Playing Uno, the Korean Way

 Seems like all I’m being paid for is to watch the kids play Halli Galli, Go Fish, and Uno. Like any game, each person has a different way to play, but these kids take it to a whole new level when it comes to Uno.

First, don’t shuffle the deck… who cares if you’ll get all yellows. If you are young, go through the deck and find all of the good cards and give those to your friends (if your teacher is playing, give her all terrible cards). Step two, deal five cards, not seven. Dealing here is giving five cards to one player, then the next, not dealing one card at a time to each player (the cards really never get mixed).

Play “rock, paper, scissors” for five minutes to see who goes first (there will be some confusion as to whether to say it in Korean or in English. Also, they will argue over someone not making a clear selection or waiting until seeing what everyone else has chosen. This means they will start over. Finally, when the first player is chosen, he or she may then choose the order… however some students will complicate things and try to continue “rock, paper, scissors” to find the exact order (similar to a star), meaning they’ll never remember the complicated pattern they’ve just created, because they can never remember the order, no matter if it is counterclockwise or clockwise.

Now that almost fifteen minutes has passed, the game can begin. But first, you show your good cards to everyone (some students will actually lay their cards face up on the desk). The dealer turns a card over—let’s say it’s a green three—here is when it gets tricky. Anything goes. If the player doesn’t have a three, wild, or green card, he/she will put down any card. If the students are feeling cranky, they will call the player on this, if not play will continue on that card. Some students will put down all of their cards of the same color… all of them. Some students may put down all of their same number cards. Another thing that could happen is, let’s say a red two is played, a student will put down a yellow six followed by a red six because they want to keep the red theme.

When a special card, such as reverse gets played, you can ignore it, or play a skip card to cancel out the reverse. If more than one reverse card is played at once, get super confused by the order. If there are three reverse cards played, argue for three minutes on the direction. Skip cards, as mentioned before can cancel things out, such as reverse and plus cards, however, not another skip card. Skip cards can also be ignored.

Plus cards can be built up (each player places a plus card on top of the last). If a draw four wild card is placed, ignore the color completely and place a draw two card on top, then choose the color, after everyone yells at you for not choosing a color.

They’ve added another rule, that the person who doesn’t shout “uno” first, must draw a card. This means, that when a player is down to two cards, there is a standoff on who is going to say it first, this could take up to a minute. If the person with one card says “uno,” first, the other players must take one card each.

Not only are the “rules” completely impossible to follow, the students don’t seem to grasp the strategy of the game. They will miss obvious plays, drawing more cards while they have at least three cards they could have played. This means, I win every time I play with them and that includes playing with official rules while everyone else plays their way. Ok, so I loose when they play drop every card of the same color… but any other time, I win.

Have fun if you are going to play the Korean way. Don’t forget to check your phone every few minutes. Especially if it is near your turn, you have to make everyone wait for you.  If you have fringe, you must flatten it and check yourself in some sort of reflective surface before your play. Oh, and scream at the top of your lungs at every possible moment. Boys are not excluded from any of these activities.  Oh and never, ever, ever dream about playing Uno with a deck of cards other than Uno cards! It is sacrilegious. 

Health Check

Every year, I have to go for the required government health check. It usually takes half an hour; it’s degrading, but mostly painless. This was the first year doing it without anyone’s help.

We wake up to a dreary, rainy morning and drive the 45 minutes to the bigger hospital in Seosan. Enter the hospital through the underground parking garage. The basement houses a GS 25 convenient store and an overpriced kimbap restaurant. One thing to mention about Asia, there aren’t any cafeterias in hospitals, so all able-bodied patients go outside of the hospital for food. That being said, I still flinch every time I see patients of all ages sitting in wheel chairs with IVs attached scarfing down instant ramen noodles and a coke at the 7 Eleven.

                                                                                                                                 

Once on the main floor, nothing is in English or our level of Korean. The information desk is empty, so I attempt to find out if I pay first and where the health check office is. No one speaks English. Call the boss (from the phone they had lent us for such an occasion), but no answer, it’s too early. Finally get the translator on the phone to work properly, but even that isn’t coherent enough. They keep asking “where have sick?” Fasting, along with the early morning, is wearing on the nerves and I’m on the verge of mania.

Finally, someone seems to understand and says, “two floor,” while holding up three fingers. Go up to the 3^rd floor to be directed to another area. Then go through the whole rigmarole again before someone understands the translation and gets a form. That takes 45 minutes in all. We sit there, nearly passing out, before they call me. First, they test the blood pressure, which is surprisingly normal, and then they check for color blindness (pinks and browns are getting harder to distinguish these days). I’m made to wait as some older lady comes demanding attention. I stand, in the middle of the room, waiting for a nurse.

She comes to whisk me off to check my chest size (why?), height, and weight. A serious explanation of how the hearing test works lasts several minutes, and I’m a bit apprehensive as it starts. But I hear the sound in the left ear and then the right ear and let it be known correctly. Then it is over—it was a three-second test. I struggle to distinguish the English letters on the eye chart as my head is spinning from blinking florescent lights, caffeine deprivation, and low blood sugar. I don’t even think of the fact that Koreans cannot even pronounce most of the letters on the chart.

Now it is time for the blood test. This is always the worst part. Usually, one can find my vein and the nurse rolls the needle around, or randomly pokes until she finds something, only to go for my hand. This time, I try to suggest that the vein in my hand is better, but the tourniquet goes on, the phlebotomist flicks my arm a couple of times and sticks the needle in—no pain. I sit there in a mixture of hunger and disbelief, forgetting the usual need to pass out.

Out comes the needle and I’m given an alcohol-soaked gauze and taken to the bathroom to give a urine sample. I am mid squat, thanking my lucky stars that I’m not  in danger of passing out in the squat toilet, when blood starts dripping from the gauze. I quickly finish my task, wrap some toilet paper around my arm and duck out of the stall to run into the next patient, who turns green looking at my arm. I wash up, grab some towels, and am bustled away to the x-ray lab before I can ask for a bandage, as the other patient notifies the phlebotomist that I’m gushing blood. Suddenly I’m surrounded by patients and nurses as they attempt to put a tiny bandage on the bloody arm, each spouting advice in Korean, while an older man sitting next to me starts doing those reverse arm presses off of the chair. My wound is clotting by the time they get my arm clean and the bandage on. I look around and notice I am the only patient in there not doing some sort of “exercise.”

The x-ray technician calls my name and asks me to take off my bra and put my shirt back on again. I come out in my tank top, but she makes me put on my sweater too. The x-ray takes two seconds, and I have to get dressed. The nurse checks my arm and with a satisfactory nod, leads me passed more reverse arm presses, to the doctor’s office. The doctor starts speaking Korean to me and I say, “no.” He curses in Korean and sits in silence. I look at him, “I’m hungry. May I go?”

He sighs and asks, “Where are you from?”  “America.”

“South America?”  “USA”   “Ah, USA, ok, ok, ok. North.” I nod.

“You ummmmm surgery?”  “No.” silence while he marks something on the chart.

Tobacco?” “No.” “Drinking?” “No” “Driving?” “Yes?” Salience as he thinks about how to say the next thing in English. He shakes his head and marks things down on the chart, “Nice to meet you, bye bye, see you next time.” He chants like a school boy. “Umm yeah, nice to meet you.”

We pay and eat kimbap in the hospital basement.

Back in the ROK

Took a three-month hiatus from blogging while Matt and I visited Idaho. We had big plans to see and do many things, but between family obligations and so many activities in my home area, we didn’t get around to as much as we had hoped. If you’re interested in our adventures, you can read his blog: http://lametayel.tumblr.com/ 

After almost a year of searching through terribly paying jobs, obviously crazy bosses, and impossible employment standards (no Americans here, no Brits there, no males anywhere), we had a couple of promising job offers in the dreaded hagwon (private afterschool academies) setting in South Korea. We were lured into a school owned by a Canadian who has owned an academy in S.K. for quite some time now. Three weeks after accepting the job, we are now in Chungcheongnam-do, a rural province south of Seoul.

View from old town towards our apartment complex.

We arrived a week ago Saturday night. Our bosses, a married couple, picked us up at the airport and drove us the one and half hours (or would have been if they hadn’t got lost) to our new home. They quickly showed our exhausted selves around the apartment before promising to collect us the next afternoon.

Our apartment is a spacious three-bedroom, two bathroom epitome of South Korean culture. Accessing the building is quite difficult. First, you have to go through a blind intersection, in which cars park in the middle (in order grab a bite at the convenient store). Then you have to choose which parking lot or garage you want to park in and carefully back into a spot, or if you are Korean, just park any old place and block four spaces. If you are of normal weight, you’ll have to crawl through the trunk of your car to get out of the vehicle.

Now you can squeeze between or crawl over parked cars to get to the doors of the apartment building, using a key card to enter. If it is windy, you have to physically wrench the automatic sliding door open and closed again. You wait for the single elevator that services the 18-story building and protect your nose from the kimchi smell until the 11^th floor. Another keycard (we have three key cards together for this place) will let you into the apartment.

There are four closets on either side as you enter the apartment, however none have tension rods in them to hang up coats. After the closets, you have a handy switch to switch off your gas or all of the lights in the apartment (except for the lights in the living room), then you have four switches to control various lights in the bathroom and entry.

There is a bathroom to the right, which has an actual tub with a shower, but no shower curtain rod. If you go straight instead of going into the bathroom, you will end up in a bedroom (empty save a fold-up cot and a tennis racket) and a glassed-in balcony that runs the length of the apartment.

If you turn left from the entry, you will be in the kitchen/living room area. We have a couch and a 32-inch TV. Black and cream tiled gives a feature wall. The kitchen has a full sized refrigerator, a cupboard for a kimchi fridge, a four burner hob, a gas oven, a vegetable washer, a cloth sterilizer, and a dishwasher. Next to the kitchen is a room that houses the washer and a water spout for cleaning.

If you go through the living room, there are two more bedrooms (one has its own separate balcony). One is the master suite, consisting of a complicated lighting system. Our ensuite closet and bathroom is equally annoying with a strange motion sensored light that seems to only detect ghosts. Our master bath has a heated toilet seat with so many buttons for various streams of water, that is it quite terrifying.

At least Koreans but a tarp between the ground and their soybeans.

So what besides the kimchi fridge screams Korea? There are two intercoms to open the downstairs door and the apartment door which are conveniently located right next to each other and three steps from the apartment door. The washer is off the kitchen, but the drying rack is in the master bedroom. There are several sterilizers, but everybody dries their food on the street. Not to mention the tiles, wall paper, as well as wall outlets, are crooked, and the paint is chipping but the light fixtures have crazy amount of detail that can only be seen when the light is just right in the early afternoon. Oh, and there is a big plastic cover in the middle of the living room’s wood floor that has “AIR CON” in big letters. It’s Korea in a nutshell.

On Sunday, we were taken to the school to get a crash course on the classes we were to teach the following day. By crash course, I mean: “here is your schedule, here are the previous teachers’ notes, I think your books are here, you’ll teach from 3:20 to 10 tomorrow, make sure they have more fun than learning.” After this half hour “orientation,” they whisked us off to Lotte Mart to get our groceries. I hate shopping with people, even though they were trying to be helpful, you could tell that the guy was not having the most fun following us around. By the time we got back, jet lag had hit us and we were lucky to get the groceries put away.

No time during the week to do anything but work and sleep. We’re teaching between eight and nine, forty-five minute classes a day. More on school in a future blog post, after I’ve been there for a bit. However, I can tell you that it is clear no one has any clue what is going on at that school, considering the teachers weren’t even correct in noting the pages covered, let alone the books used. We’re quite excited for this new adventure. 

Final Countdown

Down to just a few hours in Taiwan.  Last couple of weeks have been fairly stressful with the boss changing our schedules five minutes before class. In the end, we just planned generic lessons and went with it. I had to tell students goodbye 18 times, because I never knew which would be the last class—chaotic for everyone.  Some students cried and some were kind enough to make me gifts.  

To add to the stress, Matt was hit by four cars in a matter of two hours. He was ok, just bruised and angry.  He was hit twice in Taichung in front of a police officer, who did nothing because, apparently in Taiwanese culture, if you move after an accident you’re ok, so in order to get a police officer to pay attention, you must sit down in the middle of traffic and not move—yeah that sounds like a brilliant idea.

We made it to Hemei, to food, and almost home when a car headed straight for Matt. It was so bizarre how every single vehicle was trying to run us over. The next day was nearly as bad, as Matt saw several accidents on his way to work and I saw one on my way home. 

Thursday went with the boss to the tax office. Met him at eight thirty in the morning in front of the school (who knows the last time we were out of the apartment that early) and drove right by our place on our way to a “short cut” that took 45 minutes for a normally 15 minute drive.  After discussing Matt’s injuries from the “car accidents,” G made a left turn in front of oncoming traffic which was blocking said short cut. We were in the middle of three lanes as a tanker came barreling towards us, narrowly missing the car, G kept his smiling countenance.

Finally made it to Changhua, only to park on the side of a busy road and wait for several minutes until it was made clear that we were waiting for the accountant. The accountant appeared across the street, wearing a purple shirt dress with some sort of cat on it and some pink shorts. She carried a manila envelope. G hopped out of the car, crossed the busy street and spoke with her for a few seconds as he checked over documents. Then the deal was done.

After the shady encounter with the accountant, we went to the tax office, which smelled and looked like an Asian hospital. The only difference really, was that the employees were wearing t-shirts and jeans of the most informal kind, some were just one step up from pjs. We filled out our forms and went to the ground floor where I realized my blouse had come unbuttoned and I was walking with my bra hanging out. I rushed to cover myself and failed to notice that G , typically Taiwanese, hadn’t held the door open, so I walked into the door. Drove past our apartment on our way to the school where we were let out.

Saturday, our last full day, started with a visit from the landlord. I had spent the entire week cleaning and gathering up our possessions. The landlord walked in and started complaining that he couldn’t possibly give us our money because how could he see from the “clutter” and we had better get that stuff (one pile of our luggage) out of the apartment. He then tried to knock off my lap top and overcharge us on the rent and then claimed we had stolen a magnetic fob from the spare key (which we had to have made because he wouldn’t give us spare keys). We did get our deposit back and a dirty floor to boot.

G kindly took us to the new teachers’ apartments to help unload their new furniture. G made sure all of their stuff was out of the car and drove off, leaving Matt and I to walk back home across town. Cooled off and then met with a couple of co-teachers for a farewell dinner in Taichung. Watched as bats flew out of the neighbor’s roof, like mice coming from a crack, and started devouring insects in the sunlight. 

Flea Circus

Came back from Dragon Boat Festival to find out that the teacher who had been here for only three months had gone.  Three weeks of G covering the lessons until the new replacements arrived on the 20th. As part of their training, they have to observe several classes.  The have only observed one of my classes. It is a class of 15 kids ranging in age between eight to eleven, who after being in school all day, have finally snapped.

I introduced the new teachers and encouraged the students to ask them questions. They asked the normal “How old are you?” “Where are you from?”  and they laughed at Minnesota, thinking it was “little soda.” During the questioning, one student randomly started meowing, followed by another cat, and a monkey. Joseph, the smartass of the class, asked in a high pitched, baby voice “Do you speak English” followed by a maniacal laugh. Completely ridiculous, especially paired with the looks on the new teachers’ faces.

At the end of the training week, one of the new teachers had to teach while I observed. It is a class of eight, six to nine year olds; a challenging class with moody twins and a hyper active six year old. The new teacher messed up and started to panic slightly. The six year old, feeling the rise in tension, stood up in his chair and started singing at the top of his lungs. Each class he takes the opportunity to stretch out his diaphragm, but this was particularly loud. The new teacher stood in shock as seven children ran to subdue the six year old, and the six year old started backhanding the students as he sang his finale. Stacy and I sat back in amusement.

One of my classes includes the aforementioned hula dancing kid, who has since developed a multi-personality disorder. When he takes off his glasses, he is no longer Angus, but his twin brother, Ongus.  The barking kid has calmed down a bit, but he still pants. That class also has a loud child who claims he likes to eat babies… I am a bit worried.  

The “gay” class is still at it, but is now including heterosexual relationships after they claimed I was gay and I said “No, I like boys.” and then had to hastily explain that I meant boys over the age of twenty. One boy offered to hook me up with his eighteen year old cousin and a girl offered to set me up with her dad. I should mention this is the class that draws pictures of me surrounded by ghosts, or me throwing grenades at students.

I will be curious to know how the new teachers handle these classes. I hope they don’t try to stifle their creativity and weirdness. These kids are the only redeeming feature of Hemei, let alone the school.

In other news, summer is here. Temperatures are between 31-43 degrees Celsius. The air conditioners only seem to be able to get the rooms down to 28 degrees. Despite the heat, we’re still walking around Taichung and Hemei. This heat is just plain useless without water to swim in.

Erecting an Egg?

Once upon a time there was an advisor named Qu Yuan who told the emperor to quit being such a greedy liar. The emperor didn’t take kindly to the advice and banished the advisor. Qu Yuan spent his days of exile writing poetry (because being a poet somehow makes you important in China). One day, a warring kingdom overtook the greedy, lying, emperor’s kingdom. The advisor was so sad that he threw himself into the river. 

One night, Qu Yuan came to a neighbor in a dream and complained that the fish were eating his body, why not throw some rice into the water to distract the fish. Well, rice brought more fish, which attracted bigger fish. The advisor came again and suggested that the village make sticky rice wrapped it in bamboo leaves, that way it would last longer. So the villagers sacrificed their meagre food for a corpse and threw these rice dumplings into the river. But this just attracted more fish.

Desperate to save his rotting corpse, Qu Yuan came again and suggested that the village make a boat shaped like a dragon, because everyone knows that fish are scared of dragons. So the villagers made a dragon boat, put a drum into the boat, and went about the river making a racket and scared the fish away. Presumably, because the fish got scared away—for an entire year, I might add—the villagers had nothing to eat, so they were forced to eat the rice dumplings.  Now every year, across China and Taiwan, they race boats shaped like Dragons and beat gongs or drums and make one hell of a splashing racket.

Other traditions to do during this holiday are putting out special plants to ward off ghosts and bugs, wearing a perfumed satchel made to look like the dumplings, and balancing a raw egg for good luck  (or as our school says: erecting an egg).

I get a three day weekend. The boss suggested a trip to Lukang, but the river is ugly and a teenage student told me there was nothing to do there during the festival but wade through people. Decided to go south back to Tainan, instead. Caught up with a friend from Korea, who has recently moved a bit north of Tainan. Got a room in a love motel for a whopping thirty dollars per night inclusive of a round bed, a clean bathroom stocked with one towel, a razor, toothbrushes, and a comb, not to mention the complimentary condom.

Woke up terribly early on Sunday to go to Guanziling, a famous hot spring resort up in the mountains. Judging by the one-lane road and debris littering the river below, we were just a couple of days shy of a mud slide. The town is built on the side of the mountain, the only safe pedestrian route is the historical “Hero’s Path,” aka 300 steps of hell.  I am no hero, I rode the bus to the top and walked up ten stairs for a photo op.

We wandered up a path to get a good jungle photo, but stumbled onto private property. The owner shared some of his bayberries with us (don’t worry, these are the edible kind).  We arrived at the outdoor spa covered in red juice from the berries, but they allowed us in anyway.

Enjoyed the mud and various other types of pools, but avoided the sauna, figuring we had already sweated enough for one day. Broke for lunch, eating local boar something or other and some noodles. For desert, we shared an expensive coffee from the famous Dongshan coffee plantations. Relaxed for a couple of hours in the spa, before heading back to Xinying.

Arrived at the bar in Xinying and ordered drinks, only to be told that the owner, Shou-ting  (aka Sue), was taking us and the bar tender to the night market. Desperately tried to down our beers, but Sue promised that someone would put the beers in the fridge. We wandered with our local guides through a typical night market of greasy food, strange clothes, and mountains of hair accessories.  When we got back to the bar, our drinks were still on the table, hot and flat.

Slept in a bit longer on Monday before catching the train an hour south to Tainan. The bus to the historical district took nearly as long as the train and the heat was excruciating. But we still wandered through the historical markets and sampled Asia’s version corn dogs. Watched the dragon boat race through a sea of umbrellas.  Gave up and decided to beat the crowd to the train station so we could have a seat for half of the journey, stood near the bathroom for the other half.

It was a well-deserved relaxing break! 

Funny Farm

Another long gap between blog posts. I blame the computer. It seems that, not only are certain keys on my keyboard not working, but the USB drivers like to randomly eject things plugged into the USB. Rather annoying when attempting to type or transfer files onto the external drive.  Anyway, I’ve been told I must, must, must quit procrastinating and just fight with the cranky computer to produce a blog post.

Sometime after Koahsiung, we finally made it the two stops past Taichung, to the Houli horse farm and bicycle path. Got off the bus at the “Horse Farm” stop, only to see large nameless buildings, presumably belonging to the military base. We walked uphill past the guards and found the tired looking horse farm. Reviews had said it was a bustling farm full of picnic areas, food stalls, and horses. It looked like a run-down military base with some cartoon statues, and a few horses thrown in. The horses were well taken care of, except for their desperate need of salt and reprieve from the flies. We excitedly paid the extortionate amount to ride the horses in a warn track around and around and around. The horses refused to accept that we had paid for some fun, not moody horses.

Quite disappointed, we followed the many signs promising coffee, only to wind up in a village a mile down the road, the only hint of coffee was another cup of coffee with an arrow pointing the direction. We turned around and headed back to the bus stop. However, there wasn’t a bus stop on the opposite side of the road. So we wandered back towards Fengyuan, where we came across a betel nut vendor selling coffee and waffles. She led us to a nice, wooden patio with umbrellas and lawn furniture.

Caught a bus back to Fengyuan, noticed a Time Crisis 2 arcade game in the window of an arcade gambling room, and watched Matt play a game or two. Afterwards, enjoyed pork cutlet at a mall food court before heading back to Hemei.

Another weekend headed back to Taichung to scout out a big red man we had seen perched on top a temple.  We easily found him, but the dreary day made it hard to enjoy what we had hoped would be a good photo shoot.

Rainy season has started. Luckily, it seems to be one day black and gray, the next day blue sky and rainless.  The temperature is up to 90s with 95% humidity. It feels like a wet blanket. I’m hating the constant damp and dark.

The kids are feeling it too and have become crazy. The barking kid is getting a bit yippier, the hula dancing musician is getting a bit more “May-gic”-al, the karate kid is getting a tad bit kickier, a class has discovered the word “gay,” so now everyone is gay. A fight breaks out in almost every class now, but I’m able to silence it in one look, making at least one student cry. I feel powerful.