Greetings...
Since "cold" has returned to Busan, I've been able to wear my suit jacket to school again. I've always thought that wearing it adds an element of "sophistication" and "success" to my appearance that is glaringly absent most other days. Little did I know that the jacket also throws a little "Hollywood" into the mix. Before class one day, a 6th grade girl complimented me on my jacket, especially my shoulders. I said, "Really? Thanks!" She said, "Yeah, like George Clooney." "Wow!" I said, "You think I look like George Clooney?" "No," she said, "just the shoulders." I got a real kick out of that so now I introduce myself as Mr. Clooney everytime I see her to which she always replies, "Only the shoulders!" Heck, a compliment is a compliment and if ANY part of my body resembles George Clooney, well that's alright with me.
The photo above is from a recent dinner I had with some teachers. About 6 weeks ago, I started an informal conversation class with 5 or 6 teachers at my school. For an hour on Wednesdays, we get together, eat some snacks and do some good old talking. I usually have a theme for the "lesson" like restaurant dialogs or phone dialogs and we use that as a starting point. Well, "teaching" this class is outside my contract and I told them from the beginning that I didn't want any money for it. They agreed and compromised with presents (socks) and taking me out to dinner. For our first outing, we went to VIPS which is probably the best Korean/Non-Korean restaurant we've discovered here. Imagine Souplantation (which is already awesome) but better--a buffet with the ability to order some serious steaks. The male teacher you can see next to me is a kick in the pants. He's hilarious and he makes every class pretty entertaining. He was fascinated to learn the word "poop" and he immediately turned it into an onomatopoeia. So, he goes around saying "POOP!" while making suggestive hand gestures that resemble defecation.
One really funny side note about that picture of us at dinner: A waitress took this picture for us and gave it to us in a little VIPS photo mount. So, I had to take a picture of the picture to put it up here. One great "feature" of my camera is that it reads people's faces and if someone blinks, it throws up a little question, "Did someone blink?" It's meant to prevent you taking pictures of people with their eyes closed but it also has another tragic result. It's happened before and it happened this time as well: my camera thinks Koreans are blinking when they're not. Is my camera racist or did they just forget about Asians when they designed this feature. It's even more confusing when you realize that my camera is made by Nikon, a Japanese company. You'd think they'd be a little more sensitive about their own facial structures.
If you haven't already watched it, the video above is from a recent field trip I took with the 6th graders. Some months ago, they went on another field trip but I wasn't able to go--my theory is that Mrs. Lee didn't want to go, therefore I "couldn't" go. I was bummed because I love field trips and it would allow me to hang out with these kids in an even more casual setting. This time, I put up more of a fight so I could go and I won. So, the day before Halloween, I woke up at 4:30 in order to be at school by 6. The entire 6th grade took two buses approx. 2.5 hours to the West of Busan to visit two locations: a GIGANTIC steel plant and an aerospace museum. When I heard that the kids would be split by gender for the bus ride, I immediately hoped I would end up on the girl bus. Overall, I get along much better with the female students, especially the 6th grade girls. Most boys in all the grades I teach are much less interested in me as a person and the 6th grade boys, a high majority of them at least, barely give me the time of day--a few down right loathe me as our relationship is based on their complete lack of interest in learning English and my constant struggle to make them interested. Long story short, I got on the girl bus and I was more than relieved.
The steel plant was AMAZING! The company is called POSCO and this "plant" was more like an entire city. They had housing for employees, their own soccer stadium, movie theatre, etc. We drove around most of the property (which took forever) and finally got to get out and see some cool stuff. We weren't allowed to take any photos or video which is why there aren't any in the video above. They ushered us into a small theatre and they showed us a "history of the company" type video which was all in Korean. Then we drove to our one and only sight-seeing part of the tour. We walked up about 3 flights of stairs and walked along this incredible steel making assembly line. This super long building was at least 2 or 3 football fields in length and was filled enormous machines, loud noises, heat and molten steel! I felt like I was in Attack of the Clones when Anakin was dodging swinging machinery and fighting aliens. These long, 10-inch thick slabs of orange-hot steel were sliding along this system of rollers, getting sprayed with water and steaming all over the place. Then they'd shoot down the rollers to the next station and do it all over again. When the water hit these slabs, it skated along the surface because the metal was so hot, it was almost like the water wasn't even making contact with the steel.
Then we turned around and headed back to Busan, stopping along the way for lunch and a tour of an Aerospace Museum. As you saw in the video, they had lots of tanks, planes and various military vehicles lined up. They had one kinda small building with displays and artifacts, a lot from the Korean War. It was obvious that the kids, and I, had a lot less fun here than we did at the steel plant. All in all, it was a great day and I'm really glad I went.
As you saw at the end of the video, it snowed! I was awake for over an hour before I looked outside and saw the slight dusting we got overnight. I was shocked because every time I asked a Korean about snow in the Winter, they always said, "It's rare." That's one thing we've come to learn about a lot of Koreans--you can never trust their knowledge, experience or ability to explain things. One person couldn't remember the last time it snowed, another thought it was 7 years and a third person was positive it was only 3 years since the last snow. See what I mean? Now apply this situation to EVERY other question you might have about Busan, or Korea in general, and this what you run into. I made an analogy to Rob a while back about Korea and its citizens: I likened Korea to a large company and its citizens to employees--the problem with the company is it's EVERYONE's first day on the job so no one knows anything but they will go out of their way to make you think they do to save face. When you're essentially helpless against this wave of ignorance, it can be very frustrating and it's an absolute miracle that this society functions at all! Sorry, getting a little angry. Is it time to come home? Yes, yes and yes!
It's all good. We're going to spend a week in China during Christmas, we've got 3 weeks of English Camp (like we did in the Summer) and then we're basically home! And you can take that to the bank!
Stay tuned...
-Brent "Not Quite George Clooney" Dunham
