My Kingdom for Some Chinese Food

• Flying 16,000 km on a moments notice - $2000
• Ingesting enough Gravol to knock out a horse - $12
• Relaxing on a Walmart certified inflatable pillow -$20

Getting to fly the greatest airline established since that popcorn fellow invented the airplane: Priceless.

Although the reason I flew home last week wasn't exactly pleasant I'm incredibly glad that I had the opportunity to spend some time with my family and take in some Canadiana. Two weeks ago I wouldn't have imagined flying home for a week, yet last Sunday I found myself doing just that. I was lucky enough to find a seat on a plane out of the Ulsan airport on short notice and after a few hour's packing and an hour or two of sleep I was out the door and on my way back to Canada.

Many of you probably remember the blog back in July that highlighted the greatness that is Korean Air and once again I was able to soak in it's splendor.

Let me start by saying that there are airlines and then there is Korean Air. Having grown up flying only on WestJet and Air Canada I was shocked to discover that flying can actually be enjoyable. The staff are super friendly and although they speak little English they offered much more in terms of conversation than the usual grunts of the Air Canada staff. I was also lucky enough to get an emergency exit seat. Check out all of the room I had.

You can't properly tell from the picture but I was able to fully extend my legs and almost lay down completely. I found a certain guilty pleasure in stretching out in my seat and smiling at the people in the rows across from me who had about a quarter of the space that I did. The emergency exits are like a bit of first class in the coach section and I highly recommend their use to all readers.

The real highlight of flying Korean Air though are the entertainment consoles attached to each seat.



They have them on WestJet too but nothing like this. Aside from the 50 or so movies you can select to watch (modern hits and classics combined) you can also watch several television shows and news programs. They have about 100 hundred different CDs to listen to as well. What's really cool is that you can select tracks from the CDs and create your own tracklists in your personal music folder. I was rocking out to the Bangles and Bette Midler at 30,000 feet in the air. I can now die a happy man. For some odd reason the consoles also include a Google Earth type program that allows you to examine several cities from around the world. I spent the better part of the trip exploring Chicago and Tokyo.

The airline also gives each passenger a small gift bag that includes a sleeping mask, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a comfy pair of green socks. Yes, socks. When is the last time Air Canada gave you a pair of socks? Hell, I defy anyone to show me when Air Canada ever cared about anyone's feet at all. God bless the Koreans.

And then there is the food:

I can' t say much about the food other then it was airline food. They do offer free beer and wine though. So if you are an alcoholic this is the airline for you. They also offer unlimited peanuts. You can rest assured that I got back the $2000 in free peanuts.

It was definitely surreal to arrive back in Canada. Everything seemed so strange. Although it's a little shameful to admit, I do believe that I suffered from a wee bout of culture shock upon my return. Between the abundance of white people and the lack of Kimchi I just didn't know what to do with myself.

The first place I went was to the fabulous Vancouver restaurant On Loks. That's right, after returning to Canada the first place I visited was a Chinese food restaurant. But you just can't get good Chinese food in Korea and Canada doesn't really have any food of it's own. I guess we could have drank some maple syrup and ate some beavertails but it just wouldn't be the same. Besides my father and his partner Dawn love the place, so it made perfect sense.

Although I was fairly busy helping to straighten out my grandmother's apartment and planning for the service, I did find the time to head to the Great Canadian Superstore to stock up. I guarantee you that I was the only person dancing in euphoria down the soup aisle. After months of having to take busses for hours to find cans of mushroom soup, having unlimited amounts of western products in front of me almost caused my poor little head to explode. $160 later and I was ready to leave the store (thanks again dad).



Here's a shot of the all the goodies I returned with. I'm not sure if Jo was happier to see me back in Ulsan or to see the 15 packages of macaroni, the 12 sidekicks, the 10 gravy packages, and the dozens of other fine retail products crammed into my suitcase.

In total I spent 4 days in Vancouver. I also managed to make it to Kelowna for one night to visit my sick step-grandfather Gene and to see the rest of my family. I wish that I could have had more time to see everyone but between visiting Cottonwoods and hugging my mom for the 100th time, my trip there was incredibly short.

I drove to Kelowna and back with my sisters and getting to drive in Sheri's new SUV was a pretty cool experience (I'm used to driving my Nissan which is held together by elastics and good luck). If only it had come equipped with an ejection seat it would have been perfect.

My grandmother's memorial was exactly what she would have wanted. I was happy that I was able to see all of her friends and to hear about how much she meant to them. My grandmother was a special lady and will definitely be missed from the South Vancouver seniors community.

Anyway, in all I spent five days in Canada, 27 hours flying, 15 hours in airports, and 7 hours in internet cafes. Good times.

Cheers

Shayne

P.S - I've spent the last five months drinking boiled water and was pretty excited to return to the land where water flows like, well, hmmm water. Damn Vancouver for ruining that for me. Imagine my surprise when my entire time in Canada was spent drinking bottled water.

P.P.S - Because of the wacky Brits they no longer allow liquids on airplanes. In fact, they took my hair gel at the Seattle airport. So imagine my surprise when I boarded the plane and was given metal cutlery (including a knife). The world's safe from stiff hair but not knife-wielding maniacs.

That's all folks...ha hyuk!

Long Time Gone

Greetings

As many of you know I spent last week in Canada. My grandmother, Diane Robinson, passed away last Friday and a mere 25 hours and 8 thousand kms later I was back at home grieving with my family.

The trip itself will be getting its own blog later in the week but I just wanted to post a quick note letting you know that I’m back at home and that the site will be getting updated regularly again.

A lot of you have called or emailed me and I want to say thank you for all of the support. The loss of my grandmother was a surprise and I’m still in shock. She was a great woman and although we didn’t always agree on politics or religion she always supported me and loved me unconditionally. I don’t think I could have asked for a more caring grandmother.

Diane Robinson 1930 to 2006

Mother
Sister
Grandmother
Great Grandmother
Friend

Do me a favour and go and tell a loved one how much you care about them. You never know when you'll lose that opportunity.

Cheers

Shayne

Hey look, that cab is getting closer to us....my god...AWWWWW.... OH MY GOD .....I'M ON FIRE

Greetings

The next time someone cuts you off in traffic and you're tempted to drop the F' Bomb and throw up your middle finger, simply give them a wave and say a quick thanks to the big cheese in the sky. Why should you be thankful when some jerk-*&f cuts you off? Well, how about this, because back home getting cut off still stands out and isn't considered a normal part of driving.

Things are a wee bit different here.

Someone once described driving in Korea like playing Mario Cart on Super Nintendo and I think that's a fair assessment. To start with, they don't use stop signs here. Sure, the major roads all employ traffic lights but if you go off them you're screwed. There really are no stop signs, anywhere. In theory the bigger road at the intersection has the right of away. But if all the roads are of equal size and importance then it's anyone's guess about who has the right of away. It seems that the trick is to drive through with your horn blaring and hope for the best.

There's also a zillion scooters whizzing all around. Every delivery service uses scooters and they follow less traffic laws than the cars do. They drive on sidewalks, go through red lights, and well, basically anything else you can think of that's illegal back home.

There doesn't seem to be any traffic cops either, or any kind of punishment for disobeying what traffic laws do exist. Everyone we know regularly goes through red lights, forgets to use indicators, and certainly doesn't mind a little tailgating now and then. All of this probably explains the following:

Since June 29th:

• We have been involved in two car accidents
• Our co-worker had her front-end destroyed
  
• Our Boss had her minivan destroyed
• Our coworker's mother got in a terrible accident
• Several students have been hit by cars
• We have almost been killed about 5 times (literally), usually by a scooter rounding a corner at 60 km per hour.
  

With all of this in mind we thought that it was time we joined the circus and rented a car. We have to go to Deagu for shopping every month and usually we take a bus. However, we've gotten sick of the 6 hours it takes to get to Costco and all of the work involved in hauling massive suitcases across Korea. We figured, to hell with the buses, it was time to hit Costco in style.

On Sunday we picked up our friends Katie and Robyn and off we went.


Here's a photo of our trusty Steed. I named him (yes, it was a boy Hyundai) 'White Lightning', which is English for White Lightning, in case you were wondering. I've never driven a Sonata before but found the car itself pretty easy to drive.

I have to admit that for the first hour or so I was white knuckling the steering wheel and praying to Kurdt Cobain and Shannon Hoon to get me home alive. I almost got run over a few times by the buses but other than that it was a pretty fun drive.

Here's an action shot of your lovely writer enjoying the Korean countryside. This image brings to mind "Born to be Wild" or some other great road trip tune but in reality we were listening to Korean pop tunes about turtles and Kimchi.

The only reason I've included this photo is because it looks like I'm asleep at the wheel. Well, that and I like looking at myself.

Another action shot of the Korean country side. The weather looks beautiful but it's actually pretty cold. But I'm used to the darkness of Kelowna winters so I'm loving life in beautiful, sunny, Ulsan.

Here's a shot of Robyn loading the trunk. Costco is basically the only place to stock up on most western products so we really try and load up when we are there. As you can see one can never have enough diced tomatoes or Lipton tea in their trunk.


Haha, here's a shot of the trunk after we finished stuffing it. Our trunk was symbolic of Korea itself, far too stuffed and ready to explode. Oddly enough the food in the North of the trunk started a fight with the food on the bottom and eventually food from a more powerful trunk had to come over and whup some ass. Things worked out though as the two food groups agreed on a new border to keep them divided in peace.

Here's poor Katie and Robyn in the back seat. Yes, those are 8 pound bags of pretzels. I was the only one who wasn't covered in boxes and bags. Thankfully, all I had to deal with was the fear of dying at any second as I navigated my way home on the Korean roads.

Well, I wish I could say that it all ended well. But unfortunately Joanna lost a leg when a bus veered over and smashed into us. But what can you do, right? It's a small price to pay for driving again. Besides the doctor says that she will be able to run again by next summer.

Overall driving here was one of the most exciting things I have ever done in my life. We loved it so much were now looking into possibly buying a car.

Anyway, until next time.

Cheers

Shayne

P.S - I wasn't joking about how bad the driving can be here. In fact, Korea placed second for car accidents in the OECD, with 147 car accidents per 1 million people in 2004, falling one notch from the No. 1 spot the previous year. And that's just what was reported. Most accidents are settled with cash so who knows what the numbers are really like.

Pehhhhh-Peh-Ro!... Peh-Peh-Ro, Peh-Peh-Ro, Peh-Peh-Ro, Peh-Peh-Ro... Pehhhhh-Peh-Ro!!

Back home it's Remembrance Day, a day to appreciate all of the effort that so many brave men and women have made over the years in the name of their country. A day to thank all of the people that were forced to handle situations that most of us can't even imagine. It's a day that means a lot to us as Shayne's Step-Grandfather and other family members are World War II veterans and my own father spent his entire life in the armed forces. We try to make this blog as lighthearted as possible but days like today really put our own lives into perspective. It's easy to take for granted that most of us has been fortunate enough never to have had to fight in a war.

Although it's doubtful that any member of the Canadian Armed Forces or actual war veterans will read this post, we would like to thank all of them for everything they have done. It's a scary thought to wonder if we would be able to follow in their footsteps if need be.


But now back to regularly scheduled Shayneandjo.com programming...

November 11th is slightly different in Korea. Instead of somber ceremonies and reflections, on this day Koreans give each other Pepero (pronounced peh-peh-ro). Many of you may know of a similar Japanese candy phenomenon called Pocky. Well, Pepero is Pocky's slower younger cousin from Korea. For those of you unfamiliar with either product, Pepero is a chocolate-covered cookie stick. A good idea in theory, but while Pocky has a sweet, crunchy cookie stick with a thick layer of chocolate, Pepero's cookie stick tastes more like a bread stick and the chocolate is paper-thin.

Regardless of how top-notch Pepero is, the fact is we got a whack-load of it on Friday (the last school day before the official Pepero Day on November 11th). Not all of the students were so generous, but the nicer ones (mainly the girls) happily handed us over-sized Pepero stick after over-sized Pepero stick, and we as happily accepted. To tell the truth, it was a bit of a competition to see which of us got the most.


As you can see from the above photo we did quite well. Both of us got about the same amount, so no winner this time. All that was left after counting our respective piles was to dig in.

And dig in we did. No, we didn't eat our way through all the packages, but we got pretty close. In our defense, we had to discard a lot of it after one bite, as there are many brands and varieties of the Pepero snack, and some of them quite disgusting: of note, the ones that tasted like chemicals, and the big ones in the pink tartan packages that used rice cake instead of cookie for the stick.

(Here's Shayne holding examples of both the big and small varieties of Pepero.)

But before you start thinking that our students broke the bank buying Pepero sticks for us, think again. The ones we got were relatively cheap - it was the few girls with boyfriends at the academy that really blew us away. Several of the girls got Pepero gift packs the size of shoe boxes, and one got a stick (no joke) the size of a giant loaf of French bread, covered in chocolate and sprinkles. That last one set the poor boyfriend back about 15,000 Won ($15).

Well, that's just about all I can say about Pepero Day. Well, except for that one thing that may be on all of your minds: do Koreans really celebrate a day where they purchase a specific brand of candy in abundance and give it to all their friends and family? Yes, yes they do. And that's a closer if I ever saw one.

Jo

The Great Indoors

Greetings,

If you were to play the classic Sesame Street game "one of these things is not like the other" with Korean cities the answer would always be Gyeongju . Located just 40 minutes from our bathroom Gyeongju is a rarity in Korea. It's amazingly clean, sparsely populated, and full of temples and relics older than even Jo. In fact, it was the capital of Korea during the Silla kingdom between the 7th and 9th centuries.

It was because of all this that we were really excited when we found out that the next English camp would be held in this beautiful city. As you probably remember from our previous posts, English camps are where we take 10 or so children on a sleep-over in someone's apartment and play games with them for hours on end. Not a bad way to make a living. Usually this takes place place in Ulsan but last weekend our boss rented a couple of condo's in Gyeongju. She also upped the number of children to 18 (dear god) and thankfully added a third english teacher to help us maintain order and the strict discipline that Jo and I are known for. :)

Here's a shot of the condominium resort where we stayed. The complex was massive and contained everything from a waterpark, to a PC room, to a Karaoke bar, to ... well that was about it actually. But the place was really nice and a lot better than our apartment, so it was a good change for a few hours.

We didn't spend that much time inside though, as the bulk of camping entails games and then more games.

Here's a good shot of every fat kid's nightmare in P.E.:

Ahhh, the much feared Duck Duck Goose. A great game to play if you can manage to make it around the circle before your competition. But, for those of us who were a wee bit pudgy in grade school it represents failure...utter and complete failure. Sorry, I lost myself in memories there for a second. Thankfully most of the children loved Duck Duck Goose and manged to avoid killing each other in the process.


We had planned to hand out Mc Chicken burgers but the sponsorship deal fell through and the kids had to settle for oranges.

You might not understand the point of this picture but we included it to show you the student in the pink pants (Jo's note: actually, we included the picture to show my team winning the three-legged race). The poor girl is a magnet for pain and someone managed to get hurt during every game. When we played Red Rover she hurt her wrist when a student ran into her, and then later closelined herself WWF-style trying to break through the opposing side's defenses. Then during soccer she got nailed in the head by a 15 year-old boy who was trying to clear the ball down the field. The poor girl. She even managed to get hurt during the pit fighting and the skydiving too.

One of the perks of "Camp" is giving all of the children English names. It's great. Within seconds Hyun Soo becomes Paul, Young Do becomes Owen, and Che Chong becomes Oprah (just kidding). Usually we name the kids after movie stars, friends, or family. Though we did name the girl in the pink pants Uma. Haha, still laughing about that.

A classic shot of good old fashioned Futbol. Only seconds after this photo was taken little Uma was airlifted to Japan for reconstructive surgery.

Ahh, who doesn't love Red Rover? Well, the boy in the yellow and black shirt didn't. That poor little guy is in middle school and was one of the two older children duped into coming because they thought some other older girls would be there too. Imagine their suprise when they got into the van and realized it was just them with sixteen 10 and 12 year olds, and a full two days of Duck Duck Goose and Red Rover ahead of them. Haha, poor bastards.

Here's little Won Joon. There's no real story behind this picture other than he was one of the cutest kids there and clearly has a future of ultimate fighting ahead of him.

All I can say is thank God for wordsearches. Sweet, sweet, wordsearches. Nothing works as well when you need to kill an hour and calm a brood of rambunctious children.

Another "cute" shot. Here's little Yay Jin. She's only eight but she already speaks better English than I do. In fact, just yesterday she was correcting my use of dangling participles.

Here's Joanna teaching them something or other. The guy in the green t-shirt is Sufwan, a part-time teacher at our academy. He was born in Bangledesh, raised in Australia, and now lives with his father in Ulsan. He's about to head to Texas for a while. One of the cool things about living abroad is you meet so many people that seem to have traveled everywhere. Suddenly my tales of driving to Beaverdel just aren't as cool.

Here's our boss's son being trippled-teamed. I had to help him by running in and whupping some butt in the form of the classic Hulk Hogan Gorilla Press.


Here's a shot of one of the students "camped" out (pardon the pun). Poor little Owen looks like he's about done for.

Anyway, the weekend was pretty cool and it was great to see a little bit of Gyeongju. We're planning to go back at New Years and explore even more.

Alright, so that's what, three or four posts about teaching? I promise that the next post will be about something that doesn't involve singing, Red Rover, Halloween, or World War 2 (just testing your skills at the "one of these things is not like the other" game).

Cheers

Shayne

No...Not the Scream Mask...NOOOOOOOOOO

Greetings

After weeks of Halloween wordsearches, crossword puzzles, lesson plans, and games, the big day finally arrived.

Jo and I tried hard to bring Halloween to Korea by promising that any child who showed up in a costume would receive copious amounts of confectionary delights (of course not in those words. It was more like - scary clothes....candy....scary clothes....candy...repeat 500 times)

We weren't sure how many children would actually take us up on our offer since the number of costumes for sale was limited and the children aren't exactly rolling in cash. We said that anything that was unusual would count as a costume. Meaning that if children showed up in traditional Korean clothing or even wearing a bag on their head we would accept their offerings as genuine Halloween apparel.


Proving that Halloween is more for adults than children, here's a picture of myself with our Korean coworker Sunjun. I think that both of us had a hard time teaching when scaring the children was so much more fun than teaching them about indefinite articles.

Here's a pic of Joanna playing the role of Martha Stewart (sans the handcuffs). Thank god for Jo, that's all I can say. Without her know-how when it comes to crafts I would have been screwed. I probably would have just given the kids some spoons and paste and told them to go nuts. Thankfully Jo organized pumpkin making lessons instead.

Anyway enough of boring old us. Let's get to the children and their "Korean" costumes.


Here's Seung Yeung, one of my favorite students. I'm not exactly sure what she is supposed to be. I think she's a cross between the devil and Dog the Bounty Hunter after a bar fight. The kid beside her is pretending to be a patient on Ridilin.

It seems that costumes available were limited to three types: 1) the mask from scream 2) the devil horns as modeled by Jo and 3) witch hats.

Here's little Ji Hwan rocking the scream mask in true Korean fashion. He's actually holding a real blade in his hand. Haha, that could never happen in Canada but it really added some realism to the costume. You can bet that I didn't punish him that day.

Speaking of things you just wouldn't see back home. The students below all have real NunChucks. I know that they're real because I almost killed myself showing the children how skilled I am at martial arts.

(Please don't kill me)

Haha when I said the costumes were limited I wasn't kidding. Check out this class. Four out of the six students came wearing the scream masks.


This class was a little more creative. These four girls are wearing traditional Korean clothing and they didn't understand why I said they would count as Halloween costumes. In Korea they are standard fare for the holidays and fancy events. For us Waygooks they seemed pretty cool though and worthy of a Hershey bar or two.

Here's a picture of what happens when you let children draw whatever they want. Haha, the board started out with a small picture or two of Dracula penned by Jo and myself. By the end of the day the board was host to every crazy Halloween image possible.


Ahh Halloween, you gotta' love it. We should have posted this a few days earlier but I was sick and Jo was lazy. So here you are. Happy belated Halloween.

We are now off to another English Camp which will definitely deserve a blog.

See you then

Cheers

Shayne