Busan, Korea - 1996
My first time in Asia. Quite a shock. I was put up in a small little hotel right downtown seeminly in an alley. Quite shockingly they sold food and everything else in this alley. There were people everywhere. I'd never seen so many people doing so many things in an ally in my entire life. As I explored just outide of the alley, it opened up into ever winding more countless streets wandering everywhere. The smells were distinctive and quite shocking.
My introduction to my new school was equally a shock. I arrived in Busan 4-5 days earlier with the specific purpose of watching how other teachers taught English so I could mimic it and do it myself. However, when I was brought to my school the next morning, they immediately stuck me into a classroom. I had no idea what to say or what to do. I also couldn't understand anything that the Korean students were saying back to me. My school also contracted me out to a Middle School on my first day. This meant I had to ride a bus in a very strange place and memorize how to get there. Not being able to read any signs, or make any kind of reference made this quite difficult. For one, throughout Busan, there are tons of bowling pins and crosses on tops of buildings. That in itself is a strange sight, so you think I will memorize this building because it has a bowling pin on top. Then you get on the bus, and you see 30 buildings with bowling pins on the top and realize.. hmm.. I'm lost already.
One of the more interesting things about Busan, is there everything was quite compact, and there were all kinds of businesses within each building. Usually the bottom floor had some simple restaurant or shop. Above it could be just about anything. Sometimes residencies, sometimes entire english institutes, bowling alleys, singing rooms, video rooms, small companies, everything you could imagine. South Korea is absolutely nothing like the United States in any conceivable way. There are small businesses everywhere! If you want to rent a video, you have your choice of 10 places all within a 2-minute walk. If you want to get some juice, again, who knows how many places offer this no matter where you are in the city within a minute or two. If you want to sing songs into a karaoke tv machine, you can find countless places all within 5 minutes away. If you want to go shoot pool or go bowling, again, countless places within 5-10 minutes even in the most remotest places in the city.
The other thing is there are many areas that are more or less ut off from traffic. Cars occassionally still ride down them, but they are primarly pedestrian, and pedestrians have the right of way. There are entire markets just about everywhere you can imagine selling everything you can imagine held throughout the streets as well.
Okay, one thing I should talk about is one of Korea's largest dog markets which happened to be between my school and my apartment. The dogs were kept in cages on the side of the road. Beside them on a butcher's stand lied pieces of dog meat, often the head or full body sitting there available to purchase. The markets worked like this - if you were a shop owner and needed more dog meat, you'd take one out of the cage. You'd pull it into the back, and break its neck quick as adrenaline was flowing. Once dead, you would put it in a vat to singe the hair. Then they skin it, and cut it into pieces and place it out front on the road. The preferred way to eat dog was in a soup. I never tried it, but walked by these markets nearly everyday.
My friends and roommates happened to live in a large highrise apartment in the location of a place called Deokchondong. We had great views of everything on our side of the mountain and of the airport in the other direction. Busan and all of Korea was a very mountaineous place, so to get to the main downtown areas, we had to go around the mountain by bus. If you made the effort downtown, you could go to many places including Hyundae beach, Somyon, Pusan National University, Nampodong, or Texas Town.
Hyundai Beach was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the entire country of Korea. People from all over the country would go to these very crowded beaches during the summertime. Koreans generally don't wear bikinis or swimwears, so often they will swim still wearing their shirts and jeans. There were also some very famous hotel along with hotel discos along the beach as well. Many of us teachers during the summertime would hangout at the beach all day and evening, and then hit the hotel discos at night, then again the beaches late at night to build a fire and hangout. A great place overall.
Another big spot in Busan was Somyon and Nampodong. Both were kind of downtown centers. They had everything you could imagine, shopping, restaurants, bars, etc. Nampodong also had all of the cinemas, and the first year i was there they held the first "Busan International Film Festival" whihc is now a very famous event throughout the entire continent of Asia.
Another nightlife spot was the Busan National Unviersity area. Incidently, this was the closest place to where I lived. There were alot of little bars and restaurants in this area. Most of these were English Teacher hangouts to talk about life in Korea with your fellow expats. The most famous bar of its time was "MONK BAR". A little future history on the place. A few years later Korea suffered a huge economic crisis and was eventually bailed out by IMF. At this time, the owner of Monk Bar lost alot of money as everyone did, and he climbed a famous building, Lotte Department Store, and jumped off to his death. As most foreigners of Busan at that time had often frequented the legendery MONK BAR, it was quite a shock. Also, a year or so later when the economic crisis hit, english schools closed everywhere and many English teachers left the country, which no doubt was his core business.
Another somewhat famous place in Busan is Texas Town, or sometimes called Russia Town. It was a seedy place filled with nightclubs and sailors on leave. Busan was a port town, so a constant stream of sailors would arrive on shore, and go to this region. There were also alot of ethnic Koreans from Russia who lived here. It was quite odd because they looked SO Korean but could only speak Russian.
Not too far from Texas Town or Russia Town, lied Busan Tower. Busan Tower is high up on an extremely large hill or small mountain depending on how you wanted to look at it. I guess its a very large hill. Anyhow, if you climb the stairs to the top, you have a beautiful park and an amazing view of the entire harbor. There were alot of young people strolling or older people playing differnet unique korean card games.
Okay, my school. I taught at an adult institute teaching English. Classes ere 50-minutes each, and I had 6 classes a day. Our school had generally between 5-8 foreign students totaled. We shared two four-bedroom aparments not too far from the school. One apartment was loosely described as the girls place and the other the guys place. Every month, differnet teachers would either quit or complete their contract. So at the beginning of each month, you would often have a new arrival. Not always, but often. All contracts in South Korea are for one year, and your class schedules change at the beginning of every month.
The classes itself were quite unprofessinal. We were basically at liberty to teach whatever we wanted to do. The main thing is that the institute owner made money. Some teachers just played games, others watched movies, others held conversation, and some taught lessons. My classes were primarily conversation-oriented. I generally made up lists of questions to ask students on various subjects, and tried to start conversations around it. Looking back, it wasn't the greatest way to teach, but we had no structure from the school, no guidance, and none of the teachers had any experience. For the most part, as was common throughout South Korea at the time, all they wanted was a college-educated person from a native-English speaking country. You'd think it would be a disaster, but we ended up helping each other out alot, and everyone and the students kind of learns and improves constantly as you get feedback from students and ask other teachers. You learn quickly!!
There is SO Much stuff I could say about Busan, but, unfortunately I will cut it short and continue with the next aspects of life. Also at this time, I spent 5 months in Busan, but due to the fact I was missing the girl back in Portland I made a decision to give my 30-day notice, do a few quick travels to places in Asia I thought I should see, and then try to get back to Portland, Oregon. Once my time was up, I took a flight to Bangkok, Thailand.
You can email me at:
Wintermoon2@yahoo.com