Catching up after a long break!

**Preface to the post: This blog post was written today. In the interim between this one and the last, Christmas occurred, North Korea attacked Yeongpyeong island, I lost my purse at an all-night New Years party, and Mom and I decided to take a trip to Thailand in February. Oh, and I started playing WoW again.**

January 23, 2011

It having been about three weeks since my last entry, I suppose there’s some major catching up to do! First and foremost, I found my purse, so my entire freakout is now null and void. What happened was the next weekend I went back up to Hongdae – braving the Seoul subway system all by my lonesome and emerging victorious – found the bar (Gogo’s Music Bar), and asked if they had found my purse. They had! I guess it wasn’t stolen, just kicked under a table or something, because everything was still inside. My one regret is that I didn’t think at the time to give them a tip/reward to thank them for keeping the purse intact. Perhaps if I go by that way again I can rectify the situation!

Perhaps my relief in finding my purse was not accurately conveyed in the above paragraph. Fact of the matter is, by that time I was convinced it was gone, and I had accepted it, so when it turned up, it was less of a “thank GOD”, and more of a “oh wow, that’s really great, although if I hadn’t gotten it back I still would have survived fairly competently”. Still, I’m psyched that things all worked out, and now I can look back on my awesome New Year’s party night with no regrets!

On that same weekend I went to the Artsonje Gallery where I saw a manga exhibition from nine famous manga artists. It was really neat, and each artists’ style was completely different and interesting. I also stumbled upon the express subway line to Incheon airport, which I may or may not take advantage of at some point in the future.

School has continued to be good. For a few weeks the Korean teachers were meeting with us once a week to discuss the students, but that has now stopped (for reasons unknown). Liel, a sweet girl in my elementary class, is obsessed with cats, and has taken to showing me all new cat stickers, pencils, and paraphenalia she purchases on a day to day basis. Young Sun, the Korean TA who accompanied me to the hospital for my initial medical review, has now disappeared, and a new intern has taken her place. Apparently they change every three months or so.

I have taken to drinking orange juice every day in an attempt to stave off any infections I may pick up from my students. Working with so many different kids, you get exposed to a lot of different things. My brief love affair with Hansot, the Korean take out joint just up the street, has more or less ended – their bulgogi is still delicious, but I’m starting to crave different fare. Same goes for Paris Baguette. Jenna showed me a Korean diner that does take out, which I will probably be hitting up frequently.

Last weekend I took an exciting trip to Seoul to find the travel clinic in Itaewon. The reason was that I needed a typhoid shot for my upcoming trip to Thailand. I went to Good Morning hospital in Pyeongtaek, but they didn’t have the vaccine, so I had to go to Seoul. I got the vaccine no problem, then had some Middle Eastern food and headed over to the Korean War Memorial to see the Da Vinci exhibit. Sean, Sacha and I tried to go see it a few weeks ago, but we got there after it closed. It was very interesting, although not worth the 15,000 won entrance fee, and after that I wandered around the War Memorial museum, which was really fantastic. I may take Mom there when she comes up next weekend.

I’ve also been preparing for Mom’s arrival, as she’ll be staying at my place a few nights before and after our Thailand adventure. I’ve bought towels – which reminds me that I have to buy face cloths too – a foam mattress pad, a comforter, a pillow, bathroom sandals... hopefully she’ll feel at home, and if not I’ll give her my credit card and tell her to go to town at the Lotte Mart. I’ll be heading up on Saturday morning to Incheon airport, where I’ll meet her at noon at her hotel. From there we’ll spend two days in Seoul, two days in Pyeongtaek, seven in Bangkok, two more in Pyeongtaek, and then she flies out. It’s going to be AWESOME!

What else, what else... I’ve been doing lots of writing recently – not as much as in November, obviously, but still a decent amount – and have found that grabbing my notebook and going to a cafe is really conducive to writing. My computer decided to be horrible for a few weeks, in that the screen would randomly shut off and I would have to flip open the lid multiple times to get it to turn on, but a few days ago it miraculously fixed itself. So I have no idea what’s going on there, but I’m very grateful. I’ve also been rewatching Scrubs, and it’s even funnier than I remember it. American Idol started up this week, which I’m really excited about... I have a batch of postcards to mail out to Canada on Monday... I bought a Death Note lighter... my rice maker stopped working... Korea’s advanced to the quarter-finals of the Asia Cup... my Korean language skills are improving at a horrendous rate... I saw Tron in 3D and it was spectacular... and that’s about it!

Tomorrow will be another lazy Sunday, which will in all likelihood involve some WoW, some shopping, some TV watching, and *hopefully* some Korean-learning thrown in for style. Without a teacher to help me make sense of things and basically egg me on to succeed it’s been really slow going, and I’m still at that stage where I know so little that the sheer amount of words and grammar is just overwhelming. My search for an agent for my novel is proceeding without success, although I send out a letter every two days, so maybe I’ll start to see some results soon. And now I really have run out of things to say, so I suppose it’s as good a time as any to sign off and go watch some Scrubs!

Daegu

December 12, 2010

Gosh, a lot of time has passed since my last entry! Let’s see... since the art show, I went on a bus tour of Pyeongtaek, went out drinking with my Korean co-workers, hit up a Noraybang, went to Insadong (the shopping district in Seoul), and, as of this post, went to Daegu to visit Ashley!

On the Friday evening before I left, it was Kate’s going away party (she’s going to work at the Songtan Avalon). We went to a little sushi place where we sat on the floor and ate huge platters of sashimi, mussels, noodles, omelets... absolutely delicious. I also tried my hand at soju, which goes down quite smoothly after you’ve had a few shots. After that, we all went to Noraybang, where I proceeded to display my less-than-stellar singing skills by singing Walking After Midnight and that Alanis Morisette song where she’s pissed off with her ex.

The next morning I had intended to be up and out of the house by 9 to catch a train to Daegu, but it was more like 11:30 when I left, to my chagrin. I got to the train station around noon, and then discovered that the next available train left at 2 pm! I ended up sitting in the Dunkin Donuts at the station for two hours, sipping on my green tea latte and working on my latest novel attempt, which I have whimsically named The Winged Woman and the Violinist. Never mind that the “violinist” loses his violin about six chapters in. Ah well.

On an interesting side note, apparently the way to order a green tea is not to say “one green tea, please”, because if you do that, you get a green tea latte. I’ll have to figure out how to say both latte and tea (actually, I think tea is “cha”), and from there I should be able to get my tea without too much hassle.

I couldn’t get a seat on the train, so I chilled in the snack car with all the other poor saps who booked their tickets too late. I started off standing beside an airplane game, hanging on to the back of the seat so that I didn’t fall over, but about an hour in the crowds thinned considerably, and I was able to score a spot on the narrow ledge under the window. I know, luxury, right?

While stuffed in the snack car for three hours, I decided that I will write a screenplay about a guy who comes to South Korea with dreams of becoming a professional Starcraft player, and ends up falling in love with the snack car girl. Except that she is engaged to a guy in the military, and when he comes home there will be an epic contest for her love. True to South K style, there will be lots of soju, which should make the film artsy enough to win several important film festival awards.

Upon arriving in Daegu, Ashley took me on a taxi tour of the city, by which I mean we went back to her apartment. Seriously, though, Daegu is HUGE compared to Pyeongtaek. They’re even in the process of building a monorail for the 2011 Games they are having next summer. These aren’t Olympics, just some sort of sports games that happen yearly. Possibly Asian. I’m not really sure on the details. Ashley lives in an apartment complex that reminds me of Cherryhill, and her apartment is about three times as big as mine, lol. I guess that’s what you get when you live in a big city!

That night was the going-away party of one of her co-workers, so we went to an Indian restaurant where I met the dozen or so foreign teachers Ashley works with. They were all very nice, but I was blown away by how huge the Avalon – one of three – in Pyeongtaek was. And I thought four foreign teachers was a lot! Shows what I know. We went to a bar after the meal with James and Nell, two of Ashley’s closer friends, who were lots of fun. Ashley and I reminisced about home, and it was really a great night.

We went to bed early, so we could be up early the next morning for our sightseeing. This didn’t work so well for me, as I had been going to bed at stupid hours like 3 and 4 in the morning, so it took me a while to get to sleep. But it was worth it when we were up and raring to go the next morning! First stop was the Daegu museum – probably not its official name – where a nice old Korean lady showed us around the galleries on a personal tour. Apparently the museum curators here in Korea always give you a personal tour if they can, which I think would be an awesome practice to adopt in Canada.

After that we headed to the outskirts of Daegu to go see Ghatbawi. Allow me to explain. Daegu is in a valley, surrounded by mountains – kind of like Rome and its seven hills. Except the hills are inside Rome, whereas the mountains are actually in a ring around Deagu. The mountains are dotted with temples and shrines and statues, and we decided to see Ghatbawi, which is a big stone statue of Buddha with a flat rock balanced on his head.

Since we were promised a cable car by Ashley’s friend, we didn’t exactly dress to go hiking. Then we got to the base of the mountain and discovered that all the Koreans were dressed in hiking gear. A lot of them had backpacks full of granola bars and water bottles. “It’s alright,” Ashley assured me. “There’s a cable car.” Spoiler alert: there wasn’t. Lol.

It was one hell of a trek – 2 km uphill, half of that literally just walking up endless flights of stairs. But it was a really nice day, the scenery was gorgeous, and once the pain in my legs turned to numbness, it didn’t even hurt! We took about 10 rest breaks from bottom to top, but it was all worth it when we reached the top and found about fifty people praying to this huge statue of Buddha, chanting, ringing gongs, etc. Apparently Buddhist monks have to do 108 bows every morning before breakfast, which seems a bit excessive to me... but then, I have always found religion a bit baffling.

Interestingly enough, the trek back down the hell was about five times worse than going up, possibly because my legs had gotten so used to the whole upward-angled thing that when I abruptly switched it up, they got confused and revolted. The stairs weren’t bad – well, they were fairly treacherous, being uneven stone – but once I got to the ramp, it was... suffice it to say that I am no longer a fan of ramps. Give me stairs any day. At least they’re level, and I don’t feel like a waddling penguin. After surviving the hike we warmed up in a traditional Korean restaurant at the bottom of the mountain, where I tried a squid and spinach pancake, which was surprisingly delicious.

We had had big plans to go to Dr. Fish, a spa-type place where you stick your feet in a huge vat of water and let little fishes nibble at your toes, but it was closed by the time we got there. Possibly it’s closed on Sundays. Anyway, we wandered around downtown Daegu for a few hours, seeing the sights. Ashley took me to the Cat Cafe, where cats wander around and sit on your lap and are absolutely adorable. It’s a complete health hazard, of course, but I miss Sirius and Giles, so it was a welcome risk!

Also went to a second-hand book store, where I found FAITH OF THE FALLEN! I’m so excited to read that. Also bought some reindeer fluffy gray earmuffs, which I love to death and make me look ridiculous. Said goodbye to Ashley, then took the train back to Pyeongtaek. Unfortunately this train had no snack car, so I had to stand sketchily between the cars in the cold. On the plus side, I found the world’s coolest Korean – he had plaid yellow and purple converse shoes, a black wool coat, a trendy black hoody, and swoopy emo hair. I wanted to marry him, but tragically I did not have a ring handy to propose.

It was an excellent weekend, and I had a total blast. Next weekend is my birthday! I shall miss all my Canada friends terribly, of course, but we are possibly going out for sushi, so I’m still pretty psyched :D

Seoul Arts Center

November 20^th, 2010

Today didn’t go quite as expected, although it turned out well enough! The plan was to go with Sean and Sacha to Insadong, which is the arts/crafts/souvenir district of Seoul, and then go see a photography exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center. After getting dressed, I ended up Skyping with Emily for over an hour, which was totally awesome, except I definitely wasn’t ready to go when Sacha came knocking on my door, lol.

After a bit of a mixup regarding which bus station to go to, we ended up at Express Bus Terminal, which took us into Seoul. From there we started to head for Insadong on the subway, realized that the Arts Center was closer, changed directions, and went there instead.

The Arts Center is huge, and kind of looks like the Western SSC, in that it is concrete and somewhat hideous. Once you get inside, go up the elevator, and see the veranda, however, the Arts Center becomes much nicer. It’s a huge complex of galleries, and there’s even an opera house! We bought tickets for the National Geographic Photography exhibit, and had to wait... I’m going to say 3 hours to get in? Possibly a little less, but it was around the 3 hour mark.

While we waited, we checked out all the free exhibits, including some rather delightful modern art, and then went into this Design show where various artists were selling their wares. I picked up a sort of emo-looking passport holder that I love, and Sacha got a hoodie and passport holders and buttons and various other paraphenalia.

The photography show was fantastic – some of those pictures, really, you have to see to believe. A lot of the landscapes, you have to do a double take, like you’re asking, “Wait, this is real?” And the animals shots were cool too – I swear there was one of a beheaded narwhale (or whatever those unicorn whales are called), but Sean thinks it was just poking its head up through the ice. My favorite was this image of a bear standing at the edge of a waterfall, mouth open, while a fish flies out of the water and straight towards his jaws. The fish has that classic, “Oh, s**t” look about him. Brilliant photography.

After that, we judged there wasn’t enough time to go to Insadong, so we went to a Vietnamese place, where Sacha and I had our first experience with Pho soup. It was really good – they give you broth and noodles and meat, basically, and then you add beansprouts and lemon and such. And it was also really healthy, which is a good change for me. Of course, we also had lots of deep friend spring rolls and such, so perhaps not so healthy after all.

Once I got home – took the bus back, which is about an hour ride – I ended up Skyping with Jesse for... I’m going to say an hour and a half? We started out on normal enough topics, but when I mentioned that I’m thinking about foraying back into WoW, Jesse went off on a tangent and started looking up characters specs and builds and stuff that left me flummoxed and amused.

So I didn’t actually end up going to Insadong, which means I don’t have Christmas presents yet, but I figure that I’ll just send all the gifts home with my mom when she comes up in February. I wasn’t sure about this at first, until I realized that any package I send will get there mid-January anyway, and that’s practically February, so why not send it home for free? Ahahahahahahaha.

Sudok-sa Monastery and Apple Festival!

Adventure Korea is a tour group in Korea that caters to foreigners. They do day trips and weekend trips – to the DMZ, to various seasonal festivals, to Jeju (the official Korean honeymoon island), etc. On Saturday, Sean, Sacha, Jenna, Jade, Nick, and I all headed up to Seoul to participate in the Apple Festival tour, which involved going to a Buddhist temple, and then hitting up an apple farm for an apple festival.

Because the trip started at 8 am in Seoul, I attempted to condition myself during the week to waking up earlier. Before this, I had been staying up until 3 am, following the theory which my fellow teachers prescribe to, which is that if you wake up at noon and go straight to work, you aren’t nearly as exhausted by the end of the day. It’s a sound enough theory, but man, setting my alarm earlier and earlier while my body protested wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

I actually wasn’t doing very well with my plan – I think by Wednesday, the earliest I’d managed to get up was 11 – until CK called my internet company and supposedly connected my internet. The internet, naturally, did not work, so CK told me he’d be coming over at 11 the next day. Since I didn’t want my apartment to look like a sty in front of my boss, I got up around 9 and cleaned the whole place. He didn’t show – which was a bit on the frustrating side, I’ll admit – but at least I got up earlier than 11!

On Friday he actually did come over, although it was more around 1:30 than the 11 he had intimated the day before. That was another 9 am day – it’s amazing how dirty one’s single-room apartment can get in the course of 24 hours – and CK fiddled around with my internet for a bit before proclaiming that it didn’t work. The reason, he thinks, is that I actually have a different internet modem thingy than the company he called – possibly. Anyway, he said that I should wait until Monday and try again, at which point the internet will hypothetically work.

Long story short, I’m over a month in to Korea and I still don’t have internet, a cell phone, or a bank account. The upside, of course, is that they paid me my salary in the form of a humungous stack of W10,000 bills in a white envelope, which made me feel like some sort of gangster or hitman!

Moving right along to the Apple Festival. So I get up at 5:30 on Saturday morning, so I’ll have time to take a shower and wake up before the 6:20 departure time. I catch a cab with Jenna, Sean, and Sacha to AK, where we hope an express bus up to Seoul. Allow me to explain. Seoul is north of Pyeongtaek, but the apple festival is south, which means we were essentially backtracking about an hour both ways. Frustrating? Yes. But there wasn’t really a way around it.

We all attempted to catch some sleep on the stupidly early bus to Seoul, and I didn’t quite manage, although Jenna gave it her best effort. She hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, which I’ve encountered before – you know how sometimes, when you really, really want to fall asleep because you have to wake up early, the last thing you can do is sleep, even though you’re exhausted? That’s what happened to Jenna. Luckily we had a three hour bus ride ahead of us for her to get some shut eye.

Arriving a bit early for our tour, we went in to the nearby *possibly* train station and got some Dunkin Donuts. Then we got on the bus, which was pretty cool – purple faux-leather seats, a weird, purple, tassle, fringey thing that went around the top of the windows, etc. The ride started off with our official Adventure Korea tour guide making us introduce ourselves, and there were the usual jokes – “I’m so-and-so, and I like poetry and taking long walks on the beach”, for example. I stuck with, “Hi, I’m Michelle from Canada,” which worked well enough. If I give away my secret identity, after all, they might find me.

After an obscenely long bus ride – we hit traffic coming out of Seoul, so it was closer to 3.5 than the 2 hours it was supposed to be – we finally reached the Sudok-sa Monastery. On the way, however, when I had almost fallen asleep, they started blaring Avatar! Very frustrating, although eventually I gave in and watched bits and pieces.

The temple was absolutely beautiful – a series of really elaborate, carved, and painted gateways leading up this gorgeous, tree-lined path to the temple proper, which had all these serene pools and statutes and stuff. I’m making it sound a lot lamer than it was, because it really was quite extraordinary, especially since the day was really warm, really bright, and basically the perfect fall day to visit a temple.

I think my favorite part had to be in one of the gatehouses. There were these four statues of huge, fanged men – not sure if they were kings or gods – and one of them was stepping on a statue of a woman, who was flailing under his shoe. It was totally bizarre and we all thought it was hilarious, mostly because I was under the impression that Buddhist temples were supposed to be more, you know, peaceful.

From there, it was on to the Apple Festival! It took place at a little apple farm/winery about 20 minutes from the temple. We walked up this long driveway, past long rows of apple trees, which were practically falling over from the weight of the apples, and over to the festival. It was on two levels, and the stage at the far end featured people singing... wait for it... Italian opera. I’d never associated Korean apple festivals with Italian opera, but there you go.

We went on a little tour of the apple winery, which was interesting, and then grabbed plates of pork roast for lunch. Unfortunately the pork was really fatty – and by really, I mean more than half of each piece was fat, and we had to try and eat them with toothpicks. Anyway, it was an alright meal, and following that we went down to the tent where we could make our own apple pies.

This turned out to be quite the adventure, as it seemed that every bee in a thirty mile radius had decided to pop by and terrorize we apple-pie makers. I managed to get through the whole thing without screaming, although there was a minor freak-out incident wherein Jenna had to shoo a bee that had landed on my arm away. Making the pies was really fun though, because you got to roll the dough, decorate the pie, etc. And eating it later was really tasty, although I almost forgot to capture my finished pie on camera because I was so excited to eat it! And it wasn’t half bad, either.

Following the pie adventure, I accompanied Sacha over to the wine-making area, where she got to throw apples in a huge grinding machine, mix up the mush with sugar and yeast, and try to understand the wine man as he explained how to let the apple mush ferment for a month until it turned into wine. Luckily there was an English speaking Korean there, who was of great help, and when the grinding machine broke down we had a lovely chat with a couple from the Osan air base, who had brought their kids along for a day of apple fun.

Then it was up to the top level to watch a bunch of Korean kids perform. I wasn’t terribly excited at the start, at least until they started yodelling, at which point I was completely enthralled. Again, not quite what you’d expect at an apple festival, but wonderful nonetheless. Nick got up on stage at one point to help the kids play their little cow-bell looking instruments, and he got a box of apples for his efforts.

After that things wound down, and we went back to the bus for our trip back. There was free wine and beer, and although I didn’t partake overly, some of the people on the tour did, and we stopped about half an hour later for the entire bus to go empty their bladders. Then it was allllll the way back to Seoul, and then back to Pyeongtaek.

When I got home, I watched Bring It On – not the original, but one of the sequels. It was delightfully awful, and I couldn’t stop laughing. I made myself stay up till 3 am, so I could get back on my usual sleeping schedule, and I managed to wake up at 11 the next morning, so I was pretty successful. All in all a wonderful day, despite the excessive bus time and waking up stupidly early!

Seoul Lantern Festival

The past week was... annoying. This is mainly because on Monday I developed a sore throat, which continued to plague me all week, and on about Thursday my ears decided to join the party, and now they hurt more than my throat does. Sacha tells me that if my ears start to itch, I’ll need to pop by a pharmacy, because it means I have an infection. Nooo! Every time I swallow now my ears hurt, and going to bed is a pain, because I can’t stop coughing. But enough about my medical woes!

Today was very fun, because we went up to Seoul for the annual lantern festival. First we went to AK to catch the train, which didn’t go all that well. There was a mix-up with the trains, and Sean and Jade ended up getting on the wrong train, while Sacha, Jenna and I took the correct one. We only had “standing room” tickets, which means we didn’t have seats. Luckily the wrong train ended up going to the right place, so it all worked out.

At the Seoul metro station, I had my first close encounter with a crazed Korean camera enthusiast. Allow me to explain. I was standing outside Paris Baguette with Sacha when a Korean guy wandered over, gave his camera to Sacha, and mimed her taking a picture of me and him. Apparently this is an actual thing, that some Koreans like to take pictures with foreigners – possibly because there are so few of us in Korea? Anyway, the guy sidles right up to me and wraps his arms around my waist, then slides them a little higher... at which point Sacha shoves the phone back into his hands and shooes him away. Our best guess is he wanted the picture to look like he had a foreigner girlfriend! Very bizarre.

From Seoul Station we took the subway one stop over to City Hall, which isn’t actually next to City Hall. It is next to a huge intersection, as well as a big, open plaza that is possibly one of the sights of the upcoming Seoul G20 Summit. I was confused by this, since I was sure that we had just had a G20 this summer in Toronto, but apparently I just don’t understand what’s going on. Anyway, after figuring out where the lantern festival was, we stopped for dinner at an Italian place. It was over-priced, but the pizza was really good, the carbonara pasta was good, and the salad was... strange. Supposedly it was caesar, but it just didn’t taste like Caesar to me. It was still delicious, though.

We met up with Nick and Jodie, who were exhausted from football earlier that day – I think they play every Saturday, apparently against a bunch of huge Russian guys. After trekking down a very large, very loud, very brightly-lit street, we found the lantern festival! Basically, they took a narrow-ish river and built little podiums, onto which they put hundreds of lantern sculptures. The lanterns were amazing – they had everything from the Statue of Liberty to Chinese dragons. Nothing overtly Canadian, which was unfortunate, but there were a few Canadian flags scattered around, which both confused and amused me.

The downside was the “crushing crowds of death”, as Sacha termed it. It seemed like the entire population of Korea decided to pop up to Seoul that evening. To get at the lanterns, you had to go down this long ramp that turned into a walkway beside the river. However, not only were there a gazillion people, there were no railings by the river! I saw at least one guy step into the river. It all seemed horribly unsafe to me, but I guess the festival coordinators weren’t concerned about people taking a dunking!

One very funny part was that, just as we reached the stairs to get back up, we saw a ladder on the far side of the bank, with people climbing up, kind of like an escape route. That brought to mind the question of – what happens if someone actually gets trampled byt eh crowd, which was entirely plausible, and needed medical attention? We were about twenty feet down from the main road, and there was only access via the ramp, stairs, and ladder.

I had been hoping to make a lantern myself, but the line was far too long, according to Jade and Jenna. I did get a picture with a demon-looking character, which may or may not be posted on Facebook, since it wasn’t my camera. Considering that I don’t have a camera, this makes sense. I also got a picture with the mascot of Seoul – Hae-something, I can’t remember the name – which is a cute cartoon character that is possibly yellow.

Following the festival, which wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be, but was still very entertaining, we trekked back to the train station, where we found an anti G20 rally! They all had signs, and were wearing running shoes, which we think meant that they were planning on doing some sort of marathon protest. Deciding that it would probably be a little safer inside the train station, in case the rally people got into an altercation with the 50+ cops hanging around, we proceeded into the McDonalds.

After a burger or two, we had a beer at a sketchy little place across the street with twinkly lights, Christmas bulbs, a huge picture of a semi-naked woman straddling a cowboy, and an odor rather akin to eggs mixed with a sewer. Nevertheless, great fun was had by all, especially when Nick lost W50,000, only to discover later that Jenna had found it on the floor, at which point the money was promptly returned.

Following a long train ride back to Pyeongtaek, Sacha, Jenna, Sean and I participated in what I have decided to term the “foggy cab ride from hell”. As soon as we turned onto the main road that skirts the city, there was so much fog that we literally couldn’t see more than a foot in front of the cab. This didn’t stop the taxi driver from pumping the gas, shooting down the road without a care in the world. Alright, possibly an exaggeration there – he did slow down, but it was still a terrifying experience!

Having survived this latest encounter, we proceeded to our rooms. I had intended to go straight to bed, but having downloaded the movie Tekken, I started to watch it while I edited my Flip video of the day’s adventures. Since it was actually a really interesting movie, I ended up watching the whole thing. Over the summer I watched the Street Fighter movie, and it continues to amaze me how filmmakers can turn these fighting-tournament video games into not-half-bad movies.

Going to Seoul and Korean Halloween

On Saturday, I had major plans to go and meet up with Sacha and Sean in Seoul – more specifically in Itaewon, which is a foreigner-friendly part of the city that purportedly has a wide variety of cheap knockoffs. Since I needed a winter jacket, Sacha suggested that this was an excellent place to get one.

Actually getting to Itaewon turned out to be quite the adventure, however. Because Sean and Sacha had gone to Seoul the night before to attend a friend’s birthday party, I would have to meet up with them in Seoul. The problem with this is that I don’t have a cell phone, so I had to first get to AK Plaza, find a phone, call them, figure out where they were, and then arrange a way to meet up with them.

The first part of the plan went smoothly enough – I got to AK Plaza without a hitch. Well, I ended up sharing a taxi ride with an ajima (old lady) who got dropped off at a hospital – possibly pharmacy – on Jungang-ro, which is a major road that leads to AK. Anyway, once I got to AK I wandered around looking for a phone, but came up empty-handed.

Then the heavens parted, and out of the golden mist came a sweet lady named Soon who offered to let me use her phone. It turns out she’s a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, and I listened to her spiel on “Where is God Now?”. Sacha and Sean turned out to be in Itaewon when I called, and Sacha warned me that by the time I got there they probably have already left. That was fine with me, since I’m more than capable of shopping alone, so I told her that I would call her again if I had any questions on how to get there.

I got a ticket to Seoul and got on the train. However, when we hit Yongsan, the loudspeaker claimed that this was the “terminal” stop, meaning the last stop. Everyone got off the train, so I shrugged and followed along.

For the record, Yongsan is technically in Seoul, it’s just not the main station where I had intended to end up. Since I was to all intents and purposes stranded in a random train station, I wandered around for a bit and looked for a phone. No missionaries came to my rescue, so I decided to just hang around Yongsan for a while, and hop a train back when I was bored. There was a subway I could have taken into the city, but I figured that it probably wasn’t a good idea to get lost on the subway when I didn’t even have a phone to call for help.

There was a really cool ski and snowboard exhibit right outside the station, which I watched for a while. It consisted of people skiing/snowboarding down an artificial hill, doing tricks off a series of ramps/bars, and getting cheered on by the crowd. They weren't very good, but it was still fun to watch, and I got a video shot for my vlog.

Back into the station, and I discovered Ipark mall, which has no affiliation with Apple. It’s a massive mall that had about five floors devoted to electronics. I found a book on learning Korean from the book store, as well as James Patterson’s “Wizard and Witch”, which I have not read but thought sounded interesting. I also found a really plush silver jacket that I splurged on and bought, since winter in Korea this year is rumoured to be freezing.

Back to Pyeongtaek – no difficulties this time! – and the day was complete. I stopped by Sean and Sacha’s to let them know I survived, then kicked back and read Purity. That would be an Inuyasha fanfiction I read... gosh, it has to be at least 6 years ago now. Anyway, I rediscovered it, and it has kept me quite entertained so far.

Sunday was more successful – success here being defined as me doing what I intended to do. Since it was Halloween, Sean and Sacha planned out a scary movie night at the AK cinema, since they don’t really celebrate Halloween in Korea. Well, there was apparently some kind of party in Seoul, but I didn’t go to that, so it’s irrelevant. Anyway, I went early with Sean and Sacha to get tickets – you get to pick your seats in Korea – and we bought ice cream from Baskin Robbins and chilled at the AK “Skygarden”, which is basically a really nice garden on the roof of the building with a view of the city.

Then it was time for dinner, and what an experience it was! We decided to have Pizza Hut, which is a much bigger deal than it seems, because in Korea, Pizza Hut is considered fine dining. A large pizza is about $25 – no joke – and the inside of the restaurant is very fancy. It was all very civilized, although I have to say that the pizza itself was nothing to write home about. Which is ironic, considering I am currently writing home about it. Meh.

The movie was... interesting. We met up with Jade and Nick, then took our seats. Paranormal Activity 2 started out kind of slowly, but once the devil-worship, poltergeist stuff got under way, it was scary enough. Sudden movements, loud bangs, etc. I quite enjoyed myself, and spent the rest of the evening jumping at small noises.

Drinking with Koreans

October 27, 2010

Today was my first experience “going out with my co-workers”, which was a very, very interesting encounter indeed. The day – Wednesday – was good. I had afternoon classes (well, class starting at 4:30, technically) and then in the evening I spent all three hours doing phone tests. That involves calling up the students and talking to them for about 3 minutes while they try to remember fairly significant facts from their reading books. Such as: where do we find trees? Answer: a forest. Yeah. That was a question. And no one got it right.

After that we headed out to 5500, which is a Korean BBQ place right next to the school. Sacha warned me in advance that Koreans drink a lot, and that if I tried to keep up with them, there’s no way I’d win. So I didn’t try. I stuck to beer – I probably had only 2 glasses the whole night – which turned out to be a good plan, because holy cow can those Koreans drink.

We got there early and had some BBQ while waiting for our coworkers to show up. When the Koreans finally arrived, out came the soju almost instantly. I can’t imagine how many bottles we went through – 15, maybe? Even the tiniest of the girls did like 8 or 9 shots, and believe you me, they can hold their liquor. It was actually really impressive, and I don’t know if I could duplicate the feat.

The interesting part was the social interaction. They do this thing where they ask “Are you okay?”, which is a way of being friendly and showing concern for your fellow coworkers/friends. CK was apparently concerned that I was being too nice with the kids, and that they were walking all over me, which is really only the case in one class, so I assured him that I was perfectly fine. But one of the girls was particularly adamant – Young Sun, the TA who helped me out for the medical checkup a few weeks back – and I’m going to say she asked me if I was okay at least 20 times throughout the course of the evening.

All in all it was fun, and very intriguing to watch. Next time I’ll definitely join in the soju fun, although I’ll have to make sure I don’t get carried away, and therefore need to be carried home after. I still haven’t gotten used to the all-night-partying mentality that they have here. When I was ready to head home at 2 am, the Koreans indicated that they were heading out somewhere else to continue drinking. I couldn’t believe it!