How I met a famous Russian artist in a worthless Korean town...

To my dear readers. I apologize for the hiatus to those of you who have enjoyed reading. I guess in some respects I just haven't had anything worth writing about which also has to do with my distaste and disdain with my job and its day-t0-day mismanagement. But back to an update with where we stand.

We found out the president of our college snuck out of North Korea before the DMZ was really established... that explains some of the crazy.

Grad Schools:

I got into the University of Jyväskylä in Finland for the Masters in Sport Psychology which is great. But financing has been troublesome. You can't get any financial from the government unless the university has applied for "Title IV" eligibility, nor can you get a private loan for a foreign university, Finland doesn't give any aid (loan/scholarship) to any Masters seeking students especially if you come from the USA and the main Grant for studies in Scandinavia can only be applied for the year before you begin and before you even know if you will be accepted or not. As you can see, it's a bit of a predicament at the moment. So my options are only if the university will grant me a deferment or to re-apply next year after finding a decent paying job at home, or if I need to, go back abroad for work.

So somehow our korean-redneck-village got to host this international symposium for cultural exchange recently. It turns out it was mostly Russian artists, teachers, and students from Moscow. And that's how I ran into one of Russia's and even the world's highes regarded painters, Nikas Safronov. At the moment I ran into him and his friends at this restaurant I didn't know what he was really known for, but it turns out he's made many works for people like David Bowie, DeNiro, Putin, and Pierre Cardin. Apparently, he's just rollin' in the rubles at the moment. He told me stories about Stallone's mother was looking for their relatives via Gorbachev, a couple of his illegitimate children, and how I need to get an orthodox cross necklace.

I met them one more night at the local Hotel/Casino resort and had a drink with them and also ended up meeting Yuri Rozum who is apparently Mikhail Gorbachev's favorite pianist. The best part is I got all their contact information and was invited to come to Moscow and even offered a job at a social sciences academy. Who knew that from such boredom, unthinkable lack of social order, etiquette and manners in this town that I could meet a prominent group of cultured and artistic individuals from Russia.

We had Katie Dobie and David Hardnett visit recently as well. We had an awesome time, seeing the DMZ where I took photos past the line where you're not allowed to Jason Bourne-style... hung out in Seoul, went to some of the beaches on the east coast and we ended up skipping two days of work effectively sticking it to the man...

Live from Yonsei University Hospital and sans my appendix... may it rest in peace T_T or the "How I Could Have Died in South Korea Story"

Alright so I'm bored as shit and coming at you with a missing organ which I did give my consensus in losing but funky fresh from Wonju, South Korea at Yonsei University Hospital. I'm typing this on a special and dirty Internet PC which lets me use it for an hour by only putting in 1,000 Won which right now is like putting in 2 quarters... I almost forgot what a quarter looks like... It's dirty because it's physically filthy...

So you're probably wondering how I lost an organ in South Korea. F my life right? Well Wednesday night I came home from Hapkido... ( I joined hapkido recently, it's a martial art) and after grubbing on some pasta, I felt a stomach pain. I thought not too much of it. Some occasional bloating is not uncommon. But I had trouble sleeping that night. In the morning, I still felt shitty and asked my director to take me to the local hospital, thinking that maybe my abs were bruised from all the hapkido jokingly remarking that I want to make sure it's not appendicitis or a hernia. Well joke was on me I guess because our 3rd world hospital's doctor told me there was a pretty good chance that it was my appendix. Blake and my director came by but wanted me to get a second opinion and a much more suitable hospitable to be operated in. I had to agree, our hospital looks like it belongs in Burkina Faso.

So we head to Wonju to the presitigious Yonsei University while along the way our director makes two wrong turns, find out the Universities hospital is downtown and not on campus. Thankfully, I made it to the emergency room alive. I was stuck in a room with about 20 other sickos for about three hours after they performed another blood test, X-Ray, and CT scan. My white blood cell count was twice the normal rate so something was up and the doctor said I probably had acute apendicitis. The CT scan revealed that I had a mischievous appendix tucked away in my pelvis. It was joking around long enough. The doctor's took me soon after to the operating room. But first I had to strip, then my treasure trail and pubes were shaved by a man, his simple razor and some baby powder.

To be honest, I was a bit nervous. I never had surgery and my first experience was going to be in South Korea no less. I was hoping not to be one of the rare cases where the anesthesia goes wrong and you wake up in the middle of surgery only to be completely paralyzed from expressing all emotion and physical action while having to bare all the pain... Thankfully, this was not so. The docs strapped me up Jesus style on the operating table and before I could say kimchi, I was passed out from the gas...

Next thing I remember waking in a daze coming face to face with Blake and my director. I felt all the symptoms of a drunkeness without the fun indulgence hours before. The operation took less than 2 hours and apparently my mischievious appendix was larger than normal but the doctors found it almost immediately via laproscopic surgery. Currently I have three scars on my lower abdomen and I'm hooked up to a portable IV stand thingy.

The first couple days were spent in and out of sleep in a room with 7 other old Korean dudes. Now there are only three ages, 58, 69 and like 80 probably. I spend my daylight hours watching Korean dramas, comedies, lifetime channel and old school Korean ballads being sung on TV. Good thing English is a priority to some Koreans as my nurses and doctors could communicate with me. On the third day, I was finally allowed to drink water but only after performing flatulence and then food on the 4th day but only after performing defacation. I don't think other people and myself were ever so excited upon the arrival of my bowel movements before...

Due to my strange sleeping schedule, I was up real early from midnight to 4 am watching Sunderland / Tottenham and then watching Man Utd spank Fulham 4-0! While watching the first match, a body was taken outside followed by the grieving family/friends.

Some interesting things though, the beds here have little roll-away beds underneat so family can actually stay in the room throughout the night with their illen-ones. Also, the cost of my surgery and 4 day stay in the hospital after insurance will also cost me about 1,380,000 Won which is about 840 US dollars. Pretty sweet huh?

Anyway, my goal is to finish the book Layer Cake, which is also a movie staring Daniel Craig and get ready to go home tomorrow! Take care from So Ko!

Not so Useful Security Guards, Courtesy/Clog Award, & I'd Rather be Paid in Rubles

So nearly fourt months have passed and while a few things have changed, a lot of shit is still the same. Still live in a extremely, backward and conservative village where age trumps rationality, innovation and progress but we are finally finished with dealing with Korean children in our Winter Camps and their perplexed teachers as to our crazy, western methods. 

To be honest, there were some great students but I'm never dealing with the ridiculousness of this situation again. Only two forms of weaponry were recovered during the two months (airsoft gun, and butterfly knife).  I did introduce some good jazz and reggae to our last group. They had quite the bubble over Louis Armstrong's voice and appearance.

We were able to visit the city of Busan a bit. It has beautiful beaches and many more options for eating and inebriation. Our initial taxi driver sped to speeds of about 140km/h through the highway feeling completely safe in the embrace of the leather seats in his Hyundae. 

My birthday was a couple weeks ago and I received a nice package from my parents with FourFourTwo magazines, gummy bears, cool glasses, and a set of David Beckham cologne and body wash so that I can now not just look like him but also smell like him. I got a couple bottles of wine from Blake and our co-worker Pam. One of which was consumed at the bar.  We went out in our quaint but sewagey town to a couple bars. 

The first bar started out slow and steady with a few harmless games of "G'day Scott" (australian based) and famous names.  Upon leaving the bar, we hurried into a taxi but not without some incessant honking from an unruly motorist behind us. Being a bit unnerved, one of us extended a finger of gratitude and shouted a cry of appreciation in the form of a two words, eight letters...

After getting out of the taxi near the next bar stop, we were met with a few other Korean teachers of our buddy's. We didn't initialy realize that the driver who was honking like an asshole also followed us and began to well... attempt to speak to us via our friend's coworkers asking us if we said "bad words" to him and showed him the finger of appreciation. We were a bit perplexed at first so we shrugged him off but it was ridiculous to think that he was justified in being an asshole and we were out of our minds to respond. Koreans are cute when they're angry; just wanna pinch those cheeks.

The last bar was marred with new encounters, more pouring, a walk home and a personal altercation with a road sign and a late night chat with Madness of which both incidents having no record in the annals of my mind.

The following weekend was another birthday of a friend of ours but this time taking place in the area of Sinchon in Seoul. We met some more foreign teachers from Pennsylvania and the UK and enjoyed a nice Pale Ale from Alberta at London Bar, my first Pale Ale in at least 4 months. Good beer is a bit harder to come by, you'd understand the state of my depravity. Further altercation ensued on the streets as another dousche bumped into us and telling us not to mess with him because he lived in LA. Our new friend confronted him and told him, "Well I'm from Hampshire", a small town in southern England. A rather intriguing man who left with kind words of our mothers. Later we went to the strangest western bar. I felt like I was in an episode of Fear and Loathing in a bar full of weirdest looking entities. It seems like a good majority of westerners, especially Americans, that come here have some strange skeletons in their closets and/or are outcasts of society. Of course this is not the case, with yours truly. One of the monsters grabbed our buddy and almost got a beating and the same for our birthday girl. Needless to say, I did not fancy staying too long even if the music was a nice change.

The Courtesy/Clog Award goes to Blake Wergeland. Before this past weekend Blake was finally successful in clogging our toilet but also was courteous enough to call me before I came home to inform me that I should probably by a plunger from the 1,000 Won (Dollar) Store. 

On a last note, Korea has a lot of security guards at schools and apartment buildings. Though what their job is, is another matter. Same thing goes for our local police force. We have these two guys whose job is to move a plastic barrier everytime anyone drives up the hill towards the school every day.  Extremely redundant and a waste of funds.

In Korean news, North Korea has taken a rather aggressive stance with the South challenging them even with the arrival of Hillary Clinton and planning on satellite launch very soon. It will be interesting to see how this all works out. That's it for now, take care!

The Daegu-bah System, I was on Korean TV & OASIS

Happy Korean Lunar New Year!

This weekend was the Korean New Year so we got a much needed 4 day break. Staying in little ol' Yeongwol was almost tempting. Instead, we headed down to a real city, Daegu. Since we took the Daegu bus from Jecheon, we coined it the Daegubus System ala Star Wars (Dagobah System). If you don't know the Dagobah System, it's where Yoda hid after the extermination of the Jedi. The planet is a murky, swamp land. Yoda lived near a cave that was strong in the dark side of the force, which balanced out his light side, successfuly evading detection from the Emperor (wikipedia). Yes, I cited Wikipedia, booyah.

Anyway...

We hung out in Daegu for a couple nights at our sweet hotel which had a sauna, barber, and massage parlor. Our room looked like a dojo. So we fought in it.

The sauna was great and relaxing, filled with some naked Korean dudes. The hotel's brewery/restaurant looked like it was from Bavaria so it gave me the comfort and illusion of

being back in Europe.

So we went out, had some drinks, met some people which was different considering the impossibility of meeting anyone your age in our little dorf (as the Germans say). Daegu was great though, so much going on. I also flipped the bird at a passing taxi as he thought it relevant to honk at me and Steve from 100 yards away, felt pretty good about that. I also found out I could lift an Australian from the pavement.

We took the bus from Daegu to Seoul on Monday during the Holiday rush. While on the bus, we looked into our Frommer's guide to South Korea. Within its texts it stated that if you take the roads during the holiday, then you are a complete idiot. Train tickets go on sale 2-3 months in advance since driving will take up to 16 hours from Pusan to Seoul.

But this gave me time to crack open a new book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky, a highly regarded voice on foreign policy. If you can grab a hold of it, library or otherwise, it's a must. An easy and informative analysis on the US's global goals for the past 60 or so years.

Oh sweet, they are showing 12 Monkeys on tv next. Great film. We didn't do much in Seoul but I snagged an Oasis poster from a wall to take back. Oasis are coming April 1st and we have tickets!

It's also Blake's Birthday today, so happy Kwanza Blake!

In footie news, AC Milan want Beckham for 4.5 million pounds, Arshavin is most certainly signing for Arsenal and Robinho is involved in a sexual assualt probe; those crazy Brazilians.

Part II.

So I was on Korean television the other day. The KBS channel came by to interview a foreigner to get their perspective the city of Yeongwol. Granted there were many things to say about improving this town but I got my 20 seconds of lime light at 9:30 and we went down to our local bar and got to check it out. Pretty exciting stuff, some Korean men wanted to take some shots with me and referred me to as "Tv Alex".

So tomorrow we got invited to go with some other co-workers to check out a beach and eat some King Crab. Will let you know how it is!

Also in St. Olaf news: The Players FC IM soccer team just recorded another interim championship!

All the best~

Holiday Recap, Oles in Seoul, Country Ass Mophuka & How to Scare the Shit out of a Korean

So a quick recap of the holidays spent here. Much of it was snowless especially in our town. Which is strange since we live in the mountains. I guess you can't have it all in Korea. Xmas Eve was spent going to High 1, a ski resort, in the city of Gohan. There I learned how to ski from my sensei, Blake. Initially, I was like a newly born fawn dealing with these four new appendages and what order they should go in but I got the hang of it and after a couple runs, I was speeding down the slope like a crazy, korean man on Soju. A great experience all in all. I can grasp the appeal of the sport and also give major props to those who actually do race due to the soreness in my lovely, many lumps and loins.

Cornballer Syndrome:

So we've been in Korea for 2+ months now and when we go out, the meals are usually served pipping hot. Our friend Blake seems to have short-term memory loss when it comes to this fact and everytime we go out he hastily consumes his food only to come to the realization that yet again, it's scolding hot and the expression, "Ohhhh my god, every god-damn time" (ala Michael Bluth). The reason I call this the Cornballer Syndrome is because of the show Arrested Development. A true gem if you have yet to partake in its excellence. Enjoy this winter with the Bluth family :-D.

We took the midnight: 30 train home with a bottle of frothy, yellow cheap champagne to ring in father christmas. Blake and Steve attempted to share some with a couple Korean birds in the but they promptly refused. Steve tried to mend the situation by looking up past the girls to the back of the train and gesturing to the sleeping people if they wanted some as well, as not to totally feel embarassed. The rest of the night was marred by Korean school directors, some soju, our apartment, light switches, standing in washing machines, bitting, spitting, a couple right hooks... I'll let your imagination work its magic.

New Years was similar in the fact that we went to High 1 again to ring in the New Year with a couple Oles living in Busan. But this time we were on the grounds of the casino with a bunch of Koreans, us and the only two bottles of champagne to be found in a 2 mile radius. Needless to stay, the fireworks were great, we drank the champagne, checked out the casino, after walking around for 20 minutes realized that they didn't serve any proper drinks and cashed out to the only open motel room in the city. Kinda like Mary and Joseph, except none of us were immaculated impregnated like Annakin Skywalker's mother. Our motel room also had curious stains on the walls, which we figured were either...

A) Vomit from a projectile vomit competition.

B) Blood from a blood competition...????

C) Flatulence stains from a Kimchi lady flatulence competition

The next day, after skiing, we decided to head back home. But wait! Those darned Koreans decided to change the train schedule so..... we had to stay at our little inn one more night. The following day gets better. We want some food, so we hit a Korean bbq joint. We order the bulgogi which looks like it's enough for 3 people at most and then they charge us nearly 80 dollars for the meal. We were rather upset. The great thing was that I got to swear at the dumb lady who thought she gave us the proper amount of food and she juts nodded her head. I vowed I would defecate on their premises the next time we were in town.

Our Olaf friends were with us for one more day in our little town in the mountains so we took them to the bowling alley! We have 6 lanes with some of them having pins that had to be from the 60's because no matter how hard we threw the ball at the pins, they fell about 6 seconds later. One man couldn't get the concept of throwing the ball from behind the line. I'm just glad Walter Solbchak (The Big Lebowski) was not around to witness such atrocities being committed on the lanes of a bowling alley.

On this episodes of, Koreans say the darndest things!...

Our friend Steve received some Xmas cards from his students. Here is one of them.

Dear Stephen,

You are very tall and handsome man. I think about you sometimes (I'm not a gay boy).  Have a merry Christmas.

- God

I also get occasional emails from my older students. One woman e-mailed me after we were at the same function on the friday before. She apologized for drinking but she said that she likes to drink and she enjoys the social aspect of drinking. Rather heart felt.

So the New Year is upon us and our regular taxi driver stopped coming to pick us up. He's a bit less douchy so we got that going for us.

Last weekend we hit up Seoul to meet up with the Oles on global. We got into town a bit late but it was rather great meeting up with a few of our friends and meeting some new ones. They had not experienced soju yet. Naturally, we had to accustom them to the green bottled drink regardless of adverse effects of the purely ethanol liquid.

Our winter camps are going well enough. We have a middle school group and our first high school which has been interesting. There's one guy whose about 19, he lays the law down on the younger ones and so we refer to him as Ben Affleck ala "Dazed and Confused".

There's a man in town. We refer to him as "Country-Ass Mofo" so to speak. He drives this strangely inefficient piece of machinery around town, slowing up traffic wherever he goes. He struck again the night we left for Seoul to meet up with the Oles... One day, mister. One day.

And for the cap stone!

So you know a Korean? Wanna scare the shit out of him? Tell him/her that you slept in a closed room with a fan on. Or just lock them in a room with a fan on. Sounds pretty ridiculous yeah? Well Korean believe in the urban myth that if you fall asleep with the fan in your closed room that you will die; no joke. It's pretty stupid thinking about it but there ya go!

Hope you all are doing well! Happy New Year and all the best!