The week of May 19-23

I had my open class on Tuesday with my Grade 3 co-teacher. This is when parents are invited to observe a lesson and give feedback. Last term, there were around 6 or 7 parents present; this time, there were twenty! (Interestingly enough, only 2 of them were fathers.) They all sat in the back and watched intently. I didn't pay them any attention, though; I just did my thing at the front of the class.

I noticed, though, that I acted differently because I knew they were there. Back home, kids regularly tell me that not only do I look like Carlos from YTV's the Zone (I don't see the resemblance), but I also act like him. In other words, I'm very animated; I exaggerate everything, as if I'm on some sort of invisible stage. It really is a performance. I don't know where it comes from, but if you throw me in front of a bunch of kids with a piece of chalk or a picture book in my hand, that's what happens. Anyway, having the parents there to watch made me amp up my stage persona even more. 

Not even close...

The result: I had moms full out singing along with our chant. Success!

My co-teacher was really happy that the class went off without a hitch; she had been very nervous about the class for several weeks. It's her first year teaching English in over ten years, and she's self-conscious of her English skills. Thankfully, she did a fine job, as I knew she would, and we were able to put the day behind us.

As a reward, I offered to treat Anne to some Canadian cuisine. My friend, Steph, showed me a restaurant downtown where they make a pretty damn good poutine. When I showed Anne a picture, she said her mouth was watering. I mean, sure, it's not fresh from Quebec, but it's definitely much better than the crap you'd get at a Burger King back home. Plus, it's a huge serving! It was so big she couldn't even finish the whole thing. I probably ate about a third of her bowl. 

Afterwards, Anne treated me a mountain of patbingsu, which is a shaved ice dessert topped with a sweet red bean paste. It was a nice little cultural exchange we had.

The next day, Anne and I had another bunch of Grade 3's to teach. Our current unit is "How many (insert animal here)?" The activity Anne was leading involved students listening to a piece of audio and placing the correct amount of animal stickers on to their text book. One kid was bored out of his skull, as he knows his stuff, and so he made this lovely piece of art with his remaining stickers. It was close to lunch, so I couldn't blame the guy.

He got up to show his artwork to his buddy, but I immediately sat him down and flipped the picture over, lest my co-teacher caught sight of it. I knew she wouldn't have appreciated his artistic vision, and likely would've torn him a new one instead.

In that same class, one boy got really worked up about being eliminated from the game Anne was leading. He stormed to his desk and threw his textbooks on the floor, bursting into a full blown hissy fit. Anne was busy leading the game, and I wasn't doing anything particularly productive, so I went over to help a brother out.

When I sat down, I was inspired to draw a quick Cartman sketch for some reason. As my hand moved and the picture slowly began to take shape, the kid simmered down, his curiosity fully peaked. He kept tilting his head this way and that, trying to figure out what the hell I was drawing. The rest of the class was shouting "Let it Go" as a part of the game, so I added the little speech bubble. 

When I was finished, he took the piece of paper ever so delicately, as if I had just handed him a baby bird or something. He just looked at it. Two minutes earlier, he was ready to start flipping desks. The funny part is this is the second time I've done this, and both times, it's gotten pretty much the exact same reaction. I have no idea what that means...

Comic Expo

Last year I went to my first Fan Expo in Toronto, and I had a ball, so I was really excited to hear that there was a Comic Expo taking place in Busan this past weekend. I was certain it was going to be mainly Korean comics, but I figured it might be cool to learn about Korean comics. And who knows, maybe they'd have some North American comic stuff, or a funky Korean interpretation of North American comics--like an anime version of the Avengers or something.

After two and a half hours of travel time on the bus and subway, KyoungHwa and I finally arrived at the Bexco Convention Centre in Busan at around 3:00. There were people in costumes walking around the main plaza area outside the main entrance, posing for pictures for anybody who asked. I was disappointed to not see any familiar characters, but they still had some funky get ups.

The dude in Burgundy is the king of Korea. They are bowing to their king. They are not worthy.

The creature with the red cape has brought shame upon his family, his king, and his country.

Great shame.

Once inside, my heart sank down to my feet; this "expo" was just four short aisles of comic artists selling nothing but comics, banners, key chains, and not much else in terms of merchandise. And three quarters of the comics looked like some sort of variation of Sailor Moon.

There was one North American vendor in the bunch, though--a fellow from Halifax--so I bought a comic from him to support a fellow Canadian.

It turns out that this expo was just a small show that happens once every two months; the real expo happens later this year. Hopefully I'll be able to check that one out as well.

Although the expo turned out to be a bust, I did manage to score a couple of treats, so it wasn't completely a waste; and I was more than happy to spend the day with KyoungHwa, who apparently has seen more of Canada than I have. She plans on going back yet again in February to visit friends in Regina and Edmonton. She's a friendly soul and great company to have when you're spending close to three hours in transit.

After the two of us parted ways, I decided to take advantage of being in Busan on a beautiful Saturday, and I called up Nate and Kirsten to see if they'd be down for some Mexican at Fuzzy Navel. Instead, they invited me down to the beach to hang out with them, Scott, and Hye. I'm ever so envious that Haeundae Beach is right at their doorstep.

One of the many reasons I love Nate and Kirsten is that they're the type of people to bring supplies to make your own mojitos to the beach. It was a perfectly gorgeous day for drinking on the beach.  Thank God the warm weather has arrived.

Gaji Mountain

It took nine months for me to finally scale my first mountain here, and it really served to remind me of just how out of shape I really am.

Perhaps it wouldn't have been as bad if I had brought along the right shoes. Unfortunately, I left my walking shoes at work on Friday, and so I was stuck wearing these things. As you can see, they don't exactly offer much support. It was going to be a long day.

Lex, Honey, and I arrived at the entrance to Seoknamsa Temple, which lies at the foot of Gajisan and serves as an entrance to the hiking trail, at just past noon. We probably could've afforded to start out a bit earlier in the morning, but the urge to sleep in was just too strong. (And yet, I still somehow managed to find no time for breakfast and wound up eating an ice cream cone for breakfast. No shoes, no breakfast--it's like I forgot I was hiking or something.)

We found the tiny sign that read "Trail to the peak of Gaji Mountain this way," which was practically covered by bushes, and started our ascent. Six and a half kilometres to victory.

Things started so nicely--we walked along a nice wide shaded path; it was like we were leaving the Shire. Lex even joked that we could probably ride his scooter all the way to the top of the mountain.

The path soon came to an end, though, and things became progressively more inclined. We were very liberal with our breaks, as we knew we were just starting out, and this hike was going to take us a good four hours.

On the plus side, according to a sign we came across, we had inexplicably already traveled 2 kilometres in five minutes, as there were only 4.5 kilometres left now.

Less than half an hour in, I realized that it was already almost 1 and I had yet to eat solid food, so we stopped to eat. I pulled out a sandwich that I had picked up from the convenience store that morning, but I could only stomach to eat half of it, as one half was an egg sandwich and the other was a gross tuna sandwich monstrosity. Lex graciously offered half of his Subway sandwich, and I immediately felt better.

While we ate, a fellow foreigner walked past us listening to music on her ear buds; we all waved and smiled, as if to say, "Those ajimmas ain't got shit on us foreigners."

As the "trail" got progressively more difficult, I could tell based on the looks on the faces of my compatriots that they were questioning whether we were going to make it or not. Especially since we crossed a little pole with the number 126 on it, meaning there were 125 poles left to go. I was also dreading what the descent would be like in my shoes. In case you forgot what they look like, they're basically sandals with a cover.

The distance on the next sign we saw had mysteriously gone back up, so either somebody needs to fix those signs, or somebody was messing with us. (Or maybe we had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque?)

After just over an hour, we suddenly (and thankfully) found ourselves on flat terrain yet again. There was even a road! We also spotted our foreigner friend resting on a rock.

We looked at a map trying to figure out how far we'd come and where the hell we were, but without a "You are here" sign and with little in way of details on the map, it was difficult to tell.

The girl sitting on the rock, who I will now arbitrarily dub Jen so I can stop calling her foreign girl, helped us out and explained that we were about a fifth of the way up the mountain, and from where we were, we had two options: We could either try our hand at scaling the mountain's rugged face along the "path" just off to the left, or we could take the road to the right, as both paths ended up converging later on. Obviously, we opted for the road.

The road didn't last long, though, and we soon found ourselves scaling a Gladiators course, climbing a steeply inclined and seemingly never-ending concrete path, and of course, taking in some beautiful views. (Although Lex pointed out that, despite being so far away from civilization, somehow, we could still hear the sound of cars. And there was always fucking garbage at every fucking lookout. People suck sometimes.)

When we reached checkpoint 104, we were pretty happy with our  progress; that is, until we got to the next checkpoint and it said 105. Suddenly the numbers were going up...

At one point we came across a group of foreigners and Koreans heading in the opposite direction. We greeted each other as we passed, and inside, I gave a quick chuckle thinking about the scene in Shaun of the Dead when Shaun's group crosses paths with his friend's path, and both groups are mirror copies of one another.

After a couple hours, we came to particularly nice rocky lookout and took a well-needed rest. Lex saw a sign in English and quickly got up to go read it, proclaiming, "Look, American!"

The laugh that comment drew from me rejuvenated me yet again, and I went over to the small store just off to the side to purchase a chilled bottle of water before carrying on.

The sight of a sign that read "Gajisan: 0.9 kilometres" about 15 minutes later filled us with great joy. We could taste victory.

Eventually, we came to a flight of stairs. As we climbed them, something inside me told me this was it; victory lay at the top of this flight of stairs. I could feel it. Sure enough, halfway up, I saw a flagpole. We made it!

Once at the top, we all flashed some pictures, and then sat behind some big rocks to shelter ourselves from the wind and enjoyed some victory shots of soju. Soju tastes damn good when you're 1, 1240 metres up.

We saw Jen up there as well; she was doing some crazy yoga. Clearly, her priorities are all backwards.

Sadly, our victory was short-lived. Lex and I shouted in unison that the mountain was now our bitch, but oh, how wrong we were. We started to make our way down and quickly found ourselves in the bushes, unsure if we were on any sort of path. It was like being back in 'Nam; I just knew Charlies were hiding in the shadows.

Once back on a path, I faced what I had been dreading all day: rocks; endless jagged little rocks that were just dying to trip me up, slip out from under me, stab me, or twist my ankle. When I had climbed down Maderas Volcano in Nicaragua several years ago, my muddy shoes had slipped out from under me a couple times. Those falls hadn't been terrible, but these rocks looked far less forgiving--especially with my glamorized sandals.

Every step was a game of trying to find the flattest surface to step on. Sometimes I won, but most times I lost miserably--a  stab here, a slide there. Every curse word uttered was like a tiny hit of morphine.

Lex, on the other hand, scaled down the mountain with complete ease. It was like he was going for a casual stroll through the park.

Thankfully, we eventually came to a flight of stairs, and my life suddenly became a million times more bearable. At the bottom of the stairs, though, we found an ominous looking map that showed that we were still nowhere near the bottom of the mountain. A small voice inside of me started to wonder if we'd be able to get down before it started to get dark.

We continued on our way with increased purpose in our pace, often walking in silence, with the rocks beneath our feet the only sound to keep us company.

Then we came to a crossroad, but none of the arrows pointed towards Seoknamsa Temple. We had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque! It was 5:00 at this point, so we couldn't afford to get lost. We took the path to our left because 1) it was going down and 2) it read Seoknam Tunnel (or at least, we think it did) and that sounded close enough.

I shared my concern that we hadn't seen anybody else coming down the mountain in ages, and sure enough, the next time we took a break, this man entered our lives.

We had just finished delicately navigating a particularly difficult rocky section, but this guy was practically galloping his way down the hill! It was like watching Tarzan swinging through the jungle.

He let out a laugh when he spotted us. He tried to explain in his broken Konglish that we had taken the wrong path to Seoknamsa, and he offered to lead us home. With a wave of the hand, he got us back on our feet, and we were on our way. "Where there's a will, there's a way--that's my motto," he said.

He was very talkative--asking us questions and telling us about himself--and he ended every sentence with a laugh. Every response from us would also elicit a laugh, as he was impressed and amused that we understood him. When Honey answered that they were from California, I was too busy concentrating on where to place my foot next to bother adding that I was from Canada.

Although he was making us walk at a faster pace than I would have liked, I actually really enjoyed the guy's company. (I wish I could remember his name, but again, I was too busy focusing on not impaling myself on a rock to pay attention to details like names.) He was just so freakin' happy, and it was bloody contagious. I felt like I was being led through the woods by a creature from Narnia or something. At one point, he even had us running!

We eventually found our way back to the correct path--we had taken the long way down--and within ten minutes, we were back in civilization, completely exhausted. We owed our lives to this man, so we thanked him by giving him our spare bottle of soju. Gaji Mountain certainly wasn't my bitch, but it definitely was his.