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!