You can eat anything you like - so long as it's Kimchi!

It's been a little while since I last posted, which is strange considering I've been sheltering from the blistering sun or the rampaging thunderstorms for most of the time.

In this blog I'd like to focus mostly on Korean food, of which we in England it has to be said know very little about. First things first there is Kimchi, which is at everything single meal (breakfast, lunch and dinner). It is pickled, fermented vegetables although it is mostly cabbage and at times I think it can be life threatening due to just how spicy some of it can be. It certainly doesn't look very appetising, but when I was first taken to dinner by my boss I didn't hesitate and went straight for the Kimchi after struggling with the steel chopsticks used here. I'll say one thing for Kimchi, it isn't bland!!! I don't however agree with eating at every meal, everyday. When I asked my kids what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the answer was all the same: Rice and Kimchi.

Variety is not a word used when referring to Korean diet. James told me that the main ingerdient in all Korean food is "red" and he's not lying. All Korean food is red. It has that same taste which is likely to bring tears to your eyes and knock your socks off if you eat it in large enough quantities. There are some odd mixes such as the Army Soup, invented during the Korean War when the American soldiers gave the people food supplies - so it consists of glass noodles, tofu, kimchi, bean sprouts and spam and hotdogs!!!
They also have the barbeque restaurants which are fantastic as you cook your own food at the table and pick and choose from a variety of side dishes. It is extremley difficult to do if you don't have a bowl of rice and are having to do everthing with you steel chopsticks (which slide out of your hands when greasy)
I have to say that I am happier with the food here than I was in Thailand. My main problem with Thai food is that most of the time it simply wasn't designed for someone my size, an English man can only take so much rice with a few scraps of meat. The korean bbq's are truly filling.
Lastly on the subject of food, it has come up a few times in conversation with Koreans here that we in the West like to eat lamb. A few of my friends have mentioned that they have spoke about this with Koreans too. The Koreans are quite often disgusted with me when I've mentioned that lamb is my favourite meat, that is until I politely remind them that they eat DOG!!!

Korean Kids

I have found it strange just how good my kids are at English considering that in everyday life barely anybody is able to speak a word. Shopkeepers and waiters will quite happily rant at you in fluent Korean and then look perplexed when you're unable to speak back to them. Even if you can speak a little bit, they're not used to speaking to someone who's first language is not Korean so they won't slow down or change their words or even use charades to help you!
My kids are almost all super intelligent, but this is no surprise because they have no choice in the matter. All Korean children are sent to extra English, Maths, Science, Korean and Music classes to supplement the government school system (in which the standard of English is horrendous). They are pushed to the limit of what the human mind can take when they study but they are equally sheltered and treated like babies for a long time and they won't leave their mothers until they are married!
The Korean alphabet has no F,R,V,Z, TH, or X which can cause huge problems with pronounciation. They are also incapable of ending most words without putting an extra "uh" or "ee". "Englishee" and "Robertuh" being prime examples. The F is pronounced as a P ("ehPPuh" they say) and the V as a B ("BuhWee") which was very funny during the World Cup Final when Cesc Pabregas, Rafael Ban Der Baart, and Robin Ban Persie took to the field. My older kids have learnt the alphabet properly but problems do occur quite a lot still.
They do say some very funny things during class. Actually the three examples below are all from one girl in my more intelligent classes, she was deadly serious in all three.

1: Me: Name a scary animal
    Jenna: My Mother!!!!! (all the other girls in the class then agree that their mother is very scary too)

2: Me: Describe your mother
   Jenna: She has brown eyes, glasses, short black hair and a skin condition!

3: Me: Jenna read your story please.
    Jenna: One day Mr. Cole the art teacher came into class dressed as a superhero and asked the students to draw him. The students called him crazy and then the headteacher sacked him and now he is a beggar. The End.

It is very hard to keep a straight face when you hear things like that in the class room. It is also hard to keep a straight face when trying to discuss geography with Korean children, it is clearly not an important subject here.

Me: Name a country that speaks English
Children: KOREA!!!
Me: No, a country that SPEAKS ENGLISH
Children: OH!...........SEOUL!!!

According to that class: China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Mexico and France all speak English. None of them said England even though they know that both I and my predecessor were English.

Right that's all for now. I have loads more I want to talk about, but I'll bore you if you read it all at once. So I'll leave you with news that I discovered there is such thing as Kimchi doughnut available in all Dunkin Donuts across Korea.......I think I'll pass on that one.

First Post

Right, I meant to start writing this a while ago, but I am a lazy man...

First things first I am not in Seoul, but in a small town 90 minutes south-west of Seoul called Seosan. Seosan does not work in a mildly humerous pun to be used as a title for this blog, so "Seoul Man" will have to do for now.

First Week
Arriving on Sunday, the only thing I wanted to do was watch my beloved England play Germany in the World Cup. A decision I regretted when myself and another Englishman were sat in a bar at midnight local time watching the team of pamperred, prancing pre-madonnas get battered by a German invitational XI composed of three Turks, two Ghanaians, numerous Poles, a Spaniard and a Brazilan. The South Koreans, who exited at the same stage, were welcomed back in Seoul as heroes and I had a hard time explaining that the England time were likely to be pelted with stones for losing in round 2.
On the Monday, when I was due to start my first day of school, I was rudely awoken by a man shouting over a tannoy at about 6am. Not speaking a word of Korean I naturally assumed that the North Koreans were invading and sprung out of bed to look out of the window. Seeing that there was no panic among the citizens of Seosan, I ignored the tannoy and went back to bed. I later found out that the tannoy was just a man shouting "Garlic, come buy your garlic! Garlic for sale!". Who really needs to buy garlic at 6am!?
I do possibly have the nicest boss in the world, Liz told me as soon as she me me that she was going to be my Korean mother, I'm not sure I had a choice about this, but I aprreciated in anyway. Liz has lent me money, booked me train tickets, bought me dinner and is letting me borrow her son so I can buy a TV this week.

Gay Korea
Korean is a deeply conservative country and can also be very Christian in certain areas so it is no surprise to find out that homosexuality is not tolerated in Korean society. However what is extremley funny to Western eyes is that Korea is an extremley gay country, it just doesn't realise it.
Men have ridiculous hair cuts, which they're constantly adjusting in the mirror, they carry handbags, wear tight white jeans, wear make up, get their eyebrows plucked, sit on their friends laps....the list goes on. You just have to google images of Korean boybands 2am and Big Bang to see what I mean (the posters of 2am's latest single is hilarious as one of them has a tear rolling down his cheek in it

2am
Big Bang

Meg and I have started a photo album, entitled "Gay Korea" which we'll put up on Facebook soon. Most of the photos are going to be of one of posing behind or nearby the unsuspecting target so that we can take a photo of him without him even knowing it.
Oh yes, there is also the phenomenon of Dom Chim here or to put it simply Ass Attack. I was warned about this before I arrived in Korea, which was handy as it has saved me on numerous occasions. If you're ever in a Korean school DON'T BEND OVER!!!! If you bend over, perhaps to pick up a pen, you run the risk of a child shouting Dom Chim and then ramming his fingers up your arse! This is a very popular game with the children, and indeed with the teachers as my boss has Dom Chimmed a couple of children right in front of me, the other teachers, our school driver and indeed some parents and nobody thinks that this is weird! Liz asked me to we have this game in English schools and I tried to explain just what would happend if a child tried to ram his fingers up another childs arse in an English school. "I think he would regret that decision for the rest of his school days" I told her.

Fan Death
And now for my favourite thing about Korea phenomenon the mysterious Fan Death. Put simply Koreans believe that if you leave you fan or airconditioning on overnight then you will die. I don't mean that they treat this as a ridiculous old wives tale like when your mother tells you not to pull that face or it'll get stuck like that when the wind changes or the Loch Ness Monster, I mean that Koreans genuinely believe that you will die!
It is so bad here that fans are sold with timers that will turn the fan off after a certain point, hotel staff will come round the rooms and turn the fans off, the government releases statements during heatwaves telling people to turn them off at night and death by fan is reported in the newspapers as a cause of death in an obituary.
James (my very good friend and fellow ex-pat out here) told me about Koreans he has met with degrees in science who still believe in fan death and have not understood why Westerners have never heard of it. He showed them the wikipedia article which says at the top that it is only believed in Korea.

Fan Death

Right that is all for now. Hopefully the Gay Korea album will be completed sometime soon (and then constantly added to), none of you leave your fans on over night and Kim Jong-il doesn't invade the South with the aid of garlic salesmen