2 More Weeks Until Seoul

Finally, something worth posting about on this neglected and long-forgotten blog: The author is going back to the land of live octopus lunches and cheap haircuts! That's right, he's returning like a long over-due library book. What's a library? Moving on... After almost six months of sitting on his butt, perfecting the art of doing okay at Starcraft 2, walking the dogs, going to the gym, and drinking copious amounts of delicious, finely crafted American beer, he in fact, is going back (feel free to send beer). This year the loquacious language instructor will be tucked away in a corner of Gwangjin-gu, Seoul somwhere over near the Han River making millions of Won every month.

Fun Fact #1: My cousin, Geoff, was just in Cairo studying Arabic-- as of the end of the month, he'll be in Seoul actually.  Not sure why Cairo didn't work out...

Fun Fact #2: I miss kimchi something bad.

Anyway, here are some more photos from my trip around Thailand, Philippines and Hawaii:

Poker in Cebu City/Mandaue, Philippines. Derren (left side) had the table made. Pretty sweet.

Sunset at Boracay, Philippines.

Maui.

Crater on Mt. Haleakala, Maui (or was it Mars...).

Spices in Thailand.

Bangkok Airport, Thailand.

Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Magellan's Cross, Mandaue Philippines. He really put it there-- then he died of a spear to the body.

3 Months or so Since My Last Post

If you really want to know about Thailand, the Philippines or Maui then come find me. Let's have a beer and I'll tell you some wild stories. Other than that I don't really want to delve into that right now. You should know that Diana and I had a great time in Thailand, I was never robbed once the whole trip except by taxis drivers and their ilk, and ate awesome things. I'll throw some photos on after this post.

Next item on the agenda AND the most important. I AM TRYING TO GO BACK TO KOREA. I use all caps to definitely get your attention if you are reading this. One, I need a job. Does anyone know any good leads? Anyone have something maybe in March that is open?

I am ready to go back but I have a small PROBLEM: I am waiting for the delightful FBI to get my my clean background check back to me so then I can have another government agency put apostille stamps on it (like a notarization) and then be FULLY eligible for another position in Korea. So if anyone at the FBI reads this or anyone who is familiar with the process, do you know what's up? It says up to 4 months but that has to be a joke. But then again I've been waiting for several months now and am learning that I hope its the truth because I'm beginning to suspect a dog ate it and I'll never get it back.

So if you know about those two things please hit me up at: sidebyrnes@gmail.com PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

Now some photos:

Penang Curry Me in the Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Airport

Old temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Cooking class with Diana in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Riding Elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Pineapple Crab Curry, our favorite, in Phuket, Thailand.

Diana enjoying a Thai ice tea in Phuket, Thailand.

On the ferry into Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

Catfish soup, extra spicy, Bangkok, Thailand.

My couch surfing hosts who didn't sell my organs, Derren and Anna, Cebu City, Philippines.

Chicken blood and chicken intestine bbq in Mandaue, Philippines.

Balut (look it up), Mandaue Philippines.

Awesome poker playing Pinoys + Derren and me in Mandaue, Philippines.

Fire dancing in Boracay, Philippines.

Sunset in Boracay, Philippines.

Adobo in Boracay, Philippines.

Island hopping in Boracay, Philippines.

Me having more balut with the local massage girls.

Ken flying through a bamboo forest on Maui, Hawaii.

Me posing in Maui, Hawaii.

Sunrise on Mount Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii.

And now it's like you were there too.

1 Country Down 2 to Go

The egotistical, egomaniacal author of awesomeness has certainly taken his damn time getting around to the readable writing of this entry and maybe his last while on the peninsula of Korea. He has had a hell of a time here and you his avid reader (or maybe you just google searched something dirty and got this blog) have had the obvious pleasure of living vicariously through him.

 Secrets, untold stories, and many opinions have probably been kept from you and will only be unkept if you buy the thirsty author a liquid libation or two upon his triumphant return. Or does he really have any? Maybe he just wants a free beer or two (a beer that isn’t the color yellow).

Yes, I am returning to the picturesque Puget Sound, even though this place has been mighty kind to me, and who knows, I may come back—and not just for the kimchi. The terrific teacher also learned things. Simple things, such as rice is awesome, or beer shouldn’t be yellow and I am capable of eating a creature that’s still alive (which I did again the other day).  Other things like a baseball game can be called even before the first pitch has been thrown or just about any animal or vegetable is actually quite consumable. 

One thing that I never got into was many of the more trying experiences of being an immigrant (however temporary) to this country and now I’d like to think that I understand the experiences of my friends back home just a little more. It’s not an easy thing living in a country that isn’t your own and which you have so little in common at first. I’ve seen firsthand here that it’s not for everyone.

Anywhom, I am leaving Monday for Bangkok via a layover in Kuala Lumpur where I will meet up with the legendary Diana Sundermeyer of the WWU Rec Center Pool. Me and Sundermunder will spend a few hours in the Bangkok airport wearing shirts that are not the color red because one, we’re no longer lifeguards and two, well, there’s that minor “Red Shirt” thing in Thailand. Then to Chiang Mai in the north, then Phuket in the southeast and that’s where I part ways with Sunderwunder who flies back to the US to return to her normal life of huffing chlorine fumes. Then I have another week by myself in Thailand to basically stay out of trouble and apply and REapply sunscreen to my (after Jeju) humbled skin.  I plan on eating grotesque amounts of phad thai, phad see ew, and host of different curries. It’s gonna be yummy.

Once I find my way back to Bangkok I fly to Manila only to then jump to the city of Cebu on the island of the same name. There I will drink San Miguels for $1 a piece and try my hand at couch surfing for the first time-- just trying to trust the world a little more. After a week there I will head to the island of story: Boracay.  Once there, there will be more $1 San Miguels complimented by chicken adobo, lumpia, and mangoes. Oh the mangoes! This man goes for mangoes! Haha.

Then I will rescue some razor blade wielding roosters from their gladiatorial lives and be on my way out of the shark infested waters of the Philippine archipelago. From Manila I will cross the gynormous Pacific and arrive in Maui to visit a high school friend, one Mr. Ken Sandin. Yes, that’s the only reason. Really, it’s a good enough reason, right? Okay, so I’m looking forward to Hawaii too.

After a week there I will find myself back amongst the tall trees and well-watered mountains of my home town. Let’s just hope all of this works out the way I say it’s going to.

Keep reading, I’ll try and update from the road.

대니 (Danny)

P.S. I'm going to miss my students so much. Aren't they adorable?

2 Sun Byrnes

Hey look! It’s the self-styled Marco Polo’s own mother.  She hopped on a jet plane and made her way to the magical Orient to see what was what and all she got was several mouthfuls of kimchi. Yes, the author’s momma thought it would be worth it to fly for a full day and visit her eldest son here in the war-paused peninsula of Korea. You of course, haven’t done this. So this makes her better than you in all quantitative and qualitative ways possible. She found not only fermented vegetables but sun burns, subways, and stone statues to boot.

So as of today, my mom is safely back in the US and at home. First, thank you mommy for bringing back my winter clothes and things I didn’t need. I’ll pay for that extra-bag fee. Anyway, I hope you had a good trip, especially for your first outside of North America.

I got to flex my skills as tour guide again (first time with my friend Carla who was in town). It’s fun showing someone around Seoul after you’ve been here as long as I have—even if you just make up information a most of the time. I also got to use a bit of my Korean on during her time here and I think I may have almost sounded fluent (to the untrained ear of course)!

So other than taking my mom to the usual haunts and tourist traps around Seoul I also flew her to the mythical island of Jeju-do which Koreans usually only speak of in hushed tones hoping that they can go there soon. It’s Korea’s Hawaii as they tell it and while I haven’t been to actual Hawaii, yet, I don’t think they are too far from the mark. And boy do they have everything there: beaches, oranges, and a sizeable number of statues that are little people but pretty much just look like penises. And furthermore, if you touch the nose of one of these penis-people statues you’re supposed to be in line for a boy child. Sure beats the Chilean troll of unwed mothers: Trauco. He’s pretty neat actually. Ironically, he’s also from an island. What’s up with islanders and weird myths?

On Jeju we took a taxi tour of the island and stopped at two craters, a pretty coastal area, a coastal waterfall, and a strange lived in Korean folk village. At the aforementioned stone hut community we had some not so tasty snacks from some nice old ladies and then their pigs got me all muddy because my mom didn’t like her snack and fed it to the black pigs. Fun fact: black pigs are supposed to be more delicious. Sad fact: black pigs are more expensive to eat.

Anyway, as the title states I did get myself a nice sun burn since I never get to go outside anymore; I just stay indoors, breathing processed air and then breathing it out only to yell and 6 year olds. It’s mostly okay now but let’s say there was a moment where I almost tore the skin off my back.

However it was totally worth it to play in the waves and lay about on a beach. Hotel was a 2 minute walk from the beach with ocean views—livin’ the life of Riley. Hooray for my one vacation of the year! Back to work this week, boo.

Starcraft II. Like a good denizen of this half of the peninsula, I’m playing it. It’s gorgeous, great and glorious. Yeah, I’m sometimes a computer game nerd.

Anyway, that’s all the new fit to print. Eat your kimchi.

1 Language to Rule Them All!

The author walks like Gulliver among the giants. The buildings here seem to notice the writer just the same. How’s that for poetic? This lackadaisical, lethargic lycanthrope—wait, doesn’t that last one mean the writer is a werewolf?

I wanna talk about the English language aka the current lingua franca of the WORLD. What an incredible tool that can make or break everything. When I was taking Korean classes we weren’t supposed to be speaking in English (or any other language for that matter) but English eventually rose to the top and was used by instructors and students of all nationalities to discuss vocabulary and points of grammar despite some detractors. At one point we had a Chinese guy, a Russian guy, a Japanese guy, and English guy, a Colombian guy, a German girl, a Canadian guy, and me (the Amurkican). English was used! (Though one time the CoIombian, the German and I used Spanish to communicate so that our teacher didn’t know what we were talking about because she didn’t enjoy us using English to discuss Korean grammar.

The other night was the aforementioned Colombian’s farewell party. So I met the German girl and the English guy at a club to see him off. I found out that a Colombian friend of his was in the room and was looking as bored as I was, so I went up to talk to him and see if I remember any Spanish. Well, I did and it turns out that he didn’t speak any English. He really wanted to go dance with the girls but was afraid that without English he wouldn’t be able to really do much. Point in case; to dance with the ladies: you should know English. Also I want to ask if it’s legal to throw down a semi-colon and a colon in the same sentence like that. I’m looking at you, English majors.

On the other hand, one night while on the bus from Korean class, my friend Sean and I were mumbled/yelled/shushed at by an elderly Korean man for speaking in English. The irony is that we were discussing Korean grammar.

Also English is on everything over here. It’s on street signs, menus, and products. If you don’t have a basic grasp of how our alphabet works and you then probably have no idea how to read Hangeul then you’re SOL. I like to tell my students that with English they can use it anywhere. I may not be 100% right but it helps give meaning to what I do and to those English teachers here who just want to have a gap year where they don’t have to worry about much. (Also you can't read awesome blogs like mine if  you ain't got the skills.)

Speaking of English being used everywhere, this Friday I went to Ocean World with the kinder kids and got to play in all the shallow water they had! There were some awesome looking waterslides but since we were the kids… nothing. Weird stuff included the need to wear any kind of hat while in the water, life jackets for just about anything, and when we were done Andrew and I were asked to scrub down all of the boys’ arms, legs and scalps with soap and then dry them off. I have now scrubbed down most of the kinder program at my school.

Also, the world cup happened and you all know about that. But I went to city hall a couple times and it was nuts. I have some weird insights into East Asian group-thought but that will have to be for another time.

All in all, I’m here for about 2 more months. And I’m going to probably try to eat and do a few more stupid things before I’m done. Please comment too! Especially if you’re a friend from back home and you made it this far!

안녕!

2-0 South Korea! but 1-0 North Korea...

Nestled between the dumpling-eating giant that is China, the smaller robot-filled island-nation of Japan and below the absurd “North” our humble hero has not for at least a month told you, his army of beautiful readers, what he’s a been doin’. Many notable and noteworthy news items have passed this small peninsula like the rainclouds over Seattle lately. Some of which were probably already noticed by nearly all of his more “up on it” fans.

The biggest would have to be the leading news item of the WORLD other that big black eye that BP gave the Gulf of Mexico. That would be the sinking of a South Korean battleship by (we’ll say presumably) North Korea. Now not to belittle the situation at all but when confronted by South Korea and the majority of the nations of the Earth, North Korea was all like: ‘What? We totally don’t even know about that battleship we destroyed that you’re talking about. You should go ask the US. They probably did it. Yes, you should ask them. We were here just minding our own business and stuff.’ The author thinks this was possibly the most immature reaction to an act of war one could ever come up with—even off the top of their head. Flying false colors went out with the swashbuckling kind of pirates because, well, we have science now and it points fingers squarely at North Korea. I know they don’t have electricity but have they forgotten about science? Galileo and those dudes didn’t even have electricity.

Now it’s time to sing the body electric. You know the part more about me and not just the Kim “Kanye West-sunglasses” Jong Il and his hermit, semi-communist, dark-at-night democratic people’s republic.  Though, they did make it to the World Cup, good for them—seriously.

So for Mr. Buddha’s birthday, which was in May for all the folks not living within semi-Buddhist borders, I plotted a trip down to the island of Anmyeondo for myself and several colleagues. 2 Koreans, 2 Canadians, 2 Americans, 1 Irishman, 1 Australian on a bus that doesn’t have a bathroom and don’t stop, not even for pedestrians that at times seemingly jump in into harm’s way as if they were Superman.

What we saw: One day of great sun and picturesque walks on the beach with new kinds of starfish (sea stars?), millions of hermit crabs (second time I’ve dropped ‘hermit’ in this blog so far), and white sand covering several miles of beach. Then the rain…

…it kept raining all weekend on and off but we still managed to have some fun. The rain wouldn’t have been all bad if there had been more taxis and fewer tourists. We visited a national park which had some amazing pine trees unique to Korea which have an umbrella shape at the top. The down side was that most of it was devoted to cabins for staying the night or well manicured flower gardens and ponds. I managed to lose the group and get lost in the woods for a while which was heaven. Nearly… nearly like hiking but not quite.

Basically the weekend would have pleased Mr. Buddha, equal amounts yin (good) and others yang (bad). 

Moderation is the key to life I suppose. Overall, it was a good trip and well worth getting out of this concrete jungle.  Just too bad that after a solid week of hot, muggy sun this past weekend was quite rainy. I think the US should officially celebrate more religious holidays. Koreans get both Christmas AND Buddha’s birthday off… we need more Buddhists. On the way back the kid on the bus next to me slept on my shoulder (normal here) and I saw more rice patties than Iowa has corn fields.

Umm, there was an election and stuff. Nothing much changed politically though. Seoul’s mayor is the same. The candidates have cheerleaders. Check the videos/photos. They consist of old women who apparently have nothing better to do than learn chants and choreography that usually just add up to repeating the candidates name over and over. They also send little flat bed trucks with sound systems all over, even on back country roads on little islands like Anmyeondo. These trucks again, just blast the candidates name over and over. Sometimes, if you’re lucky one of the trucks will have the candidate making speeches from the back—sometimes while moving! Either way, it was definitely a new way of doing elections for me.

And then the World Cup! My friend David is in South Africa presently and I’m sure is having a great time. He is seeing the South Korea-Argentina game and I am very jealous. I went to World Cup Stadium here to watch the game with no fewer than half the stadium worth of other fans all decked out in Korean red. Others went to the malls or city hall to see the game. I can’t even imagine Americans going together somewhere to watch sports on a screen together—never mind in the rain. Anyway, Greece got their hummus handed to them by Park Ji Sung and the Korean squad. The US got a tie against England, and I was very tired and dehydrated the following day…

Anyoung!