Poor Fido!

I went to the outdoor market yesterday in Dangjin. There are tons of vendors there selling everything from vegetables, to blankets, to live octopus, to pottery, to toothbrushes. It's huge and you can buy pretty much anything there.
The smells that waft from that area of town are perplexing to the senses. There's fresh fruit and beetles being boiled in a large pot by a tiny ajuma (old Korean lady). There's live turtles swimming around and gasping fish flopping their Swan Song.
I came along an interesting piece of meat that I couldn't identify. I looked at one of my friends quizzically.
"Ummmm, what is that?"
He answered, "Dog." He answered very flatly, without making eye-contact and just kept walking. I stood there with my mouth agape.
"Um, what?!"
I just stood there.
I'm trying to look at it all anthropological-like. Such as, don't judge, this is a different culture, this is how they do things. But, no, I couldn't do it. I was staring at a freaking dogs flesh.
I tried to continue walking and forget about it, but we came along a freezer a couple stalls down. This was the only freezer-like or refrigerator-like object I saw all day. Plucked, headless chickens had been baking in the sun all day with no fear of salmonella in sight. I'll stick to buying vegetables and fruit here, me thinks.
The freezer was chock-full of skinned dog meat. The heads were still attached. The teeth were still intact in the poor things snout. I was completely mortified. I looked straight ahead and walked as fast as I could away from the freezer. Just a few steps ahead were two steel cages full of fluffy, sweet puppies. Fully breathing, licking and heart-beating, adorable puppies. I instantly fell in love with all of them, wanted to buy them and take them home and make absolutely certain that they wouldn't be a part of anyone's meal. I couldn't help but wonder if the puppies were being sold as pets or if they were being sold to eventually be eaten as food. I'm hoping for the former and I may be delusional, but I'm just going to hang on to that hope.

Things I Love About Korea

I've compiled a list of just a few things I love about living in South Korea.

- First of all, ondol heating. It's awesome! The heat comes through the flooring and it's warm and toasty on bare feet. It also dries your clothes fairly quickly, as clothes dryers in Korea are non-existent.
- Ridiculously easy and cheap transportation.
- Bibimbab: a rice dish with beef, egg and vegetables all mixed together. It's freaking awesome and someone should write a song about it.
- Galbi: marinated grilled short ribs; this stuff is amazing. I don't know what they marinate it in, but it's damn tasty and I would consider staying in Korea for the rest of my days solely to eat galbi!
- Samgyeopsal: essentially this is grilled bacon and then mixed with kimchi on a lettuce leaf with some rice. De-to-the-vine!
- Gimbap: rice, pork and vegetable seaweed roll. I eat this stuff all the time, it really has become a part of my daily diet.
- Gyul: tiny mandarin oranges. I eat about five a day. They completely rock and my students give them to me frequently, which makes me extremely happy.
- The innocence of the Korean people, especially the Korean children.
- Feeling completely and totally safe walking down the street (especially after living in Vegas).
- How excited kids get when they see you, especially outside of the classroom.
- Street food vendors (they are beautiful, beautiful people, especially after a long night at a Hof).
- The little warm pastry ball things sold by the street vendors. I don't know what they're called, but they have some sort of custard filling. I'm not sure exactly what's in them, but they completely rock and smell amazing!!!!
- Cheap prescription drugs.

This is a short list that I will be adding to as the remaining 6 months of my contract progresses. There are more things that I love here, but I'll get to the rest later.

Stay off the Sidewalks if You Wanna Live

Korean people are horrible drivers (and yes, I'm aware that is a blanket general statement). Traffic signs and lights are merely suggestions and rarely followed.
Korea has one of the highest vehicular accident rates in the world. I'm convinced they're the worst drivers on the planet, but I've heard drivers in Southeast Asia and Central and South America are worse.
Traffic lights are frequently run and there are thousands of little moped drivers to whom no rules apply. Most food delivery drivers are on little mopeds and they cut people off, drive on sidewalks and make up their own rules. Oh, and they stare at me while they're zooming by at top moped speed. There's even a flower guy, whose entire bike is covered in flowers. I actually like him, though.
Also, inconsistent brake and accelerator pedal pushing is highly encouraged. Whenever I'm in a vehicle I feel like I'm in constant whiplash mode. And, when I'm on a bus, I'm constantly feeling like I'm going to vomit because the bus driver's foot is constantly springing forward and zooming back.
Drivers also like to leave the windshield wipers on when it's not raining, causing the wiper blades to screeeeeeeeeeeech back and forth across the windshield. I wonder how many times a year they have to replace those suckers?
This leaves me to my final point: honking the horn. I'm convinced drivers' hands are permanently attached to the car horn. They honk at everything, most often when it's not necessary.
Agnes' father drives me to one of my weekly classes. Thank god he doesn't speak English. He drives like a bat out of hell, swerves into on-coming traffic, zooms through lights and honks at air. I really do put my life into my own hands when I get in the car with him. But, at least it's not Agnes who's driving.

Adventures with the Devil, Act 416

I swear it's an absolute miracle I haven't committed murder yet.
This woman is certifiably insane. I'm going to have to find a way to survive six more months with her.
A couple days ago, I turned in my hours to Agnes, which I do at the beginning of every month. I get paid on the 10th of every month.
I went over my contract hours for the month, so I'm supposed to get paid overtime. Agnes had a couple questions about the hours I had written down, which I knew she would because I had added the hours from a holiday and the time it took me to go to and from my off-campus teaching job; all reasonable additions to a normal brain functioning person.
March 1st is Lunar New Year and a national holiday in Korea. I'm supposed to get paid for national holidays. So, of course, Agnes pitched a fit about that, saying I didn't work that day. I told her according to Talking Club corporate headquarters, I get paid for national holidays. Dropping the "Talking Club Corporate Headquarters" bomb seems to scare her so she shut right up.
Then she wanted to fight me on the time I wrote down to grade tests. I had been given a huge stack of tests to grade as I was leaving school one day, so I counted the time it took me to grade those tests at home. She told me I shouldn't have taken them home. I fought her on that, saying maybe the teachers shouldn't wait until the end of the day to give me a huge stack of papers to grade. They could easily give them to me throughout the day.
Then she got all fired up (and so did I) about writing down the time it takes me to walk to and from my kindergarten classes, which aren't at Talking Club. She got crazy pissed about that and I told her if she wanted to cheat me out of the money I had earned, I would just stop going to the kindergarten. She said I couldn't do that because the kindergarten hours were part of my contract hours. I said no they weren't. My contract was with Talking Club, not Ischule (the kindergarten). She said, "Ok, we'll just bus all the children to Talking Club and you could do the classes here." I said, "Great, that would be fine."
I knew full well that would never happen and would be a logistical nightmare and the kindergarten directors would never agree to it. Bussing 40 4-to-6-year-olds to Talking Club four days a week would never happen and I knew that. Agnes then said, "Ok, fine, but I want your key back." She had given me an office key when I first started so I could get into the building and do prep work and use the computer.
I hadn't been using the key or office inappropriately and she knew that, she was just mad at me. I chuckled a little and said, "No problem."
Now I intend to call her incessantly for her to open the office for me. I know she sleeps in really late, so I'll just keep calling her early in the morning. It's going to be fun! I've got to entertain myself somehow for the next six months with her!!!

Take a Picture, It Will Last Longer

I'm so freaking sick of being stared at. Everywhere I go, I get stared at, pointed at and talked about. I understand being curious, but there comes a point where it just becomes rude!
People have no shame about it either. They stop and stare at me and look me up and down and then start talking and pointing at me. Then, if I pass them, they will turn around and watch me walk away. In the beginning, it was funny, now it's infuriating.
I walk to a kindergarten where I work four days a week and every day there's a woman that walks the same road, but in the opposite direction. We pass each other every day.
Every day she stares at me and looks me up and down and kind of has this "Tsk, Tsk" look on her face. It's not like I'm dressed inappropriately. She always sees me in either jeans or dress pants and my winter coat.
At first, I smiled at her when we crossed paths, but her reaction has never changed. She always does the same thing: stare at me and look me up and down.
The other day I lost it. I could see her coming and she was staring at me, so I stared back. Then she started looking me up and down with a look of complete disgust on her face.
I started yelling, "STOP STARING AT ME!!!!!! JESUS!"
She quickly scuttled off while looking back at me and shaking her head.
It's so frustrating!
A friend of mine wants to have a T-shirt made that says in Korean writing, "Stop staring at me, it's rude." I think I will have one made, too.
I asked some of my high school students about the staring issue and they just laughed. They said it's because people here don't see white people very much. But, honestly, I'm not the only white person here and the advertisements, storefronts and television shows and ads are plastered with white faces. Surely, I'm not the only white face this woman has ever seen.
Apparently manners are not universal.