Sports day and the Fire Flower Festival

A little while ago our schools held a Sports Day for all of the branches. We now have 15 branches across Busan and Changwon cities, and all staff and teachers were invited. This was the first time we'd done such a thing.

It started at 9:30am on a Sunday morning, and waking up on time was arguably the first (and most difficult) event. But a respectable number of us showed up on time and began milling around the soccer field of Yeonsan Middle School, where the event was held.

Here's Jeff and Anthony waiting for the day's events to begin. Anthony has since been promoted to Head Instructor of the branch that I worked at during my first year here.

The CEO Mr Kang, addressing all of the teachers in Korean. We've gotten used to not understanding any of his speeches. He sure sounds friendly though.

Amanda was fairly tipsy for the whole day. In Korea, it's more acceptable to be slightly intoxicated during the day.

Here's Heather and me, happy as usual.

For lunch we had roast pig and donkasu (schnitzel type things). The food was good, but I can't help comparing any roast pig to the New Year's Pig back in Australia that Hong's dad always cooks. Nothing ever comes close to that.

There were a number of competitions during the day, which included foot-baseball and dodgeball. In this event, everyone had to hold the material firmly while the smallest person in the group ran across the top of it. Because we weren't strong enough, it was more of a crawling/tumbling than running.

The object of this game was to blow up as many balloons as you could. Then there was a competition to pop them all. Kind of fun, but could have been better organised.

For this event, we had to race in teams around the witches hat, while locked together in a long hoop. One person got to run on the outside and push. It wasn't long before we realised that different people have different sized legs and different speeds at which they run. This made the task considerably more difficult than first imagined.


The object of this game was to bounce the ball as many times as possible. I think we got to 17 or so.

We split the entire group into two teams and had a massive tug-o-war. Our team won both times, possibly because we had more of the bigger guys on our team. I pulled a muscle in my leg during this, which I referred to thereafter as a battle wound.

In wars (and tug-o-wars) there will always be casualties, I guess.

Mr Hong and Conan were the two final contenders of the relay race. It was a heated rivalry between the Gwangan and Changwon branches, but Mr Hong won the day by diving (or falling) at the end. He actually broke his kneecap here, which he discovered the next day. He had surgery soon after and now hobbles around headquarters, defiant and proud.

Daniel recently bought a motorbike. It's a Honda CD-R and is pretty fast. I sold my scooter ages ago partly because it was a little dangerous.

Jef and Amanda were up late drinking the night before. When they arrived at Sports Day, it wasn't long before the ever-resourceful Amanda located the beer stash. The last event of the day was karaoke and I'm sure you can put two-and-two together by yourselves.

They sang 'It's Raining Men', a song that has since become somewhat of an anthem for us here in Korea.

And the audience cheered. All in all, it was a good day out and more fun than I had anticipated. It's rare that we get to see all of our school staff together at the same time.

Recently the annual Fire Flower Festival was held at Gwangali beach. This is always a massive occasion with around one million people observing the event. I headed down to Anthony's place early in the afternoon. Luckily he landed his new apartment at the beachfront a couple of weeks before the event. Fireworks were launched from the bridge and the boats you can see there.

As time ticked by, the crowd below began to accumulate. Soon it became a patchwork quilt of picnic rugs. We had stocked Anthony's apartment with plenty of food and beverages hours beforehand and enjoyed the scenery below.

As always there were friendly policemen around in their preferred teams of 30 or so.

But actually, at large events like this in Korea, there's usually very little trouble.

We briefly went down below to have a look around and saw this line up for a convenience store. When there are too many people, an assistant at the door will get everyone in a queue and you have to wait until other people have left. Otherwise it just becomes silly inside and you could be pressed up against a Coke refrigerator and unable to move when the fireworks start.

At least you'd have plenty to drink.

We sat around in the apartment and had some pre-fireworks drinks as more of our friends showed up. Bunny-earing in the middle of this photo is Hyo-ju, Anthony's good friend from Cheonju. She once brought us a big bucket of gamjatang (pork and potato stew) from her hometown, which is famous for it.

By this time, any poor commuter attempting to traverse from one end of the road to the other would soon find themselves gridlocked in people-traffic. I spared a few thoughts for such people in the thronging mess below as I comfortably sipped my beer at the window. Contemplation is always much easier when you're in a nice apartment.

Then the show started. There were some impressive new lighting effects from the bridge as well as remote controlled aeroplanes that were involved in the show. To give you an idea of scale, that bridge is around 7.5 km long in its entirety.

The show was choreographed to various theme songs, including 'Allegria' by Cirque du Soleil, which was a classy pick. As the 'fire flowers' lit up the night sky, the crowds below increased their thronging to a dull raw.

These was also a new addition - little floating fireworks that were released by a boat and gently bobbed up and down on the water.

The show lasted a little over half an hour and the view this year was much better than last. If you flick back in this blog to the same festival last year, you'll see that back then we were reduced to waiting in a stairwell for the show to begin. We were also about a kilometre further away.

That's why it's good to have friends like Ants-on-me (Anthony).


Here's a video of the show toward the end.

As the crowds started clearing out, large amounts of street rubbish became visible from our vantage point. I took this long-exposure shot with my trusty and compact (yet no-frills) Sony DSC. If only those pesky people didn't move, it would have looked much clearer. The next time you're walking on a recently crowded street at night, consider pausing every once in a while, lest some poor blogger be attempting a long exposure shot of your surrounds.

After this, Heather and I went down to ground zero for a closer inspection of the debris. Not long after this, teams of council workers set about cleaning up the mess. In the morning it was all cleared away.

After that we meandered around the streets for a while, which were busy until the wee hours of the morning. This photo was taken outside Thursday Party, which is now only a minute away from Anthony's apartment. It was a fun night out and I hope to be able to make it down for the same event next year.

Look out for the next post, because Heather and I have a rather special announcement to make.

See you soon!

Two years in Korea

According to the little purple stamp on my passport, July 21st 2006 was when I first landed in Korea's Incheon airport. Thinking back to that time, I realise that a lot has happened since. Every once in a while I rift through my earlier blog posts and in a strange way it sometimes feels like it was somebody else who was living that life. Maybe I should lay off the beer for a while.

A couple of weeks ago it was Heather's brother-in-law's birthday. We went to a buffet restaurant in Migliore called Todai. The food was quite spectacular and some of the earlier LKB readers may remember an old post about the Di Maris buffet in Jangsan. This restaurant was quite similar, but within walking distance of my apartment.

Todai is a franchise and apparently has outlets all over the world, even in Las Vegas. Koreans love family restaurants, so chains like VIPs, TGIF, Outback Steakhouse and this one are always packed on the weekends. The restaurant has a seating capacity of around 500, but you still have to make a reservation.

Here are Heather's father, mother and niece. They don't speak any English, but these days I talk to Heather's mother on the phone in Korean for conversation practice. I still speak Korean like a toddler though.

And here's Heather's brother-in-law. I don't think he appreciates being photographed, even if it's for a celebrity appearance on Lee's Korea Blog.

Yikes.

Heather's niece is called Ji-Ae. She is adored by the family and spends most of her time running around and exploring.

At the Todai buffet there was a chocolate fountain that you dip skewered fruit into. Ji-Ae was very interested in licking off the chocolate, but not so interested in eating the fruit.

"Hey! Who licked all the chocolate off my fruit??"

Here is a nicely sculptured watermelon. Back in the days when I used to cook, I could cut butterflies out of carrots.

Here are some of the Hwamyeong staff who I went to dinner with a while ago. The main reason I included this picture is because that white necked bottle on the left is $60 sake (Japanese rice wine). It tasted around 10% better than $5 sake.

As the weather warms up, house parties are more common among the English teaching community. I didn't know whose house this was, but it was a good time. There were around 30 of us crammed into a single room. The cops politely asked us to leave at around 1am and we obliged.

Here are Jef's friends, Maria Kwak (top), who is a CDI trainer in Seoul and Jennifer Esterline (bottom) who is an adoptee and designs mobile phones for Nokia.

Someone recently told me that I always make that face when I pose for cameras. Is it true?

Last post I was talking about how I landed a promotion at CDI. Now I have more responsibilities and am a little busier, but I'm enjoying it overall. Now I work in the office at the human resources department and interview new teachers as well as look after the April English program. This is part of the whiteboard in our office, showing our timeline for recruiting new teachers for the fall term. We have to bring in 30 new teachers by August 25th.


Korea is a little further ahead of Australia in terms of gadgets and things. My housekey and traffic card are microchip systems, rather than the aging technology I used back home. I shot this video last week of the fingerprint identification system that deactivates the alarm at my new workplace. Much cooler and more convenient than punching in a number password.

One of my co-workers, Kelly Park has decided to escape from the chaos and travel the world with her boyfriend, Joon Son. This is their travel plan over the next few years. Amazing, isn't it?

If any readers are living in any of these destinations and would like to help out two Koreans looking for part-time work, get in touch. They're not afraid to get their hands dirty and you'll find that they are overqualified for most positions. Joon was the previous CEO of the 13 CDI schools down here.

And for me the wheels of destiny are also turning. Recently I was accepted into Seoul National University for a doctoral program in biotechnology. I had declined a PhD offer in Australia in order to come to Korea, but it has always lingered in the back of my mind. Soon I will be traveling to Seoul to have a look at the campus, but my decision still isn't final. I really like the company that I currently work for and it does have an interesting set of challenges. I get more fulfillment from a place where I'm needed, rather than a place where I'm supposed to be.
If that makes any sense.

For the meantime, I've contacted the department head at SNU and deferred the position until January. Exciting times.

Last weekend was the 2008 Boryeong Mud Festival. I went last year and blogged it, but I decided to go again this year. Shiraz Moe, a fellow teacher in Busan, was nice enough to organise the whole trip for us, including booking the hotel and coach bus. So on Saturday morning, 30 English teachers congregated at the agreed meeting place and set off for the west coast of Korea.

It was a six hour journey. Along the highways of Korea there are numerous small towns that make their living from operating large rest stops. They are all very similar and have a cafeteria, some shops and high capacity toilets. The food available is so homogeneously identical that sometimes you wonder if you've traveled far at all.

Over the course of the day, coach buses and cars will continuously stream in. The cafeterias are set up to take your order and feed you within 20 minutes, which is the standard coach bus waiting time.

Erick was rummaging through the back alleys of the convenience store and found these curious oddities. They're called Dick Sticks.

He quipped "I wouldn't know what they'd taste like. "

On the way we also stopped off at the Hite beer factory. Hite is Korea's biggest brewer and holds 55% of the market share for domestic beer products. If you look closely in this photo, that worker in the middle has a patch over his eye. He might have been a beer pirate.

A woman from the company began to take us on a tour, but she couldn't speak any English. She called out and asked if anyone could translate for her. So Emily went up to the front and began translating a whole bunch of Hite facts for us. A bottle of beer takes 30 days from start to finish and the factory produces 1000 bottles per minute.

Then we walked around the factory, with Emily still translating along the way. Although she had never been a tour guide before, no one could tell. The real tour guide would whisper the information in her ear and then she'd announce it to the crowd.

This is what we looked like. There were so many of us that the ones at the back couldn't hear anything. I don't know why Erick is smiling like that. Maybe he just ate another one of his sticks.

This is a wax sculpture of Park Ji-Sung, a Korean who plays for Manchester United. He's wildly popular amongst elementary schoolers here. He is also a spokesperson for Hite beer.
Now that's an interesting combination.

This is the factory floor, with kilometres of conveyor belts winding their way through mechanical boxes and checkpoints. The factory was closed for the day, so everything was in suspended animation.

And here's where all the action happens - the beer master control room. If you work in this room, you literally have the power to stop and start the rivers of beer as it moves around the factory. It also has alerts for when there's not enough beer, which of course would be a critical situation. I like to imagine there's a place like this somewhere in my head.

And here are the kegs, ready to be shipped off to the happy dining tables of Koreans enjoying BBQ all over the country. I forgot how many litres of beer per day they make, but it was an impressive number.

Then at the end of the tour they gave us free unlimited beer, which was nice. We all got tanked up, with the beer being much crisper than normal. When we all got on the bus later, it wasn't long before half of us were begging the bus driver for a pee stop.

Here's Emily, with a well-earned beer after her tour guiding. Hite actually tastes pretty much identical to the two other major Korean beer brands, which are Oriental Brewery and Cass.

And here's Heather posing with her beer. She's saying to the LKB readers "A Hite a day keeps the doctor away."

In the same area they were selling this shirt, of which I bought the last one. It contains an interesting misprint and reads "Let's drink fresh teste of the Hite. Hite is our new good friend." I don't know how much of a good friend I am, but I don't have that kind of devotion. We actually told the lady behind the counter what it translated to and she was surprised. I think they'll fix it up for the next print run.

And here we are at the end of a long day of factory-touring. In the background is a wax sculpture of Jang-dong Gwan, a famous Korean movie actor.

I'll split this post up so that it wouldn't be too long. When I have time next I'll pick up where I left off and continue with the rest of the Mud Festival weekend.

See you soon!