Korea Life Blog - Discount Air Tickets!


Shouldn't this be be illegal: You need to make a trip abroad for a visa run and you open the newspapers and see these ads that say, Fukuoka 210,000 Won! Osaka 250,000 Won!, then when you call them up they quote the price at least 100,000 won higher. Why don't they just lie even more and say "free tickets!"

This is getting frustrating. I just want to fly there, zip! bang! boom! and get it over with, and not monkey around with the train and boat again. I was considering trying to do the whole trip in one day, but doing it that way would involve a great deal of stress if things don't go perfectly. Doing the visa run in that fashion can be risky and fail if there's even a long line at immigration/customs. Anyone done it that way lately? I'm trying to plan this trip for some time next week. Anyone else going then? I'm going to either Fukuoka or Osaka, possibly Taipei, whichever is the cheapest.

Hopefully I won't need to go through this hassle for a year now that I'm getting the E-2 visa again. This is the price I got today at one travel agency I popped into near Songnae Station: 410,000 won to Fukuoka. Add that with 50,000 for the visa, at least 50,000 for a hotel, plus all sorts of miscellaneous fees and that adds up. And I have to pay for it all because even though I'm getting a full time visa, I'm not technically working full time. I wonder how much money I've basically thrown away on these trips. It used to be something to look forward to, now it's just a nuisance.

Update: I booked a ticket for next Thursday for Fukuoka, return on Friday afternoon. They really did have a cheap ticket, but it was on JAL (Japan Airline), which would be fine if the return flight wasn't at 9:00 in the morning. I wouldn't have enough time to pick up my visa and get to the airport.

So I paid 300,000 for an Asiana Air ticket plus a whopping 43,000 airport tax. Oh well, that is about average, I guess. I had planned on about $500 US total for the trip, anyway, and looks like that's about will I'll be paying. If anything interesting happens, I'll be sure to update my Japan page.

Korea Life Blog - Great Theater, Bad Movies




This theater in Save Zone is great because it's nice and new and never crowded. As you can see, it's empty now. The entire upstairs is always dead, and not just during holidays. That Popeye's Chicken gets a few customers but the Subway Sandwich down the hall is always empty. We're worried it will go out of business. It's the only one around here.




Here's Julie looking over a selection of movie promotional fliers. We were considering seeing a movie last night, but as usual nothing good is playing. I am picky about movies, though.




This may be an old movie because this billboard has been here forever, but this is why I'm picky and don't go to see many movies these days. What is this crap they're making in Hollywood? As I said in the previous post, we ended up getting beer and anju instead.

Korea Life Blog - Songnae Night


Here's a few shots from last night. It's been a pretty slow holiday. After walking around aimlessly for awhile, John, Julie and I did at least go out and have some good food at an anju (food served with beer) bar and a pitcher of ice cold beer. By that time we were sick of taking photos and left the camera at home. Oh well, just imagine the three of us laughing and eating food and drinking beer.



This ajumma and ajushi night club has a lot of lights. When I first saw "7.8F" I thought, wow, they're pretty exact as to where they are in the building. Now I'm guessing that means it's on two floors.



Here it is from another angle. This whole area down the road from us is flooded with lights, music and entertainment.

Korea Life Blog - On the Roof


Here's a bunch of shots I took up on the roof last night. I've had my Minolta camera for nearly two years now and just finally realized there are night settings on it. I always just thought my camera is a piece of junk that can't take photos at night. I didn't bother to look at the manual (who does?) and I didn't bother to push the setting button with the night icon right there in plain view. Anyway, I still have no idea exactly who to work the settings, but here's what I ended up with:



Julie actually posed for the camera for a change and is only making a meek protest at the moment I type this.



Such an innocent face. Hmm, almost has me fooled too.







Now this is what I came out with on the night setting and with a few brilliant adjustments (pushing random buttons).



After fiddling with the settings even more (more pushing of random buttons and cursing), I took this shot. Not too bad. To think of all the night photos I could have taken over the past years. Oh, well. Better late than never.



I also didn't know I had this trail-effect setting, or maybe I just changed the speed of the shutter...I have no idea but I kind of like the effect.



A artistic shot including the moon above Hyundai Department Store. More on Chuseok (pronounced like Chew-suck) here:


The full harvest moon festival occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, and is similar to the American Thanksgiving holidays. The day before 14th and 16th of the 8th lunar month are also holidays, giving a total of three days off to allow people time to visit their home towns. As the most important of all Korean holidays, during this period people jam the highways to visit their home towns and family members. Similar to the lunar new year holidays, family members pay respect to their living relatives and visit the graves of their ancestors. Family members exchange gifts and play special games.

Though it won't actually be Chuseok until the moon is full, we got a head start yesterday by feasting on Nachos, Cheese-dip and Salsa, and John made up some Spaghetti for dinner.



John and I hung around up there taking pictures for ages and fiddling with the effects and taking bizarre photos such as this one. He had his camera with him, too. Check out his website. He's made a hundred updates in the past two hours.

Korea Life Blog - Prostitution Crackdown


The government is clamping down once again on prositution. They changed the laws and will no longer prosecute the prositutes themselves, as many of the girls have been forced into the business and have no escape. They had risked being arrested before if they tried to go to the police for help. Now only the brothel operators and the clients will be prosecuted. Hopefully this will enable some of those women who are victims to get out.



I really don't understand prostitution in Korea anyway. It's technically illegal, yet it exists everywhere here in every shape and form and usually the businesses are blatantly obvious about the services they provide. But when they do a crack down on it, you end up with protests such as these. As if the owners of these shady places didn't know what they were doing is illegal. They made the decision to open that kind of business. How can they protest and expect to find any sympathy? I guess they are thinking that the government usually looks the other way, vaguely implying permission, perhaps the police take some bribe money in return, and now suddenly it isn't OK...again. I know I don't feel sorry for these unscrupulous brothel owners.

Korea Life Blog - Chuseok Gift Set


One of the downsides of having this Friday off (the school is taking the kids on a field trip) is that I didn't get any Chuseok gift sets this year. Not that I would have gotten any for sure, but I have in years past from the parents. Julie had to work today, but she only got one gift and it was from her boss.



Click the photo for a full size pic. I'm running out of space again on my blog so I've resorted to using Photobucket again. I guess I'll put the full size pics there for now until I get a bandwidth warning from them. In the meantime I may go through and delete any digital-cam videos that I have on the blog. That should free up a lot of space.

Korea Life Blog - Songnae


Here are some photos of Songnae, where we live. I compressed the quality but left the sizes large. Click on the pics to see them in all their glory. Sorry dial-up users. If you can't see them all, try refreshing your browser a few times.



We almost moved into this office-tel, but we realized it would be pretty noisy next to the subway/bus/taxi station here.




Another shot in front of Songnae subway station. The public transportation system is utterly amazing. The trains come every 3-5 minutes and the busses literally come every 2 minutes. As soon as I jump off the train, I jump right on the bus.



Another shot. Notice the World Cup flower pots still around. There's the 7-1 bus that takes me to my place.



It was a nice day and the threatening clouds were all bark and no bite. Beautiful sky. Notice the omipresent apartment complexes that run into the distance.




This is Hyundai Department store (yes Hyundai, the car maker, also makes department stores here as well as apartment complexes, ships, heavy machinery, and on and on). I'm not sure if there are still departments stores in this style in America, but this building reminds me of one of the old Macy's in Albany, New York from when I was a kid. I like the style.



This is a strip of buildings next to our place. You can see on top of the one to the left the giant crabs and lobsters. Those belong to the restaurant that I posted about here. I'll just mention a few of the other businesses in this strip: a pool hall, several hagwons (private schools), a few banks, some small, specialty hospitals, several restaurants, a convenience store (of course), a huge Samsung Electronics store, a Health Club, and lots more...



One of the many food stands around the area. This one specializes in kyae ran bbang which is some kind of fried bread and egg. I've actually never had it for some reason, but it looks and smells pretty good.



This is the crosswalk on the main road in front of our place. Who says Asian men don't lose their hair...



This road is massive. There's Walmart Korea, and in the backround are three more brand new office-tel buildings. This area is sprouting these places like concrete weeds.




Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, is next week. Walmart is stocked full of gift sets. Other bloggers have posted some pictures of some of the funny sets like Spam, but there are also very nice ones like these. There's a small store near our place that carries unique, traditional gifts.




Two halmoni (grandmothers) carrying Chuseok gift sets walk into the sunset.




At last, home. Here's another shot outside our window of the sun going down beyond the mountains.

Korea Life Blog - Soju in the City


Rather than continue to post his "brain dumps" on my site, I convinced John to take a couple of minutes and whip up a new blog. Here it is:


Soju in the City

Korea Life Blog - At the School


I resized and uploaded all these pics last night, which took forever due to malfunctioning software, and then I decided not to do the update, saving it for today. Now I realize that I really don't have a lot to say about these pictures as I already talked about my job a bit and there just shots of the kids. I wish I held off on taking the photos because my assistant and the woman from "the agency" who are both in the pics, stayed after the classes yesterday I left and totally redecorated the classroom. It looks really nice and I have a lot more things to do now with the kids with all the things they put up on the walls. I even got a new green board with a hundred or more velcro objects on it. Today I spent 30 minutes of each class having each kid "give me the (whatever object)," and they went ape.



I really don't like birthday parties. I guess I have to do this once a month, too. It wasn't that bad, just a little silly and basically I had to just kill time until the last 20 minutes when the party would start. This is my first class. Why is it that the little girls are always so cute and innocent and well behaved at this age in Korea. I love those two girls. Some of these boys are a real handful.



Kids blowing out candles with me standing behind them. Later I had to put on that birthday hat while "Bonnie," from the agency, took class pictures. She had her own camera and she took this photo with mine. I changed her English name to protect her secret identity.



This one is kind of funny. Julie said I should delete it, but I think it is a true representation of the nature of that wicked little boy to the front left.



This is my second class and my favorite. These kids are smart, quiet angels -- almost all of them. This is probably because the class is mostly made up of girls. I think there are about 12 girls and 4 boys. There's an extra boy in the picture because he had to leave early so came for this class instead of the third. They do that a lot and it's kind of annoying, since all of the classes use different books.



Here's Bonnie from the agency. She has to do this birthday party routine with every class at seven schools every month. The cake was pretty good for being made in Korea.



One more shot of the second class. Happy birthday September babies. You might not be able to tell from looking at this, but there is a range of ages from 9-13 years old among the kids. Unlike at most hagwons where they group all the kids together based mostly on age, here they did a level test and stuck to the results when placing them. With a few exceptions (some parents insisted their child was smarter than in reality), it has worked out well.



Here's Cathy, my assistant. She was very busy cutting and serving the cake today. Bonnie told me to relax and kept giving me pieces of cake to eat. Poor Cathy has to do all the dirty work.



I copied this idea from a hagwon I worked at. When students do something exceptional, we give them a small sticker. They would then have to go get their folder and put the stickers on a sheet on the inside cover (if they get 30 stickers, they get a prize). Bonnie had the nice idea to have the kids put the stickers on display on the wall. A very logical idea. Therefore she made Cathy make one of these sticker-boards for each class. They never ask me to do anything except teach.



This isn't a great picture, but this girl is so cute and sweet. Her English name is Sarah. A total doll and very smart. I want to kidnap her.



Bonnie asked me to take this picture, I guess for evidence that the kids ate everything.



The third class. These are the smartest kids. There are only 10 kids in this class. Once again, very good children, at least in my opinion. I thought they were great today and we had a really good class. Maybe I've become lenient after working in hagwons where half the kids are out of control, because even when the students here misbehave a little, it doesn't bother me at all. Cathy, on the other hand, a graduate student of education, gets really upset when the kids make even a little noise or a small mess. I was startled today when, after class was over, she held them for 10 minutes, scolding them in Korean, and making them do things like sit down and stand up over and over and over again. I just snuck out and went home. After all, I didn't know what she was saying. Outside, some parents who were waiting asked me where the kids were. I'll have to tell Cathy to relax a little.




Here's my extra room. The kids play in here while waiting for class to begin. I can also read stories to them or play games in here if I want.



These pictures are not in any real order, I see. This is the door to the playroom.



And finally, in dramatic conclusion, here is the amazing door to my classroom.


At the end of the day I found out I have Friday off as well as all of next week for Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, except next Friday. Not that I'm complaining, but does it make any sense to have this Friday off and all of next week except Friday. Only in Korea.

That's it. Come back tomorrow for an update a lot of pics from around my area.