Taxis, Glasses and Socks...
Hello All Over the World type folk,
Here's Hels in Mokpo again to share my last week (or so) with you all. This might be a quickie but then I always promise that and then it turns into a long one and I have to go back to the beginning again and delete the bit saying that it was going to be a short message. And in taking the trouble to explain that this has now become longer than a lot of the messages I have sent over the years!
No Korean class this last Saturday which all involved were eternally grateful for. I, for one, was way too hung over to even wake up enough to put my contact lenses in for quite some time. We had a bit of a soju party on Thursday night at Tim's and then led onto to the other side of town to continue until the wee small hours (I love not starting work until 3.35!!). Feeling a little fragile the next day, I hauled myself out of bed and to work where Tim had already been for an hour. Had to laugh when I walked in and saw an empty Red Bull bottle on his desk- hee hee! And you can't even get it here, he brought it back from his recent trip from the Philippines for whenever he is too hung over to make coffee so the other teachers couldn't appreciate the joke as much as me. Friday night was party night over at Trish's and despite promising myself a soju-free weekend (after much discussion with various folk about whether or not Thursday REALLY counts as the weekend) I was back on the lemon stuff almost as soon as entering the room. Highlights include falling over and breaking beer bottles. Well, you have to question the logic of a country where you aren't allowed to wear your shoes in the house(through tradition rather than strict law enforcement before you get the wrong idea) having really shiny floors in all of the residences! People, in this case drunk people, sliding around shiny lino covered floors in their socks- well, it is a disaster waiting to happen really, isn't it! But at least it is easy to clear up the beer, i guess, which wouldn't have been spilt if people had slid on the shiny floors, which are easy to clear beer off etc etc. I ended the night phoning Trish from the car park to let her know that I couldn't find my way out and that I was having a go on the swings and hoping not to throw up. Got home just in time to hear the cockerel on my neighbour's roof crow in the dawn.
So I was thrilled to bits (in an almost unconscious sort of a way) when Reb rang to cancel the Korean lesson. The reason?? The Korean teacher was too hung over to take the class. So it is a contagious affliction. At least this gives me more time to study for the test. I have learnt the vowels now and some of the consonants (I'll have 2 vowels and four consonants please, Carol!) and can count to the astronomical heights of 7 (10 if my kids help me!). Problem is that the learning over here is done by rote rather than understanding which explains why I understood nothing the first time. Tim told me two things today that will make learning the Hangeul script really easy- apparently it is written in the form that your mouth and tongue take when saying the sound. I will have to explore this idea further. But if we were told that from the start or that two lines make a 'y' at the beginning of the sound then we would probably be further on now. I guess that it is just different ways of learning. Me and Tim get very frustrated here that the kids aren't taught to sound out new words when they see them (C-A-T etc) which means that they don’t' know where to start when they see new words. Most of the time they won't even get the first letter right- they are just guessing. they can say 'bed' and 'room' but don’t' recognise the word 'bedroom'. It's enough to make you spit (and swear sometimes which you can get away with if you use words that don't appear in Hollywood movies as no-one can understand even if the kids repeat it later!!!) but we will see what we can do with that one.
I am now a legal alien- I picked up the product of my finger-painting, sorry printing, session today- my shiny new alien registration card- and there isn't one from Venus for the women and Mars for the men, much to my disappointment. And now I have my address written down in Korean which I assume is right after they read it off the form that I had to fill in! So maybe now I can get a taxi all the way back to my house sometimes instead of to the nearest landmark.
The Immigration Office is near a huge apartment complex that most of the other teachers here live in. The block in called Boo Young (which I read in Korean off the side of the building though I guess it is cheating a bit if you already know the name!). Did i tell you about the car park at Boo Young (yes, the one where I got lost) which gets so overcrowded at night that people leave their handbrakes off so you can push the car in case it is in your way. Failing that they have little embroidered cushions in the window with their phone numbers on so you can just phone them and tell them to come down and move the car! Near Boo Young there are a lot of my favourite machine in Korean- the Telephone, Can and Coffee machine! It looks like a normal can dispensing machine but half way down the front of it is a public phone. All it needs now is a seat and there are usually plenty of those abandoned on the streets (where else do you regularly see bus stops with three piece suites in them?) Fantastic idea- i can see the benefits of that even though I don’t' drink coffee. So i thought that was one of my favourite things but it has been superseded even since this morning when I went into the bank. I don’t understand the bank at all and while i was trying to work out where to stand and who was queuing and who was just starting at me I noticed the pens on chains- perfectly normal almost universal bank furniture. But imagine your irritation when you get to the bank and realise that you have forgotten your glasses and you have to go home and get them so you can read the forms you have to fill in- well, Korea has catered for that by attaching handy pairs of spectacles to the chain for customers use! Fantastic!
I just want to add a little something about taxis here too. They are plentiful and very cheap and have far less people on board to stare at you than buses. So I use taxis all of the time unless I am walking somewhere. I do walk to work though it can be quite hazardous since there are no pavements (and many pigs heads) on the way (imagine how you feel when you see an ajumma chopping up a piece of meat on an old fashioned wooden block when you realise that the bit she is holding onto to make sure that the meat won't just slip out into the road is an EAR!) and the drivers here are very fond of using their car horns. Now I thought that they were using them instead of brakes but I have sussed what it is all about now. Taxis want to use them and can't understand why you don't. If you stand still for more than thirty seconds, for instance if you are trying to cross the road, they will stop and try to entice you in- unless you are in a hurry and then it will be 'National Korean Catch a Taxi Day' and there will be none spare. But they are far more cunning than I previously suspected. They can't understand why you would choose to walk down streets that have no pavements and you are quite exposed. So they beep to draw your attention to your own stupidity and also to upset your nerves so much ('ohmigod all this beeping is scaring me half to death') that you decide to get a taxi for the rest of the way! If they can't entice you in they will scare you in- cunning so and sos!
Well I had better go now and delete that bit at the beginning of the message about this being a short one!
Here's Hels in Mokpo again to share my last week (or so) with you all. This might be a quickie but then I always promise that and then it turns into a long one and I have to go back to the beginning again and delete the bit saying that it was going to be a short message. And in taking the trouble to explain that this has now become longer than a lot of the messages I have sent over the years!
No Korean class this last Saturday which all involved were eternally grateful for. I, for one, was way too hung over to even wake up enough to put my contact lenses in for quite some time. We had a bit of a soju party on Thursday night at Tim's and then led onto to the other side of town to continue until the wee small hours (I love not starting work until 3.35!!). Feeling a little fragile the next day, I hauled myself out of bed and to work where Tim had already been for an hour. Had to laugh when I walked in and saw an empty Red Bull bottle on his desk- hee hee! And you can't even get it here, he brought it back from his recent trip from the Philippines for whenever he is too hung over to make coffee so the other teachers couldn't appreciate the joke as much as me. Friday night was party night over at Trish's and despite promising myself a soju-free weekend (after much discussion with various folk about whether or not Thursday REALLY counts as the weekend) I was back on the lemon stuff almost as soon as entering the room. Highlights include falling over and breaking beer bottles. Well, you have to question the logic of a country where you aren't allowed to wear your shoes in the house(through tradition rather than strict law enforcement before you get the wrong idea) having really shiny floors in all of the residences! People, in this case drunk people, sliding around shiny lino covered floors in their socks- well, it is a disaster waiting to happen really, isn't it! But at least it is easy to clear up the beer, i guess, which wouldn't have been spilt if people had slid on the shiny floors, which are easy to clear beer off etc etc. I ended the night phoning Trish from the car park to let her know that I couldn't find my way out and that I was having a go on the swings and hoping not to throw up. Got home just in time to hear the cockerel on my neighbour's roof crow in the dawn.
So I was thrilled to bits (in an almost unconscious sort of a way) when Reb rang to cancel the Korean lesson. The reason?? The Korean teacher was too hung over to take the class. So it is a contagious affliction. At least this gives me more time to study for the test. I have learnt the vowels now and some of the consonants (I'll have 2 vowels and four consonants please, Carol!) and can count to the astronomical heights of 7 (10 if my kids help me!). Problem is that the learning over here is done by rote rather than understanding which explains why I understood nothing the first time. Tim told me two things today that will make learning the Hangeul script really easy- apparently it is written in the form that your mouth and tongue take when saying the sound. I will have to explore this idea further. But if we were told that from the start or that two lines make a 'y' at the beginning of the sound then we would probably be further on now. I guess that it is just different ways of learning. Me and Tim get very frustrated here that the kids aren't taught to sound out new words when they see them (C-A-T etc) which means that they don’t' know where to start when they see new words. Most of the time they won't even get the first letter right- they are just guessing. they can say 'bed' and 'room' but don’t' recognise the word 'bedroom'. It's enough to make you spit (and swear sometimes which you can get away with if you use words that don't appear in Hollywood movies as no-one can understand even if the kids repeat it later!!!) but we will see what we can do with that one.
I am now a legal alien- I picked up the product of my finger-painting, sorry printing, session today- my shiny new alien registration card- and there isn't one from Venus for the women and Mars for the men, much to my disappointment. And now I have my address written down in Korean which I assume is right after they read it off the form that I had to fill in! So maybe now I can get a taxi all the way back to my house sometimes instead of to the nearest landmark.
The Immigration Office is near a huge apartment complex that most of the other teachers here live in. The block in called Boo Young (which I read in Korean off the side of the building though I guess it is cheating a bit if you already know the name!). Did i tell you about the car park at Boo Young (yes, the one where I got lost) which gets so overcrowded at night that people leave their handbrakes off so you can push the car in case it is in your way. Failing that they have little embroidered cushions in the window with their phone numbers on so you can just phone them and tell them to come down and move the car! Near Boo Young there are a lot of my favourite machine in Korean- the Telephone, Can and Coffee machine! It looks like a normal can dispensing machine but half way down the front of it is a public phone. All it needs now is a seat and there are usually plenty of those abandoned on the streets (where else do you regularly see bus stops with three piece suites in them?) Fantastic idea- i can see the benefits of that even though I don’t' drink coffee. So i thought that was one of my favourite things but it has been superseded even since this morning when I went into the bank. I don’t understand the bank at all and while i was trying to work out where to stand and who was queuing and who was just starting at me I noticed the pens on chains- perfectly normal almost universal bank furniture. But imagine your irritation when you get to the bank and realise that you have forgotten your glasses and you have to go home and get them so you can read the forms you have to fill in- well, Korea has catered for that by attaching handy pairs of spectacles to the chain for customers use! Fantastic!
I just want to add a little something about taxis here too. They are plentiful and very cheap and have far less people on board to stare at you than buses. So I use taxis all of the time unless I am walking somewhere. I do walk to work though it can be quite hazardous since there are no pavements (and many pigs heads) on the way (imagine how you feel when you see an ajumma chopping up a piece of meat on an old fashioned wooden block when you realise that the bit she is holding onto to make sure that the meat won't just slip out into the road is an EAR!) and the drivers here are very fond of using their car horns. Now I thought that they were using them instead of brakes but I have sussed what it is all about now. Taxis want to use them and can't understand why you don't. If you stand still for more than thirty seconds, for instance if you are trying to cross the road, they will stop and try to entice you in- unless you are in a hurry and then it will be 'National Korean Catch a Taxi Day' and there will be none spare. But they are far more cunning than I previously suspected. They can't understand why you would choose to walk down streets that have no pavements and you are quite exposed. So they beep to draw your attention to your own stupidity and also to upset your nerves so much ('ohmigod all this beeping is scaring me half to death') that you decide to get a taxi for the rest of the way! If they can't entice you in they will scare you in- cunning so and sos!
Well I had better go now and delete that bit at the beginning of the message about this being a short one!
posted by Helen @ 12:05 AM
<< Home