So long, farewell, anyoung hee gyeseyo (or you stay, I go).

One spring morning, we woke up to the brightest and clearest day we had seen in Korea this time around. Decided to visit a park along the inlet that we had seen on our Costco runs. Taking a wrong turn, we wound up on the opposite side of the expressway from the park and discovered a seaside-y sort of place full of seafood restaurants, seaside walkways, and street vendors. Upon further investigation, we found a tiny amusement park with an arcade (including Time Crisis!), a mini aquarium, and two old naval ships which we could go into. One ship had previously belonged to America and had been through WWII in the South Pacific, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War before being turned over to the Korean navy in the 1980s. Not feeling like eating octopus, we drove to the nearest Burger King in Dangjin.

The next weekend, being four days long, gave us enough time to visit Andong and Cheongsong-Matt’s old stomping grounds. Drove for nearly five hours directly east. We easily found a love motel in Andong and enjoyed exploring the area again. The next day, we drove the forty-five minutes to Cheongsong, along a road we had never been before. Cheongsong was a great trip down memory lane! It has changed so much, with more posh coffee shops (for rural Korea) and some more restaurants. Heard someone calling out Matt’s name as we walked down the street. Turned to see one of Matt’s old students running towards us—he actually remembered him! We tried to find Matt’s old landlady, but she wasn’t home.

Spent the rest of the day hiking around the foothills and around town. Cheongsong and Andong were more beautiful than I had remembered, with clear skies and huge green trees. Returned to Andong along the bus route, finally stopping at the giant grasshopper park we had seen many times from the coach window. It was getting dark and was quite scary, being the only people there. Finished off the night successfully eating 1 kilogram of pork, not recommended to eat that much in one sitting!

Before returning to dreary, dirty Shinpyeong, we stopped at Korea’s highest stone pagoda, located right in Andong. I was a nervous wreck the entire five hours home, hating Korean drivers who love to come to a sudden crawl inside a tunnel and then go crazy after the tunnel to make up for lost time.

Started cleaning the apartment, cupboards and such, a week early, which was good because it took several hours at a time to do minor tasks. One day had to drive an hour away to the pension office, just to spend half an hour filling out paperwork. By the time we returned to Shinpyeong, we had to go to work. Another day we had to go to Dangjin to open a bank account in order to transfer money to America. What a mess that was!

South Korea has often been applauded for its technological strength of late. I don’t really get how that could be. Many of the computers are ancient, still using XP and a really old version of Internet Explorer. Anti-Virus programs are never updated as soon as the free subscription runs out. Many of the websites consist of broken links. When Matt asked why Korea has the oldest versions of everything, he was told it was because no one had the money to upgrade, even though most of the upgrades that can be done are free.

Non-the-less, it was still surprising when Matt spent an entire day going around to local banks trying to find one that would transfer money out of the country. Instead we had to visit other banks in Dangjin and set up new accounts. This isn’t easy, it takes hours to fill out the paperwork, go to your other bank and transfer the money to the new account, go back to the new bank, and fill out the wire-transfer forms. We were at this for two hours producing ATM cards, bank books, Alien Registration cards, passports, and bank numbers, only to be told that we couldn’t transfer money because we had transferred from different banks in 2012! After another two hours, we were able to transfer money, with the warning that we couldn’t do it again this year because we had already transferred the limit, which I can unfortunately say, isn’t true.

After returning to Shinpyeong, we headed to work, where the students were a mix of sad and happy that we were leaving. I was for one, relieved, especially after our boss had decided to forgo the insurance from the car wreck, making us pay $400 for the car. Upon questioning an unclear statement from our boss, he flipped out and accused us of being argumentative and we were the subject of scorn for the next few days.

We were told to leave the apartment a day early, so we did. The boss “kindly” gave us a ride to Dangjin bus station and made sure we had purchased the tickets out of town before giving us a surly goodbye and driving off. We waited around the bus station for several hours, sat on the bus for another two hours, and arrived at the airport, exhausted. Concluded that it would be cheaper to stay at the spa in the basement of the airport and catch a movie at the movie theatre, rather than pay the $30 taxi ride and $50 hotel fee. Didn’t catch a movie in the end, because apparently, it costs $18 to leave the spa for longer than an hour.

Plane luckily arrived on time, and we fought old Chinese ladies for over-head space and foot space thanks to their yen for duty free crap. In no time we had arrived in China, where we had made it in time to get a free hotel room!

It was a grand hotel with a beauty pageant and another conference going on. We tired ourselves out waiting for various south East Asians to check in. They were all herded to the basement rooms (no windows), while we westerners were ushered to the higher floors. We giggled at the window between the bathroom and the bedroom and settled down to sleep, only slightly disturbed by the scratching and gnawing of a rat in the closet. Woken up early to catch the shuttle bus past abandoned hotels and four-story houses for the next part of the journey to the UK.

Just Some Very Korean Things

As we only have twenty-one more days left to go, and have cleaned the bottom of the sink for the thousandth time, I want to write a blog about some of my pet peeves about being here.

In no particular order:

-Cleaning the sink. Now, we clean the sink every day after doing the dishes and empty out the two-inch deep food trap, just like normal people. But what isn’t normal, is the three-inch deep dirty water reservoir underneath the food trap. I have no idea what the purpose of this thing is, maybe it is a way of trying to break down grease or something. There is a pipe that sticks up out of it which is corroded in pink slime and nothing will get at that, this slime loves to creep up into the water reservoir while I’m at work and stink the place up. WHY?

-These bathrooms. Korean bathrooms are wrapped in plastic and tile, the idea is that they can be hosed down instead of scrubbed. This means that there is a drain placed somewhere outside of the shower. Smart idea, even if the one hose (the shower head) isn’t long enough to reach the entire bathroom. It means, that the shower drain isn’t banked well and most of your shower water goes all over the bathroom floor. Also, it means that when you use a public bathroom after cleaning, you have to wade through inches deep water and hover on a dripping wet toilet, which isn’t too clean… yuck!

-Korean makeup (Won’t even go into the animal product testing).  It is becoming widely touted as the best makeup. Maybe they send the good stuff abroad, but this stuff you get here is just a step up from the stuff we used as kids. It doesn’t last too long and smears easily. This means that my co-workers come to work with an obvious foundation line, and are constantly reapplying the darn stuff. My students are continually applying tint, a watery dye that gets all over their hands and teeth—making them look like old ladies.  We won’t even go into how terrible the nail polish is, at least the “nail remover” works.

-Appliances. I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth mentioning again. They are so noisy! The dishwasher lets out this high-pitched whistle for an hour of its two hour cycle (we’ve stopped using it), and acts like an ancient machine, having to prewash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. The washer isn’t much better.  Also the fridge has this awesome “The door is open,” high-pitched wail, but it only comes on as I’m cleaning the fridge, not when the door has accidently been left ajar.

-Packaging. Korea makes it mandatory to recycle. I’ll not complain about that. But why do they allow manufacturers to make packaging that is non-recyclable? I have to pay a lot of money for these tiny garbage bags, I don’t want to have it filled with non-necessary packaging. Non-recyclable plastic bags house anything bought in pairs, many takeout containers are non-recyclable (luckily there are still restaurants that will bring you actual dishes to return).

-My paycheck. Ok, so it isn’t much different than the US in this case, but still irritating. Health care has gone up, and I get quite a chunk of my pay taken out each month, yet I still have to pay nearly $100 for a checkup and medicine. I’m always dubious about these checkups—wait for an hour in the waiting room, and spend less than five minutes with the doctor who sticks strange things into your body and shoves you out of the room without a so much as a how do you do.

-Childrearing. Even though Koreans are so easily embarrassed, they have this no discipline policy with their children. Sure, at home they’ll beat them senseless (if our upstairs neighbor is any indication or the bruises on some of my students), but in public the children are nightmares. It goes beyond the “give me” temper tantrums –these kids deliberately pull items off the shelf, run around your tables, knocking food over, and run out in front of cars. I’ve seen a kid swing a racket at another kid and smack him in the face—the mother didn’t even bat an eye.  Public parenting policy is just to ignore the kid. Or better yet, if you are playing badminton, just bring the annoying four year old into the gym, put him on a treadmill and leave him unattended. Somehow the kid actually survived and didn’t break anything.

-Supermarkets. Most of them are Mom and Pop stores and carry the exact, same thing. However, you never know how much anything is. There are no prices anywhere and prices change drastically every time you buy it. One day, juice will be one dollar, next the same juice will be five. Also, every supermarket overcharges on produce, so expensive and most of it is covered in mold!

-Feminine products. What is with selling a package of four tampons for $12!?! I feel like this is early 2000s Russia. Luckily, I can go to Costco and get good old American brands for less. Located in the baking isle of the markets, you can choose from seventy thousand different kinds and scents (except for unscented) types of sanitary napkins. There will always been a salesperson to help you through the traumatic ordeal that is choosing the pads. I’d rather have someone help me through the horror of no one being able to wrap a used pad and dispose of it properly.

-Selfies. I know they are incredibly popular everywhere, but please tell me they aren’t to the extent of Korea! My students must take a selfie every five minutes (that is not an exaggeration). It is like Whack-a-Mole trying to get these kids to keep their phones in their bags for a lesson.

Please don’t feel sorry for me, this is just so you can be in Korea with me.

Korean Pie

Since teaching a gaggle of middle school girls, I have become inundated with Korean dating information. I thought I’d share some of it with you.

Korean teens aren’t allowed to date, so of course sneak around. Somehow these kids find ways to see each other between school, academies, and family get-togethers. Because it is forbidden, their young romance seems ten times more involved than that of western kids at that age. These girls can tell you down to the minute how long she has been dating a guy. Two of my students have been dating for over a year—they are 13—and feel very deeply for each other.  Two other students have quit the academy because their parents have found out about the relationship—the girl has presumably been shipped off to a convent, and the boy has been forced to change academies.

It can be very difficult for both parties during a relationship. Females are told from day one that they must have boyfriends. They feel a terrible sense of failure at being single. I think the boys feel it to, but not to the extent that girls do. In some ways, I think the boys find it a terrible relief not having a girlfriend, mainly because having a girlfriend here costs A LOT of money.

There is at least one day a month (the 14^th) which requires someone in the relationship (mainly the guy), to fork out money. Let’s start with the first month: Diary Day this is the day where a girl gives her boyfriend the diary she has kept the previous year (I’m assuming about their relationship). Some people say couples will give each other diaries to record their moments.

February of course is Valentine’s Day. Only, the girl gives the guy chocolate. He reciprocates the following month with White Day. May is Rose Day, Pickle Day, and Yellow Day all in one—basically you give your someone something fresh—like a rose or a fruit, not sure what pickles have to do with this. The next month is kiss day and hold hands day (because you aren’t allowed to do such horrid things in public). The man gets to fork over extra money in July on the couple’s ring with Silver Day. August 14^th is both music day and green day—so take a walk in the park followed by a night at an expensive dance club. September is the beloved couple’s photo day (the result of which will be slipped into the back cover of their phone case).

The poor guy has to fork over even more money in October, starting with the 4^th, apparently on that day you must get 104 roses, ten days later, is wine day and you must take your lover out for dinner. November has Peppero Day followed by love letter day.

Finally the boyfriend gets a reprieve in December with Hug Day and Dutch Pay Day. April is a break  from all this madness to feel sorry and advertise you’re single. It is called Black Day—basically you eat black food, like Jjangmyeon.  Many of the girls seemed to be in terrible spirits as they went off with their friends to eat this black, thick, sloppy food.

Between these holidays, buying birthday and anniversary tidbits, and the dates in between, how do parents not know about the relationships? How do young men manage to save enough money to purchase an apartment or a house--a requirement that must be met before the family can even dream about giving their daughter away.

Catching Up With Korean Culture

Back in Seoul!

I’ve really been neglecting the blog.  So much has happened, I don’t even know where to begin! Bring on the novel!

We went to Seoul for Lunar New Year in February, which I don’t remember entirely because I had a terrible cold. We went around the old stomping grounds—some things have not changed and some things have. My apartment is still there, as well as the school, but the Smiling Jesus homeless shelter has gone and is being replaced with some high-rise.  Many new buildings are going up, just as many of the older buildings are emptying. It was great to be back in the city, but not as nostalgic as we had anticipated.

The weekend after Seoul, we went east to visit Matt’s friend, Tyler. He is now married to a local and lives in her parent’s “old” apartment, built in the 1990s. It has nearly the same layout as our apartment which was built three years ago. We reveled in the mother-in-law’s taste in decorating: a different wallpaper pattern for every wall.

After we recovered from the new bird flu, we put in our sixty-day notice at our school. This comes after many, many trying and mind-boggling “policy” changes at the school. Not wanting to stay a moment longer than we had to, we suggested an end date of the 15^th of May—cutting the month practically in half (exactly 60 days).  Ten days later, the boss says that the accountant doesn’t like having to calculate unfinished months, so could we possibly stay until the end of May—they pay for the ticket change fee, etc (up to $200 each). We agreed, but after several attempts at changing the ticket, we were told it wouldn’t be possible.

Two days later, it was found out that new teachers could arrive on the 25^th of May, so could we call the ticket agent and beg to change the flight to just one week ahead. I questioned the feelings of the accountant, but they just asked me to change the ticket. The fee would come to $230 each which was too costly for them.  This past Monday, it was concluded that they’ve “had a change of heart,” and “may” be willing to pay that price, but they’d let us know for sure and shrugged off our warning that the longer they wait, the more expensive the tickets will be.

This constant indecisiveness is one of the deciding factors of turning in our notice. These bosses cannot stick with a decision. First it is “don’t play games in your class.” (not defining what they mean by games), and then a week later “The students are complaining, you better play many games from now on.” To be followed with, “The parents are complaining that you are playing too many games, so no more games.” Lately, our fearless leader has been having trouble motivating the Middle School students and has made a deal that if they work hard in her class and for twenty minutes in Matt and my classes, they can have 25 minutes of uninhibited phone time. She failed to communicate her thoughts to her husband, who then comes and has a go at Matt and I for allowing free time. Her husband says “don’t listen to her,” but then the wife has a go at us for not listening to her. We talk to them until we’re blue in the face, but the only decision is to listen to whoever told us last.

Wednesday, I taught a group of six graders. They are the oldest in their school, so that means they get away with EVERYTHING. No teacher wants to teach them, so the fresh graduate teachers, who are already overworked with odd jobs from other, older teachers, are put in charge of these guys. In short, no one stands up to these spoiled monsters.

Our bosses have continuously told me to send any of these students out of the room if they curse in Korean—apparently mothers have been complaining that we allow such a thing. Usually the kids curse, I threaten, and they stop. But Wednesday would have put a sailor to shame, so I threatened again and shortly after, a kid made another student angry, and the irritated kid screamed “She-Pal!” So, I sent him out of the room. The boss comes back and says “Well, he told me he was angry, so it is ok.” I told her I didn’t care, but to just figure it out and stick with a decision, so I could do my job. She ignored me.

This week has been possibly the most Korean culture has confronted us than in the entire of time we’ve lived in Korea.  

On our way to work Monday, we were nearing an intersection. There was a car, going incredibly fast, and no indicator, it of course, suddenly turned left, into our lane. Matt slammed on the breaks, but it was too late, we connected with the driver’s rear tire. Our driver’s front bumper was pretty crumpled, but no one was hurt. Of course a bus decided to come barreling down the road, so we had to move the cars.  The ladies in the other car, saw their opportunity and called their fathers. We called our boss.

When we all were gathered, the fathers tried to blame us for the accident and scam us out of money. We called the insurance, but apparently, older males usually win the insurance battle, even if they are no where around at the time of the accident, just because they are older males. There was a lot of shouting from all sides. Incredibly infuriating, and we still don’t know what has happened with it.

They have special lady parking.

Wednesday was April Fools’ Day. A favorite day for Korean children. They come up with all sorts of shenanigans, like putting their clothes on backwards, moving the desks around, writing on the blackboards—they laugh for hours about this. We decided to pre-empt the students and changed the schedules on all of the doors. The kids didn’t really notice, but the teachers did and our boss lost it. It took us three times of saying “April Fools’!” before it registered that it was a joke and neither she, nor the receptionist had messed up.

We’ve also been going to the gym to blow off work steam. If we’re lucky we can get there before anyone else does. Koreans love to exercise in freezing temperatures and with sad, wailing, ballads. It’s a real downer. If no ballads are playing, the old people usually turn on a TV to a really loud talk show for old people. Their “must get things done fast and inefficiently” culture is reflected in their exercise routines. They put the machines on a low weight setting and go 90 miles an hour. Bounce, bounce, slam, slam, clang, clang. I’m surprised the machines don’t break! The gym also has a driving range, so there is the constant “thwap” of golf balls on the wall.  Also curious, the weights are always disappearing from the gym, one by one. It is good though, I turn my irritation to workout motivation.

Spring is here. So we go from blinding yellow dust, to thick fog and rain mixed with yellow dust. Soon the eggs that the yellow dust has brought will hatch, and the insects will start feeding on the trees. In the meantime, the tulip trees are blooming, and they are pretty. 

English Books

Last Tuesday, the full-time Korean English teacher quit. Apparently, he had sent a text message one hour before he was scheduled to work. This is the third full-time Korean teacher in the four months we have been here. Not wanting to scare mothers, our boss has taken it upon herself to teach all of the classes and run the business.  And I thought things were stressful before!

As a result, many of our classes have been combined. This is very confusing for everyone. One class is the perfect example of chaos and confusion. Five girls have been put together into a class. Three girls are in the middle of book one, one girl is in the middle of book two (but is smart enough for book three), and one girl has just started book three (but needs to review book two).

I ask which book to use, I get “Use their normal book of course!” (They have this way of making you feel crazy for questioning these things). I explain to my boss that they are using three different books, perhaps it would benefit all of them to use book two. This is impossible because parents will complain that their children are re-doing books and jumping ahead. So, we just need a new book. So now it my responsibility to go through the hundreds of sample books to find a suitable book.

Fantastic. None of the books have been kept in order, so grammar, reading, listening, high school, middle school, math, Korean, and used books are mixed together. As I am searching, my boss comes in and picks a book off the shelf, “Use this one.”

“Okay! Great!” Not even dwelling on why she couldn’t have just chosen that in the first place and saved me half an hour. The first unit is this: “Hi, I’m Anna. What’s your name?” “I’m Dan.” “Where are you from?” “I’m from America.” “What’s your favorite food?” “My favorite food is a hot dog.” The next page goes on to give four countries and different variables to favorite (sport, food, hobby, etc).

Grammar mistakes aside, I have to teach a class who cannot even remember “I like blue,” four different lessons in one unit. Yeah, that is not going to work well! Not only that, there is no writing at all, not even a vocabulary match-up. I go in search of a better alternative, finding a listening book that focuses on only one of those topics at a time and has some writing and a vocabulary section. I propose this new book to the boss.

“Yeah, that will be too difficult for them.” The boss replies. I explain how I feel about the book she had chosen, but she insists the book I have chosen would be too difficult and to just stick with the book she has chosen (Even though the listening book uses the exact same language with better grammar just broken into clearer lessons). I begrudgingly agree and set about trying to figure out how to teach the bloody book.

Ten minutes later, the boss comes back in, goes to the shelf and says, “See, you have some reading books here and some listening books here. You can choose one you think is best for that class.”

“Ok…what about the one I just picked out?” She again reiterated it was too difficult and pulls out a reading comprehension book, “This one is good.”

“Yeah, I can see that this is good, but they cannot even identify the words “pink” and “purple,” I don’t think a reading comprehension book is the way to go.”

“Well then you can choose the book! Just check it with me!” Face palm. It’s pretty much been like this for all fourteen classes.

I'm Living In a Children's Book

I have a class of six boys between the ages of eight and nine. They are the result of two classes combining together. Three of the original four kids get along well. The fourth boy is very, very odd and really has to work through some emotional issues (case and point, he’s severely addicted to Uno and has a mental breakdown if he cannot play it)—I think parents telling him “no,” would probably be a good start. Anyway, no one likes this child--except our boss. The second class was made up of two eight year olds, one boy is good-natured and determined, while the other kid is from one of those families—everyone groans when you talk about one of the three brothers. This last boy is toxic in a class of more than two.

I really wanted to do something fun with this class and most students like “running dictation.” In this version, I have written a numbered list of vocabulary words, I call two names and a number. The two students run to the back of the room where the list is, find the number, race to the front and write the word associated with the number. In a normal game, I’d make the team to do a Chinese whispers sort of relay, but since they aren’t exactly team oriented, I decided to skip that part of teamwork and just break them into groups for points. To make it “fair,” I wrote down team names on a paper and made the children blindly choose their teams—I wasn’t monitoring well, thinking probability would be in my favor—and the three best students, who like each other, got on the same team. That left the good natured kid with the emotionally disturbed boys. While Cooper and Bobby scowled at each other, Ted threw his hands in the air and went “Yeah! Fighting Team B!”

Ted volunteers to be first against Tyson. I call out the number, they run to the list and dash to the whiteboard. They are writing when Ted glances over to check his opponent’s progress. Tyson drops his marker and starts screaming, “Hacking! Hacking!” As far as I can figure out, this is Konglish for looking/cheating. Nothing I do calms him down while Ted just stands there with his spaced out smile and shrugs his shoulders, now teammates are fighting. Get that broken up and move on to Bobby and Dustin.

They run to the board, Bobby forgets how to write a U –the vowel we’ve been studying for two weeks. He starts to glance over, but Watch Dog Tyson calls him out. Bobby ignores my prompting, goes limp and drops the marker and scuttles back to his chair where he does his weird limp, blank stare and cries a bit. He is unresponsive to any comfort and the students are starting to poke fun, so to divert their attention I call on Cooper and Curtis. Number one down.

I call a number, Cooper runs to the board and realizes he doesn’t know the word and runs back, by this time, Curtis knows the word and is starting to write, Cooper takes one look at Curtis. Where Bobby goes limp and invisible, Cooper gets animated. Red gathers at his neck and creeps up his face, his already big head balloons out and his eyes turn black and jump  from his face, his fists ball up and he crushes whatever is in his hand. He screams “No!” I’m afraid he’ll billy goat Curtis, but instead sits down in a pout, breathing heavily.  Number two down.

Ted wants to go again, despite seeing his two teammates bite the dust. I call out the number over Cooper’s hyperventilating, the boys race to the front. Tyson finishes first. Ted stops mid word, gives a blank smile and a shrug and sits down. Man three down. I’ve made a huge mistake. However, looking at Cooper’s cartoonish face, Bobby’s corpse-like appearance, Ted’s blank smile and shrugging shoulders, and Curtis’s slightly evil glare over the retainer protruding cheeks, I can’t help but laugh. I have to take longer than necessary erasing the three letters off of the board.

Cebu: The Best Worst Vacation (Part Two)

Matt's photo of us at the beach at the resort!

Once on Mactan, wander around to several hotels (even the ones owned by Koreans and Japanese, which the locals warned us against), and with the help of locals and tourist police, find a room that fits our budget at Boyla Diving Resort. We chose the cheapest and least moldy room with a view over an abandoned pool for thirty-five dollars. Perhaps it was mostly destroyed in a typhoon or earthquake, but the “indoor pool” was just a tiled floor; the furniture in the lobby was ancient. Tried to use the TV, to find that it only served as a prop. Also, breakfast wasn’t included. The faucet in the plastic sink leaked all over the newly tiled bathroom.

We explore the “beach” in front of the hotel (really just garbage and rocks). This is where we learn that Mactan Island is originally a coral island, making it great for diving, but not for swimming. All of the so called “famous beaches” are really man-made for hotel use only. We were inundated by locals trying to sell us island hopping tours as we tried to find a spot to swim, looking a bit further down the “beach,” we see a blue infinity pool…I wanted to cry.

Matt suggests we go back to the hotels and see if we can use their beach for a fee. We walk back to the main road, all the while hearing shouts “Where you going?” “Tricycle?” “Sir, Mam, how about island hopping?” “Sir, food? How about Maribago Grill?” Only “yes” is an acceptable answer, to which we wouldn’t give, so they followed after us until there was another innocent tourist to irritate or we turned onto a hotel drive.

After several inquiries, and suggested prices of $100 each per day for a crowded dirty pool and a tiny beach packed with locals selling tours, we settle on the local five dollar beach, with dirty water and sand and the same three guys coming up to us every fifteen minutes to ask about island hopping or jet skiis.

On the way to our hotels.

We march determinately back towards Boyla, over the potholed mud road between goats and dogs, trying to avoid wading through puddles. We walk past the “dressing room,” the only remnants of a building, beyond Boyla, and around the corner. We quickly come to a high cement wall with some wooden doors advertising “Nordtropic Resort,” knocking on the door, a guard lets us in. We enquire about rooms, fully booked, but one room, which costs two hundred dollars a night, cash. Seeing what little hope we had in our eyes vanish, the manager offers a fifty percent discount, as long as we don’t use the kitchen or the extra bedroom. We agree, deciding that if nothing else, we’d have a decent hotel room for New Year’s Eve.

Back at Boyla, the electricity in the entire neighborhood goes out. We feel our way down the stairs to the lobby, where the emergency lights aren’t working and the maid has to give us candles from Santo Nino’s shrine. We sit outside for a bit while locals again try to sell us tours. Finally the power comes back on. We give up and go to bed over the sound of a generator being used somewhere next door.

Wake up at six in the morning to the deafening sound of roosters. So many roosters!  Cockfights seem to be a major source of entertainment for the locals and their roosters are big and mean. Still, you feel a bit sorry for them tied up in the lawn with only a six inch tether.

Check in early at the new hotel and jump into the pool. It is clear that this hotel is owned by a western, because of the little things (like light switches being where you’d expect). Eat dinner at the hotel restaurant, loving vegetables. I can never get over how fruit and vegetables are not so easily accessible in the tropics. Enjoy the dance music over the loud speaker, eat cake and a traditional Filipino dessert, Biko (a yummy brown sticky blob of rice, sugar, coconut, and mango) that the hotel gave us. At midnight, go up to the roof to watch the fireworks show. All of the papers and news stations had many stories warning against lighting your own fireworks, complete with gory pictures, but this didn’t seem to deter the locals. In fact, some of the fireworks nearly missed us, and hot ash landed on our clothes.

New Year’s was such a relief with nice people, a clean hotel, and a lovely pool. Even the sky turned blue after we had been in the hotel for a few hours! We decided to save the holiday and stay at the resort. The next few days are happily filled with swimming in the pool.

We attempted a couple of trips to the hotel beach, but being new, the sand kept washing away and the water was dirty. Matt and I rescued a starfish, who a year previous could have latched onto the coral rocks, but now gets washed up on the cement sandbar. This along with the large amounts of tourists I saw bringing back starfish and large sea shells back from island hopping makes me question how environmentally sound all of this resort tourism is.

Being a Korean resort town, Maribago has very little to offer in the way of food. You can either eat at the expensive resort cafes or at the expensive Korean-style hot pot and seafood restaurants. Other than Maribago Grill, which is a terrible place if you have food allergies because they sneak chicken in your dish and call it pork, there isn’t much for “normal” food. As a result, we had to walk a few kilometers to McDonalds (we would have happily eaten at the resort, but we felt like we needed to get out of our own world once in a while). We didn’t make it, made it as far as a jeepney stop—a palm and metal pipe shack filled with goats and pregnant ladies, and decided to turn back to town. The next day we succeeded in getting to McDonald’s via jeepney.

A typical local store

It quickly becomes clear why locals hate Koreans. Not only do Koreans only stay at Korean resorts, ride in Korean buses with Korean tour guides, and eat at Korean restaurants, there are several Korean grocery stores stocked with Korean detergents, chopsticks, water and cola brands, things than can easily be purchased everywhere in the world at cheaper locally-made prices.  This means, Koreans rarely put any money into the local economy—except help paying a few salaries—which seems to go more towards Cebu City since some of the resort workers find it cheaper to commute back and forth to Cebu City than rent a room on Mactan.

Check out on Sunday, and head north to the Lapu-Lapu and Magellan Shrines. Again, locals follow us around trying to get our business… they are willing to follow you kilometers out of their way. After the shrine, get mistaken for wealthy tourists and get shown new condos for investment—well worth the clean bathroom (but where is the toilet paper in such a posh place!?!). Then head to the airport, where the relief we had felt after checking in to Nordtropic vanished and we find out that we have to pay a thirty dollar terminal fee to exit—which means scrambling for a cash machine at the last minute.