Dongtan : Matrix City?

Dongtan is a beautiful city. When you get to know it, it's a nice, quiet, big-city-to-be. It'd be perfect to live in... with a boyfriend. 

When I am with N teacher, we often talk about Dongtan. It always come back to the same story, really, but it's always a conversation that cannot be avoided, because Dongtan is like that. While it is a quiet place, it is asking for it's share of the everyday gossiping. 

Our conversation have two parallel trains of thought. 

Dongtan is a Ghost-Town

Dongtan is a ghost town. I blogged quite a bit about this in many different ways but the general feeling of the town is messed up. It is a 5 years old or so, city, so it's super clean and new. Thing is, usually, when a new city is born, it's because it gets created starting from a small village, and people like the place and naturally gather there. It becomes big because there's a need. 

My dad told me once that the best way to make a brick/rock path in a backyard is to have grass first, and see where a path will appear gradually where people naturally walk to get by. That way, after the path is made, people will just keep using that same way without damaging the grass on each side of the path. 

If you build a path first, and choose it for the design and the position it has in your backyard, for instance, there are high chances that the path will not be used as often, and you'll find yourself with two paths: one that was designed to be one, pretty and unused, and a grass path where people walking around will have made the grass wither away. 

So far, I think Dongtan is a designed path.

It looks beautiful and clean, it is a genius or architecture with both sport and leisure facilities as well as a lot of good quality shopping areas an amazing amount of coffee shops, but while there are thousands of inhabitants, people don't seem to be converging into the city itself. They mostly take one of the two express buses to Seoul, or go there by car. 

However, one cannot deny one thing. Walk in Central Park on weekends or hot weekday evenings and you'll find a crazy amount of families with babies and toddlers and high schoolers ALL OVER THE PLACE. Or you'll see couple strolling in the numerous paths of the place. Both Korean and foreign. All those people work in the Samsung company that has a big settlement right beside Dongtan. Samsung covers a indecent number of different things all around the planet, but I am amazed at the amount of people who work for them anyways. What can they be doing with so many workers?

However, All the people who are here seem to be that, families and couples who came to look for peace in the ghost town that is Dongtan. I dare you to find young single men. I mean. Not even men. Find me one. And I'll treat you to Kobe beef. 

Dongtan is the Matrix

N teacher, however has this vision of Dongtan as a sort of messed up Matrix city, where everything is so clean cut perfect and just can NOT be just there for no reason. She tells me that the place is a crazy Matrix where people who move in just become part of this weird system... why else would there be so many stores, coffee shops and shops that are completely empty at every time of the day? Why else would new stores just pop out of nowhere and appear as if they'd been there all along. Chilling in Korea. 

Aren't we the weird kind of anomaly that walks around, aware that there is something wrong? Why would fountain shows start as we walk by? Why would a dead part of the park light up as we walk by, when there is no one else around?

Pushing the idea, I like to see us in this weird Truman Show with a city built out of nowhere and everything a person needs (save maybe friends?).

I'd say that Dongtan is the wet dream of some architect. What architect wouldn't love to design a whole city and put people in it? The whole city seems to have been completely framed on one single mindset and peolpe just trying to fit in the mold. 

I'll upload more pictures of the city soon... just a bit lazy now...

Second Quarter at NGLOWKids

Two Quarters have officially passed. Moving forward with Nglow we went through so many crazy last minute changes and it's been driving me nuts...but. 

I am not sure I dislike changes. It's crazy and stressful as hell, mind you. I have skipped 3 months period and I am totally blaming Nglow for that (though, it's good not to be crazy moody for three months, eh?) Thing is, I have never been a person that loves routine. I am full of messed up dilemmas: I am a bit of a control freak, so I NEED to know what is going on, because it's everything or nothing. It's either I keep EVERYTHING in control, or I let everything go completely wild and make myself comfortable in my mess and watch the world burn around me without any trace of remorse. Trust me, you prefer me as a control freak. 

On the other hand, if I were to be in control of everything all the time, nothing would change, and it would end up being the weirdest boring piece of routine life ever. I don't think I would like that. I need stuff that crashes into my life to make it all weirded out, in order for me to find some sort of balance. In this regard, Nglow has been good to me. 

We started with the really badly managed merge with the school upstairs (resulting in having too many kids for the number of teachers, two directors and two secretaries, amongst other things). It kept going crazy for a month, before I finally started to like my kids (who were screaming running and I-do-what-I-want-when-I-want little monsters in my eyes for the longest time). Then we got teachers leaving, Korean helpers leaving, new ones coming, that we had to fire cuz they were nutcases. 

One of the foreign teacher left (had planned on leaving the school that merged with ours before the merge so that one was not a surprise) and was replaced with a sweetheart that used to work in chungwon (correct me if the name is messed up). She's from Montreal and speaks French. We've been rummaging all the coffee shops in Dongtan lately, making jokes as if we're on dates every night after work. Anyways. Then, some kids joined, and some left. Two of them, were kids I loved: 5 years old class's Daniel and 6 years old class's Chloe. I will miss those kids so much. I am so sad :(

The new teacher ( from here on "N Teacher") had only been here for a week when hell broke loose in the Hagwon. The big boss opened a new branch in Yeosu and didn't have money to pay us in time so we got only 50% of our paychecks, 5 days late and the rest only 4 days later. All the teacher were pissed. So was I. I had been sticking to the school out of loyalty, because I believed that many things that happened were out of anyone's control, and believed that loyalty brought loyalty back. Not getting paid because of a bad decision of bad management of my boss's part, I felt that as a kind of treason. Maybe I'm too much? 

Anyways, everyone was coming back from their vacation, broke, as any vacation is bound to have people spend a lot of money, and we didn't even got our money one time. Man I was so pissed (PMSing was not helping at the time, to be completely fair). I left the school as soon as I was done with my classes and my prep for the next day instead of staying til 6 as my contract said: if they were not keeping their end of the contract by not paying me on time, I would not exert myself finding new ideas of stuff to do when I was working for free anyways. That lasted a short time, fortunately. It's not like I had anything to do after school, with no money, I basically just went home after school and slept early. I just felt angry at my life. I refused to make my kids pay for that however, the kids had nothing to do with this. It would've been unfair that they'd pay for that. There was no way I was not going to show up at work.

We went past that point anyways, there were promises made that this was not going to happen again, written promised, spoken promises. I am willing to believe them one more time. I do it for the kids, I tell myself. But I also do it for myself, because I like the place somehow. NGlow is a home for me now. For how long, I don't know. But for now, at least, it is. 

We went from 4 managers to 2, then one quit. Last week my boss was at the school the whole week. It felt like he finally put his heart into setting things right. He brought staff from the main branch, and they seem to know exactly what they are doing. Management wise and human resources wise. I think NGlow has gone as low as can possibly be, and feel the breeze going up. We'll be fine. 

Last week we had to write our quarterly reports on each of our kids so I took a lot of pictures with my kids. Lately I'd been busy with everything else so I did not take many pictures, but this week was picture week. I am still amazed at my kids. They are the lowest of all the 7 years old of the school. I have the trouble class. One of the main reason is that the English level gap between all those kids is to huge that it's hard to get them on the same page. Especially with nine kids. Eight of my kids were in the school for more than 6 months before I got them, but the ninth kid got there a week after the merge. He did not know a word on English. He was tearing up every 2 seconds because he could make nothing of what was going on in the class. After getting used to coming to school, he got really good really quickly. I can't be that good of a teacher, so I can only say one thing: this kid is really clever. And he has a lot of positive energy that he brings to our classroom. 

On the second week of August we had a water fun day on the same rooftop as the day we had our Children Day event. Lot of refreshing water on a super hot summer day. Nowadays I forget how hot the summer was, as the day is just hot and nights are slowly getting chillier. 

Summer in Korea is a sweet lot of hotness and beautiful sunshine.

My new kid. En petit chien mouillé.

Stormy's 6 years old's David the living sunshine. I have rarely seen a kid always happy, and respectful of people around him. He is so sweet and well-behaved. Setting the example in Stormy's classroom. He is also in my after school, along with 3 other kids of her class (Chloe used to be there too :( ).

Alice in Wonderland

Julie

Jaden my love-craving kid

Joey, one of the cutest kid in the world

Jerome (6yrs old) 

 Paul, my little Goo Junpyo, fashion princess

Ann of Green Gables : Coffee Shop

When I lived in Montreal I only bought two plants. One was a green leave type of plant with four little trunks intertwined, and the other was a plant with weird bunches of tiny pink hard petal flowers. The first one lost three trunks in the first year I had it. Now only has one. The second grew tall and less and less stuffy, so that it now looks like a kind of cactus. I figured I really didn't have any gift with greens. They didn't die though. 

I wasn't completely wrong, but neither was I completely right. Thing is that I live in North America. Thus, the dry weather (yes, even in Montreal) is not really good for Asian plants. Yup. Without knowing, I obviously had to have chosen Asian plants. I am thinking it must be Karma. What do they say in Chinese culture? If you are bad to someone and owe them big time, they will be reborn as your sons or daughters. I think I was really bad to Asia in a previous life, seen that unknowingly everything drags me towards it, I spend all my money and time for it....

Anyways, I discovered that those plants can grow to huge bushy flowery plants in Asia, and neither really look like the ones I have home. Poor babies (see picture above for pink flowers one). I see my pink plant everywhere in Korea lately. I think it must be an easy-to-take-care-of kind of plant. I don't see the green one as often.

Trève de bavardage.

Anne of green gable - Coffee Shop

I have been going around coffee shops lately and taken many pictures in order to make small blog entries like this one, but never took the time to write. It's hard to keep focused when you are as lazy as I am. I can add the fact that since last week, my wifi connection has been really crappy and so I was never able to write at home (not that I usually really write a lot at home in general but it must be psychological: if I don't have Internet at home, I don't want to go out in a coffee shop to write. And the opposite is sadly also true :P). 

I came across this one coffee shop in my very first visit to the Other Side (of Dongtan) but there were no cute waiter so I kept looking (in the end, I still have to find a coffee shop where there is a cute waiter, but that's another story). 

Anyways, I finally got to try this coffee shop, and immediately regretted not going before. It's really really close to the kind of atmosphere I am looking for in a coffee shop. I have only been once, because I refrain from going again: there are so many coffee places here that I am afraid I'll miss a good opportunity if I stick to one. Which is also a shame because that prevents me from becoming a cool Habituée of any of those places. Also, after a few coffee, they usually have a free coffee on the house, so that would also save me some money. I gave up on the thought of saving any money here. Not going to work. I am never so good at spending than when I am craving coffee in here. Or shopping. But lately my budget does not allow me much shopping ( hence, my craving for coffee, va chercher pourquoi). 

After trying a couple of places in Korea, I found out a couple of things that make a place better than normal coffee places.

1. Big baskets you can take to put your purse and personal belongings instead of letting them sit on the floor by you or squeezing them behind you on a chair.

Some places I went to had large benches with an open space under them to put the basket in, other, like this coffee shop, let you the choice of using them or not by staking them near the paying counter.

2. Different settings in the coffee shop, giving you the choice of how you will take you time there.

There is the usual 2 or 4 places table setting. That's what you can find pretty much everywhere. Most people end up sitting there, because it's simple and clean, and you can go with many people without being squeezed in any kind of way. 

Some coffee shops have a sort of corner with a more intimate setting, with differently shaped tables (sometimes antique tables, of writing corners and the like) so that going there with many people might be inconvenient, but making it feel less awkward when you go alone.

Some places have a couple of tables outside, though in this setting the tables are rarely taken, seen as there are a lot of mosquitoes lately and people sort of freak out about being bitten here. Dunno why. Maybe I should look up some info on the mosquitoes in Korea one more time... Having a terrasse style setting makes it appealing from the outside though, usually, the coffee shops that grasp my attention the quickest are the ones that have a terrasse.

The last type of setting I like, it the half-second floor. Usually, the coffee shops - especially in Dongtan - are quite large and take a full first floor, so they ceiling is usually pretty high. So to add up a little bit of depth to the place, some coffee shops have added a small staircase leading to a usually open mezzanine type no-shoes sitting-on-the-floor space. Those place usually have cushions and are very tempting, as you feel like you can just have your drink, write a little and lie down on the couches to rest and waste the day away.

Anne of green gable has all those settings. 

I like the old-style setting, the painted wooden doors showing the kitchen at the back, the open counter at the front, the general warmth of the place...

I obviously chose to crawl up on the mezzanine and had the cutest surprise of my life! Isn't this baby adorable? Don't you feel like getting there and fall asleep on one of its feet? I did. But then, a couple just butted in and screwed the atmosphere. Bear got shy and it didn't happen.

Surprisingly I didn't order coffee. I got a weird type of what I expected to be lemonade, but it was way too sweet for what I wanted from it. Thing is I ordered that because I also ordered a Chocolate Fondant, but it didn't quite do it's job in cutting the sugar away. It was good though. I just had an overdose of sugar...

3. Its own personal toilet.

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. If you read my blog since I got to Korea, you know that it is practically impossible to find a place that has its own toilets. The restrooms are usually shared with all the other commercial areas using the same floor in a building. Thus, they are rarely clean, and rarely have toilet paper or soap (since none of the stores want to be the one spending money for toilet paper and soap for the rest of the building, stingy Koreans). Most of the stores have a toilet paper roll inside so you need to take some paper from it as you go out. Makes it really cold/hot and uncomfortable in the worse of the winter/summer.

I actually need to go back, if only to take pictures of the toilet, that is inside the coffee shop (I only know of 2 coffee shops like that and I've seen a lot), when I used the restroom I really didn't expect that so I didn't bring my camera (who brings their cameras in bathroom right?) but the toilet looks really adorable, is clean and even has a little window. Having its own toilet in Korea is a big plus on my coffee shop rating list.

4. Having something unusual.

In my hometown there's this Café Bar called L'Abstracto, that has been open for years, is part of the best thing we have. This is the only place I know of that has this smooth atmosphere and is not a slave to its customers (that can be for the best sometimes and for the worse in other....) so waiters are really laid back and it's pleasant to go relax with either a coffee or a beer. When I was young, they had this adorable smooth white dog (man I can't recall the name... was she called Molly?) Anyways. In Ann of green gable, they have a soft eyed brown dog called Namu (which means tree in Korean). I suppose people who don't like dogs won't choose that coffee shop, or go to the mezzanine. Maybe that's why they actually have one in the first place?

The Green Bean : Cafe

Okay.

I mentioned before that, after 3 months (or was it 4?) I finally realized that there are many amazing places in Dongtan. Being alone around here, and never pushing myself long enough to walk around and risk getting lost, I had never ventured on the other side of what is called "Central Park" (pretentious name ? Yah. I also think so) and gotten to that amazing layout of small streets filled with coffee shops and clothes stores. I actually never even got to the part of the "green" of Dongtan that is called Central Park. It's a huge park that has a lot of small rivers and places to sit, trails in little tree shades, tennis and badminton courts, soccer fields, rollerblade park, climbing walls, kids parks fountains... What the hell was I doing avoiding that spot for so long. 

Anyways. 

In the end I got past the green spot. And ended up in a Green Bean :)

So here we are, I'll give you one of the promised coffee shop reviews I never took the time to write.

I know I should just get expressos when I order a coffee for the first time, as that's really the only way to tell if a coffee is good or not, especially when they burn their own beans, but I always get a capuccino when I try a new coffee shop. Since it's the summer, and thus, freaking hot outside, they always look at me weird when I ask them for a hot one. I take ice capuccino only when I am in vacation, so hot it is. I also asked for sugar (the little liquid thingy besides my cup) in case it's bad. If it's bad, then sugar always makes it taste decent.

I did not use the sugar.

The Green Bean has good coffee. They also serve Haagen Daaz ice cream with their homemade waffles, but the waffle would only get a 5/10. It's not bad. It's just that I had so much better in Sanbon. I am becoming pretty picky with waffles since I'm here.

I love the roof of this coffee shop. In Sanbon, there were a lot of coffee shops, but they were mostly very tiny stores rectangular in shape with this small-places-atmosphere that I liked. The main difference with Sanbon, appart from the fact that there is LITERALLY one coffee shop beside the other, beside the other, beside the other....., is the size of the places. They usually occupy a pretty big space and I noticed that a lot of them even have a half/second floor with low tables where you crawl-in and sit after taking off your shoes. I'll update about other coffee shops soon if I take the time. I tend to be lazy. 

The place had a terrasse with parasols (so when it gets slightly cooler I'll probably have my coffee outside when I go back) and a very high ceiling with wooden planks spread out on it to give the room a warmer feel. 

The only thing I could really do without was the fact that 99% of the people that got there after me (the 1% being me) were families with noisy kids that did not really make me feel at peace to write my blog or my letters as was my original plan. Well that's the thing about Dongtan, all the people that ended up living here are families with kids and the dad working for Samsung.

Like a lot of Korean cafés, the toilets are in the same building but you need to get outside to get to them. Which is both inconvenient in the winter because it's cold and in the summer because it's hot. Outside toilets, because they are usually shared, are also a bit less clean than their in-the-cafe counterparts. Nevertheless, the toilets in The Green Bean were not so bad. Had me walk past a handsome man writing on his notebook on the terrasse.

Most shared toilets in Korea have the same guidelines: do not throw the paper in the toilet, because it'll explode and you'll be covered in poop... eh yah. Not really but the fear is still there. They also usually have the "please don't smoke" sign. This time, however, I liked the message for non-smoking. I felt like it would touch a bit more directly most of the people in Dongtan: "Please refrain a little, our kids also use this toilet space." I felt like it was exactly the kind of message that could get those mothers to care enough.

Rosemary in Korea : Last week

When you visit a country for a long time, you always think you have plenty of time left for everything, and find yourself going "oh well, we'll come back and look at this more closely later, I have plenty of time".

Which is such a lie.

And you generally only realize that on the very last week. This trip was the same for Rosemary, for what concerns me anyways. There were many things we expected to be able to finish, re-do and re-visit. At least we got a couple things down even on the very last week, running from bus to metro and through the streets of Seoul. We did a good job, I think, with most of the things we wanted to get done.

On Monday night, I got Rosemary to try on my hanbok, something I realized, I had completely forgotten, even though being in Korea, that was one of the interesting things I could get her to do for free. I was missing the ribbon for the hair, but she has a huge red bow so we just made it into a modern pink hanbok. Was so fun to do her hair since it's already so long and black :)

The seated pictures look okay, but on the standing ones we can tell really easily that my hanbok is currently stored in a suitcase instead of being hung nicely in a plastic wrap. I have no long wardrobe and it's quite bothersome to have the messy-looking folded bottom part of the dress when I look in my wardrobe otherwise. Oh well.

I will never forget the.... grace.... displayed in this beautifully feminine dress.... when Rosemary stood up from my temporary bed on the floor...

 Anyways. After the pictures, Rosemary started being obsessed by the idea of wearing a decent in-a-real-setting-with-decent-lighting-and-actually-nice-hanbok, so we decided on going to the Korean photo studio I had been with Heather previously. I personally did not see anything wrong with going a second time, I would just pick a different costume. I love costuming anyways :)

The store closed at 7h30. I finish work at 6 but had left at 5h15 for the purpose of going there with the valid excuse that my friend was leaving soon. There were no other days we could have YES, busy week. So I took a bus to Seoul and we agreed to meet at Anguk station, near Insadong. Traffic jam got me some 15 minutes late so I got to Seoul station around 6h15. I was at Anguk station around 6h35. We arranged to meetup there, but we missed each other's text messages and were at different exits. We went back inside the station and got on our way to Anguk. It was past 6h45. 

And then, I went on the opposite direction. 6h53.

We came back to the right spot, but while I always seem to have walked in the exact same direction every time I went there, I seemed to have missed the fact that there are in fact a LOT of streets that look the same in Insadong. Anyways. The way I was sure the place was at  didn't look at all like the right spot. But I was so pissed. So was she. But then, had I been right and had we turned away looking for the place, or asked around, there might just have been more confusion and we didn't have the time to ask around. I felt like we were at the right place. So I kept walking. And walking...

7h05.

And walking.

And Rosemary was sure we were nowhere near. And I believed her. Still, I kept walking. 7h15.

We got there. Yes, I was right!! But would they take us so near their closing time?

They did. Maybe they didn't have too many people that day? In any case, we got there and both got turned into princesses. Then we took studio pictures, and after, instead of letting us take pictures freely, as they usually do, they helped us strike poses and took pictures for us. That was obviously cuz they were anxious to close, but that helped. 

 I don't actually have the studio pictures right now, but enjoy the ones we took after :)

After the shooting, we laughed at Rosemary's overly drawn eyebrows that, while being perfectly fine for the lighting in the photos taken by the professional photographer, looked really intense in the pictures we took after.

"Oh, that's really dark...", said Rosemary to her makeup artist.

"Is it too dark?"

"No, it's okay, it just looks like I have two dead caterpillar on my face but..."

"Oh, okay then."

She kept painting her face...

That was the day where Rosemary learned that sarcasm goes undetected in Korean land... at least for some people...

We made it into a great day by having dinner in a cute place with pretty Angela that I hadn't seen in ages! :)

 The plans we had for Thursday were really cool. A friend from University I had met in China had this event at Octagon with his company, and we were going to chill there and end Rosemary's stay with a bang.

We got dressed, got on the bus to Gangnam, then on a cab to Octagon. We got there late, around 11h30, too late for other metro/busses. But. When we got there. All pimped up. We realized I never thought to tell Rosemary to make sure she had her ID. Silly eh? One would think that people don't need to care about that after they passed the 25 years old line... While I always do bring my IDs in clubs, cuz it SOOOOO infuriating when once in a while they decide to be stupid and ID you, I never thought of telling her. And well, we were doing to dance all night, so she travelled light. And had left everything at my place.

... tried everything.

Ended up getting back home in a cab. Rosemary was sulking. With reasons, but sulking with a big S. We had the V.I.P. bags that were handed to us before we got IDed, and decided to wear that S*** and get some food. Angry and hungry does make a good couple. And Rosemary was both.

Fortunately for us, her hunger was more intense than her hatred for Korean wannabe high class clubs, and we had an ok end of day. 

STILL. 

What a FML way to end her up to that point almost flawless trip to Korea.

 On Friday we went to Dongdaemoon (or was it namdaemoon? darn it I can't remember) Anwyayyyys the one that closes REALLLLY late at night (open from 10PM to 2-4AM) and realized that we should have gone before. So many cheap clothes all over the place. That was blissfull. Haven't gone since then, and when I went I had no money to spend, but that was fun anyways!