I worked at EG Language School in Daechi-dong, Seoul, South Korea for two years. What does the EG stand for? English General Hospital of course! Duh!
In between enlighting young minds and being weirded out by children drawing pictures of poo, I found the time to make these two incredibly amatuer miniature documentaries. It was a long time ago and I can’t bring myself to watch them now, but I can still post them here.
Part 1
Part 2
Here in Jeju Island, South Korea, I stood on the largest penis in the world. This gigantic phallus is one of the highlights of Loveland, a quasi museum of love and sex. Really, it’s more like a place for couples to come and giggle, and occasionally for families to feel mortifyingly awkward. Loveland, along with the Teddy Bear museum, Happy Town and Goblin World (?), are stops on the tour bus circuit and a reminder that Orlando and Las Vegas haven’t completely cornered the market on tackiness.
I’ve finally finished putting together these videos for the trip my girlfriend and I took from South Korea to England last year. These two videos cover the part of the trip up to Saint Petersburg. It was intended as one long video, but youtube has a ten minute size limit.
There are a million holes I could poke in these (I wish the video quality were better for one), but I’ll leave that to you instead.
Part 1:
Part 2:
I decided when I started this blog that it wouldn’t be chronological. I wanted to write about things that happened a long time ago, as well as what I did the past week. I thought that looking through old pictures and videos might provide a different insight than looking through the photos I just took. In any case, I’ve got a huge backlog of data on my hard drive that’s just sitting there. I’m still working on finishing my unwieldy Trans-Siberian video that seems like it will never end. As a break from that, I might as well take a look through the past.
I’ve been thinking most recently about the trip I took last year to Jeollanam-do with Adventure Korea. With each step of the trip I was surprised by something. First, it was the body snatchers-like abundant greenery. I’d never seen so many lotuses, much less been surrounded by them.
I even made a very amateur-looking amateur film about it.
After an afternoon at the lotus sanatorium, we took to the sea.
I always love the wind in my hair, the smell of the salty sea, and all those clichés, but I never expected to find such joy in clam digging. I was pretty good at it too! Though that probably had more to do with tenacity than any particular skill.
The final pleasant surprise of the trip was how, well, not disgusting live octopus was. I would even dare to say it was tasty. Before this, I’d had it chopped up but still moving, which brings to mind worms and other creepy crawlies. This was much better. It was a bit chewy, but less so than I was prepared for. I thought I tasted butter, but that’s why I’m not a professional in the culinary arts. There was no butter, just raw cephalopod.
It was one of those weekends that carried over to the next week in my thoughts, a tropical getaway in a temperate zone. It was hard to adjust back to work.
The Seoul subway system is the cleanest and most efficient I’ve ever used. The only drawback is that it closes at midnight. I ride it for about 90 minutes each weekday. Strangely, there are no buskers anywhere, only salespeople. Sometimes they sell CDs of the world’s greatest pop hits, which they play from a boombox. But that’s the closest it gets. Maybe busking is illegal (though the selling of knife sharpeners and cotton arm warmers is a daily occurrence). Maybe they’re viewed by Koreans as lower than beggars, and there’s no coin to be made in that racket. Everyone and his adjoshi father is listening to MP3 players anyway.
On the surface, Seoul is Westernized. Road signs are in Korean and English. There’s McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, Quiznos, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Dominoes, Cold Stone Creamery, Baskin Robins, Coffee Bean, Starbucks, etc, et al, and so on. The lack of culture shock and the enormous beer pitchers were the two biggest surprises when I first arrived three years ago. Of course, there are innumerable differences between Korean and American culture, but these differences aren’t immediately obvious. It’s a million little things, like hunched over old women darting ahead of everyone to the front of the line, or the generous sharing of food at the office.
Not all of these little things are entirely unique to Korea. After being here a while, I begin to have trouble distinguishing between Korean culture, Northeast Asian culture, Western culture and global trends. The lines between these are often blurry, and spending most of my time in Korea, I forget what it’s like back home. I lose my point of comparison. Deciding what exactly is Korean becomes difficult.
Of course, the Korean language is Korean. Nevertheless, one of the areas where things get blurriest is language. Here, like anywhere, English is used differently. This is called Konglish. Determining what precisely Konglish is, however, can be tricky. Some just consider it bad English spoken by Koreans. I tend to use wikipedia’s definition which is “…the use of English words (or words derived from English words) in a Korean context.” Some examples of these include referring to cheating on a test as “cunning” or “hacking,” and calling a flasher a “Burberry man.” There are also the emasculated “shutter men” whose only job is to raise and lower the shutters of their successful wives’ shops, who after all, have everything else under control. If you work in an English hagwon (academy), you’ll notice “helicopter moms” hovering outside the classroom door, making sure their children get to sit in the front.
Some words or phrases come from Japanese English (“Jinglish”), or other parts of Asia. “Air-con” comes to Konglish through Jinglish, but it sounds so natural coming out of my mouth these days that I hardly believe it.
In addition to all this, the diversity among the foreign population in Seoul further flavors the linguistic stew. Complex Anglo-Aussie-Ameri-Kiwi-Konglish-Canadian sentences emerge. One begins to “take the piss out of douchebags” and remark that it’s “spilling” outside.
Language is so inextricably tied to identity that it’s quite telling to see how people who have been here for a long time choose to speak. There exist fiercely proud patriots who insist the brand of English from their country is superior. Then there are lonely pedants who wince at the Konglish which foreigners gladly absorb and regurgitate. One can resist Konglish or embrace it, but one can never hide from it.
Winged vermin. Rats of the sea that shit from above. Seagulls. I love ‘em.
I went to university in Columbus, Ohio, the flattest part of a flat state, far far away from the ocean, hours from lake Erie to the north, with no rivers worth taking seriously in sight or smell. On a spring break trip to Canada, my friend and I noticed the squawk that had been missing from the midwest, that I didn’t know I missed from back home. First in Lake Ontario in Toronto, then by the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, and finally upon returning to the U.S., on the waterfront of Lake Champlain, Vermont there were seagulls.
When I traveled from Jeju Island, South Korea, to the much smaller island of Udo, the seagulls were there again, following intently, flocking together as birds do. It was mesmerizing, so I recorded it.
In Ganghwa-do, between the town of Oepo-ri and the island of Seokmo-do, the second video captures a more chaotic scene : gulls darting in all directions, mad for French fries and chips that passengers were holding over the edge (not seen).
Dirty, white, grey, disease-carrying spirit animal of every seaside and lakeside town, I salute you!
But I still cross my fingers when you fly overhead.
