Busan Aquarium

On the weekend we had the chance to explore some new areas of Busan. Our favorite area was the Haeundae district. It features the Haeundae Beach and has a lot of personality. The streets are full of people from all over the world and, unlike the rest of Korea, individuality seems to be a positive in this district.

The best part of the Haeundae area is the Busan Aquarium. It is host to several different types of aquatic life. You can even go swimming in the shark tank - if you fork out the cash for it.

I must have taken about 125 pictures in the aquarium - as I started snapping I realized that I love taking pictures of sea creatures - apparently I'm going to have to give scuba diving a try and get a good underwater camera!

When you first enter the aquarium you see the penguins - very cute.





I also loved the fact that they are the "Jackass" species of penguin.

The crabs and shrimp were cool.





My favorite shrimp were the ones that look like men with crazy big mustaches.



A scary huge octopus - he never came out so I have no idea exactly how big he was.



The jellyfish were cool - the moon jellyfish were great because the light in the tank kept changing, so the jellyfish would change colors.







And we found Nemo!



He was with Dory!



We got to see a big turtle - he was amazing - I wasn't able to get a super good picture of him because he went by so quickly.





And we saw many other fish, including a freaky looking guy, some beautiful tropical colors and some lumpy orange guys.







But my favorite sections were the sharks and the stingrays.





Maybe it's a good thing we didn't pay to swim with the sharks - it was scary enough on the outside of the glass.





And the stingrays just rocked. I love this picture because they look like ghosts!



And I love the little fish that swims along with the stingray!





Unfortunately the aquarium ended on a low note. Right at the end, as you are about to enter the gift shop, they have two enclosures that could not have been more than 10' x 10' in size. One had two female lions and the other had two tigers. They were such small spaces and the animals were just lying in the corners - they looked so sad.

To make matters worse, some lady kept knocking on the plastic glass in the left corner of the tiger's enclosure, where one of the tigers was resting. After a minute of her knocking the tiger got up from his corner. I swear he looked right at me - I was standing in the right corner - and he looked absolutely depressed. He then slowly walked to the right corner and curled up with his mate, who was already asleep there. It broke my heart.

Then the lady came over to where I was standing, and pushed me aside so she could continue pestering this tiger. Neil, seeing I was upset and that this lady was a jerk, grabbed her arm and told her to stop. Of course, since she was Korean, she didn't understand and just laughed in his face, and continued to laugh as she walked away. Apparently having a humane attitude to animals is funny.

I understand that the culture here places a different importance on the treatment of people and animals. In this culture humans are the top species and animals are here to satisfy our needs, be that as food, entertainment or a pathetic substitute for a child that we dress up in ridiculous costumes (I'll write more on the Korean fashionable pets another day). But I will never be able to agree with those beliefs, and I will never feel okay about seeing animals mistreated in such a way.

But that's enough of my rant. I can honestly say that 99% of the wildlife in the Busan Aquarium appears to be very well taken care of and it is an excellent place - well worth a visit should you ever find yourself in Busan.

Happy Seokga Tansinil!

This year May 21 was the celebration of Seokga Tansinil, or Buddha's Birthday in Korea. His birthday is celebrated each year on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month. Our boy Buddha is 2,634 years old, based on a birth year of 624 BC. In South Korea, Buddha's Birthday is celebrated by hanging colorful lotus lanterns in temples for the month of May. On his birthday many people visit the temples to pray and light a lantern.

We visited Busan for Buddha's birthday to visit the very special Beomeosa Temple. Beomeosa Temple translates to "Temple of the Nirvana Fish". This temple was built in 678 and has a very special story on the origin of it's name.

The mountain where Beomeosa is found is said to have at the summit a golden well which never, ever dries up. The water of this well is believed to have very special magical properties, as one day a golden fish came from heaven to play in the well and has lived there ever since.

The temple has been reconstructed twice - once in 1602, after it was burned down following a Japanese invasion in 1592. It burned down again only years later in 1613, this time in an accidental fire.

To get to the top of the mountain where the temple is found we take a bus from near the Beomeosa metro station. Since it was Buddha's Birthday we were in the company of hundreds of Koreans. The lines were extremely long and the heat was excruciating, but I channeled my inner Buddha to find calm and nirvana. This allowed me to keep my cool while I watched groups of old Koreans cut the mile long line and nab a spot on the bus before everyone else. After a 30 minute wait for the bus, and a sweaty, claustrophobic 30 minute bus ride to the top we were finally there.

The first thing we were greeted by was vendors, selling a variety of things, from small knickknacks and toys, to traditional Korean rice cake and cotton candy. There were also candidates for the upcoming elections shaking hands and kissing babies everywhere.









The temple itself was beautiful. There were brightly colored lanterns hanging everywhere, with tags on each. I believe that people can buy a tag and write a wish for their family on the tag, to hang from the lantern. They were not lit yet, as it was not dark.





As we wandered we came across many small temple rooms, where people would pray to various images of the Buddha. We weren't able to go in, or take pictures of these small rooms, as it didn't feel right to interrupt the worship. Although I did attend Buddhist temple on occasion with my family when I was young, I never really learned much beyond the basic bow - and the warning not to play with my o-juzu beads in temple.

Apparently other foreigners had no problem posing for cheesy pictures in front of the prayer rooms, or having their pictures taken with monks like they were seeing Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. It was definitely a strange dichotomy, with some people there to have a special religious day and others there to sight see.

There was a small stage, with some women playing traditional music. I assume that later in the evening there would be more of a ceremony on the stage, when all the lanterns would be lit up.



The temple also provides lunch for all visitors to the temple that day - which is a staggering number of meals. We didn't partake in the meal, which is a traditional lunch of rice, vegetables and chili sauce - bibimbap.

It was great to see a traditional, historical sight on such a special day. I look forward to visiting another temple in Busan, which is built into the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean, but we will save that trip for a day when it is less busy.

Oedo Botanical Gardens & Haegeumgang Rocks

Okay - just to preface this post - my title implies that we visited the beautiful Oedo Botanical Gardens and somewhere named Haegeumgang "rocks" or in non-street lingo, is pretty fabulous. So just to clear up any misconceptions before we continue, I mean rocks in the literal, geographical sense. We're talking some big freakin' rocks. Okay - on with the post.....

On Children's Day we took a day trip down to the south end of Geoje Island with a bunch of foreigners. Our mission - to see Oedo Botanical Gardens. The Oedo Botanical Gardens are located on a small island just south of Geoje, and the entire island is devoted to these gardens. So we hopped on a ferry with about 20 other foreigners, 50 Koreans and headed out to sea.

On the ferry we got to see many "igneous" rocks as our resident geological expert Jimmy put it. We also got the experience of being completely ignored by the snack cart -however being as the "snack cart" consisted of dried squid the length of your arm we were okay with that.

Before docking on the island, we took a side trip to the famous Haegeumgang Rocks - the pride of Geoje Island. They're pretty cool - for big rocks sticking out of the ocean. Everyone on the ferry climbed out onto the sides of the boat (which were about 1.5 feet wide) to look at the rocks. We were excited because we were close enough to touch them with our hands. That was before we realized that we were about to attempt a three point turn using a cave that was narrower than the boat. Our excitement of touching the rocks quickly turned to a combination of wonder and fear as we watched our ferry driver pretty much ram the side of the ferry into the rocks. Thanks be for the yellow foam balls that line the side of the ferry. Something we have learned from Korea - you can feel safe ramming any kind of transport into something as long as you have some kind of foam bumper pad protecting it.

Here you can see part of our adventure attempting to enter the cave.



After our dramatic run in with the rocks the rest of the ferry ride was pretty anti-climactic. We arrived at Oedo Island and had 1.5 hours to explore before we were due back to the boat.

The island really is beautiful, with over 3,000 different species of plants, all weeded, trimmed and shaped within an inch of their life. The only way I can describe this island is if someone middle class all of a sudden became a billionaire, bought an island, went on a shopping spree for random Greco-Roman statues, put together a hodge-podge of architecture features from various time periods and combined it with a bunch of gorgeous flowers to make their island look "classy". That being said, it was certainly beautiful and I enjoyed standing on my make-believe terrace overlooking the ocean and imagining that I was some sort of Disney princess.

Here are some of our favourite pics of the island.




















Along the way we came across a statue garden titled "Hope of the World". Our eyes were then met with a variety of statues in a variety of compromising positions - not to dissimilar from the more graphic scenes of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Apparently mass orgies are the hope of the world.






After our day on the island we climbed back onto the ferry. This time we got seperated from our group and spent the ride back to Geoje in the company of many drunken Korean men singing and dancing along with the Korean pop blasting through the speakers. Apparently we missed the bar on the botanical island, or someone forgot to inform us that this was BYOB.

Next weekend we are heading to Gyeongju. This is a city about 3 hours north of us on the mainland and it is where the capital of Korea was during the Silla kingdom for over 1,000 years. A lot of history. Get your learnin' caps on.

Door Bumpers and Bad Taste

Hello Everyone,

First and foremost, our apologies to our devoted fans (both of you) for not writing a blog for some time now. Like Miko said a few posts ago, not much is different in this little life of ours. Of course, small situations that make our heads turn happen here and there but they don't always seem that interesting afterwards. Anyways, here we go with the blog post.

So this is something I've been wanting to blog about for some time now but I needed to get some good photographic evidence first. Driving over here is not like it is back home (see previous post about getting hit by a car). Parking over here is very interesting as well. They do have one awesome thing in some parkades though. There is a light over every parking spot. If there is a car in it then it is red. If there is no car in it then it is green. You just have to look around for a green light and drive straight to the spot. Brilliant!! Difficult thing is that you will have about 3cm on either side of your vehicle to park. Needless to say, this country can fit a car into the smallest of spaces (although I've only seen one person who could actually parallel park well). Because of these small parking spaces they require what I call "door bumpers".

Now a door bumper is essentially that. It's a bumper that prevents your door from dinging another persons car. What I want to know is why do 90% of door bumpers look like this:



They are giant blue foam cubes that always stand out on any color car. I mean...seriously?!



Granted sometimes the rare car will invest in a fancy door bumper that actually matches the car color such as:



While taking these photos I did notice this nice little door bumper. It comes all "bejeweled" with fake diamonds and all.



I just don't get that when these different colored door bumpers are available, why are so many people opting for the giant blue foamy. I just don't get it.

Now, originally that's all this blog was going to be about but then I noticed a wonderful advertisement that I had to share with the world. It's a photo of a Samsung advertisement that caught my eye. I think it is probably a grand opening advertisement but the photo they chose to use is...well...take a look.



In case you didn't notice anything more than the average earthquake skyline, look again just under the "E". You are correct! That is a photo of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and they're falling down. Nothing says "come to our grand opening like memories of terror". Nothing but class ladies and gentlemen. Nothing but class.

Well that's about it for me. We've got a long weekend coming up so I'm sure we'll have a blog about that soon. We did go to a fancy botanical island but I'm gonna let Miko do that blog since I think she'll make it more witty and interesting. Hope you enjoy my ramblings and don't forget about us.

Konglish

More Konglish!

We haven't seen too much lately (our city is decent with English and when it's wrong it's usually just a misplaced letter), but these two beauties caught my eye.

This first one is a bank in downtown Gohyeon (the area of Geoje Island we live in).



Fresh Bank. Fresh Fish? In all fairness, they do have fish in their logo, but I don't think I'll be buying my fish there anytime soon. This one was fun, because I had to go in the middle of the road and stand between the lanes of traffic to get close enough for the detail. Just another day being a crazy foreigner.

This one I spied on another walk through downtown, on my way to pick up art supplies. I usually try to walk down different street, so I see new things. This place is called Tiara Hair Boutique.



A pretty standard list of services for a hair salon, but I'm dying to know what "magic" is.

A constant source of entertainment for both Neil and I are the flags of the world, which run all along the boardwalk along the harbor edge in Gohyeon. We notice a new mistake every time. This first picture we took during our first week here.



At first we just took the picture because we were proud Canadians. It wasn't until later that we realized, according to the sign, we were proud Canadians from "Northern South America".

And while waiting for my ferry to Busan two weeks ago we noticed that Brazil had moved to Eastern South Africa. Good thing we spotted that. Had we planned our trip to South America to visit Brazil we sure would have had egg on our faces.



Hope you're all doing well in Northern South America!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder? Or Just Bored?

Hey Everyone!

First and foremost - we both apologize for the lack of posts - but the reality is that if we were to tell you what we are really up to you wouldn't be too impressed. It's not that we've become "soju warriors" (the name for Koreans who are usually drunk by 8pm). The truth is that we haven't led too exciting of lives yet. Korea, for the most part, is not too different from home.

All the modern conveniences are at our fingertips. Our island has a large number of foreigners, so communication is rarely a problem and everyone living here is used to foreigners, so we're not experiencing that "we're in a freak show as the main attraction" feeling. We tend to eat in a lot, since vegetarian food is hard to come by (I have learned how to say "I'm a vegetarian" though, which is making life a little easier in the grocery store - they always want me to sample meat). And through the wonder of the Internet we are still staying current on our MUST SEE TV. All in all, life is pretty much same old same old.

We are looking forward to our vacations, when we will travel to countries where Western culture has taken less of a grip - and there are always the random moments here in Korea when we really do feel like we're on the opposite side of the world.

Some good news is that I finally have all my working papers and now both Neil and I are fully "set up" for our life here. Foreigner ID cards, bank accounts, and I will be picking up my cell phone tomorrow! It's nice to feel like we have a life here, it's been a long time coming.

To get my work visa, I visited Japan two weeks ago. It was a quick trip and I was only in Japan for a little over 24 hours. I did feel a little excitement - in my family I am the first person who has actually gone to Japan. My father never went and my sister will be going, but not until next summer. I had a feeling of, well, not really homecoming, but like I was connecting with some of my personal history.

I docked in Fukuoka, which is a 3 hour ferry ride from Busan, Korea. It is the closest Korean Embassy on foreign soil, so the ideal destination for any foreigner doing a visa run. I hopped in a cab outside the ferry terminal to my hotel. Surprisingly, at least to me, they drive on the other side of the road in Japan. You learn something new everyday, or in this case, every time you go to a foreign country!

Here's a photo of my arrival into the Fukuoka ferry terminal. A little foggy, but you can get the idea.



My hotel was right on the main street in downtown Fukuoka. It was small and clean - and I was really just looking forward to sleeping that night, since I had only had 3 hours of sleep in Busan the night before.



My first stop was the Korean embassy to drop off my visa paperwork. Up to now getting work visas for Korea has been an ordeal for both myself and Neil. There are many hoops to jump through in order to work here. So I was prepared for any scenario the embassy through at me. I had university transcripts, at least 5 photocopies of my passport, a 2 page written letter explaining why my previous visa had been cancelled and the address of the Canadian embassy, should my work visa be denied and I be stranded in Japan. I was ready for whatever they threw at me. So imagine my surprise when I walked into the embassy, went straight to the counter and was told, after handing over my application and passport, that "Thank you, your visa will be ready tomorrow at 10am". By far the easiest process for a visa I have been through yet.

Once that was done I had a lot of time to wander the city. And by that I mean go shopping. Fukuoka is really just a small business centre, so there is not too much in terms of tourist destinations. But there is shopping. Lots of shopping. The downside of Japan is that it is REALLY expensive, so I spent most of my time just looking and wishing. They take fashion to the next level. Everyone has a very distinct style and they go all the way with it. I did have some fun in one store called Loft, which is like the Japanese version of Ikea. Incredibly trendy home furnishings and supplies. I had fun in the costume section (yes - they had a costume section) where I found an extremely creepy Michael Jackson mask.





I was also happy to see that, not only Obama has made a cultural impact in Japan, but also Michelle, although apparently her catchphrase is "I HEART Obama". And she kind of looks like a troll doll.



My other surprising discovery is that Fukuoka had very little English. Nearly all the stores and restaurants carried menus in only Japanese, which meant my options for food were whittled down to cup of noodles from the convenience store near my hotel. And in all the stores I went into no one spoke English to me. They all spoke in Japanese, and when I responded in English they just smiled and nodded. But it isn't a big city. I expect there is much more English in bigger cities like Osaka and Tokyo.

The next day I happily picked up my visa, spent some more time sightseeing and headed back to Korea. It was a whirlwind trip, but I look forward to seeing more of Japan and having more to share with you.

Leading a Horse to Water...

Hello Internet World!

So this is Neil and my first post. Miko has done all the posts thus far but I figured I should get one in every once in a while. You'll be able to tell the difference because mine will probably be much more of a ramble and Miko's will be clear and concise. I told a bunch of people to check out the blog so I figured this was as good a time as any to post something. Also, Miko is in Japan getting her work Visa finally so I'm home alone and looking for something to do. Let's start!

Yesterday I found some great comics on Facebook that must be drawn by a guy teaching in Korea. They are spot on about life in Korea so if you really want to know what it's like over here then check them out. The link is posted on my page. I'll include a few of them below.

So teaching overseas is not new to me since I taught in China for a year. Because of this I assumed I'd be set and this would be a cake walk. Not so much. One, Korea is very different from China. Two, in China I taught first year College and now I'm teaching mostly Kindergarten so far. This obviously provides different experiences. Third, in China I had to create my own curriculum and here it is mostly provided for me. Both of these have there ups and downs so it's a toss up. Ultimately I just keep trying my best and try not to care too much. That's what I keep telling myself. Like the title of this post says, I'll keep leading the little horses to water but it's up to them if they're going to drink.

One great thing about this time around is that I'm learning as much as my students sometimes. A secret of Neil is that I've never really understood things like verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. Don't even get me started with Present Perfect Tense, Infinitives and such. I never really needed to know the difference because I already speak the language and I know how to form sentences. I even made it through a year in China without really knowing. Obviously this has changed though because you gotta know what you're talking about when you teach. I'm smart now! I still never use "their" though. I just like "there" so much more.

My charades skills have also improved once again. I acted a lot of stuff out in China so it came back to me quite easily. This also brings us to our first comic that I mentioned earlier.


Hehehe They're so funny...but more so if you're here I assume.

One of the things that my kindergarten students do that makes me laugh is when they whisper to each other. I assume this is because they are trying to keep a secret. We all know how well most Kindergarten kids are at whispering though so it's not difficult to hear. The thing that makes it great is that they generally whisper to each IN KOREAN. They don't want me to listen in on something that I won't understand a word of. Silly Kindergarten students.

Now it brings us to our second cartoon. Excited? This is something I somewhat experienced in China but more so in Korea. The students will have layers of clothes on and a big winter coat and then they complain about being hot. Meanwhile I'm standing at the front of the class standing under the heater because I forgot a sweater. "Hot, teacher." Silly students.


This next cartoon is spot on as well. This situation has happened to me many times. At least 5 times a week. Bottom line - I'm a freak to my students. My arm hair is fascinating to them. Students of all ages have randomly either stroked my arm hair or pulled my arm hair during class. A friend of mine here even had a student lick his arm hair which luckily hasn't happened to me...yet. They enjoy the facial hair as well and want to touch it but that's not as easy since I'm usually standing and my head is luckily out of reach. Silly freakish teacher.


Lastly, I just want to mention how it weirds me out how the english speaking Jehovah's Witnesses seem to keep finding me. They've found me twice so far and I expect this to continue. I'm gonna have a large collection of The Watchtower newsletters in no time. Last time I just kept walking and said I already got a newsletter downtown. Seemed to work...for now. Apparently there are lots of Mormons as well but I haven't been approached by them yet. We've found a Mormon church and seen Missionaries on the street but that's about it.


Anyways, I'll stop rambling for now. Thanks for checking out our blog and feel free to post comments if you're so inclined.