Autumn 2008 SAGA OF DRAMA - Conclusion

If I were a sitcom or a movie, I would have the perfect cliche ending. Which would be boring and disappointing after sitting in the theatres for 2+ hours, but a sigh of relief if it's what you're actually going through.

Dr. Fish - Dec. 7

On a snowy night in December, I ventured to Myeong-dong market for a dessert and foot treatment, with the fishes!

I've actually done Dr. Fish treatment three times now. This is from my second time when I went with my friend Steve. Dr. Fish is a way to naturally clean feet using tiny little fishies to nip at the dead skin. It's insanely ticklish! I love fish and think they are so cute. It was really fun to have fish not be afraid of me and swim around my feet.


The specific place we went to in Myeong-dong is near the Uniqlo and is a dessert coffee house with a few different spa things. You have to buy a dessert and then it's like 2,000 won for 15 mins of fishy foot time.

I was having a good time, but I was having a bit of foot envy. All the little fish were swarming Steve and leaving me high and dry. I complained several times that he had to take his feet out so I could have some fish time. :P

The whole process leaves one's feet quite soft =^_^=

Autum 2008 SAGA OF DRAMA - Part II

Continuing the drama, living the drama, I make what JuJu calls drama a pesky mosquito bite in the wake of being swarmed by killer bees.

GD.

Thailand - Nov 12-15

...that was a wonderful vacation. I have never felt more awakened. The country is very strongly and devoutly Buddhist. It's awesome to walk amongst their beautiful temples and architecture. Unfortunately, my photographs of the Emerald Buddha were just terrible blurs, but I was able to get many many photos of other jaw-dropping Buddhas.

Halloween 2008 - Last week at Jackie's

For my final week at Jackie's, I ended with my favourite part of working there: the Halloween party. Funny how the good and the bad kind of juxtapose themselves.

Halloween is a great holiday. I always remember the excitement of running around town with my brother, mom and dad when I was little. Brandon and I'd stay out for hours collecting candy. Except for one year, I trick-or-treated from when I was two to 18 (and I did a couple neighbours' houses that skipped year). Halloween's one of those holidays for me that didn't get mucked up by the people around me, so it's still as exciting as back when I was small.

I usually like making my own costume, but this year, I was under a lot of stress. There is, however, a great costume shop in my neighbourhood, so I found the best costume ever:

Gwacheonsan - Last Jackie's Hiking Trip - Oct 18

I love hiking in the autumn. Words like "crisp," "golden,: and "breezy" come to mind. Often, hiking in the summer is too full of "sweaty" and "frustrating." Jackie's decided to host an outing to Gwancheonsan (I think that's where we went). I went despite the fact that I'd already known that my butt was being canned in a few weeks. I went for a couple reasons, one, because I enjoy hiking, and also, I wasn't going to let my jerk-boss squeeze me out and make me hide as if I was leaving voluntarily.

Autum 2008 SAGA OF DRAMA - Part I

Blah, so yeah I am behind on my blog. It's not intentional, but I have figured out a way to reduced the problems and I will update with travel stuff soon. In the meantime, I have unfun news to report.

Kid's Sentences

ESL is a wonderful experience. On occasion, things are lost in translation, and make for some good laughs (or shocks).

Here are some that I gathered at my workplace in Korea for the past year:

• John looked at dog's poo, so he was very upset.
• Chad is working himself.
• The man is smoking in the lounge because he has a lot of stress.
• Slaves work very hard especially Egyptians.
• Len's favorite food is pizza and cock.
• I love to adventure people's body.
  
• Don't be silly Christ!
• Ms. Sara told Jonathan to elaborate on what he did to his sister last night.

Yeoido Fire Festival - Oct 4

The Yeoido Fire Festival was a last-minute venture. My friend Yonghwa told me about a giant fireworks show on the east part of Seoul, and we agreed it would be great and we'd have a good time. We planned on meeting there and then check out the show. I got there before dark, and there were already a large number of people. I decided to just find a place and stick to it, and wait for Yonghwa.

My 24th Birthday!

One thing that is hard to be comfortable with about Korean culture is that people do not generally have guests at the house. It's maybe because people tend to live with extended families, or something more subtle. Regardless, if you're going to go to someone's birthday shin-dig, more often than not, it's at a bar or a restaurant somewhere. Now that's fine on occasion, but I'm a woman of balance. Where are my house parties?

I decided to be a little bold and skip the bar and have a cooking party at my house. I'd made mandu before with my Chinese class the year before, and I really thought it was an easy and great food to make at a party. In addition to the yummy pork dumpling morsels, we also made Vietnamese spring rolls. They were a great hit.

A comfortable number of people came, and James even bought some tequila. I broke out my new dresses I'd bought in Bali and we lived it up.

Of course, any good party night is not complete without a round of singing! To noraebang we went. Noraebang is the best because there really aren't any rules or expectations of anyone participating, just sing until your voice goes hoarse. Which I believe mine eventually did. It always tends to, but not before I broke the mold of Elvis and Guns and Roses with some Metallica and I think Linkin Park XD Rock on!

People drifted away and we finished the night off playing on the swings in the park back in the neighbourhood. It was a perfect night. Happy Birthday me!

Bali - July 21-27, 2008

I really am behind on posting my trips. I mean, I went to Bali last summer! :S However, even posted late, a tale of my trip to the Indonesian island of Bali is certainly worth one's time.

When I first arrived in Bali,

Boryeong Mud Festival - July 12-13

Make a festival where you can get all muddy! What a wonderful idea! I think there's a number of us out there who really haven't graduated from the sandbox, and an opportunity to play like in the good ole days of kinder-youth will be taken in force.

At first I wasn't sure how I was going to get down there,

The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon

I bought a book of Korean folktales yesterday, and so far am seeing a similar trend of tales. However I'm just in the animal tales, so maybe I'll notice something different later. I wanted to share an excerpt from one of the tales I've read so far, about an unconventional, by Western standards, way of escaping a bear.

...

[A burglar who mistakenly had ridden on the back of a tiger was hiding in a tree. A tiger was telling this story to a bear, and the bear said it was a good idea to go eat him.]

With that, the bear proceeded ahead and the tiger timidly followed.
Meanwhile, the burglar was watching all this and hid himself inside a hole in the tree.
The bear climbed up the tree to the hole and looked inside, but he could not reach the burglar. So he sat on the hole, hoping to smother the burglar.
Finally, the gasping man could not stand it no longer. Looking up, he saw the private parts of the bear dangling above him, so he untied his belt and cinched the bear's testicles tightly.
The bear roared in unbearable pain and fell over dead.

....

It wasn't something I expected to read, anyways. It makes sense though that the pain was unbearable. Hyuck hyuck.

The Next Step

Signs that I am moving further in my learning of Korean: I finally went to Yongsan and picked up an English-Korean electronic dictionary and some hangul stickers for my keyboard!
Ooooo...

Ahhhhh...

I have probably put it off for a few reasons. One, I am not a techno geek, so owning more electronic things don't interest me so much. Another is that I am not a techno geek, so looking around techno geek stores like iPark is a little overwhelming. I was getting sick of it though, because not having a dictionary really sets me behind in understanding most of the Korean teaching resources that I have. The vast majority of them are badly done, and the good ones still don't have good glossaries. Most of them require extra resources to use them. The stickers are a huge help too. Unlike Chinese, to use the Korean alphabet on the computer I kind of needed a keyboard guide. Korean has letters, so the keyboard is set up with the letters in certain places. Without the letter guide on the keyboard, I'd probably hurl the computer out the window out of frustration from all the random guessing. Therefore, I couldn't use hangul at all on my computer.

All that has changed! Yay for getting off my butt!

안녕!

:'( My Trees Are Gone

One of the things I've noticed about Korean culture in the city is their complete and utter inability to create, preserve or appreciate green space. Case in point is that all space on the ground is paved. All of it. With obvious exceptions that were created to be park area. There just aren't any lawns or weeds or flowers growing anywhere.

I had a nice exception outside my building. The house had a huge wall that was covered with vine and there were several trees that the vine also climbed. It was great for the rustling sound and the occasional birds chirping in the branches when I was sitting in my room. I love green, it's often so grey in this city that I cling to what I can.

That is, I WAS enjoying the green. A week ago they started construction on the building, first with ripping out the vine, then getting progressively more and more loud and invasive doing work on the property. Yesterday, they took a huge section out of the brick wall. I had been curious and mildly at unease, but otherwise unattached. But today, they have done the most atrocious thing, and I can do nothing about it but whine. Successively they have removed all the trees in front of my apartment, with indications that it may continue further into their backyard.

WAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Why? Why?

I can't understand, nor can I change anything. I am sorry to lose my friends.

Cherry Blossoms - Beginning of April

The cherry blossoms were gorgeous. I wandered around different parts of the city to find them. They were put in by the Japanese during the Japanese occupation, but the Koreans kept them because they were so pretty. They are a wonderful gentle pink-white that add a lovely peace and tranquility to the early spring season. I have a bunch more pictures I put up on my other blog here: April 14, April 18, April 20, April 21, April 22.

I enjoyed going to take pictures at Children's Grand Park. The whole main walkway is planted with cherry trees. It was wonderful to walk underneath and see the petals fall like soft rain.

Daejon - March 22-23

For the last weekend in March, Aaron and I went down to Daejon to hang out with his friends Dan and Gliah. We took the train, which was only about an hour. After we met up at the train station, we all went to a market nearby and did some kimchi shopping.

There was much kimchi to choose from, cabbage, cucumber, radish... and actually I still have some in my fridge even now. Some really nice, spicy, old, stinky stuff. Hmmmmm....

I enjoyed walking around the market. I found some cute things, like some socks and some nail polish. I don't really go around to markets in Seoul like this. A lot of them are really out of the way and I get lazy and just stay to central Seoul because it's easier to get to. I'm interested in checking out the fish markets in Korea. There is always much more than just fish being sold.

Buddha's Birthday - Hwagyesa - May 12

For Buddha's Birthday, Nuran, his friend Andrew, my friend Chuck, and my boyfriend and I went to visit Hwagyesa to partake in the Buddha's Birthday festivities.

It was great that Nuran and I could meet up another time before he headed back to Canada. It was way strange seeing him in Kyeongju the week before, I mean, we hadn't spoken in like 5 years! Random.

Hwagyesa's a large Zen Buddhist temple near Suyu station in northern Seoul. Despite still being in the city, it has quite a number of trees and wooded paths to walk around in.

The temple was fully decorated with lanterns everywhere. It was quite a sight. There was a main stage off in the square where there were several performances. I enjoyed the traditional
dances and the fan dancing.

Before we'd gotten to the temple proper, there were lots of vendors of all sorts. Chuck and Aaron braved having some bondaegi, or silkworm larvae. I could not bring myself to eat bugs, sorry.

It was fun to wander around amongst all the colours of the lanterns. Each lantern can be bought for $50 or something around that. It's kind of like temple day for half-hearted Buddhists. Kind of like how lots of Christians only go to church on Christmas and Easter.

We wandered down from the temple to get some food, and we found a restaurant with the usually helpful "Good Restaurant" white flower sign. It turned out to be a place that sold pig organ soup. Andrew just loved the stuff, but I had a lot of trouble. Aaron said he looked at me from across the table and did his best not to laugh at me I was so green! Ah, not a good food day for me.

Unfortunately and shockingly,

Kyeong-ju May 4-5

As a little weekend getaway, Aaron and I decided to head south to Gyeongju (Kyeongju, or Kyungju depending on the different ways to spell it). Kyeongju was Aaron's first city that he worked in while in Korea and is kind of like his Korean home town.

To start, it was a 3-day holiday weekend, so getting train tickets to Kyeongju was difficult. We ended up getting a train that landed us in town at 4 AM. Now, we didn't think that would be too bad, but it turns out

Only in Korea

X-Ray Oddities

The 5-centimeter nail shown in this X-ray was found after a man came to a Seoul, South Korea, hospital complaining of a severe headache. After examining and interviewing the man, doctors speculated that the nail had been the result of an accident four years before his visit, but that the man did not know the nail was lodged in his head.

(Yohap/AP Photo)

JuJu @ Namsangol Hanok Village - Mar 19

My friend JuJu and I went to the same university. We actually only took one class together, science fiction. Perhaps it was a lasting one? Regardless, he came out to Korea before me, and he was actually heading back home a few days or so after we decided to meet up.

Namsangol is a little pre-fab tourist trap just out of Chungmuro subway station that offers several styles of traditional Korean homes to view. Especially for the time of year we went, it was a bit deserted. I enjoyed seeing a new thing, even if it wasn't a legitimate old neighbourhood. There are enough real ones in Korea, it's a little amusing to see that this one got built...

I find the typical Korean home style quite comfortable. What with it's huge sliding windows, inner courtyard and floor heating. If ever I have the chance to built my own home, I'd like to model it off an Asian-style layout.

We also found a gigantic time capsule commemorating Seoul's 600th birthday, to be opened when it turned 1000, to play on. Whee!


All in all, it was a nice morning to see a friend before he jetted home. Bye JuJu! Korea will miss you!

Weekend trip to Busan - March 1 -2

Perhaps I can update those close to me on my happenings in the last few months. I haven't been idle, only lazy with posting photographs. :P

So just for fun, Erica and I decided to go to Busan for the weekend March 1-2. We took the KTX, or the fast train, so it was about and hour and a half - 2 hours to get there. Busan is Korea's second largest city. I say "city" loosely because really, Busan felt more like a very huge town (being together with your closest 3.6 million friends).

I posted a bunch of arty pics on my picture blog, look at the March 8 through April 1 entries.

Our first destination was Haeundae Beach, and on the subway trip, numerous people couldn't stop gapping at me. I was a WHITE person! I saw kids get excited and point and loudly say, "Waegookin (foreigner)!" Even though they also have a huge English hagwon industry, there still isn't that many foreigners down there.

The sun was out, and for March, it was pretty balmy. Erica and I enjoyed the scenery and chowed down on some mandu.

Irony

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia

Part of Speech: n
Definition: fear of long words

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia — fear of long words. Hippopoto- "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus (though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, hippopotamine has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a pseudo-Greek noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a pseudo-Greek noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear".

Happy Jeongwael Daeboleum

Today is the first full moon of the lunar calendar. It's kind of a lucky day. People celebrate by eating nuts, more specifically peanuts. I asked my kids to tell me about it. They say the crack of the peanut shell helps bring good luck.

Sometimes people drink wine too. One of my students said her mom gave her some wine to drink, but she said it was very "bad tasting."

:P

Help me I'm dying! Part II

Help me I'm dying! Part I

Spring Festival in Beijing, China

Being in Seoul sometimes cramps my style. In winter, my neighbourhood is ugly and grey. I was excited about going ANYWHERE for Lunar New Year. I was getting depressed by the drudgery of work and my apartment's frosted windows so I can't see anything outside. Cramped in a little box in an organized world. *cue the sad violin music*All that changed when I arrived in Beijing Feb 6. Not only was it a break from all things Korea for a bit, but also I was immersed in a beautiful and exotic culture and city, complete with tasty things to eat and fun things to buy! The one big drawback was

Subway vending machines insure a "feeling fine day"

Cups written like we think in the morning

New Year's Extravaganza

For New Year's, a few of us decided to party down and head to Jongak for the ringing of the bell. Imagine a gigantic bell, with all the ornate finery and painting and traditional wooden structure that goes with it. It's a really interesting way to literally *ring* in the new year.

That's pretty fun, but imagine that you are one of a thousand people on a few city blocks who are lighting off so many roman candles that you don't even HEAR the bell, now THAT's pretty fricken awesome.


Good Luck in the New Year! Saehae bok man-i bad eu sae yo!