Shitting in the Street

Today, I saw a man empty his bowels onto a street in Suwon, the town where we catch a portion of our trains around Korea. We were walking to a restaurant to have dinner after returning from a hard day’s Ultimate, and there he was. Pants down, standing up, with a neat little pile of excrement near his feet. When he was done, he simply returned his pants to the normal position and continued to go about the rest of his drunken evening. We did the same, perplexed and shocked by the sheer vulgarity of what we had just witnessed.

This is by no means a common occurrence in Korea, but it is not unheard of. Our co-workers have mentioned spotting piles of human waste on pavements around Dongtan and the cities where they previously worked. It was clear that the offender was in a drunken stupour. Hopefully, a human in their normal state would not do such a thing. There are bathrooms in most restaurants in Korea (although not all, due to space constraints), and there are public bathrooms in train stations, which are common enough that they should be able to cover the needs of anyone desperate enough. But not our bare-bottomed fellow.

One moment, we were walking happily, discussing our exploits from the day with one of our team-mates. The next, we saw a person performing an act that is normally hidden away behind a number of doors. I was almost physically ill soon afterwards, and was happy to be able to have a sugary float a few minutes later, to distract my bowels.

I pity the man. His clothes were clearly well-worn, and he was likely one of the surprisingly high number of homeless people in Korea. In South Africa, homeless people are often seen at robots (traffic lights to those not familiar with the greatness of South African terminology), begging for spare change. They are not afraid to make themselves seen, if it gets them even the smallest amount of money. In South Korea, the homeless seem far more passive. Even when they beg, they do so by sitting quietly, with a mat placed out in front of them for people to place money or food on. They say nothing, and often hide their faces. There is an air of shame surrounding being homeless in Korea, particularly when they feel the need to beg for money.

Many of the homeless are also alcoholics. Often they carry plastic bags filled with empty bottles of soju (Korea’s cheap liquor of choice). The man we saw today seemed to be a person in this category.

Extreme poverty can drive a person to do drastic things. I pity the man who felt desperate enough to forgo all dignity and relieve himself in a crowded street. I hope that his future days are better. We will likely never see him again, but I feel that the image of a man at his lowest will stick with me for a long time to come.

Cleats, Hucks, and Salty Buttcracks: ROK-U Game Day 1

Yesterday was the first weekend of the Republic of Korea Ultimate (ROK-U) 2015 Fall season. After the great time Kris and I had in Seoul Spring League, we felt that we should experience the major league for Ultimate in Korea. Even before we came to Korea, ROK-U was something that drew us to the country. As ROK-U is a national league, game days (or weekends) are held in cities across the country. The idea that we could travel around Korea playing Ultimate was very appealing, and we eagerly awaited the first game day. It did not disappoint.

We arrived, managed to find our captain and several of the other players from our team, whose name is the Cheon-won. For those outside Korea, cheon-won is the Korean word for 1000 won, the Korean currency. It is roughly equivalent to R10 in South Africa, or $1 in the United States. Here is a picture of a Cheon-won note: 

These blue notes with the visage of a venerated elderly Korean general are the cancer of the wallets of those in Korea. They seem to multiply at incomprehensible rates, devouring all of the other, more valuable notes in the process.

Having a name that is drawn from a banknote inevitably leads to money being a central theme in the team. All of the team’s pre-and-during-game chants revolved around money. Some more notable of these included “CASH MONEY!” and the old faithful “MAKE IT RAIN!”. While these may not be the most creative use of the money trope, we still have all season to elaborate and branch out from these old staples.

The frivolity of our chants hints at arguably my favourite thing about our team – the spirit. We didn’t win a single game all day. We never scored more than three points in an entire game. But we never stopped fighting. We never stopped having fun. And that is more important to me than winning will ever be. I was wearing in new cleats that I had been gifted for my birthday by my aunt, and from the end of the first game, my feet were aching. I was having so much fun, I didn’t care.

Nothing exemplifies the spirit of our team more than the manner by which we dole out our MVP award to the standout player of the enemy team. Members of our team sign a cheon-won note. We then announce the player lucky enough to receive the award. That person then has to retrieve their enviable prize from the lower back, nay, the upper butt crevice of our inimitable captain. This could be a thing of horror and humiliation. With us, it is just something done for a laugh to be had by all after a hard game of Frisbee. And everyone laughs, even the person lucky enough to rescue the venerable Korean general from his sweaty prison.

We have many weekends left in the league to win games. I am glad that we started having fun before the first minute of the first game.

Pension: Storm in a Teacup

One of the foreign teachers at our school is leaving Korea. Her reasons are her own, and she feels it is time for her to leave. Something that she had to do before she leaves was claim back her pension from the Korean pension fund. On Tuesday, she went to their offices expecting to find a not-insignificant amount of money waiting to be claimed. She was told that the school had not paid a cent towards her pension the entire year. Thus began the storm of frustration, confusion, and anxiety that plagued the teacher’s room until today.

Every month, a portion of our income is deducted, allocated to the Korean national pension scheme. According to the rules and regulations of this scheme, the hagwon is supposed to place this amount in a pension account for each teacher, and match the value each month. The fact that our employer had not moved a single cent into our colleague’s account the entire year understandably caused some mild panic. All who could check their balances did so, and found the situation to be the same. The teachers who had spent prior years at the school had been paid up until the beginning of this year only, and the new teachers had not been paid at all. The panic levels increased significantly when this was discovered.

Since earlier events have caused us to question the security of our school’s continued existence, all of the teachers are wary for signs of potential financial collapse – oracles staring into flames to hope to discern whether to tuck tail and run before the metaphorical axe falls and cuts our bodies off at the wallet. Pension not being paid for the entire year is such a sign.

Kris and I were mildly less concerned because, as South Africans, we cannot get any money from this pension scheme, despite paying into it every month. The only reason we pay it is because we are obliged to, and because the payment cannot be separated from our healthcare. Even still, we are tempted to drop it and simply put aside the money that would otherwise go into the pension into a ‘Oh bugger, we have become ill or disfigured’ fund.

Nevertheless, there was a flurry of job seeking, looking up potential avenues to claim our money back, and headless chicken syndrome. Thankfully, this did not last long. The pension officer that our colleague dealt with contacted our employer and apparently threatened to press charges for the lack of payment. The next morning, all of the pensions were paid up in full.

So, all in all, it was little more than another day in the life of a foreign teacher. In one way or another, you are probably getting screwed. Your employer will not communicate properly with you. You are always looking for jobs, just in case. But hey, the money’s good, and life could be much harder.

Six on the Beach: Six Things I Learned

This past weekend, Kris and I went to a ridiculously fun Ultimate tournament in Pohang called Six on the Beach. It was a two-day celebration of Ultimate, filled with sand, sun, and throwing some discs. We brought back sore muscles, sand in places where sand should never be, and many lessons. I’ll share some of the things I learned this weekend, from the difficulty of running on sand, to the quality of the Ultimate community in South Korea.

Playing Ultimate on sand is painfully hard. 

Running of any kind is difficult enough, but sand goes out of its way to be exceptionally uncomfortable and awkward. Whether it is the mini-mountain-climbing feeling of playing on soft, uneven sand, or the pain of playing on unyielding hard, wet sand, it is not an ideal surface for quick, sharp sprinting. The only benefit that sand has over other surfaces is that it is rather suited for layouts (diving to catch an otherwise unreachable disc). This did lead to more layouts than I would have expected. Some of these were clearly gratuitous, and players were jeered accordingly from the sidelines when they planted themselves in the sand for a disc more in their reach than the hem of their sleeves.

Every Ultimate player, no matter how experienced, has something that they need to work on. 

I have a great deal of my game that I need to improve on, most of which were agonisingly highlighted during the tournament. Most prominent amongst them is my need to gain speed and endurance in my running. Close behind my physical ineptitude is my need to not panic when I get the disc. I have the annoying tendency to simply throw the disc away wantonly. This was demonstrated in what could have been a highlight of mine for the tournament: I made a full stretch, horizontal layout, catching the disc with the tips of the fingers of my right hand. The fact that I succeeded in doing this sent a surge of adrenaline through my body, and I casually tossed the disc away to what I thought was a nearby teammate. Sadly, my throw flopped pathetically to the dirt. I was, however, heartened by the fact that even the most experienced players had moments that they could have done markedly more proficiently. Whether it was throwing the wrong type of pass to making a cut to the wrong side of the field, we all had something that we felt we did poorly. We are all human, and it is helpful to remember this when you mess up.

There is no shame in having McDonald’s for two (or even three) meals in one day. 

It’s close. It’s fast. It’s (mostly) in English. When you don’t feel like breaking out your rudimentary and embarrassing grasp of Korean or waiting a long time for your meal, the golden arches lie in wait. They know you want their salty, fried, processed goodness. And they are more than willing to give it to you.

Ultimate tournaments can run on time!

I have only participated in a handful of Ultimate tournaments before Six on the Beach, but a common feature of all of them is that they ran over time to varying degrees. Some were a handful of minutes over time. Others were a handful of hours. Six on the Beach proved that they could run to schedule. With nothing more than an air horn, a watch, and some shouting, the Six on the Beach team managed to start and finish matches when they said they would. Well done! While Ultimate people are generally relaxed when it comes to time, I appreciate when events I attend run on time, and Six on the Beach did not disappoint!

Not all love motels are seedy. 

When we had been told about love motels before this weekend, I had the impression that they were completely decrepit, poorly-maintained old buildings with tiny rooms and beds filled with lumps and mysterious stains. When we booked a love motel for our one night stay in Pohang, I had my reservations. I quelled these by rationalising that we would only be there for one night, and the price was very reasonable. I needn’t have consoled myself. Our motel, which was two minutes away from the beach, was spotless. It came complete with a well-sized shower, computer (for stimulation purposes, we deduced), television, a comfortable bed, and clean towels. We would gladly stay there again, and will be far more willing to frequent love motels in the future.

The Korean Ultimate community is amazing.

While we had experienced some of the Ultimate community beforehand by playing in the Seoul Spring League, Six on the Beach was our first major exposure to players from around the country, and we were eager to see if players from around the country were as friendly, helpful, and generally pleasant and fun to be around as the Seoul community was. This was indeed the case. From first-timers brimming with enthusiasm, to veterans with the name of their Korean hometown tattooed onto their bodies, everyone was simply enjoying the weekend of sandy disc-throwing revelry. Advice was passed cordially and in good nature. Smiles abounded. Laughter contended with the various tactical calls throughout the weekend. It was sublime.

While my legs may still be sore from running, what will stay with me longer will be the memories made at Six on the Beach. The lessons I learned, the new friends I made, the older friendships made stronger – this is what Ultimate is truly about. We may all leap around after a small plastic disc, but the main driving force behind it all is something that Ultimate has had everywhere I’ve played it – a wonderful community. Thank you to the organisers. Here’s to the next tournament being as epic!

The Magic of Mac and Cheese

This week was a tough week. Even though some of our students were still away on holiday (or politely looking for other hagwons for next semester), the five working days seemed to drag by like time in a dentist’s waiting room. That was until a seemingly mundane discussion on Wednesday afternoon gave us something to look forward to for the weekend. What was this fabled holy grail at the end of the week? As you may have guessed from the title, it was the humble macaroni and cheese. The thought of the goopy, delicious combination of pasta, cheese, and whatever mysterious fillings they may have drove us forward, helping the hours pass by much more briskly.

But why? Food is a common topic in our break room at our first school in Korea. As a foreigner, exploring different foods is one of the more common pastimes, alongside alcoholism and finding things wrong with your job. This exploration could be finding new, exciting Korean food or the most interesting recreations of Western-style dishes – both are interesting to the foreign population. Everyone has their favourite burger joint, pizza house, and Korean barbeque restaurant, and the merits of each are discussed at length. Is the Western dish authentic to what is experienced ‘back home’? Is it a unique Korean take on something? Most importantly, is it delicious? These questions follow each other in rapid succession, establishing a baseline for comparison of any particular dish or restaurant before the minor details are digested and savoured.

On this particular Wednesday, the subject of macaroni and cheese came up through a conversation such as this. The slightly left-of-centre nature of the dish meant that some amongst the teachers did not have a favourite place to acquire and devour good ol’ mac and cheese. The rest tended to agree that Sam Ryan’s, a foreigner pub located in nearby Suwon, boasted the best mac and cheese in Korea. Kristen painted such a vivid picture of its deliciousness that we, as a teaching unit, resolved to go to Sam Ryan’s on Friday evening for mekju (the Korean word for beer) and mac and cheese.

Once this was asserted, the week noticeably accelerated, and took on a surreal, macaroni-worshipping nature. The dish was rarely far from conversation. A co-worker even changed Kristen’s wallpaper on her work computer to honour the soul food delicacy.

When closing time on Friday finally came, the majority of the teachers hopped into two taxis bound for Sam Ryan’s. Two of our co-workers had decided to not attend. And they missed out tremendously. The mac and cheese was gorgeous. Gooey. Cheesy. Filled with love and care. And it went down well with a couple of beers (or more than a couple, in the case of some of our compatriots). What left us feeling most warm and content, however, was the good times had at Sam Ryan’s. We kicked back, discussed everything from little gripes at work to philosophy to the minutia of American football timetabling. It was a great evening, enjoyed by all.

We ate delicious food. We drank a little (or a lot). We talked about everything and nothing. It felt like our first few meals together, where we were all still excited for the year ahead. We may have become slightly deflated in the meantime, but the medium of mac and cheese allowed us to forget everything else for a little while and simply enjoy being with friends from two other countries on the other side of the world – something we forget to do all too often.

Mudfest Mania

On Friday night, Kris and I stood at a crossroads. We had booked a place on a bus to a place called Boryeong for the weekend, to attend a rather unique festival that was taking place there. It was not a music festival, or a flower festival, or even a craft beer festival. It was a festival celebrating the wonders of mud. We were uncertain whether we would rather be content at home for the two days of freedom from children, or at this bizarre festival with some potentially scary strangers who happened to live in our town. Looking back at how much we enjoyed the weekend, we needn’t have even considered missing Mudfest.

One of the major reasons for our trepidation in the hours leading up to departing for Mudfest was the apparent emphasis on drinking alcohol that permeated the Facebook message group prior to the trip. It would seem that many of our Mudfest comrades would be having big weekends indeed, and we weren’t sure if we were comfortable with that. These intentions came to become truth soon enough, as the drinking began before we even stepped foot onto the bus. However, we decided to share the first few drinks with everyone, and this helped ease us into the rest of our time together. We arrived at our accommodation in the early hours of the morning and did some brief exploring of the area before Kris and I decided to call it a night, leaving some of our party to explore several bars.

Kris decided to share a few more drinks than I did on Friday night, and felt rather poorly on Saturday morning. This experience was shared with the others amongst our group who overestimated their capabilities to process alcohol, and for most of our group, Saturday morning and afternoon were spent in our accommodation, nursing various symptoms and not moving a great deal. Once some strength had been regained, Cards Against Humanity was cracked open, and there followed several hours of inappropriate laughter and bonding between us. While the majority of Boryeong was spending their time getting covered in mud, we were perfectly happy to be inside, having a good laugh together.

Today, then, was our day to see what exactly about mud was worthy of celebrating in its own festival. Kris and I rose early, leaving behind most of our group (who had made a concerted effort to drink more on Saturday night than they had on Friday night), to explore the wonders of mud. And we were very, very pleasantly surprised.

We had expected there to simply be a large pool of mud to splash around in, cover yourself with, and then proceed to take more selfies than should probably be allowed. While there were indeed two large pools of mud, there was so much more than that. There were slides. There was mud football. There was an obstacle course. There was even an inflatable gladiatorial arena, where you would beat another person with a foam cylinder, attempting to knock them off of the pole that you both sat on. It was a veritable mud theme park. And, for most of the attractions, the victor of the activity got to throw mud upon the body of the loser. My own victory over Kristen in the gladiatorial arena was indeed sweeter after covering her with mud. Everything was more fun with mud.

Like our recent field trip to the ‘water park’, it astounded me how activities that seemed so simple proved to be so incredibly enjoyable. We bonded with some new friends. We threw frisbee on the beach. But, most prominently, we got covered in mud, and had a blast doing so. We will see our Mudfest comrades again. We will return to Mudfest next year if we decide to stay in Korea. I am simply hoping that I will be able to, one day, remove all of the ninja-like mud from many nooks and crannies on my person.

Everybody Loves Water Pistols

Today was our third field trip at our first school in Korea, and it was by far best we have had up until this point. While our expectations and initial impressions may have been rather low, the day quickly turned to on one of the most positive experiences we have had with the children. What turned the day into such a good one? Nothing more than a parking lot, two blow-up slides, an inflatable pool, a host of water pistols, and a rediscovered chlidishness inside us teachers.

For the whole month, we have been aware that the field trip would be to a water park. Our initial thoughts of travelling to a massive theme park with three-storey slides was quashed by our co-workers who had been at the school for more than a year. They told us that in previous years, there had been little more than a couple of slides in a small parking lot. When we arrived at the ‘water park’ this morning, they were proved correct. I looked upon the two slides, splash pool, and pavement with dread. I felt that the children would quickly be bored, and the day would turn into a constant hunt for explorers seeking entertainment outside of the small oasis of fun. How wrong I would be.

The children ate their snacks, which ranged from healthy fruit to exotic sweet things, and changed into their swimming clothes. The slides were ready, and so were the children. I was not ready for how much fun would be had in the short time we would spend in a Korean soccer academy’s parking lot.

The children soon became one with all of the watery objects, sliding and swimming and sliding again. Almost as quickly, the first streams of water flew from a water gun. Thus began the aquatic warfare that would not cease until the ‘adult’ teachers were told it was time to return to the reality of the school. The majority of children had brought water guns with them, of varying size, functionality, and effectiveness. The teachers happily scavenged any guns that were left unattended, and I managed to sample almost every means by which children and other teachers could be covered in water.

My personal favourite was a foam water cannon in the shape of a pink unicorn. Apart from the ridiculousness of the image that was created by my wielding this weapon, it was also remarkably good at its job. Its operation was simple: put the end of the tube into the water, pull on the handle to suck water in, point it at your target, push the water out again, and watch as your quarry is covered in water. The only limitations were the strength of one’s arm and the limited water capacity. In a young girl’s hand, it made a soft stream that reached a few metres. In my hands, it was a siege weapon capable of reaching across the entire parking lot, from the floor to the top of the taller slide. I had more fun than I probably should have through drenching children. And I wasn’t the only one.

The pools were prowled by students and teachers equally determined to spread watery havoc to the best of their ability. Children played. Teachers forgot that they were meant to be working, and played as well. Work was a foreign concept in the small playground where we enjoyed a bubble of simple childish joy.

While I one day might look back at my experiences in Korea and see all of the bureaucracy and duties and mundanity of day-to-day teaching, tonight, I remember what it feels like to be a child for a while. I cast off my glasses, my negative attitudes, and my disciplinary teaching facade, and sprayed children in the face with a pink unicorn. Today was a good day.

Flickering Dream

When we were sitting back in South Africa a year ago, contemplating whether we actually wanted to go to Korea or not, we drew up a list of pros and cons. Amongst the list of pros was the fact that we could (we thought) easily travel around Asia, because we would be so much closer to the region than we would be back in South Africa. One country in particular that we both wanted to visit was Japan. We thought that it would be simple to get to Japan, with it being only a short flight from Korea. We became very excited at the prospect of getting on a plane and an hour or two later being in the country that is the heart of so many geek cultural icons. Nintendo, Pokemon, anime, manga: all of these things come from that small island. We dreamed of seeing their roots with our own eyes. Had we known how difficult and frustrating the process of getting into Japan would be, our dreams would be much more faded and greyscale.

Our most deluded thought was that we would simply be able to walk into Japan without a visa. Reading on forums online, we were spun tales of flights of fancy for a weekend with no more than an hour’s planning at an airport. We thought that we could be able to do that as well. One factor we didn’t take into account is that the people who penned those tales of whirlwind weekend trips were from the United States of America, and held USA passports. The USA passport was recently ranked the fifth most powerful passport in terms of accessing countries without a Visa (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11552784/The-worlds-most-powerful-passports.html). The South African passport sat in a distinctly lackluster forty-second place. Crucially for our purposes, Japan is not on the list of countries that South Africans can travel to without a visa. Maybe next time we’ll travel to Belize, or even visit the dictatorland that is Zimbabwe.

Once we realized this, we began the process of applying for a visa. We booked our accomodation via airbnb.com, bought our plane tickets, and submitted what we thought to be the necessary documents, including our Alien Registration cards (essentially a dompas that allows us to work as a foreigner in Korea), passports, and the statement from our joint bank account. We were told that we would receive an email the following day notifying us if there were any additional documents that we would need. Two agonizing weeks later, we sent the Embassy an email asking for follow-up, hoping that they had simply forgotten to let us know that we could collect our visas. If only. The weak light of our dream began to fade – the visa could take two weeks to print after an accepted application, and our time window was closing.

As it turns out, there were two major problems with our application – our accommodation did not appear to be licensed by the Japanese government, and there was no bank statement for my application (our bank account is in Kristen’s name). The first problem was fixed relatively quickly by booking at a hotel that is properly licensed for the duration of our stay, and submitting that booking to the Embassy for application purposes. No, we have no intention of staying there, and we will cancel the booking the moment that we hear that our application has been accepted. Apparently this is a common practice amongst travellers to Japan, and is the easiest way to get governmental approval. It is understandable that accommodation from airbnb will not be licensed, as it is essentially people renting rooms from their homes online. Nevertheless, once we submitted the illusory hotel booking, it was accepted. That left only the banking details still to fix.

This problem would remain unresolved for far longer. The first representative from the Embassy that we spoke to simply could not comprehend that I simply did not have a bank account. We engaged in a frustrating exchange of emails trying to explain this to them, but the concept simply would not dawn on them. We tried to set up an account for me, but there apparently needed to be three months’ worth of transactions to show financial stability. We even debated forging my name and account number of my account onto one of Kristen’s bank statements. Luckily, about a week of constant back and forth later, another Embassy employee began to talk to us, and seemed to understand our situation. He saw that the account was stable, and had enough money to provide for our stay. All we need to do now is provide an official document from our employer stating that my salary gets paid into Kristen’s account each month. With this insurgence of logic into the conversation, the light of our dream began to grow bright once more.

Today, our journey towards a visa may be drawing to a close. Our employer should provide us with the necessary document at some point today, which we will happily send off to the Embassy. Hopefully, by this weekend, we will hear whether it has finally been accepted. We are beginning to see the bright colours of our childhood characters surrounding us with nostalgia and happiness. In about four weeks’ time, we’ll see them with our own eyes, and not just our imaginations. And that will make all of the hassle worthwhile.