Hmm...it seems like all of a sudden there are going to be a lot of remakes of Japanese dramas.

Kimi wa Petto (You are my Pet), Zettai Kareshi (Absolute Boyfriend) and now Dragon Zakura.

Of course earlier this year there was Boys Before Flowers.

I will watch all of them! Well at least I'll watch the first episode, and in the case of Kimi wa Petto watch the movie. I'm the most worried for the fate of Kimi wa Petto, as BBF's Jihoo was cast as Momo. His acting is far too stiff and fake looking. :/

They could have easily found another pretty boy with a big name, who could act cute at the drop of a hat. I hope he pleasantly surprises me. Though, I doubt he can pull of MatsuJun's awesomeness in that role.

Of course the remakes go both was, sort of. At the moment in Japan there's an anime version of Winter Sonata with original Korean cast as voice actors being released. Japan also remade My Sassy Girl and The Devil in relatively recent history.

Once or twice a year, the YMCA arranges for foreigners to see small shows either for free or a very cheap price.

This one was free.

Last year I saw an amazing B-boy performance, the height of which was watching a transformer transform live on stage.

Before the show started, we were required to put white bath robes and place our bags in a locker.

At the door we were given sealed cans filled with dryed beans or beads. They were also painted with something that glowed in the black light (as our robes did also).

It'd be easy enough the theorize on why this show was called 'The Zen' but I prefer to think of it as a fun show. Anyone could have gone in and enjoyed themselves. It was quite audience involved.

The height of the whole performance was getting the audience on stage to engage in a ball fight (the type that kids playrooms are filled with). Then there was the dance competition. I was somehow reeled into it, team 2 of 3. I didn't win. Ooooh well. I have two left feet and wasn't expecting to. ^^

I had a killer headache when going in, which only got worse. Thankfully I was given some medicine after the show. I would have bought some before the show, but every pharmacy I walked past was closed. ;-; Even with my headache, it was very fun. If I'm in Daegu next year, I'll aim to continue going to Daegu in Motion shows.

I've gained a bit of weight lately, but I know exactly what the cause is. Two Thanksgiving meals and leftovers, letting myself go just a little and not being on meds too often. Plus I might have gained muscle weight (who knows). 4 lbs, caught early enough that I can easily take it off again. I'll aim for shedding that within the next two weeks, I just have to be more diligent.

But I do think that the weight gain was somewhat worth it, though also frustrating.

Thurdsay was Thanksgiving #1, lots of fun with Melissa. :)

Saturday was Thanksgiving #2, I met three new folks and watched It's a Wonderful Life.

Both were very low key but awesome.

This weekend, I saw a super fun (and free) performance. I'll chat about that in another post. At the moment, getting ready for school and teaching insanity are on the agenda.

Love this song, there's no video so you can listen to the song and continue going about your business.

It's kind of folk/opera/pop (popera). Parts of it remind me of Cirque du Soleil Allegria music.

I went to jujitsu for the second time last night. I didn't get as much of a workout, but I think it was exactly what my body needed to recover a little.

There was an english speaker there (I think his name was Jeremy) who knew what he was doing. He explained all of the basics and helped demonstrate one basic hold and one basic lock. There was a nice Korean guy who was also doing his best explaining in english. I really appreciate it.

I feel like the pieces are making (a bit) more sense now.

Tonight is Thanksgiving Dinner #1

If you're American or if you're having a Thanksgiving meal anyways (like me) then HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

(For non-Canadian friends on lj, Canadians have Thanksgiving too but it's in October.)

Anyways, may your night be food filled and joyous!

In a way it's nice that Korean doesn't use Chinese characters. It's one less thing to worry about and hangeul is easy.

At the same time it would be insanely easier to learn vocab with the Chinese link there.

Estimates are that anywhere between 50-80% of Korean vocabulary is originally from Chinese.

I can only catch on to roots if they happen to be in my dictionary, or if I catch on to a pattern.

I don't want to learn hanja (at least not at this point) but it would be helpful to know what Chinese certain syllables are derived from.

Thusfar I've found no books that explain these concepts in english, and don't expect you to learn the hanja (chinese characters).

For example today I looked up the word textbook:

There seem to be two common ways to say this:

1. 텍스트 - this is originally from english it says tekseuteu so "text"

2. 교과서 - 교 I know from experience means either school or education 과 is lesson 서 is book
I wasn't told these things, I found them out or caught onto patterns. But knowing that this word is essential education (school) lesson book, I can remember it much more easily. It's much less random than straight up giving me the word to memorize.

That being said chinese syllables will usually have more than one reading. 과 can be either lesson or fruit for instance. Probably the syllable has other meanings too. But I can safely figure out that a textbook is not an education fruit book XD

I feel for those learning english since a lot of it appears to be random. That's because a lot of it is random, taking elements from many different languages. At least Korean makes a lot more logical sense. I just wish there was a good book that explained Chinese roots.

Yesterday he discovered that I'm learning Korean.

This morning he was asking me a question, one I could have answered, but I had a thermometre in the ear he was talking into.

So it took me a while to registered what the question was. It was just "so you're learning Korean?"

easy to understand, easy to answer but hard to hear. There was a lineup of kids behind me too, so I didn't want to hold them up.

I know it's not a very exciting story. XD I just hate not answering when I'm easily capable.

Apparently all Korean school children (at least those in elementary schools) are being vaccinated for swine flu.

Just in case you want to know what it looks like, here's a video.



It's very close contact, has some throws and a lot of wrestling on the ground.

Last night I finally joined Brazilian jiu jitsu.

While I'm told that there are foreigners who attend these classes, the first time around I was on my own. No foreigners in attendance but me~! But that's a pattern I'm familiar with given my taekwondo history.

When I took taekwondo, I was surrounded by elementary school students but there was a tiny attendance of high school students and adults from time to time. This time around, it's mainly a population of high school boys with a handful of adult men and a few women. So it's a different experience from taekwondo in that regard.

It was more expensive than I was expecting, as I had to pay 90 000 for the month and a one time entrance fee of 20 000. Though for this price I can go to any of the lessons I want. I'll probably aim for 2-3 times per week, usually at 7 pm. There are two night classes, one at 7 pm and one at 9 pm. The problem with the 9 pm is getting home so late (practice lasts about 1 3/4 hours), then trying to wind down after doing really intensive exercise. It's difficult when your throat is parched and your heart is racing.

I still have to pay 45 000 won for my uniform. Didn't have the money for it this time around.

The warm-ups were pretty similar to taekwondo, they just lasted longer. The time for practicing moves was really frustrating. I could never figure them out by the time they were changing the moves they demonstrated. It doesn't matter if I focus and make mental notes (as I always do), physical sequences do not stick in my brain! That's one of the things that makes me a bit apprehensive about doing some martial arts and dancing classes. I understand that these demonstrations are necessary, but it doesn't make them any less frustrating to me!

After we played a game where the first one pinned was the loser. All of my opponents were experienced men who were physically stronger than me. So it's no surprise that I didn't win a single one. Just gotta get up and keep on trying.

My favourite part by far was the free grappling, where you went against an opponent for a particular period of time. I'm pretty sure that against one of my opponents, neither of us won by the time the clock ticked down. That was progress! I think that the guys there are surprised by my strength. The problem is that I have no technique to back me up.

It seems I'll have to brace myself for seeing lots of half naked Korean men. Not that that is a 'punishment' of any kind. But a few of the guys were changing in the main area of the dojang before class. I also sort of walked in on a bunch of guys changing. But you have to walk through the men's change room to get to the women's. To be fair there aren't many women doing juijitsu. Plus it's not a big deal waiting 10 minutes while the boys clear out.

I'll be taking a break today and will be back on Wednesday. While I think my body could handle another day, I honestly need chore and study time.

After jujitsu, I walked half way home and hit up a 1000 won store, basically the equivalent of a dollar store. I bought a book entitled "Living Ehglish Language Foreign." There was another one there named, "Living Englise Language Foreign." It's like they published one addition, realized there was a mistake 'corrected it' and then published it again. I'm not sure if anyone should trust an English book where the word English is spelled wrong on the cover. Who buys that type of book?

Well I do apparently.

Originally it was 6000 won, but when I enquired about the price it was only 1000. The phrases are written three ways - in English, in translated Korean and in English phonetic hangeul (Korean alphabet). The last is the funniest thing to read ever. It sounds like exactly what it is!

So in other words, it has a bunch of phrases written something like this:
아이 원투 오펀 어 벤크 아컨트.
I guess if the English speaker was used to bad English or adept at listening they could understand. But 오 마이 꼿 it's still fantastically funny to read.

(PS - the book decided that god would better be hangeulized as got, not me XD although to be fair there are english books that romanize Korean almost as ridiculously)

Whoever can guess where the above lyrics are from can get a prize. (the prize is my love)

Very recently something snapped within me. It was something good, not a volcanic explosion of lava.

It's like I remembered why I came to Korea to begin with, and why I was still here. All of a sudden I wanted to learn Korean a hell of a lot more than I did before. Plus I feel like I'm skipping around in some kind of 꿈나라 (dream country).

My life is awesome. I still have things to complain about, but doesn't everybody? I have a good job that has few frustrations, I make a good salary (for ESL teaching and living in Korea), I don't worry about losing my job oh AND I'm doing exactly what I want to do. And while I may not be in my very first choice of locations worldwide, it's one of my top choices.

A lot of foreigners pay lip service to wanting to learn Korean, but they don't really. They want to, but they don't want it enough. I went through phases of wanting to learn Korean more and more. A part of me regrets that I wasn't that motivated earlier. Initially I would make excuses like, "well it's difficult because Japanese is the language I really want to learn." I still want to learn Japanese, but I'm in Korea now. The more Korean I learn the more the country and culture can reveal itself. Plus if I learn Korean the structure might one day make learning Japanese easier.

But my Japanese language excuse was just that, an excuse. Was I working on Japanese instead of Korean? uh...no.

If other foreigners don't want to learn Korean fine, but a lot of foreigners fail to realize that they’re not learning because they aren’t putting in the effort. (unless they're one of the rare language geniuses floating around) And no, one hour once a week is not “putting in effort”.

I'm the first to admit that different people have different strengths, but I think that any foreigner can get their Korean up to a conversational level. All they have to do is want it badly enough.

Keep in mind that a conversational level does not denote perfection. Rather, in my mind it's being able to converse freely on any number of day to day topics. Plus you should be able to understand and produce most of what you want to say in these situations. Like perhaps you may not be able to express something like "I'm curious" but you can find a synonym/substitute like "I want to know."

In my case, my language learning abilities are just average. But I like learning Korean, it's like solving a puzzle and new personal breakthroughs are really exciting for me.

My Korean level is pretty pathetic for how long I've been here, but still surprisingly higher than about 95% of foreigners. It's because most foreigners don't want to learn.

That's fine, so long as they don't complain about simple problems that could be solved by knowing a tiny bit of Korean. So long as they don't expect Koreans to speak english to them, because frankly this is their country and their first language is Korean.

But I really don't understand foreigners who have been here for a year and haven't even learned the basics. Learning these simple things will make your life so much easier:
~ Hangeul - it will take you a week maximum if you actually try. It might take you longer to learn a few of the rules of reading hangeul (there are only a few of them though!) but otherwise it's so straightforward. Plus a lot of signs are written in konglish.
Example - "컴퓨터 쿠리닝"
Let me write that out for you phonetically "kuhm-pyoo-tuh koo-ree-ning" Hmmm...I wonder what this could be?
~ Sino numbers - learn these so you can recognize prices
~ the numbers one and two in pure Korean numbers - very useful for ordering in restaurants, unless you plan on ordering more than one or two of something, it's all you need
~ "Where's the bathroom?" a very useful phrase ;) (for almost everyone)
~ thank you and hello
~ "how much is it?"

And that will make your life several fold easier. I know much more than that, and want to learn more. But I don't understand foreigners who don't even try to learn that much.

Lately I've developed a very can do attitude. These are all the things I can and will do:

1. Learn more Korean - even if I have to become a loser hermit for short periods of time, my goal is now to reach at least a lower intermediate level in 1 3/4 years.

2. do jujitsu - I'm joining today! Finally I have no more excuses except the usual ones (need to do housework/errands)

3. Lose weight/become more fit

4. Be a good teacher (I already am but I want to develop even further)

5. Stop being afraid or apprehensive of things that don't deserve those emotions. If I want to do something like swing dancing, I will damn well do it. If I want to talk to someone or ask a question, than I will.

This week's goals -
1. Joining jujitsu (of course)
2. Going to two American Thanksgiving meals. It's a little ironic considering that I didn't have a Canadian Thanksgiving meal. XD
3. Reviewing everything in Sogang Korean Book 1A, completing all the listening exercises, solidify the grammar and finishing all the vocab memorization.

And I’d like to see Rain’s ‘Ninja Assassin’ but I might have to do that next week.

It's an old song, but the video is fun.

Today I found the CD in a used store for 3000 won, thus I was reminded.



And to my family and those who know very little about East Asian pop culture, the red headed girl in the video is actually a boy. He's a very pretty one at that (Hee-chul <3)

And here's' another fun and ridiculous Korean song~!



Today I bought a Korean Anne of Green Gables comic. I'm so ridiculously excited, though I probably won't attempt to read more than choice phrases, for at least another two months.

There's nothing like a relatively balanced/nutritious meal consisting entirely of street food.

Today's was rotiserrie chicken, pickled radish and roasted sweet potato.

It was a bit lacking in the non-starchy vegetable department, but still fantastic!

What I found interesting about it?

The calendar notes a heavy snowfall day and 'the height of winter cold'.

The first is on December 7th. I'm not optimistic about their being any snowfall around that time. As a coworker from last year worded it, "in winter, Daegu is very drought."

The height of winter cold is Jan. 20th. Let's see if these events come to pass. ^^

There are insane amounts of cell phone stores in Korea, but it seems they only exist to sell phones.

Every time I've taken my phone in for - battery, internet or cleaning they tell me to go to a service centre. They don't offer to order anything in or send my phone there.

The battery thing was odd, as I then walked across the road to a non-LG store and was able to buy a battery.

Still, there are a lot of cell phone stores that seem to do a whole lot of nothing.

The question us foreigners constantly ask is, "why?"

Take the intersection near my house, three of the corners have a cell phone store. The fourth corner has a KT Telecom building. One of the corners with a cell phone store has another one a few doors down.

Downtown Daegu has a street of cell phone stores. Foreigners call it cell phone street. This street is subject to such ridiculousness as a T-world beside another T-world separated by a wall. There's then an Show sandwiched in between another T-world store.



Oh and there's a whole street of them following the same general pattern and all offering the same things.

My non-Korean mind cannot comprehend this.

*brain explodes*

I don't understand how all of these places can stay in business.

Most of the roleplay stories are at least vaguely based on western or Korean stories.

On the western side of things -
The Grasshopper and the Ant
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (the gate painting scene)
The Tortise and the Hare
Peter Pan
Dog of Flanders

On the Korean side -
Shim Cheom and
The Golden Axe (which becomes 'the golden bat' carried by a man who looks like a cross between Zechs, a modern day hippie and Jesus)

The pig counting role play is the only one I remember and can't place (though it reminds me a little of of the game "this little piggy").

It's always fun watching and reading them, then reliving my childhood trying to figure out what story it's very vaguely based on.

After weeks of being told about the open class and preparing for it, we finally had one.

Last year, I never had a true open class. Rather officials from the board of education would come and pop their heads into a classroom.

What is an open class pray-tell?

Basically you open your class so other staff from the school (and sometimes officials from the Board of Education) can observe. In our case, only teachers from the school attended.

The degree of preparation that went into this? A lot more than any teacher on this planet is capable of applying to every class.

Simply put this was a play, nothing like a real class.

Those in attendance were given our four page english script with four pages of additional notes in Korean.

We spent time carefully considering our script, presentation and activities. Then we painstakingly spent time creating all the materials. We listed our materials and moved them into position, to produce the most time efficient class possible.

We practiced the script twice on our own and memorized the questions, activities and procedures. Then we practiced the script with classes 6-1 and 6-3 before fine tuning it.

Yesterday class 6-2 had a 40 minute open class prep class.

Today they had their open class.

There were a few minor flubs (for example I dropped a game piece, I accidentally had the students repeat a line when they should have listened to it in context first) but it was almost flawless.

After class there was a discussion meeting. As I don't know much Korean, I was only required to put in an appearance. So I bowed, made a few greetings and shared my some thoughts in english, which were then translated into Korean. Directly afterwords, I made my leave.

If nothing else this experience was...interesting (I need a better adjective to describe some things). At times it was frustrating, but it was intriguing to see the final result, even if it was a fake class.

"Can't trust a country that calls their national currency the 'loonie'."

Oh, Canada ^^

This evening, I got my butt down to Hot Tracks and bought the new Nemesis CD. Korean rock CDs tend to be in CD stores only when they're fresh off the press, at least in Daegu.

Nemesis is my favourite Korean band. Last year I got to see them live. This was amazing as: 1. the band was awesome, 2. I feared they'd be doing their military service during my entire first year stint in Korea. But Wendy and I attended their comeback concert post-military service, as the honorary visible minority. XD

Earlier in the day I splurged and bought a CD player. I've been doing a lot of splurging this month, but the CD player is coming out of my extra money in Canada. Thusly it doesn't effect my Hong Kong fund in Korea.

But who doesn't include a power cord with a CD player when there is obviously a place to insert a power cord - apparently Lotte and Koreans. (I have a Lotte CD player.)

I still have not listened to much of the CD, as only half of the files worked in the zip I downloaded. Now that I have the CD and a (cordless) player, I'll listen to the CD after buying a cord.

The real reason for this entry? Pimping Nemesis...

behold their two MVs and Gee cover :D

Like it? then be sure to check out their albums. I'll upload them if interested.







Oh yes and one of their guitarists (Ha Sebin) is also in EVE and has done arranging and composing for both bands. He's a pretty talented guy.

[edit] So I found out about a concert on Sebin's Cyworld. It was today :( Not living in Seoul, I hate Sunday concerts. I also hate how difficult it is to find Korean rock concert information.

The chill is wonderful, it makes me feel thrilled to be alive.

Sunny, chilly fall days are by far my favourite.

Last night I watched the movie Snow Cake. It made me really nostagic for my Northern Ontario home, as it was filmed in Wawa. The scenes were so familiar; the pines, trees, cliffs, lakes, highways, snow and space.

While I never want to live there again, long term, North Bay will in a sense always be my home away from home away from home (if that makes any sense). It's a place I can always go back to, with a sense of familiarity.

If you're looking for a good movie about people, humanity and the human condition, than check it out. I realize that it might not be for everyone. It is a movie that is sad at times, but not without cause.

The acting was solid and I enjoyed the portrayal of romance, in the sense that it existed but was something transient.