A Scavenger Hunt and Ngo's Departure

From time to time, our school organises events on the weekends for the teachers to participate in. Jareb Steines, a teacher at the Dongnae branch, recently put together a Scavenger Hunt. We met up at Busan tower in Nampodong at 11am on a Sunday.

The idea of a scavenger hunt is to put together small teams of people and complete as many set tasks as possible. The tasks are usually things like "Collect three different kinds of flower" or "Take a photo of yourself standing next to a bridge." Completing the tasks necessitates traveling to different areas of the city, finding stuff out and having fun.

John, Anthony and I went out to show support. Having stayed out quite late the night before, we weren't in a particularly competitive mood though. For those of you who don't know, blue Powerade is a rudimentary hangover cure.

Although many teachers had said they would come, only six others including Jareb actually showed up. The 11am on a Sunday factor may have had something to do with it.

But we weren't about to let a good idea go to waste, so we formed 3 teams and started completing our tasks anyway. We would meet up in Seomyeon around 3 hours later and find out who the winning team was. One of the first tasks was to take a photo of two people wearing 'Couple-Ts', which are matching outfits that couples here often wear. But we couldn't find any so we took one with these military dudes.

The next task we did was to "Take a photo of a team member giving W1000 ($1) to a kid under the age of four." Anthony did the honours.

I like the expression on the kids face: What is going on here?

Here's John and Anthony completing "A photo of one team member feeding another team member kim chi." Why were we back home all of a sudden and not out competing, you may ask?

A: Because we were tired.

But we went out again soon after that.

"Two team members outside a Family Mart wearing face masks."

"A before-and-after shot of a dirty public place that has been cleaned up by the team."

John's face mask was optional.

John and Anthony grew to enjoy the anonymity provided by their masks and opted to keep them on for the rest of the event. It's always a little bit odd when there are two masked guys following you around in a department store. Thanks to Anthony and John, I am now used to it.

Team Dongnae ended up winning the event, having completed more than forty of the fifty tasks. The winning prize was a high-five from Jareb. I'm glad we made it out though.

Devin and Tamara invited us over again for Thanksgiving this year. I still find the event to be a festive curiousity (for whom are the thanks given to?), but I'm never one to turn down a nice dinner. Different teachers from the branches had prepared a variety of dishes.

Jason Medley enjoying the fine selection of wines available.

They had ordered two turkeys and there was plenty of food to go around. One thing I hadn't had in a while: Deviled eggs.

Num num num.

We ate and ate. I had three plates, which was a far cry from last year's record. But I'm on a diet these days and trying to condition myself for the cafeteria luncheons that I'll be surviving on in Seoul.

Homemade pumpkin pie or strawberries and cream anyone?

Although they look quite nice, one thing that Anthony and I have in common is that we never enjoy eating sweets.

Cake, donuts or cream buns? Ewww, no thank you.

It's a different story for John though.

All the food and wine was a little too much for poor old Vince, who promptly fell asleep on the wall.

As one does.

It snowed quite heavily in Busan last week. On average it snows here about twice a year, so it was very rare to see so much. It's never enough to make a snowman out of, but I am always hopeful.

John and I moved into our apartment in Seomyeon more than a year ago. At that time, it was quite expensive to get the key-money (deposit) together. But we scraped up enough dough and have been living together for quite some time. In Australia I moved house more than 31 times (I lost count at 31) since I left home at the age of 16. Having lived with so many different types of personality, I can safely say that John is a very easy person to live with. I've never seen him irritated for any household related issue.

Everyone has what I call a 'default mood', which is the mood that they are usually in when they wake up in the morning and nothing significant has happened yet. John's default mood is blank and happy, which means he's open for suggestions as to the days activities and is always feeling pretty good about things.
We decked out our house with boys toys: an X-Box 360, 42 inch plasma screen, poker set and a hub that allows wireless multiplayer. In the photo above, John and Anthony are playing Madden '09. We spent a lot of weekend afternoons like this.

But all good things must come to an end. After spending a solid 2 years in Korea, John's contract was up and it was time for him to head onto greener pastures. Seeing as he's heading back to Canada in the winter, I guess they're not really greener pastures so much as snowier pastures. Anyway.

We had a farewell party out with friends the weekend before. He may be coming back to Korea sometime in the future.

Anthony, Heather and I took him out to our favourite Thai restaurant in Busan. It's at Haeundae beach, very close to the Queen's Motel. The dishes are typically small but very well flavoured and the service is excellent.

We also went fishing, which we were supposed to do more often after we bought our new fishing rods. We went out to Gwangan on Sunday and it wasn't long before John caught the first fish in our fishing history. It looks like a piece of seaweed or something in the photo, but in real life it was flapping and did have gills. On such an auspicious occasion such as this, we decided to be noble and set the Leviathan free.

Here's me, Joon, Anthony and John at the airport, right before he left.

The problem with Korea is that everyone has to go home at some point. But every ending is a new beginning and it's better to think of the good times we've had, rather than the company we've lost.

Good luck and work hard John!

See you next time everyone.

A New Addition to the Family

Life in Busan is coming to an end. I'm mentally preparing for the move to Seoul and wrapping things up down here. I'll be moving to the capital in around 3 weeks time and am feeling pretty good about things in general. Busan is a great city and I'd prefer to stay down here, but Seoul will also be interesting.

Heather, John, Anthony and I went fishing at Gwangali a few weeks ago. Here's John and Anthony fishing off the artificial rocks. We bought fishing gear and shrimp bait that day and stayed out for a few hours. We didn't catch anything except seaweed, although Anthony did manage to pull in a starfish using the hand reel. Starfish don't make for good eating, so we threw it back.
I wish I had more opportunities to go fishing. As Henry David Thoreau once said "Many men (and women) go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after."

During the weeknights, Anthony will often be over and we usually cook things up together. In this photo, Anthony has grilled his marinated beef to go with my pad Thai. More often than not, things turn out pretty well. Anthony is very easy to please with food, he thinks just about everything tastes 'bomb'.

Even instant noodles.

Here's a dinner from another night. We made grilled hot dogs with sausages from Daejeon Costco and Neapolitan spaghetti.
Normally we watch movies while we eat, or our two favourite television series: Entourage and The Office.

While we're on the topic of food, here's another dish. This one was made by Joon, a new Korean friend of Daniel. It's called naeng chae jok bal, which means 'cold vegetable pork'. It's roast pork seasoned with vinegar, onion and garlic.

Here's a photo of us from a little while ago, celebrating Obama's victory at the Guri Bar in Seomyeon. I was very happy that Obama won the election, and hope that it's the beginning of a new era of more logical American foreign policy. Because he's also the first black president, I celebrated by only drinking black-coloured drinks that day, like Black Russians and B-52s. Photo: Erick Taggart

In some Mega Mart stores in Korea now, the price tags on the shelves are now digital. They're also solar powered, with the fluorescent lighting of the supermarket providing sufficient power to keep them on. If you cover the small solar panel, the numbers disappear after a few seconds but reappear as soon as you stop. I'm guessing that this upgrade also makes data entry much faster.

Three cheers for technology.

Heather and I recently bought this car. It's a 1997 Daewoo Lanos and we picked it up from a very large used car shop in Dongnae. It runs fairly well. On the inside of the back window Heather put up a chobo unjeon (learner driver) sign.

Here's the newest addition to Heather's family. Her oldest sister just had a baby girl and we came to visit them. Now Heather has two nieces.

Birth is a funny thing. I was used to seeing Heather's sister walking around as a pregnant woman. Now the contents of her stomach are out in the world, breathing, yawning and crying.

Her name is Ji-Woo and she was still too young to open her eyes when I last saw her. If you watch her for long enough, she changes facial expressions while sleeping. I distinctly saw an expression of what seemed to be mellow disgust, followed quickly thereafter by one of pleasant exclamation.

While the range of different human emotions are all too familiar to me, I'm sure they're somewhat of a novelty to little Ji-Woo who was having a fun time trying them out for the first time.

And here's her bigger sister, the one and only Ji-Ae. We played games outside the room while the grown-ups talked and rested. I had forgotten how much free fun you can have if you're around someone with enough energy.

Ji-Ae doesn't quite understand how to play hide-and-seek. She knows how to close her eyes, count and look for someone, but she doesn't know how to hide yet. I tried teaching her but what always happens is that when I count (very loudly and slowly), she'll run off and crouch behind something. Then, as soon as I turn around, she'll jump out and yell "RAAaaA!"

Heather also tried to explain the concept of hiding to her, but I think she's getting confused with another game they play at her daycare centre. Still, it was fun to play.

Anthony hosted a gathering at his apartment for the Korean staff of the Busanjin branch. We walked down to the nearby live seafood shop at the end of Gwangan beach and bought around $100 worth of raw fish. That's enough to feed a small army. You can buy around two dozen raw oysters in the shell for $5.

You basically pick and choose which fish you want and the vendors will pluck them out, quench the flapping with a well-placed knife blow to the head, and chop them up into bite sized pieces. You can literally be eating the same meat that was swimming around in the water 10 minutes ago.

Flounders are funny fish. They spend their youth as free-swimming normal looking fish. When they mature, one eye migrates to the other side of the head and they spend their days lying on one side at the sandy bottom of the sea. Looking up into the sunlight, they spot silhouettes of smaller fish and can rise up surprisingly fast. Their two eyes can rotate independently of one another.

I think of them as Picasso Fish, because of the irregular faces they have.


The vendors are nearly all Korean ajummas, who are famous for their fiery personalities. Here's a video of our favourite lady, chopping up a live octopus for us with typical ajumma dexterity and nonchalance.

We brought back our catch to the apartment and feasted on the marine life with wasabi, lemon juice and chili sauce. The five people on the left are all staff from Anthony and John's CDI branch.


We played some drinking games and got a little tipsy. This is a video showing the technique for making a soju bomb. You need two shot glasses, one larger glass, beer, soju (or vodka if you don't have any) and Fanta or Coke. The soft drink goes in the bottom shot glass, followed by soju in the second and then beer is poured on top. If you drink it in one go, the final glass acts as a chaser.

Three of these will assist conversational abilities with any stranger.

Last weekend, Heather and I went up to Seoul to meet my professor. Near the hotel where we stayed, this enormous pot of seolleung-tang (beef bone soup), was quietly bubbling in a shop front window. That's enough seolleung-tang to feed around 50 people.

We also visited the Mok-dong CDI campus, which is one of the seven main branches in Seoul. Donna is the Branch Manager of this campus now. She was our first BM in Busan when we started.

The Mok-dong branch has 1600 students and 40 teachers.

CDI Test Prep is a relatively new program that prepares students for school entrance exams. It's catered toward advanced students and the Mok-dong branch has an entire floor devoted to it. At this branch there are 800 Eagle level-or-higher students. Eagle level is textbook material for high school native English speaking students.

The computer lab. I saw an interesting talk on TED recently, about the misplaced idea that more computers equals better education. Clifford Stoll (an American physicist) says that the increasing number of computers in schools can stifle other important skills that children need to learn.

To a certain extent, I agree.

Donna took us out to lunch at the Del Cruise buffet, a rather flash restaurant near the school. Any self-respecting buffet in Korea these days will have escargots, sashimi and fresh lychee as standard fare.

Heather with her two new friends.

We also met up with Jang-Ho, Heather's younger brother. We drank together at a bar in Myeong-dong for quite some time before trying to catch a taxi to get home. That's him with the scarf, clutching the box of his mother's banchan that we brought up from Busan. Late at night in Seoul, because there are so many customers and not enough taxis, it can take more than an hour before you finally manage to flag one down.

I've started organising my accommodation in Seoul, as well as mentally preparing for the change. To become a student again, after two and a half years of working life means that I'll have to reinvent myself to a certain degree. Deep down, I always was more of the academic type, but a lot of my science know-how has lain dormant since I left Australia. It won't be long until the dusty textbooks of my mind will need to be reopened.

There's a lot of hard work and a big challenge ahead of me. Heather puts up with my occasional complaining about such things, which means that you guys are all spared for the time being. Thanks to her, Lee's Korea Blog is not merely an avenue for the negative grumblings of a soon-to-be overworked Australian Korean student.

See you next time!