Korean Recycling

One of the great things about Korea is that it is very clean. The subways are immaculate. There is no garbage on them nor is there anyone eating while riding. The streets barely have any garbage; nothing noticable at least. And the recycling system - for all you environmentalists - is as rigorous as algebra. There are five different containers for us to drop our recycling in (all of which we have to sort out ourselves, three additional boxes on the side for papers and cardboard, a garbagebox a few steps away, and a compost a few steps away from that. The best part about it is the man at the end of the arrow in the picture above; he’s watching you as you sort, and if you get anything wrong he flags you down and tells you where to put your recyclables, so you can’t just dump your stuff in one container and run. Not that we’d ever do that. We’re good, honest people, after all. Click the picture above to see the video of us recycling (super exciting!) or just learn how to recycle here if you would prefer to have it that way.

Snorting Spudgy

Dogs usually wag their tails or shake their back legs when they’re happy. Spudgy does all of that, but he also does something special. What Spudgy does, ladies and gentlemen, is honk/snort. We don’t know why he does it, but it sounds like he’s asleep and snoring whenever he’s happy. Rub his ears for a bit, and he'll forget how to breathe properly, and start purring like a kitten. We made a video to prove it. Click the picture above or watch Spudgy’s Snorts here to see the video. And, yes, this isn't a very informative video, we know, but we just got a new dog and we're really happy about it, and want to show him off as much as we can.

Korean Couple Shirts

Oh, you thought we were cheesy before. You would make fun of us for our pet names and public displays of affection. Well, you wouldn’t be saying that in Korea. Here, public displays of affection have taken on an all new level. Indeed, people don’t kiss each other or give piggy backs as much in Korea as we did in Canada. Instead, they display their affection with matching shirts, also known as Korean Couple Shirts. We saw these shirts on other people and began hunting for similar shirts instantly. Check out what we found. Click the picture above for the video, or just click here for our video on Korean Couple Shirts.

Martina's Summer School

So you’ve seen a lot from Simon’s school and his students. But what are Martina’s students like, you’re sure to ask. How much different are they from Simon’s students? Well, for starters, Martina’s students are cool, and can talk to Martina about fashion and music, while Simon's students are not all too interested in talking about anything at all. You’ll be surprised to find out what they listen to - stuff that’s even older than the two of us. Anyhow, they’re a lot of fun, and a real pleasure to teach - even though there’s only four of them in the class. Click on the picture above to see what Martina's Summer School is like, or just click here for our video on Martina's Summer School Classes

Newest Member of the Stawski Family

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s someone new in our lives that we’d like to introduce to you. His name is Spudgy, and he is pictured here, above. He is our Pekingnese dog that we just adopted from a shelter. He doesn’t look Pekingese, we know, because his hair is so short, but it turns out that shaving your Pekingese dog is the Korean way. It's very hot in Summer, and Pekingese dogs grow absurdly long hair, so to prevent them from passing out from heat stroke, it's best to shave them down to cool them off. Unfortunately, Pekingese dogs aren't very cute when they're shaved. Anyhow, we made a couple of videos on him so far: the one in the left image below is on our getting Spudgy from the adoption shelter. The second on the right is on an intro to spudgy.

We arrived at Samsong station at around 12:20 this Sunday and met Ryan there. Ryan is a volunteer for the Korean shelters, and he’s the one who we spoke with on the phone and in email and who guided us to the shelter. He’s an American who has been living in Korea for around two years now, and he has done extensive work to help find homes for many, many animals. Bless his soul.

He told the taxi where to take us while he rode his motorcycle alongside us. In a few minutes we were at the shelter, which was in a very rural area. Ryan is also raising money to relocate the shelter into a better area, where the dogs will have more room and the neighbours will not be so pissy (after all, you’d be grumpy too if you had 220 dogs barking all the time). At the shelter we met the lady who was running it, and for the life of us we can’t remember her name. She takes really good care of the dogs, especially considering the huge amount of them she has, and also considering how severely understaffed she was. It was a surprise that the dogs were in any presentable condition whatsoever. She must never get a drop of rest.

The shelter was divided into two parts: most of the small dogs were in the house, while the big dogs were in the tented area. We first walked into the house to see the smaller dogs. We came to this shelter specifically because Martina saw a picture of a pug that we wanted. Unfortunately, by the time we got there he was gone; he was at the hospital that day because he was sick and very old. We were sad when we heard the news, but continued to walk around and look for a dog because there were so many sweet dogs there. Granted, it might not look that way when you see the video, as you’ll hear deafening dog barks, but that was just because the dogs are not used to having visitors. As well, the problem with having so many dogs together is that as soon as one starts barking the others follow suit, even if they don’t know what they’re barking at.

Martina saw one that especially caught her attention amid the many barking dogs. This was a sweet little shaved Pekingese dog who wasn’t barking at all. He just waddled up to Martina and stood up for her. Martina picked him up and he snuggled up to her. He was very still and quiet and sweet, and Martina instantly fell in love with him. When we asked about him we heard a couple of sad things; one - he’s blind in his left eye. It’s clouded over, and he can’t see objects but he can feel light. Secondly, he had hip surgery (you can see the scars from the incisions on his hip), and he doesn’t walk all too solidly. When Martina heard this she started to cry, and fell in love with him even more.

We walked around the tented part of the shelter afterwards to see the other dogs. There was one spunky dog that Simon happened to like, who climbed up his fence for you to pet him. We considered him or Spudgy, but after taking the spunky dog for a walk we realized that he might be too demanding for us, and Spudgy was so frail and sweet that we had to take him: the spunky dog could easily be adopted by someone else, while some people might be turned off by Spudgy’s eye and hips. So we adopted Spudgy, who was nothing but affectionate with us. We were waiting for a ride to the vet, and so we were sitting outside and eating watermelon. Spudgy sat on our legs the whole time.

We took him to the vet in Sinshon, and - from what Ryan told us - he’s the best vet in Korea. He gave Spudgy a quick look over to see if he was alright (and this was all while Spudgy was shaking and quivering in fear. So sad!). It turns out Spudgy needs some dental work, which isn’t surprising for a dog in a shelter. The woman running the shelter had 220 animals to take care of; she couldn’t be thorough in brushing everyone’s teeth. Anyhow, we’re going back to the vet next week to get Spudgy’s teeth cleaned, and to get some blood work and X-Rays to make sure everything’s alright. By then Spudgy should be more comfortable around us and not so scared that he’s shivering.

If you’re in Korea and reading this, please consider helping out with the shelter. If you can’t adopt a dog or take it into foster care, you could still volunteer to help. Dogs aren’t treated all too kindly around here, as many are run through the puppy mills to be genetically engineered like Paris Hiltons’ teacup dogs, or they’re abused otherwise. You always wanted a puppy when you were a kid. Now you’re old enough to get one.

Our Canadian Friend Chris

This is our new friend Chris. We met him at that GEPIK Native English teacher weeklong conference. Turns out he is as much of a video game geek as we are...and he lives in Bucheon! On top of that, he’s Canadian! Woot! A normal get together with Chris includes a full evening of Nintendo Wii, delicious Korean chicken, and beer or soju. Good times all around. In this video he lets us know where he’s from, what he thinks about the Korean education system, and his sole purpose of being in Korea: the KFC (Korean Fried Chicken - much better than that Kentucky kind). By the way, let us apologize in advance for the background music. It was from the Marble Mania video game (you Sazunics know exactly the one we’re talking about, with the marble rolling around).

Monsoon Season in Bucheon

It is monsoon season here in Bucheon, Korea, and so when the sun isn't scalding then the rain is torrential. It's big and relentless, and nothing like Canada's PG version of Rain. Stand outside in normal clothes with nothing shielding you from the clouds and you’ll be soaked down to your underwears faster than you could eat an apple. It’s intimidating stepping outside in the hard rain, and its better just to watch it from your window.

That doesn’t stop a lot of people, though. We were cooped up in our apartment for far too long and Simon was become obnoxious with his whining and complaining. And so Martina dragged him out of the house and they went for a walk through the rain, which had softened by then. She took a lot of pictures of the rain, the clouds, the umbrellas, and the rainboots, and the puddles, and it makes for fun pictures. Click the picture above to see them, or just click on this link here right away.

Huge Glasses

See, I grew up in a generation where big glasses were a bad thing. If you had big glasses you were a nerd. Pepsi can lenses were not cool. They made you wimpy and dorky, and would make you lose out on any potential friendships. Here in Korea, though, big and ugly glasses make you cool. So here’s a video of a student in Simon’s class who wears glasses unlike any we’ve seen before. They’re distractingly gaudy. And her wearing them is not a mistake; she’s one of the cool kids in the school, so it’s not like her grandmother bought them for her and she has to wear them. If that is the case, then she’s done a great job of pulling them off - you’ll just never catch Martina wearing glasses like these. Click the picture above to see the video of them, or just click here to see our video on Huge Student Glasses if you’d rather.

Forgotten Pictures

Remember when we climbed up that ridiclously huge mountain? That was on a Saturday. What we didn’t tell you about is what we did on that Sunday. We didn’t mention it before because it was pretty boring: we went to another temple with Martina’s teachers. We’re getting the feeling now that once you’ve seen one temple you’ve seen them all, and unless we go to one that is ridiculously lavish or beautiful they all seem the same. Perhaps the better explanation to this phenomenon is that, in the summer, you don’t want to walk around temples. We’re sure they’re probably far more beautiful when you’re not sweating profusely. As well, we seemed to have got lost. The caretaker of the school stuck with us even though we fell ridiculously far behind (mostly because Martina took a lot of pictures and nobody wanted to wait for her) and made sure we didn’t get lost. He spoke with us in Korean - he didn’t know any English - and we nodded as if we knew what he was saying. Eventually we did get lost, though, and we had to backtrack in order to refind our way. By then we were half an hour late, and the bus was waiting for us.

That much being said, Martina did take some pretty awesome pictures, and Simon made an HDR picture of the temple, and so we decided to post them up on the site. Click the picture above to see them all, or click here to go to the gallery.

Korean Music Awards

We noticed through our window that something was being built in the park. It was a massive stage, with hundreds of lawn chairs in front of it, a huge tv behind it, and smaller (but still huge) TVs on its sides. We thought that this was being made in preparation for the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (check it out at www.pifan.com), which is around ten days of awesome movies being shown in various locations around Bucheon, akin to the Toronto International Film Festival (only the Bucheon one is “Fantastic”). Martina took some really cool pictures of it at night that you have to have to have to see (some of which you can see in the thumbnails below) and we didn’t think much else of it. We just expected some movies to be played in Korean and that was all.

That was until Thursday, when Martina was taking a nap after school and was woken up by the blaring speakers of the stage. We ran to our window to see what it was, and what we saw

- instead of a Fantastic Film Festival - was a live performance by a huge Korean Pop Music band called “Battles.” They’re quite ridiculous by North American pop standards, and their hit song sounds extremely familiar to any of us alive and cognizant during the early nineties. Check their video out here, and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when you hear the chorus.

And so we left our apartment and went to the park to see what else was going on. Right when we got there MC Mong, Martina’s favorite Korean Rapper, got on stage and began singing his new song. Afterwards, a rapper by the name of Mighty Mouth sang his super chipper song, “Energy” while his backup dancers jumped around. It was very...energetic. Anyhow, what’s most interesting about all of this music is how much of it is in English. Why are all of these songs with English titles? Much of the songs are in English, and - after being here for a month and surveying the state of English in South Korea - we’re not sure how many people understand what’s being sung. That much being said, it was still a really interesting experience to wake up to a huge Korean concert in your backyard with Korea’s biggest artists on stage. It’s a shame that it had such little meaning to us. If these were English artists of bands that we actually cared about this would have been absolutely amazing. Instead, it was just cool, and it was kind of funny to see how everyone was absolutely in love with the artists on stage. So click on the picture above to see the video, or just click here to see it instead.

A Tour of Our Apartment

This video is long, long overdue. We actually made it in three parts: the ones with Martina in the t-shirt were made many weeks ago; with Simon opening the front door - around two weeks ago. Martina walking up the stairs occurred yesterday, when we finally gathered together all of the clips and slapped the movie together. As well, we made a bunch of pictures of the apartment, which will be posted soon.

So this is what our apartment in Korea looks like. It's actually called an Office-tel, since the rooms are often used for offices. It’s kind of a loft, though not as lofty, but it’s really sleek and clean and we’re really happy to have it. Our apartment in Windsor was very old and had a lot of character; this apartment is very austere but in a fashionably minimalist way. Heck, we really like it, and the view is beautiful, as you’ve seen in a couple of our videos already. There are just a few parts of it that are a bit weird for us, as you'll see in the video. The video is ten minutes long, by the way, so make sure you've got that kind of time on your hands before you start watching. One last word about the video, by the way: In order to keep this from being as boring a video as, in theory, it should be, I constantly taped Martina off her guard and being silly. So click the picture above for a Tour of our Korean Apartment

Supercool Phone

This is a student in Simon's Extra classes. He's in this class for no good reason. The class is full of students with very weak English while he got a 90% on his English exam. He's bored as hell in class and so he fiddles around with his supercool phone, and I don't blame him. In fact, I encourage him to do so when he's done the classwork. I made a video of his phone because it's got something I've never seen before in Canadian phones. Here's the deal: take an antenna (a short and small one that comes with the phone) and stick it in the side of the phone. Wait for a minute or so while the phone's application kicks in, and - voila - you've got yourself free to air Korean Television. Sure, it's not useful to us because we don't watch Korean TV, but, maaaaan that's still pretty cool. Click on the picture for the video, or just check out these Supercool Korean Phones here.

Korean Coffee Shop Snacks

Ever go to a coffee shop and feel like having a snack with your beverage? A muffin, perhaps? A cookie? Maybe a sandwich? Here in Korea, people like having snacks with their coffees as well. The big difference is in what they like to snack on. You'll be quite surprised. We recently went to a Holley's Café here in Bucheon, right beside the Hyundai Department Store and the Mall, and we found some coffee shop snacks that are pretty out of what we consider ordinary. What's a bit confusing, though, is that - even though we've been to the coffee shop many, many times, we haven't actually seen anyone eating these. Anyhow, click the picture here to find out exactly what it is people in Korea snack on in coffee shops, or see the snacks themselves through this link instead.

Korean School Pillow

Students always find different ways of slacking off in class. It's the same in Canada as it is in Korea. In both Canada and Korea students will secretly use their cellphones in class, or play their PSPs under their desks, or write notes to other students, so on and so forth. In both countries students lay their heads down and take naps. In Korea, though, students have perfected the art of nap taking in class. I have never seen anything in Canada like what you're about to see here. I was so shocked that I made the poor girl stand up and, instead of scolding her, made a video about it. Click the picture for the video, or just click here instead.

Korean Ice Cream!

Ice Cream is a must with Korea's heat. Ice Cream in Korea is also delicious. Also, Korean Ice Cream is sold in special ways, with many special flavors and packages. And so, Martina made a video to let you know about this special Korean Ice Cream, in all its majesty. Click on the picture here on the right for the video, or just learn about Korean Ice Cream this way.

Martina's New Haircut!

I finally got my hair cut! After fighting with the hot and humid Korean weather, I walked out of the house and into a Korean hair salon. Using flailing hand signals I managed to sign my way into the length and layers I wanted. $12 dollars later I got my cut. These “after” pictures are a bit bad because I just got off a bike and it is nighttime, but enough with the excuses, the point is to show the length. Hurrah! Click on any picture to see it full-sized.

Korean Basketball

As many of you know, I - Simon - play a lot of basketball. I play every day unless rain or socializing gets in the way, and it rarely does. I have a basketball court a stone’s throw away from our apartment, and I can check from the window in the hallway if anybody is playing or not. I’ve got in pretty sweet here, I’ll admit, but there are a few things about this scenario that bother me; namely, the state of Korean basketball. If you like to play basketball and plan on coming to Korea, you will find a few things that make you want to scratch your head:

1. Scoring: If a full-court game is going on, I’m pretty sure the rules are: first to 500 points wins. Seriously, the games go on forever here. In Canada I used to play first to 21 points wins. Here the points keep going and going and going.
2. Fast-Break Offence: Essentially, fast-break offence is the only offence everyone seems to be good at. The plan is this: get a defensive rebound, and throw the ball as fast as you can to a teammate on the other side of the court. He will score a layup. If this fails, resort to plan b.
3. Plan B Offence: This is the worst kind of offence. From what I have seen, nobody in Korea likes to shoot from anywhere farther than four-feet away. If they could not get a fast-break layup, then they will pass the ball around to their teammates, over and over again, in hopes that one of them will be close enough to the rim to score a layup. If not, they will continue to pass, and pass, and pass. It’s not uncommon for a team to make more than 15 passes per posession. It’s really painful to watch. However, some people know of a secret weapon in these situations:
4. Secret Weapon: Head fakes, ladies and gentlemen, are golden here. It’s as if someone just discovered them here. If you do a headfake, you’re guaranteed to get your defender off his feet. Every defender here is as gullible as possible, and will bite for your headfakes every single time. You would think that this secret weapon would no longer be a secret after being used so often, but, no no no. Indeed, everytime is like the first time with a headfake.

Of course, I can’t say that this is the state of Korean basketball in its entirety. I won’t be that naive or stereotypical. What I can say for sure is that every time I have watched a basketball game on the courts by my house I have seen these four rules come into play every time without fail. Maybe at the court by my school different rules are in play. Maybe. I will have to see. I will report my findings once I play elsewhere...

Miso: Korean Traditional Music

Martina’s Vice-Principal gave us free tickets to see some traditional Korean music, in hopes that we could better appreciate Korean Culture. It was to be played at Chongdong Theater in Seoul, which is roughly the equivalent of the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, only smaller. We went with Martina’s co-teacher and her friend, another co-teacher, after spending two hours getting our cell-phones and the internet set up. We’re not joking. It took that long. The co-teachers translated everything for us, but in a very Lost-In-Translation kind of way; the man at the store would talk for a few minutes, the co-teachers would nod and hmm their part, and then translate everything for us in under 10 seconds. “He says that this phone is expensive” - for example, would be all the translation we’d get after seeing the man wave his hands at times, laugh at times, shake his finger, and so on. I’m sure we missed out on a lot of what he was saying, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is this: we have two cell phones and a one-year contract. The cellphones cost us $40 each (though in Canada they go for $325), we pay $12 a month, each, and every minute costs us 10 cents. Text messages cost us 2 cents. Here are our phones! Click on the picture below for the video.

Once we got our cellphones and internet set up we hopped on the subway and went to Seoul. We got off at Seoul City Hall Station, which is right beside Chongdong Theater - where our musical was going to be played. We weren’t really looking forward to seeing this, because we saw a bit of Korean traditional music performed at our weeklong conference. It was alright, but nothing really interesting. This, however, was lightyears ahead of what we saw at the conference. It was far more intense and much better executed. We left the theater with out mouths hanging open - we were floored. We bought the DVD of the performance we loved it so much. Below you’ll see a clip of one of our favorite parts. It’s amazing, and worth checking out.

After the show all of the performers ran outside and performed again, an encore of sorts, only this time with everyone around them. After that they let us take pictures with them. Click on the pictures below to see the full-size versions

Altogether it was an awesome experience. Martina profusely thanked her Vice-Principal the next day, even though he could barely speak English. Martina waved her hands around and got her point across nonetheless. If you want to know more about the musical we went to, check out this link. Make sure to check it out while you still can. And, heck, even if you miss it, it's a great part of the city to get lost in and just wander about.

We Have the Internets!

It’s finally here! Yesterday we spent the day waiting for the technician to install the internets. He was supposed to be here at 10. He came at 5:30. I guess that’s one thing Korea and Canada share in common: technicians who never arrive on time and ruin your day by making you stay and wait at home. It’s really annoying, because Mrs. Stawski’s (Sr.) birthday was on Friday, and we wanted to Skype her on Saturday morning here to wish her a happy birthday. Instead, she waited, we waited, and we never got to call, so she felt hurt. How awful!

Complaints aside, we should be updating the site more often now that we’re online at home and don’t have to go to cafés to steal weak internet signal. Hooray!

Class Control

I had to take a movie of this, even though it’s not that exciting. I have a class of students who are rowdy as all hell. Sorry, I meant to say I have 22 classes of students who are rowdy as all hell. And so this is a video of my crowning achievement as a teacher in Korea: getting everyone to sit down and shut up. Click here if you'd like to learn my secret and see just how I did it. It's much easier than you probably expected.

Student Glasses

This is a student in my - Simon's - class. This student has something special about him that I felt I had to share. He's a trendsetter. What he has started has been copied by many students at my school, so kudos to him for being so cool. Why he started this trend I don't know, and I tried asking him about it, but neither of us have enough language in common to figure it out. One of these days I'll make a weird fashion trend of my own. Anyhow, click here for the Student Glasses video and see what I mean.

Korean Busrides

Before we climbed up Palbong Mountain on Saturday we had to get there. And so we took a fancy pants bus. What impressed us most about the bus wasn't the big LCD television at the front of it, or the really comfy chairs, or the speaker system wired throughout the bus. No, ladies and gentlemen. What impressed us most about the bus was the alcohol consumption. Everybody was drinking. Everybody was sharing drinks. In Korea they drink on buses; in Canada we would get arrested for doing so. It’s a shame that we were the only Canadians on the bus, because we had the overwhelming urge to sing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. As well, this bus was hooked up with a karaoke system, which - unfortunately - wasn't put to use. What would be better than singing R Kelley's "I Believe I Can Fly" while doing 120 on the highway and drinking beer? Anyhow, click the picture above for the movie, or just click here instead.

Palbong Mountain

The weekend of July 5-6, 2008, Martina and I went on a retreat with her teachers to celebrate the completion of exams, which is why we couldn’t update the site this weekend. Anyhow, we were told that we would be doing a bit of hiking on a small mountain. It turns out that this was the steepest and most dangerous mountain we have ever been on, Mount Palbong - which sounds intimidating and Lord of the Rings-esque. There were parts that were so steep that we had to drag ourselves up with rope. It was intense, and the sweatiest workout we had in years. We were panting, huffing and puffing, but by the end we got atop the 350+ meter mountain and took some really, really pretty pictures. We took a lot of pictures, so click here to see pictures of Palbong Mountain or the picture above, and click here for the movie.

We Met a Celebrity

On the last day of our stay at the conference, we met a celebrity. Know who he is? Click the picture to find out:



We saw him when I (Simon) noticed a bunch of people walking into the conference building’s cafeteria wearing Nike Korea Basketball shirts. Then I noticed that they were all very tall. Then I noticed this guy who was absolutely ridiculously huge; I mean, he could barely fit in the room. His head nearly touched the ceiling, and surely would touch it on his tippy-toes. Martina took this picture with him, and it doesn’t fully show how tall he is. Martina is standing up straight and he’s crouched over nearly in half. When he walked past me once I saw that I didn’t even make it to his shoulders. It was the smallest I’ve felt in years.

Gyeonggi Provincial Museum

We were really upset on Wednesday after hearing a presentation by one guy who we thought was cool. We spoke with him beforehand and he seemed like a nice guy. When he had his presentation yesterday we were thoroughly upset. He lived in Vancouver for a while, and his dislike of Canada fueled many of his jokes. The audience loved how Canadians are non-committal in their conversations, how most of them do pot, and how they always have a stupid glazed look on their faces. We spoke with other Canadians after the presentation and we were all furious about the speech. If we ever see that guy again we’re going to thoroughly scowl at him, and mutter and point.

Luckily, on Thursday we didn’t have a big presentation day. We went to Gyeonggi Provincial Museum instead. It wasn’t really fun, but it was relatively awesome compared to the boringness of this week. We drew self-portraits (Simon’s is exceptionally awesome, by the way), learned how to make proper shadow puppets, learned about famous rodents, and much more! Apart from the silliness and the fun and games, we saw some really really cool ancient Korean papers. We love books, as you all know, and even though we couldn’t understand a word of what we saw we still knew that these books, with their browned pages, were awesome. We made a movie of our adventures and took a lot of pictures as well. Check it out.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to our Canadian families and friends! We were the only people here at the Gepik Workshop who wore our Canadian shirts with pride. Anyhow, while we’re here, we took a few pictures and made a mini-movie about a pair of weird doors we found. Yes, we took the time to make a movie about doors. You don't want us to video tape the lectures, do you? Click here for our video of Korea's Weird Door.