Happy Birthday Elvis!
Greetings from the land of morning calm.
It's January 8...Happy birthday Elvis!
You know, I always thought, and I think was led to believe by the western media that everyone, everywhere in the world knew of "Elvis", but that of course was really very naive of me. Sure, it's a small world in some ways, but it's also a big world with billions of people who neither know nor care about the people we hold as cultural icons. In Korea some of the older people (50+) might know of people like Elvis, and The Beatles etc. Korea has its own cultural identity and the icons to go along with it. They have their own actors, thinkers, writers, and singers. While many may have some familarity with some of the more famous stars of the west, i.e. Brad Pitt, and Britney Spears, generally speaking they have had little or no exposure to the older ones. I suppose the same is true even in the west and there's a whole generation back home that has never heard of The Beatles. You know you're old when....
On January 4 I bought a three month pass at the swimming pool here in Haman-Gun. It's a standard olympic size swimming pool and best of all it's open seven days a week. I've been swimming everyday since I registered. It's been a while since I've done laps and it sure feels good! I've long known that I'm a water person; it gives me time to think, and is both relaxing and energizing. On weekdays I go in the morning. I'm usually in the water by 6:30 and have my 20 laps done by 7:00. Then, I might spend a few minutes relaxing in the hot tub or just hit the showers and then go home for breakfast before heading off to school.
Things at the pool are pretty much as someone coming from North America would expect:
- I have a pass that I give to the attendant when I come in,
- he gives me a key to a locker attached to a rubber wrist band
- I go to my locker, and change
- have a quick shower
- put on my bathing cap (eeek!)
- find a free lane and dive in
I have seen Korean men coming into the pool and some of them do it slowly as if the water is cold, but I don't find it at all cold, and usually dive right in. I do nine laps, usually Australian crawl, and then do a lap underwater. I was surprised to find that I can still do that...go from one end of the pool to the other underwater (20+ meters). One thing about pool etiquette that differs from home... I haven't seen it myself but when showering it's apparently very common for a perfect stranger to offer to scrub your back. It's unlikely to happen to me since they understand that foreigners don't generally follow that custom.
I still haven't gotten together socially with the other ESL teachers in the Haman County school district. I was thinking of going to Masan today to wander around and maybe buy a casette walkman to play the tape that goes with the Korean language book I bought last weekend. But, I found a perfectly acceptable player at the "Whole Sale Mart" just down the street...$12.00.
After my swim at 10:00 yesterday mornig I went looking for a place to get a haircut. I was a little apprehensive because my sense was that Korean hair stylists don't know how to cut hair for non-Koreans. But, as I walked towards home I found a place, walked in and got a great haircut. It only cost $7.00 and I was so happy with it I tried to tip the girl, but she refused.
I had forgotten to let the kitchen faucet drip a little overnight to stop it from freezing and yup, it was frozen yesterday morning. I met one the superintendant as I was going to the pool and had luckily looked up the words for 'pipe' and 'frozen'. He guess he understood mje because when I got home after my haircut, the water was running again. I just dropped off my stuff, grabbed my school bag and went to school to do the email thing.
There were a couple of guys I know in the classroom I usually go to to use one of the computers...they have high speed connections. I managed to explain to them that my phone wasn't working. One of them kindly called the phone company which luckily is open on Saturdays, and arranged for a technician to come to the apartment and fix it sometime between 1:00 and 3:00pm. Then, the three of us we had lunch together and I left for home. I had to get back to wait for the phone man, and some girls from last week's English Camp said that they would be coming over for a visit at 1:00pm.
The phone guy showed up sometime between 1:00 and 1:30. It took him an hour to fix whatever the problem was. The girls, four of them, all around thirteen years old came knocking around 1:45pm. One of them brought me a book..."The Little Prince". The great thing about this besides the fact that it's one of my favourite stories, is the fact that the book has both Korean and English versions. Half the book is the Korean version, and the other is English. That's great because already being familiar with the story I'll be able to read it in Korean - well, eventually. At this point it would take me a couple of months to read it in Korean. Luckily I had some things for the girls too. I had contacted the Canadian Embassy in Seoul and those nice people sent me some cellphone holders with the Canada logo on them and some big Canada buttons. The sixty plus Canada flag pins that I brought with me from Canada are all gone and I haven't yet been any of the other four schools where I'll also be teaching. I've contacted M.P. Marlene Jenning's office to see if they send me another two hundred pins, but it's unlikely...they don't usually send them overseas. Anyway, I gave each of the girls a button and a cellphone holder and will save the rest for other friends and kids from the last two weeks of English Camp. We did some phonics, I showed them how to play some stuff on the guitar, had popcorn, juice, tea and they left around 5:30.
So now, here I sit on my heated floor, well coifed, phone connected, tapping out this little thing on my keyboard and listening to music from speakers connected to my PalmPilot, "Bat Out Of Hell" by Meatloaf. I always wondered... do his friends call him, "Meat"? He was appearing at a place in New York City when my son, and I were there in early August of 2005. Personally I think the guy's a genius, and I should have seen him when I had the chance. Oh well. I just fried a couple of eggs, and ate them with toast, a tomato and a couple of cups of coffee. Oh ya! After English Camp on Friday I went downstairs to the teacher's room, the one with high speed internet access, and the head cook from the school's restaurant was there. I had finished all the kimchi she gave me a little while ago, so she gave me more, lots more, more than I can probably manage to eat before it goes bad. I figure if I eat kimchi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus maybe more for a bedtime snack, I might be able to finish it. While I do love it, and eat it everyday, I really don't think I'll be able to eat it all. Hmmm, maybe I could have a party and give away containers of kimchi away as door prizes.
I was planning to go to the school after lunch today, but it was closed. No one told me the place is closed on Sundays. Damn! I must have missed the memo on that. Maybe it's closed on account of it being Elvis' birthday? Well, maybe not.
New plan...lunch, PC Bang for an hour or so to write some emails, second hand smoke a pack or two, digest lunch and then go for my swim.
Hey, I'm not sure if they're crazy about it, but I just found a USB port on the front of the tower in front of me at the PC Bang. And it works!! That means I can come here (at the expense of my lungs) and update the blog. Well, I guess I'll do this unless they come and tell me I can't. I'm a dumb foreigner, and can plead ignorance.
Now, all I need is a printer and I can also print the new dialoges I wrote today. I had the idea last week of creating dialoges that the kids can do every day. They really need practice speaking. So, I wrote some dialogues, but they needed improvement. This morning l wrote some new dialogues that more closely follow the main topic I'll be teaching each day, i.e. nouns, homonyms, months, days of the week etc. I can format and print at least the one I'm going to do tomorrow, tomorrow morning before class, and then do the rest at 1:00pm when I'm done for the day.
I'm going to take a little pole in class this morning. I'll ask them to raise their hands if they've heard of :
- Elvis
- The Beatles
- Muhhamed Ali
- Bruce Lee
I have a feeling that few if any have heard of the first two, but Ali and Bruce Lee...I'll bet many know of them.
Well, time to hit the pool! Cough! Choke! Sputter! Hack!
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