Mediocre Incoherency

Warning: As you may gather from the title, this post has no coherency. And it's mediocre.

I sometimes wonder if the strange dreams will ever stop. I had a pretty vivid one wherein Rick Moranis was sent to an alternate dimension where all the dead people go, but he wasn't dead himself. He then had to find a way back to his family while trying to thwart the evil ghost's plans of inhabiting his now soulless body before he can get back to it. If it's not already, it should be a summer blockbuster. What happened to Rick Moranis anyway? We need you now, Rick, more than ever. In the time of our greatest need, Rick has forsaken us. Why, Rick, why?

I had another that was played through twice. First as real life events, and second as a movie (I seem to like dreams that portray themselves as movies. Or maybe I just interpret them that way). Basically, a fellow teacher (that I am actually friends with in real life) didn't like me because I was taking care of his kids one weekend, so he set my house on fire with a lit cigarette. It turns out I wasn't that angry about the house, but moreso that he'd put his kids in danger (because they were inside) just to get back at me for doing something nice for him. So, I decided to leave the country.

In the movie version, my part was portrayed by an early '90s Mel Gibson and the other part was played by John Stamos. They taught at a prestigious New Zealand university, and instead of burning Mel Gibson's house down, John Stamos only peed in his gas tank because it turns out John Stamos' kids were actually fathered by Mel Gibson. As a result, Mel Gibson left New Zealand, but as his plane was taking off, it broke and crashed into the ocean.



I saw a kid's t-shirt today and it said, "We're more popular than Jesus." Man, I wish I had that shirt. Also, I wish that kid got the reference. How many people in America do you think would freak out at that shirt? Start burning things. Ban the Beatles and such.

You know how it's funny to us when someone doesn't know enough English to form a correct sentence so they just kind of wing it with what they have? Like instead of saying, "Yes, I'm sweating," they'll say, "Yes, many water comes"? Yeah, I do that all the time in Korean. I sound like some kind of idiot most of the time and people laugh at me. It's like I'm an unintentional comedian. Since I fail at being an intentional comedian, I guess I'll take what I can get.

I forgot to mention how a few weeks ago my landlord took me out to dinner randomly. Yes, Mr. Lee strikes one more time. Like a hat trick or something. Anyway, I'm just minding my own business when he knocks on my door and immediately grabs my hand when I answer. Luckily, he only holds it until we cross the street and enter the restaurant that I've lived across the street from for over a year, but never patronized. We sit down and what occurs in the next hour is him teaching me random Korean words. Some of them actually stuck, so I'm grateful for the experience (and the free meal) but it was funny to me that I had to remind him of the English word "water" yet he already knew how to say "penis." I guess males really are the same all around the world.

A Letter To Our Consumers

Dear Americans,

When you travel abroad, from time to time you will meet the occasional international traveler who readily admits that he or she "doesn't like Americans." Instead of getting angry, politely remind them that that is no different than saying "I don't like blacks," "I don't like Jews," or "I don't like gay people." Ask them their reasons. Usually, they will state, "Americans are loud and ignorant." Ask them, are Americans ignorant like the kind of ignorant that is disliking a person based on where they are from? You can go so far as to ask them if they've ever visited America. 99% of the time, they'll say, "No, I have no desire to go." You can consider the conversation over at that point, as they are unswayable bigots.

You may get tired of having to justify yourself for being American. Don't give in and claim Canadian citizenship. That would be doing your country a disservice. Stick to your guns and know that you're a better person for not judging someone based on their nationality. What your government does has no basis on your personality and who you are. Your accent does not determine your IQ, and chances are you are not the loud, fat, uncontrollable drunk that your reputation precedes you as. Finally, there are enough worldly, open people you will meet who like Americans just as much as everyone else. Some even like us more because they say we're not stuck up (unlike aforementioned unswayable bigots) and boatloads more fun (they may even use the word "smashing" in their description of us). Words of advice.

Sincerely,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Steve

Dear American Haters,

So, you don't like Americans? Tell me, how many Americans have you known on more than a cursory level? 3? So, for every one of those loud, fat, ignorant ones you knew, there were probably 10 quiet, polite ones that you didn't even notice. How many times have you wrongfully assumed that a Canadian was an American because they were loud and obnoxious? Whatever first world country you're from, I can guarantee that I've met 3 of your fellow countrypeople who were equally, if not more, disgusting and ignorant as the Americans you claim to know. Let's be generous and say that you've met 30 Americans and they were all loud and obnoxious, ignorant, drooling, obese, drug addled cesspools of STDs and drama. Essentially they were all Snookies. That's still .0000001% of the U.S. population. Do you think doctors come to blanketed conclusions based on .0000001% of the data they collect? "Well, Jim, it looks like one of your mitochondria are acting strange, so I'm going to assume that you're mentally retarded and suggest a lobotomy to fix you right up."

Oh, that's right. It's cool to dislike Americans in the international community. You can sit around the campfire on a Thai beach drinking beer all night with everyone else and bash us on how stupid we all are and how we don't speak the Queen's English and aren't part of the Commonwealth. We bomb Islamic countries and get our fingers into everyone else's business internationally and we're proud of it, damn it. It's like some hybrid car owners. You're smug and superior if you dislike Americans. What an ego stroke, eh? If I judged people based on what their government does, regardless of where they're from, I'd have absolutely no friends and hate life. Surely, every single American went down to the White House and personally shook George Bush's hand on invading Iraq and gave him $10 to keep the good work up. Are you really that obtuse?

Oh, you've got one more card to pull. Wait for it. "Americans don't travel." I am clearly case in point, having traveled. Let's take a look the geographical size of Europe vs. that of the U.S. Surprisingly, the size is relatively similar. So, let's go ahead and assume the EU is now one country. On top of it, let's put a 5,000 mile wide ocean between Europe and Asia. Now how many countries have you been to? Many Americans don't leave the U.S. because the U.S. is huge and somewhat isolated. There are 50 states with 50 different feelings. It's like containing 50 countries in one. They all have their own laws and their own governments. In addition, our visa policies make it more expensive to travel than you (again, not my fault, but my government's). It costs you, what, $40 to go to China, whereas it costs me closer to $200. Let's not even get into differences in work ethic expectations and economies. There's only about a billion things you're glossing over to reach that smug conclusion.

If there's one thing that I want you to get from this letter, American hater, is that you are a blight. If you can fall asleep at night making seriously flawed, blanketed statements about a group of people, then you have no place in an increasingly globalized world. Go home and don't reproduce.

Sincerely,
Steve

Jeju 3: The Reckoning

The time has come, dear readers, to recount my final full day on Jeju. Blogger has been acting a lil' whack lately. Some posts disappeared apparently and I couldn't post anything new, but now! No more excuses. The rapture is nigh.

Our final day was spent hiking Hallasan, the highest mountain in South Korea. At a whopping 1,950 meters tall (that's 6,398 feet, children), this mountain takes around 8 hours to successfully hike. The problem with the day we chose (our final day, as mentioned before) is that it was rife with rain...the entire day. Something that is very bizarre about Korean hiking trails is how manicured they are. They include rock paths and wooden boardwalks and staircases...
...the whole way up the mountain. However, on this day a majority of our path looked more like a cascading waterfall:
We were smart enough to purchase stylish trashbag smocks to protect our precious clothing.
These smocks failed on that front. In fact, the smocks did such a poor job that, despite having gone through the wash (ah, my incredible washing machine...), my jeans still retain some semblence of that hike. That is to say, Hallasan rain smells like magic...if you believe magic smells like onions and sulfur. And I do. So, I sometimes opt to wear my onion sulfur pants out on the town and scare the locals even more than normal.

About 2/3 of the way up, there is a shop selling ramen, candy bars, and water to refuel the wary hikers (surprisingly [I'm serious about the surprise part...] no beer or soju). I can only imagine the time the shop owner has every morning, hiking 2 hours up a mountain (perhaps with boxes of ramen in tow) to open the shop rain or shine. Actually, it dawned in my mind that there was perhaps a secret road out back, and that we should have taken that back down instead of enduring the cascading waterfall.

Now for the tale of the summit. Once we passed the tree line (about 1/2 hour from the top), the climate changed so dramatically that it's hard to even express. The temperature dropped dramatically, the wind increased at least ten fold--enough that one could not stand up straight--and the rain shot in sideways strong enough to sting quite a bit. I could not hear or get a sense of equilibrium through that majestic smock. It was easily the hardest wind/rain combination I'd ever been in. After climbing up stairs for 3 1/2 hours, it was not the greatest feeling. But, we endured to the top and were rewarded with these spectacular views of the island:
...ugh. Well, here's a picture of the summit in the rain and wind (which was somehow not quite as strong as about ten feet below the summit):
The way down was when I began to feel the effects of the way up. By the time we reached the base lodge, I could hardly walk. What hurt the most was my feet. Word of advice: don't wear Chuck Taylor All-Stars on a rocky mountain hike (tap the Rockies!). You'll regret it for at least 3 or 4 days afterward. However, it's kind of tradition now that my Chuck Taylors go with me on mountain hikes so I'll next be climbing Kilamanjaro and K-2 with them.

Anyway, at the bottom we ceremoniously flipped Hallasan the bird and considered it conquered. Take that.

Jeju Day 2: Jeju Harder

Before I move on, I just had to point this out: So, in Love Land there was a sculpture series that was clearly themed on large, fat women and small, skinny men trying to escape them. Now, I'm not sure if this was something that was ordered by the creative staff of Love Land or if there just happened to be enough of them to warrant a separate section, but either way somebody's got some psychological issues to work out.

Day two was not quite as action packed as day one. It was sunny, so we wanted to head to the beach. Here's our second beach experience: The beach wasn't quite as majestic as the first, but it's right around where we were staying. Here's our resort: And the interior: It had coy fish and expensive sandwiches! I'm going to go ahead and reveal to you that I am, indeed, lying about where we stayed. We stayed in a hostel that was $15 a night and definitely not as luxurious (or as expensive) as the resorts.

That evening, we tried one of Jeju's specialties: 똥돼지 (ddong dwaeji...poop pig). These are special pigs that are said to taste like tropical rainbows (Skittles?) and ecstatic happiness because they are well taken care of and they eat nothing but shit. Apparently, that's not true so much anymore, so they changed their name to black pig because they're black (racists...). Anyway, it was a tasty treat.

Afterwards, I traversed down the hill to the waterfall area to view all the Koreans taking pictures of a waterfall. Here it is: Oh, you wanted to see the waterfall. Fine. I believe up to this point, I have neglected to mention how random Jeju is. On our various excursions, we would pass a number of museums and sites scattered around the island. To name a few: Teddy Bear Museum, Citrus Museum, African Art Museum, Glass Museum, Green Tea Museum, Genghis Khan re-enactment, traditional Vietnamese village, Anti-Japan Monument (not so random), and Mini World (boasting miniature reproductions of world famous sites). We went to none of these places during our stay, but I wish we had made it to the Green Tea Museum. It sounds so interesting...

Another point to touch upon is the utter lack of driving skills on Jeju. I have never seen worse driving in my life, and I've lived on mainland Korea for over a year. My theory is that mainland Koreans come to Jeju for vacation and rent a car. Mainland Korea is very different than Jeju in that you can get everywhere you need to go via taxi, bus, or train without driving a day in your life. The most economical way to get around Jeju is by renting a car, thus that's what they do. You can guess how well that goes.

Anyway, there's still a whole day of Jeju action left to go. Tune in next time, folks.

Jeju, Day One: Lovely Love Land

I would like you to know that I am aware that my blog is on life support. It would be more difficult to blame myself than to blame an external factor for why this is happening, so I'll just do that instead. I am being facetious, but the next sentence is actually true. For some reason recently, Google (and thus blogger, being owned by aforementioned parent company) has had sporadic trouble loading, both at home and at school. So, when the rare time comes that I actually feel like posting in my blog, I have a 50% chance or so of it not being able to accommodate my request. I feel cheated and violated when this happens. You are not the only one.

As such, I will move on with my most recent excursion: Jeju Island.

For those of you who don't know, Jeju Island is the Hawaii of Korea. As laughable as that may sound, it is partly true. I was surprised to be greeted with humidity and an abundance of palm trees upon my exiting the airport. Other things the two islands have in common:

1. 
   
   Fickle weather


2. 
   
   Volcanic activity


3. 
   
   Resorts


4. 
   
   Honeymooners


5. 
   
   Higher costs


6. 
   
   Waterfalls


7. 
   
   Randomness

I'm going to probably hover around the "randomness" bullet point for most of these posts because Jeju Island is probably the most random place I've ever been to. I'm also breaking the trip up into days, mainly because the first day is so long. You've been warned.

Since we arrived in Seogwipo (the city on the south side of the island where we stayed) late on Friday night, we did nothing noteworthy before Saturday. On Saturday, however, much magic happened. As mentioned before, Jeju is the fickle mistress of weather. The day began pretty crappily and rainy and we had originally thought the entire day would be like this.

It began with us finding out how things work in Seogwipo: every restaurant is closed until at least noon. So, we loaded up on breakfast at the Family Mart before hopping into taxis bound for...THE LAVA TUBES!

The second thing we found out was how big the island was. In an illogical sort of way, we assumed that the bus we rode on the previous night was so long because it had to stop all over the place. We reconsidered that theory after our cab ride was about a half hour on the highway and costing $30. Alas, we arrived and were greeted with a much more varied park than we had anticipated (remember: random).

Since I mentioned it already, we'll start with the lava tubes. Somewhat uninteresting (note the lack of pictures) except that one of the two is the only place in the world where limestone formations reside in a lava formed cave. Interesting...to a SCIENCE TEACHER! I teach English, by the way.

Other things in the park: palm tree avenue, bonzai tree park, stone formations park, bird zoo, a traditional Jeju folk village, a "water garden,":

Holy crap its water!

some other tree park wherein trees were planted by various countries and we get to see ambassadors from said countries posing in front of the tree via photography, gift shop, and, obviously the best part: soft serve ice cream.

At this point the weather had given way to a cloudless sunny day, so we opted to head to the beach that was across the street. Here's a glimpse of that one fer ya:

Hey, how ya doin'?

Unfortunately, the water was still rather cold, so swimming was minimal. From there we hit possibly the highlight of the trip: Love Land.

A trip to Love Land is something that must be seen to be believed. It has been on my list of Korean attractions since the beginning, and I'm obviously glad I went. Love Land's origins are based in Jeju's reputation for being the honeymoon island. In the past (and party so still), Koreans were traditionally very naive and innocent. With a trip to Jeju Island for their honeymoon, they sometimes needed a little help to get certain sexual details correct ("You mean I don't pee in her?"). In fact, hotels even had to hire special "assistants" to coax Korean couples to consummate their recent marriage. The idea behind Love Land is to teach and "get couples in the mood." Instead of doing that, it has become a comedy scene of perversion with some pretty strange sculptures. I can only begin to post the most PG friendly of those, so if you'd like to see the good ones, ask me or gander at Facebook (or Google them [that is, if Google decides to work for you in your region of the world]). Anyway, here are some photos:

This is, apparently, how we perform intercourse in America, based on the international sculpture series.Notice the sperm swimming into the heart on the store front.

She's holding a pepper in her hand. Huh huh. Do you get it? It's subtle, right?

Forget about retaining any semblence of that Western coldness. Old ladies will be manhandling fake penises and old men will be mounting and groping sculptures, etc. Like I said, it's something that needs to be seen to be believed. Truly unique experience.

We ended the night by going to, perhaps, the only Western bar in Jeju. It indeed did have other Westerners, dart boards, and delicious Western food and beer. A treat of a day.