working on the parts of the hand.  They made finger-print paintings and needed one set of their prints and another of "a friend's" prints.  I stamped so many paintings that my finger tips looked like this girl's right hand all day long (even after more than three washings).  The children in my later classes were all quite worried that something bad had happened to me and asked me about it all day long (in Korean though).  The children all had a good laugh at the relatively massive size of my finger prints (I'm the only male in the school). 

Speaking of being male, it seems that a requisite part of being a male teacher is having children want to be tossed into the air by you.  No matter where I go, children are all the same, and they always want me to toss them into the air.  In fact, having a male teacher must be such a rarity for young children these days that one concerned and surprised young girl felt it was necessary to inform me, "you are a man!"

The four year-olds were each given a large "name tag," that they were to decorate.  Ben here went a bit overboard decorating his though.

After this class I had a large break until my next class.  The vice-principal thought it would be a bad business move to waste two hours of valuable White Teacher Time, so she searched around to find a class in which I could help.

The teacher of the folded tree making six year-olds let me stay with her class, and she even invited me to eat lunch with the class afterwards.  These boys thought that was a good idea.  But for the rest of the day the school cooks were very worried that I did not get lunch and would try to sneak me quick meals whenever they could.

I sat at this table, but I had to wait until the end to get my food (fair enough).  The children all felt bad for me, and would take turns giving me spoonfuls of their food.  I started to worry that they wouldn't have enough, but they all seemed more interested in feeding their new white friend broccoli than eating it.

I had to keep moving around the table or else fights would break out if one group of children got to sit with me for too long.  When I came to this corner of the table the girl with the pink bow in her hair was unsatisfied with how I was eating my rice, so she took my spoon from me and would feed me mouthfuls of rice in between my bites of kimchi and whatever else I was eating.  The boy to her right would feed me spoonfuls of the seaweed soup just above the bowl of rice after my rice (with his spoon though).  After each time I took a bite of my meal the children would ask masisseosseyo?  And after each time they asked I would roll my eyes/head around, while making an "MHMMM" sound or groaning wildly and rubbing my belly.  It never stopped getting smiles, laughs, cheers, and sometimes all three. (Masisseosseyo means delicious, in case you hadn't figured it out).

I also had Fight Girl from the last post try and teach me some more Korean.  I must not have been a very good student though, because she kept looking at me like I was an idiot and shaking her head at me.

After lunch it was time for my special lesson Mr. Kim wanted me to teach.  I had originally thought I was getting the same six year-olds class I had normally been teaching at this time, but instead I found myself working with a combination of four and five year-olds.  I had to rethink my lesson on the fly, but fortunately Mr. Kim had given me creative licence in my lesson planning (a real rarity in this country).

I used a song Mr. Kim had given me and some flash cards his company had developed to introduce the idea of the family.  Once the children had the concept of Mommy, Daddy, Brother, Sister down I had them each draw a picture of their own family and I would write the English words out on top.  One student came up with this family which contained Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle - all words I hadn't gone over, but was more than happy to include in her vocabulary.

After the children were finished I had them stand up and present their picture by saying "This is my Mommy.  This is my Daddy, etc. etc."  I then had them finish up by saying "This is my family."

I'm not sure if the lesson was an educational success, but the children seemed to have fun, especially when I killed some time at the end of the day by performing handstand walking and throwing them up in the air.

The rating for my first week as a teacher in Korea?  "Victory!"

Tomorrow I am in Suwon to visit a friend and hopefully see the Traditional Korean Folk Village there.

Episode 27: In Which DFM Causes Koreans To Fight

Day 2 of being The Korean Kindergarten Cop.

I get to the school a half-hour early every day, and then I drink some nokcha (green tea) in the front office while I am told to "relax relax."  This beaming girl was one of the first students to arrive and she sat by the office smiling and waving at me for about twenty minutes.  We shared a rudimentary introduction she had learned and then she showed me her collection of stickers for being a good student.  "Good job!"  I told her.  She smiled so hard I thought her face was going to crack.  Later in the day, after I took her picture in one of her classes, she gave me a thumbs up sign like she had seen me do many times before and said "good job!"

I went back to my nokcha, but she came over and gave me one of her stickers.  It didn't really stick well, but I figured that it was one of her good student stickers and she had removed it from her sticker page to give to me.  I was touched, so I balanced it on my watch so that she could see how much I liked it.  Smiles do not know what language barriers are.

My four year olds were learning about things you do in the morning.  The children cut out letters and pictures and placed them on larger images that depicted scenes of "brushing teeth," "washing face," and "combing hair."  I'm not sure what the letters had to do with anything, but at this age pretty much all they can do in English is sing their ABCs.

The cute girl in the pig tails was really smart and could list some colours and also pick up a basic understanding of constructing sentences.  In this assignment she had the motor skills to cut her A out in the shape of an A.  Contrast that with the boy to her right who decided to cut out everything, including the pictures to which the pictures were supposed to be glued.

The five year olds were working on naming the parts of a house.  This boy had the World's best house, complete with flying sharks guarding his lawn.  Mail carriers, you've been warned.

I had told all the children on the first day that I was from Canada, so on my second day I decided to bring something Canadian to show them.  I had a small key chain with a Canadian flag on it and the children kept wanting to see it.  They would point at my pocket and say "Canada" while they hopped up and down or vibrated wildly with anticipation.  Louis was very fond of The Canada and didn't want to share it.  There was a bit of a fight between these two boys when Louis wouldn't let him hold it, but they were back to being best friends and hugging only moments later.  That's how boys settle arguments; pay attention girls.

Speaking of fights... the girl with the pink hair band is as much of a camera hog as Louis, and she didn't take it lightly when the boy in the silver coat tried to jump in front of one of her pictures.  Check out her left hand.  Are those claws?  She's definitely going for blood here.

  

The six year olds were working on a picture of a map of Korea.  In the corner of the sheet with the map outline was a satellite image of the Korean peninsula.  The objective was to rip up coloured pieces of paper and glue them to the map so that it looked like the satellite image, and all whilst learning words associated with basic geography.

Tiger-claw Fight Girl (from above, and seated at the bottom right) would teach me proper Korean pronunciation, while Sticker Girl (beside Fight Girl in both pictures) spent a good chunk of the class giving me gifts like paper hats and pine-cones, and writing my name on strips of paper with hearts surrounding them.  She made sure I stuck all the gifts and papers with my name on them in my pocket, and would make sure to periodically check that they were still there throughout the class.

After work I went over to meet with Mr. Kim.  He wanted to talk to me about the next day's lesson plan, which had changed a bit.  He gave me some special teaching materials his company had made and wanted me to see if I could use them in the lesson.  Mr. Kim also needed my help editing a book his company was making for teaching grade-two English.  One of the assignments contained directions that were really quite tricky to put into words, even for a native English speaker, but after a lot of humming and hawing I finally came up with what I thought was the best compromise of brevity and accuracy.  DFM, international educator and editor.

Mr. Kim also told me that the children all thought I was their old teacher, Seth.  Never mind that Seth had much longer hair, "us white people all look the same."

The most important reason for bringing me over though, was that Mr. Kim wanted to extend to me the offer of a four month contract with the school starting in May.  As much as I love teaching at Mr. Kim's school, I had to tell him that I already had prior arrangements for the summer months back in Canada.  Mr. Kim said that in Korea a man's word is his most important possession, so there was no way he could ask me to renege on a contract I had made (even verbally) with my current employer.  I asked him if I could come back at a later date to teach for him.  "Any time," was his response.  Oh, and a four month contract with Mr. Kim also includes a "mandatory" paid week in Japan for a "cultural trip."

Mr. Kim next asked me to continue teaching three days a week for him for the remainder of my stay in Korea.  He even opened the bank to me and told me that I was free to negotiate with "Mr. Lee" (Young San) regarding my wage.  I wasn't sure what he meant, so he said "you just tell Mr. Lee what you need.  You might say 'Mr. Lee' I need more money for traveling and he will give it to you."  For a guy who lives off of rice and kimchi and has spent most of his life working for less than $10/hr, I had trouble grasping how I could ever need more than $100 a day (what he was currently paying me).  I told Mr. Kim that our previous arrangement would be just fine.  If I do come back after teaching in Canada I will think more seriously about what I ask for as a wage.  Mr. Kim finished by saying he would write me a letter of recommendation on official company stationary after my month working for him (I had only been working for him two days at this point).  I tried to stay away from teaching while I was hear, but I love it too much.  I think I'm going to accept.