The DPRK

  The other weekend I and small group went up to the border of China and the DPRK, AKA, North Korea.  It was incredible to see the country and at first glance it did just look like another country and didn't really stick me as North Korea.  Things started to take notice though; look behind you, back toward Dangdong China and you'll see what industry gets you: buildings, electricity and other modern conveniences. Look back at the border and you'll see some old abandoned buildings and an old Ferris Wheel that was once a landmark for the border town, back in the 1950s.
   As sad as the border was when seen from the Broken Bridge and from Chinese border, it doesn't really compare with what you can see when you go to Tiger Mountain to walk a section of the Great Wall that overlooks the real country side. From the zenith you can really see the poverty of the land as well as the barren-ness of it. The line is literally, shrubbery on the Chinese side then dry nothingness. There are no trees. There are no roads.
 It's sad to view but it doesn't compare to the ultimate viewing chance that you can take and should if you ever find yourself able. A boat ride takes you along the border and you get to view the real North Korea, the one you're not supposed to see.
   Here you don't see the poverty. You feel it.
     The border guards look like what they have looked like for the past 60 years. The same jackets, hats and guns.  The country literally hasn't progressed past the 1950s when Grandfather Kim first took power after Korea separated.  We went by two border guard posts, the mens and the women's. The mens was littered with fox-holes which were supposed to look like natural rock fall but you could see the guards inside them watching you. We also saw many fishermen out in their boats and if our boat got to close, we could hear guards shouting at us.  We saw farmers on the land scrapping up what they could and it was upon seeing them you realize, life is day by day. The Men's Army has one power boat that sits on shore as it is probably out of gas.
  A little further down you'll happen upon the Women's base and its rare that you'll see them out and about. They tend to hide in their towers. Which I can't blame them for doing as I hate it when people try to sneak taking my photo because I'm the first White person they've seen. Past the Women's base you'll get to a spot where on either side of you is North Korea and it is here that you really feel the poverty. You'll see a run-down community that it is specifically for the Government officials; the Chinese farmers that live rurally and not luxuriously, have better lives.  You may see some people on the shore washing their vegetables and/or laundry, if you do they are lucky to be eating and have to use the river because they don't have running water. Or do sparsely and have to use it sparingly.  You may see some kids in school uniforms, wearing the uniforms on the weekend because it's the only clothing they have.
   We came across an army boat crossing from one side to the Army base on the other. It wasn't a motor boat. It was a large gondola-esque boat that was powered a man in the back rocking a large rudimentary oar. Sitting in the boat were some, what looked like farmers, but were actually Officials, and a young guard that stood sentinel with this old rifle. I stood in my boat to meet them and returned his glare of hate with one of pity and sorrow.
   Arriving back in China you really do feel a 'return to civilization'.  The experience of seeing North Korea in this state makes you wonder why they are so hesitant to accept aide. What are they so afraid of?   My curiosity is peaked and questions must be answered.  The next step is getting into the country..

Of Dragons and BBQ Bananas

Life at Maple Leaf Dalian in Jinshitan, China (金石滩 - Golden Pebble Beach) has been interesting to say the least. It has definitely been keeping me busy! There are three tiers for the High School students; Foundations (elementary) Bridging (intermediate) and Full BC (advanced) - I'm teaching the pre-social studies in the Bridging program - where all the students are striving to get into the coveted Full BC. Even the failing ones.  The high school is also segregated, so I have over 70 boys that I have to teach Canadian social studies to. On top of this I have to TOC (think substituting), which is an added headache as the process of getting the list every morning seems to be a cumbersome process.    Administration faults aside, once I get to the class it is usually pretty interesting. As a sub the boys immediately assume that it's going to be an easy class so it's "free time". The first part of the class is usually me having to somehow assert my position as the Teacher and more - or - less The Alpha Male.      Sometime it's easy and all I have to do is get the students on the page as me, usually achieved by talking about Dragons or making goofy comments about their names (ie. Friday, Field, Paradox, and.. Bieber - he got a 'change your name' comment) and sometimes it's the hard way and I have to kick a student or two out.   My most recent TOC was for an English 11 class and we had an excellent discussion about how Dragons are a fantastic element to a story and why Dragons are just simply fantastic. It was a fun discussion as the students really wanted to convince me why adding Dragons into their story would help it, I played the devil's advocate and gave them a tough stance to argue against. They did well and after some reminders that I was only arguing for the sack of arguing they really got into the discussion.
   Then, after the class got bored with the arguments, the word 'desire' was asked to be defined. I gave them a simple definition and put it in the terms of food. I asked if the cafeteria food was ever 'desired' and you should have heard the resounding 'NO!' that followed. I then asked for which food was desired and got some obvious answers, pizza and KFC. Then some not so obvious, sushi/sashimi and BBQ bananas.
 I was told by the class to ignore the student as he always came up with these kind of answers. But I was curious. Apparently, it's a real thing. You take your banana and grill it. I have yet to try it but I want to!

A Traveling River Rat Returns

Hello again all!

Sorry for the absence. I've been pretty busy with things between having to leave Korea and coming back to the States.

To make a long story short, I had to switch jobs after 3 amazing years of teaching elementary and middle school students to a Kindergarten academy. I wanted to try my hand at a "normal" schedule, working from 9am to 6pm instead of 4pm to 10pm. It was great, but after three long months, it turned out that the school and I didn't quite see eye to eye and I ended up having to leave prematurely.

It's not all bad though, I got to see Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies on my way back East and now I am back on the job search and bloggosphere. (It's a word now).

Stay tuned Travelers. I'm working on some great posts about Vancouver and being back on the Island; and all island life entails.

In order to fully appreciate where we are, we sometimes have to return to where we were.

Some weird happenings

I'm not exactly sure what it is but the weird Koreans always seem to find me. I don't know if it's my shaved head or what, but they always seem to find me and always cause a scene. I've told you about the creepy lady at a store here downtown and how she thinks I'm Michael Phelps and thus wants to fuck me. Well, there's been some others recently. Four to be exact. What's the saying? It comes in threes..but I was on a roll

The first is a dude that Heather and I ran into while exploring the Hampyoung Chrysanthemum Festival. We were walking around and taking pictures of the Namdaemoon structure. When we noticed a group of people sitting around. We happened across them, just trying to walk by, but one guy, drunk, was really enamored by me. So much so that he got up and wanted to take a picture with me. Which is normal. But this got weird when he started trying to kiss me. I pushed him back, his friends held him back, his wife even beat the shit out of him, but he still persisted. Heather and I made our break for it and thought we were finally rid of him, until we were on a bridge and he reappeared, still hell bent on kissing me. I held him at bay telling him to keep moving and when he didn't listen to me or his wife yelling at him in the background; she roared and tackled him away from me and literally dragged him off.

The second was a older guy at the bank. I was at the teller getting my updates done on my bankbook and getting my number changed so that my new cellphone will get messages when I use my check card, essentially the debit card of Korea, when this older dude came up to where I was standing and tried to shove me aside so that the teller would help him. When I didn't budge as easily as he thought I would, he got pissed and started yelling at me for being a foreigner and not having the right to stand in his, a Koreans, way. The teller and I told him to wait, but that made him even more pissed off and physical. The bank tellers here work by number, you take a number and when that number is called it's your turn. This guy didn't have a number but thought that he was entitled to the teller over me because he was Korean.

He grabbed me by the shoulder and tried pushing me aside even more, so I reversed his grip, grabbed him by the back of the neck and kicked his knee out so that he lost his balance and had no choice but to stumble away from the teller. Now he was really pissed but some of the managers of the bank came over and escorted him out. He stood outside of the bank for a good amount of time ranting and raving about the injustice but the rest of the Koreans outside that he was trying to start a rebellion with just ignored him. When my business was done and was leaving one of the managers walked to the door with me just incase the dude was there and tried something. Luckily, he had moved on.

The third was a kind of a double happening. I was taking out my recycling one night and when I was sorting my plastics from my glass the janitor of my building came out and started yelling at me about something. When I told him that I didn't understand, he got louder and angrier. So I just made fun of him without his realizing it. Finally he got so fed up that he tried to take the box from me but when I refused to give it to him and told him that it was my box, he got really confused and dumped all of the plastic and glass onto the ground. I took the opportunity to bounce. While in the elevator, another man came in while I was entering and saw me back knuckle the button to my floor. He was very impressed by this, so much so that he asked my apartment number and tried to kiss me. Already on edge, I pushed him back and said "try to kiss me again and I'll punch you in the throat." He blinked a lot quickly hurried out of the elevator.

The most final and most recent one was when I was at the store the other night. I was there getting my stock of water and juice and was at the cashier behind the dude. He was middle aged and looked like he didn't have a decent place to go, but he was determined to buy his soju, the Korean vodka. It only cost him 2 thousand won, or roughly about 2 dollars. He tried paying with 2 cards, both were denied. Then he pulled out a wad of cash and flipped through it, grumblingly. He looked around and saw me, pocketed the wad of cash and started to ask me for money. The cashier, a nice, young woman was calling to him trying to get his attention back to her. But he was, once again, determined to get me to buy his soju for him. Logic and reason, unknown. But he finally left me alone after much of my telling him to "fuck off", the cashier begging him to come back to her and the manager of the store coming over to stand 'intimidatingly' behind the cashier. The dude paid for his soju and stumbled up the stairs.

I paid for my things, the cashier being very apologetic about the man, I just smiled and told her that it was okay. But when I got up the stairs and outside, the fucker was waiting for me. He persisted to demand money from me and tried to take my bag for himself. I kept walking, making him follow me and since he wasn't paying attention to where he was going, just on rambling on how I needed to give him my money or my drinks, I led him into the back of a car. He hit, fell and I kept walking.

Life changing event #5

Helicopter ride!! What an amazing experience! It was the perfect day for it too, hot, so with the doors off we had amazing air circulation, and it made for much better photography! A little hairy at parts when you lean over and there's nothing but your seatbelt to keep you from falling about 400 feet. Or when you accidentally stick your elbow out just past the doorway and 11o mile an hour wind hits it. Other than that, it's the coolest thing ever!

My dad and I were driving to Redwood to drop off some old mowers and we passed Maxson Airfield, I mentioned that it would be cool to take the helicopter tour. So on our way back, we stopped in and signed up for the ride. The ride itself was half an hour and it felt like it was 10 minutes. But damn, what a view! Seeing the river from such a long way up, you really get to see what the river is like and how islands are formed.

As you can see, the top of the rock is not even half of the real rock. The rest of it, like an ice berg, lurks below. This, for those that don't know, is a shoal. Basically it's a rock that comes out of nowhere in the middle of the river, to claim your lower unit, prop, or underside of your boat.

The other thing that is cool about being up so high is that you get to see things that you normally don't get to see when you are on the surface. Like this old dock crib. This dock was around long before the existing dock and boathouses ever existed but as time went on and the people moved, the dock was removed, but the crib remains.

There are so many other things that were awesome about this flight but they would make this post way too long, so I'll just leave you with the words of, if you ever get a chance to take a tour in the air around, do it. You won't regret it. It really is life changing when you get to see something from a totally different perspective.

Life changing event #3

So, a few days ago my cousins and I went kayaking around an island called Grenadier, it's a Canadian island with a golf course and is the summer home of the owner of Zippo lighters. On that eventful day, my cousins and I decided to go around the island. We started early and made our way over glassy water. It was pristine and just plain gorgeous.

Later in the day we found ourselves in a bay for our lunch break. It was much needed for the rest of the trip was insanely windy. At this bay we noticed a strange looking buoy, it turned out to be marking a sunken ship. After exploring it while in the kayak I decided that it would be cool to return to with a boat that could better fight the wind; so a few days later, my parents, brother and sister in law and their two boys all made the venture down to find the sight again.

We did and thought that it was the coolest thing, looking over the side of the boat to see what we could of this mysterious ship. We left the sight, saying "we are definitely coming back here with our snorkels." Well, like always, the intentions are there but things start happening and the time to do it runs away.

But, not today. My dad and I were thinking of what to do, the projects around the house are done and it was too beautiful of a day to sit around. So, at my mom's advice we made the venture back to the sunken ship with our snorkels. It was awesome!! It was extremely mysterious and creepy. Swimming over the ruins, we (my dad and I) realized that it wasn't just a small sailboat that sunk but a real, actual wooden ship. What this ship was before it crashed, we can't figure out, but it has all the tell tale signs; wooden decks, ribbing, and pointed bow and stern. But the thing that baffles us is the giant metal tank that seems to be at the bow of the ship. It's so big that part of it protrudes up and is close to the surface of the water, very dangerous. There were parts that you could stand on, ribs that were sticking upward, the tank, and other random sections of decking.

It really was the coolest thing. Life changing.

Life changing event #2

The second event on the list is something obvious but at the same time amazing. Have you ever wondered where osprey's get the sticks to build their nests? This question has bugged myself and my dad for a long time, but last week the bugging question was answered.

We were floating along and watching some Herons when we noticed an osprey flying in. We couldn't tell where it was heading because it was controlling its flight like it was going in for a landing. But, it wasn't slowing down. It was heading right for a dead part of a pine tree; we were there thinking, "well it can't land there" SNAP The osprey took the top of the tree right off, a good 4 foot stick.

Sitting there jaw open, watching the osprey carry its stick off to the nest, we couldn't believe what just happened. All these years wondering, answered in a single act. Life changing.