Birthday

So far, it's been a really good birthday though. I received about a dozen pairs of new socks, which are nice, I got some sort of yogurt juice, some acorn juice, a lap blanket, a bag of origami strawberries, a tupperware full of chicken curry, several colorful notes, and one snickers. When I first got to school, my teachers got me a sweet potato cake with candles. They all sang happy birthday and then we ate it together. All my classes have been singing and the students and teachers have been very congratulatory.

Also, you should watch this. It's a 14 part video series from the Editors of Vice Magazine. It's perhaps the only legitimate documentary footage to come out of North Korea in perhaps 50 years. That cannot be overstated. The vice documentary has their crew sneak into the country after bribing officials at a Chinese embassy and they then tour the country. Watch this to understand the bleakness of the country. Remember, 14 parts.
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1438428757

Movies!

Here some some movies that I've taken. They're from varying times and at varying locations. Enjoy.

Tane fighting with a walnut roaster.


Sharks in the Busan Aquarium


After the fireworks festival; in a bar.

Gifts

Yesterday, I received four gifts.
Gift #1
One of my co-teachers made me some curry. I now have it in a Tupperware container in my fridge.

Gift #2
It is getting very cold and student gave me a chemical hand warmer. I'll try to post a picture of it later. On the front is a baby that is sitting on an inflatable duck. The baby appears to be constipated as he looks like he's straining while wringing his hands with toilet paper. There is steam coming out of the duck. The duck is sweating and also looking at a coiled pile of poop.

Gift #3
After lunch, I came back to my desk and found three small oranges sitting there. Delicious.

Gift #4
While riding the subway, a man sparked a conversation with me and I helped him with his English skills. He called me a "bull in a China shop." After telling him the meaning of different words, a traveling salesman came onto the subway. He was dressed like an Asian Michael Jackson Cowboy and was selling black lace gloves. The man I had been talking to bought me a pair of gloves.

Also, as per Danny's suggestion, I taught some of my students CPR. I'm not sure how much info they'll retain or how many lives they'll actually save, but they seemed to enjoy it. I don't have a dummy or a doll, so after explaining all the steps and reviewing with them, I would "die" in front of the classroom and they would have to save me. I would often have to come back to life to guide them to what the next step was. They took videos of me with their cellphones, so I think I may end up on the Korea youtube.

Coincidences

I'm constantly reminded of how small the earth is. My last major experience of this was in a remote village in Africa, I came across someone wearing a Klompen Klassic t-shirt. For those of you who don't know, my hometown has a fun run with the same name every year and gives out t-shirts for the participants. Somehow, one managed to wind it's way out in the middle of no-where 8,000 miles away. That man gave me some kasava roots when I pointed at him and yelled.

Well, similar incidents have been happening in Korea.

Story #1
Before coming here, my mom had told me that she had a nurse friend who had a son here. I had emailed him once and thought nothing of it. A few weeks ago I saw him at a bus stop. It turns out, that this kid from Grinnel lives only 5 minutes from my apartment. In a city of 3.6 million and a country of 27 million, someone lives closer to me than here than if we were at home in America.

Story #2
Several weeks ago, Danny, Tane, and myself went to a scarecrow festival with one of Danny's teachers. While there, we were minor celebrities just because we were the only whities in attendance. So, we were given silly objects and asked to do goofy things and people would clap and take pictures of us.
A few weeks later we went to a fireworks festival. There was special seating for foreignors and we were ushered up to the front and sat down for a while. Some other people crowded around us and we started watching a show. After a little while, the girls next to me start nudging me and show me there camera. I see a picture of myself at the Scarecrow festival which is a 3 hour drive away. So through all that time and distance, they still managed to end up right next to us at an event that had almost a million people attending.

Story #3
My friend Emily came here recently. While still in Minneapolis, the maintenance man at her apartment building told her that his nephew was in the country. I'm sure you can guess what happens next. We decided to have a birthday party for Emily and Danny and we invited a few friends to join us. Danny had been emailing some of them because we hadn't seen them since orientation and they were coming as a surprise. Low and behold, one of them was the nephew that Emily had been told to look for. He was surprised and so was she.

So remember kids, by the law of probability, the unlikely is very likely to happen sometimes.

Fun Facts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox
In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of 23 (or more) randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will both have been born on the same day. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, reaching 100% as the number of people reaches 366.

So, if you have a room full of 23 people, there is a 50% chance that two of them share the same birthday. We did this once in a college math class they had and it worked. One class didn't have any shares and for the other, I and someone else shared a birthday on Nov. 26.

Go Sell Crazy Somewhere Else...

We're all stocked up here.

After Exiting Beomeosa temple this weekend, we were handed a pamphlet by a group of people.

I couldn't read the cover and my co-teacher wasn't sure how to explain it. I was somewhat familiar with "Intelligent Design", and decided to investigate further.

I must admit, the space suits and jump suits had me a bit confused. I wasn't sure what was trying to communicate. I knew of the old show Mork and Mindy, but this scenario didn't seem humorous.

These books looked reassuring. But they really didn't answer my questions; they just led to more. A giant swastika Star of David heading towards the Earth? A double helix playing computer games as a child watches on? What does it all mean?

A colony? This is starting to remind me of an episode of the Simpsons.

Now we've got some faces. This is the prophet, but what does he have to say? Is he better than the contemporaries before him?

If he's authored books like this, then I hope so. I wonder if he and Douglas Adams were friends.

Oh, it's all starting to make sense now.

FYI, it's a Buddhist symbol, not a Nazi symbol. The Buddhist's have been using it for thousands of years while the Nazi's latched onto it for 20 years.

Gracious

It's been a long time since I've posted, but I've become very busy as of late. Two main things have been taking up my time.

This is one. She came to visit for 11 days and we're approaching the tail end.


And this is the other.


Look forward to future topics including: UN War Memorial, Bath Houses, Halloween, the Presidency abroad, the impending cold, DJ Shadow, and many more!

My Address

If you want to send me something, here's my address. A post card, a letter, or whatever. Anything you send will be reciprocated.

Brandon Boat
#209 - 1804. Jeolyoung Apt., Dongsam-dong
Youngdo-gu, Busan Korea.

Fireworks Festival

This past weekend I went to the Fireworks festival at Gwangali beach. It had been played up in my mind for weeks. I had numerous stories from fellow expats and teachers alike. It was a phantasmagoric, though very crowded, spectacle. I'd heard that it would be impossible to escape before 1 am because of the congestion due to attendance. Regardless, I still went. The venerable Mr. Hahm was out front again, he invited us to enjoy the performance in the apartment of one of his friends.

We had a few hours to kill before meeting up with Hahmalammading-dong and walked around on the beach. This photo was at around 5:30 and the show started in at 8:00. It was incredibly crowded. Remember that behind me is the same scene that you see in front of me.


They had a pre-show that had a few singing groups and these performance chefs. There show was like STOMP, but with knives and a tasty end-result.
This was the stage of the performance. All the fireworks were launched off of floating barges or shot from the bridge. It was choreographed by a company from Shanghai.

This is a shot of the crowd below the apartment building that we were in.

Here's a wide shot of the beach and a video of the crowd. Things don't seem very clear in the video though.


Here's us in the apartment enjoying a little snack before the show started. Mr. Hahm is to the left, next to Danny, Tane, and Rie. Everyone else is a friend or member of the photography club.

Now, what follows is several photos of the event and videos of the experience. It was an hour long show and I got most of it. I was going to post several videos but it takes around 20 minutes for each video and I don't want to waste that time. Here's part of the finale and maybe I'll put up the others if I get time. I couldn't get the last one up, it was too big and powerful for the computer to handle.



I have more stuff that I'll try to get up later. Enjoy for now. You can always check out facebook for pictures as well. Excluding you mom.

A Series of Blurbs

Continuing just like last time...

Gym Friends
Tane has made several friends at his current gym. The owners have befriended him and taken him under their wing. They've developed a workout routine and frequently jab him in the stomach saying, "Destroy the grease." They took him out for dinner the other day and it was a great success, so they invited us to do the same last night. I was reluctant at first for a variety of reasons. For one, I've been getting a bit tired of what my teachers call "white privilege." This refers to Koreans that will randomly approach you and perform outlandish favors. This includes paying for your meals, showing you around, and providing generous goods and services to complete strangers. I have yet to pay for a meal for my teachers or anyone else. It's simply impossible. Any attempt to pay the bill is foiled. If you blink, they'll have snatched it from your hands and run off to the counter before you can do anything about. It's nice, and I think it has to do with them showing hospitality. We're guests in their country and they want to be cordial and impress us with their hospitality.

A lot of it is wonderful and people are extremely warm and genial. It really is great to experience these acts of kindness in a foreign land. But I am getting tired of it. Often when riding the subway, people will come up to me to practice their English. This brings out a forced conversation where I have to hear about their favorite TV shows from America. I'm glad people are interested in English enough to approach a stranger and thankful that they're kind to me, but I don't really care. Oh, you've been to America before? So has the man who talked to me on the last train, and the time before that and that. It's just bothersome.

So that's the attitude that I initially went into this dinner with. I assumed that these three gentlemen who were friend with Tane were doofs. Mr. Park is a Presbyterian who is overly enthusiastic about sharing his faith. I was told another was named Master Lee and was some sort of martial arts mystic. I was told the last was a body builder who couldn't speak any English. They all chain smoke too. So I was not particularly excited going into this. I thought about not going since I had to pack up and move the next day, but I decided that I should take all the opportunities I can whether I like it or not. I was wrong about my judgments.

Whale
In talking about the dinner, I thought I would just seperate it into bite sized pieces that are of their own accord. The restaurant we went to was near the gym and was of Japanese style. There were many different dishes in front of us to start out. One of them, was whale. Whale meat comes from Japan and currently existed in a legal gray area that is more than likely illegal. I know it's illegal in Korea, but apparently the restaurant owner knows a smuggler that brings it in. It was prepared sashimi style (raw or hwe), and had a small pile of salt for dipping. The whale itself was odd. The meat was of a black and gray coloration with a large tuft of yellow fat on one end with a small layer of skin. It was very unusual and had a very rich and buttery taste. I'm probably a bad person for enjoying it and perpetrating their hunting, but I've always said that I'd try cannibalism if I got the chance so I'm not going to start splitting hairs here.

Octopus
Another culinary treat we were privy to was live octopus. This is an old fashioned delicacy here. A small octopus is stretched out and it's tentacles are chopped into bites and seasoned with sesame oil and green onions. Once again, it's sort of gruesome dish, but see the above people eating statement for my views on eating curiosity. They set the plates in front of us and the dinner wriggled and crawled around on the platter. When I reached down to select a morsel with my chopsticks, I started a tug-of-war match because it did not want to leave the plate. The little bits of arms gripped the plate and fought to be lifted up. Once I finally freed a piece, I placed it in my mouth to savor the experience. The bit of critter inched across my tongue with its suction cups and latched onto my teeth. I "chom chomed", as they put it, and then swallowed. It's vital that you don't try to eat it whole because it can latch onto the inside of your throat and you'll suffocate. I'm still alive though and if you come to visit me, we'll find you some octopus.

The Boyos
The three gym friends were extremely kind. They took great pains to remember our names and even made a cheat sheet so they could pronounce them correctly and remember them. I was extremely appreciative of that. They did think of some nick names and celebrity look alikes for us. They wondered about my sideburns and thought I looked like Elvis. I don't see the resemblence personally. They called Danny Michelangelo, and later clarified that they meanat Michelangelo's David statue. Is Danny a model of the perfect man? They think so. They said Tane looked like James Dean, but then also called him puny. So I'm not sure what to make of their look-a-like game. They smoked for the whole meal and a great time was had by all.

Mr. Park is a former securities trader and gave us a long talk about the markets. Master Lee appears to be incredibly qualified as a fitness expert. When he first arrived, he examined Danny's back and just from feeling, he discerned that his hips were out of alignment and that one of his shoulders was overdeveloped. He then did several chiropractic techniques at the table. Afterwards he did a long demonstration of take down moves and different fighting styles. He showed us Karate, Taekwando, Tiger style, and many others. Danny was the dummy and Master Lee demonstrated all the different places and ways you could break someones joints and cripple them. They mentioned that they felt blessed to meet us and it did their hearts well to know us. In the end, I can't wait to have dinner with them again. I just hope that I'm able to treat them some day.

30 Second Stories

A lot has happened since I last made a post and I haven't really had time to muse about it. So, I thought I'd cover a lot of topics in little 30 second stories.

Scarecrow Festival
I went with Danny, Tane, Rie, Mr. Hahn, and his photography club the city of Hadong where we went to a scarecrow festival. An entire mountainside has been deemed historically significant and was sealed like a time capsule. New developments are not allowed to be made, but you can see Korea like it used to be. So picture any old timey educational place that you've visited and add some elements of Korea and that's what it was. What was odd, was that we were treated like celebrities. First, we were videotaped eating chestnuts by a TV station. Then, we had a group photo taken with the mayor of the city. Later, we sat on the floor and drank flower tea with several journalist and posed for photos with different newspapers. Then, we received free food and traditional booze from the Provincial politician.

Lantern Festival
After the paparazzi, we drove to a different city for their lantern festival. Traffic was congested and it took us 45 minutes to go 10km. The lanterns were wonderfully elaborate paper constructions of different figures and art that were lit up internally with lots of different colors. It was a gorgeous sight/site. We also toured an ancient castle that repelled an outnumbering Korean invasion. We gave gentle ribbing to our Japanese accompaniment. After, we drove a long way back to Busan and went out for dinner at midnight with Mr. Hahn. He'd never had vodka before, so we poured him a couple drinks. I left at 1 am because I was too tired, but they said that Karaoke afterwards was very fun.

Praying Mantises
I've seen several different praying mantises here, but they've always been squished. They've been of intimidating size at around 3 to 4 inches and always squashed. It doesn't seem to have been by accident because they're always on footpaths and crunched right in the middle.

Turtles
I was walking through the produce section of Gukje market when I spied an unusual cage. While the cage, a bucket with a net, was not unusual the contents were. Inside, I saw five colorful turtles. Unless you're naive, you know what those turtles were doing in the food section. Upon asking the price of these wares, I was informed that they were only 5,000 won. That seemed like a very cheap pet, but I had no means to care for them. I suggested to the group that we chip in and buy them to have our own turtle races. This idea was discussed favorably, but we did not know what to do with them afterwards.

Books
I recently grabbed some boks from a nice English language section. They have all the classics, basically anything without a copyright, and some of the more popular current items. I picked up a couple of nuggest because I found them really cheap. I grabbed Nabakov's Glory, Don Quixote, World War Z, and a drink mixing guide that I thought was only 5,000. It turns out it was 15,000 and just had the one scratched off the price tag. I also found a Time Magazine in a convenience store. I bought it because I was desperate for reading some print news. I usually just read online. I don't think I'll buy it again though because it was 7,000. That's not worth the price of news.

Apartment
I'm going to be moving into my new apartment tomorrow. I just need to seperate the trash in my place and they'll do everything else. They'll move the furniture, take all the dishes out my cupboards, and they have a mobile refrigerator to keep my contents cold while they move. It sounds fairly easy, but I need to bring all my valuables and money to school because they might swipe them. Hopefully, I'll find myself in my new apartment safe and sound tomorrow.

More later.