Movies and Political oddities

Well, not much to really say this week. I might slowly begin to ease from posting every Sunday and simply take this to once every two weeks (twice a month give or take) as things have been becoming routine for me; the usual weekly route going into the weekend and the same goes fro the weekend going back into the work week. I did however do something pretty awesome Sunday, and that was see X-Men; Day's of Future Past.
I must admit, I didn't expect to actually go to a movie, but one of my Airsoft buddies had mentioned he was seeing a flick Sunday night, so I decided to check it out and see.

The movie was playing in Gangam, a very hip and happening city, which as the name refers to, it's also the place where Psy came from (hence his song, Gangam Style).

Yeah, I don't think they play down that fact at all...

It was a pretty bustling part of Seoul, very active and a large mesh of foreign and native individuals, what really surprised me was where the station actually was; centered right in a massive underground mall that seemed to spiral on forever (with 12 exits/entrances to boot) it got pretty confusing, but thankfully, the signage was a big help in sorting out where I had to go, and once I met up with my bud and his friends, we started off to find dinner.
I keep forgetting that Korea is built upwards, you can walk into an alleyway and be surrounded by several stories of shops, bars, restaurants, you name it.

We had a sit down dinner at an Italian restaurant and before we knew it, we had eaten and made our way to the movie theater nearby for our showing.

I was originally expecting a Korean dubbed movie with English subtitles, but it was English dubbed with Korean subtitles. Either way, X-Men, Days of Future Past was quite a movie and I really enjoyed the whole thing (including the ending which added some interesting place for another movie after this one.)
When we finished, we actually had to step out into the rain; and this is one of the heaviest rain's we've seen since we got here. The Rain Season is upon us!

A memorial tree of all the wishes to those perished
in the Suwon disaster.
It's been 3 months since that happened.

Another odd thing going on has to be the government elections. For those following what's been going on, a lot has begun to shift with the aftermath of the Suwon disaster. A lot of organizations have been looked into, a lot of rules changed and policies developed, and (not being 100 percent sure) a lot of government officials are being criticized; especially the President.

Apparently, the situation was so bad, that many Korean's are just furious about the terrible organization of it; from the Coast Guards poor response to the lack-luster inspections of the ship to everything leading up to this terrible tragedy and how so little had been done prior to be wary of this. Another interesting thing I heard was the owner of the ship had actually fled the country as all these accusations and legal troubles began to target him for his negligence.

 It also seems unnecessary to see people who aren't directly involved taking flak, ala Miss President. The PM actually resigned in her place to take responsibility for the blame, but can anything really be changed about it? As one of my co-teachers had learned from talking to one of the Korean teachers, the Korea's are just mad about it, they want action, they want change, and they certainly want something done to the organizations at the forefront of the blame (Mostly coastal services and such) for how poorly this was handled. It seems odd, coming from a Western perspective, but it seems Korean's are far more diligent about this sort of thing and they don't let things go easy; especially when almost 200+ teenage students lost their lives because of some terrible management. I'm not the right person to really judge anything; something like this is well beyond my scope and tbh the first thing I've ever really experience. I mean, I've lived through 9/11 and know what its like to take a serious loss, but in regards to the system failing to be properly prepared, well, that's something someone higher up should deal with.

Whatever the case, I've already paid my respects to those passing: I've shared my hate and my sorrow because they are students and children who had lives ahead of them, but there isn't much else I can do for them. I just hope by the time this finally settles, everything will be sorted and new policies, management and security protocols will be in place to make sure this never happens again.

My votes for number 2...or maybe 4? Perhaps 1?

Something else that surprised me was the fact there is a Mayoral race in Bundang. Each day since last week I've seen champagnes showing their 'number elector' to the citizens of the city. I'm not sure what they say, but it seems the numbers they display are the numbers of the ballots to be voted by the people.
Due to the Suwon incident, a lot of these campaigners couldn't get their full show into service, and many have to resort to large groups of people supporting their champing with their colors and numbers on display. Quite something in comparison to what I remember from the Mayor race back home.

Suffice to say, things like that have been going on, but for me its business as usual. I have my life and duty to handle on my own accord and though it isn't as exciting as my first few weeks, I'm sure much more will happen in the coming months ahead.

Sports and Exercise, with a few bumps.

I must admit, I never expected myself to be so active during my days in South Korea. I guess part of me knew that with less responsibilities at home, I'd have more opportunities to go out and do things; and boy, do I sure take advantage of that. For those who've read my prior posting, I mentioned I was doing swimming weekly, not at the same place mind you, but every Saturday I make my way to a nearby Community center (which Noel mentioned to me) and have been swimming there Saturday post my Korean Language classes.

It's been quite something to swim again, despite my first attempt being quite a disaster, my continued periods of swimming have proven much more rewarding, and I've been less sore or exhausted by being in the pool or the hot baths, so no further problems will plague me (hopefully). I do still need to buy a swimming cap, and I don't really like borrowing those they have at the center, but hey, when you need to swim, you make due.

Speaking of activities, this week was quite a tiresome
one for me, so much so that I actually didn't go swimming this weekend. Since the weather is turning so nice these past few weeks, and because our current theme project at school was based around sports, we had been organized to having sports day, twice, during the week. Sport's day is as it may sound; its a day where you play fun activities with the kids such as ball rolling, tile flipping, relay races and then some. We had to make it two days because we couldn't handle all three sets of classes in one session. Kinder and the older block of Elementary students had their day on Tuesday while the earlier block of Elementary had their's on Friday. Pretty much, it was a day packed full of fun in the sun with children running around like wild animals.

Probably the best thing about teaching is playing around with the kids, I always enjoy any time to go out of the classroom and play about with my students; it helps build bonds between them, though maybe they just enjoy the sheer fun of getting out of class. Anyway, my job through the festivities was to manage the "Ball Rolling" game, which involves two very large, blue and red colored balls that the children had to roll down a lane and back again; whoever finished their line first won.

Simple really, the other games weren't too complex either; though one that really got me surprised was Parachute Running, which actually was something I never heard about. The children wear colored parachutes on their back and run from one end to another. The parachute is suppose to hold the the child back, but since the wind was low, the chutes were more of show and a hassle for some kids; though many of them wanted to make the chute poof out and ooh and ahh their friends.

Suffice to say, the games, being almost with an Olympic motif were often fair sided, both teams would manage to get equal points before the final event, which was a tug of war. Now, let me just say, there are three male teachers, and a bunch of female teachers; so when one team has TWO of the three male teachers, it makes the game pretty one-sided. Thats how I felt when I was in that game with Kevin and Bryan on the other side, tugging both me, a few female teachers, and a whole row of kids over to their side.

At the end of the games, all of us were tired, but it had been a very fun week. It was also my first full week at Hapkido.

Hapkido, a Korean version of Akido, is a Defensive base martial arts. Through training of body and mind, you're able to develop skills and movements to counter attacking foes. Its exactly what sort of martia arts I've wanted to learn, and the Master there is very friendly and passionate about teaching us. I'm part of a class of 6 (including myself) of varying ages, so its quite nice to see others, both young and old, taking part in this discipline. I hope to achieve great things with this by the time I leave, and seeing it three times a week for 120,000 Won a Month doesn't sound so bad either.

You can guess with both Sports Day and Hapkido during this week, I was pretty tired, sore, and more or less busted up because of my activeness with the kids; like stated before, its the reason I missed swimming, but next week won't be the same, since its just Hapkido, I'll be back on the physical action routine once more.

Art Stream ready to go!

Just need to find the time...

Currently I've wanted to spend time working on my art and writing, so, after speaking to an old friend, I found a good website to do such things and stream them, in other words, show off what I'm doing, to other interested in watching.

The link is located below, feel free to watch.

Each completed picture will be put into the art section of this Blog.

Seonsaeng Art Space

Old pictures, slapped together from
different notes of scripples

Tancheon Sports Center and the hospitality of strangers.

For awhile, I wanted to get into some physical activity to work off steam and build proper body muscle while I am staying in Korea. I had found one of my biggest issues back home from working out (aside from being lazy) was the fact no 'cheap' places were close buy and I really couldn't find the time or effort to commit to plans. However, being in South Korea and having an almost limitless amount of free time during the evenings and weekends, I decided I would try and invest in swimming or some other sport, and thanks to the help of one of my fellow Foreign teachers, we got an opportunity to check out Tancheon Sports Center.

Tancheon Sports Center is a massive sports complex, carrying facilities and classes for a wide range of sports; from squash to running to bowling and, above all for me, swimming. When my fellow foreign teacher and friend, Kevin, asked one of our Korean teachers, Sarah, about finding a place to play Squash, she had mentioned Tancheon to be one of the best (and since it was right across the street, one of the closest). So, one day, during lunch break, Sarah took us to see the sports center.

This place is MASSIVE, and this is only an aerial view of the place (the facility with the pool and such is just beside the stadium, the one with the two brown roofs). When we were taken inside, Sarah spoken to the reception desks and found that they did indeed have the time's we could come in to swim or play squash, but the former mostly was during the day, with classes being done in the evening (when everyone comes off work). That's one thing you find in Korea, since everyone works during the day, its often hard to find something that's 'free'-anything in terms of working out or what have you as most of the time they have to teach classes for parents and kids who got off work or school. Anyway, Kevin and I were given booklets that talked about the classes they had for different sports, dancing, even some martial arts, and their times which they operated during the week and weekend. 

Afterwards, Kevin, who had class to teach, departed, and left Sarah and myself to explore the facility for him. Tancheon is indeed well stocked, possessing a 25x25 meter pool (i think), squash/racquetball ball courts, even an ICE RINK! It blew my mind, and certainly my expectations of just how well stocked this place was. What really surprised me though was the price, I originally thought we'd have to buy a membership, but we found soon after you could buy a day pass for 3,000 Won (that's 3 bucks!) and get a locker to boot, how epic!

Anyway, that was two weeks ago, and since then I hadn't found time to go swimming. Between meet-ups, shopping trips, and Airsoft, I had little time during the weekends to actually go and do it. However, since Monday was "Children's Day", a national holiday, I decide to go check it out and get my swim on.

I had bought a bathing suit and swim trunks with a pair of goggles prior, so I was set in that department, and after packing a towel and some rubber sandals, I went off to the sports center. Paying 3,000 Won was nothing difficult, though the last screen gave me trouble as it presented me with four options and not a single one was in English (despite the English button being pushed), it was no issue though, the one I pushed charged me 3,000 won and I made my way over to the Kiosk to get access to the pool. Once in, I changed, showered, and went right into the pool, but not before meeting another foreigner by the name of Noel. 

Noel helped me figure out a few things about the pool place and that a second card the cashier at the Kiosk gave me was a parking pass, which was moot for me as I don't drive. I was curious what it was at first because there was a display saying you needed a pass for something, but I didn't think it was for parking; either way, it was sorted and I went off to the pool.

Not the same pool, it was a 25x25 meter pool with 8 lanes.

Its been almost six years since I swam in a pool, perhaps not exactly six, but it was the last time I remember actually swimming much of anything for a decent period of time. Perhaps I am wrong, but at the back of my mind, there hadn't been any point in time that I had seriously swam for more than one day, and so I knew my body would be a bit rusty.  One thing I didn't know was that I had to wear a swim-cap at the pool. It wasn't until a lifeguard stopped me and handed me one saying it was required that I figured it out. I was actually glad he did so, but it means that I have to go out and buy one for myself now. No worries, they aren't too expensive anyway.

With cap on head, I went about swimming. I started with the basics; four laps of Front, four of back, four of breath stroke, and four of elementary. I wanted to do Side-stroke, but as the time wore on, the lane became a bit too packed for my liking (4 other people began to swim with me) so I had to keep decent pace. Sadly, as I figured, my body was not use to the heavy work-out I gave it. I started to get foot-cramps every so often and my legs were sore from the kicking; I didn't let it stop me, but it hurt like the dickens, so I took it easy, resting periodically before going on to the next lap. Noel, who was a lane beside me, was swimming like a bawss; he would keep going without stopping and I couldn't help but envy his capabilities for an older gentleman. I knew that before I stopped swimming, I could do as he could, but for the moment, the pain in my feet was becoming quite unbearable. I lasted 45 minutes before calling it quits; with the original laps of 32 short by 2 (I couldn't do the last two Elementary Back Stoke) I decided to go over and see Noel in the 'slow lane' which was pretty much people 'wading' back and forth.

Noel was glad to see another foriegner. Once he finished, he told me that we should head into the change room, apparently, the rule of the pool is to work out for 50 minutes, and then take a mandatory 10 minute break where the lifeguards go around and tell everyone to get out. That's actually pretty smart because it stops people from overworking themselves. I was glad to, I'm sure Noel would have kept going and I'd be forced to sit and watch. Going back into the charge room, Noel invited me to take a dip in the hot tub with him, I was quite delighted to do so, but we had to be stark naked, which everyone actually was, from child to senior or 'Ajoshi'. It was actually not too bad as I did the same, and went into the hot tub.

Again, not the same, I'm working with stock photos
from the internet.

Noel was one pretty cool dude; he originally came from Australia (I didn't ask were exactly) and had been living in South Korea for 14 years! That's the longest period of time a foreigner whose stayed here that I've met, and he had done quite a lot, from teach to just general learn the culture. We got into some pretty neat conversations about religion, politics, jokes, and just general experiences of South Korea. I started to feel a bit uneasy by this point; my head started to get very fuzzy, and I felt a bit weak. Noel asked if I was okay, which I replied with "yeah, I'm good."

 During the conversation, Noel asked how my Korean was, I told him non-existent, but willing to learn (and currently taking Language Classes). He offered to teach me a bit, which was cool, and we agreed afterwards he'd do so. Hangul, which is the Korean language, is a pretty logical, if not simple, language to learn. It took Noel just two weeks to get a grip on it, and he's since been working with it. I knew I'd have a bit of a ways to go, but since it's been said this language was designed for easy learning and simplicity, I doubt I'd have much trouble getting my own handle on it.

We spoke in the hot tub for almost 20 minutes before I decided to get out. Noel suggested we go for another dip but I was still sore, saying I'd probably just shower. He did convince me to try for at least half an hour, but then we decided to go into the Sauna, which I would prefer a lot more (I had said I wanted to leave by 4pm, and it was already 3:30 by the time I checked my watch.)

Going into the Sauna wasn't too bad, we continued talking about South Korean culture, especially about the food they eat, which somehow or other turned into a debate on dog meat (which is something you can get in Korea). During the Olympics of 1988, they had outright banned the production and distribution of dog meat for a period of time before, during and after the games which - despite being a sensible idea - was a bit extreme as it's part of the culture of Korea. Noel and I hammered this issue; it made me queasy just thinking about it, which turned into how people experience other cultures and got him into how his mum wouldn't like it if he had visited him while he was in South Africa years ago. Suffice to say, we were in there for a good 15 minutes before I started to get uncomfortable, and that's when I decided it was time to get out.

I walked over to the shower to soak myself when I started to feel the blood pumping in me like crazy, lightheaded and eventually just sheer exhaustion of an almost unseen force before I collapsed to the ground. This was NO JOKE, I was literally out for a second before I looked up to see Noel above me asking if I was okay. I didn't hurt myself in the fall, and I could give him a thumbs up that I wasn't in any serious pain or anything. One thing I remember learning was when you fall, its good to collapse downward rather than forward or backward as it will help your body sprawl onto the floor without banging your head on it. I did this fine, but damn, was it awful. Noel began shouting for help in Korean, and soon, almost every man in the room was around me, but they didn't gawk or stare, they immediate started to take care of me.

Everybody being lifeguards in this shower-room

One of them tilted my head to the side to let the water from my ears while others fixed my body position to be straight, another checked my pulse and Noel was talking to them. My body was tingly, but I still was able to move and I kept taking slow, deep breaths to help cool myself off. Soon enough, he said to me to stand up when I felt okay, and once I did, I was lifted by another man carried me to the dressing room and sat me down.

Koreans hospitality was exceptional here, many who hadn't even met me or knew me were around me asking if I was okay. A life guard asked if I needed anything and I simply said some water which I got quite quickly. Other men were checking my pulse, keeping me settled, even drying me off and the whole time Noel was there speaking to them, noting specifically I didn't need an ambulance (which I didn't, I was okay by this point). After a few more moments of breathing and cooling, I was able to stand up. Noel suggested I take a cool shower, and said that I should take a sit-down shower, which was something I've actually wanted to try. As I was leaving, a Korean gentleman began to bless me (he was Christian)  and he was doing the whole cross and prayers to make sure I was okay. It was surprising, and I gave him a Buddhist bow in response with 'gamsahabnida', which is "thank you" in Korean. Once that was done, I got changed, and waited for Noel.


 As I did, another Korean gentleman came by and offered me an vitamin drink. I hadn't even seen this man before, but here he was, cracking me a bottle of the Vitamin C drink that is ever so popular and handing one to me and to Noel. I was surprised.

The whole ordeal was amazing, I left feeling quite relived and perhaps even delighted to have met Noel. If he had't been there, I might have had a rather boring experience, let alone one that helped me recover from a near disaster. Noel and I spent some time that evening together, he taught me some Korean and I even invited him for dinner with me. We ate, talked, watched some Comedy with Dave Allen on life and Airplanes, and afterwards, Noel even showed me another swimming center at a community center/church not too far away. He even inquired if I was doing any martial arts, and said I hadn't thought of it, however, once he mentioned a Ikido (which is the Korean equivalent of Akido) I was bouncing on that idea real quick. An exchange of e-mails later and he said he'd pass me the info as soon as he could and then we parted ways for the evening.

Today was a real good day, did some good swimming, made a great new friend, and saw even more of the kindness and hospitality of Korean people.