A Decent Pair of Pants!

So that had little to do with Korea, I know, but like Brainiac and Solomon Grundy I have felt similar frustrations about the elusive pants.  Now before I begin, I want to briefly talk about clothing in general in Korea.  What I am about to say has been said before, but it bears repeating.  If you are curious about this issue then please read on.  If, however, you are less interested in the fine details of clothing sizes then skip ahead to the paragraph after next. 

For any of you whom do not know this already, I am a fairly large person.  The average Korean is not.  There are also some basic structural differences that make things more difficult.  Some of the basic bone structure is different just enough to affect sizes.  Now if you reading this and are thinking that perhaps this may not be relevant to yourself, think again. Many members of the female persuasion have had issues also.  If you are thinking of living here for any length of time, I would highly encourage you to pack extras of the following items:

• Pants:  Nothing beyond a US size 38 is easily available

• Socks:  If you have wide feet like me, or anything past US size 12, you will not find anything.

• Shoes:  Like socks, anything beyond a US size 12 is nearly impossible to find. 

• Belts: Like pants anything beyond US size 38 is very difficult to find. 

• Women, the local women do not have hips (or feet past maybe a size 8).  Pants may be in your    waist size, but the hips will feel very snug. 

Now that that’s out of the way, on to some amusing stories.  I bought a few pairs of jeans online, along with some nice slacks.  This summer was very hot.  Wanting to be more comfortable, I wore my jeans more often than not.  My jeans have since worn out.  Holes have appeared and it was time to replace them.  And then I ran into problems.  You would have thought that getting clothing shipped to Korea would have been a very simple process.  Amazon.com, JCPenny, Target, and other usual online clothing chains will not ship clothing to Korea.  Macy’s will, but they are very expensive.  What I managed to find, that also fit my personal style, was Eddie Bauer.  They ship to Korea, have a number of fine things, and are moderately priced.  With the point and click world at my fingertips and a credit in my hand, I ordered a number of new pairs of pants.  Simple, right?  Were I more juvenile I would more than likely make some rude noise with my mouth and tongue, but since I am not I will refrain from doing so. 

I instantly had a hold placed on my order and Eddie Bauer was determined enough to send a letter via ground mail to my permanent mailing address in the USA.  Why?  I had no idea at the time.  As it turns out, it was to confirm my Korean mailing address, because I kid you not, they could not confirm the spelling.  It wasn’t because of suspicion of fraud or something that could have been solved via email, no.  It was because they could not confirm the spelling and wanted me to call, on the phone, with a confirmation number, from a letter, sent to the USA.  This delayed the delivery of my order by nearly 2 weeks. 

On an amusing aside, I was walking through E-Mart, with my headphones on listening to another one of my wacky audiobooks.  As I was going through the store I saw an older, foreign gentleman, whose wrinkled tattoos suggested navy career, stopped and pointed at me as I went by.  His local assistant began to chat with him.  Taking off my headphones, I was curious what was being said.  As it turns out, the soccer ball shaped octogenarian, asked with frustrated hope, “Where did you get those pants?”  I replied that I brought them with me, and I saw his heart sink.  He and his assistant went off to the few foreign quarters to find the few places that sell larger sized clothing.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, these places do exist, but they are few and far between.  They have also shown themselves to have a limited stock. 

Just a few days ago now, my package of new pants finally arrived.  The tragedy throughout all this was the fact that the order was wrong.  I ordered 4 pairs of pants and a belt (all one size smaller than I had been wearing, woot!).  One pair that I got in the package was so small that Rachel was able to wear it comfortably.  Another said the correct size on the package, however had been mislabeled and was about 6 inches too small in reality.  I have yet to mail it back, but will be done in the next few days so that I can get the correct size.  But I at least have a few decent pairs of pants.  

In Our Town Of Halloween

For reasons that will become apparent by the time that I finish this blog, I have been a very busy person.  The planets had aligned into those all too vexing patterns where I was forced to offer a number of my weekends to the gods of work.  Now, I have mentioned that I have been working every other weekend doing catch-up classes.  This was all well-known and expected, as painful as they are.  This month, however, I had yet another conference wedged in-between these catch-up classes. 

With the leaving of our old boss, the school’s tone has changed dramatically.  The level of pressure has vanished, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t working hard.  One thing that has ebbed and flowed is the effectiveness of the communication.  This isn’t anyone’s fault, as we’re all trying to figure out how to manage everything.  Consequently, I was told that I had to go to another conference, and I was so tired of these things that I really contemplated skipping out on this one.  This one, however, turned out to be something mandated by Korean immigration.  As it turns out there is a new rule, as of a few years ago, that anyone that comes to Korea to teach and work for their first year must attend this conference, and if you don’t show up, immigration will find you.  Now unlike previous conferences this one was actually useful, or at least it would have been more useful should I not already have had some experience with Korean culture, language, history, and other teaching experiences.  I am not saying that I didn’t learn anything, far from it.  But I am saying that Emma got a lot more out of it than I did.  There is something amusing that I find about the slow responsivness.  There were a small number of teachers that were at this introduction conference that had been there for more than a year, and a smaller number that had been there for 4 years or longer. 

Some things that I did take away from the conference were more of the cultural things.  There was some interesting music played and a performance of some traditional theater, or at least it was completely traditional until a particular moment (you’ll know which one).  Now I apologize about the film quality, but I was recording this on my phone and my arm is not exactly the best tripod.  I hope that you’ll enjoy them.

Now this is all important because the conference I was close to one of the massive street markets.  Finding an awesome woman after the conference (whom I had met before), we set out for the market with the intention of finding materials that I needed to make my Halloween costume.  After some delicious Chinese soup, we managed to find the cloth that I needed to make my costume.  Nancy was awesome enough to help me out and purchase the cloth that I needed.  I was a little short of cash at that moment, and I paid her back 10 minutes later, but still she is an awesome person.  Now I had everything that I needed to make my wizard costume…well not everything. Earlier in the week, Rachel and I had gone down to a costume shop that was quite well stocked.  I picked up a nice outfit and some things that made up a few cool effects of the costume, and overall I think it worked out well.  I originally tried to go for an evil Time Lord (such as the Master or the Valeyard), but it didn’t really work out as well as I had thought.  But it did make for an awesome wizard. 

The school was in full holiday mode.  We spent hours and hours blowing balloons.  I mean hundreds and hundreds of balloons.  One of the activities that we had to do was making balloon animals, and we needed to prepare at least 2 for each of our students.  We had scores of cutout characters (bats, ghosts, and such) to tape to the walls.  I wouldn’t say that it was a nightmare experience, but it was hard and very long.  Honestly, it reminded me a great deal of high school.  I had my ipad, playing music, as I prepared for a show.  We were working long hours, it was tedious, and I loved it. 

Each of us had an activity that we were in charge of for the holiday.  Mine was to teach the kids a Halloween song.  Now, my co-teacher Jade was also responsible for the same activity, as we took on different groups of students.  This worked out quite well for the younger students, but the older students… not so much.  My two songs were the Monster Mash and Spooky Loo.  For anyone that has not heard either song, they are not really something that a teenager would really enjoy. Well, maybe one from the 1950’s, but definitely not one from contemporary Korea.  Acting quickly, I put on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and the kids were enthralled by dancing zombies.  The Walking Dead is huge here, as well as a number of other zombie related shows, so I knew that they would enjoy it. 

The sad thing was that I did have to teach a few classes.  They weren’t that difficult, but it was a bit of a drag when some of the kids saw that others were having fun and not them.  Most of them got their turn, but the oldest kids were left without any holiday celebration, although they demanded that I teach in my costume, so at least someone really liked it.  Overall it was a fun time, but 2 days of it was very draining.  By the time that we got done with everything and headed out for drinks afterwards we were all completely exhausted. 

The best thing about it was that it was a 3 day week, and I was allowed a nice rest and for Thursday and Friday to be added to my weekend.  So here I am while writing this, enjoying the end of my break.  Strangely I haven’t done much, and I am dreading Monday as I am sure many of my students are.  Oh well, back to the grindstone.