In Which a Seal's Penis is Ingested

This is reposted from my friend Tane's Blog. I have it linked on the right hand side of this and if you're craving more information about our experience in Korea, give him a read. He is somewhat of a journalist, so the quality is top notch.

"For men in Korea, sexual power is a big deal.
Perhaps I should clarify.
For men, sexual power is a big deal.
No, still not totally accurate. Let's try this...
For the living anywhere on Earth, sexual power is a big deal.

The difference in Korea is that men talk about it openly and have a plethora of secrets to increase said power. Nearly anything you ingest that remotely resembles a phallus is supposed to charge up your loins, including eel, sea slugs and dog. (Yes they eat dog here... and if you eat pig, cow or rabbit I don't want to hear about the horror of eating 'man's best friend').

Last weekend I might have had the ultimate in sexual-power elixir. At a holiday party for some members of my gym, my friend Master Lee brought a special bottle of the traditional Korean liquor, soju. This massive vial of soju held a male seal's genitalia, supposedly infusing the drink with near magical sexual energy. This picture was taken after we'd finished about half the canister.

And getting this wasn't cheap. Apparently this one seal-unit infused tube of soju cost about $2500, which we figured made each shot about $75. This was a rare luxury I was really lucky to be able to try; most of the Koreans at the party admitted they'd never had the opportunity to try such a drink before.

It was about the best tasting soju I've had; it was incredibly smooth and easy to drink. But I didn't suddenly feel like a bunny in spring time, nor did women flock to me as I walked home.

As for the leftover seal parts, Master Lee is planning to refill the canister with more soju and let it absorb the remaining energies for next year. If you're interested, drop by my gym and mention my name... maybe the folks there will invite you to next year's uniquely Korean holiday party."

Spices UPDATED!

Christmas rolled around and I received a rather nice gift from Emily. My spice collection is now approaching respectability thanks to her and some heavy searching in the city.

I apologize if someone has something currently in transit that is similar or duplicate, but I feel the more the merrier. I will gladly make use of it. :D

Spices Requested
Cumin - Check
Chili Powder - Check
Cayenne Pepper
Paprika - Check
Old Bay Seasoning
Fish Rub
Lemon Pepper - Check
Garlic Salt - Check
Garlic Powder - Check
Cilantro - Check
Mrs. Dash in just about any form
A lime (Though highly unlikely/wrong, I would love you for this. I don't know if it would work or survive, but I would be ever most gracious if it works.)

Christ and Punishment (Get it?)

Merry Christmas to you, as I'm typing this the holiday is just puttering out for you. I had a rather nice holiday. Danny, Rie, and I went to the batting cages and hit some baseballs for a while. Next, we went to the arcade, but left when we saw that Peter was there. (Peter is a Korean who tried to be our friend. He is emotionless and annoying. So, we passively avoid him.) We then went shopping at Home Plus, bought some ingredients and made one helluva vegetarian chili. It was quite delicious. All we were missing was cumin, garbanzo beans, and jalapeno peppers. Tane arrived when we started making it. He told us about the Church service we went to, he let us in on the secret, and then we ate Chili. Forgoing the normal holiday classics, we enjoyed our chili with Scrooged, and Champagne courtesy of Tane's parents. Thanks for the stockings you two! And now for something completely different.

Punishment
Korea is a rather odd country in terms of how students are disciplined. Many practices that are common here would lead to rampant firing and high class lawsuits in America. Corporal punishment was officially banned by legal decree several years ago, but its use is still widespread. I felt uneasy during orientation when I was told that it still occurs. I felt that I could not take the sight of adults hitting children with switches.

Upon arriving at school, I soon realized how prevalent and integral it was to the education system here. Every teacher has a small arsenal of different implements to use when doling out punishment. Some sticks are meant to look intimidating, some are meant to make scary *Thwaking* sounds, and others try to increase the damage area. Not every teacher practices these methods, but I'd only need one hand to count them.

All of the punishments are not carried out with weapons. Many of them involve putting students in stress positions or making them do calisthenics. Students that are late each morning are corralled and forced to stand at the entrance gate of the school and do squats as their peers trickle in to join them. The stress positions involve students sitting on their knees for long periods of time writing the same lines over and over and over for as long as an hour. Other punishments involve relocating your desk to the hallway outside of the teachers office. This cold drafty hallway is spent in near isolation except for the transition time and those using it for access.

At first, all these practices shocked me, seeing them over and over again. Occasionally hearing yells and screams from the hallway was very unnerving. But now, I don't seem to notice or even mind. Seeing a student get his ear tweaked or receive a short noogie seems in order in some cases. What do you do with a student who yells during class, punches to person sitting next to him, or tells the teacher, "Fuck you." Here, you'll get a slap on the wrist or you'll spend a lot of time in the hall to think about what you've done.

The main idea in all of these cases is applying negative reinforcement. It's simple psychology. You reward good behavior with praise and bad behavior with punishment. Both need to be an appropriate level of stimulus as you wouldn't buy a student a new car getting an A or burn down the house of a student who burped in front of you. So what is appropriate here? I started thinking about this today because of this news article that I read. It also brought to light two older articles.

http://koreabeat.com/?p=3286
"Sixth-grade Seoul English teacher Kim Yeong-hwa has written a book about the trials Korean teachers are now facing because of the impossibility of imposing corporal punishment. Apparently she doesn’t read the newspaper; corporal punishment keeps getting banned because teachers keep using it in ever-more creative ways."

The other articles that are referenced are stories on punishment. One of them is about a day-care center that punished children by stripping them naked and locking them out on the fire escape for 10-15 minutes. This is abhorrent and may seem barbaric of Koreans, but it's not anything different than from what can be found in the US. In fact, I'd wager that the US has far more cases such as this that are even more extreme.

For example, a current practice in place in US prisons and schools is the isolation room. These have been around for a while and don't seem to be going away. Isolation is an interrogation method used that's designed to break down the mind. It's designed to disassociate you from the outside world and break down your thought patterns. They are especially cruel to those with mental handicaps as even shown in Iowa. Many of these "tombs" have been green lighted as okay, but child psychologists have given strict recommendations and requirements that make the use of these okay, such as constant supervision, wall padding, and discretion that the punishment is used appropriately. Many times these guidelines are not followed.

How are guidelines like these made and how should they be enforced? Voluntary enforcement only works if people have a good sense of of morality or are trapped in the panopticon. As reported here, educators are still grappling with this issue even though it has finalized as law over a decade ago.

"In the future, principals at schools involved in corporal punishment-related incidents must make immediate reports to the appropriate board of education.The Seoul Office of Education announced on the 5th that it plans to implement a system to punish teachers, principals, and other educators who have been concealing such cases rather than quickly reporting them as required.

The Office also plans to conduct inspections through the end of the year on the regulations at individual schools regarding corporal punishment and hairstyles.

The inspections are intended to discover and ameliorate cases of violations of students’ rights. The inspection committee will be made up of educators experienced in guidance counseling as well as human rights experts.

Corporal punishment regulations will be inspected to see whether the rules are being observed, what the reaction would be of school committee members to creating or revising the rules, whether there have been cases of corporal punishment, and how such cases ought to be handled. Hair regulations will be investigated to see whether they are used in the most limited degree necessary for educational purposes, whether students’ opinions have been taken into account, whether the regulations are appropriate and can be applied at the actual time, and whether there are forcible haircuts."

I wouldn't hold my breath over this issue. It doesn't seem like it will be resolved anytime soon. I do wonder though how this is affecting people though. I've read that Child psychologists demarcate the line between punishment and abuse with the use of an object. If a parent strikes a child with an object, it's considered abuse. If they're spanked with the hand or scolded in some manner short of punching, then it's not. I wonder what sort of long term affects all of this punishment has on the students if any. When I see them get punished, they bounce back really quickly and just take the punishment as any old thing. I wouldn't guess that they're developing a psychological victim complex that will affect their upbringing into adult hood, but I don't know. I've prattled on for too long now, tell me what you think.

Sickness

Yesterday, I got home at around 1 am and after getting ready for bed, I vomited for the next 8 hours. That storm has seemingly passed, but I still have a 101 degree fever. I've been laying around all day and have been sleeping an hour or two at a time throughout the day. I clawed my way out of the apartment and managed to get some Gatorade, crackers, and some knock-off Sprite.

Last night, I ate almost continuously from 6:30pm until 12:00. We went to a Christmas dinner sponsored by our recruiting agency. That was a several course meal that lasted for sometime. Then, we went over to Soemyeon, because our friend, Rie, from Japan is in town. She had prepared a lot of different Japanese food that I ate as well. We sampled 4 different types of Japanese liquors and then went home at 12:30. I started to feel sick in the cab, but thought it was just due to heat. This was not the case however. I hope that I recover.

Christmas Lessons

For the next week, I'm going to be teaching the children about Christmas in America. I've been going over simple customs that are done in America. I also present different things that my family does. With the help of my mom, I've dug out a lot of different Christmas pictures from the distant past to show the students. I'll post them later.

I've also been explaining the difference between Santa Claus and Sinterklaas. For those who need a little refresher, the esteemed David Sedaris has kindly provided a lecture on the subject, entitled, "Six to Eight Black Men."

Here's what I did on Saturday

First I climbed a Mountain. As seen here from the road near my apartment.


I went with these people. Danny and the family of one of his teachers. Husband, wife, and two middle school girls.


Not quite the top, but its close.


That's the other half of the island.

This is where I used to live. Of all those similar looking apartment buildings, I lived in the top left one.


This is my general neighborhood. I live in the building directly behind that large red roof in the center.


Here's a fussy little critter I managed to snap a photo of.


Here's a very sweaty me at the top. Notice the chest sweat.


Here's the opposite side of where I live on the island. It's the over half of Youngdo-gu and just across those bridges is Nampo-dong where we spend a lot of our time. This is only a small section of the city. Much more of it is to the left, right, and behind those mountains.


This is an abandonded school that we walked past.


Then we went to a restaurant along the coast of Taejeongadae.


This is what was on the menu. Those are all filled with critters. Click to see a larger picture.


The appetizer.


Our little grill to cook food. But what kind of food?


Ah, splendiferous shellfish garnished with vegetables and spices allready.


How did we cook that? Watch this video.


It ended up like this. We grilled shrimp, used the shells as little plates, and dumped all the hodge-podge into the tray to stew together.


We'd cut the little muslces and stire them around.


Later, we received a large plate of different types of raw seafood. A video below will show you what's so special about it.


Up close and still slimy.


Watch and relish what you're missing.




One last video of what our food was.


Here's a door behind Danny's apartment. It's just a free standing door with no wall. I just don't understand.


Later, I went to the market. I think you can guess what's going to happen here.


I found a shirt for Nick Rempe.

Horse Fighting

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=7w0Q-JS9RME

From the description:
"June 1999
A fighting ring, a mare on heat and two stallions fighting to the death. It's the new and popular South Korean sport of horse fighting.

On an island where horses are usually traded for meat and medicine few are sentimental about watching the proud animals fight. Promoter Kim Byong denies the sport is cruel "Horsefighting simply brings out that basic instinct in an animal," he says. In the midst of the cheering crowd the stallions rear and kick to win the mare. They are awarded marks for the number of bites and kicks they land on their opponent. Weaker horses are occasionally killed. The organisers are hoping the sport will catch on with tourists. And if the spectacle of the fighting fails to draw them there's always the celebratory horsemeat barbecue to follow."

I've heard nothing about this since coming here and doesn't seem like it's a mainstream activity. I would assume it has it's place in bear baiting, cock fighting, or dog fighting like in the Middle East and America. It doesn't seem to have caught on very well.

Slides

Shamelessly stealing this from Brian at http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/ I don't know him, but I found this interesting and would like to give him credit for it.

"Korea Beat has been covering slides lately. They're actually emergency exits used at preschools, although I admit that when I first saw them fixed to the sides of 유치원s I thought they were for fun. Anyway, playing around Naver I found a few awesome ones, too.








"

Thanks

I just realized, that every morning the principal walks through the teachers office thanking everyone for coming that day. He always says, "Good morning" to me, but he said something different to the teachers. While reading through my book, I came across the phrase 고맙습니다 or komapsumnida, the polite way to say "Thank You." So he individually thanks all the teachers each morning. Interesting.

Spare Time

I've got quite a bit of spare time at the moment. The end of term exams are next week and my co-teachers have requested that I don't come to my classes. They want my time to teach the students more of the textbook before testing time next week. This means that my work time this week is virtually zero. I do still have my 9th grade classes, but that's little more than babysitting. They took their final exams a month ago and are just hanging out until then. They do have a school wide dance competition that they're preparing for, so sometimes I watch them work on choreography. The rest of the time is spent teaching them card games or CPR. I've also been showing them movies with English subtitles. They don't really like that and the class degenerates in chaos occasionally, but there's not too many alternatives because they will do everything in their power not to learn.

I've heard that the President recently became an outspoken critic of showing movies because they lack lots of education merit. I agree whole heatedly. I've shown the Disney film Pocahontas to one of my classes and for the most part it's a terrible film. It's disservice to call it a historical film or even one that has it's roots in history. It's a romanticized version that's full of distortions and out right lies. Quick history lesson: The people that came over to Jamestown were largely idealists and layabouts who did everything in their power not to work. They spent most of their time bowling in the palisade square. Thus, many people starved to death. Later, they would go on Indian raiding parties and despite starving to death, they would burn the Indians crops and food supplies and run off, not taking any of it. John Smith, a hard ass, comes around and starts putting people in the stocks and whipping people raw to enforce discipline in order. He's "saved" by a prepubescent Pocahontas who later marries some rich doof and she moves to England to become a spokeswoman for big tobacco; shilling lung cancer to anyone who will listen.

So, why show it? It's full of catchy songs, has cute animals that run around, a talking tree, adventure, and will give the kids the most trivial understanding of American society which is more than they'd get if I tried to force them to watch a more accurate historical documentary. Tane says showing them Finding Nemo was successful. Perhaps I'll do that tomorrow.

Also, if you're feeling generous, I am in the need of different spices. I've started cooking a lot more and feel primarily limited by the amount of dried herbs I have to sprinkle. I made roasted tomato soup last night with as many fresh ingredients as I had. I was able to buy 4lbs of tomatoes for around $2.50 and whipped everything together. I'd like to branch out and make more dishes if possible, and here's where you come in. I'm not sure about legality of shipping dried goods (whether or not they'd get through customs), but I did receive some Gouda cheese from my grandmother and I know that's surely banned. Spices are cheap and so is postage. The way I would go about doing it is putting the container in a manila envelope and just fold it up. With the cost of the spice, shipping this can't be more than $5. If you send me something, I'll send you something in kind.

Spices Requested
Cumin
Chili Powder
Cayenne Pepper
Paprika
Old Bay Seasoning
Fish Rub
Lemon Pepper
Garlic Salt
Garlic Powder
Cilantro
Mrs. Dash in just about any form
A lime (Though highly unlikely/wrong, I would love you for this. I don't know if it would work or survive, but I would be ever most gracious if it works.)

If you want, I can even send you Asian spices that you are unable to conveniently locate. Just include your request in my package. I can also send you something that's a surprise that you may not know that you like. Trust me, I won't send you anything bad or disgusting. I will, in fact, send you something most palatable and delicious.