It is getting close to Christmas and for many foreign teachers in Korea this means a long awaited week off.  On Saturday, myself and five others, Alisa included, are heading to the warm country of Cambodia!  I'm really looking forward to a vacation, and Cambodia seems like a perfect place to see a different culture, learn about a different history, and lie on a beach.  Angkor Wat is the world's largest religious building and the biggest reason tourists travel to Cambodia.  I'm really looking forward to seeing it, but we're also going to be travelling around the country quite a bit.  We fly into Phnom Penh, take a boat down the river to Siem Reap, which is near Angkor Wat, then head to the coast before getting back to Phnom Penh for our flight home.  It'll be great.

Unrelated to this, something important has happened on the Korean peninsula this week.  Kim Jong Il has died.  This has brought back opinions and debates in the news and in conversations about what the situation is really like in North Korea.  In the news, you see North Koreans crying hysterically over his death, but are they crying real tears, or is it all for show?  From what I've gathered, the situation is drastically different outside of Pyongyang, the capital, as opposed to inside the city.  In the news, we only see videos and pictures of people in Pyongyang.  But, as I understand it, the people living in Pyongyang are not a good representation of all North Koreans.  This is because North Koreans are only allowed to live in the city if they are chosen.  And, of course, you have to be pro-North Korea/dictator to get in.  So maybe the crying people in the news are genuinely sad that Kim Jong Il is dead.  Or maybe in order to be in the authorities good books, you have to be a good actor.
What do South Koreans think of Kim Jong Il's death?  No doubt they are influenced by it.  It hasn't yet been a full lifetime since the two countries were one.  And yet, I don't get the sense that the Koreans around me feel all that affected by it.  It is on the news, of course, but it doesn't seem like people talk about it at all.  It even seems like CNN/America is making a bigger deal of it than South Koreans.  Of course, as a foreigner, I can't claim to know at all how Koreans feel about things.  Yet, more than on this occasion, I've been surprised by how much of a barrier (both physical and mental) has been built between the North and the South in such a short time.

In other news, I'm a recorded musician!  This weekend, my co-teacher Roman, another friend Scott, and I got together with a guy from out of town who's putting together some kind of 'Foreigners in Korea' album.  He brought his recording mechanisms with him and, in his small hotel room, we jammed out and put down a pretty good cover of "With a Little Help From My  Friends" by The Beatles.  Here's the link for it.  I'm the drummer. (Unfortunately, the other guys didn't think a drum solo was appropriate for the song):

http://soundcloud.com/ookpic/with-my-friends

I'll leave you with funny Christmas video that I've been showing my afternoon students just for fun.

Thanks for reading,
Merry Christmas.
Michael

This past weekend I went on a ski trip.  The best part of the trip was the first time I looked out of our van window on our way there and noticed snow on the ground.  I missed snow and it was awesome to be in a place with lots of it.  I went with an energetic group of friends, and our trip included a beautiful night drive through the mountains, getting stuck in the middle of an icy hill, walking for an hour in the middle of the night to our hotel, very little sleep, an early morning, long lines at the lifts, an awesome day skiing, a joyful Christmas dinner with a large group of foreign teachers from all around Korea, a better sleep, and a good drive home.  The drive back was so good because I got to drive the van the whole way.  I hadn't realized how much I missed driving a vehicle larger than a scooter until I was given the chance.  Another highlight of the trip was meeting a German guy.  We met him while we were skiing on Saturday, and he's awesome because he is in the middle of a bike trip... around the world!  He started with a friend in Kyrgyzstan and are making their way through Asia.. on their bikes.  You hear about people who do amazing things like this, but I'd never met one before.  He was a cool guy.  I was inspired.

Taking a beer break.  (Fritz is the guy in orange on the left.) Good group.

This week I made pasta ratatouille.  It turned out pretty well.  I'm telling you about it because I'm proud of myself.  That's all.

Without a computer at home, I've been reading a lot.  I read "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah.  It's a powerful memoir about his experience as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone.  From the book, I'm struck by how easily humans can make horror seem normal, and by how amazingly our spirits can recover from that kind of experience.
I'm now reading a drastically different book.  I'm reading "Home From the Vinyl Cafe" by Stuart McLean, the storyteller on CBC.  His short stories are perfect bedtime stories.  They crack me up.

Apologies for the late and shortened blogs lately.  Christmas time is busy at school with us planning our Christmas party.  Not as busy as last year though.  This year the kindergarten classes won't be putting on any Christmas plays, thank goodness.  We'll do that in February.

Thanks for reading,
Michael

The weather has been getting colder and colder here and last night I even saw some snowflakes falling.  And, as I remember mentioning in a blog post last winter, this means that our school gets steadily more frigid.  Keeping warm air inside the school building doesn't seem to be too high on our directors' priority list.  I'm always finding wide open windows throughout the day.  And, I forgot to mention this in last weeks blog, in the mornings, when our custodian cleans the school, she won't vacuum a room until she has opened a window in it first.  I'm sure it's related to the fan death idea.

It's been a tiring week, since my co-teacher was away, but at random times in the middle of my kindergartens driving me crazy, they say or do something that brightens my day.  The other day, just randomly as I was teaching, Apple, with the round apple cheeks and the New Zealand accent, raises her hand, and with a big smile says very matter-of-factly, "My little sister's English name is Marshmallow".  I couldn't help but laugh because I'm sure, if Apple's sister looks anything like her, Marshmallow is a perfect name for her.
Alex also has been making me me laugh lately.  Every once in a while, also randomly, Alex starts reenacting a scene in the movie "Up". The one when Russell, the chubby boyscout, knocks on Mr. Fredricksen's door.

Alex knows it by heart and does a really good job acting it out.  So funny.

Tonight I'm joining a group on a ski trip.  First one of the season.  I'm excited.  This is where I'll be: http://www.high1.co.kr/eng/main/index.asp

Thanks for reading,

Michael

Fan Death

I think it is about time that I told you about Fan Death.

Fan death is a belief held by South Koreans (only South Koreans - not even North Koreans) that a running electric fan in a room in which all doors and windows are closed can kill a person.  I'm not making this up.

I get my information for this blog about fan death from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death) , Ask A Korean (an interesting and helpful blog for foreigners http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2009/01/fan-death-is-real.html), and from personal experience.

To be honest, my personal experience is pretty limited. I can't actually remember coming across an electric fan here in Korea, which makes me wonder if Koreans are afraid of them.  But I read that the fans that are sold here are sold with built-in timers that you can set so that the fan will turn off automatically after you have fallen asleep in order to prevent fan death.  Also, in 2006, Koreans were warned by a government-funded agency that "asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners is among the country's five most common summer accidents." Saying that, in a two-year period, a total of 20 cases of fan or air conditioning asphyxiation were reported.(Wikipedia).

There are multiple explanations that I have heard or read about that offer an answer to the question: How exactly does a fan kill a person?  The first explanation that I became aware of (and the most ridiculous) was that while the fan is running, the blades chop up the air particles making them unbreathable and causing the person in the room to suffocate.  Other theoretical explanations given on Wikipedia are: the fan creates a vacuum inside the room; the fan uses up all the oxygen in the room, leaving only carbon dioxide; and that air blowing on a sleeping body could cause hypothermia.
The author of Ask a Korean admits that there are a lot of unscientific explanations and rumors for how a fan can kill someone, but he still defends fan death by explaining that, for a fan to kill someone, it has to be very hot in the room, in which case the fan begins to act like a convection oven that blows hot air onto the sleeping person who then eventually runs out of liquid in their body from sweating so much and dies of overheating.
To me, this explanation is a little more credible than the others, but I still think it's crazy to believe that a fan can 'cook' a person to death without them realizing it.

So the question is: if none of the fan death explanations have any credibility, why do Koreans believe it?  Well, some people probably think it's due to a lack of critical thinking skills.  This could be part of it I guess, but Koreans aren't stupid.  Wikipedia explains one theory for the origin of fan death: in the 1970s the government created the idea of fan death as propaganda to conserve energy during a time when energy supply was low.  Another theory that I've heard about, which sounds plausable to me, is that Koreans use fan death as a pseudonym for suicide. 

It's funny to think that something like fan death could be believable, but the author of Ask a Korean makes a good point in his blog.  He says that fan death really isn't a very big part of Koreans lives.  He compares it to the belief that red wine is benefitial for our health, some people believe it, some people don't.  And it's probably true that every culture has beliefs unique to them that seem unbelievable to others.

A quick update of how things are going here: It's been a dreary, rainy week and my co-workers and I have felt somewhat bluesy lately.  To combat this, on Wednesday, Alisa and I went over to Roman's apartment and had a movie night complete with popcorn, hot chocolate, and Tim Tams.  We watched "Almost Famous", which is one of Romans favourite movies, partly because his sister is in it.  It was lots of fun.  Then Alisa and I did a 'honk run' up and down our stairs to work off the Tim Tams.  It was a good night.

Thanks for reading,
Michael

We got down with some seoul music this weekend and visited our nation's capital.  We put the soul in Seoul.  James Brown kind of soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGbpucWLfpE&feature=related
Actually, I didn't know who James Brown was until this weekend, and we didn't do too much dancing, but we made sure to keep the the soul in Seoul joke going the whole time.

After taking the night bus which brought us to Seoul Station at 3:30 a.m., we discovered how bad 'love motels' can be.  The only one that would take us put us in these super small cubical rooms with paper thin walls, down in the basement.  I didn't get much sleep.  Thankfully we found a much nicer one for the next night.

The highlight of our trip was Saturday night when we decided to climb up to the Namsung Tower, which is at the top of a pretty big hill.  Despite not knowing the way and getting lost once, we found the staircase leading to the top and all made it up in one piece.  We would have had to wait an extra 50 minutes to go up the actual tower, so we decided against it and just hung out at the top for a while.  The view was nice and the company was great.  Then we took the cable car down.

The next day, we had some afternoon hours to walk around Hongdae, a cool area of Seoul.  There, we found the coolest coffee shop ever.  It's called "Thanks Nature Cafe".  It was cozy... it had great hot chocolate... it had cool little sheep figurines on the table...



... it had a really nice sheep painting on the wall...

... and it had REAL SHEEP outside, just chillin in a small pen! Sheep in a city, who'd'a thunk it?



So that was our trip to Seoul.  It was fun.

Back at school, things aren't as exciting.  Some parents have been complaining more lately for some reason or other, and as it always seems, the teachers are the ones who get talked to.  So again, I feel like more like a puppet of the parents, and less of a teacher.  So that's frustrating, but we'll get over it.

On a happier note, Alisa and I and a couple of others have just bought flight tickets to Hong Kong for the Lunar New Year holiday in January!  Can't wait!

Thanks for reading,

Michael

I'm making a change.  I'm getting rid of my computer.  I realized that I don't really need it.  I realized this because my computer broke down a little over a month ago.  I brought it to a local computer guy who speaks a little bit of English, and he told me, that I needed a new hard drive.  So, after a week, I picked it up from him thinking my computer problems were solved.  But when I turned it on, up pops a nice new Windows 7 Ultimate operating system... all in Korean.  "Unfortunately the computer guy didn't pick up that I don't speak Korean when I didn't speak Korean to him" I thought grumpily.  So I brought it back to him and he was apologetic and said he'd fix it.  But three weeks later, he hadn't fixed it.  With the help a co-teacher I found out he doesn't have an English Windows and he couldn't find one (to his credit, I think he did try to find one - I just wish he would have told me after the 2nd week).  So I took my computer back and looked up how hard it would be to download an English Service pack.  It looks like it wouldn't be too hard.  But being without a computer for a month caused me to realize that I don't really need one. I wasn't using it for anything productive anyway.  We have computers at school that I use, and I have a kind sister downstairs who'll let me use hers when I need it.  So I decided not to have one.  Hopefully that computer guy will buy back his hard drive and take my computer with it.  Though I do feel sorry to my dad who got this computer and brought it over here for me.  Sorry dad.
This change will likely bring some change to my blog as well.  I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep up the weekly blog schedule, but they might not be finished on the same day every week.

Friday was a special day.  Why? Because it was 11/11/11 of course.  But, while this was a special day for the world, it was an extra special day for Yale Class.  You see, I have a student named Danny who is very interesting.  He usually doesn't play with the other students during break time, but that isn't a problem for him; he'd just rather play by himself.  And everyone likes him because he's so good natured.  He's Thomas' best friend (mostly because he's the only one who doesn't get mad at Thomas for being a bad friend).  But Danny is also brilliant.  He was the first one in the class to start reading Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series.  Now half my class reads them.  But Danny is the only one who remembers the jokes so that he can tell me at school every morning - "What is invisible and smells like bananas?...  monkey farts."  He cracks me up.
So a couple months ago, Danny discovered that the time 11:11:11 was considered to be a wish second by some.  He told us all about it and then consistently grabbed my arm during the day to make sure he hadn't missed it.  Soon, everyone wanted to know when the wish second was going to happen.  Well, just for fun, and to reclaim my students' attention, I set my watch alarm to 11:11 so they wouldn't have to check the clock all the time.  So for a while now we've been celebrating wish second every morning during our second class.  Then along came November 11.  I was going to be 11:11:11, 11:11:11 !  Danny couldn't wait.
But there was a problem.  November 11 is special in Korea for another, similar reason.  It is Peppero day.  Pepperos are stick-like crackers made by the huge food distributing conglomerate in Korean and Japan, Lotte.  Someone at Lotte had the great idea to market pepperos by making 11/11 Peppero Day, since pepperos look like the number one.  It's kind of fun, but this turned out to be a distraction to Danny's big day.  And not the only distraction.  Friday was also a special day for Poly school for another reason.  It was our field day.  I love field day, and the kids do too, but this meant that at 11:11:11, instead of being in our classroom amonst people who know about and appreciate wish second, we were outside in the middle of an intense kindergarten soccer game.  Despite the distractions, I told Danny and my class that I'd let them know when the big moment was going to happen so that we could all give a big "whoopee!" and then get back to the game.  But that was before I found out I was the coach of the red team, which meant that I was busy substituting players and cheering on my team...  and I wasn't checking my watch...  and Danny was also distracted by the game so he couldn't remind me...  and by the time I remembered, it was too late.. it was 11:20!  Alisa and I tried to pretend like we hadn't missed it and gave a big "whoopee! It's 11:11:11!"  But Danny had to see it on my watch, and when he did, he saw that I had missed the big moment, that I had let him down.  Sad.  But nothing dampens Danny's spirit - "We'll just wait until 12:12:12, December 12, 2012," he said, and went on playing.  What a good kid.

Thanks for reading,
Michael

This weekend I had the chance to observe and participate in another different and new (to me) event in Korean culture: The 1st birthday.  Through church, Jane and myself had gotten to know a very kind and welcoming Korean couple, June and Sara.  One year ago they had their first baby, a girl named Hanna.  I remember seeing them shortly after their baby was born and I remember how happy they were.  Lucky for Jane and I, they invited us to their babies first birthday, which was on Saturday night.  When I first heard about the invitation, I remember thinking it a bit strange for them to invite us, who they don't know really well, to their child's birthday.  But that was before I realized how big of a deal first birthdays are here.  First Birthday's are such a big deal that they have their own name: Dol.
So on Saturday, another friendly couple picked us up and drove us to a large, special events hall in a remote place overlooking the bay and right away I knew I was underdressed.  I wore my corduroy pants and a nice sweater, thinking I'd look nice for the occasion.  But people at the party were decked out in full suits and wedding dresses.  June and Sara were wearing a very fancy matching outfits, which also matched their baby's attire, who hereself was in a fancy white dress. (She later was changed into a Hanbok, which I think is traditional for Korean babies on their first birthday).

- You have to realize that the last 1st birthday party I've been to was Ruth and Andrew Ippel's Henry's birthday in the living room of Harambee House in GR. Andrew and Ruth certainly weren't wearing a white dress, vest and bowtie, and Henry was probably mostly naked. (It was a great party though).
We were also treated to a wonderful buffet, lovely music, and all the guests were given a gift of their own (which just seemed backwards to my western way of thinking).
One part of the party, which I hear is traditional for Dols, was when the baby, Hanna, decided her future, or at least what she will become when she grows up.  A tray of toys was placed before her and she chose one.  Some of the toys were: a plastic stethoscope (doctor), a microphone (kpop star), a pencil (teacher), and a judges gavle (judge).  She chose the gavle.  (I wondered - where do you find a toy gavle? But I'm sure there are stores here which sell these kinds of toys just for 1st birthdays).  I find the whole idea of having your one-year-old decide her future by picking a toy very Korean - they start them early here.
I was also surprised by how quickly it went.  We were all in and out of there in 2 hours.  It seemed like so much planning went into such a short event.  But I guess 2 hours beats the 1 hour weddings that they have.
Overall, it was very cool to go to a Korean 1st birthday.  I'm happy and lucky to have Korean friends who invite me to such special events.
During the party, I was wondering about the reason 1st birthdays are such big events in Korea.  I thought that it must have something to do with the past, when, during tougher times, when Korea had less medicinal knowledge, many newborns would die from childhood diseases or because of Korea's seasonal temperature differences.  I looked it up later and I was right... exactly... word for word on Wikipedia... I'm genius.
It turns out, according to Wikipedia, Dols used to be even more extravegant and complex.

I also want to quickly mention something that seemingly has taken Korea by storm: Angry Birds.  You may know about it, but for the benefit of my parents and grandparents, who probably haven't heard about it, I'll explain. It's a video game for smart phones where you sling wingless birds at structures and evil green pigs to knock them down and retrieve the stolen eggs.  I don't know about North America, but it's huge here.  In some of my classes, I have to collect cell phones so my students don't play Angry Birds during class.  But it makes sense to me that anything having to do with cell phones is going to take off here.

Thanks for reading,
Michael