stuff and north korea

I am currently at school. It's 9:15 and I'm not teaching. I'm supposed to be teaching, just like I was supposed to be teaching at this time on Monday and from 7~10 yesterday.
but I'm not.

right now the kids have their middle school mid-term exams at school. This therefore means that they're stressed beyond anything I experienced until Governments in grade 12. They are studying more at home and are not coming to extra classes as much...hence me sitting on my ass the last three evenings because NONE of my students showed up!!!

This is happy for me, however i can't believe that they go through this. Their scores on their middle school exams determine what high school they will get into. The high school that they go to will directly affect which university they go to. AND the university they go to will determine their job. If you get a crappy score on a middle-school exam...well then forget about those dreams of medical school. that's high stress for my little 12 year old students. It KIND OF makes sense in a country with so many people (encroaching on 50 million) that schools would have to be so competitive, but come ON...really??? middle-school scores??

who am i to say though, I'm just a lowly English teacher who actually can't speak English anymore due to constant deterioration.

Side note...or, more, that was the side note, this is the meat of the blog. I'm officially finished teaching on July 24th. I leave the country on the 26th. Usually a teacher has to move out of their apartment 3~4 days early so the school can get their apartment ready for the new teacher. We're moved into a pretty nice hotel for a few days. It's actually a sweet deal since it forces us to pack and get organized a few days before our actual departure. It's a good thing...usually

I have to move out of my apartment 2 WEEKS before I leave. The new teachers are coming on the 18th. So fine, I'd have to stay in the hotel from the 17~26...still a pretty long time. except, I'm going to China from the 14~17. I obviously can't move while in China, and the new teachers will be coming while I'm gone, so I have to move out on the 13th. I found this out only after asking absentmindedly when I'd be moving. I figured it wouldn't be for a few weeks. they told me it would be next week...i guess it's a good thing i asked.

anyways, how stuff does happen for a reason. Now I'll be organized. I've already thrown a lot of clothes into boxes because I panicked when I realized how soon I'd have to move. I'll be organized before China, then be able to chill for my last weeks.

AND I wasn't going to go to the Mud Festival on the 21/22 because it was 3 days before I was leaving the country...and honestly...i didn't need that stress. but NOW I'll already be organized. I'll now spend my last weekend in Korea partying it up covered in mud on a beach with all of my friends. granted it's the 3rd time I've been to this festival, but it's a pretty killer time.

beyond that i don't really have much to say. I never did blog about North Korea...sure, I'll throw that in (still have 20 minutes left to kill)

North Korea was an .... interesting experience. We drove in a bus all night to get to the border. It took 4 hours, it then took 3 to cross the border. There were non-smiling guards (or mushroom heads as I called them - they had niiiiice hats) EVERYWHERE. We were NOT allowed to take pictures. Every 100m along the road a different one stood, some obscured by bushes, most in plain sight, all with little red flags to raise if they saw anything suspicious like a picture being taken outside of a specified "photograph zone." If a red flag was waved then our whole convoy of around 20 buses would have to be stopped and searched.

glad that didn't happen.

Being in North Korean immigration was a surreal experience. BLASTING over loudspeakers was a oddly cheerful song playing on a loop.

"bang kap sim ni da, bang kap sim ni daaaaaaa" with other choruses thrown in (nice to meet you, nice to meet yooooouuuuu)

The song was in stark contrast to the non-smiling, marching with straight leg, smaller than the average south korean, guards everywhere. They were everywhere. We waited for a long time for our chance to pass through immigration. No smiling, no stamping of the passport (sad), only of a piece of paper that they took away when we went back through immigration to South Korea, then I was in North Korea.

My first image upon entering were more guards walking around and some sad guy dressed up in a bear costume waving. The now eerie song was still playing.

North Korea is strange.

We all piled back into our buses and headed for our "tourist zone" We were not allowed to take any pictures while on the buses. We could only take pictures within the "zone" and on the specified mountains we were to climb. I will therefore describe what I saw.

North Korea looks not-surprisingly like the South Korean country-side. The main difference would have to be the tanks and rocket launchers on top of every third hill. Not even an exaggeration. There were 3~4 of each on every third hill. There were also caves dug out of random hills that housed guns and other weapons.

Another stark difference would be the lack of cars. I saw ONE truck the entire time I was there disregarding military vehicles. It was pumping out so much black smoke I thought it was about ready to explode. The smoke was explained shortly after. Apparently the North Koreans are so short on gas that they run their vehicles on wood. Not quite sure how they do that...kinda crappy that they have to.

A third difference was how many people were working int he fields together. North Korea is a communist dictatorship. This means that everyone works together on Government farms. In South Korea they have just as many farms in the countryside however I was apparently used to seeing one of two people working in them because it was blatantly obvious to me that there were numerous workers in every field.

Finally their houses. They had actual houses, no apartments, and they were all the same. The same small rancher style made out of what looked like bleached concrete. Every village was surrounded by a wall. The villagers have to get permission from the post office (staffed with guards) to leave the village.

North Korea was beautiful. Green and lush, quiet and peaceful. The trucks and rocket-launchers didn't bother me, nor did the guards. I've lived in South Korea long enough and been to the DMZ for this to be normal. I currently live in a country being occupied by the USA. I see soldiers everyday. Military helicopters fly over my apartment in formation at 10:30 every morning.

The mountains that we climbed were really nice, with words carved in the rock faces EVERYWHERE done by the Kims. I'm not entirely sure if these are all over the entire country, or more concentrated in this part due to the visitors. That way we can think they're everywhere ;)

Beyond that there's not all that much to say about North Korea. I was REALLY restricted in what I could experience. It was all picture perfect and i'm sure it was made to be as such.

and...that be all. I go to China in 9 days with 20 friends. that'll be pretty cool.