Off to Shanghai

Off to the inferno known as Shanghai, be back in a couple of days.

It just keeps coming

Why don't they just kick us out already?

Foreigners Face Restricted Banking

The job makes or breaks the experience

So basically for me it all boiled down to the job. When the job started to suck, I started to become very unhappy with my situation. If my job situation had been better, I probably would not be so unhappy. I was planning on staying another year and studying Korean at a university here, but whats the use? When you start to become unhappy with a situation, you leave the situation, unless the benefits of staying outweigh the costs. The benefit of staying in Korea is the ability to save money. Considering I didn't come here for that purpose, staying here is now pointless.

I tried to find interests in other areas, culture, history, language etc. I went to museums and historical sites, but I found them to be rather small, lacking, and uninteresting. I have found Korean tv to be very entertaining but English subtitles are hard to find. I haven't been particularly enchanted with Korean history like I was with Chinese history, which I studied briefly at my university. No matter how hard I try I just cannot find the motivation to study the language. And it's all because of the job.

In other news, my camera broke and I need to buy a new one for my trip to Shanghai next week.

Anti-Foreign Sentiment Scares Away International Investors

Another example of whats been bothering me about this country.

Anti-Foreign Sentiment Scares Away International Investors

"He noted that the best negative example is regulators' probe of the legitimacy of Lone Star's takeover of the Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) in 2003. ``Through this incident, the international community thinks Koreans believe that non-Koreans making money in Korea is like committing a crime, which drives away potential foreign investors.''"

This comes directly from a Korean newspaper no less.

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In other news, I read this nice little quote from one of my elementary student's journal.

"But (name left blank) is ugly. She is from china. Chinese are ugly. But we are pretty..."

Just an elementary school student, they start them young here.

Good example of why I'm leaving

Teacher sent to prison

Here is a perfect example of why I am leaving. This is a Canadian teacher who had a fake diploma, got caught, and is now going to spend 6 months in prison. Should he be deported? Absolutely. Should he be banned from ever coming back to this country? Absolutely. Should he be fined an obscene amount of money? Absolutely.

Should he spend 6 months in prison? No, just execute him instead for being a foreigner. He probably had sex with Korean women too.

Nationalism starts young here. I was going over a geography unit with my elementary students, and we were talking about countries, and one of my students asked me where Korea was. So I showed them where it was, a few seconds of shocked silence then students started yelling at me "why is Korea so small!" "where is jeju-do!" "Where is dokdo!" Then I made the mistake of saying, "Well, actually you need to cut this little square in half because the top half is North Korea", big mistake. Anyway, my point is, it's not fun living in a country that has an intense love/hate relationship with you.

In other news, I will be going to Shanghai at the end of the month with my friend, shes going to show me around her city. I'm trying to decide if I want to go to Beijing, Shanghai or Taipei next year.

Only a few more months

Three and a half months left, I'm so excited. My plans have been changing week by week, but right now my current plan is to go home in October, stay there for a month or two, then go to Taiwan and continue teaching. I'm not quite done teaching and traveling, but I am quite finished with Korea.

I enjoyed the first 4 months, but it went downhill after that. While on the surface I find this is a good place to live, if you scratch below the surface things aren't so nice. I have a good friend from China who is routinely subjected to racism, it's pretty depressing. I keep seeing these "news" reports on the evil foreign English teachers and how we are corrupting this society. Every time I go anywhere with an Asian girl I get stared at, she gets stared at, and it's just not fun. I even had this one teacher I work with follow me to a restaurant where I was meeting this girl we both know, the guy walked by the window with his arms crossed (very aggressive posture) staring into the restaurant trying to see who I was having dinner with. This same guy demanded all the female teachers at our school get into his car and all the male teachers get into another car, after all he must protect the women from us foreigners, right? I got turned down for a date once because, "someone might see us". Someone might see this Korean girl with a foreigner and assume shes a "bad girl". And I thought I heard them all. I can't even go get a new cell phone. I have to get a used cell phone because they don't give new ones without signing a contract and I'm a foreigner so I can't sign one.

I'm not even going to talk about what people from poor countries go through, I get it easy because I'm from a rich country...sigh.

Anyway, I'm going to have to start taking more pictures, I only have three months left.