Do Something Good 1st Meeting

We had our first meeting of the volunteer club today. Last year's project for the boy who drank acid, Se Tu, had about 30 students, but I did not know what to expect today, so when we got 55 I was really pleased.  

The students decided that they wanted to work on international projects in Thailand including :

• a sister school for Burmese refugees
• an animal sanctuary
• helping with health care for an individual. 

I think I have ended up with another big project which will be like childbirth: I will be exhausted, aggravated, frustrated, happy, proud and in the end I will forget all the bad stuff and think, "That was great!".

Good Kids

I am really enjoying the students this term.  The things I like the most these days are:

1. Enthusiasm.  There is just nothing like coming to school and having kids scream "Steve-uww"from the windows.
2. Generosity- The single greatest trait of most Koreans is how they share.  If a kid buys some food, they always share it.  The same is true with my colleagues. 
3. Closeness- I love it when I see a couple of high school girls walking around holding hands and just laughing like little school girls. It seems in most places kids are in such a rush to grow up, they can not enjoy adolescence.
4. Notes-I often get thank-you notes from the kids...usually with a few grammatical mistakes which for some unknown reason, makes them even better.

Kids have problems here, but there is an awful lot that the rest of the world could learn from a country where kids study hard, don't do drugs, don't have a lot of sex, and are generally just not snarky like they are elsewhere.

Shortages but not of porn

There may be a shortage of food and about everything else, but at least the North Koreans can get their porn.  According to an article todays' paper, "Foreign porn has spread so widely that any home with a player usually has one or two porn DVDs."

I guess all they need is a little electricity and they can have themselves a good time.

Safe and Stupid

Some Koreans, like some Americans, have the same blame the foreigner first attitude, so it is no surprise that when a foreigner does something stupid and criminal it gets lots of attention. There have been recent stories about Americans  who have molested kids, attacked old men, and video taped and distributed liaisons with Korean girls.  The haters have good material to hate us.  I have always been treated so well, so I think the haters are a minority.

If you normalize the statistics for age and sex between Koreans and foreigners, there is not a big difference in crime statistics. It seemed reasonable for the Korean government required us to get a document from our state saying we did not commit any crimes.  No big deal, it took about a week and it was done. 

Now they have decided to require that people get FBI background checks. The process entails:

• get fingerprinted- how long this takes depends on your jurisdiction
• send the documents to the FBI- 3 months for processing plus a week for mail (3 months...ridiculously long)
• Send the documents to the US State Department to be certified- 3 weeks for certification, 1 week for mail

If everything goes perfectly, you must wait 4 plus months for this one stage in the process. 

Korea is competing with Japan and the rest of the world for native English teachers.  The JET Program in Japan is far better organized and has a better reputation the EPIK program (which I am in).  One advantage Korea has is the JET program is bureaucratic and takes forever to get through the highering process.  With this new requirement,  the EPIK program has lost a big advantage.  

Given that everyone already has to go through a background check at the state level, it seems unlikely that this FBI background check will have any real impact on crimes committed by foreigners.  What seems certain to me is there are going to be some people who go to another country because they do not want to wait for this process to be completed. 

Gyeongju Part 2

We made our third trip to Gyeongju this past weekend.  I wrote before about it being a living museum, and that is fair since there are cultural sites everywhere you look.  Last time we were not able to go to Bulguksa, a temple that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  We made it this time and it is really beautiful. It was founded in 573 expanded, destroyed and rebuilt over the years, but the statues are original stuff.

Kids and Museums

We have gone to lots of museums recently and they have all the normal stuff behind glass...great for adults.

What I think that is different is that they are all been overflowing with families with young kids...fabulous in my opinion.  Most museums are free, so it is a cheap way for any family to have a day out. In addition, they have lots of interactive displays in separate areas for kids. Some of the display are designed for little ones, some for the whole family, and even some computer generated stuff to appeal to teens.  Brilliant in my opinion.

Silly Pictures From Gyeongju

As mentioned before, Gyeongju is great and beautiful, but like everywhere, there are a few silly things I had to take pictures of.

I really do not know what they mean by this sign

A funny non-infringing (kind of) sign

I love the Love Hotels because they all have some personality.  This weekend we stayed in one that was pretty tame outside of the love toy vending machine.

Do Something Good!

I am starting a volunteer club at school. The purpose of the club is to

• get students interested in volunteering (something that is not very common here)
• teach them about other countries and the problems people have
• give them an opportunity to speak English with me
• give them an opportunity to develop leadership skills
• improve students' resumes to enter university 

I wrote a few times about Se Teu, the boy who drank acid, and the program we had to pay for his operations.  I think it was a great experience and wanted to continue doing something like this.  The school supported it, but I did not have the sense that they were enthusiastic.

Students who were in the group last year have been sending in their university applications, and now there has been a growing realization of the value of a volunteer program and everyone is remarkably enthusiastic.

I contacted a US based organization, Do Something Good. They provided me with the materials to help organize the students and some advice. I am hoping that I will have the students take over all the leadership very quickly including the choice of projects.

As usual, I had low expectations....maybe 10 or 15 kids will be interested.  I put up some signs Friday and I have got 26 kids signed up already.  What they hell have I gotten myself into...again!

Weekend Pics

This weekend we joined what seemed like a million others to a rain soaked lantern festival in Jinju.  In the end it was nice, but not great because of the rain.  I also posted a couple of pics of the rice fields.  The pictures do not really capture the incredible contrast of the blue sky with green/yellow of the fading rice.

Vacation

Just got back from a vacation around the south west part of Korea.

We spent a day in Damyang which is famous for bamboo and old trees neither of which were exciting. The town had a really nice feel with a long walking park and hundreds of families enjoying themselves. The government provides tons of free things for people to do and they really take advantage of it. It is great.

My favorite site in Damyang was a series of boulders placed across the river. It afforded the more daring a way to cross (and fall into) the river.

 I have to give a hat tip to the girl in heels who traversed the river. A girl can be a risk taker, but one of the risks should not be appearing to have short legs.

We spent our first night in a love hotel. We knew it would be hot when we saw the hallway lit with black lights and painted with flourescent paints. We got into our room which had your standard 6 foot long mirror next to the bed. I have no idea how they expect you to brush your hair using it, but I guess it was OK.

You can read more about the vacation after the jump

The Deadliest Mile

Today's paper had a story about Korean roads being the 5th most deadly in the world, but this is compared to the population.  Of course in a densely populated country, a lot of people do not drive so this statistic is meaningless.

A much more important measurement is the number of deaths per mile driven.  In this category, Korean roads are deadliest...slightly ahead of the Czech Republic and 20% ahead of Malaysia which was in 3rd.

Koreans are consistently some of the most thoughtful people I have met, but it seems that there is some sort of evil spirit that takes over their bodies when they get behind the wheel.

This weekend I was doing my usual driving/bitchin' about Korean driving when I realized I was nudging into traffic and being a slightly bad driver myself...I am afraid it is catching.

Can You Pass This Test?

A student challenged me with the following question from a national test that was given early this month:

"28. With no attempt there can be no failure and with no

failure no humiliation. So our self-esteem in this world

depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed

potentialities. Thus, ________________________________.

This illustrates how every rise in our levels of expectation

① the higher your expectations are, the more you will achieve

② self-esteem can be increased by lowering actualities

③ success divided by pretensions equals self-esteem

④ early failures in life may lead to happiness later in life

          ⑤ more supposed potentialities increase chances of happiness


13% of students nationwide guessed the correct answer, 3.  A guess may be the wrong word since a guess would mean that 1 in 5 (or 20%) students got the right answer. I have attached a few passages/questions and, according to the Flesch Easy Reading Formula, they are university level for native English speakers.


Most kids struggle with saying anything past, "How are you?" and "What's your name?", but they are expected to understand ridiculously complex written questions that most native English speakers would have to read a few times (like I did) to understand.

Eventually the translating software will actually work and the need for reading English will diminish, so the current lack of focus on speaking is an enormous mistake. The government is making strides, but until the university entrance exams have a spoken component the current system will stay in place and the vast majority of kids will study English for a decade and not have even a rudimentary grasp of the spoken language.

Since the questions are already on the internet, I thought it was a good idea to publish a few of these after the break if you are interested

Trust

According to the UN, you are about 14 times as likely to be robbed in the US than in Korea. There are some conveniences that come along with safety; shop owners leave things on sidewalks overnight, bicycles are not locked in some areas, and nobody checks tickets on trains (but they do on subways).

My favorite recent crime story was about a man who was robbing a little private school.  When he produced a knife, the woman fell.  As she got up, they discussed why he was robbing the shop.  She pulled out a bible and they talked about it and he apologized and left.

Less than 20 minutes after he left, Cho came back to the institute and kneeled before Woo with teary eyes, asking her to report him to the police. Since she refused to do so, Cho called 112 (which is 911 in Korea) and turned himself in.

Only in Korea.

High School Boys for Mature Women

There is an article in today's paper about male sites for young men to sell themselves to mature women.

More than a dozen male high school and university students have been caught by police for operating multiple online community sites brokering sexual encounters between younger men and older women.

 ...Of the 14, seven were high school students.... 

...Among community cafes they operated, one site had a membership of 550 adult females

I am not sure what to make of this.  I am guessing some of the "550 females" are really guys pretending to be girls and others are just playing around and not really seeking an encounter. That said, there must be a market for something like this.

According to the article, "The boys did it because they wanted to make money."  This part does not surprise me since there was another article today with a Reuters poll saying that Koreans are the most materialistic people in the world.

These sort of things really do shock me because the people I meet do not seem to be any more materialistic than people anywhere else. In addition, I know that there are sex related things in big cities, but we just see none of it here in our little town.

Even though I posted a few things lately that seem a bit negative, I really do think Korea is a great place to live, to raise a family, and to teach.

Paint and Perv's

Daegu International Body Painting contest was held Saturday and we went along with tons of families and more than a few perv's.  Our friend, Moonsook, came along and we were hoping to see her shocked by the bodypainting, but she was not fazed at all.  Fortunately, some western girls starting making out while we were walking around and that made her crazy.. 

No times on the web site so we got there far too early.  It was pretty interesting to see the models being painting and the perv's panting.

Any chance there is a half naked young woman in the tent?

The showing was at night and I would guess there were 5000 people in attentdance.  I was shocked by how cool they were.

Proselytizing

According to Wikipedia., 46% of  Koreans cite no religion/atheism.  This is seen as a great opportunity for those proselytizing. Christians have been converting Buddhist here since the 1800's and, if considered jointly, are the biggest block of believers. There are about 70 Mormon missionaries in Daegu area now trying to convert Koreans. They wanted to have a chat with me...talk about barking up the wrong tree.


Korea, like most countries that were originally Buddhist, is very open to other religions.  At my school, every Saturday there are people proselytizing.  There is a weekly newspaper written by a ministry that is provided to the students.  I can not read most of it, but the students tell me there is some mention of religion, but that is not the focus of the paper.

I often wonder about these things.  Somehow it is OK to promote some religions, Christianity primarily, but I wonder how people would react if the same things were being done in the name of Islam or Atheism.

Is it safe for young girls?

As safe as I, and everyone I talk to, feels here, there are some serious problems for young girls.

Earlier in the month, there was a story about child rape that reported it was very high and increasing. A quote about the reluctance to report it made it even more disturbing: “Given this reluctance, the actual number of child sex crimes in Korea could be far higher than the number officially reported,” 

There was another story today  that said sexual crimes in general are vastly under reported here.  They found that the true numbers are 8 times as high as the official numbers indicate because "victims were deterred by society's negative view of sex crimes and their sense of shame."

I talked to a small group of kids about this awhile back and one girl said she did not know anyone affected by it, another told me a friend of her's was abducted and someone tried to abduct her.  Another girl said that two different people tried to abduct her. Scary.

Penalties for child rape have been really weak until recently. Last year there was an 8 year old girl, Na-young, was raped, tortured and nearly killed by a guy who had two previous convictions.He got a 12 year term. The public went wild.  Law makers are responding and the laws are being toughened.

It is good that the laws are being changed, but until people feel comfortable reporting the crimes it seems a bit irrelevant.  Hopefully, there will be more programs in schools to deal with this.

Heading Back

We are heading back to Korea tomorrow and I am really looking forward to it. Our life in Korea is pretty easy/good.  I miss the kids at school.  They make me crazy sometimes, but I really enjoy spending time with them. I am also looking forward to seeing our colleagues.

A few observations on our trip here. As expected, it was great seeing family. There were a couple of things I did not expect to like so much.  The biggest is the courtesy people show each other in stores, while driving, and just in general. I always forget it until I am in the environment. It is really nice to not worry about someone pushing or cutting in line or driving you off the road.  I also forget about the roads, how the medians are so beautiful and the roads well maintained.

The other striking thing is just how fat we are as a people.  Every time I return home I am shocked.

Some Good Shit

I am in the Seoul area waiting on my plane (heading to the US for a couple of weeks) and saw this sign when I was looking for a little dinner.

Koreans have difficulty differentiating between "P" and "B" sometimes in the most humorous ways.

6 feet + 5 feet + 8 inches= Motivated students

University students have come to our school for a few days to give the students some counseling (whatever that means). I was driving up yesterday and saw a girl I did not recognize. She was about 6 feet tall (5 feet of which were legs) and about 120 pounds. She had on ridiculously short shorts...maybe 8” from the waist line to the cuff.

I was talking with a boy later in the day and asked about the counseling session. He got that shit eating grin that every horny high school boy gets with the obligatory throaty Beavis and Buttheadesqe laugh. Yup, Super Legs worked with all the boys in his class. He explained that a lot of the boys had not done the work to prepare for the counseling, so once they found out she was doing it, there was a mad rush to complete it properly so they could be first to talk to her.

In short, Super Legs was able to accomplish something I haven't (motivating the boys) with a nominal amount of effort (and fabric). The girl is a freakin' genius.