koreans, hogwans and racism

uugghh! koreans are a strange sort. they will give a foreigner the shirt off their back and bend over backwards to help you and then spit on you as you leave. they make no sense.

hogwans (privately run tutoring schools) are so awful. they lie cheat and steal to get as much out of the foreign (and korean) teacher as they can. if you have worked in korea at a hogwan and haven't dealt with some kind of headache.....consider yourself VERY lucky. my last hogwan was an experience that made me vow never to walk into another hogwan job again as long as i live. now teddy is being pushed in the same direction. he has been at this current hogwan for almost two years and he finishes his 2nd contract in 4 days. finishing this friday means that there will be one week left in his hogwan's semester that he won't be there for. finishing on friday also means that he is jobless for the last week of my vacation.......a great opportunity for us to have a quick trip together before i start teaching again. well, his hogwan hasn't prepared for his end of contract and don't have a teacher to replace him yet (no surprise there!)....now they are saying that he has to work that last week of their semester or they will withhold his severance pay. teddy has been a loyal employee and has done a lot of work for his manager and now she's stabbing him in the back. lovely. she is telling teddy to go to japan this weekend (because his visa expires this sunday) and come back to work next week. i highly doubt that they will be paying for his visa run to japan and a legal extension of his working visa. i'm pretty sure that she means for him to fund his own trip to japan and return to korea to work for them on a tourist visa! crazy! anyone know a lawyer in korea???

as for the racism part........don't even get me started!!!

ratatouille and passports

the two aren't related at all but were the highlights of my day.

first the ratatouille..... it was one of the most time consuming dinners i have made but it looks and smells delicious. it's simmering phase right now. well as simmering as it gets in korea. korean dishes don't typically call for simmering, so their stoves aren't made for simmering. the flame for the burner goes out before you can get it low enough for a simmer. so i have been turning it on and off for the last while. hopefully it won't matter. i'll be eating it in and hour or 2, when teddy gets here---which isn't soon enough for me!

and the passport..... a few weeks ago i applied for a new passport. as my luck would have it, you can't renew passports overseas (even if you've applied for the one which is expiring in that overseas country!)---you have to submit a re-application, along with the fees of a new application and the fee of not knowing a guarantor in the overseas country. so about $200 later my application was getting processed. today the new one arrived in the mail. yea! you can never guarantee anything going through the mailing system, so to have my passport in hand is a blessing. now on to renewing my visa for working in korea...... that'll be another post!

best medicine

as with most foreigners living in korea, i have had many colds this winter. there's something about these korean colds which makes them seem far worse than any cold i can remember having back in canada. i have discovered the best cure and i encourage all of you to try it the next time you feel the sniffles and body ache coming on. this is it:

1.5 to 2 liters of water
a handful of ginger root
one lemon
one orange
honey

you clean the ginger root and slice it as small as you can or grate it. add it to a pot containing the liter and a half or 2 of water. you add to that, the juice from both the lemon and orange. peel the rind off the orange and lemon and add that to the pot. bring this mixture to a boil and then simmer for about 5 or 10 minutes. strain it as you pour it into a mug and add a spoonfull of honey to each mugfull you drink.

drink as much of that citrus-ginger-honey tea as you can over the next day or two (you may have to make a couple of potfulls---i do!) and i'm pretty sure you'll be feeling much better!