The Bicycle Thief

As we have mentioned before here, Korean garbage disposal consists of just putting bags or just plain piles of garbage on the sidewalk. There are designated places for it but there is little to no use for trash barrels. It's not uncommon to see things on the sidewalk that you yourself may want to keep. There are tables, chairs, shelfs, lamps. Really, all manner of things. So you can imagine my delight when I left our building for work the other day and saw a nice looking bike in the garbage. 

I still have no clue what "garbage day" is but the garbage was pretty high. There was also an old mattress, an old lamp/night stand, and this bike leaning against the mattress. I have a bike here but, frankly, it is sort of a piece of crap. Naturally, I was delighted with my luck to find this awesome bike in the trash. It seemed a little too good to be true. I looked up and down the street and around the corner and there was no one around. So I began to examine the bike. The bike seemed to be in good shape. It was rather old but definitely better than what I have now. It had a lot of character and could already imagine myself cruising through Mokpo on it. 

I inspected the tires, brakes, and frame. Everything seemed to be in good working order. At this point, I am very reluctant to do anything with this bike. Someone may have just left it there, although I don't know just leaves their bike in the garbage. There was even a key that would lock the back brakes and that was unlocked with key in place. It struck me that the owner would have locked this had they wanted to keep the bike. I thought of leaving it until after work to see if it was still there but knew that if I did that someone else would take it. There are is an army of people in the city that scavenge the garbage for anything recyclable or useful. 

I decided to give the bike a whirl. I figured if anything was wrong with it it must be the gears. They must jam or something. So I took the bike and gave it one pedal down the sideway to see what would happen. As I took off an older man appeared out of nowhere and came sprinting after me. I slowed to a stop, having moved maybe 10 feet, and the man began to grab me and hit me and yell quite loudly. I almost fell off the bike in surprise and bewilderment as to me situation. 

I immediately forgot any and all Korean that I know and just started yelling, "No, No!" back to him so he would stop hitting me. I finally remembered how to say, "no" and "sorry" and began to say them as much as I could. He hit me one more time for good measure and began to lecture/yell at me. I explained I don't speak Korean and he then continued to lecture me in Korean. I felt bad that he thought I was stealing his bike so I just let him yell at me hoping it would make him feel like he got some justice. I eventually think he understood that I thought the bike was trash due to the bike being in the trash. He kept asking me something I couldn't understand and I just apologized one last time and went on my way to work. 

PS - If you have never seen the movie The Bicycle Thief you should probably go do that right now. 

Exploring Mokpo

Hello All!

As you may or may not have noticed, we are not the best at keeping up with our blog. It has been 2 weeks since our last post but that just means we have more good stories to share!

Well, I guess the biggest story for us is that we began our new schedule at work. March is when student begin their new grades in Korea so it is a big time for academies to get new students. Our Director told us she calls it "The Harvest." We got 40 new kids between the 2 academies this month buuuut we also lost 20, so we are us 20 anyway. Most of whom are very little and low level students. So we have lots of wide eyed little ones wondering the halls these days.

To make room for all the little ones, all of the middle school students were sent over to Easy Academy. Despite their level at E. Bo Young they were all tossed into classes together at Easy Academy. Now Lindsey and I work at Easy all day on Mondays and Tuesdays. Lindsey teaches Mondays and myself Tuesdays. We only teach Newspaper classes there so its a little boring (in my opinion) because we read the same article over and over again 6 times a day. There are only so many times I can read about Korea being the tallest Asian country. On the other hand, its super easy. We get to leave an hour and a half later for work and we really just need to sit and read with the kids. Although, I will be trying more next week because I was told by our Director that the kids think my class is boring.

A few months back we had a Korean Food Night at work so our co-workers could show us some Korean dishes. This was a big help due to us being totally perplexed by the supermarkets here at the time. Last Friday we had American Food Night so we could share some of our "culture" with them. Our plan was to make chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. While not a particularly fancy meal, definitely an American childhood classic. If you didn't eat this as a kid we were probably never a child. Our Director is kind enough to pay for all of these meals but this added a little unexpected stress to shopping. In our weekly meeting she told us not to buy too much because she was making dumplings too. While this confused a little since it was suppose to be American food night, we just decided we wouldn't make the grilled cheese. Then, while shopping, Lindsey almost had a nervous breakdown because she was so worried we would spend to much money. We had to cook for 14 people and chicken breasts are expensive so it was a legitimate concern but I assured her that we should make an American meal and just make too much food. In the end, we also made the grilled cheese too because it felt essential to the meal. We had a giant pot of chicken noodle soup, 15 grilled cheese sandwiches, bread for dipping, and loads of dumplings. It was a great meal and everyone seemed to really like it. Out director's husband had 2 bowls and was scrapping the pot for every little thing that was left so we felt we did our job.

Making my first dumpling 

This past week we also got a day-off. We had Thursday off in memory of Koreans who were killed by the occupying Japanese when they protested in the streets in a year unknown to me. Pre-WWII I believe. To our luck, it was a beautiful day out, the first day to feel like Spring was on the way. We decided to spend the day walking through side streets and areas of the city we have never explored. It was a great day, we found a great new bulk grocery store too. At one point we were approached by a Korean man who wanted a picture with us (which we did) and he then invited us to his church (we think). He asked for our phone number. We told him we didn't have one and just wanted for our phone to ring in our bag, luckily it did not.

 Little kids can rent these cars down by the water and its hilarious watching them "drive" this cars. They crash into everything imaginable. The parents have remotes and are definitely responsible for some of the crashes.

Later we met Cody, our co-worker, in Old Downtown. We just walked around and talked, went up to Yudalsan Park. Nothing special but nice and relaxing. Then all of a sudden a girl who is clearly quite distressed approached Cody. She was crying quite hard and asked for his phone to call the police. While this was going on I realized she was not wearing shoes. Then, I realized she was actually only wearing 1 sock. Then, I realized her mouth was bleeding and her sleeve had streaks of blood from wiping her mouth. She told Cody she was not from Mokpo and didn't know where she was and she had lost all of her belonging. Cody was too polite to ask exactly was happened to her, he just called the police and told them where they could meet her. We really want to know the story though!!! I really wanted to take her picture because she seemed genuinely scared and it would have been great but it seemed inappropriate. My theory: sex worker.

While the following weekend wasn't quite as nice as Thursday had been it was still a great day for getting out and getting our explore on. We headed out for Old Downtown with Kirsten and Keagan. We walked to a very old part of Mokpo with lots of old homes and small shops. During the Japanese Occupation this area was where the Koreans were aloud to live. The Japanese lived in more spread out areas on the other side of Yudalsan. We eventually wondered our way thru some small side streets and found ourselves on the far side of Yudalsan that we can always see but had never been too. In the quest to get there we discovered some of Mokpo's hidden gems. We found a beautiful sculpture park and botanical garden on the side of the mountain. While the garden was pretty much dead due to it being late winter you can tell it will be very nice once the good weather comes.

 Drying fish on the roof

Swastikas are buddhist symbols and not uncommon around the city 

 As this car came down the road Kirsten began to yell, "Their gonna be in the trunk! Their gonna be in the trunk!"

 and there they were! A wedding tradition we believe

 The making of a music video without music, revolutionizing the music video industry 

Well, that was pretty much our week. Spent at work and exploring the side streets of Mokpo. Oh, and I got a package from home! Always fun to get packages. Thanks for reading!

Dave