Dirty Pop

To start this one off I just want everyone to know that this whole blog thing is actually pretty awesome.  I get to take a step back, think about my experiences and share all the best parts.  I really enjoy writing it so I have to make sure I make this time I have in South Korea a story worth telling.  I hope you're all enjoying it so far.

Sparky

On October 15th all of the EPIK teachers were given free VIP tickets to The Asia Song Festival which was a concert put on at the Daegu World Cup Stadium featuring a bunch of pop bands from around Asia.  Some of the names of these groups and their members make you wonder who the idea-man was behind their formation and take you back to the days of boy-bands and Spice World mania.  They like to capitalize seemingly arbitrary letters in the middle of their name to make it cooler.  X5, RaNia, ChoColat, AprilKiss, HITT, leeSa, G-Na, Perfume, Miss-A, Super Junior, Girls Generation, and Beast all performed a couple of songs each.  While I wouldn't really consider it my style of music, I went along with friends, never wanting to pass up an opportunity to see a live show.  The tunes they sang were infectiously catchy, and usually accompanied by group dance routines.  It's the kind of music you can't help but bob your head to so many of the foreigners that wanted to get up and dance were given a swift telling-off by the security team that pounced on anyone whose bum left their seat.  It was really funny to see an entire crowd all sitting in their chairs, denying themselves the chance to move to the music.  Our seats were on the grass field but turning around allowed you to see all of the manic fans in the stadium seats waving little flags emblazoned with their favourite group's name all in unison.  At one point, an entire section was able to spell out BEAST with the glow sticks they were holding in the air.

One thing that I've learned about Koreans is that they don't like getting rained on.  Taking the two minute stroll to school the other morning without an umbrella was considered a cardinal sin by my co-teachers.  They think that the rain will make my hair fall out.  I promptly took the opportunity to teach them the idiom "I'm not made of sugar" and accepted their offer of a spare umbrella for the walk home in the afternoon.  At the concert, it began to rain a bit towards the end of the show.  That's when all hell broke loose.  The umbrellas popped up, the plastic poncho salesmen showed up out of nowhere, and a lot of people fled the area screaming.  Naturally, many others took the chance to get closer to the stage creating complete anarchy and clogging up the aisles.  It was mayhem.....and all because of a little shower that lasted ten minutes.  Being pushed back by security guards who were trying to restore order made me think back to just this past summer at Lollapalooza Music Festival in Chicago when torrential rain made the third day an absolute mud pit complete with belly slides and wrestling.  To think, two months ago I was watching the Foo Fighters in a downpour with my friends, covered in mud along with thousands of others, crammed together in Grant Park....and loving it.  Now I am being herded into my seat by security guards that had to call in reinforcements and stop the show momentarily for the announcers to tell everyone to calm down.  It was surreal.

In other news, I got to attend a Community Dog Walk with the Korean Animal Protection Society last weekend which was fun.  I miss having a dog in my life a lot so it felt good to let them stretch their legs instead of being in their cages.  A lot of the dogs were yappy little lap-dogs that I can picture my father tripping over accidentally on purpose. Most of them had been abandoned when their owners got sick of them.  One poor little poodle had been died purple by it's previous pet owners (say that sentence 10 times fast, I dare you).  It was sad and hilarious at the same time.  I called my dog Sparky most of the time but really went with the first thing that came to mind at any particular moment since he didn't have a name.  He was a little white puppy that was full of energy and a lot of fun.  After the dog walk we were offered the chance to visit the "cat house" which was nearby. The very idea of a house full of cats left some of the female volunteers squirming in their flared jeans and running-shoe combos.  I could picture a lot of them in ten years being those crazy cat ladies that dress their cats up in outfits and talk to them in high pitched voices as if they are human children. I politely turned down the offer and went on my way.  It could have been a house made of cats for all I know.

That's all for now folks.  I am trying to spread out my posts a bit more so that I don't run out of material to write about and also to can keep the readers coming :)  I like tracking the amount of views I get after each post is published and seeing where they all come from.  It's a good example of the world-shrinking potential of the internet and social networks.

My girlfriend Louise recently got confirmation of a three month position in Daegu working with Save the Children.  She has accepted the position so I will be welcoming her to South Korea in a week's time! She had been planning on making it out here eventually but we didn't know that it would come about this fast. We are really looking forward to the adventure ahead of us!

Much love

D

Cleanse

On Monday October 3rd I found myself in an all-too-familiar position.  Lying in bed with a pounding headache and the fan on full blast directed at my face after a night celebrating the Daegu Devil's win in the Ulsan Cup.  I was hungover.  I drifted in and out of sleep, threw on Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, and succumbed to the sickness for most of the morning.  Around noon I gave myself a shake, made some lunch, packed a bag and headed out the door with my longboard.  I rode to a place I had only seen in passing but hadn't worked up the courage to go to yet, a 24-hour bathhouse known as a jim-jil-bang.  It was just the medicine I needed.

I went in through the main doors and my bewildered look caught the attention of the lady behind the desk who pointed to a price list.  It was 7000 won, around 7 bucks, to go in for as long as you would like.  They gave me a little uniform to put on for after my bath and I trundled into the locker room, greeted by a man shining shoes at the front door.  What I found inside was a totally new, but eye-opening experience.

After undressing and putting my stuff away, I went into the bath area.  This steamy room had four baths in the middle filled with water of different temperatures.  There were showerheads coming out of every wall at different heights so you could decide to sit or stand while you bathed.  There were waterfalls to stand under that pelted you with high-pressured water, sunflower showers that blasted you with cold, pulsing water.  There were two saunas with both dry and moist air.  Oh yeah...there were also a lot of naked Koreans of all ages.  If I thought my skateboard drew attention, it was nothing compared to being the only white guy in a Korean bathhouse.  I surveyed the situation, trying to suss out what most people tended to do, not wanting to stray from the norm.  I realized that everyone just did their own thing.  There are a lot of different aspects to the ritual of visiting the bathhouse.  There are men who go with their buddies or business partners to talk shop and hang out, there are also men who go to have some time to themselves and relax.  There was one guy that sat in the same bath and stared at the water for the entire time I was there.  I wondered where his mind could have drifted in that hour and a half.

There is also a familial aspect to the jim-jil-bang.  Fathers and sons go together and there is no shame as they stroll around as naked as they came into this world, and wash each other.  This is totally  foreign to anything you will find in North America.  Trying not to sound too creepy, but it was really cool to see.  I'm not saying I wish me and my dad could have hit up the old bathhouse together growing up, but it  was humbling to know that they didn't feel embarrassed.  And man, I've never seen a more rigorous cleaning process.  They were scrubbing viciously at spots that I never even think to clean. Trying to fit in, I gave myself a good wash; scrubbing behind my ears, in my ears, between my toes, behind my knees.  I swear I could hear a faint squeak as some of the men walked by me giving new meaning to the term "squeaky clean".

After a session in the sauna and the cold-water bath, I got changed into my uniform and headed upstairs.  There I found a communal area for both men and women where you can just hang out and relax.  Off this area are several different rooms with different themes, or temperatures.  There were little caves that you could crawl into and take a nap on a mat, there were rooms that played forest ambiance sounds and had trees plastered on the wall, there was a domed hut that looked like a house on Tatooine that was made of a particular clay and was really warm inside.  There was also an ice room which I didn't venture into.  I found a quiet room and threw on a Joe Rogan Experience Podcast which I am currently hooked on and just chilled out.  All in all, it didn't take long for me to forget that I was even hungover in the first place.  If ever (or rather whenever) I find myself in a similar state on a Sunday morning, I know exactly what I am doing.   The fact that they are 24 hours also means that you can stay there overnight if the need calls.  this is handy if you are ever travelling around Korea as it is a cheap place to stay.

I'm looking forward to going again possibly with other people.  The trick is to surround yourself with the right type of people in these situations.  It would be pretty uncomfortable for most, I'm sure.  I'm glad I went by myself the first time as it allowed me to make up my own mind about it without my experience being affected by the opinions of others.  In that sense, I'm kind of a one-man wolfpack.

Much Love
D

Sunday, Devil's Sunday

My latest adventures took me to Ulsan; a city on the coast and the so-called back-bone of Korean industry. The city is known for being the place Hyundai pumps out its cars in three colours; black,white and silver to almost every driver in the country.  But I was there for another reason; to participate in the Ulsan Riverside Cup with my teammates of the Daegu Devils.  Being one of the newcomers to an established institution, I've found it great to be welcomed into the team and make instant friends.  Starting the tournament off slowly, we scuppered to a 1 - 0 loss against a team from Seoul called the The Outcasts.  While they didn't feature Big Boi or Andre 3000, they did manage to foil our efforts and also knock one of our players, Aron, unconscious and reeling with a pretty bad concussion.  We really should have beat them.  We recovered in the second game against a team that flew from Jeju Island for the tournament, aptly named Jejuventus.  We beat them 7 - 0 and I managed to open my account for the team by bundling a ball over the line from very close range.  But they all count.

From then, we went from strength to strength and defeated our cross-town rivals Daegu FC 2 -1 .  The next day we were into the quarter-finals winning on penalties, through the semis, and into the cup final against perennial contenders Busan Utd.  We went up early in the game but gave away a cheap goal, allowing them back into it and calling for extra time of two ten-minute halves.  The first passed uneventfully but the second was very back-and-forth, resulting in four quick goals shared at two apiece.  It was penalties again.  I could only watch on in anticipation as Busan pushed two wide of the post and we netted convincingly.  Devils for the win.  We were Ulsan Cup champions and the celebrations began.  It was a great start to the campaign which I hope we can follow up with a strong league performance.

I'm not going to lie; I was pretty disappointed at the amount of time I was given on the pitch and feel pretty gutted that I haven't really been allowed the chance to prove myself yet.  Six games in two days could have allowed for a lot more changes, with a deep bench of fresh players itching to play a part.  For that reason, I didn't feel that I had played a big role in triumphing in the tournament and found it hard to hide my frustration as is usually the case when it comes to football.  I'm sure a lot of you can attest to that.  I do have to remember that it is still early days and that I have to earn my spot on the pitch.  Given more than 20 minutes I think I can really show what I have to offer the team.  I just have to keep showing up and putting the effort in.  If anything, it has spurred me into a (hopefully) more pro-active approach.

The celebrations were taken back to Daegu where we all met at our sponsoring bar Travelers.  The beer and Irish whisky were flowing as the night carried on into the wee hours.  It tastes so much sweeter out of a big trophy like that.  It was a great Devil's Sunday, as we call it.

The next day I looked to ease my aches as well as my hangover so I sought out the nearest jimjil-bang which is a Korean bathhouse.  That experience deserves a post unto itself so I will save it for next time.  Until then, thanks for reading and stay in touch with emails, blog comments or Facebook messages.  I haven't forgotten about you, so don't forget about me!

Much love
D