The House that L.G Built

This is a shot taken around the apartments where I live in Nowon. Everything in the apartment seems to be made by L.G, even somewhat bizarrely - my couch. Hyundai's and Daewoo's are almost the only cars on the road. Funny, but they seem less ugly when there's nothing to compare them to, I think it's how dinosaurs got laid. The area is built up and very nocturnal, however for me it has changed my perceptions on high density living. Firstly I never feel like I'm in the middle of a huge press of people, there are many parks, and playgrounds surrounding the area and a group of mini-mountains behind the apartments. Pretty much everywhere you walk off the main drag has trees forming a canopy, which prevents it from feeling like a concrete jungle.

When I say nocturnal, there are people around all hours, however for all that it remains very quiet at night. It also demonstrates that row upon row of apartment blocks doesn't have to equate to a loss of sense of community or personal safety. I think sometimes we're conned into accepting or believing in an inevitable decline of those values as a population grows. Here, kids routinely run around playing unsupervised towards midnight and old couples go out walking without fear. There are no police patrols on foot and although it is an affluent area, no gated communities and no surveillance cameras, yet people walk around safely at all hours.

No doubt some nasty stuff goes down, there's crap in every society, but they seem to have avoided (at least in this area) some of the modern malaise that we are at times resigned to. I do wonder whether the politics and economics that use fear, especially to drive consumerism, has a degree of responsibility.

This is looking down towards work, which is about a 2 minute walk from the apartment. Korean's are serious about overtaking Japan as asian numero uno. They spend $8 billion a year on after hours tuition. Many of their kids do their regular school, plus additional hours at english school along with the extra homework. Some parents complain to the school if they don't feel enough homework is being set.

The academy I teach at it is one of the largest in Korea with around 70 teachers, 30 of them foreign, which makes for a pretty smooth ride from a logistics point of view. The kids (poor wee bairns) go to Korean school during the day and when that has finished they come to us for a few classes between 1530-2200, covering anything from basic reading to science and maths. They even still come for english lessons during their school holidays.

On the teaching front I'm improving, a big part is building a relationship with the kids so that they actually want to speak English to you. Most the kids are pretty well behaved. One class in particular stands out, this group of kids are funny (even more so because they're doing it in a foreign language) but what's funnier is how much they're aware that they're funny. It's really hard trying to quieten them down when I'm cracking up laughing.

I've joined a gym, which is about a 90 second walk from the apartment, double that after training legs. It's a little bit different. I had to buy a pair of shoes just for the gym as they prefer you not to wear the same shoes on the street and in the gym. Being on short notice and somewhat budget restrained (due to having my wallet stolen coming out of Honolulu) finding a Korean shoe store near here that carried my size mean my fashion choices were for once limited by more than just my own poor taste.

As I result I ended up with a very silly shiny silver pair of velcro gym shoes that would look at home on a 100m sprinter in the Olympics or trying to attract votes for the Brownlow. I'm smiling just thinking of them, you guys would no doubt physically burst something laughing. Actually, there's something about being in a gym where there's happy hardcore slamming out of the speakers at 200bpm and some woman in the corner keeping time with a hula-hoop that makes my sneakers seem just about right.

I recently had cable connected at home, which means I've gone from 40 channels which I know nothing about to 80 channels I know even less about. All I've learnt is that every single Korean game show involves throwing or falling into water and dancing, I think it's a law or something. I do get the American Armed Forces Network channel, conveniently this means I can get my bullshit straight from the source.

A couple of weeks a go group of teachers from the academy headed to Boryeong for the annual mud festival. Children have got the right idea, mud is fun. Good clean dirty fun. Basically tens of thousands of people flock to this little town to drink and get muddy, cerebral it wasn't, but good for laughs.

This kid couldn't remember where he'd buried his sister. Mud + fireworks + bad punk bands = good weekend.

I'm yet to be convinced that it's not a scam the Korean's thought up over a few rounds of soju one night.

"Hey, you reckon if we pretend it's a festival that we can make foreigners travel for 10 hours just to roll around in some mud?".

"Nah, surely they wouldn't be dumb enough to fall for that..."

Friendship. Keeps you vertical.

Actually, it's kind of inevitable when you can buy a 1.6 litre bottle of beer for a few bucks at any 7/11.

The weekend just gone, we headed out to Itaewon which is where foriegners go to fall down.

Vodka 1, Jacob 0.

Lunacy. Contagious.

Random.

This blog is bought to you by... Be well.