2009 ICC Fall Retreat Promo Video

I didn't create the video portion of this but I added sound and text so that my church could use it for our upcoming retreat. Check it out!

Lotte Giants!

Today I got my first real experience with photojournalism. Busan Haps, a local magazine for foreigners asked me to shoot some photos to accompany an upcoming article on the foreign players in the Lotte Giants. It was amazing experience, particularly since they gave me an all-access press pass and let me shoot photos from the sidelines as well as during the actual interviews. After the game, I talked with the owner of the magazine and he was so satisfied with my work that he invited me to shoot the upcoming basketball tournaments as well. I can't wait! It's a great way for me to practice my skills, get experience and expand my portfolio all at the same time. I won't be posting many of the photos on my website but I did take some that I consider portfolio worthy. I'll probably have those up in a few days so I hope you will take the time to look them over and give me your opinions.

Proverbs

I have recently come to realise that the old proverb "curiosity killed the cat" could easily come true in our household, if we don't keep a firm eye or two on Ginga. I could also extend the application like so: "Curiosity may sting your dog on the nose." It hasn't happened yet, but the amount of times I've told Tia to keep away from a bee or a wasp now numbers more than ten!
What a blessing to have animals and children, even if one gets exasperated at times ;P
The world IS a beautiful place and there's always sooooo much more that can be explored.

Opportunities knock in the strangest ways

I've never been much of a journal-writer. I used to write all the time, but around the time I left high school my passion shifted from writing to photography. I'm telling you this because I don't tend to update my blog much even though there's a lot of things to write about.

One of those things is the strangeness of living in a completely different culture where being a westerner is an oddity and often a reason for unexpected opportunities. For example, last Thursday my friend Matthew called me out-of-the-blue and asked if I wanted to be in a commercial. He does commercials all the time for the city of Busan but apparently this time the company wanted someone new. So on Friday afternoon I showed up at the Nampo-dong station in Busan expecting to be one of many extras. To my surprise, it turned out that the commercial was promoting tourism and the only person in the commercial was yours truly. I spent the following 8 hours smiling, pretending to buy souvenirs, pretending to take pictures of a gorgeous sunset (which I plan to go back and photograph later) and running through a fountain with several Korean children. Afterwards I asked the director where the commercial would be shown if it was green-lighted by the city tourism council and he told me Japan, the Philippines, basically most of Asia and Los Angeles, but in LA it wouldn't be shown on TV but on one of those big LCD screens that you see on the outside of buildings. Okay then...

On top of that, tomorrow another film crew is coming to film me and my wife in our home. At least that was what one of the directors of EPIK (the English Program in Korea) told us after explaining that Shannon and I are the perfect couple to promote teaching in South Korea. In reality, the film crew called us and said that they need to film us at home, walking in the park holding hands, drinking coffee or tea at an outdoor cafe, enjoying our hobbies, eating Korean food and talking about our teaching experiences. So what we thought would be a simple video about us has turned into yet another commercial. I'm all for it but I think Shannon is still hoping for something a bit more genuine. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Anyway, that's it for now but I'm sure this is only the beginning.

Dealing with sickness in Korea

Our South African friend, Brett, unfortunately had a TERRIBLE time getting good treatment and being admitted to hospital when he caught chicken pox here from his students. Note: Adult chicken pox is DANGEROUS. There's apparently a vaccine available here in Korea, so if you never had chicken pox as a kid, ask a doctor for that vaccine asap!

We can't comprehend that what Brett had to go through is the normal experience here. They didn't seem to realise and confirm how serious his sickness was until he was finally in a hospital-like clinic.

We have full health insurance here and everyone we've spoken to has had no problem going to a hospital to see an English speaking doctor when they needed to. Rob even managed to get a list from the Haeundae District office of medical practitioners in our area who speak English. It's so nice to be able to communicate in your own language when you're sick. And you want to be able to fully understand what the doctor has to say to you.

But so far, my experiences here have made me a little anxious about being sick in Korea. :(

I had an awesome experience of going to a doctor about knee pain. He spoke some English. He was the first doctor who's x-rayed my knees. He told me I have degenerate bones. (No wonder I've had confidence problems walking down steep hill slopes for years.) He told me I have the knee joints of someone thirty plus years older than me. That's right! Old lady knees! It sounds funny, but it really upset me, cos when I asked what we could do about it, he said "lose weight and not exercise." How can you lose weight and not exercise! Anyway, I have lost 5kg since coming to Korea (granted, I didn't have that weight before I left Germany, but it IS possible without too much effort...) and I have been going to some awesome physio therapy there that's really helped. The physio therapist there is a young Christian guy who's studied in Australia for 4 years, so his English is pretty darn good. Each time I go, he'd give my knees heat treatment, electro-shock treatment, then ultra sound treatment and then I'd wear the air massage pants to increase leg circulation. Sometimes I get to lie on the massage bed too. And it costs under 4,000won each time I go! (About $3!) He's also given me really good exercise to increase my strength in the muscles around my knees. Exercise should be walking/running in the pool. Haven't checked out that option yet.

The more negative exeriences are as follows:
I've had were going to a gynocologist on Rob's list and finding that no one there really spoke English. It was a mildly negative experience, because I clearly caused the workers there a lot of stress, not being able to speak Korean and I felt like there was false advertising. This clinic is so convenient for me. Right near my school. I did ok with my phrase book and the pictures on the gynocologist's wall. In all fairness, she did know enough English for us to communicate with help from the pictures on the wall, but she didn't want to speak English. I couldn't find out from them how their clinic was on this list of English speaking practices, if no one there can speak English.

With rainy season, there have been a sudden increase of flies at school, mosquitos at night and beautifully, thousands upon thousands of big, lazy dragon flies :)

I've been bitten by mosquitos on my legs, arms and neck (and now face) at night, and often these are getting infected days after the bite occuring. You know me, I TRY not to scratch, but I guess somewhere during the night or during the day I sometimes give in to the urge and then a day later, there's this huge pink pussy infection around the bite.
:( I have mozzie repellent spray, but it STINKS. Will have to try to use it more often, esepcially before walking Tia at night. We also have screens on our windows, so we'll have to make sure our couchsurfing guests know to keep them shut at all time and we have a mozzie net over our bed. That's being totally paranoid, considering there aren't really mozzies around compared to other countries. And yet, I'm stillg etting bitten. They love my blood! Please pray for me to be able to resist scratching and to keep away infection!

Last Friday and Saturday I woke up with what appears to be spider bites on my face. (Also on one leg, I think). They just look like pink acne and they hurt if you touch them, so I just put tea tree oil on them and waited for them to go away, but Korean friends urged me to see a dermatologist before going away on Summer vacation. So today I went across the street to the big medical centre here and found no English on any of the signs. Which floor to go to? I tried the second floor. None of the administrators spoke much English. I got them to understand that I wanted to see an English speaking doctor. Then when I showed them my symptoms, they told me I was at the eye clinic and the dermatologist is on the 5th floor. So on up to the 5th floor! I HAVE TO learn much more Korean!

When I got to the dermatologist, for the first minute he only spoke in Korean until I asked him in Korean if he speaks English. He said in perfect English "In Rome, do as the Romans do. You are in Korea, so you should speak Korean." Yes, I understand and actually, I agree with that statement. Because of his stance on Korean language, I asked him what the Korean was for certain symptoms and he gave it to me and we wrote it down. However, if I were feeling like crap because I was seriously sick, I probably would've thrown a tantrum right there.

Unfortunately this blog post hasn't been that encouraging for new teachers arriving in Korea. I can only encourage you to learn as much Korean as possible asap and find out from your mates where their good English speaking doctors are and go there. Do also enquire at your local district office, because there could be good English speaking doctors very close to your apartment and school. After all, 4 million people live in Busan. There have to be a lot of doctors here and doctors are highly educated people.

New additions to the Digby family!

Well, this is several months overdue, but maybe you heard through facebook? There’s a LOT to catch up on folks, so I hope you’re interested in our newest family members! Or just skim read.

Here’s how the idea became concrete, even though we’d decided it wasn't practical and we didn’t have the money for it:

Back in early-mid May, our friend Ashley went back home to Alabama (and Hawaii and Japan) for 10 days, bringing back her Mom with her. During that time we had the privilege to dog sit her then 3 month old Maltese puppy, Marley. He looked like a tiny clean mop head. He was soooo funny. His favorite game was then chase. I’d chase him to his bed, then he’d chase me,

I’d hide somewhere and then chase him…. How can something so small be such a bundle of energy? He was such a well-behaved, sweet puppy though. His Momma had trained him well! He didn’t even bark. I trained Marley to walk on a lead – I couldn’t believe that you have to train a dog to like going for a walk. At the beginning of the stay, Rob was dragging him around on his arse. Marley HATED it! How could he hate going for a walk?! I don’t remember that EVER being a problem with the family dogs the Whites have had. But then we took Marley to the beach with Kim and her Rhodesian ridgeback, Lola, and he saw a big dog having no problem being on a leash. I think Lola set a good example. Then I spent a few days coaxing him during short training session walks. I observed that Marley was so tiny that he couldn’t easily keep up with me, so I had to walk slower and encourage him to come where I was goi

ng so that he’d walk alongside me rather than stop behind me. He also didn’t have good depth perception. He was scared of going down stairs (he broke his leg jumping off Ashley’s bed when he was really little) and he was also scared of the grating covering the storm drains (fair enough, cos his tiny paws could easily go through that, if he didn’t jump it). So I stopped and encouraged him to go down each step, rewarding him with a lot of praise for each step. Then I showed him how to jump over the grating several times before encouraging him to jump the grating. It took maybe 3-4 days for it to become more natural to him. I praised him still for good jumps and for keeping up with me when I said “Come on, Marley” in a nice voice, but I didn’t have to encourage him as much as before and he was enjoying the walks! Ashley was pretty amazed when she came to pick him up. I knew I was going to miss the little critter!

Somehow, God knew that and during the days we had Marley, our friend Mary was out jogging and had stopped to tie up a shoelace when a small group stopped to talk to her. It was a (Korean) parent and daughter who were out walking their dog and near their dog was a little puppy. “Can you take this puppy home? We already have a dog.” Mary already has a dog of her own, but the puppy came and sat near her. It seemed friendly enough and it was beautiful, so luckily for us, she had the heart to take it home. The puppy was really skinny and had worms and parasites, so she took her to the vet for treatment and since the puppy got on so well with Mary’s dog, Pepper, Mary was happy to wait to find a good owner. She advertised on facebook and pusanweb and on the last day we had Marley, she brought the puppy to church for us to meet. Rob was instantly in love. My only hesitation was because the vet said this was going to grow into a “big dog” (which by Korean standards, would be maximum 10kg, so more like a medium sized dog) and although our apartment is family sized, this puppy was used to living on the street or playing with another dog (at Mary’s), not being couped up alone in an apartment for hours on end each day!

However we went to Mary’s the next day and took Tia home with us. Yes, we named her Tia, short for “Tiaki”, which is Maori for “to care for/to protect”. Rob wanted a name that would be special for our future home, because we intend to take Tia back to NZ with us. She’s a part of our family, we want to care for a puppy who was abandoned and show her a better life. Rob’s family always took in strays or saved dogs and cats in the USA. We also hope that she’ll grow protective of us.

We shortened Tiaki to Tia because

1) it’s easier to say and

2) because “Tiaki” sounds too much like “Teriyaki” and sadly, it is a delicacy to eat dog here in Korea (granted, not in Teriyaki sauce though.)

Our friend Jim still jokingly calls Tia “Teriyaki”. She has no idea ;P

So here’s some facts about our first pet child:

1. Tia was 2.8kg when we picked her up on May 25^th
2. She was estimated by 2 vets to have been born around the time we arrived in Korea. That is, somewhere between mid February and early March. So she was approximately 3 months old when we got her (and now she’s now roughly 5 - 6 months old).
3. This is the first time Rob or I have raised a puppy from such a young age.
4. She’s already doubled in length and height and she now weighs 5.8kg. I still pick her up and carry her like a baby to take her in the local shops with me, but she doesn’t like it so much, now she’s a teenager ;) We have an open dogbag which we use to take her on the bus and subway. (Most dogs over 5kg won’t go in a bag.) She’s well-behaved. That’s how we get away with it.
5. Tia is what most Koreans would call a “Dong-ge”, which means a mutt who eats shit off the street. Koreans on the street often ask if she’s a fox, but no, she’s definitely a dog! From our research using google images, plus what the vets and people say on the street, she maybe is part jindo ( traditional domestic Korean dog) or shiba inu (traditional domestic Japanese dog), because she has a curly tail and she is of the same colouring, especially around her face. But her frame is much slighter and she has much shorter hair to be fully either of those breeds. Her feet are also small, so we can’t imagine her getting as big as those breeds. Maybe she has a little chiuaua blood in her, as her ears are HUGE, compared to the size of her head! As she grows, her ears grow even faster J So BOTTOM LINE, she’s a Korean mutt. Some people have said to me, “Well you know, that’s actually the best-natured type of dog.” In this case, we have truly been blessed with her!
6. No, we didn’t need to train her to walk on a leash. She’s always loved it!
7. Tia is well-behaved and often timid around people (often she’s outright scared of small Korean children – particularly boys or really young ones – and elderly Korean men and women = abuse when she was on the street, we think), but around other dogs, she’s a playful warrior!
8. Tia doesn’t bark, apart from four barks on three separate occasions when I began playing (off her lead) chase with her in the park near our apartment building.
9. Tia is terrified of water! Whether it be the shower or a bath, the sea, a river, a deep puddle or heavy rain! I have soooooooooo many funny stories about this. Next time I get to speak to you, please ask about it. Every week we subject her to at least one of the “being in water” or “being near water” experiences, but she’s still quite scared. We wonder if her original owners tried to drown her in Dongnae’s river. That’s truly how scared she is of it, even though she trusts us.
10. We’ve taught her to recognize her new name, “come,” “sit,” “stay” and if we’re walking: “wait,” now we’re teaching her “down.”
11. She initially got fatter living with us, but now she’s very thin again. She’s been fussy about her food for the last month now, at times just refusing to eat it, even if that means starving for 18 hours, then eating half of what she used to eat during her last big growth spurt. I’ve been getting good advice from the internet and the vet, but I’m a little concerned that it’s been a month now and we haven’t seen any consistent improvements on this front. In spite of my concerns, she’s just as energetic and happy as she ever was and she still has a healthy coat, but people are often making the observation that she’s thin.
12. She’s just finished all of her puppy shots (I dunno about elsewhere, but here puppies get HEAPS of shots! And their ears cleaned and deworming, even if they don’t have worms…) and this week she started to lose her puppy teeth!
13. When we come back from our summer vacation, we’ll be getting her spayed. Hopefully this doesn’t change her beautiful temperament too much!
    

Tia’s been a great addition to the family, even with all of the pee-pad training and pooing inside at the beginning. Now she never poos inside and she almost never needs to use her pee-pads. We walk her 3 times a day and during the weekends up until last week, she’s mostly gone wherever we go. Wanna know why now she’s stuck at home more often? Cos Tia became a big sister last Thursday!

Here’s how it happened:

I arrived at school on Thursday afternoon to do a little printing in preparation for my 2-hour summer camp class, but I was having printer problems. The lovely Mr Hwang (the school’s computer guy) came to help me out and he had this tiny box with a tiny ginger tabby kitten in his hand. The kitten had gorgeous blue eyes, so I asked if I could hold it. He said yes. It fell asleep on my chest almost straight away. Since it was in a box, I asked if the kitten had a home. He said “No, it’s not my cat.” I said “Whose cat is it?” and he said “It’s not my cat. Some students bring it to school.” My colleagues at school don’t have the best English and I have almost no Korean, so communication is always at least somewhat limited. I eventually found out that the students had found it near their apartment building, brought it to school and left it with him. I knew Rob wanted to get a cat after our vacation….

We’d been thinking that Tia should get adjusted to other animals while she’s still young. We take her to the local dog café sometimes (see the picture above), but otherwise Koreans walking their dogs are normally sh*t-scared of Tia coming near them or their dogs, even if their dogs are bigger, older and clearly the more vicious breeds. Probably cos she looks like a fox I guess, but it’s a shame for Tia! She barely gets to play with her own kind!

I rang Rob, who said he wanted it, so we put the kitten in a bigger box with some water, then I taught my two hour class. Apparently cats don’t like being transported, because once the car started, that cat was doing everything it could to get out of the box. It made for some not-so-safe driving conditions!

We took the kitten to the vet and the vet determined it to be healthy and under two months of age (not good). We thought it was a female from looking at its genitals, but really, it’s so hard to tell with kittens! Turns out it’s a boy. At first, he hissed at Tia, probably because of her sudden movements. But once we introduced him to her bed, they hit it off. Tia was so amusing to watch that evening. It took a while of us telling her to wait and her looking bemused, trying to work out how she could play with this little thing. He’d eat his formula and she’d sit there, watching him licking his paws clean and the expression on her face was “What is he doing? How long is this going to take until we can play?” Even now, he tries to suckle her, even though she produces no milk. She generally lets him, or gets up and moves if we’re coming towards them, because we take him off her and put him right in front of his cat bowl, where the formula and solid food is. Yes, he eats solids too. We have to spray him with the water gun to deter him from eating from Tia’s food bowl. And when we’ve gone out and left them at home alone, we’ve had to punish Tia for eating all of the cat’s food. We made it quite clear that food was NOT for her.

On day 3, I really felt for Tia – new older sister syndrome – I remember it well. This is where (not that you’re spoiled, BUT) you’re used to being an only child and then along comes a little sibling, who you love. But after a while you begin to realise how few perks there are: you get less attention, you have all of this responsibility all of a sudden and you’re being told off and punished a lot more all of a sudden because of it! Poor Tia, because she’s a dog, she responds to a telling off, but of course, Ginga keeps on truckin’ like nothing’s happened! Just like a little sister or brother, eh?! As you can see though, they still are good family friends.

Anyway, we’ve called the kitten Ginga, for several reasons:

1. the kitten is a ginger colour and kiwis never pronounce ‘r’s on the ends of their words (right, Shannon?!)
2. ginga rhymes with ninja, which is, of course, what every kitten is! Rob loves calling him the ginga ninja!
3. In Korean, 진자 (said “gin-ja”) means “REALLY?!”, which is what every student and teacher are going to be saying when they hear Shannon Teacher took home a stray kitten brought to school by some of our students!

So far Ginga’s settled in well. It’s made a difference getting him kitty litter. He naturally runs under the couch, but we catch him and put him in his box and then he’s fine. At night he naturally goes straight there. He’s peed in Tia’s bed a little, which Tia doesn’t like and now we’ve gotten him his own bed, which he’s beginning to use more and more, since we’re taking away Tia’s bed as much as possible. He knows where the water bowl is. He plays boisterously as a kitten should (no claws when he’s pouncing on Tia though) and sleeps a LOT.

We need to get him a scratching post, because as of today, he’s started really scratching at things. We should probably clip his claws again too, but he’s getting his first shots at the vet’s on Wednesday, so maybe we’ll watch him do it one more time. This is the first cat I’ve ever had and the first little kitten Rob’s ever had. His family always got stray adult cats, rather than young kittens.

I’m glad he’s getting his first shots so early. That means we can get him neutered – hopefully before he gets the teenage urges to mark his territory in our apartment!

The only things that shows what a young baby he is, is that he CANNOT remember where his food is. If we’re here, he’ll meow and meow and meow until we put him directly in front of the food bowl. If he’s sitting on Rob when he’s not sleeping, Rob’s taking him to his food bowl or water bowl or the kitty litter box every five minutes. Good training for when we have kids, eh?! ;P

An into to long overdue updates!

Kia ora koutou! (Hi to you all! in Maori)

What have we been doing for the last few months?! It's sure gone fast!

Basically work (and I've worked had to work HARD in the second half of the semester - it was actually kinda crazy), church (I start leading a worship team from next week!) and hanging out with friends. That has left us with a VERY busy schedule.

There are so many minor comical or interesting experiences to tell you about, like how I bought a dark chocolate-peppermint ice cream at the movies but it turned out to be green tea ice cream coated in dark chocolate. VERY disappointing, after expecting to taste peppermint!

Aside from being able to read Korean and being able to say a handful of phrases, Rob and I have not worked hard on expanding our Korean vocabulary and I've recently been convicted about this. There was one week recently where I needed Korean EVERY DAY in some situation. Particularly with our neighbours, who've started talking to us because they see us around and about all the time. I didn't even know how to say "Sorry, I don't understand!"

Rob's been hit with homesickness for Germany and I've been in a few frustrating situations where I caught myself saying "Well, that's just retarded." My co-teachers actually agreed, but I don't really want to have that attitude, as much as possible.

Our first wave of good new friends are already leaving. There are about 10 of them leaving! That's life when you work in a foreign country.

We have been thinking about our old friends often though, so we made some videos which you can look forward to: introducing Busan, my school, our apartment and more...

Some upcoming entries from me or Rob will introduce:
-our Korean PUPPY, Tia
-my birthday
-lecturing for the upcoming EPIK orientation
-our new SUV
-Middle School assessments and Summer camps
-our Summer vacation: which officially starts next week, baby!
-couchsurfing and skype appointments
-old lady knees

It's the middle of Summer here now and it's mostly not too hot this year yet, but it sure has been humid. It'd be fair to say I'd forgotten what the word "sweaty" truly means until recently! It's actually rainy season, but that doesn't mean it rains every day, which has been awesome.

Well, we won't be waiting so long to write again now, so enjoy!