Human Rights

So, I was sitting in class when one of my co-teachers walks in and asks if her students can use the classroom. I was supposed to be doing lesson planning. So, I really didn't need the classroom. I continued to work on my lessons while students wrote about Human Rights. What about Human Rights? Anything. Most of them drew pictures (I mean comics) on their papers. One or two of the forty students in the room actually wrote an essay about Human Rights.

For forty of the forty-five minutes of class, I kept doing my lesson plans. For the last five, I decided to write my own declaration of human rights. Why? Because...

Anyways, this is what I wrote...

Human Rights

Student Name and Number: 강동원--160116

To discuss any topic of human rights, I feel it is necessary
to start with the basic tenets of my philosophy.

First, a person owns his or her own body. If we did not then the concept of human
rights, itself, is negated.

Second, a person owns the product of his or her own
work. If we did not then the concept of
ownership and, thus, the right to own the food or water we eat or drink would
be negated.

The best philosophical statements that I have found that
does not harm the first two principles is this: “everyone has the right to do
whatever they want”. In any given
situation, one must ask themselves if everyone in the given situation has done
something that they didn’t want to. If
not, then no rights have been violated.
If so, then rights have been violated.

Murder is wrong because it violates the concept of human
rights, itself.

Theft is wrong because it violates the second tenet of my
philosophy.

Theft is just the taking of something that someone did not
want to give.

However, if theft is wrong, what is taxation?

Surely, there are people who do not want to give money to
the government for some or all of the services that government presumes to
offer.

Is this not theft?

Is government somehow different because it is made of many
people? I would say no.

If a group of people doing something could make an action
correct, would not gang murder be permissible?

To me, the size or title of the person or people who do an
action makes no difference as to the justice of the action.

The only question as to the justice of a situation is
whether or not the people involved in the situation did anything that was
against their own volition.

Now, while I think that this is a good statement on Human Rights, I have to ask myself...

How dare I become involved in the forced detention of human beings for 7 hours a day?

--Matt W.

Note: Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Walter Block have helped create this statement far more than my own mind. I just put it in my own words.

On Work and Play

For the last two months, I feel like all I have been doing is working. I technically only teach in the classroom for about 6 hours a day. That does not sound like all that much, I know. However, then you add in the 3 hours (at minimum) of preparation time that I have to spend for each day. It adds up to about 45 hours of work a week. And, that is on the weeks when I do not have intensive classes, which was the case for part of July and pretty much all of August. So, suffice it to say, it was a busy past few months. On top of all that...I have been planning a vacation that I have wanted to take for quite a long time. And, I had to make all my lesson plans for the teachers who would cover my classes during the vacation.
So, here I sit in a country I have never been to...thinking of what it would be like to teach here and comparing it to back "home" in Korea. I can't describe quite how much I actually miss Korea, but at the same time, I find this place fascinating and appealing in many ways. And, in others ways...not so much.
I miss being able to get a good meal of Nang-myeon. I tried to describe to the taxi driver why cold noodles are much better than hot noodles, but he thought I was very wrong.
I would love to have a good bottle of Soju and Coke, but it just is not common outside of Korea that I can find. When I first tasted Soju, I thought it was about as good as water-down rubbing alcohol, but now...it is a good lubricant for any political discussion.
I hate not being able to read the local language. There is some comfort in being able to see what something says for yourself. Even if it is only every few words that you understand.
But then, walking along a random street. I recognize that face. That unique pose and quirk of the lips. It is the Soju girl! I don't know her name and I don't really think it is necessary. It took me a second to make sure that I was seeing her right.
Yes, yes, it is her.
So, I walk closer to the sign on some nondescript door and taped to the door is a white piece of paper. The first words written on the paper...Anyong-ha-say-yo (in Korean, of course). What have I found? A little piece of home (or second home anyways).
When I walk in, it is just a little noodle shop, but it has one table of Koreans...a good sign. The waitress is a native, but she understands my Korean and I quickly order up some Nang-myeon, a bottle of Soju, and a Coke. Mmm...the noodles taste a little different, but they are decent and...cold. The owner (a Korean ex-pat) comes around and asks some pleasantries (probably just wondering why this non-Korean is talking to his people in Korean). I respond as best I can since it becomes quickly apparent I can only B.S. my way in Korean and then we just talk a bit in English.
This experience enlightens me as to just how much I have acclimated to life in Korea and how I have enjoyed doing so. For bringing me the enjoyment of Korea in a different country, I would like to thank the Soju makers of the world.
And, especially, to Soju girl...thank you.


For those who are interested in where I am or where I have been (depending on when you read this)...I will post something with pictures (!!) after October 5th...sometime.

--Matthew

On Independence

So, I begin to write this blog on July the 4th, 2008 (here in Korea). For most of July the 4th here, of course, it isn't really July the 4th back home. But, somehow I was feeling slightly patriotic today, anyways.

Today is not a holiday in Korea, of course. So, I was working my regular day. I did, however, manage to squeeze in some July 4th hoopla. Well, it counts as hoopla in my limited ability over here. All I have to say is thank goodness for YouTube. The first bit of patriotic something or other that I got to watch was a bit of fireworks. It wasn't from Seattle, Anchorage, or any other place I've lived. It was just some random fireworks display from a few years ago...it might have been from Ohio. I don't know...it doesn't matter. It was pretty.

The next bit of YouTube patriotism was an obligatory viewing of a part of a movie, The Patriot. Now what is truly fantastic about this movie is one particular scene where Mel Gibson (pre-crazy, well at least before we all knew he was crazy) and his character's two sons single-handedly slaughter about 25 bloody redcoats. I played this scene in the teacher's room at work because of patriotism and to annoy the two British guys who work here. British people are very easily insulted from what I have learned...of course, after 250 years of going from ruling the seas to losing pretty much all of their empire, I might be sensitive, too. Which makes it all the more fun to poke fun at them for...

Of course, these particular British guys came prepared with a 2 page pamphlet written from a British perspective with a bunch of things about the U.S. that should be changed revolving around the Fourth of July. It was kind of amusing, but it wasn't exactly heavy stuff. The most serious complaint about the U.S. seemed to be related to how the English language really needs more "u's" in words like flavor, color, aluminum, and a list of others.

I was not going to let this weak attempt at a national broadside go. So, I was quick to say, "I have just two names to remind you of...Neville Chamberlin and Sir John Maynard Keynes, two British guys". I had just long enough to watch an unknowning look go over both of their faces before I walked out the door to teach my first class of the day. It is fun when you can take British people down a peg or two.

Happy 4th of July...Read the Declaration of Independence at least once today. The Constitution should also be read once, over some potato salad, maybe. Mmm...potato salad.

Peace from Korea, where in the last few minutes it has switched to July the 5th (232 years and 1 day from giving those redcoats a good kick in the butt),
Matthew

On Miscommunication

So, it has been a bit since I have blogged. To provide just a little update...I am still in Korea. Everything is still going well with the exception of some stupid drama things at work which are just plan stupid and not worth mentioning. My Korean has now surpassed my ability in Swahili, but still lags behind my ability in Spanish and ASL. For example, I can now quite easily say, "I am a stupid American", in flawless Korean.

Which comes in quite handy, because Koreans have of late been protesting the shipment of American cows which are "too old". Apparently, the President of Korea agreed to the shipment of cows that were 30 months-of-age and older. These are believed to be more dangerous because they are "more likely" to have Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, otherwise known as Mad Cow (or as my Korean friends say, "Crazy Cow"). There have been some pretty large protests in Seoul over the issue. The animosity has been directed toward the Korean President and the American government to some degree. I am not really coming down on one side or the other on the issue because on the one hand...yes, the free trade agreement was pretty badly drawn up for the Koreans. On the other hand, a quick search of Wikipedia shows that about 470,000 cows with Mad Cow entered the British food system before "safety precautions" were put in place by the British government. And, how many people developed the human variation of the disease? 163 people. Now, that is awful for them, but 163 out of how many people can eat from 470,000 cows (I don't know, but a cow is a large animal). I think I'll keep eating beef because dang it is good stuff.

However, me being the caring culturally sensitive person that I am...I offered to two of my Koreans friends, while in Seoul, that we should go down to the protest and I would take a good old American flag into the crowd and then burn it as a sign of solidarity. My real reason, of course, would be to just get my picture on CNN and have friends and family laugh. Or, better yet, make Bill O'Reilly get all hot and bothered. That would be a dream come true...

Anyways, none of that was why I decided to sit down and write today. In this afternoon's class, I was teaching a lesson on weather and associated clothing. It is actually an on-going lesson...and today's part was on cold weather (basically, "how's the weather?", "it's snowing."). Well, what do you wear in winter? A coat, boots, sweater, and MITTENS... Holy Toledo, Batman!!! You should keep in mind that these are little kids. Maybe, 6 or 7 in American ages. For the first twenty minutes of the lesson, every time I would say the word, "mittens"...the kids would start cracking up laughing. I like this particular class, so I wasn't worried that they were being bad. I knew I was just saying something funny. Eventually, I did get out of them in their very broken English that a word that sounded like mittens was found in Korean as well. After class, I asked one of my Korean co-teachers what Mittens meant in Korean. It wasn't really "mittens", it was more like "michen" (or something like it, it is hard to Anglo-size it). It did sound similar, but it basically means crazy with a bad connotation. Wonderful joys of language teaching. So, for 40 minutes I was in essence cussing out a classroom full of 6 or 7 year olds. Good job teacher.

Now, miscommunications happen all the time, but normally I only accidentally say cuss words a couple times a month. However, tonight in my very next class...I was teaching a small group of 13/14 year olds. One of the kids called me a Yankee. And, heck no are you going to call a Southern boy a "Yankee". So, I attempted to launch into an explanation of what a Yankee is. Of course, that leads into trying to explain the term "Civil War", which in and of itself is no big deal (they already know the word, war). However, the task is a bit more difficult when your students laugh each time you say the word "civil". Apparently, in Korean, "Sibal" (or something close to that) is the equivalent of the F-word in English. Just a side note, there is no "v" sound in Korean.

So, I cussed out two classes of students today. It was a fun day in the world of EFL.

Peace,
Matt

On Parties

What do you do for fun in a foreign country? Well, some days you can go hiking in a park, visit ancient palaces, or look at cultural curio shops. However, you can not do those things every weekend. So, what do you do when you can’t do touristy things. Well, that’s easy…alcohol and alcohol related activities.

After getting off of work at 9 p.m. on Friday, my roommate suggested going out to a live music event at a bar in the nearby town of Ilsan. I had never been to the town or the bar before, but it was quite a bit of fun.

The event was located at a German bar, Brau Hoffen (there is an umlaut in the Brau and possibly the Hoffen, but I’m too lazy to search for the double dot thing). The bands (there were about 4 of them) were all Filipino. I’m not exactly sure how many bands there were because they all looked the same. And, that is not a comment on Filipinos all looking the same. The bands literally looked very similar (I have a feeling they were a family group). Anyways, they played a variety of Korean and American music. The American music was from the 80’s and later. The Black Eyed Peas, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Justin Timberlake were a few of the artists covered. The variety was actually pretty good and the bands did a good job overall. Although, all of the girls with the exception of one were just eye candy rather than good singers. The exception was still eye candy, but at least she had good pipes as well.

So, there in Ilsan, Korea, there were 8 westerners drinking beer out of gigantic beer glasses (I mean these things were literally 3 feet tall and those were for one person; okay, well, I don't drink beer, but I had some comparatively pathetic glasses of gin and tonic) listening to a Filipino band playing American music in a German bar…only in Korea.

After getting home at nearly 5 o’clock in the morning, I had just enough time to go to sleep for a couple of hours before it was off to a Korean wedding… Ahh, wonderful life in Korea.

--Matthew

On 101 Things You Should Know About Korea

1. Kimchi exists solely as a way to prove that you are, in fact, Korean.

2. If you are a woman, you may never ever put your purse on the ground. And, if you sit down in a chair, putting your purse behind the small of your back is perfectly acceptable. The fact that this seems to cause back pain does nothing to downplay the belief that the ground may have some form of Ebola or another deadly disease that must be avoided at all cost. And, death to the foreigner who is asked to carry a purse and mistakenly puts it on the round for a second. Holy Toledo Batman!!

3. Speaking of Batman...my Korean name is Koko Bat-uh-man. Best name ever. Although, the phonetic translation of my name is something like "most excellent doctor" which is just so freaking true in my own mind.

4. Baseball teams all have players with Korean names (even the Westerners), but all the team names are in English. Why? Who knows...

5. Two channels on television are permanently dedicated showing Counter Strike and Warcraft (old school) tournaments. For those not in the know, those are computer games.

6. No matter how much your roommate insists that it is true, do not believe it when he tells you that the proper way to say goodbye when leaving a store is to say, "nigga-say-yo". Although, it was worth a good racist-implied laugh.

7. Speaking of racist terms...what is a "gook"? Well, I'm one. I'm a "wae-gook" (foreigner) and Koreans are "Han-gook".

8. Having resided in Alaska for a year before heading over here, I feel it is bloody hot at the current level of 60 degrees F. Although, the Koreans have not hit their threshold for the word, hot, yet, I have still found funny things about their attitudes about dealing with heat. "Fan Death" is one such thing. Koreans believe that if you go to sleep with a fan on in your room that there is a good possibility of you not waking again in the morning. It has something to do with the fan blowing away your body heat and you dying from the cold. I'm not exactly sure how they survive through the summer without a fan on at night and with air conditioning being a non-existent commodity it living quarters. According to some of the Korean teachers at work, I am extremely lucky to have survived with a fan on in my room every single night since I've been here.

9. I'm not going to be able to explain about their belief that blood types determine a person's personality because, frankly, I'm not really sure beyond that. However, one of my co-workers claims that it is a fact that 75% of all convicted felons have Type-B blood. She has yet to claim my offer of 50,000 won ($50) for providing scientific proof that that is true.

10. The same girl that told me about the Type-B felons asked me, what my blood type was? I have absolutely no idea, which I think amazes all of the Koreans that have asked me that question (it's actually pretty common). Right after asking though, she said, "That is a come-on". Her English is limited, so I'm not really sure if she was making a pass at me or if she just found "come-on" in her idiom dictionary and wanted to try it out. Who knows, maybe it was a missed opportunity on my part.

11. Envelopes have lick able glue on them right? Apparently not. You must either use a glue stick or tape to close an envelope, but you can have fun disgusting your co-workers by testing the envelope with your tongue to see if it does or does not have glue.

12. When walking down the street, Koreans who are sick, avoiding sickness, or avoiding Yellow Dust (Chinese pollution) will often times wear big blue face masks (these things make doctor's masks look small), but they will think nothing about pulling the mask down just enough to take a draw on their cigarette.

13. If the blue masks weren't bad enough, nothing beats the joggers' sun-visors that hang down in a pretty good parody of a Darth Vader mask.

14. Touching food with your hands is a terrible travesty, but walking past a guy peeing in the corner of the subway station is pretty much par for the course.

15. There are no garbage cans in public!!!

16. A bottle of Soju can get you pretty much wasted for $2. And, $1.50 for a Coca-Cola can make the taste almost tolerable. But, passing up your Soju to the girl who hired you is absolutely priceless.

17. There seems to be just about two variations of foreigners out here. First is the foreigner who is drunk. Second is the foreigner who is hungover.

18. Number 17 seems to apply to a lot of Koreans as well.

19. Koreans kids can be little s____, just like American kids.

20. For the first little while, its true THEY all look the same. However, they will say the same thing about you (just ask).

21. A Korean girl speaking with a British accent is annoying. Although, she's my noona ("older sister").

22. Said girl says she is born and raised in Korea, but even I catch some of her mistakes in Korea. I think she's a Russian spy personally.

Well 101 questions was quite a task and I got to 22, so I failed, but I will write some more later. Korea is still awesome. Peace out for now.

--Matthew

On Hiking

So, I haven't posted in a bit. However, I've been here over four weeks and just about one month. I am starting to recognize Korean words as words and not just pure gibberish. That doesn't mean I actually understand much, just that I am differentiating words. So, that's top notch.
Yesterday (Tuesday), my company had a day off from work. Why? I don't know and I don't as much care...it was a day off work!! Well, it was probably much harder than a day of work, but still a break from classes in the middle of the week was pretty cool. As a treat, the school set up a day trip out to Mu-ee Island. And, wait for it...I took pictures. These are the first pictures I've taken in Korea.

4 of the foreign teachers and 10 of the Korean teachers and staff signed up to go on this excursion. It meant getting up early (8:30) in the morning which wasn't all that much fun (I usually get up at 10 or 11). Then it was a long walk out to school (2 minutes). The school provided a bus and a driver to drive us (40 minutes) out to the ferry. And, then it was a very long ferry ride (10 minutes) out to Mu-ee Island (in the West Sea). Okay, so, it really wasn't all that bad and by 10:30 or so. The fun had started. Four of the Korean teachers went straight to the beach...I'm not sure why because it was cold by there standards and I saw no skin from any of them (the foreign teachers, including yours truly, were all in shorts and t-shirts, although I was the only one who stayed that way the whole day). What do you do for 3 hours on a beach without sunbathing? I don't know.

Anyways, the rest of the group skipped the beach for a bit and went hiking. Here's part of the trail. I did see a few signs that helped me estimate that it was about a 5 kilometer hike (maybe, 3 miles). It was up a "mountain" (it MAY have been 1000 feet or maybe a bit more). I consider that a hill, not even a foothill. Anyways, this picture was actually on the way down, but it was on the worst part of the trail. The rest was more like the next picture.



Like I said, the Koreans thought it was winter or something, long sleeves and jeans and sweaters for when they stop hiking for too long. It is craziness. It was probably about 55 F and really sunny. Back to hiking, this slight incline and easy trail covered 80% of the climb. I could have gotten a better picture of the trail, but I didn't so this is it. Anyways along the way up. Ann, in the picture to the left, was giving me some Korean alphabet lessons (Hangul is the name for the Korean alphabet).



So, here is the marker at the top of the trail. Of the two names in the center, the one on the right spells out So-Mu-Ee-Do (I'm spelling that phonetically). Basically each vertical set of characters is a syllable (not necessarily a letter). For instance, the first syllable has an "s" sound on top and a long "o" sound on bottom. Next is the "m" and "u", then a long "e", and, finally, a "d" and a long "o". Anyways, welcome to Hangul 101. It is actually a fairly easy language to pick up, if you can hear the difference between a couple of vowel sounds and some consonants that roll the "r" and "l" sound together and so on. I can not do those things on the fly as yet, but I'm working on it.

Here are some random pictures on the hike down the hill:




























After hiking for about 3 hours, we made it to the beach. Where we saw this:













Are they some of the first regular sized houses that I've seen in Korea? Well, yes, kind of. They are actually for a famous Korean television show, which had all the Koreans doing this:


Alright, I have a better video with all of them jump-posing, but it is longer and I'd have to edit it, and I'm just lazy at the moment.

Moving on, mid-afternoon lunch consisted of clams roasted over coals in the middle of the table (mmm...), kimchi (of course), some pancake/pizza like thing with seafood (it was actually better than it sounds), clam/noodle soup (really good), some more clams boiling in some kimchi soup mix (I think), pork strips over the coals, and, of course, beer and soju (Korean national alcohol). Soju will knock you flat pretty easily, but it comes in a beer sized bottle for about 2 dollars. So, what do cheap booze, the beach and a sunny day bring about? Nudity? Mud wrestling? Hmm??

No, no...we all played kickball. The rules were pretty much the same with a few differences. I played center field and went 7 for 7. I hit for the cycle (1 home run, 1 triple, 2 double, 3 singles). I still have mad skills (ok, kickball is a little easier since I didn't hit a homerun in baseball after the first year that I played, but whatever). My team still lost, but hey what can you do?

After a fun game of kickball, it was decided that it was time to go. Frankly, I think we got the last ferry back to the mainland. So, I'm not sure as we had a choice. Anyways, that is how this particular Korean Hogwan takes a company trip. All in all, it was well worth it and a good way to kick off my second month in Korea.

--Matthew

P.S. The pictures and the words don't quite go the way I want them to, but whatever, there are pictures and that's something.