It's weird to think there was at time just before I left for Korea (over two years ago now! Wow, I'm just blowing past all of my own anniversaries over here) where I was just a constant mess of anxiety over how I would do at my new job. As I lay out in this very awkward post, I spent a lot of time before my initial voyage thinking that I would most likely be sent back to Canada mid-way through my training week with a one-way plane ticket and a "Kick me" sign stuck to my ass. I'd never taught before and there was nobody less confident in my ability to do so than me. But not only have I made it through eight semesters, I just started my ninth at a whole new school!
Well, I mean, a whole different school. It's a different branch of Chungdahm, which made the transition really easy as I'm still teaching all of the same material. Easier, even; my new school doesn't have an April branch so I'm back to a single curriculum, which has been a bit of a relief. Honestly, I didn't realize how much stress my old schedule was putting me under until it wasn't there anymore. Kind of like how you don't notice the fridge running until it stops, but also the fridge has been punching you in the face a lot and you didn't notice that either.
So hello Gwanggyo, my new home just north-east of Suwon! Damn, this is a pretty cool area too. You know how I was always complaining that Pyeongtaek didn't have any 24 hour cafes where I could hang out late at night and mooch wifi? If you answered "yes," then you're a liar, because I don't think any of the people who listened to me rant about that are still friends with me. But yeah, 24 hour cafe! I'm writing this from one just around the corner from my (small but very nice) new apartment. I live in an Officetel now, which is basically an apartment with three floors of businesses on the bottom levels. The businesses in my building happen to include my bank, a cafe, a convenience store and three different restaurants. Plus some other stuff. Like a yoga place or...or something...I dunno, they didn't have food.
This whole community is very new so everything is in really nice condition. There is a ton of shopping, restaurants, cafes, parks and a subway station within a pretty short walk from my current apartment. My new job is directly across the street so if I ever forget anything at home or need to nap for twenty minutes while my students take a test, it's not an issue. I haven't taken any photos of this area but maybe there's a way you can, like, find images on the internet, and, maybe
It worked!
So things in this area are great! I've settled in well and I'm getting to know all of my new students, who are a lot like many of my old students except they're not sick of my dumb jokes yet. I am a little nostalgic for a lot of my former students though. I was only there two years, so not a significant portion of any of their lives, but I still got to see a lot of them change and grow up during that time. By the time I left, one of the first students I ever taught was almost two feet taller than he had been when he was in my class. I watched a lot of them change from bright-eyed kids into horrible, horrible teenagers who kept trying to throw stuff at me. I watched a lot of students come and go and I trolled them all (no joke, I convinced an entire class that I was Richard Branson's son for...some reason? Can't even remember why).
And though I won't miss them all (oh man I will super not miss some of the kids I've taught and I made real sure they wouldn't miss me), I made some fantastic memories teaching in Pyeongtaek. More than that though - I feel like the experience of teaching has rewired parts of my brain to make me capable of feeling and thinking things that otherwise would never have occurred to me. I look at situations differently than I used to and I understand people better than before. I think, or at least hope, it has made me a better person. So for that it was worth it.
I've been sitting here for a while, trying to think of how to start this post but I keep erasing it. So if you're reading this sentence, it means I didn't cull it like so many lesser versions which came before. Congratulations, sentence! You get to live. For now.
I spent the most recent week of my vacation visiting friends and family back in Canada. I've been back in Korea for almost two weeks now, and I guess the reason it was so difficult to get this started is because of how surreal the whole experience was. I was trying to vocalize it the whole week I was back but, much to the annoyance of everyone I got to see, the most I could ever say was, "Yeah it feels...strange, I guess? You know, like how...how sometimes things are...like strange? I dunno. Am I making sense? I'm gonna take a nap." I'll get into that more later.
Wow, it was a really fantastic week though. I did all the things I wanted to and more, basically living out of a car for a few days while I drove all over southern Ontario to visit people. I saw friends and members of my family who I haven't even been on the same continent with for over two years, and everyone was unbelievably kind to me. People went way out of their way to spend time with me, bought me stuff, tolerated my various ad-hoc ruminations on life in Korea and all the times I variously blurted out, "Oh yeah! Trees! I forgot Canada has trees!" or some such fascinating observation. I realized after going home that it actually took me way longer than normal to finish any given meal back in Canada because I just wouldn't shut up for a few minutes.
I will never tire of this view. Not as long as I live
It was a little strange being back though, in a way which is still hard to describe. On Sunday morning I woke up in my parent's apartment and, for one prolonged and delirious moment, honestly thought the whole thing had been a dream.
Actually the whole week was like that, this nagging sense of displacement or deja vu that I couldn't really explain. I'm trying to think of an analogy but I really can't. Two years away pulls this nearly transparent veil between you and the life you lived before. Everything was still familiar (though I did actually make that remark about trees), but from an odd distance. I mean, it wasn't as dramatic as, "Holy hell! What's Tim Hortons? Where am I?!" but there was always this thought like, "Yep, that exists, I remember," like a tiny jolt as old memories were reconnected to the present.
There was also the strange sensation of suddenly not being a foreigner anymore. Before my vacation I hadn't set foot outside of Asia in two years and I've long since grown accustomed to the sort of looks I imagine Thor Bjornsson gets everywhere he goes. So being back home gave me this weird sense of reverse self-consciousness (if such a thing exists), like, "Why isn't anyone staring at me anymore? What am I doing?"
Before I wrap this up, I have to be serious with you for a minute, because those of you reading this are probably exactly the same people who spent a whole week reminding me how loved and wanted I am back home. I really, truly love you all and I miss you every day. Our time was too short, so until we meet again: Thank you for everything.
Hot damn, where to begin? My last update was when I went to the DMZ, which seems like such a long time ago I barely remembered it actually happened. I've been to three countries since then and I'm absolutely gonna get into that but let's get the nonsense about what's happening here out of the way first.
I'll be leaving my current school at the end of this term (just over a month from the time of this writing in fact). My contract wasn't renewed and to be honest, things have taken a bit of a downward turn. The past two terms have felt a lot like when you're trying to drag a live bear up the side of a mountain, and the bear doesn't want to move so it keeps trying to murder the fuck out of you, and the person making you do it won't tell you why but keeps throwing garbage at you the whole time, and when you finally get to the top of the hill there are already quite a lot of bears there so they just make you take the bear back down. You know, the classic.
So I'm moving on and moving up. Pay raise, nicer apartment, closer to Seoul, live-in servants, a household guard and all the nickels I can eat. I'm excited! I have a hundred things I keep forgetting to figure out but I'm excited. I will attempt to update this thing for the two of you who are still reading it but I can't make any promises. Especially to the two of you. You know why.
Speaking of awkward transitions, this year I visited Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan! I really wanted to do each country as its own post but given my track record it's probably wise to be a little more concise. My girlfriend and I went to Macau and Hong Kong back in January, shortly before my last update. We spent the first few days in Macau in a pretty stunning area, surrounded by elaborate architecture and casino hotels that seemed to bludgeon you about the head with a wad of cash. Everything was either gorgeous and polished or had this fascinating old world aesthetic. Macau was administered by Portugal from the mid-1500s onward and had been a Portuguese colony from the late 1800s up until 1999 when sovereignty was given back to China. We visited during the lunar new year, and it was really interesting walking around the older distracts. There were rows of buildings clustered along narrow streets which was very reminiscent of Europe, but everything was covered in traditional Chinese decorations in celebration of the holiday. Chloe and I spent a lot of time exploring the older districts, visiting the old fortress and the ruins of St. Paul's. We also spent some time trying to hustle the Venetian casino at roulette and managed to win about $10! Meals were about $30 per person so I think we came out on top.
Click here to add a caption
Click here to add a...nah I'll stop
From there we took the ferry back to Hong Kong, which I have given the insultingly dull honorific of "Most Easiest City to Navigate if you're a Tourist and an Imbecile." Hong Kong is a huge city in a small area, and every ten meters or so there is a signpost telling you about cool stuff you can go see and how to find it. We visited Victoria Peak the first night we were there. I have to say, I've seen a lot of cities at night from the tops of tall buildings because it's a weird compulsion of mine, like if I don't do that a pterodactyl will slam into my plane on the way home, but none of them compare to Hong Kong. I genuinely think you can see more of the city at night than during the day. I mean, seriously:
Seriously
We only had a short time in the city but we visited a lot of cool places. There was a boardwalk along the river with dedications to Chinese actors who became famous in Hong Kong, like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan (I definitely tried to fight a Bruce Lee statue but I lost). We went to some amazing night markets which sold everything for cheap, and I ended up buying a couple shirts because the lady running the stall told some pretty hilarious jokes, such as, "Nah you're not that fat," and, "Oh yeah they'll totally fit." We also went to a traditional Buddhist temple during the New Year's celebrations and I tried my best to blend in while proceeding through the ceremony. You can imagine exactly how well that went and you will be 100% correct. The food was incredible and it was truly one of the coolest cities I've ever visited.
Well, that just about wraps it up! Except NO IT DOESN'T BECAUSE TAIWAN
Holy crap! Isn't that building in Taiwan?!
We were thrown a surprise vacation and with a ridiculously small amount of notice I managed to book a short trip down to Taipei with my friend and fellow indentured servant Elaina. I went to the top of Taipei 101 on the first night and did an awkward dance in this cool disco hallway near the roof. I spent a day visiting a ton of popular tourist spots like the National Palace Museum, the Grand Hotel, the Chang Kai-Shek memorial and then ending it with a hike up Elephant Mountain. The National Palace Museum might be one of the most fascinating places I've visited in the past couple years. It's filled with ancient Chinese artifacts which are so old that if you were born 2,000 years ago, you could have found one and said, "Holy shit, this thing is over two thousand years old!"
This thing is older than many countries
I also spent a day with some truly wonderful people who I met through Elaina, and they took the time out of their weekend to show us around the city and buy us an upsetting amount of food. Oh man, the food. I wouldn't know where to start, because I don't even know the names of many things I ate, but everything was so delicious and cheap that if you spend a week there just eating nonstop, even with the plane ticket you would break even. You would wind up in a grave but it would be economical.
So between my last two vacations, I have been everywhere in China except for anywhere which is actually in China. Where should I go next?
I guess I'll go back to Canada for a week. That's gonna be weird.
I just returned from Hong Kong! And you know what that means: seventeen posts in a row which are exclusively about Hong Kong. Buckle up, idiots!
Nah I'm kidding. Although I will be posting about my trip soon (which was awesome, just to get that out of the way early), my fellow teachers and I took a different trip the weekend before I left which I forgot to write about. Well, I didn't forget to write about it. I very much remembered to write about it, but then I got lazy and probably fell asleep. So that's my bad. But on to the point: I finally visited the DMZ!
Not as...ominous as people sometimes imagine, but yes that is North Korea in the distance
We booked a tour through a company called Koridoor (plugging the link here because they did a good job, and also when I link stuff more people seem to read my blog and I'm just so desperately alone) and headed up to the DMZ at 6am, an hour I normally reserve for actually going to sleep in the first place. Our first stop was at the Third Tunnel, the site of an infamous attempt by North Korea to tunnel over 44km from their border into Seoul. I won't dump a whole ton of details about the Third Tunnel here as you can find them online and also, just, no. Photographs of this area were prohibited so I don't have anything to show you, but just imagine a very narrow tunnel through solid granite with a clumsy giant constantly banging his head on the roof. That was my experience at least, at we only explored a very short segment of it. Marching an army 44km through that environment is an idea so asinine it can only have come from North Korea.
We visited the Dora observatory next, where the above picture was taken. The observatory provides an extensive view of the border in theory; it was quite foggy and started to snow when we visited. With the help of binoculars you can view some of the buildings across the border in North Korea, including a fake city they built to show off how fantastic it is to live there. The fake city also featured a 160m tall flagpole which, for obvious reasons, was pretty easy to see. The observatory also blasts American rock and roll music as well as propaganda announcements across the border continuously. They played a Bon Jovi song while we were there, which presumably accounted for the zero North Koreans rushing across the border towards us.
Dorasan station was our next stop, which made me genuinely sad. The station was opened in 2002 when relations between North and South had shown improvement. The goal was to reconnect a train line which had been destroyed during the war and eventually allow transportation from Seoul through North Korea. In the end, this would have connected South Korea to the Trans-Asian Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway, which would have allowed travel by train from South Korea all the way to Europe.
The map for the proposed railway hangs in Dorasan station
The North Korean government did allow transportation of materials between South Korea and the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North in 2007, but closed the border in 2008. Dorasan is still in perfect condition and maintained by the South Korean government in the hopes that one day the peninsula will reunite, again allowing migration to North Korea. As their slogan reads, "Not the last station from the South, but the first station toward the North."
This was a little surreal
Finally, the highlight of the trip was the visit to the Joint Security Area (JSA). After a briefing at Camp Bonifas - during which we were given some pretty strict guidelines to follow so as not to get, like, shot and stuff - we took a bus through a gate in the barbed wire fence and entered the DMZ itself. It was a pretty weird feeling to cross into such a taboo area, especially because of how normal it all seemed. You look out the window and see trees, fields with some cranes hanging out in it, the occasional road branching off in one or two directions and it just looks like rural countryside. Then your military escort tells you the treeline is full of mines and you see the North Korean flag poking up over a hill and you remember.
We visited the JSA and conference rooms on the border, which provide the only opportunity to "enter" North Korea from the South. Essentially, you go into a conference room, and once you walk past a table in the middle, bam, you're in North Korea. So I can technically say that I have been to North Korea, but if I'm talking to anyone who hasn't read this blog, you bet your ass I'm gonna add a whole bunch of lies to that story.
"JSA conference room? No, we uh, we parachuted right into Pyeongyang. There were no survivors. Not even me."
And of course, got to hang out with some North Korean soldiers as well. From a distance, of course. A pretty big distance.
The tiny guard at the bottom in front of the door is nicknamed "Bob" by the soldiers at Camp Bonifas. He stands at attention roughly 12 hours a day.
There's at least a chance someone in the DPRK will read this blog and be pretty annoyed at me. Not about the pictures though. Just because it sucks.
The South Korean soldiers (dark uniforms) face down the North Korean soldiers, partially concealed by the buildings in case there is an exchange of fire
And that's the DMZ! Definitely worth the trip and waking up at an hour that I was fairly certain was illegal before that weekend. Hong Kong posts are coming up, provided I don't forget / get lazy again. But what are the odds of that happening, huh?! Ha ha! Ha!
