My Body is a NOT a Temple

Last year I joined "Orange Fitness Club" and true to it's name I ended up rounded, plump and squishy. This fall I've made the move to a more promising named "Jamaica Fitness Club" where I have my fingers crossed it will leave me tall, dark and handsome. I wouldn't bet on it. I loathe fitness clubs.

The main reason is that health nuts insist on listening to songs that are up beat, cheerful, have only six words looped throughout and are sadly all stuck in early 90s dance music genre. Today I was forced to listen to "The Rhythm of the Night" and I'm a firm believer this song should of died a painful death minutes after it was recorded.

Behind the awful sounds of dance music are people grunting in pain before they let the metal wights crash together. Thick metal slapping metal is a terrible way to get people to look at you. It impresses nobody.

But the worst thing about health club are the horrendous fashion statements people insist on making. Like most of the others, I wear the black shirt and shorts the place provides. Others are somehow able to not catch their own reflections in the multiple mirrors. The ladies here have used Madonna's Hung Up video get up as their inspiration. The problem here is that unless you are Madonna herself, you cannot pull this look off and will just remind me of my Grandma Jessie working out to her fitness tapes from the 80s. As for guys, if you are going to roll up the sleeves of your shirts I insist that I see you actually lift a weight and not just roam the club looking girls to spot for.

After my first day of training, all I can say is I'm glad I'm going into this with such a positive attitude.

House Warming Party

On Saturday night Saejin and I had our friends over to play. This being Korea and streets having names known only to the postmen it wasn't easy getting people there. There were a lot of phone calls happening. Each call got more and more specific. "Take the taxi to the 7-11 and call me back." "Cross over the pedestrian walkway and take the stairs on your left, call me back." "You again? OK, now walk up the hill, You should be able to see me. Don't call me back."

The calm before the storm. Saejin had been worrying about the number of people coming and who would sit where and what would strangers talk to each other about so ease his nerves I distracted him by putting him in charge of food duties. I claimed to be working the room but found drinking a lot more fun.



The party soon split up into two camps. The Koreans, ingeniously camped out in the kitchen within an arms reach of the food and drink. This left the living room as the "foreign" ghetto and supplies (food and drink, actually a lot more drink than food) had to be ferried in by whomever was returning from a cigarette or washroom break.



LCI Suji's Kid's Club Reunion. I worked with Mary, Tom, J., and Michelle when I first started working in the Seoul area 17 calendars ago.

Tom showing off his bar tending skills balancing a tray of vodka jello shooters well above his head.

Shelly ended up with the Grand Prize and polished off a good number of the jello shooters herself. It was around this time that I'm glad I put my camera away, things started to get a little out of hand.

Boramae Park

Seoul is crowded, rude, dirty, noisy, busy, fast but I love it. I live in Sillim which is even more crowded, more rude, dirtier, noisier, busier and faster than most other places in Seoul. I'm glad Boramae Park is nearby. This Park is built on an old airforce base making it one of the bigger parks in Seoul. It's a great place to get away from all the chaos that is Seoul.

This little lake has some cheesy water shows throughout the day.

This duck bounced from person to person looking for a snack.

Luxury apartments on the East end of the park means there are some great restaurants around.

Old men living the high life: smoking, drinking soju and playing some Chinese Chess game midday.


These are old pictures it isn't so green now but it's still a great place.

The pathway that runs around the park that I jog on.

A huge rock climbing club where kids as tall as my waist climb without breaking a sweat.


Half way up the hill at the Western edge of the park is a small temple.

Saejin and I try to make it to the park on weekends, especially if we've been out the night before.

All over the hill are tiny work out spots. There are even bench presses that would never be legally allowed back home in case some small tyke tried it out before being strangled to death when their little arms gave out.

Saejin was a good sport and did everything I aksed him to do. Chin-Ups.

Working off his love handles.

Push-ups.

Front Page News!

65% of Women Unable to Make Gimchi.

I woke up to what appeared to be a normal morning but quickly learnt that according to a survey there's a crisis brewing in Korea. Fall is the traditional time that you see women outside their homes soaking cabbage in vats of salt water before slathering them up with hot chili peppers. It's a two day process that women are skipping in favour of the cheaper and easier store bought stuff.

The article then went on to talk about new technology also taking away from tradition Korean life. Gimchi used to be stored in giant pots which were then buried in the ground for the fermentation process to take place. That was then and Gimchi fridges are now. These things look like a mini deep freeze that exclusively house Gimchi. Families have found it's easier to top them off with packaged Gimchi rather than digging up homemade side dishes.

Whenever I teach the teacher's class Gimchi always comes up. (It usually comes right after learning my name, "Cam, do you like Gimchi?") Pressed about their Gimchi making skills the teachers (men included) all understand the process but few make the stuff. Unlike the front page story the reason they don't is they just want their mom's Gimchi and if they can't have that store bought will have to do.

Happy Belated Birthday Mom!

I've been so busy this weekend in the mornings that time differences haven't let me call home. Happy belated birthday, I will call you tomorrow morning from work.

Severance Hospital Run

I woke up Saturday to the coldest day of the season and made my way over to meet Sung Ho for Severance Hospital Run. Three minutes after taking shotgun in his car, he passed on some information letting me know that this year's run would be a whole lot of walking. Sung Ho's fiancee made it clear to him that this race was not allowed to leave him strained, stiff, injured, ill, sunburned or over worked because they were having their wedding pictures done the next day. (In Korea you take the pictures before the big day and there are a ton of poses and she did not want to be dropped when it came time for him to do the pose where he holds her.)

Before starting the race there were a couple of cases of beer brought out to the Company's tent and it didn't matter to me that it was warm or the worst beer (Hite) in Korea. Sung Ho and I were going to make it back before they all disappeared to the heftier people doing the 5km run. We made up a plan of breaking up the run by running three kms and taking the next one off. We did alright and actually altered the plan a bit when Sung Ho said his muslces could haddle it.

The only embarrassing part came about 500 meters from the finish line when the race leader of the half marathon sprinted past us. He had speed, stamina and strength Sung Ho and I wish we had but I felt a little bit sorry for him, he probably didn't get to reward himself with a beer when he finished.

The week mapped out (or) No time to Post

Tomorrow our school is off on a Field Trip to the English Village just outside of Seoul. This place is designed to be an English Zone where kids can come and study an Immersion program of English without leaving Korea. I've warned my students that the police will arrest them if they speak Korean and this sent a panic through the class. Their next question was where I'd be on Thursday and were very happy to hear I was going along.

Friday I'm off to another afternoon camp at the school nearby. This is the last one of the year and I can't be happier. That night a dinner is planned but I may bail because...

Early Saturday Seung Ho and I will try to finish the same 10KM race his office did last year. We're both a little heavier and a lot more lazy this time round so it will be interesting to see how we do. That night is Raegan's birthday and we are heading back to the Moroccan restaurant. This time round I'm abstaining from drinking because...

Early Sunday morning I'm meeting one of the families I teach and they are taking me to Everland for the day. This place is a HUGE amusement park with (disappointing) rides but it will be fun to see how shy a ninth grader and a eight year old will be speaking English a)in front of their parents and b)out in public.

Sushi Saturday

Having drunk way too many beer and shots from the kind side of the menu I woke up feeling quite grim on Saturday. Saejin and I still managed to force ourselves out of the house to watch Jodie Foster kick ass in The Brave One (a surprising two thumbs up from me) before stopping in Meyeong Dong for sushi. Admittedly a juicy hamburger spilling out buckets of grease down my throat would of felt better on my tender stomach but surprisingly sushi did do the trick.

Saejin's all time record for a sushi bar is forty plates but he did this in an all you can eat sushi bar. Here he was retrained but still ended up having at least four more dishes from when he officially said he was topped off. I loved watching the sushi flow by and probably was responsible for Saejin eating more. I kept grabbing the weirder looking dishes knowing I wasn't going near them but had to see them being eaten.

My favorite was a safe choice of salmon topped with onions and a dab of sauce but the lightly seared tuna by itself was a close second.

Marrakesh Night

Friday Night was a night of great food, fantastic friends and much needed booze. We all met up at Marrakesh Night for dinner and I will definitely be back to this place. The menu had several choices I would of loved to try but with only one stomach to fill (cow's have all the luck) and a much needed diet looming in the future I held back.

I had the Sultan Chicken in a chick pea and raisin sauce which was amazing. I ignored the swelling in my mid section and went ahead and sampled everyone else's leftover food and loved the lamb, meatballs and chicken kebabs the others had ordered.

We choose to end the meal by sharing a strawberry shisha and it was as nice as fruit flavoured tobacco can be.


Saejin double fisting his way through the shisha.

From here we made our way over to Soho where I am glad my camera stayed put in my bag.

Hard at Work

My normal work week is broken up by blogging, reading, a daily crossword, some TV, a new habit of actually studying Korean and the odd class to teach. This week I had to actually work and next week looks like it will be even more work intensive. I wish I could complain about this but after months of leisure I (grudgingly) accepted planning out a 30 hour teacher's course. I can't wait for tonight's dinner out with friends at a Moroccan restaurant. If beer should follow (and it will) I'll be even happier the work week is over with. This week, I've earned a weekend.

One of those Days

I should of known the day would of been a mess when I started it off by pouring out a whole box of cereal on the floor. To help cut down on the ant population (lemon juice does work but can only do so much) I keep my nut crunch cereal in the fridge. I pulled it out from the wrong end and had three quarters of the box land on my newly washed feet. A string of swears I rarely use came out and it set up a morning that continued to spiral down when I walked outside to first cold autumn day.

When I got to school my partner teacher then came up to me to let me know she'd just been faxed a request from Gwangmyeong's Education asking for confirmation my degree was real. All teachers in our city now have to prove yet again we are legitimate. (Guilty until proven innocent). In Korea there has been a huge scandal about a loose woman who slept here way to a top position in the Korean government using a fake degree from the States and this timed well with a bunch of English Teachers also being exposed with fake degrees from Thailand. I've proved myself now five times to the government that I'm legit so this mornings accusation just rubbed me the wrong way.

The way they wanted us to prove our innocence was to go to an American website to find my Canadian school to prove I attended. Amazingly, it didn't work. Plan B (according to the Gwangmyung Office) was to go to the U of C's website to show my name among the graduating class from my year. This list doesn't exist.

I then tried to log into my school using my old account but the school has shifted over to a new system that uses a new MyUofC eID. When I finally switched over my old ID I was now logged in a guest instead of a Student so I couldn't access my grades or order a Transcript. By this time I was completely annoyed so I fired off a a surprisingly polite email to the IT department asking for help. They gave a case number to use when I brought up my problem with a different department that I would have to call during their office hours which don't match up with my waking hours. It was a long process that took almost three hours and my stress levels were building.

4:40 couldn't of come soon enough. I came home and de-stressed with a much needed run. It has kind of worked but while writing this rant of a post (sorry) I just knocked over my glass of water soaking the desk. It's a sign, I'm off to bed.

Roasted Duck

Last night the school went out for dinner at a quiet little duck restaurant tucked between the folds of a mountain nearby. We were welcoming a new administrator to work the books here. It was a mostly quiet night until Mr. Oh started to pressure a few of the teachers to "drink until death" (it's a sign of friendship in Korea). Around this time the Olympics came up and Mr. Oh refused to believe me that Calgary held the Winter Olympics in 1988. He is a pretty big sports fan and was confident (with soju) in betting me that they were held two years after the Seoul Olympics meaning 1990.

I gave him many opportunities to back out of the bet by subtlety reminding him that:I was from Calgary, I was in Calgary in 1988 and I went to a ski jumping event at the Olympics we were talking about. These truths hardly even dented his confidence. He held onto his position tighter than the grip around his shot of soju and called up his friend to settle the bet.

While he talked, in my head I just kept repeating 1988 in Korean waiting for it to match Mr. Oh's dialogue. When it finally matched I followed his hand reach into his pocket and pull out a man won to hand over to me. It was the easiest ten bucks I've made in a long time.

Free Soju

I've been in Korea for so long that it's hard to spot the differences between here and home. During our sports day a few weeks ago it was obvious I was in another country when the Grandparents were invited to play a game. They went fishing and the grandpas successfully came away with green bottles of soju while the grandmas got elbow length dish washing gloves.

If this were back home grandpas would of been given the gloves and the sponsoring of an afternoon of drinking in public would of been outlawed, leaving the grandmas to make do with coffee or juice (probably the cheap orange stuff from McDonald's).

Chuseok Fun

Tomorrow is yet another day off and before I take any more pictures I better update from the Chuseok holiday. Saejin calculate that he drank something like six days straight during the holiday proving his liver is definitely Korean. Mine isn't so I only went out a handful of times.

One night we met up with Chan Young at Soho where he pulled out a bottle of ice cold Smirnoff Black Vodka. Thankfully we only did a couple of shots of the stuff before he packed it back up into its own insulated carrying case.

Another day Saejin and I were wandering around Seoul when we ran into Michelle and Mary. We quickly decided a drink was in order and headed off to find a wine bar. We ended up finding two.


The last night out during Chuseok came on the last day of the holiday and my longest day of the week was waiting for me the next day. Normally I would of stayed in but it was Sung Ho's birthday and he wanted me to meet his fiancee who he finally brought out in public. We started out at a fish restaurant for some sashimi and soju before heading off for a bucket of beer.

Because we all had to work the next day we made sure to drink down a bottle of Morning Care before heading off to bed.
(I definitely did not look this refreshed when I woke up.)

Aimo e Nadia - Mokdong

This past weekend arrived too soon after the holiday for the jump back on the alcohol train to be anything but desperate. It was a relaxing weekend where the main event was heading off for Sunday Brunch at Aimo e Nadia's new restaurant in Mokdong. It's way bigger than the Seocho branch and being on the 20th floor gave great views of the area.

Saejin, Mee Jung, her boyfriend and I made it to the restaurant on time but had to wait a good half hour for the rest (the desperate) to wake from their alcoholic stupors. Normally we would of ordered and eaten without the rest but Chan Young manages this new place so we knew if we waited for him we'd get something special.

On weekends they have a brunch that offers salad, a choice of three pasta's and coffee for 20 bucks (a great deal when you see the usual prices they extort out of people with the posh settings and views). In waiting for Chan Young, Dan and Jung Hui and the rest of us got to pick any pasta from the menu and were given the better ceaser salad speckled with anchovies as our starter. It was a nice meal and made more fun by watching Chan Young and Dan recoil in disgust each and every time any of the rest of us took a sip of wine.