I just spent three hours wrangling with my computer, but I've done it! I managed to post a bunch of my photos to Flickr, so now if you have a desperate craving to see hundreds of my photos, you can. I recently reset all the settings on my browser, and now everything on the blogger website is in Korean, even on my home computer, so I HOPE the link on the right will take you to my pictures. if not, the URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeyainkorea/. Predictable. Hm, I just noticed that next to each of my pictures on this website is a copyright symbol and a little "all rights reserved" note. first of all, as far as i know, this is completely untrue. as if someone would want to steal my blurry, slightly askew pictures from the top of a mountain in the middle of winter when all there is to see is a bunch of dead, brown trees. i'm glad flickr is taking precautions. (now i'm questioning my reasons for spending all this time putting these pictures online...they're not all blurry and tilted, i guess...) OK, I'm gonna press a button now and either save or delete my post. we'll see...

Sarah P. and I are doing a lesson together...her girls wrote personal ads, and now my boys are reading them and writing letters in response. So far the boys have been really, really excited to get letters from the girls, most of whom identify themselves as either "cute" or "sexy." That's of course except for the boys who already have girlfriends, who can't help being all smug and tend to write things like, "Hm, you wanna date me? It's too bad, I already have a very, very beautiful girlfriend." Thanks, guys, I'm sure she'll be so happy to read that. One of those students went so far as to give the girl his number, with a little x replacing the second to last digit. My students are nothing if not super-classy. I hope she texts all 10 possible numbers with some biting, "thanks for nothing"-style message. Anyway, most of the letters were very effusive, except for one boy who clearly thought that whoever had written the letter he got hadn't put in enough effort on her personal ad. "I think you do not earnestly," he wrote, using a light green pen on light green paper, "so I prepare this pen. You can read it, but your eyes will swim." That's pretty crafty...these kids play hardball.

It’s festival season in Korea, and for good reason. The trees are starting to show some new growth, and the perpetually brown, muddy mountains are finally turning green again. Who wouldn’t want to celebrate? Last weekend I headed down to Jinhae for the cherry blossom festival. I went on my own (a fact that seemed to scandalize all the teachers at school the next Monday…they barely trust me to go to the bank by myself), which made me feel very independent, but also meant that I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. Which is how I ended up at the 2007 Military Band Festival, also being held in Jinhae that weekend. The road leading toward the central rotary where all the bands performed was lined with banners welcoming, among others, the U.S. Eighth Army band and the National Military Band of ROK (perhaps referring to the Republic of Korea, but I prefer to think that a typo at banner store marred the otherwise awesome banner for the National Military Band of ROCK. Yesss! Rock on!). I had to wait in line for an hour, but I eventually scored some space on the bleachers sandwiched between a cadre of old ladies in regulation purple and pink polyester pants (very sweet…one of them gave me some ginseng candy halfway through) and a pair of leathery, cigar-smoking old men. The festival kicked off with an actual band, as in bassist, guitarist, charismatic vocalist, etc. They performed some current Korean hits as well as a version of “You Raise Me Up” sung in sort-of English, which was great. It’s like someone whose been forced to sing a song but has forgotten all the words and is just sort of making sounds approximating lyrics. In the case of songs like “You Raise Me Up,” I prefer the sort-of English to the more polished Actual English. All the great passion in the song with none of the guilt over the unforgivably maudlin words. Actually, this might be why I enjoy straight-up Korean pop music so much. Hm, a Korean traditional band performed, with a lot of blowing on giant seashells and leaping around with swords…they were a big hit. I also got to see a performance by this guy:

Apparently Moon Hee-jun was a really huge pop star about six years ago when he was with the group H.O.T. In the intervening years, two things have happened (according to every person I've mentioned him to): he joined the army and he got fat. Anyway, as soon as he appeared about a hundred middle school girls stood up to scream, wave and generally freak out. (The old ladies to my left were slightly less thrilled.) So, my second brush with Korean pop-stardom, though I’m getting the sense that only somewhat second-rate performers show up at these festivals. I’m going here on the emcee’s comments after the performance, which were along the lines of, “That was Moon Hee-jun, who is STILL very popular and also famous. Nope, his popularity sure hasn’t faded, not even a little bit. Boy, what a popular, still-famous guy.” She might as well have announced that his career is over. Oh, well. He still has the middle school girls of Jinhae in his pocket. I’m gonna say that the highlight of the day, though, was the U.S. Eighth Army Band. The band started out pretty standard, with a Souza-type march. It wasn’t long, though, before four women dressed like, I swear, prostitutes ran out and started dancing to the Hand Jive. Women in the army have it tough. That was just the beginning though, cause after the Hand Jive the band tackled probably the most popular American song in Korea: YMCA. (I can’t get away from this song over here. My cell phone has 12 rings: eight different bells, three Korean pop songs, and YMCA. I don’t think it’s just Korea, either. I was in a vintage clothing store in Kyoto that played ONLY the YMCA…I stayed for about half an hour, so I got to hear it at least six times. This store also sold flamboyant afro wigs in a variety of psychedlic colors that were worn by all the staff. All in all, if offered a job there, I think I'd pass.) I don’t think I’ve ever seen as enthusiastic performance of the YMCA as by the U.S. Eight Army Band, though. About 30 seconds into the song, four guys dressed like the Village People (ridiculously short cut-offs and all) ran out into the arena and began dancing in what I can only describe as the gayest way possible. This is not offensive. This is the truth. At one point the sailor, the guy with the afro (in basic black) and the Indian chief got into a pyramid while the fourth guy pretended to vigorously slap the Indian chief’s ass. The Korean military officials seated on the platform in front of them politely clapped along. Afterwards, the emcee thanked the band for “livening up the afternoon.” In short: if you are gay, and you want to be in the military, and you’re feeling a little uncomfortable about that, learn to play the trumpet and come to Korea.

SOME PICTURES


At Woobang Tower Land in Daegu with some of the girls from Samsungwon.


Also at the amusement park...Kaya and friend


A couple of my new first graders.


I really don't blame Korean men for their questionable fashion choices given that this is the advice they get from storefront windows.


Festival food in Jinhae...omigod it's an entire pig.


A bottle of soju, the Korea's ubiquitous alcohol. Who exactly are they marketing to here?


The traditional band...note the shell horns.


Display of traditional fighting skills.


Cherry blossoms in Jinhae


Outdoor market in Jinhae


On a bike ride in Gumi with Marina

So this week I'm doing a lesson on mapping the United States. Before I pass out the maps, though, I've been quizzing my students on random US trivia. Almost everyone knows that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the US, but as a bonus I ask them to tell me what "D.C." stands for. Answers include: Dirty City, DANGER City, Digital City (actually, that's Gumi's slogan), Discount Carrier, Darling Columbus (too bad that's not right) and DemocraC (I had to have a student write that one on the board before I got it). Almost universally, my students believe that L.A. is the largest state in America, and a number of different classes have insisted that Arizona has the longest coastline.

I'm not kidding when I say Gumi's slogan is "Digital City." It's written in 10-foor high letters on the side of one of the mountains visible from the freeway and from the train. I think officially we are "Brilliant Gumi, Digital Gumi." Basically every city in Korea has one of these. Daegu is "Colorful Daegu," which I find very odd.

Students have been picketing the cafeteria during lunch lately. I thought they might say something provocative (maybe some budding vegan activists?), but I've been told that they in fact just tell students to "Consider the environment when you throw away food and eat everything to increase your stamina." "Eat everything" is actually something that I think Koreans don't need to be told twice. Watching my students eat, for instance, a chicken wing is a thing of wonder. Usually they just push the entire thing in their mouth, chew for about thirty seconds and remove maybe about a toothpick's worth of bone from their mouths before swallowing the rest. The same goes for the huge gobs of fat and gristle on much of the meat. Don't take it off! Eat it! Increase your stamina!

I was on beautiful Jeju Island this weekend for Fulbright's spring conference. Apparently it's a good thing that I got off the mainland, cause Korea experienced the year's first day of heavy Yellow Wind. Yellow Wind refers to the wind that sweeps south from China's Gobi Desert, and carries not only particles of sand but also a varity of toxic particles. Apparently, the storm this weekend was the worst since March of 2002. Had it occured on a weekday, primary school children would have skipped school and many people would have stayed home from work, holed up in their houses. Anyway, every week I ask the students how they are at the beginning of class, and this week there's been a lot of "We hate China" and "I can't breath." Actually, students started telling me this before I heard about the storm...I was imagining hordes of Chinese people storming the Korean peninsula, strangling everyone in their path.