Pohang Fireworks Festival

One of my goals I had when I came to Korea was to see fireworks here. Two friends and I traveled to the Pohang Fireworks Festival to kick off our summer vacation. We flew to Pohang from Seoul. The flight was only 1 hour and it only cost us around $50.00.

We knew the trip was going to be eventful when we discovered 10 minutes prior to boarding that my friend had thrown away her boarding pass. This is not a big deal in Korea. The just issued her a new one no questions asked and we were on our way. Domestic flights in Korea are pretty relaxed. There's no liquid restriction in carry on luggage and I made it on the plane with a razor.

We arrived and asked a cab to take us to a love hotel near the fireworks festival. He didn't understand the word fireworks and none of us know the Korean word so we showed him a picture and 2 of his cab driver friends helped clarify. They started making a sound like "Pop, pop!"

We went rode into town and the roads near the festival were closed off. The cab driver drove up to a volunteer who was manning the barrier and told him, "I have foreigners in my car that need help finding a hotel can I drive through?" The volunteer let us through so we were the only people in a car on this strip of the street. I tell ya being a foreigner here has its perks sometimes.

We went to check into a hotel and the man was really excited to have us there. He started yelling at his middle school aged son to speak English to us but his son refused. It was pretty funny because the dad was really angry at the kid.

We then set out to find a cheap t-shirt. One of my friends that came with me, had just returned from Malaysia and didn't have any clean clothes. We went to the Lotte Department store and things were grossly over priced. There were a group of policeman who were dancing and eating kimbap on the street so we decided to ask them were to find a cheap t-shirt.

My friend asked them in English first but none of them responded so she resorted to the Korean she knows (cheap, t-shirt, where). She rambled about Lotte not being cheap and finally the police officer interrupted her with, "Excuse me, do you speak English?" This is by far my favorite quote of the trip. I guess he didn't like the butchering she was doing in Korean. He then advised us to go to the traditional market to find the shirt. We wandered over there and found a t-shirt for 3,000 ($2.00). They even had t-shirts from the Athens Olympic games although I doubt that they are authentic. We headed back to our hotel only to discover that my friend had left the shirt in the cab.

We tried to buy a shirt from the volunteers at the festival but they didn't understand what we wanted and it ended up being a big photo shoot. We had to take pictures with lots of volunteers and children. I really have no idea what was going on.

The search for a t-shirt left us hungry so we decided to get something to eat and were enticed by a whole pig that was being roasted on the side of the street. It was absolutely delicious but midway through the meal we saw his brother hanging on the pole covered in black trash bags ready to be thrown on the fire next. Sad day. See picture above. If you look closely, you can see one of its hooves.

We were now ready to enjoy the fireworks. They were amazing! They were all set to music and were lit off over the ocean. There were two teams that participated. One team was from France and the other was from Korea. They lit off over 48,000 fireworks! I was told by my Korean friends that the festival was much smaller this year than in previous years but it was still a great show. Here's a sample of what we saw. The video quality isn't the greatest but what can you expect from a digital camera.

I'll be blogging more about my vacation over the next week. I managed to cram a lot of stuff into one week!

Celebrating America's Birthday in Korea

So most of you that know me from back home know that I love my country. I felt a bit sad to be outside of America for the 4th of July. Never fear, I came up with a battle plan to combine the two cultures. One of my fellow co-workers is married to a US Air Force guy. She lives very close to the US Army base and has access to almost all of the conveniences of America. We invited all of our Korean co-workers. They kept asking us why we were so excited to celebrate our countries birthday. I found this to be a bit odd since they are a fairly new democracy but we promised them a good time.

I started the festivities on Friday by having my classes sing "Happy Birthday" to America. Here's a video of my favorite class.

We gathered at my friends house and her husband went to Taco Bell to get us some food. There's nothing like eating American junk food on America's birthday. Also you add the fact that Mexican food is non-existent in this country and it made for a pretty nice treat. Our Korean co-workers showed up shortly have that and made the Korean "junk food" called ddeokbokki which is a spicy, rice cake, ramen noodle, fish cake filled, soup-like mixture. I think we really mixed up the cultures!

We also taught the Koreans American drinking games. It was really fun to teach them about America!

When it was time for the fireworks we headed to the roof...I mean helipad to watch them. Yes, my friend's house is so posh it has a place for helipads to land. There were signs everywhere that were written in Korean that I'm sure told us to, "Keep Out." We disobeyed them and went up there anyway. I managed to fall up the stairs since I'm special like that but they view from the top was amazing. You could see the entire city! We watched the fireworks and sang patriotic songs with the fellow military people who also broke the rules.

On a side note, when I returned to school on Monday my kids asked what I had done that weekend. They all knew I was excited about America's birthday and I told them I had celebrated it. I asked them what they will do to celebrate Korea's Independence day on August 15th and they told me they would just stay at home and relax. One girl told me, "Teacher, I think that people in the west like to party a lot on holidays and people in the east just like to relax." My response was, "I think you're probably right. Fair enough."

Comparison--Korea v. Western Countries

Here is a list of things I have seen in Korea that wouldn't or rarely happen back home. I mean there are exceptions to every situation but this is what I've come up with.



1. A 8 year old kid brought a toy gun to school and was running down the hallway pointing it at his class mates. At first, I really freaked out but I had to take a step back and remind myself I'm not in America.


2. Children walking by themselves. By children, I mean first and second graders walking home from school without an adult. There are days I can barely manage to not get hit by a car. I can't imagine being that young and navigating the city by yourself.


3. Children out until all hours of the night. See picture above of a young child who was out for a walk with his parents around 11:30 pm. Here's another example. It was around 10:30 on a school night and we were playing poker at the park near our house and two girls came up to us and started talking to us in Korean. We managed to hear the term "Waygook" which means foreigner and "Migook" which means America, so we told them where we were all from. Around 12:30, they appeared again and tried to talk to us some more. We finally saw one of them go home with her dad around 1:00 am.

3. Having a probation office located within a 1/2 mile of 5 elementary and middle schools. The Seoul Probation office is literally a 5-10 minute walk from my school.


4. Always knowing who the foreigners are. In America, you can hardly ever tell if someone if a foreigner until they speak. Here you can tell instantly since Korea is one of the homogeneous countries in the world. This leads to a lot of stares. The other extreme is people talking to you to practice their English. The other night I was out with my Korean friends and a group of other Koreans started yelling, "Hello!" "Where are you from?"...All the typical questions. I responded and my Korean friend told me that it's not fair that I'm treated like a celebrity in Korea and when she studied in America no one cared that she was a foreigner. My response was that's kind of the beauty of America. You can't tell the difference between natives and foreigners. Anyway, I digress.



5. Crazy superstitions and rules... a) don't fall asleep with a fan on. It will suck all of the air out the room and you will die. All of the fans in this country have timers on them to prevent an unfortunate "fan death." b) Using vinegar to take the sting out of a sunburn will cause worse burning. One of my fellow co-workers got sunburned on the beach last weekend. He was asking for advice on how to cure it from the rest of us pasty, fair headed foreigners. A few of us suggested vinegar and one of our Korean co-workers freaked and told us it would make his burn even worse.


6. Kids going to school or private lessons until 11 pm. I know that the US's education system leaves a lot to be desired but having kids stay in school that late can't be good for them either. If you ask my students what they did on the weekend, they all say something to the effect of, "I went to science academy, math academy, piano academy, Chinese lessons, and another English school. When do these kids get to have fun? They asked me how many academies I went to when I was a kid and I blew their minds by telling them zero!


7) South Koreans don't seem to be the least bit phased by North Korea. Granted, I grew up in America and have been told that North Korea is evil and blah, blah, blah. The first few times my not-so-friendly northern neighbor threatened to set of missiles most of the westerners in the office started freaking out. The Korean co-teachers assured us that there is nothing to worry about and that good old Kim Jong is just trying to test America and specifically our new President Obama but he's not really going to do anything. The threat is always in the back of my mind but I've kind of started to accept their mentality. After all, if something happens, they don't have a place to run. I can at least go back to America. I've talked to my Korean friends and quite a few of them have told me that they don't really think about North Korea and don't really care. Fair enough, I suppose.


This is my list I've compiled so far. I'm sure there will be more to come after I've been here a while longer.