Repatriate Me!

Yesterday the Chinese invaded Korea as they do every spring. Well not exactly the Chinese but all the sand from the northern China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan deserts gets airborne and flying east blanketing Korea and Japan in horrible yellow dust which some times reaches as far as the west coast of the United States.

Needless to say due to this horrible weather we had to pass on the Saint Patricks Day event which we were planning on going to. I’m sure it was cancelled, but really only a fool would go out in this weather. There are health warnings every spring during each storm. One year I went out for 40 minutes and the result was a wicked case of the hives for 3 days, which just about drove me crazy.

Below is a picture which I filched from this news article about the yellow dust storm we just had. From my apartment window yesterday the view was not just gray like it usually is, but looked alot like a sepia toned photograph. Too bad I didn’t think to take a picture of it, as that was the only time I’ve seen the entire sky turned yellow/brown from the dust.

Yellow dust storm

Yellow dust storms are definitely one of the things I will absolutely not miss about Korea once I leave.

Mar 21, 2010 Comments(2) Share on:

korea - weather - 5 things

Last night my wife and I went out for dinner without the kids (it’s been a long time since we last did that) and we were talking about my trip to Ottawa this summer. As I mentioned in an earlier post the flight is booked but for the return portion I was on a waiting list. The thing is I could get off the list by spending more airmiles to fly business class. Well over dinner we decided to use the airmiles to do that.

Around 10pm last night we received a text message that the flight was confirmed. I’ll now be flying economy and not using the extra 20,000 miles needed to upgrade. I’m happy about saving the miles, but after having decided to use them am also a little disappointed to not be flying business class – Seoul to Toronto is about 15 hours and that’s a really long time to be cramped like a sardine.

Oh well, I’m happy everything is confirmed. Now I need to book a room and arrange a car rental.

Mar 20, 2010 Comments(2) Share on:

ottawa - travel - canada - planning -

There are a lot of things that I want to do before I leave Korea. This is not related to all the stuff that I need to do like visa paperwork for the wife, getting immunization & school records translated for the kids etcetera. According to the countdown timer in my blog header there is only 1 year 3 months and 18 days until I return to Canada. Time is running out and I still have a number of things I would like to do before I leave.

This summer, after I return from my trip to Ottawa in July My wife and I are planning a road trip around Korea. I figure we’ll drive around from 2-3 weeks in August and see all the things I haven’t seen, but have wanted to in the time I’ve been in Korea. It’ll also be good for our kids to see as much of Korea as possible before we move. We only decided this last week and haven’t planned where to go yet, but I’ll be getting a lonely planet book soon to decide.

Recommendations from readers in Korea will be appreciated. We are definitely planning on going to Soraksan, Ullong-do, and Gyeongju. I’ve been to Gyeongju before, but it’s been a long time and neither of our kids have been there before. We’re also planning on taking a couple of weekends this spring and fall to do some short trips. I would like to go to the Andong Mask festival, but as of yet don’t know the dates – only that it is held every spring.

In the Fall for our 10 year wedding anniversary we’ll be heading to Jeju-do for a weekend with the kids. We’ll fly down and rent a car and see all the stuff we didn’t get to see 10 years ago when we went for our honeymoon. Actually on our honeymoon we wanted to travel to South East Asia but my job at the time would only give me 2 days off.

I’ve also got one international trip planned sometime before we leave and that will be to China to go on the Beijing – Great Wall tour. I gotta go on this before I leave Korea as I probably won’t have another chance. The tour is pretty cheap and you go to the great wall and the Beijing circus as well as a couple of other touristy places. I’d also like to go to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do both, but we’ll see.

My wife will be quitting her job in the next month, so we’ll definitely have the time for all of these things. The only question will be finances especially since we’re going to need all the money we can save for when we make the move in July 2011.

I’m adding a google map that anyone is free to add pins to – recommend places for us.

View Korea Road Trip in a larger map

Mar 16, 2010 Comments(7) Share on:

korea - tourism - travel

Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to receive 4 complementary tickets to Nanta (only works in IE) from my current client. So yesterday evening we packed up the kids and went out for dinner and theatre. First a review of Nanta, also known in English as Cookin) followed by a restaurant recommendation.

There are three Nanta theatres in Seoul and one in Jeju and Nanta has been performed around the world

A Non-verbal performance integrating Korean traditional Samulnori rhythm with comic and drama in the kitchen! Audiences of all ages and nationalities can enjoy! Everyone is welcome!

The above quote is from the Nanta web site and is very true. My children, 8 and 4, as well as myself my wife and the whole audience enjoyed the show. There is a rock music soundtrack that backs the story. However the real attraction is the heavy percussion and acrobatics that each of the actors performs. Actors beat kitchen knives onto cutting blocks, beat broomsticks, wisks, colanders and more to create a catchy percussive rhythm that is enjoyable and entertaining. If you don’t like spoilers now is a good time to stop reading.

The acrobatics are impressive especially of interest was the martial arts fighting and the plate throwing scenes. The combat scene is reminiscent of improv martial arts ala Jackie Chan. My favorite was the wisk nunchakus versus the broomstick staff. The plate throwing scene which lasted quite long was very impressive both in how they did it as well as the high level of coordination and dexterity necessary.

There was also a fair amount of audience involvement in the performance, with 6, maybe 7, audience members being pulled on stage. Nanta was a very entertaining performance and definitely one that I would highly recommend. If you have kids, be sure to bring them along both of my kids really loved it.

My wife saw this earlier in the year with her co-workers but she wasn’t impressed. This time around she said it was much better and attributed that to the fact that th first theater (Gangbuk Jeongdong) she saw it in was much larger than the one (Gangnam Nanta Theater) we went to last night. We were quite close to the stage despite being near the back of the theatre.

Promo Poster

Here is a google map with the three locations to see it in Seoul.

View Nanta theaters in Seoul in a larger map

Restaurant recommendation in the extended entry

There's more, keep reading

Mar 14, 2010 Comments(0) Share on:

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A few days ago I left a comment on the Exurbanite Pedestrian’s (XUP) blog where I mentioned the low tax rate in Korea and how much I hate tipping, which I consider an evil custom. My comment is third from the top. Further down XUP asked me why I am returning to Korea. This is in light of other comments I’ve left there and some of my own blog posts, which really do seem to suggest Korea is a better place to live than Canada.

To a point I agree with this and if I didn’t have children I would probably be satisfied with living in Korea until I am ready to retire. However I do have children and they are the primary reasons I feel the need to return to Canada. In two earlier posts I detailed 5 Things I will miss about Korea and 5 Things I am looking forward to in Canada. This post will expand on those, but first a quick refresher:

5 things I will miss about Korea

• Service
• Neighborhood Shops
• Public Transportation
• Cheap high speed internet
• Korean language

5 things I am looking forward to in Canada

• Grass
• Snow
• Supermarkets
• Driving
• Anonymity

Some of the reasons I am leaving Korea, not related to my children, in no particular order include:

• Vilification of native speaker English teachers by the Korean media and the continual slanted reported to all things foreign and teaching related. See for example all 68 posts in the category We Hate Native Speaker English Teachers on Brian’s blog. Also many of the posts on The Marmot’s Hole in the Ministry of Barbarian Affairs deal with many of the same issues.
• The extreme difficulties in getting basic services for non-Koreans. Cellphones, internet, and banking are extremely difficult to do for foreigners. I’m married to a Korean with a permanent residence visa (like a green card to the U.S.) but my income still does not allow me to get a loan at a bank – I’ve been stably employed making good money for 14 years but I’m a risk because I’m not a Korean
• Even more annoying and stupid is trying to use Korean web sites. To register 98% of sites require your national id#. No problem immigration gave me one when I registered, however none of the web sites recognize them because they start with a number different from what Korean ids do. Yes that means I cannot buy anything online – instead I have to ask my wife to do it. Gord Sellar has an interesting, and long, post on the problems with the internet in Korea – The Hub of… Outmoded Software Shackles?
• Driving in Korea makes me angry. You have no idea how angry I get when driving in this country. Red lights are suggestions, not rules. The inability of most drivers to make left turns correctly – how shallow can you make that corner? Blatant disregard for public safety – taxi drivers, bus drivers and delivery motorcycle drivers love o cut people off, run red lights, drive on the sidewalk (though that is happening less often now) and a million other things. What do the police do? absolutely nothing.
• nationalism – nationalism of any kind is one of my pet peeves. There is a fine line between patriotism and nationalism and too many people cross over. Actually this is a problem with many Canadians as well.

Specifically related to my children.

• education. There are a number of problems I have with education in Korea. Yes I do know that Canadian education has different problems, but they are ones I am more willing to accept. Interestingly many Koreans would agree with me as there are regularly reports in the news letting readers know about how many Korean families send their kids abroad to study, from ages as young as 5, due to their own perceived problems with Korean education and societies inability to fix it. This has been in the news for many many years and is not a new phenomenon.
  • specifically, the need for kids to go to school for 12-14 hours a day. Actually they don’t attend school for that entire time, but once school lets out they then go from hagwon (private afterschool program) to hagwon often until 10 or 11 at night.
  • At higher grade levels (middle school and high school) students are so focused on the university entrance exam that they have no social life outside of school. One the one day off of school they get, Sundays + every second Saturday, they are often at school or the library studying.
  • The result of the focus on the entrance exam is that there is too much emphasis on rote memorization and not enough on synthesis of knowledge. Yes this is mostly hearsay, but my personal experience with my university freshmen students is that this is true. Again there are many exceptions, but I think the exceptions prove the rule.
• Apartment living blows. There is no where for my kids to play on grass. The few parks that exist in Seoul all have the grass fenced off – it’s only to look at.
• There is no where for children to ride bicycles or play together. Currently all the children in our apartment complex ride their bicycles in short circles in the parking lot. they also play soccer there which results in many cars getting hit by soccer balls.
• Finally my kids English skills are very weak. The only person they need to speak English to is me. All of their friends, neighbors, and teachers speak Korean exclusively. I’m fighting an uphill battle with English and losing. My Korean skills are not as good as they should be so my relationship with the kids is also suffering.

Having said all these negative things about Korea, one might wonder why I have stayed so long. There are a lot of positive things about Korea many of which I’ve mentioned in previous posts and will continue to write about. Canada has a lot going for it, but there are also a lot of bad things in Canada including tipping culture, taxes and crap medical care.

I’m sure that once I’ve returned to Canada, I’ll find more about it that I love as well as things that I dislike and the same goes for Korea. I don’t believe there is any one country that is the best place to live they all have good and bad things.

Well there you go – the reasons I’m leaving Korea. Less than 18 months to go – I can’t believe it.

Mar 07, 2010 Comments(5) Share on:

korea - repatriate - canada - driving - expat - employment - housing - family - internet - traffic - 5 things