The Soft Grand Pre-Re-Opening

Okay, so probably anyone reading this knows by now that I'm teaching in Korea, and that it's been roughly 18 months since my last post. So, let's get on with it!


I have no idea how often I'll be posting about Korea topics here... at some point I might even do some retrospectives on travel in Asia in 2010. I'm sure you can handle it.







So, just the other day, I reached the milestone of having been in Korea for six months. This means a lot of things, some of which I understand, some I don't. Among the ones that I do, it means that pretty darn soon I have to figure out if I'm staying in this country another year, or maybe going somewhere else. It also means that in regards to my school, I know it pretty well, and I've learned a lot about the private education system here in general. It almost means I've ate a lot of BBQ and drank more than I can imagine. More on this later.


Among the things I don't quite get, or that I'm still grappling with, there's still all the same old national and ethnic identity crises that come unsung with the job, and trying to figure out what it all means for us and for everyone else.


It also means I've become pretty intimate with the country, of course, and I understand some of its concerns a lot better than I ever did before, but that the old saying that "more answers opens more questions" kicks in and makes me even more clueless than I felt before.


Let's get started with the basics, though.


I live in Ilsan. It literally means "one mountain". That's probably because there's one pitiful, pathetic excuse for a mountain in the middle of the area, called Jeongbalsan, which is arguably nothing more than a broad knoll. That's enough for some people to think its a hike, worthy of the most epic North Face gear you've ever laid eyes upon, but of course it isn't. Here's the view from the top of it, anyway:

Ilsan is a planned and developed city, incorporated in the mid 1990's, which means its young enough to be one of my students in school, oddly enough. Ilsan isn't a city, its a town, but its a fairly large one. Its in the middle of the city municipal district of "Goyang-si", which sits just to the west of Seoul along the major Han river.


It goes like this: Seoul is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, and although it functions pretty well, people that have money would rather feel like they have money, which in most people's minds requires extra space for your elbows. So, Ilsan would have extra big, broad regular grid-like streets, and reportedly even has Western style houses with lawns. I've not yet seen these houses, but I'm assured by many people that they exist, and I have no reason to doubt them. Now, a whole entry could be written just about that, so we'll just keep moving along.


This means that Ilsan is mostly populated with the upper middle class and upper class. Which means mothers usually don't work. Which means a whole host of social problems, the most pertinent of which is that they hound their kids day in and day out to study more. Hence, my school.


I work at a "hagwon" which is basically an after-school-hours institute where kids come for one and a half hours, split in two 40 minute blocks, with one native-English-speaking-teacher and one Korean teacher, to try and improve their English. There are hagwons for everything, in Korea, though, not just English. Math, science, music... you name it. Also, they're not just for children. College students, even people in their careers often attend them early in the morning or late at night for things such as brush-up computer skills, to get certificates that help them advance in their careers.


Rest assured, the next post will almost certainly be all about the English hagwon market and system, but for now we'll leave it at these basic details. I work from 2-9pm Monday-Friday, and have class start at 3pm. I usually get at least one 40 minute break, sometimes more. The kids range in age from first grade to ninth grade, from being advanced English speakers to barely knowing the ABCs and being confused by the question "How are you?" There's a few people that work at the desk, a head boss, a super visor, three Korean co-teachers (although one of those seats is currently vacant) and two other foreign teachers. Mine happen to be from South Africa, and the USA, respectively.


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Ilsan is a pretty cool place. Its very comfortable to live in, especially the area I live in. There are two major malls in the center of it all, called "Westerndom" and "La Festa". I've never figured out if the -dom at the end of Western"dom" was supposed to be referent to king"dom", as in, the land of the king and therefore the land of the Western, or if its supposed to be "dome" and just sound cool. Koreans pronounce it as "dome", but that's because they only have the long "o" vowel in Korean . . . more or less.


I live right next to Westerndom, which is the more modern of the two. This means I live within about 300 footsteps of a 4-d Imax theatre, which boggles my mind. And yes, I've counted those steps.


My work is a ten minute walk away, and is in a simple unassuming building in a simple unassuming street. It looks like this:





There's also a decent man-made lake just southwest of the malls, gloriously called "Ilsan Lake", which is a nice recreational area that is very much adored by the local populace, given that Korea doesn't really have many recreational public areas.


Here's a few pictures of it, from various times:

I also live exquisitely close to the nightlife of Ilsan, which is just drinking, and nothing else. At the same time I arrived in Ilsan, a Canadian-run bar called "Whiskey Weasel" opened up, and its been love at first sight ever since.


This place is really a class act in operating a Western-friendly bar in Asia; the furniture is nice, the food is delicious, the drinks are reasonably priced, the staff is gracious and affable. It was a great boon to me in my first few months, when I didn't know that many people around, as it seems at that time all other foreigner bars were being vacated, and dropped for this one particular bar. Now, there's a large revolving group of people I can pretty much count on seeing anytime I walk through that door. Here's a picture of an ordinary day at Whiskey Weasel, where Batman serves the beer:



There are a plethora of options for food, but it seems like the basic foreigner's diet as a teacher is basically either: cooking your own food, ordering Korean food, or having western fast food. I cook over 50% of my food, lately, almost 100%, for all the usual reasons: its healthier, cheaper, and it gives me "me" time. I know some friends that subsist almost entirely on donuts and wraps. Others seem to subsist entirely on whiskey. I don't know how that works, either, but, hey.


The commute system here works swimmingly. There are buses that take you almost anywhere with 10 miles of your current location, and if you want to go further, well, you can just grab a connection. I'd actually like to do an experiment some day and see just how far away from Seoul you can go with taking "city" buses and connecting. I suspect it might be possible to go all the way across the country to the opposite side... but I could be wrong.


There's also an overlapping subway system that takes slightly differing routes at any time, so choosing between the bus and subway gives you plenty of ways to get where you want to go, although occasionally you'll have to make as many as three transfers, if you're unlucky (as I've been on a number of times). The subways even connect Seoul to at least several totally distinct cities, such as the one I live in, as well as Incheon (where the international airport is located), Suwon (a city famous for its old fortress, but still just a regular city), and a few other cities that don't have much noteworthy, as well as Chuncheon, which is actually in the next province East, and has actually quite a lot different. Chuncheon will be saved for another post, though.


What this means is that, if people think its too hard to get somewhere, its because they're lazy, not because its hard. A lot of things can be said about life in Korea, but at the end of the day, one of the biggest truisms is that its about as convenient as any place can be.

Hope you learned a few things! I'll be writing again soon.