Shanghai 2009

I posted photos from our trip online today, but did so on facebook in order to share with other travellers ... if this proves inconvenient for anyone, I'll repost here tomorrow:

To check out the small album, click here.

Jon update

He's home!

Shanghai photos to follow tomorrow.

A

Shanghaied

None of us have been duped into sailing the high seas, exactly.  But on Sunday night, Lunar New Year's Eve, despite the chill bar lounge music in the Royal Meridian in central Shanghai, many stomachs were rumbling like the great oceans ...

Long story short: seven of the nine travelers got food poisoning at a popular family restaurant near our hotel before we rang in the Year of the Ox.  Jon, who must have eaten more of this poison than the rest of us, is currently in hospital here in Seoul on IV.  One of our managers took him after he'd called in sick Wednesday morning and I haven't seen him since.  Visiting hours, see, are within my working day, giving me only one hour in the morning to visit - not counting the unpredictable traffic that might turn a 30 minute drive into one over twice as long.  So, Ruda has set him up with stuff to read and - go figure - Jon had thought ahead and brought a few of his own things to the hospital.

Although I'd initially been pretty concerned, knowing Korean doctors' propensity to overprescribe medication and Jon's (over?)willingness to take it, I've since spoken with him and he's doing well on a dose of antibiotics while he awaits test results.  Actually, he's not only doing well, he's been asking about emails and phone calls and is more than ready to get back to work (mentally, at least).  Maybe I'm the one that's been Shanghaied?

More to come later today.

New Year's (Take Two) and Other Surprises

Well, I was hoping to split this into a few posts and make it look as though I had posted our events in a timely manner.  Instead, I've pretended to do so in two bursts of posting.  This is the second burst (for the first, see the two previous posts, below). Please forgive me if I am repeating myself a little.

Since New Year's, we've had a few interesting events.  I've been given a few more advanced classes (Pschool Intensive Program, or PIP classes) teaching reading and writing in addition to speaking and listening.  This means that I'm with the same group of students for either two or three hours each day of the week, and have actually begun to feel like a teacher.  At first, I felt torn in many different directions and spread a bit thin, covering three or four different activities in an hour rather than presenting one long activity like in the conversation classes (Speaking, Listening and Expression, or SLE classes).  Now, the SLE classes seem slow and monotonous in comparison.

While I was adjusting to these new classes, we got a piece of ... interesting news.  While we were at work, a pipe burst in the apartment above us, causing water to stream down our walls and onto my laptop.  Jon discovered this in the afternoon when he finished work (one of his classes was cancelled so he formally finishes work at 3pm).  I got the call at work at about 4.  My computer was fried, about one or two months after buying it.  And yes, because I made some stupidly impulsive decisions, it was already the second laptop I had bought since I arrived in Korea.

To make a long story short, we were moved back into our old studio for five days while they re-wallpapered our current place and fixed the flooring.  Keedo had been sent to a dog hotel overnight to make this move easier and to test out a place we've had in mind for him during our upcoming holidays.  During his overnight stay, the trainers noticed a bit of blood around his mouth, took him to our vet and found that he needed a tooth removed. Lets call this surgery number one.  Jon then took him back to the vet for a follow-up visit and the vet suggested that the other K-9 also be removed.  Surgery number two.  Keedo came home to a different apartment feeling drugged, woozy and a little bit abandoned.  All of this on the day before and during Jon's birthday.

Jon's birthday!

January 14 is his date, and it was celebrated with lots of food gifts and 'Happy Birthday' serenades from his students (especially the girls ;) ) and a pre-wrapped corporate gift from The School.  Turns out it was a ladies' perfume set - whoops!  For dinner, we went to a traditional Korean restaurant nearby with our close friends David and Richard (others were still working through dinner) and had some makkoli (Korean rice wine) and padjeon (a giant Korean pancake mixed with vegetables and slices of octopus - deelish!).  Then we all hurried off to bed to ready up for a big Thursday ... we'll continue to celebrate Jon's birthday this coming weekend.

A few days after Jon's big day, we moved back into our apartment to find they'd just cranked up the heat to dry the floorboards (heat comes through the floor in most Korean homes - AC from the ceiling.  Heat rises and cool air falls, right?  It just makes so much sense ...).  I got a new laptop identical to my old one within three days.  Keedo got new toys from the dog hotel and Jon got ... a year wiser.

So now it's the night of Friday the 22nd and we're resting up for the last day of a 14-day working streak.  We're a little pooped and would probably be grumpy, too, if it wasn't for our weekend plans.  We're going to Shanghai for the lunar new year.

It's been in the works for about a month now.  We got a great deal on the plane ticket, have our visas ready and secured travel insurance long ago.  We invited some friends to go with us, so there will be seven of us in all.  Jon got in touch with an old coworker, Ken, from the university he worked at in China to help us find a place to stay, and the plan is to meet up with Ken and take it from there.

We're pretty excited!  We'll be back on the evening of the 27th (and start work early on the 28th) so will have photos and stories to share in the near future.

Oh - one last thing.  For the first (real) time and maybe the last, it snowed!!!

Hello 2009!

Turns out that Christmas was such a hit we were nominated to host New Year's, too!  I immediately promised myself that I would not get too Martha Stewart-y (years of Marilyn Dennis on CityLine after school has taken its expensive, time-consuming toll already).  No new decorations, no new foods (we still had unused food and leftovers from Christmas); only a place to hang out on another day off.

I had to work until 10pm that night, the final day of classes, so Jon took care of the setup.  I had thought that, being New Year's and all, I might have no students show up for class - especially the later ones - and might get to leave early.  I had forgotten that Education is the biggest religion in Korea.  I had full classes during the day, and regular classes until my last class at 8pm.

One student, a young and exceptionally cheery woman named Song (her Korean first name was similar to Seong Yu) arrived in class early and eager to chat with her classmates ... who, it turned out, felt they had better things to do on New Year's Eve than brave the partying crowds to get to a sterile classroom to talk for a few hours.  Uncomfortable as she was being the only student in the class, we went out for a bite to eat nearby (any new setting that gives us something to talk about is always, always welcome).  We filled the two hours by sharing travel, family and relationship stories (the big 3, again, aside from school), and parted ways, she, glad to have finished class and ready for a night out, and me, desperate to get home to friends who had been there for hours, chatting away without the pressure of filling the airtime with (sometimes hollow) questions.

Little did I know that it would be the night of North Korean soju and rounds of drinking games.

This stuff is more potent than the Southern stuff - 6% more potent, in fact, and still much easier to drink than its Russian cousin, Vodka.  And within about an hour and two or three drinking games, it had turned both Richard and David into happy, hatted men.

Richard didn't know his hat was pink for about two hours ... by the time he realized, he had gone outside to smoke about six times and been given strange looks by many Koreans who knew a little more than he did about his topper.

A few more joined us than had at Christmas; Rob Davis from Vancouver and his Korean girlfriend, Cecil (who has offered to teach me Korean), David's girlfriend Yuri, and Richard's soon-to-be-girlfriend, Christina/Hazel (she renamed herself before entering our place, leaving Richard confused for weeks).  All this meant that seating was on the floor with Keedo.

This is, one could say, a 'talking picture'.  Apologies that the photos are not so stellar this time around: better photos are on their way in future posts!

Lucky for a few of the drinkers we know, we got a holiday on New Year's Day.  Then, the real work began - January, I've been told, is the busiest month of the year at The School.  After working two weeks of ten to twelve hour days, I believe it.  More about January to come!

I'm Dreaming of a White ...

Christmas has come and gone.  Apart from our little Christmas party (complete with turkey, ham and mashed) it wasn't much of an event here.  And no, there was no snow on the ground, but we'd had some brief flurries earlier in the week.

Most Koreans get one day off (which meant that's all we got, too) and then come back to work without much fanfare.  It's not even really common to spend time with family on Christmas; rather, it's considered a 'couples holiday'.  

Most unusually, the streets are hopping on Christmas Eve, with every cafe in sight selling sweet potato cakes (they look like birthday cakes, but are less sweet) as fast as they can.  Paris Croissant, our favourite French-style cafe/pastry shop, ignored its usually cool image, and was selling stacks of boxed cakes outside the building, a sales gimmick that I'd consider a desperate measure if it wasn't for the big crowds pushing to buy as fast as possible.  Wild.

We had Keedo opening gifts from Canada (thank you!!!!) with us on the 25th, too!

He got booties to match a coat that had been sent to us earlier on.  This coat is miles more acceptable than the imitation brand goods sold on the street around our place: 'Ralph Lauren' doggy parkas, fuzzy pink cable knit doggy sweaters, 'Burberry' print doggy trench coats, or the worst of all: that I see dogs wearing this stuff.  I couldn't be happier that Keedo's coat is hunter green.  He, of course, is paralyzed whenever it's put on him, and can't walk on our slippery wooden floors with the booties on.  Which he's embarrassed about, of course.  The gear is great for the outdoors, though!

So, on the 25th, we just sat around all day and chatted, lamented that we had only one day off, took a few cheap shots at one another and had a few drinks.  And we killed seven hours doing it.

From left: Maria Kelley, me, Richard King and Jon in our living room.

David Hollinger, left, is from Boston; Richard is from England; Jon at centre, Patrick Kelley (married to Maria) is from Oregon, and Chris Burkhard, who recently left for more ESL training in London, England, grew up in Detroit.

Like good employees, we disbanded at about 9pm, hit they hay shortly thereafter and were at work early the next morning, our Christmas celebrations already behind us. New Years', however, was right around the corner.