Farewell parties

There have been a lot of new faces around the Daejeon ECC community recently. First John left at the end of July. We sent him off by staying up drinking and singing in a Noraebong (karaoke room) with him:

You can tell from the fact that he is throwing up the Korean X to say 'no' that John has been in Korea for too long (a year and a half already, and he's now in Seoul for grad school in Asia Studies).

We all get rather involved in our singing at the Noraebong

Next to abandon us was half of the Daejeon ECC foreign teachers: Lindsay and Lauren from my dong (neighborhood) and Jeff, Mad, and Thomas from downtown. They all left on September first. On their penultimate weekend Will and I threw the a barbecue on the roof, which was another great success.

On their last weekend Mad and Jeff threw a party in their spacious apartment where we were all to dress in our favorite odd Korean outfit. Hilarity ensued. Some people opted for shirts covered in Konglish (babelfish-generated blocks of what appears to be English if you took away grammar and coherence):

Others wore outfits that one can only find in Korea:

A common phenomenon here is couples outfits. The clothing is actually designed for people who are dating:

We were kind of sad that the one Korean who showed up wasn't wearing a cowboy hat and flannel. After all, we North Americans are also eminently mockable.

  I think the clear winner for the night was Colin and his hooded pink beater. Another great hoodie-related item of Korean clothing is the hoodie that zips all the way up, hiding your face., which was sadly lacking at the party. Lindsay is modeling an ajima (older woman) uniform of visor, mask, and white gloves, though she needs a brightly colored track suit and permed hair to be up to full dress code (I swear, 90% of women between the ages of 40 and 60 wear what I have just described).

We met all the new people and sent off the old. As the night wore on we played a game of Never Have I Ever, and it was odd to be on the other side of that game. When I used to play my freshman year I was by far the most innocent, and this time I was definitely at the other extreme. I guess things are different when playing with non-Reedies (and after attending Reed). [As a side note, I can no longer use my favorite 'never have I ever been drunk' as of last night when Alanna and I went out for a fancy Italian dinner and the half bottle of Riesling I drank unexpectedly went to my head. I have definitely consumed more alcohol in a sitting before with absolutely no effect, so it was a bit of a surprise to find my head swimming. I'm not sure of my opinion of the experience. ]

On Sunday we all met up for dinner at Lindsay's, which felt a bit like a wake. We then went across the street to the Daejeon World Cup Stadium for a rather tame soccer game. The most interesting bit was that the rival team, from a town I'd never heard of before, seemed to have grabbed up any flag that was the right color since I don't think they really endorse the politics of Che Guevara. I honestly can't think of many places less likely to see Che's face than in contemporary South Korea, the land of capitalism and conformism and whose citizens of course associate communism with North Korea.

We did our part to try to fill the massive stadium, but it was a futile attempt:

The team is called the Daejeon Citizens, which is not only one of the lamest team names ever, but also seeming false judging by the ethnic diversity of both teams.

A fond farewell to all those departed, and good luck to them all.

Sleep is for the weak

Since the beginning of August I have been teaching a group of eleven chemical engineers on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. They are all around 30-40 years old, and are a lot of fun to teach. We have been preparing for the Test Of English for the International Community until now, but now we have a discussion book and we talk about news articles, so I imagine that the class will only become more interesting. Also, the grounds of the company are rather nice:

I am getting paid fairly well to teach the class, though I am only getting about a third of what the chemical engineering company pays my school, and basically all the school provides is the book. The only problem with the class is that it is from 7:30 to 8:20 in the morning, so I have been getting up with the sun half of the time for the last month and a half.

A tangential note in case you all were worried that I had changed too much since coming to Korea: this is an actual conversation that occurred recently:
Me: "Sleep is for the weak."
Lauren: "Sleep is for the human."
Me: "Like I said..."

Belated Mud Fest entry

Way back in mid June I attended the Boryeong Mud Festival, which celebrates the soft clay there that is supposed to be healthy to bath in. Now the festival (previously mentioned just after the event actually occurred in this post) is an excuse to pour mud on oneself and others and have a huge party. All of my friends and I went and had a fantastic time. We met up way across town and waited for a bus so that our tour group could take us to the coast. [Notes: I am going to use this post to introduce you to my friends here since I don't think I've done that before. The pictures are almost all from Madeline 'Mad Dog' Stobbe, though a few were taken by Scott or Thomas or stolen from the internet.]

Thomas here takes one of many pictures of himself, with Will and Alanna in the background. Thomas worked at my company's other school in Daejeon, along with Jeff, Mad, Laura, and Renee.

There were mud-covered inflatible slides, mud wrestling, and other games, but the lines for these were absurdly long so I did not partake. The town was absolutely packed with people. The tour group that we bused down with themselves brought about 2000 people, and they weren't even the only tour group. The main stretch of beach had a large stage and an area where one could cover oneself with mud.

The mascots of the event were a Korean couple covered in mud, which had an unfortunate (surely accidental) resemblance to people in blackface.

Scott [far left] gets muddy in a pool of mud, and Jeff [center] is just about to take the plunge.

Colin and Scott pose beneath rows of flags of various countries. I know them from the Korean class we all used to go to before I got lazy and quit. Scott is one of the most relaxed, laid back, and generally awesome to be around people I've met here. Colin is also a lot of fun and has one of the best stories I have ever heard about Korea (or maybe anywhere). One day he was told by his co-teacher that some repairs or maintenance of some sort would take place at his apartment and not to be there until a certain time. He got there about half an hour early to drop off his motorcycle and decided to see if the work happened to be done early. What he found was his doorway bricked shut. As in, Cask of Amantillado brick and mortar sealed shut, and none of us can even imagine any reason why this could in any way be useful for anything. As he stood there dumbfounded a Korean man came up, frantically apologized and told him in Korean to wait ten minutes. Colin went away for a little while and when he came back his apartment was back to normal.

Jeff, Alanna, and Lindsay, newly muddy.

Here [from right to left] Laura, Lindsay, Alanna, and I stood in a cage and had mud thrown at us. I'm really not sure what the point of it was, since it didn't get us all that muddy. I suppose it was supposed to be a photo op, but there seem to be better ideas for that.

Here will demonstrates that all of us, when we have just dunked our heads in the wet mud, look like Martin Sheen at the end of Apocalypse Now. Renee and Laura are also pictured (Renee stayed by far the cleanest of any of us).

There was also colored mud, so while most people were the gray of the most prevalent mud we say the occasional red, yellow, green, or blue person walking around. We got some colored mud and drew on ourselves and each other. Scott had a Canadian flag on his chest and a heart and 'Mom' on his bicep.

  [From left to Right: Jeff, Lauren, Mad, Laura, Lindsay, me, and Renee in the background]

[The same people as before, but now Alanna is in the back and Will is partly in the picture on the right. Lauren, Lindsay, Will, and I all work at the same branch of ECC, whereas Mad, Jeff, Thomas, Laura, and Renee work at the other branch in Daejeon. Or rather, they did all work there. Thomas and Lindsay went back to Newfoundland, Canada. Lauren is back in Colorado (we grew up about thirty miles apart but never met in the US), and Mad and Jeff are making me jealous with their trip across Southeast Asia.]

We washed off in the ocean and cleaned up at our Minbak, a private home converted into a place for sleeping, usually with pads on the floor, and in this case with people absolutely filling the floorspace.

We went to dinner near our minbak, across the street from five elephants.

Here's everyone sans mud: above are Will, me, Scott, and Laura; below are Alanna, Lindsay, Jeff, and Lauren.
[Judging from the hand gesture and the results of the weekend, I'm going to claim Will is saying to Alanna 'you should date this guy'.]

After dinner we went to the main stage to wait for the performances to begin. At dark there was a fun and impressive fireworks display from a boat out in the ocean. After that some pretty major Korean bands played despite the fact that it had started to rain. We danced on the sand to lyrics we couldn't understand from several different performers, including Girl's Generation, the flavor of the month here that is the female equivalent of a boy band (corporately constructed bands meant for mass consumption).

Girl's Generation

Mad and Jeff were smart enough to bring ponchos from Canada. All convenience stores in the town were sold out of ponchos pretty much instantly.

This is Jeff's default expression.

Thomas found some plastic line and made pom-poms.

We foreigners weren't the only ones to dance like lunatics in the rain.

As I said, default expression.

Lindsay makes a friend.

I wonder if I looked this ridiculous the whole time I was dancing. Thomas, on the other hand, dances quite well.
After the dancing I got together with Alanna, a Canadian history and medieval studies major my age who also teaches English in Daejeon. We have been euphorically dating since then. In the morning I made scrambled eggs for the twenty or so people in our group. The rain had lost some of its charm by this point, so we spent our time talking in our Minbak and in a third floor cafe with glass walls that overlooked the festivities.

Note the hose dumping liquid mud into the mud bath above.

It was windy as well as rainy.
We all got matching extra large shirts from our tour group.

Some people were feeling the effects of last night more than others, but we all appreciated the warm dry place to view the activities below.