Inside the Box

I learn so many things everyday about Korean culture, that I forget to write them down. However, this past week, I was let in on a new piece of information about the education system.

At our school, we (the native English speakers) usually teach speaking and writing classes. There are obviously a few exceptions. For the most part, it is easiest for us to teach the natural way to speak and write and it is easier for the Korean teachers to teach vocabulary, since they can simply translate it directly, rather than act it out with their hands.

Recently, I have been teaching one of my more advanced writing classes how to write good paragraphs. I'm talking basics, like topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a conclusion to wrap it up in five sentences. I noticed that the more diligent students in the class were taking notes on these basic ideas. So I asked them how their teachers in school teach them writing in Korean. Do they have indentions? How long are the sentences?

They don't.

What I mean is, they DO NOT write in school. EVER. I was blown away. Not in middle or high school. It took some self control not to lose it in class...so I held it in until I could confirm this insanity with my co-teachers.

True.

Korean students never write paragraphs, or essays, or ANYTHING.

All tests are multiple choice.

English, Math, Science, History, and Korean literature classes are all multiple choice.

Even now, I am getting worked up about this.

There is no room for personal voice. No room for intuition, invention, style, or art. Everything is about their precious scores. Did I get %100??!?

And how can you get an accurate, objective score from an essay?? I guess you can't.

I love the people here, but this makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

The quantitive is so vastly superior to the qualitative concerning the education here, that I could scream.

Put your hands up for Busan! I love this city.

This past weekend was an amazing blur of laser beams and bass lines. We have now been here for more than three months, and are loving life here. There are obviously things that we miss about home. Live music probably tops the chart....followed closely by margaritas. We got to have both this weekend!

Internationally acclaimed French artist Yuksek came for a one night only appearance at club Maktum here in Busan. He is an extremely versatile musician. Depending on travel capabilities, his performances range from being a one-man-electronic band with many different keyboards, controllers, synthesizers, and a microphone...to spinning vinyl or CDJs like the best of them. Amy and I were lucky enough to get a big group of our friends out to the show with us this past Friday.

This was also one of the first times we've made it to a legit, dance your face off all night, club in Korea. Club Maktum has a massive silver mirror-esk protrusion entrance that leads down lit stairs to the basement dance floor.

On your way past the tickets/coat check, all guys are given these blue laser/lights that have a strap for your finger...girls are given red.

I was curious how popular Yuksek was in Busan....apparently, VERY. The place was packed and bumpin' long before he went on.

He finally came on after some quite talented Korean djs, around 1:30. Massive screens run by a VJ (video jockey), displayed amazing visuals in-time with his music. Laser lights pierced the entire hall which was filled with a sea of red and blue lights pumping to the beat.

In a strange way, it was quite comforting to be dancing my face off to music I love once again. The only thing that could've made it better would probably be a High-Kick from Steve.

Me, with my 'This is the greatest, most gnarliest beat ever' face on...

Heres a pretty sweet Yuksek track for ya featuring Chromeo on vocals....

Yuksek feat. Chromeo - So Down

The weekend was pretty Go! Go! Go! Saturday was recuperating. That night we met a friend at a new Mexican restaurant in Jangsang called Hello Kimchi...i dont get it either. It's run by Koreans, but they do a pretty good job considering....

This was our first opportunity to have margaritas in about four months. I got some enchiladas, which we much different than usual, but quite spicy and delicious. Chips and salsa and tacos made for a nice break from...well, Kimchi.

We headed to Kyungsung with unusually full stomaches. Kinoeye was already full by the time we arrived. This was my second chance to get to DJ here and definitely surpassed the first.

The crowd took no time at all to get into the music when I started at 1am. It didn't stop until...well actually they were still dancing when we left at 4.

It is so energizing to get to see such an amazing DJ the day before a show. I was very excited to get to show Busan some of my favorite tunes, and they were quite receptive to the new sounds. The one aspect of djing here that is much...much different than back home is requests. There are some Korean guys who dj there most of the time, and so i think my apparent Americaness really encourages people to ask for songs they like. It can get a little frustrating we people ask me five times to play a song i either don't know or hate. After the first thirty minutes or so, they stopped asking for the most part...probably because i didnt play much of anything they asked for. Regardless of their preferences, the dancing never stopped and three hours zoomed by in a flash of happiness and excitement.

Thanks Kino-eye.

I'll be back on the Nov 26th and Dec 11th.

A Pirate's Life for Me!

So, just when I thought Busan couldn't get any cooler...our friend Hayley organized a tour of the beaches of Busan for us on a Pirate Ship! Thats right folks..a real, live (well, sorta) Pirate Ship!

We had seen this boat from the shores a few times when we were at the beach, and it always really intrigued us. We had also heard of various short cruises you could take that go along the different beaches of the city. Luckily, our buddy was pro-active with these curious thoughts, and got us all spots on a 2 hour night cruise, on the Pirate Ship.

Now, one thing to mention about this ship is that it is not 100% real (although I had my fingers crossed for a Johnny Depp run-in), because it runs on a motor, and not the real sails. But those are just details, because it delivered a fully thrilling and memorable experience.

We were able to see some of the city's beautiful lights from out on the ocean. You could also bring anything on the boat that you wanted to, so we all enjoyed some Korean beers and traditional Korean snacks. It was such a fun time, and we even all agreed to try an do it again one more time before our year here is over (maybe for Bryan's 25th birthday :)).

The excitement of the cruise paired with a DELICIOUS Galbi (Korean bbq) dinner afterwards really made for an amazing Saturday night. Hope everyone's November is getting off to a great start too!

Love yall! xo, Amy

Flip-Flip-Flipadelphia! Halloweenin' Busan style

The day after a 4am dance party was a little rough. But it was saturday, and the day before Halloween! So, we had to suck it up and get down to Gwangalli Beach for a Halloween Flip-cup tournament.

Our friend Hailey put together a 16-team costume flipcup tourney for that saturday. Each team had four players, two guys, two gals. They managed to get tables out on the actual beach for the festivities.

Some teams were more dressed up than others. Costumes ranged from penguins and old-korean women (Ajeemahs) to football players and that Zach Galifianakis from The Hangover Everyone came ready to get our flippin' on!

For our older readers, Flip Cup is a relay drinking game where 1) even teams line up on opposite sides of a table 2) each player has a plastic cup filled about 1/3 with brew 3) you start at one end, where the opposing players cheers, drink, and then flip. 4) the object is to drink fast, and the flip your cup from right-side-up to top-down on the table 5) as soon as the cup successfully lands on its top, the next player then drinks and flips and so on

Our team, Team Flipadelphia, was made of Amy, Maddie, Matt, and myself. We were kinda slackers in the costume department, but our feathered MardiGras masks did unify our team enough for some gnarly victories.

The tournament was set up in a rather official manner, with two round-robin stages. Our team actually lost our first match, but won the next two and proceeded to Stage 2. We were beaten rather soundly in the second round, but the sun was going down, and we needed to recoop for a few hours before the Halloween night festivities in Kyungsung.

After some much needed Korean BBQ and a nap..hehe....we got out to Kyungsung for a Halloween pub crawl. The crawl was between four bars in Kyungsung, where you got a free drink with your ticket. The costumes and dancing was riotous.

I've never seen the streets that packed here. The details get a little blurry, but one of my favorite parts of the night was at the end, where we got some late-night McDonald's...which used to be a rather disgusting habit of mine, but is now a nice change from our much healthier weekly diet.

Shake it on Ouut!

When I was preparing for our trip, I had a few tough decisions to make about what to keep and store at my parent's house and what I would have to let go.

After some tough thinking, I decided that I needed the money much more than I needed my turntables, Infinity speakers, and a bunch of other DJ/music equipment.

I ended up selling everything except my Ovation, which will be with me till death....I love that guitar.

I thought that this would mean the last of my djing for a few years, at least.

We arrived in Busan almost three months ago and have been lucky enough to make some great friends who've been amazing in showing us some great weekend party spots. One of our favorites is a spot called Kinoeye. They have DJs playing every weekend, with some great bands every now and then.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Hailey informed me that her friend Gyungbo, of Kinoeye, was looking for a new dj. I was intrigued, but doubtful they had equipment that I would know how to use without much practice. Turns out they use a controller, Serato's Itch, which is virtually the exact program I used to dj with in Austin.

I talked with Gyungbo about some details and ended up getting a gig last week on friday before Halloween!

Here's a pic from exactly a year ago and John Robert, Jarrett, and Worth's Halloween Bonanza....I didn't get any pics from the show last week, but it felt spectacular to be djing again on Halloween weekend.

I was honestly a little nervous, seeing as though I hadn't played in months. I started around 1:30am after this Russian dj. Haha, During his last song, his drunk Russian buddy was trying to help him load up his stuff and he unplugged his disk drive that was playing the current song. Watching two, rather thick, drunk Russian dudes scream at each other in such a harsh language is equally hilarious and scary.

The first twenty minutes were rather dull...people here aren't as receptive to some of my more obscure disco/funk as people back home.

The party got pretty crunk right around 2, and didn't simmer until I had to escape for my bed around 4.

The favorite of the night was definitely: ' We no speak Americano' - Yolanda be Cool

download - We no speak Americano

The owner and the bartenders loved the music, so it looks like I'm going back for round 2 next week! So all yall git over heer and lets boogie!

Halloween at Reading Town!

The Friday before Halloween we got to celebrate this great holiday with about 100 kiddos. It was so much fun to see them all dressed in costume, and embrace a holiday that is really not celebrated here in their country.

For 5 periods in a row, we took all the classes of students up to the 'party room' and entertained them with Halloween crafts, music, and fun instead of their normal class time. It was a great way to have fun with the kids, and plus- we got to dress up in costumes too!

Finding costumes here proved to be pretty tough, so Bryan and I stuck to our 'guns' and embraced our inner 'Cowboys'. Since we both came here with cowboots, flannels, and bandanas, it turned out to be the easiest/cheapest/quickest thing we could pull together. All of the kids got a kick out of it, and kept yelling "YEE-HAW" at us...which I adored.

Bryan started off each Halloween party with a brief history of Halloween, and we played a "Monster Mash" cd in the background during the whole thing. At the end of all of the activities, we had the children go line up in the hallway, and each of them was let back into the room after knocking and saying "trick or treat", and then they received a few goodies from us (mom- the pencils, erasers, and stickers were a HIT- thanks for sending them!!).

I had a blast doing this, and it reassured me that after this I want to look into to teaching at an elementary school. As yall know, Im a sucker for themes, crafts, and little kids...so this kind of thing was just up my alley :)

I hope everyone at home had a spooky and fun Halloween! I would love to hear what everyone dressed up as!! Loved yall!

xo,

Amy

Pumpkin Carvin at our Casa

Hey Yall!

Even though its a few days past the big Halloween weekend, we wanted to catch you up with how we celebrated this 'non-Korean' holiday here in Busan.

We started out the weekend before with having some of our new and dear buds over to our home for some good old fashion pumpkin carving :). This was actually the first time since we have been here that we had friends over (our place is really hard to find...), and it felt so nice to be able to open up our home to nice friends and fun times.

A few things about this were the same as the carving tradition from home, and a few things were different. To start out with, it was almost impossible to find pumpkins, and when we did, they weren't really the same shape as those we have at home. They are a little shorter and wider here...though Im not really sure why.

Hayley, unfortunately, discovered that her pumpkin was filled with maggots when she took off the lid. How disgusting is that??? She is a trooper though, and put on some pink gloves and kept on digging. I would not of done that, or even thought about continuing with that pumpkin for a second..

Aside from Hayley's mishap, carving them was the same as the fun back home, but after they were all carved- we had trouble finding simple votive candles to put inside.

We ended up finding some candle sticks...so we had to make do :)

This was our pumpkin. I started out by trying to carve the Korean flag on it, but once I realized that half of it was on the 'underside' of the pumpkin, I switched gears and turned it into an abstract face, which ended up looking like an angry old man....

Finally, one thing Bryan and I have not really talked about on the blog is the trash system here in Korea. Each night of the week is dedicated to a specific form of trash (food trash, cardboards, metals, glass), and you can ONLY put that out. This requires a little bit more effort instead of the normal 'tossing it all in one bin' thing at home, but in the end Bryan and I feel that this a good system.

Also, instead of paying for trash in your utilities, you have to buy certain trash bags for your neighborhood, and your trash HAS to be put out in these. So, when Halloween was all said and done...we had to stuff these big ol suckers into our tiny neighborhood trash bags. Not the end of the world, but like I said, different.

Steph and Maddie's "crackhead pumpkin", our Korean Flag/angry face pumkin, Dana and Pete's cool looking skyline, and Hayley and Matt's 'Nightmare Before XMas' pumpkin

We even toasted pumpkin seeds!

It was all in all a wonderful night, and seeing our pumpkins lit up with the Busan skyline as a backdrop was really special. This put us in the Halloween mood, and got our week off to a great start.

xoxo!

Amy