I’m writing this on Friday with an hour and a half left in
the work week. It has been a very, very
long day for a couple or reasons I’ll get later. I have a decent amount to say so I apologize
if it isn’t well-written, and I’m in a shitty mood so I apologize if it isn’t
funny. But with that said let’s get
going.
Friday afternoon started on a high as Adam came to
visit. He get’s pretty decent vacation
(6 weeks), so he took a trip to Asia. He
started in Seoul, visited me in Busan for a long weekend, and is currently in
Thailand.
Anyhow, I saw him shortly after coming home from
school. We have been video chatting just
about every week, but it was cool to see him in the flesh. We were meeting some friends for dinner
later, so we decided to head to the Dugout for some nachos and a beer. One beer turned into three, as we ended up
meeting Nick, Doug, and other Adam (Max and Gah Yeong went to Japan for the
long weekend).
From the Dugout we headed to Sarey BBQ, one of my favorite
places. It has some very hearty, tender
pieces of pork (I could have sworn it was beef until I was told otherwise)
which you dip in some delicious sauces.
We gorged ourselves on meet, and shared a couple beers and sojus as
well. After dinner we had a beer at the
convenience store but then decided to just call it a night – Adam was jetlagged
and Doug had to get up early for a trip the following day.
Saturday we did a beach day.
Adam and I headed to Haeundae, where we were surprised to see a bunch of
very cool sand sculptures. The weather
was great except for the lack of a breeze, which made it just a tad hot. However, dipping our feet in the cold water
seemed to be the perfect remedy.
For dinner we met up with Nick and went to a restaurant in
Kyungsung that has unlimited fried chicken for 6,000 won and unlimited beer for
5,000. Unsurprisingly, this turned into
another gluttonous meal. We concluded
the meal with a beer at Gwangalli – Adam really enjoyed seeing the Gwangan
bridge all lit up. But again, we called
it an early night as we had a very early travel day the next morning.
I booked a Sunday day trip to Geoje Island through a travel
company. To my dismay, I learned that it
left from Seomyeon at 6:20am. That
entailed waking up at 4:45am to make sure I caught the subway at 5:35am. Ugh, brutal.
Another unfortunate detail that we learned day-of is that some people
are picked up in Changwan, about an hour outside of Busan. That means we can’t take the new bridges to
get to Geoje, which adds an hour each way.
So the ride to Geoje took about 3 hours, during which I
apparently slept on Adam. But it was
well worth the wait, as the views from Geoje were spectacular. Rocky cliffs, gorgeous water, and we lucked
out with great weather.
The first leg of the trip was the best. We took a boat ride to Oedo Island, which is
a privately owned island with an incredible botanical garden covering the
entire island. Very pretty, but packed
with people. And they all wanted
pictures everywhere. I did manage a
sweet “Big Vagina” (Curb) picture under a tree that looked like kinda like a
tree-sized vagina. The boat ride was fun
too – we took some detours to see some very impressive sea cliffs.
After about an hour and half at the island, we took the boat
back and got some soup at a local restaurant.
It was a spicy fish soup, and was quite good. The bathroom situation, however, wasn’t quite
as good.
After lunch we went to the Windy Hill, which was just a hill
with a windmill. I didn’t quite see the
novelty, but I guess they don’t really have windmills here. The area was again very pretty, but again
very crowded. I would have loved to hang
out and soak in the view if there hadn’t been people everywhere. But people were everywhere.
From the Windy Hill we walked to another area to see -- a
hike down to a rocky area right by the water.
Again, it was packed with people and we decided not to make the whole
trip down. I did check out a museum that
was called the “Theme Museum” or something like that. Outside were terrible statues of horses,
soldiers, discarded amusement park cars, and other stuff like that. It looked like one of the worst museums
ever. I didn’t go inside though, so I
couldn’t confirm.
From there we went to the POW Camp museum, I did go
inside. This one, I can confirm, was one
of the worst museums ever. I mean, it’s
an old POW Camp that held well over 100,000 soldiers. I thought it would be somber, and
informative. Instead it was totally
hokey and uninformative. Just a bunch of
bad artistic recreations, a live band playing smooth jazz, and one of those
“stick your head in the hole” to pretend to be a POW photo boards.
From there we headed home.
Though I didn’t really like the 2nd half of the tour, the
whole thing was totally worth it for the boat ride and Oedo Island. Oedo was spectacularly maintained.
The ride home took almost 4 hours because of traffic. We were treated to a beautiful sunset at the
rest stop, though. And it was a blessing
to have a TV on the bus, because we got to watch the Lotte Giants game. Once we made it home, we got a BBQ dinner at
Obutan and then went home. I showered
and crashed immediately.
On Monday Adam and I went to Jagalchi. Adam really liked the fish market – it’s
really something you couldn’t see in America.
For lunch we had some fresh eel.
I’m guessing it was caught that day.
And it was delicious.
After checking out Jagalchi we went back to KSU to play
screen golf. Screen golf is a blast; I
really need to do it more often. We
drank some beers, hit golf balls into a screen, and I won a bet so it was
free. Can’t argue with free.
For dinner I wanted to show Adam Busan’s Indian fare, but our
place was closed. So we grabbed Mexican
instead. Being from California (and
having been home recently, not abroad for 9 months), Adam understandably wasn’t
impressed. After dinner we said goodbye,
as I had work the following morning and he had a flight to Bangkok.
OK, so on to this week.
Taekwondo was fun this week. I
had a lot of trouble practicing Forms 1-6 (they kept getting mixed up in my
head) but on Wednesday, as we do every Wednesday, we practiced nunchucks and
falling. I started to sorta get the hang
of nunchucks, though I’m still pretty bad.
But I’m really getting the hang of falling. I hopped over an obstacle about 4 feet high,
landed via flip/roll, and popped back up to my feet several times without a
problem. Yesterday, however, we had a
test with the gym Master and I did worse than I ever have before. I just skipped a significant portion of From
3 when doing it with the group. It was
embarrassing and frustrating, especially since I’d worked hard practicing all
week.
But on to the juicy bits – why I’m pissed off right
now. Well, two reasons. The first is I’m almost positive that my
co-teacher lied to me as to secure a vacation she wanted to take with her
husband. So we have four weeks of
vacation this summer. For two of the
weeks we need to teach English camps, and for the other two weeks we get
vacation. A few weeks ago, she told me
that my supervisor informed her that the schedule was
Camp-Break-Camp-Break. Since she
presented it as a fact, I just said “Okay.”
I’d obviously prefer Camp-Camp-Break-Break, but that seemed to be
something I should take up with my supervisor, not her. She said that the reason for the staggered
schedule is that many Korean families take vacations during the first break
week.
Now the thing is, my contract continues one week into the
second semester of this school year (school years start here after winter
break, not summer break). This is due a
scheduling anomaly, as this semester they stopped having schools on Saturdays
(they previously had school two Saturdays every month). This caused them to cut summer break short,
and, in turn, made my contract carry over for an odd week.
So when I first heard the schedule, I didn’t care too much
because I figured I could take my two weeks of vacation the last two weeks of
my contract. But soon after pursuing
that strategy I learned that I will have to be here for the last week of my
contract. Weird, but Korea is weird
about that kind of stuff.
Anyway, when I learned that I decided to try to get
proactive about a Camp-Camp-Break-Break schedule. When I raised it with my supervisor (the
first time we had class together, a few days after I’d first heard the camp
schedule), she told me that the co-teacher in question had told her that I said
I was ok with any schedule. I thought
this strange, as she had never asked my input – she simply acted as if the schedule
had been made. Even stranger, my
supervisor told me that the co-teacher was in charge of making the
schedule. Remember, my co-teacher had
told me that my supervisor had made the schedule and already submitted it. Anyhow, I just assumed it was a miscommunication
and said I’d talk to my co-teacher.
So when I talked to my co-teacher and explained my
preference for Camp-Camp-Break-Break, she told me that she would talk to my
supervisor. I thought this strange, so
today I checked again with my supervisor.
She told me that she was certain this co-teacher was in charge of making
and had already submitted the schedule.
WTF. My new theory is that when
she talked about the busy week of vacation, she just wants to take one with her
husband. All my friends have the
Camp-Camp-Break-Break schedule, so it can’t be that big of a problem. Worse, they are planning a trip to Laos and I
will be very upset if I have to miss it.
I haven’t confronted her yet, but I will after blowing off steam writing
this post.
The second reason I’m upset is because a university job fell
through and I got torn a new butthole for it.
For some background, I’d told one of my co-teachers (different from the
one in the previous section) that I was interested in a university job, if possible,
and I emphasized that it was because I wanted the great vacation. I also told her I wanted a job in Busan, if
possible. A few weeks later she said a
contact of hers found a job in Daegu, and wondered if that would be ok with
me. I told her that it would be fine provided it had enough vacation to avoid the
brutally cold winters and hot, humid summers. But apparently that point was lost on her,
because when I got an email with the job description it had four weeks
vacation.
So today I told her today that I wasn’t going to take the
job. I said something like “I got an
email from the school in Daegu, but I haven’t responded yet because I wanted
you to hear this from me first. After a
lot of thinking I decided I’m not going to take the job. I feel terrible about it because I know that
you put in a lot effort, and I don’t mean to seem ungrateful because I really
am appreciative of your efforts.
However, the job has about ¼ of the vacation I was expecting, and
vacation is the main reason I was looking into these types of jobs in the first
place. Right now I am young, healthy,
and single, and I have a tremendous opportunity to travel the world. I want to do it while I can. However, I feel like I must not have made my
intentions clear, so I want to apologize for that. That’s 100% my fault.”
To my surprise, her response was to say “Yes, I think it is
your fault!” She went on to say that I
should have known that, without a Master’s Degree, I could never get a job with
a good vacation package. She also
apparently spoke on my behalf of getting a Master’s Degree back in the States
with a scholarship, yet I never asked her to do anything of the sort. While it is certainly a very nice gesture
that I really appreciate, I don’t see how she can be mad at me for not wanting
to do it. She also kept asking me these
questions that I didn’t know how to answer.
“You know I had to beg my Professor to help with your resume, right? You know I planned to get you a scholarship,
right? You know I wrote you a letter of
recommendation, right?” I wanted to say
“No, woman, I didn’t know that, nor did I ask you to. I simply asked you pass along my resume if
you know of any job opportunities.” But
instead I just said “Yes, and I’m really sorry.
I feel terrible.”
Anyway, awful day.
I’m going home now.
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