5.) What a ride...

So it has been a week since Kyle and I took a trip out to a small town called Gangcheon, and I figured it was about time that I come clean regarding the whole experience, especially the part where I flew off a scooter and down a short hillside, banging up my big toe pretty bad but not suffering too many other ailments, and although the scooter was not quite as fortunate, this is just the 'attention grabbing' part of the entry so you will have to read the whole story if you really wanna find out what happened.

So some friends of mine (whom Kyle so elegantly described in his entry, but whom i will choose to refer to as former coworkers) took a trip a few months ago to this town on the far outskirts of Seoul, about 3 hours from the city center, where they rented motor scooters for the day and rode around in the mountains and by the river. Ever since they told me about it, I've wanted to go. And since Kyle had a few days off last week for summer vacation, we finally made it happen.
[This is the area of the river directly under the train tracks, where many people camped, fished, grilled, swam, and jumped 4-wheelers off dirt ramps.]

We headed out on the subway, and had to transfer several times before arriving, including one above-ground train that was pretty packed, and on which you needed tickets to be able to sit in an actual seat. We had not known that, so we got there a bit late, and had to take whatever tickets were left over. The experience somewhat reminded me of what it must have been like when settlers would move into a new area; everyone just kind of marks their territory, but that territory cannot be either too large (for it will be invaded by other and you will, doubtless, end up with far less space than your greedy heart had so eagerly sought after in the beginning) or you will simply miss the opportunity to stake any sort of territory, and then just about be completely screwed, or, to be a little less crass and a wee bit proverbial, up a creek without a paddle (which, by the way, is the partial title of a very good movie that I would suggest to any guy who enjoys the great outdoors).

Needless to say, I tried to be careful and selective when I placed myself in position in the train. Perhaps I was a little greedy or wishfully thinking, or you could say I was optimistic or shooting for the top and ambitious. Nevertheless, I saw a prime target, and moved in to stand my ground; a set of seats facing each other with 5 kids sitting together, playing, and sharing the 4 seats. I figured that they were sure to be curious of a funny looking white guy standing nearby, and that could potentially open up into giving way to my snagging of prime real estate.

And I was right. Within a few minutes of leaving the station I was pulling some pretty good glances and not a few stares from these kids. Then came the real treat, the one thing that never gets old here in Korea, something that I hope I never have to go a day without hearing (if my enthusiasm seems a bit over-the-top, so to speak, or mildly sarcastic, then you are a perceptive reader and are the desired type of audience that I want reading this particular section). The kids started with a polite "Hi. Howareyou. Nicetomeetyou." that progressed, not slowly, into an impolite version, matched with an increased boldness from a few of them, due to the fact that I hadn't totally disregarded them and had been, in fact, relatively cordial (after all, they were the primary holders of something that I dearly desired: wonderful seats) to begin hitting me with each phrase that was uttered. That wasn't too welcomed, but since that particular behavior came from one specific little meat head, I handled it with a few quick words, and then the youngsters peers did the rest, and took the necessary steps to so socially ostracize the brute, infant though he was, and reduce him to a crying mass that proceeded to seek out the arms of his mother, thus freeing up one body of the 5 that had occupied the 4 seats; therefore making me one step close to my goal.

It was actually quite interesting to see how social justice was served among the five youths. It seemed as though there were some unofficial code of behavior that, if challenged or broken, led to the others slapping/kicking/pushing/yelling at the one guilty of the infraction. And even more intriguing than the behavior of the group itself was the passive and accepted manner by which such 'justice' was received. Whoever the perpetrator, which varied along the ride as the activities ranged from yelling at the foreigner, to playing rock/paper/scissors, to jumping around a little too rowdy for the others' liking, simply accepted that which was dealt him or her, and then life continued more or less as it had prior to the social infraction (very interesting series of events to observe from a control group with a median age of probably four).

They were, in actuality, not the little monsters that may have been perceived from the aforewritten description, save for that one little Tasmanian devil, who, although he was the youngest of the group and probably only three, I could easily picture him as one of the 60-year-old ajushis (Korean old men) that roam the post-midnight streets, drunk, fighting their friends, and overall simply looking for mischief that they can claim in the morning was due to the blasted national alcohol of choice: soju (which is similar to vodka, packing quite a punch, and yet costing a mere $1.20 for a 12oz. bottle~ a drink that can probably be proven to represent a causal variable with a high correlation to many of the drunken disturbances that occur in Korea between the hours of 10pm and 5am, which are quite numerous).

Nevertheless, the kids were pretty cute, and some of they were really fun to play with, although they spoke no English, except for the three phrases that Korean children are born possessing knowledge of but no understanding as to how, when, and why to use them: Hi. How are you? Nice to meet you. What ended up happening, is I got a big tired and squatted down to the floor, a move that I should have thought of much earlier, for as soon as I did so, the kids jumped up, and in Korean said "No, come sit here!" They were pretty insistent, so I obliged, and spent the remainder of the trip playing fun Korean games, in which the consequence of losing is everyone else getting to inflict physical harm in some way, including, but not limited to, punching, slapping, pinching, spanking, elbowing in the back (not an overstatement, and one of my personal favorites), and the ever-so-popular banishment from the game.
[A few of the kids waving at me once they had disembarked]

Meanwhile, Kyle, who had fallen into the second category described above, perhaps in order to overcome the frustration of a couple practically sitting in his lap on the steps between cars, met some guys who helped us find our stop and made sure we got off ok.

When we got to the town, we didn't really know where to go, so we just started walking down the main, and pretty much only street in the town. We soon come across many little shops set up on the roadside with bicycles, scooters and ATVs for rent. We kept walking, and then stopped to have lunch. While eating, a guy came in and asked if we spoke Korean to order... so I looked at him with a look of half, curiosity, quarter disgust, and another quarter of actually interest. That was my response for two main reasons. First, anyone can point at a picture menu, especially since we had established that we were teachers. And second, people don't come out of nowhere and just try to help you, at least not in the way this guy approached us. Anyway, we soon found out that he worked at the rental shop next to the restaurant, and this was probably his routine whenever he saw foreigners eating. Anyway, it wasn't a big deal, just another form of special treatment/annoying/bigoted behavior that almost all white people experience in Korea, and we ended up renting scooters from him when we had finished eating.

The rental process still sounds absurd when I reflect on it a week later. We established a price, signed a piece of paper, gave one ID card, picked our scooters, and that was it. There were no questions as to our riding ability, or even our knowledge of two-wheeled, motorized vehicles. Kyle received some instruction about how to work his, but I was handed a helmet, some gas money and given a wave of farewell. Let's just say that particular move on the shop manager's part is not one that will go into his book of 'best decisions ever made.'
[Kyle, looking courageous.]

We started off ok, but as I had never ridden a scooter, it was a bit shaky. But they are pretty basic, so off we went. First to the gas station, where Kyle almost ran into a parked truck, but applied the brakes in time to turn that event into nothing more than a sly smile turned back in my direction, and then on down the road. We soon discovered that Kyle's scooter, while a bit faster than mine, liked to stall a lot. We kept going for a while until it became such a nuisance that we turned around to exchange it for another one. So I was just leisurely riding down the road when I looked back and saw Kyle nowhere in sight. So I pulled over and waited. After a bit I concluded that either his scooter had stalled again and he may or may not need help, or that he had crashed and definitely needed help, both of which were completely legitimate considering both the equipment and the operators of such equipment.

Where I had pulled over, which is worthy of note, was on the road alongside a river on the left and a mountain on the right, and was just past a cured in the road. So as I prepared to 'pull a U-ie,' I was aware of the need to be hasty, so as to miss any oncoming cars. So I found my gap, and hit it, figuratively and literally. One of the things that I had not yet become accustomed to about scooters is that turning has a lot more to do with leaning that actually turning the handlebars. And this particular event served as a 'crash-course' for learning that lesson.

At first it looked like I was headed straight over what looked like a small cliff, but was in actuality a relatively steep hill piled with boulders, long grass (hiding more boulders), and trash. But I righted myself and tried again. That time I cleared a head-on plunge, but still was cutting it too close, or not cutting enough, depending on how you look at it. So in an effort to adjust, I twisted the throttle and turned the wheel. However, that produced exactly the effect briefly addressed above: the scooter went in the direction I was leaning, which happened to be pretty much directly straight, thus hurtling me toward imminent doom, also know as the not so friendly embankment described earlier.
[This is the part of the river that I landed near when I was catapulted off the road above.]

There were, thankfully, thick, concrete guard posts along the edge, preventing my scooter from going over the edge, but not, however, preventing me from going over. So I was ejected from my seat when my fully throttled scooter smacked the guard post rather indirectly on the handlebars and speedometer/odometer. I landed several meters away, vertically and horizontally, and continued a quick decent down a very rocky hillside. When I came to a stop, I heard lots of people shouting to look, and I, as unashamedly as possible, climbed back up the hill, picked up the scooter and a few of the pieces I could find of it in the main vicinity in a short amount of time, and I headed back down the road, where I promptly met Kyle coming back in the opposite direction.

The damage was not anywhere near as much as one would typically imagine or as much as I feared, nor was it, as I later found out, the first time such a thing had happened to that particular scooter. It was, in fact, fairly mendable, at first by just tying it up with a piece of plastic strap that I found on the road, and later with an $.85 roll of electrical tape I bought when we stopped for some refreshment. Most of the damage it seemed, at least at the time, had been to my big toe, the only part of me that really felt pain directly, although it caused quite an extensive pain in my head, another of those wonderful messages possible to be sent thanks to the wonderful human nervous system. The pain has since subsided, although there are some mind twinges of pain every now and again, but the fear of a break is no longer an everyday occupation of my cognition.
[This is some of the scenery along the road, and also the place where I stopped to "right the wrong" done to my moped.]

But the experience did teach me a lesson, although it might not be the lesson one would expect me to learn, or the one I bet my mother would desire me to learn either. What I learned was that when renting some sort of motorized vehicle of which I have no former experience and only limited knowledge, act to the vendors as if you're an expert, give the most basic if not faulty information, and always change the subject when returning the machinery, and if possible, when explaining the events and the outcomes/damages (which is tempting to avoid completely, but has many reasons for rendering, both carnal and moral) try to play off the vendors weaknesses to distract him, such as talking in fast and complicated English, for if he feels uncomfortable he will most likely want to get out of that situation more than you do, or perhaps more than he thinks you do. Sound like sage advice? I think so, although it's slightly (if not heavily) amoral.

The rest of the day was filled with us riding around the rural area around the river. There were rice patties, old houses, and little roads alongside small streams that led into the river. There was also a university that was built on a hill, which provided some pretty fun entertainment as we rode our scooters around the campus. Overall, the scooter experience was quite enjoyable, and something I'd recommend and also be willing to do again.
[Since we were given only minor instructions of where we could and could not go, we wandered away from most of the developed town with shops and people and found ourselves in a slightly run-down residential area among the rice fields.]

As alluded to above, I told the guy at the shop about the problem with the speedometer, but he seemed like he already knew about it having problems (hence the electrical tape that I found already on it after my little incident, which gave me the initial idea for my own quick fix) and he acted like he wanted me to forget about it, presumably because I could have gotten upset that he lent me faulty equipment in the first place. So it worked out for everyone. And then Kyle and I returned to the train station, where we had already purchased tickets to ensure no more unwanted seating adventures.

4.) Field Trip

So last week was my first field trip with the school kids I started teaching at Kyle's English institute. As far as an itinerary or organization for the day, the owner of the school just said, "So you're going to Insa-dong, right? Try to be back around one o'clock." So I took my two students, and headed out.

First, we had to ride on the subway for 40 min, which was an interesting experience. I get a ton of strange looks when I'm walking around by myself, so just imagine the way people stop, gawk, stare, whisper, smile, and do various other things when they see me with two young Korean kids under my wing. Looks from people were further encouraged when Ace and Jessica, my two students, opted to stand instead of sit (an option that later in the day I vetoed). Ace, a 10-year-old who speaks to me mainly in Korean, causing no shortage of confusion on both our parts, is charismatic and full of energy, and yet very small, so he gets worn out quickly. That being said, on the subway he decided, since he could barely reach the handle-rings hanging from the ceiling while standing, 'why stand at all?'. So he proceeded to swing like a gymnast for the majority of the 40-minute trip. As for my prevention of a "scene," I had already deemed that impossible, and since the school seems to stress the point that 'as long as the kids have fun, they can do whatever they want,' I opted to simply sit back and enjoy the gymnastics show.

One more thing that the school's director failed to establish before we left was where exactly we were to go. And since I've only been to that area of Seoul three times, or so, we got a bit lost at first. Not lost as in we couldn't find our way, but I just couldn't remember how to get to the fun part of the city with lots of traditional shops and restaurants. So we walked around in front of car repair shops and back alleys for a little while before I finally righted my sense of direction and stumbled upon the area I was looking for.

At one point, when we had later stopped and took a break from walking because Ace was pretty worn out from the walking and his previous ring routine, an old woman stopped and talked to Ace and Jessica. Well "yelled" is probably a better choice word. When I asked what she said, although I had a pretty good idea based on my own experience and the stories of other teachers, Jessica shyly refrained from answering my question. Apparently, although practically everybody in Korea admires America for some reason or another, many seem to think that close contact will somehow taint one's culture, purity, or whatever. So the kids got a firm talking to about associating with a foreigner, to which I felt pretty bad for their sake, considering that even if they wanted to change it, they were stuck with me.


Based on the old woman's actions, gestures, and tone, I guess that she was telling the kids not to be close to me... little did she know that I was solely responsible for their survival that day (a pretty hefty responsibility, when you stop to think about it, and a albeit a little absurd, especially considering that I had just met the kids two days prior, and the school really had no real knowledge of my credentials before they shipped two students out the door with me.) Anyway, Jessica was visibly disturbed by her encounter with the old woman, but that wore off quickly, as I think is the case with most Korea children in relation to those people two generations before them.

To Ace, however, the trauma of the situation seemed completely ignored or unperceived, mainly because Ace was busy playing in puddles and splashing dirty water in his face to "wash" and cool down, which by itself garnered some, I suppose well deserved, looks from people passing by, looking for the guardian of this child, who was doing something extremely undignified. (Koreas have some sort of taboo about water... it's weird, but I haven't come to enough of an understanding about it to really expound in detail, so that will have to wait.)

A brief note about Old People: It seems like the old people in this country are treated quite well, and tolerated even when doing rather absurd things (which is very often the case, with examples ranging from loud grunts in crowded, otherwise quiet public places, to cutting you off in line, no matter where you are, to physically assaulting/handling someone, which will be discussed in greater detail later in this post), which is interesting, because that is not based on the older generation's contribution to the country's economic status, for that has been mainly developed by the middle-aged population. So I can only hypothesize, at the time being, that this extreme tolerance is simply due to the respect-based culture so prevalent here.

The day was a very interesting study of the personalities of the two students with whom I spent over five hours that day. Jessica, a cute, happy, and yet reserved young girl is slightly older than Ace (she's 11) and her English is quite good, so she takes it upon herself to translate for Ace when his mind is off in wonderland somewhere and he doesn't catch an instruction that I give him. Ace, of whom I'm pretty sure you have already constructed a pretty good mental picture based on his antics described above, is a very fun student, and I don't remember ever getting upset that he only responded to my questions and comments in Korean.

Another interesting note is that for these field trips the students receive all of their money for the day from their parents, so I have no idea how much they've been given or how they are expected to spend it. And from the instructions I received, mainly through what Kyle was told when he took some field trips, was to let the kids do what they want with their money. So I did. So when we stopped to look at some trinkets and Ace wanted to buy some, I didn't give much attention to it, after all, it was only a few bucks. Afterwards, I found out from my translator, Jessica, that Ace had spent all but $2 of his money, and we still hadn't eaten yet. Even so, he was not concerned, he just looked at me and said, "I'll just eat water."

Now if by now you are questioning my potential parenting skills, don't worry, I'm pretty much just taking advantage of the opportunity to see how a more liberalized form of guidance works. It's kind of like an experiment, with real people in the real world, something that most social scientists theorize about but can rarely put into personal practice. So it's kinda fun, and I still bought Ace some lunch, so he didn't collapse on the way home, even though that caused some irregular variables in my little experiment.

We walked around for a while and looked at cool little shops, and then we stopped for some traditional Korean food. Next we went out for ice cream, and then wandered our way back to the subway station to head home. Once we got to the subway station, both of the kids needed to use the bathroom, so I waited outside before I decided that I had better go too. As I walked into the men's room, I saw Ace coming out, not looking concerned but rather confused, with an old man's arm wrapped around his neck. I stepped in to see what was happening. It was pretty much just another case of what I guess I can call KOPGWA ("Korean old people gone wild, again"). Most old people seem to think that the country is their playground, and that all children are their toys. I've seen an old man, otherwise strange and a bit creepy, walk up to a mom with her two-year-old and start picking up the kid, playing with it like he was its grandparent, and finally ended up giving it several little swats on the butt. Personally, I wanted to say something like "hey, old man river, knock it off or I’ll do some swatting of my own," which looked along the lines of what the mother was thinking, although I'm pretty sure she was more concerned with her child's well-being to with thinking of any witty comment.

Anyway, the experience with Ace was not much different. They old man seemed to want Ace to leave the restroom with him - for what reason, I don't know, and since I'm pretty sure that either I wouldn't understand the Korean words Ace would use to explain or that Ace wouldn't really have even less of a clue as to what was going on. Anyway, I pulled him away from the old man, and took him back into the bathroom with me, and told him to wait where I could see him. I then proceeded to a urinal to take care of my own call of the wild. Whilst standing there, besides the obvious events that took place, two other things seemed to happen simultaneously. One, Ace abandoned his post for more interesting territory and began checking out the condom machine affixed to the wall, and two, an old man came up to use a urinal two places down from me, only to scoot one closer, and then lean over to make sure my mechanics were all working appropriately.

Subsequently, I had a response for each occurrence, as well as the auto-pilot employed in my personal endeavors in the 'little boys room.' Regarding Ace and his curiosity, 'how am I supposed to drag him away from there without striking more interest into his mind while also not opening him up for another encounter with a perverted old man in the Insa-dong public toilet?' And regarding the old man who was too busy scamming for a peek of Chip Jr. that I'm pretty sure he was missing his wall-mounted porcelain liquid receptacle, "do I slap him? and if so, with what?" Suffice it to say, we made it out of there alive, Ace and I both with a little less dignity than with which we entered, but alive nonetheless. And then we proceeded home, without any further encounters with KOPGWA's.

Overall, the field trip was great. I got to hang out with two really fun kids, walk around the city, see how people respond when they see a young, white guardian of two Korean kids, eat some good food, and get paid for it all at the same time. I seriously don't know if there is a much better job to have, at least in the short run.