Year 1 - Happy Easter 2002

It is Easter Sunday here now.

It has been a while hasn't it? A lot has been going on lately.

On top of the usual hectic pace of teaching I have had my dentist visits. Monday will be my last visit for this tooth. The dentist and I have had many talks, he is a nice guy, and a good dentist. His staff is nice too, but they don't speak a lick of English. He likes to improve his English, and we ended up having a discussion on semantics.

He said that dental work in Korea is cheap. I replied that some of it may be cheap, but I prefer to say affordable. Cheap has a double mean. It costs less, and the quality is less. He does good work, not shoddy work. So I would say he is affordable, not cheap. We had a chuckle over that. :) Many things in Korea are affordable without being cheap.

Thursday I went out of town with some students. We went to a place called Munue (pronounced Moonie). First we went to a spot overlooking the valley. There is a cave there that legend has was the home of a dragon. So, we stopped, went into the cave, and looked around. I didn't see any dragons. There was also a cairn there where you can place rocks and make a wish. One of my students and her husband want another child, so she wished for a boy. I put a rock on it and made a wish for my mom's health. We had a nice walk around the area. Then we went into Munue for lunch. We had Ori Tang, duck soup. It was very good. Not gamey at all. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Dating in Korea is interesting. Some of the means are similar to North America. Meet someone, ask them out. Even where you meet people can be similar, work, church, bars. THere are a few other ways that are fairly common here which aren't as common in Canada or the US. Blind dating is VERY common here. Sometimes it is group blind dates, sometimes single. using the internet for dating is very common too. They meet in chat rooms, or through services, set up an "appointment" and see how it goes from there.

I mentioned in at least one previous letter about how same gender relations are here. It is common to see girls, women, walking down the street hand in hand, arm in arm. When out at a bar, restaurant, or other places it is not unusual for them to be clingy with each other, playing with hair, holding onto each other. Although that mainly happens at bars. Men also exhibit this behaviour, but not as often as women. (Mind you according to Koreans there is NO homo-sexuality in Korea, it is a Western problem only. But that is another kettle of fish.) This is something that most Westerners never get used to, I still haven't.

Last night I went out to dinner. After dinner we went to a nurae bang (karaoke room) and spent several hours. It was a good time. Karaoke rooms are very popular in Korea. Their selection of music is actually pretty good. There is a wide selection of Korean and English songs. There is even the odd Japanese song thrown in. One of the girls last night was a really good singer. Karaoke is something I would never have done in Canada unless very drunk. Even then it is debatable. ;)

Take care,

Flint

*****

And my singing is still horrible. :)

One thing that still strikes me as strange is that for all the Christians in Korea Easter isn't that important a holiday.