Seoul, Korea - August 29, 2003
I've been downloading alot of movies and tv shows off www.kazaa.com lately. One of which was the American Reality Show, 'The Amazing Race'. On the 10th episode of the 4th season, they go to Seoul, South Korea. Its quite interesting as its not the best picture of Korea, but strangely its all part of the reality here.
If anyone is unfamiliar with this Reality TV show, the idea is these teams have to race to different parts of the world following clues at designated locations. Its a race through any means possible, and during each leg of the race, the one in last place is eliminated and out of the race.
Immediately in Korea, they had very obvious communication problems. It was quite interesting as they had just come from Malaysia in the previous leg of the race. It was summer down there as always, in these beautiful jungles, friendly people, and English was widely understood. Then they arrived in Korea in the middle of Winter, no one understood them, the people were extremely different, and a huge concrete jungle of a city. The first things I noticed was they were trying to get places, but mispronouncing the names. In Korea, if your pronounciation isn't exact, they have absolutely no idea what you want or what you are talking about. It was very evident this was the case in this leg of the race. Everyone complained and had an extremely tough time communicating and getting to where they wanted to go. In addition, they'd ask the cab drivers if they knew where it was, and they'd always say 'yes' and they'd always go 100 feet and ask for directions from someone else. Typical I was thinking, as I've had that happen many times myself. During the race, one person told the cab driver to go fast, so he put on his emergency blinkers and ran all of the red lights and stop signs.
One of the first places they had to go in Korea was to the DMZ, which is the military fortified barriers between North and South Korea. They went through all the many army personnel and tanks and such. One of the teams made a comment how freaky it was to be in what appeared to be a war zone. Its part of being in Korea that you think about once in awhile, but never really think about too much. Also, apart from the TV show, a few friends and myself went to the DMZ last weekend. We went to a village thats shared between the two countries, and were able to step into North Korea for a few minutes and then had to step back into South Korea. It was interesting overall.
Back to The Amazing Race. At this point in the race after the DMZ, they had to find a certain subway stop to get to the next clue. Oddly enough, it was subway stop that is about 15 or 20 minutes away from my house. Fairly close!! From there, they had to do a challenge of either studying Taekwando to be able to break these boards, or they had to eat a plate full of live octopus - a Korean delicasy. All fairly interesting to watch. That was pretty much the show itself, but interesting to see it viewed on television on The Amazing Race.
As for my life in Korea, its going well. We are a couple weeks away from a major Korean Holiday (which means a 5-day weekend), and work is going quite well. They fired most of the old management and staff and made alot of changes. At first they seemed quite negative, but now it seems that they are actually quite positive. In addition, they are hiring two new employees here, and it seems like they will be staying in business and remaining quite healthy. When the old management kept disappearing there were rumors that everything was going to fall apart, no more foreigners would be hired, and things just might be coming to an end. It turns out all of those things were unfounded, and things seem pretty optimistic at this time.
One of the major changes in my workplace, I teach English online 1-on-1 to students via webcams, headphones, and webbooks. One of the major changes is they are attempting to implement a system where we will teach multiple students at the same time. I don't know how that will go, but we'll just wait and see. I also can't believe its almost September already. The last five months have gone by fairly fast.
Next Journal Entry in Taiwan:
September 11, 2003
You can email me at:
Wintermoon2@yahoo.com