2.5 months in Seoul, South Korea

Revisiting Korea

2010-06-04T22:35:00.010-04:00

It's hard to believe it's been three years since I last visited Korea. So much has happened since then, and I'm amazed to find myself a second-year medical student. Looking back at posts like this helps to remind me of all of my experiences in Korea, and why I chose to become a doctor.

Surrounded by classmates taking medical Spanish makes me think about the state of my Korean language skills. In the midst of med school, the best I can do is the occasional unwise but satisfying Korean-drama binge during exam week. It does surprise me how much I remember and retain from my Sogang classes, particularly more technical vocabulary words and reading text. I'm so glad that I had the chance to visit through the Light Fellowship ---the summers I spent in Korea definitely reinforced my language skills and will come in useful when interacting with Korean patients (fingers crossed on that one).

Anyway, a quick update to the blog-- my friend Kaila, who was my Seoul travel-buddy, and my little sister Esther are both in Korea for the summer: Esther is on the Light Fellowship through Yale. Kaila is back to work with an adoption agency and find her roots as an adoptee in Korea. Here are their blogs. I wish them luck!

Kaila's Blog: http://theroad-kaila.blogspot.com/
Esther's Blog: http://estherinseoul.blogspot.com/

Also I couldn't resist posting a food-related tidbit--a recipe for homemade yakgwa, a syrupy golden-fried Korean honey cookie:

Cafes in Seoul that I love...(in Korean)

2008-03-02T14:08:00.005-05:00

Over the summer I made a presentation to my Sogang Korean language class on my favorite cafes in Seoul. Seoul has a great cafe culture--people spend hours and hours just sitting and chilling with friends over an iced green tea latte or slice of cheesecake. (Can nobody make a green tea latte like they do in Seoul?? Since I've been back in the US I've ordered about 4 and they're just not the same..)

I was planning to convert this into a blog entry one day, but I realized it's already spring and I still haven't found the extra time. Maybe when MCATs are over!
For now, here's a segment of the raw Korean presentation version, complete with photos. The cafes are in Sinchon, Daehangro, and Myeongdong:

PART I:

PART II:

Why your phone service should be SKT

2007-08-31T12:03:00.000-04:00

My last weeks in Korea went by like a blur.

So cliched, but so true. Honestly, I've been putting off a blog entry because just thinking about making a written record of the past few weeks makes my head hurt...

So for 8 days I went on a tour of Korea sponsored by SK Telecom. It's actually called 문화독립기행. and is the 3rd annual trip of its kind. 문화 means culture, and 기행 means trip..
..But 독립? When I looked it up on Yahoo Korean-English dictionary (I love this site), it told me:

1 [자립] independence; self-help; self-reliance.

~하다 : become independent ((of one's parents)); stand on one's own legs[feet]; stand alone; end one's dependence ((on)); be[set up, strike out] on one's own; set up for oneself.

As we were told at orientation, a lot of native Korean youths don't really know enough about Korean tradition... the trip was primarily a way for them to learn more about Korea's culture. As we heard at orientation, the study-abroad (유학) craze in Korea is getting to be a problem--Korea's culture's getting neglected by the younger generation of Koreans in favor of ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH (plus some Grey's Anatomy, CSI, 50 Cent, you know, the general Westernization phenomenon).

But the group, in addition to including 30 Korean students, also consisted of 20 foreign students (including me! and other students from countries like the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Mozambique, Kenya, Poland, and Norway). We got to learn about Korea too, with the help of explanations from our native Korean friends on the trip.

An emphasis of the trip was on 체험 (cheh-hum)... now 체험 is different from the simple word 경험, which means experience. According to 체험, you must experience everything PERSONALLY and directly, literally with your body.

Accordingly, we 체험-ed many things. Here is us:

체험-ing spending the night in a hanok, or a traditional Korean house. This was at Jeonju Hanok Village.

We also 체험-ed the making of hanji, traditional Korean paper. A rectangular frame with a kind of sieve inside is dipped multiple times into a suspension of mulberry tree fibers in water--first it's swished horizontally, then vertically to make a fine network that ends up making paper!

The paper's then dried and heated to remove moisture. Hanji is famous, as we learned, not only for its strength and its endurance, but for its usefulness for people with skin diseases (it can be used to make clothes), as wallpaper (it traps dust), and for wrapping foods (since it's breathable, it prevents the spoilage of food).

Jeonju Bibimbap 체험; we actually made this famous dish! The region of Jeollado is famous for its food, and the bibimbap (rice mixed with different ingredients) from Jeonju is particularly renowned. I thought my bibimbap tasted pretty good.. but it took a loooong time to make.

Bosung Green Tea Plantation 체험 (actually, I took it upon myself to do 체험 here by eating a raw green tea leaf, haha. It tasted like... a leaf.). Contrary to what I expected, the scent of green tea leaves did not fill the air. The plantation was beautiful though, and very relaxing to the eyes.

Korean drumming 체험--this was really cool! At first I wasn't really into it (the instructions were really confusing to me.. "one hand is "da" and one hand is "dum" and one side symbolizes the wife and one symbolizes the husband and the husband can never go to the wife's house and WHAAA?") ...but once everyone starts beating that drum to the rhythm, a weird kind of energy fills the air.

Mount Wolchulsan 체험 : We climbed up to the "Cloud Bridge" near the peak, a task that was exhausting...

but left us exhilarated!

Jindo Island funeral rites 체험: Jindo Island's funeral rites are unique from those of any other region because (1) their elaborate song and dance, and (2) the earthy HUMOR that they include. The rites that we saw were staged for the public (no, nobody had to die for us..)

The above skit is about a wife (played by a comical man with lots of blush on his cheeks) who cheats on her blind husband...it's complete with the conception of the child (seriously), and a mock labor and delivery of the baby.

Us as part of the funeral procession.

Buddhist temple stay 체험, complete with waking up at 3 AM in order to bow to Buddha and enjoy a twilight walk in the forest

The room that all (30+) girls stayed in:

Eating meals at Buddhist temples is an interesting experience--there are signs posted (1) prohibiting talking during the meal (this rule is not kept strictly) and (2) to finish ALL of the food in your bowl and wash the bowl after eating (this rule must be adhered to). The food? Vegetarian. You get one bowl with rice in it and pile all of your banchan, or sides, on top. The result is basically bibimbap.

Eating Jejudo's black pig (nicknamed Poop Pig) 체험. 흙되지 (dirt pig), also called 똥되지 (poop pig) is famous on Jejudo Island and its meat is supposed to be more succulent than that of other pigs. All I can say after eating it is that it's pretty good, but it sure has an amazing amount of fat!!

Jejudo's famous Jeongbang waterfall, the only waterfall on the island that flows directly into the sea. This was definitely 체험--look at us, we're practically IN the waterfall! One student even jumped in and started swimming around.

Walk a little to the left, and you'll be in the ocean.

I have to give the planners of the tour due credit--anything that could be personally experienced, or 체험ed, was! And in general the tour was extremely well planned--a group of over 60 people traveled together and nobody got lost or injured; every night we stayed in reasonably comfortable accomodations, and everyone got 3 square meals per day (Korean meals, of course).

So after all of this 체험, can I really say that I now 독립 Korean culture? Can I, as Yahoo English-Korean dictionary would say, "stand on my own two feet", "become independent of my parents" and have my own understanding of Korean culture?

Well, it's a start... now when I think of Korean tradition, I have much more to base my thoughts on than I did before. I think my prior knowledge of Korean traditional culture consisted mainly of random readings from Korean class, those Korean historical military dramas my parents sometimes watch on that weird international channel at midnight, and the movie The King and the Clown. Oh, and wearing my hanbok to get money at sehbeh, a Korean bowing ceremony, from my relatives every New Years.

Seeing and experiencing things that represent Korean tradition like celadon pottery, delicious foods, dancing, songs, funerals, and temples starts to give you a deeper understanding of the mindset and the philosophies that are behind Korean culture. For example, my knowledge of Buddhism before I came on the trip was really spotty.. despite that unit on Eastern religions that I studied in high school World History class, most of what I remembered was that Buddha was the obese golden statue and that Buddhists believed in reincarnation. But through the trip, in addition to being assigned to give a presentation on Songwangsa Temple, I got to see the paintings and listen to monks in Buddhist temples, and observe daily life in a temple. I realized that many things in Korean society, like the strong emphasis on human relations (인연) and the belief that everything is complex and interrelated can be explained through the influence of Buddhism on Korean history. Things like these, understanding the mindset behind the culture, were among the most valuable things that I'll take away from this trip.

Better yet, thanks to 체험 I don't just have random memorized facts about Korean traditions and famous sites floating around in my head, but real, treasured memories. Getting to spend 8 days with not only some really interesting people from all over the world, but real Korean students was amazing. I realized that even after 2 summers of living in Korea, there's a lot about Korea and Korean society that I have yet to learn. Also because of the trip I ended up making a cyworld account, the Korean version of MySpace/Facebook to keep in touch with Korean friends and the Korean friends that I made on the trip. Cyworld AND Facebook? I now have way too many distractions to keep me from doing my work next semester...

Patbingsu Recipes for the Summer

2007-08-04T12:24:00.000-04:00

Ever since Mark's gotten back to Korea, we've been making near-daily trips to what is possibly my favorite ice cream place on the planet--- MILKY ROAD.

Patbingsoo (patbingsu), a Korean dessert of shaved ice topped with fruit and red bean, can be found at practically any cafe in Seoul, but Milky Road adds frozen yogurt (with real fermented yogurt) to the mix:

Fruit can be expensive in Korea, so this my preferred way of satisfying my fresh fruit cravings ^^

We took a visiting dean from school here this weekend, and ordered not one, but all three of their special big sized yogurt bingsoo's (one is usually enough for 2-3 people)!

The three were Well-Being Green Tea (with green tea ice cream, fruit, and black sesame topping), Fruits Garden (a variety of fresh fruit), and Sweets Basket (chocolate ice cream, sweet potato). Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of them until we were halfway through eating:

There is only one Milky Road store in Seoul and none in the U.S. It's a Japanese franchise: http://www.milkyroad.co.kr/

The one in Seoul is coincidentally located right near my school, in Sinchon towards Yonsei University, above Seven Eleven on the street where Krispy Kreme and Choi's Tacos (another delicious place to eat) are located.

Patbingsoo (팥빙수), by the way, means red bean (pat), ice (bing), water (soo)...

Obviously, once I return to America I'll be going through major patbingsoo withdrawal. I'm planning on using the following recipes to make my own knock-offs at home:

Basic patbingsoo recipe:

- 2 cups of ice
- 1/2 cup of cut-up fresh fruit (kiwis, strawberries, bananas, pineapple, peaches, mango, any berries, watermelon, melons are all good) or fruit cocktail. I also really like nata de coco, a clear jelly made from fermented coconut water
- 1/4 cup of chapsal dduk, sweet rice cake. Looks like this:

- 1/3 cup of sweetened canned red bean, called 팥
- 1/4 cup of condensed milk

You can buy ingredients such as canned red bean topping and rice cakes at your local Asian supermarket. If you're in NJ, NY, PA, VA, MD, GA, or IL, Hanareum, also known as H Mart is a great Korean supermarket to go to. If you're desperate you can even order Korean food online at sites like kgrocer.com

Instructions:
1. Grind up the ice using a mixer or ice grinder and put it in a bowl (clear bowls are nice to eat out of)

You can use a special ice grinder as shown above.

2. Pour the condensed milk over the crushed ice in the bowl. Put the red bean topping over the ice and milk, and then sprinkle the fresh fruit and dduk over the whole thing (you can be artistic and arrange the fruit prettily, or just dump it on top and eat).

3. EAT
The Korean style of eating patbingsoo is 섞어섞어, or "mix mix". You take a spoon, mix everything together so that the toppings and ice blend, and eat! But personally, I prefer leaving the toppings intact until the very end.

Here are some of my favorite variations of patbingsoo:

Misutgaru patbingsoo recipe
[미숫가루 팥빙수] (Roast grain powder bingsoo)
A more traditional twist on the basic patbingsoo; has a nutty, satisfying taste

Ingredients:
- misutgaru powder (roast grain powder, do not confuse this with malt powder)
- cereal (corn flakes, frosted flakes, captain crunch, etc)
- chapsal dduk (sweet rice cake)
- a scoop of vanilla ice cream
- crushed ice
- red bean
- condensed milk

Make the patbingsoo according to the regular recipe and then top with cereal, then ice cream, then rice cake, and finally sprinkle the misutgaru powder over the whole thing!

Green tea patbingsoo recipe
Ingredients:
- Green tea ice cream or green tea powder
- red bean
- chapsal dduk, rice cake
- fruit
- condensed milk
- ice

Yogurt patbingsoo recipe
As close as I can get to Milky Road without having a frozen yogurt machine at home..

Buy the Korean yogurt (you can find it at most Korean grocery stores), thaw if frozen, and pour on top of the shaved ice. Top with fruit and red bean.

Korean yogurt (a popular brand is Maeil):

SEOUL IN A WEEK: the whirlwind tour - part 3 of 3

2007-07-31T05:32:00.000-04:00

Read SEOUL IN A WEEK: Part 2 of 3

Read SEOUL IN A WEEK: Part 1 of 3

Kelly (McLaughlin) asked me what my friends thought of Korea, which is a more complicated question than it seems. The simple answer would be that they loved it, which they wholeheartedly did, but their impressions of Korea were pretty interesting.

While my friends were packing to come to Seoul, I had warned them that people here are very dressed up. They wanted to fit in (as much as a foreign-looking person can), and fight the stereotype of the "slobby, slutty American" (in the style of Brittany Spears, who recently scandalized store clerks by wiping grease on a designer dress and leaving the bathroom door open while peeing), so they packed things like dressy shirts, nice shorts, coverups, and skirts, which they were really glad to have once they arrived. At the end of the week, they commented that they hadn't seen one person wearing sweatpants since they'd come. Of course, as soon as they'd said that, a lady wearing a pair of designer sweatpants coupled with silver HIGH HEELED STILETTOS came to stand in front of us in the subway.

They were also struck by how even guys took such pains with their appearance--while at Baskin Robbins, we watched the male clerk unabashedly fixing his hair under his visor in front of a huge mirror on the side of the register about fifteen different times (between ringing up customers), while we ate our sour yogurt ice cream. Of course, it was great for all of us to be surrounded by attractive, well-groomed people. However, we couldn't help but wonder--how much of Korea's time, energy, and brainpower that could go into scientific research or building up the country's infrastructure is instead funneled into looking good? And also, what is it that allows Koreans like the Baskin Robbins clerk to blatantly and unashamedly primp in front of the mirror in public, while Americans, I believe, would die of embarrassment if caught in such an act?

Neither of my friends had ever visited Korea before, and it was Maddy's first time ever being in Asia. Marian, who'd been to China last year to visit her brother who teaches English there, was really surprised by the difference between Seoul and China. She described spending a day in China and having her white shirt be black with smog at the end of the day, or being called a whore by people on the street because she was foreign. She confessed that she'd expected Korea to be similar. In reality, she said that being in Seoul was almost like being in New York City, except that everyone was Korean. Facilities were clean, and anything she wanted or needed was within easy accessibility--she said she actually could imagine living here without too much hardship. Anyway, she said that her trip made her much more curious about Asia, now that she realized that the countries in Asia were vastly different. The "China represents all of Asia" fallacy is a pretty common one, especially in my hometown, where I sometimes get asked, "Are you Chinese or Filipino?" with no other racial options well-known enough to be presented to me. Hopefully the assumption will become less prevalent once the unique characteristics of countries such as Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc. become more well-known to the rest of the world.

I was also surprised by the popularity of my two white friends in Seoul. People kept giving us smiles, or commenting on how "beautiful" or "nice" my friends were. At clubs and bars, Korean guys would continuously try and hit on the 'exotic' foreigners. At restaurants, the waiters would sometimes tell us that they were giving us extra-good service because it was my friends' first times trying the food. I'm sure that part of this friendliness was an effort to give a good impression of Korea to foreign tourists, but it's something that I rarely experienced when going around with white male friends last summer or this summer. Suspicion towards foreign males "taking our women" is something present in every country, and as much as we'd like to believe otherwise, is a strong feeling even in America (look at the obstacles that interrace couples still have--black men and white women, Asian men and white women, etc.). However it seems that although some Koreans might look with disapproval upon a Korean woman with a foreign male, they are more likely to take a quick glance and look away, or whisper to each other, than actually make a cutting insult.

Another thing that my friends were surprised with was the comparative lack of laws in Korea versus America. They didn't see a single policeman the whole time they were here, and were a bit amused/scared by taxi drivers' disregard for traffic rules. At the Seoul Zoo, we were delighted when the kangaroo keepers let us in directly into the kangaroos' pen to feed them pieces of food. This would never fly in America, where we love to sue the pants off of companies. If someone were to be kicked by a kangaroo, the zoo would be sued into bankruptcy!

Anyway, here's our the second half of the week--

Wednesday, July 25

On Wednesday we went biking on Yeoido Island along the Han River, the river that runs through the middle of Seoul. We rented bikes from a stand right outside the subway station (paid 3,000 won each per hour) and explored the island for a few hours, stopping for a few ice cream cones. We ended up eating the ice cream cones under the shade of a wide bridge--there were public benches and mats spread out for people to lay down and relax with their kids.

On our bike ride along Yeoido Island, we passed the 69 building, formerly the tallest point in Seoul (prior to the completion of Namsan, N Seoul Tower), and also the National Assembly Building:

Namsan

National Assembly Building

Then we were off to Bau House, an 애경, or pet, cafe a highlight for my friend Marian, who's studying to become a veterinarian.

It was an ordeal to find (like many destinations in Seoul), and eventually we realized that the map I'd gotten online was wrong. By luck, I heard a passing Korean girl mentioning 애경카페 (pet cafe) to her boyfriend. I whirled around, asked her whether she knew of Bau house (it turned out to be the cafe that she'd been talking about), and we got directions from her:
Living in apartments and working a busy schedule makes it hard for most Koreans to have a pet. Thus the popularity of dog cafe--you can come and enjoy a few hours with incredibly well-behaved and well-groomed dogs and cats, without the hassle of walking, feeding, or grooming. If you do have a pet, you can bring it to the dog cafe with you.

Upon our arrival, we were dismayed to see that a huge group of elementary school children had arrived before us and were terrorizing the dogs and cats. As soon as we sat down, a fluffy Chihuahau, that had been being zoomed around in the arms of a hyperactive little boy, actually dove into our lap shaking. We tried to shelter it for the rest of our stay (as it was the only pet in the cafe that would fit into the boy's arms, it was in high demand with him), but as a consequence were continuously pestered by the boy who kept asking us, "강아지 주세요!! 언제 갈거에요?" ("Give me the dog please!! When are you guys going to leave?"). When he eventually realized that we weren't going to hand him over the dog, which kept burrowing deeper into our laps, he started giving us treats to give to the dog. I guess he actually was an okay kid, but was just really really bad at handling pets--unfortunate.

At night we went to Chongdong Theatre to see a traditional music performance--Maddy, a music major, was especially interested in this, and ended up enjoying the performance so much that she bought a DVD of the performance after the show.

We dressed up in hanboks, traditional Korean dresses, and took photos. Marian and Maddy are wearing the princess's dresses, and I'm wearing the colorful marriage ceremony one (I swear I didn't know, I just liked the rainbow sleeves). After we took our hanboks off, the attendants directed our attention to a big sign that we'd missed---5,000 won each to take photos with the hanboks on. Oh.

The show consisted of samulnori, a "4 instrument" percussion performance, pansori, and more-

Here we are taking a photo with the orchestral instrument players-- the woman played the Kayagum, or Korean harp, and was an amazing musician--
Here we are with the pansori singer--she performed the famous Korean folktale "Shimcheong", the blind man's daughter who sacrifices herself for her father. Unfortunately the audience, which was mainly foreign, couldn't understand the singer's Korean lyrics (resulting in some people sniggering in the row behind us, and Maddy giving them a dirty look)--- subtitles to the lyrics would have been really nice!!!
Sameulnori players: they have white streamers on their heads which they swirl in time to the music. These guys were without question some of the most intense musicians I've ever heard perform. They got so into their performance that they were sweating like mad, and had some really primeval expressions on their faces. I couldn't even see the one guy's drumstick (just a blur) because it was beating the drum so quickly!

Afterwards, back to Sinchon for some KOREAN gelato at Gusttimo. The flavors here include some delicious Korean-inspired ones--my personal favorite is the sour yogurt gelato.You get 3 flavors each-- I had the spicy chocolate (chocolate with a kick), yogurt, berry yogurt. Marian--white wine, berry yogurt, red bean in green tea. Maddy--red bean, mango, melon.

We kind of got a lot of spoons... (corresponding to a lot of pre-ordering sampling). Oh, and ate our cups clean as well.

Thursday, July 26

On Thursday, we took a bus from Gangnam all the way down to the traditional Korean folk village (Minsokchon) right outside of Seoul:

Korean being a Korean ajummah in bright pink visor that we found sold at the gift shop. All she needs now is a flowered silk shirt, some linen pants, and some flesh-colored 4-inch platform sandals:

Korean traditional roof, called 기와 (ki-wa):
The Jindo-geh, native dog of Korea, designated a national treasure. It is extremely pure-bred and is guarded in the island of Jindo in South Korea. I'll be going there next week!!

Maddy petting a donkey:

Fire to keep mosquitos away:
A press to make Korean paper. We missed the korean papermaking workshop :-(
Performances!

Two girls of exactly equal weight stand on a seesaw and catapult each other straight up into the air (please do not try at home)

Rope walking- Impressive, because not only does the guy walk the rope and do tricks, but after walking every length of the rope, he leans on the wood and proceeds to make rowdy jokes to the audience~ (this is featured in the famous Korean movie 왕의 남자, or The King and the Clown)
Traditional Korean wedding. I couldn't catch the meaning of everything, but the bride and groom are presented a pair of wooden wild geese, 기러기--the birds mate once and stay together for their entire life and symbolize the enduring nature of marriage. They also drink alcohol from two halves of the same gourd and eat certain foods like chestnuts (to symbolize longevity).

Thursday night, somewhat broke after all of our touring, we decided to take advantage of free drinks all night at Helios Club in Itaewon for Ladies Night.
We paid zero won to hang out, drink a variety of cocktails, and dance the night away~~great deal!

It was neat to have so many people from different countries rubbing shoulders in Itaewon. Neat, but volatile. Sometimes interracial fights break out in Itaewon, and Helios that night made me see why.

The dance floor at Helios is pretty tiny, and was full that night-- the DJ puts "Walk it Out" on.. and four girls dressed in ghetto hip-hop apparel from head to toe try to push EVERYONE off the floor and start screaming, shoving, and hopping up and down on top of peoples' sandal-clad feet so that they can take up the middle third of the dance floor to "walk it out". They were getting in peoples' faces, were about twice as big and muscular as everyone else, cursed my friend out, and were the only black girls on the dance floor. The Korean girls just gave black girls a frightened look and scuttled away. Really, I was ashamed FOR those girls.. they're just making even more Koreans believe that all blacks are "scary" (a sentiment that I've heard from many Koreans considering studying abroad in America) or violent or ill-mannered--all so untrue. But you really can't blame Koreans if this is what they witness.

Of course, this is only 4 girls, but it's a sad truth that one bad incident sticks in peoples' memory more than many, many unremarkable ones...

Friday, July 27

We spent the day at the COEX mall window shopping and walking around, and afterwards went to O'Sullocs Cafe in Daehangro, which serves a variety of different green tea drinks and desserts.
I especially like the dark-wood and light green decorations, with a waterfall on one side of the restaurant:
We pored over the menu for awhile (the waitress had to come and go a few times) until we decided what we wanted:
Green tea walnut cheesecake and green tea tiramisu:
We also got a cold pear green-tea drink, which was amazing, refreshing, and not too sweet with bits of pear in it.

Dinner was one of the specialties of my area (Sinchon), dak galbi, or spicy chicken and vegetables barbecued at your table. We ordered it with a seafood mix-in (해물 사리) and a mix-in of rice that gets fried into a flat pancake with the rest of your sauce at the end of the meal:

Afterwards we went to Hongdae Club Night (by chance, my friends came to visit me on the last Friday of the month!), paying 15,000 won to get into all of the area clubs and a free drink coupon. We stayed pretty much around NB and club hooper, which was slightly less crowded than the ever-popular NB. No photos because I didn't, as usual, bring my camera clubbing, but we had a great time~ guys, see you over Thanksgiving break!

SEOUL IN A WEEK: the whirlwind tour - part 2 of 3

2007-07-30T07:57:00.000-04:00

Read SEOUL IN A WEEK: Part 1 of 3

Monday, July 23

We started off the second morning in Seoul somewhat American-ly. Starbucks red bean frappuccino-- a mix of Korea and America blended with some cream and ice~

Then we went to Namsan tower, highest point in Korea:

We decided to take a cable car up, and walk the stairs on our way down.
There was some kind of robot exhibition going on:
My favorite, a lion made of shredded car tires:

A somewhat foggy view of Seoul, but still cool~ On one of the observatories, the windows are labeled so that you can see which direction famous points in Seoul are.
We went to n Grill for tea and cake. N Grill is the restaurant at the very top of Namsan, reservation only and very expensivee.. The entire restaurant rotates so that you can see all of Seoul, 360 degrees, while eating your meal.
Stopping at an observatory on our way back down the numerous stairs, we got some people to take another photo for us :)

I think I would have melted if I tried to climb all these stairs UP to Namsan tower in the stifling humidity..

A fountain on the way down:

From the base of Namsan, we rode a bus that took us through City Hall and to Myeongdong, the bustling shopping district in Seoul.
Starving, we stopped for lunch at a Korean-Japanese restaurant:

I ordered ddukbokki, rice cake in this addictive spicy sauce.. it's also found at every street food stand in Seoul, fortunately. Here I dip dumplings, fishcakes, noodles, anything in the wonderfulll sauce.

Stir-fried udon, japanese noodle, topped with bonito flakes (dried fish) that wave around enticingly as the dish sizzles..

The best yogurt place in Myeongdong,
walls covered from ceiling to floor in Post-Its left by tourists all around the world:

They have soft ice cream YOGURT flavored--it's tangy and slightly sour and amazing. We ordered it twisted with mango ice cream.

We had time to come back to Sinchon for a quick shower, and then we headed out to Hongdae. Went to a bar called Asoka, very close to the Hongdae subway station, for watermelon and yogurt soju cocktails. The watermelon cocktail has real watermelon mixed into it, and the yogurt cocktail is... simply amazing.

First time that we've all been to a bar together, since Korean drinking age is 2 years less than in America, and all three of us are 20! Guys, you couldn't have visited at a better time ;)

In Korean bars, it's often expected that drinkers will order anjou, or drinking snacks. We got roasted fish and peanuts, with a spicy sauce and a buttery sauce:

It was really nice to just sit and sip.. talk and reminisce about middle school and high school, growing up and how we've changed so much and at the same time not at all. If someone had told me 5 years ago that I'd be in Korea, being able to speak Korean, and be confident doing all the things that I'm able to do now in Seoul, I wouldn't have believed them. And I wouldn't have even imagined that my two friends from Burlington would be in Seoul with me. Anyway, I'm happy and thankful with the way that things turned out, but like Marian pointed out, it's not just luck- we helped make our own fates happen. I'm proud of all three of us for working so hard to get to where we are now...

After the bar, we headed to norehbang, Korean karaoke room. Initially my friends were somewhat hesitant to go, and I later found out that they'd expected an American-style karaoke bar, with strangers listening to each other sing. Norehbang is very different-- you can reserve your own individual room for 10,000 to 20,000 won per hour, and your room is equipped with a large screen, two microphones and mike covers, a large floppy book full of songs, and tambourines for beating in time to the music. And yes, they have a full selection of American songs!!
Yes, it's Abba's Dancing Queen...

Tuesday, June 24
An animal filled day..

We went to breakfast at Dr. Fish Cafe in Sinchon.

The premise of the cafe may be a little too much for the squeamish. After you order your food and drinks, you take a nice relaxing foot bath.. Then you put your feet in a big pool at the center of the cafe..

And THEN you let little fish eat the dead skin off of your feet!
The fish come from China and were originally used to treat psoriasis.

It's a very strange sensation, having fish nibble on your feet... but somehow really refreshing! Afterwards we took another foot bath, this time with lavender oil, dried off our feet, and headed to the Seoul Grand Park Zoo!

Less than $3 to get in, but with an amazinngg array of animals and facilities,

Giraffes, my favorite:
Crossing a stream to visit the Insectarium:

We were lucky enough to be passing the kangaroo enclosure right before kangaroo feeding time! The kangaroo keepers let us in early so that we got to be alone in the enclosure feeding the kangaroos for half an hour!

Maddy and a dolphin water fountain:

And dinner... Korean fried chicken at Kyochon Chicken~!

Korean fried chicken is a completely different dish than KFC- it's freshly fried as soon as you order it, and flavored either with soy sauce and garlic or spicy sauce. It's also fried twice and more thinly so that it is crispier and lighter~~ and served with mild vinegary pickled radish that complements it perfectly!

We had our chicken with Korean Red Rock beer~

After dinner it suddenly began to rain hard, and we only had one umbrella between the three of us, so we went for shelter in a Board Game Cafe:

At board game cafes, you buy a drink and can choose from a catalogue of different games. We chose Clue, a game we hadn't played in years--the waitress had to dig up the English language instructions for us.
It was really nice to get out of the rain and sip our green tea lattes (Maddy got a honey tea latte) and hypothesize about who killed Mr. Boddy. Kinda made me miss being a kid.

Part 3... Biking on an island, a traditional Korean music performance, and Korean clubbing!

SEOUL IN A WEEK: the whirlwind tour - part 1 of 3

2007-07-29T10:49:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, three of my favorite things came to Seoul:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

On Saturday morning, Kaila and I went to Kyobo Bookstore in Gwanghwamun which opened at 9 AM sharp to sell a big stack of the seventh Harry Potter book to eager fans. The crowd was smaller than I expected, and we were able to start reading our new books by 9:30 AM :) Got a cozy armchair at Caribou Coffee in front of a fake fireplace and curled up to read for 3 hours...

Favorite things 2 and 3. My friends Marian and Maddy all the way from Jersey!

My friends' flight got in around dinnertime, so we took the airport limousine bus from Incheon Airport back to Sinchon just in time for a delicious dinner-- Korean barbecue for only 3,500 won per person and fruit-topped yogurt at the local Milky Road.

Sunday, July 22:

The next morning, we went to visit what is considered the most beautiful palace in Seoul-- Changdeokgung. We went on the first English tour of the day, at 11:30 AM.

In front of the palace entrance:

Waiting for the tour to start...

Our tour guide leads the way through the first gate,

The roofs of the palace buildings:

Throne:
Hole-y windows allow for ventilation in the heat...

Changdeokgoong is unique because it works the natural scenery of the area into its architecture. Ponds, trees, and stone harmonize with the structure and placement of palace buildings. On the Changdeokgoong tour you can also see Biwon, or "Secret Garden".

The "gate of eternity": our tour guide told us that those who walk through the gate will live forever ^^;

Palace guardians on top of the palace roofs. Korean versions of gargoyles, but in our tour guide's opinion, much "cuter".

End of tour. With a final "감사합니다!", we were off to the next stop, nearby Insadong!

Insadong is in walkable distance from Chandeokgoong and is a long street with tons of vendors and traditional shops. The road is closed to cars on the weekend, meaning even more shoppers, vendors, and activities:

Great place for souvenirs; you can shop around because a lot of the shops sell the same things (at sometimes different prices), and Insadong's muuuuccch cheaper than most other tourist gift shops.

The famous Korean celadon, pottery made with a special light green glaze that makes fine crackles on the ceramic surface..

Marian buying a celadon mug to bring home:

Han-ji, special Korean paper. It's handmade paper made from the mulberry tree that resists humidity and pressure, and lasts for over a thousand years. Here it's sold in a variety of patterns:

Lanterns in a side alley:

A mysterious man with an elaborate sign.. not sure who he is? But a lot of passersby stopped to stare.

We stopped for some cold traditional tea at Old Tea Shop, a place that attracted our interest because we'd heard that it had live peacocks and monkeys inside!

Once we went inside, no peacocks or monkeys were evident, but there WERE great decorations and little birds flying all along the ceiling:
We decided to sit in a traditional booth, with floor cushions instead of chairs. We took a look at the mysterious book lying in the corner.

It turned out to be a guest-log, so we took a pen and left a memo on the han-ji. Maybe it'll still be there in 1,000 years!

(Below) We ordered cold pear tea and jujube tea (made of dates),
omijacha, five-flavor tea, (the orange drink below) which was somehow sour, sweet, and spicy at the same time. It is made from berries from the Chinese magnolia tree.

I ordered my favorite, sujongwa, a cinnamon punch (I have a weakness for cinnamon... unfortunately there is no cinnamon gum to be found in Seoul). You can also taste ginger in it. Mine came with a dried persimmon at the bottom.

We also got complimentary rice cakes and puffed rice snacks. Yum!

The bathroom came equipped with a heated toilet bowl and... fish in a stone bowl at your feet.

Cool, refreshed, and ready to head back out into the crowded street:

After walking around Insadong some more and shopping, we went to have hanjungshik for dinner. Hanjungshik is a traditional Korean meal with maaaanny courses. The restaurant we went to is my one of my favorites. It's called Jahamun and is an ordeal to find. Not located near any subway stations, and according to our taxi driver, having erroneous directions on its website. If you want to go, go to Gyeongbokgoong subway station and take a taxi for about 20 minutes (our driver had to call the restaurant from my cell phone for directions).

We ordered the 38,000 won/person meal (their most popular set), which consisted of 18 different dishes! We got to eat the same things that the former royalty of Korea ate... Here are a few:

Seasoned chicken wrapped in eggplant:
Sashimi that came with the traditional Japanese wasabi-soy sauce OR Korean spicy sauce for dipping:

Korean mini savory pancakes..

Stuffed prawns:
Seasoned ox-tail:
Banchan, Korean side dishes, and a special bean paste to eat with rice:

Maddy demonstrating her excellent metal-chopstick abilities.

For dessert we got rice cakes with red bean and walnuts in them, and sujeonggwa, the cinnamon punch, to my delight (sujeonggwa twice in one day!).

Our waitress had to explain all the dishes to us. We also got her to take a photo of us and the table laden heavy with Korean food.
The restaurant was nice enough to phone a taxi to pick us up directly from the restaurant, and let us take our bamboo rice bowls home as souvenirs :) The rice we ate contained dates and chestnuts, and was steamed and served in hollow cylinders of bamboo.

Bellies and brains full of new Korean foods and names, we headed back to Sinchon.

Next day-- Namsan Tower, the highest point in Korea, shopping in Myeongdong, Korean soju bar, and karaoke!

Conflagrations and Pumpkins in Sinchon

2007-07-19T10:02:00.000-04:00

The first fire I've witnessed in Korea had to be right next to where I live :(

On Wednesday evening, I was randomly walking past the street I live on on the way to dinner with a language partner and a friend, when we saw a huge crowd gathered up ahead of us.

Everyone had their cell phone cameras out and was snapping shots, trying to get closer in, so I thought they were watching some kind of street performance.

Nope.

Just fascinated by burning buildings.

Eventually someone called the fire station, and the police tried (in vain) to shoo the crowd away.

화재: fire, conflagration
구조: rescue
구급: first aid

To my knowledge, no one was hurt, although 3 stores, a clothes shop, a ramen restaurant, and a norehbang (karaoke room) were destroyed.

노래왕

24-hour ramyun

Firefighter!

The cause of the fire turned out to be an electrical wire that exploded and caught fire. My goshitel building is next to the wire that caught fire, so we got our power shut off for a few hours while the cables were replaced.

On a lighter note, dinner that night was really interesting-- Korean food in squash bowls!

The restaurant served all of its food in edible cooked squash halves-- it's in the side street towards Yonsei past Sinchon Rotary:

낙지 볶음, spicy octopus, in squash. The sweet squash flesh is supposed to counteract the tear-inducing spiciness of the octopus.

호박죽, or squash porridge, in squash bowl. Sweet, warm and filling!

Volunteering at Good Neighbor Clinic

2007-07-15T06:24:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I make the incredibly arrogant mistake of thinking of Korea as a monorace society with some Americans, Canadians, and gyopos mixed in. I never really think of the presence of other minorities, aside from the weekend Filipino market in Daehangro or the Indian men who sell earrings on the streets.

Hyehwa Station: weekend Filipino market

Foreign migrant workers are a silent but significant presence in Seoul. In Korea's monorace society, they make up 50% of the foreign population. On top of that, 65% of all foreign workers in Korea are in the nation illegally. Most come from the Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

It's practically impossible for these illegal migrant workers to get adequate health care in Korea--not only are they unable to afford expensive medical treatment, but they can't get any type of health insurance because of their illegal status, and employers often take advantage of them by further lowering their meager wages.

Good Neighbor Clinic is a free clinic for migrant workers in Korea that helps remedy this problem. I went there to volunteer today:

The clinic is held on Sundays at Gyeongdong Church (경동 교회) at Dongdaemun Stadium station. This clinic is unique in that not only does it offer free health care and drugs, but also offers a barber shop in the basement, free lunch, a place for patients to sit and rest, and clothing.

When I arrived, patients were standing outside waiting for treatment. Meanwhile, I went through the orientation and training session for volunteers, where I learned that although offered by Gyeongdong Church, the free clinic is unique in that it doesn't pressure its patients nor its volunteers to convert or attend church services, which I found impressive. (Also, I was surprised by how much of the 2 hour lecture--all in Korean--I found myself being able to understand!)

Good Neighbor Clinic is held only on Sundays, the only day of rest for many Koreans. Most of the doctors and directors who volunteer only have Sundays off their regular workweeks, and so sacrifice 2 of the 4 days a month that they have off to work at the clinic. In fact, the clinic was based on the passage of the Bible where Jesus healed the shriveled hand of a man on the Sabbath, despite the Pharisees' disapproval. One patient from Vietnam that I saw today, who injured his hand working at a sock factory comes to mind...

I volunteered in the main treatment room escorting patients to and from different stations (surgery, injections, blood treatment, pharmacy, etc.):
I also got to listen to the doctors (my station was Surgery) diagnose patients and prescribe treatments, really good language experience since everything was in Korean.

I had worried that my lack of fluency in Korean would be a problem, but it ended up not being an issue because the most of the patients weren't fluent in Korean either. The clinic encourages volunteers to take a personal interest in patients, and I was able to talk to the patients about their home countries and their lives. I was impressed while conversing with patients who worked and lived in Korea without fully knowing Korean--they were skilled at working around the gaps in their language ability and communicating! A valuable skill for any language learner, since no matter how long you study a language, there'll always be a time when some inventive groping for the right term will come in useful.

COEX Mall and Exhibition Hall

2007-07-15T05:10:00.000-04:00

I love COEX. Out of shopping areas in Seoul, it probably doesn't compare in cultural and historic value to colorful, bustling districts like Myeongdong, Dongdaemun, or Namdaemun. No random street vendors or winding side roads of hole-in-the-wall stoors here...

But it's a welcome break from the frenziedness of Seoul. COEX is:

(a) not crowded to the maximum,
(b) has (relatively) wide walkways,
(c) is indoors and air-conditioned,
(d) has a mall DIRECTORY -- e.g. no searching fruitlessly for a particular store or restaurant, (e) once, someone actually said "excuse me" to me after bumping into me,
(f) has cute clothes! that are pretty good quality but not as strangely expensive as in department stores, [it's weird to me that you can buy a winter coat off the street for 10,000 won ($10) but a similar looking coat for 250,000 won ($250) at Hyundai Department store]
(g) **it has an exhibition hall upstairs that has cool events**

On Thursday COEX exhibition hall had a Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Market that I haaaad to go to because I am constantly craving fruit here. I miss my hometown Produce Junction (South Jersey phenomenon?) with its big $1 bags of peaches, plums, grapes, melons, etc that come straight off the farm. Unfortunately for me, Korea is the land of the $15 cantaloupe :(

Anyway, the exhibition turned out to have a lot more than just fruit and vegetables; it more like a farmer's market. There was a 3,000 won ($3) entrance fee, and the exhibition hall was upstairs from the mall:

Inside were rows and rows of stalls... Same as at any farmer's market, a giant pumpkin was on display:A cow farm had a stall where you could try different flavored milks and yogurts. I'm in love with Korean dairy product! Whenever I stay in Seoul I end up drinking milk or yogurt at least every day, more than I ever do in America, just because it's so so good here. Here they had walnut, blueberry, and strawberry flavors:

Kaila and Presca investigating the handmade soap bars..

Beautiful velvety black mushrooms:

Rice arranged in baskets at a stand opened by a local rice paddy:

Locally grown aloe:

Prettily displayed vegetables:

Everyone looking a little shell-shocked from the sheer amount of stuff to SEE here:

South Korean tomatoes... I prefer South JERSEY tomatoes though.

In Korea, tomatoes are viewed as fruit, and are often served sliced with sugar. This could explain the Korean phenomenon of sweet ketchup and sugary tomato sauce that's served on top of pizza and pasta in restaurants all across the country:

One stand let you try dwenjang and kochujang (soy bean paste and red pepper paste), staples of Korean cuisine:

Strangely, there was a giant Dole stand that was offering cooking classes to a long line of eager people:

Artsy stuff at the exhibition ranged from random things like statues made out of sawdust,

microcosms of clay,

and lanyards (remember the ones that were so popular 10 years ago in elementary school?) and mobiles:

and more practical things like tiles to make walls for your house and looms for Korean cloths and mats

The exhibition also featured live ANIMALS!

A stand set up by some type of organization dealing with efficiently using insects on farms featured live Korean bees--check out this video:

Ducklings and bunnies, but enclosed by no fence! I watched in horror as one little boy proceeded to hit all the rabbits and ducklings with a balloon, as his mother watched indulgently...
I swear this one bunny was posing for me.. as soon as I took out the camera it wouldn't stop staring :)

Something called (I kid you not) an oompa loompa (우파루파, scientific name ambystoma mexicanum):

Chameleon: Big headed characters dressed up in Korean traditional clothing that I took pictures with after getting dressed up:

Although I've been to COEX many times, this was my first time seeing an exhibition there. I highly recommend! Here is a schedule of their events. Right now there are several exhibitions going on, including a Robot Exhibition and a Fairy Tale themed one.

Cultural lessons from my Sogang language teachers

2007-07-03T10:26:00.000-04:00

---------------------------- Sogang University campus in Sinchon, Seoul

For the most part, on weekday mornings I look forward to walking to Sogang campus, grabbing some breakfast, and going to Korean class. We're always discussing an interesting topic--today the issue was genetic engineering. We started off by watching a clip of The Island in Korean. I didn't know, but the Island was really popular in Korea, much more than it was in America, because of Korean scientists' research with cloning. We ended the lesson with an hour-long structured debate on the societal pros and cons of genetic engineering (with many of the Japanese students being confused--they said that they hadn't had any experience with debating in high school).

It's really nice how my Sogang teachers are always willing to explain aspects of Korean society to us. A couple things that I've always wondered about, that my teachers have given me some insight on:

1. What's up with "Korean time" (being soooooo late)? I often have to add 30 minutes to the time that I was supposed to meet a Korean person... and when I'm late they don't seem to mind at all!

My question was prompted by a lesson that we read on old Korean customs. In the past, Korean government workers were whipped 20 times if they were LATE arriving to work or left work early. However, they were only whipped 10 times if they missed work completely that day. This resulted in many Korean government workers not showing up to work at all. (The reason for this seemingly unreasonable law was to maintain discipline by not having stragglers show up late.)

Anyway, after I read this fact I was confused by the apparent contradiction... I'd always seen Korea as a culture that didn't place particular value on punctuality. My teacher agreed with me about "Korean time"--although Seoul society is often 빨리빨리 (fast fast!), Koreans generally have a relaxed attitude towards meeting times. This is what she said:

"A long time ago when Korean farmers said that they'd meet, they told each other, 'I'll come over to meet with you when the sun hits the top of that tree.' Of course, the time that the sun hits a certain tree is different depending on where your vantage point is. The meeting time was subjective. And so the farmers got used to sitting outside relaxing and waiting for their neighbor to come over.

Objective ways of keeping time were first made by Western society. Westerners started using clocks widely before Koreans did. So they got used to setting an exact time to meet and keeping their appointment. So even though now we have had clocks for a long time in Korea, I think that the traditional attitude about time as a subjective concept still remains."

Thanks 말하기 선생님! Thinking about it this way actually makes me less annoyed at having to wait a little--I'll chalk it up to tradition rather than inconsideration.

2. Why do Koreans like sad movies so much? And sad dramas--the hero or heroine always seems to have an incurable disease or a tragic secret.

In video class we started to watch a movie called 팔월의 크리스마스 (Christmas in August) where the hero suffers from a terminal illness. While watching the movie, video teacher advised us to look for the deeper meaning in all of the scenes and dialogue. Don't just take the lines at face value, she told us, because everything contributes to the theme of the movie.

In the same way, she told us that many foreign students studying Korean complain about how melodramatic Korean TV and movies are. "Why is everyone crying? Why does everyone have a disease? Why is there so much tragedy?" they always ask her. "Korean movies are too sad!!"

"There is a lot of sadness in the Korean people. It is because of the division of the country--because of the creation of North Korea and South Korea, many people were separated forever from their families and home towns.

My grandfather was from North Korea but he was in Seoul when he found out that he would not be allowed to return to North Korea. I remember how he used to cry every New Years when others would return to their homes to celebrate, because he could never return to his home. He never saw his mother, father, or brothers and sisters again.

The sadness in Korean movies expresses the deep sadness of the Korean people. Next time you complain that Korean movies are too sad, think about how you would feel if someone told you that you could never return to your home country."

-- 비디오 선생님 (who is, by the way, also an amazing actress!)

Beating the Seoul Heat

2007-06-25T05:43:00.001-04:00

Seoul can get crazily overheated.. so overheated that Koreans have developed numerous ways to stay cool; cold foods like patbingsoo and naengmyun, and also 얼큰한 soups (foods that are piping hot and spicy but somehow refreshing at the same time) like boshintang, seafood soups, and other peppery stews.

But when it gets unbearably hot, the best way to escape the heat is simply to go somewhere cooler. This Saturday I sought out the coldest places in Seoul...

Attached to Lotte Department Store at Jamsil subway stop on Line 2 is a big ice skating rink, the biggest one in Korea:

It's surrounded by restaurants, cafes, shops, and arcades. You pay for entrance and to rent skates (they can convert your American or European shoe size to the Korean size). You can also buy a pair of one-size-fits-all gloves in various colors (I got pink) for 500 won. Go after 6 PM and ladies over 20 years old with a partner get 50% off admission!

Funnily enough, the best skaters on the ice were the oldest! My favorite was a diminutive ajummah in a bright purple floral shirt who gracefully skated circles around young couples.

The ice rink is cool without being too chilly, a plus if you're coming in from the sweltering outdoors wearing just shorts and a t-shirt. Normally, a huge round window on the ceiling lets light in, but when I went on Saturday it was covered up with tarp. Lotte World, the attached amusement park, is undergoing renovation right now-- I hear that someone died last year on a ride, and there have been problems with injuries and so forth...

Another great place to go to beat the heat, especially in the evening, is Chung-gae-chun. Get off at Gwanghwamun Station and walk straight till you get to a huge snail shell with water flowing out of it.

Chung-gae-chun used to be a large road, but was converted into a loooong stream with walkways and trees. The water is chilly and fast-flowing, and lots of people sit on the side of the stream to dangle their tired feet in the water. Take a look at this video:

It's a great place to bring a picnic snack or a few drinks and chat with friends while enjoying the cool breeze :) Being surrounded by college students in Sinchon where I live (and college students in New Haven), gives me a somewhat skewed perception of Koreans. It's easy to start to generalize from Sinchon and say Seoul-ites are all fashionable, slender, and young. Chungaechun, of course, had its share of dating couples, but it was nice to rub shoulders with the rest of the population... rambunctious families, young children trying to paddle in the water, and elderly couples.

Deciphering the Korean Text Message

2007-06-17T05:50:00.000-04:00

My first time I went for a ride on the Korean subway I was surprised to see tons of young people with bowed heads and madly moving thumbs teeeextting away.

It's a huge part of the culture, but unfortunately learning how to read Korean text messages (문자) is not a standard part of Korean language class.

Some things that I eventually learned:

1. Laughing...
ㅋ ㅋ = kekekeke, cute laugh
ㅎㅎ = hahahaha

2. Sounds of happiness and complaint
잉 = eeeeeng... whining
음냐 = umnyah.. i want mommy!
냠냠쩝쩝 = yum yum chomp chomp .. this tastes good!

3. Abbreviating
Abbreviation happens a lot, just like in American text messages.. here are a few examples
난 = 나는 (I)
알써 = 알았어 (okay; got it)
이젠 = 이제는 (now)

4. Emoticons
ㅠ.ㅠ = crying face
(^_^) = normal happy face
^^ = happy face abbreviated
^.~ = wink!
-_- = disgusted/bored face
^^;; = sweating face
*^_^* = blushing face!

5. Flexible (wrong) spelling
구 =고 (and)
basically any word that when spoken, sounds different from the way it is actually spelled, might be spelled differently in a text msg

Trying to look up words and expression that didn't exist in the dictionary drove me crazy at first, but once I learned to just read text messages as though someone was speaking aloud to me, I was just fine.

PS~ If you have a prepaid foreigner's "Card Phone" like me you'll be relying on text messages as your major method of communication- very cheap compared to making phone calls!

Women: What You'll Need in Korea

2007-06-10T11:22:00.000-04:00

It's always hard to figure out what goes in the suitcase and what stays at home before going on a long trip. I think it's even more complicated for females though--toiletries, clothes, and shoes can take up a ton of luggage room! Girls, when you're traveling to Korea, keep a few things in mind. Seoul, particularly the college districts, is packed with stores selling makeup, toiletries, and trendy clothes. However, some stuff is better quality in America; other things are better bought in Korea.. here's a comparison:

What to Pack: Things to bring from home
- Comfortable shoes: the most important thing, for me at least. Last year I made the mistake of buying most of my summer shoes in Korea =( You'll be doing a large amount of walking in Seoul, and the last thing you want is chafed, blistered feet while running up and down the stairs to the subway. Many shoes sold here are rough on the feet and scanty on foot-padding, so try to bring your most comfortable shoes from home, and shop for shoes that feel good on your feet before you come to Korea. I found that it's practical to bring 2 pairs of comfy high-heeled shoes in different colors, a pair of sneakers, a pair of comfortable flip flops (flip-flops are not that commonly worn here though), and a pair of comfy flats.
Another note: if your shoes break while you're here, you can visit a 수선, or shoe repair shop. These are little shacks that can be found on the street, the man inside will fix your shoes for a reasonable price--usually from 3,000 to 6,000 won (USD $3-$6) depending on what you need done.

- Makeup: yes, there are tons of makeup stores in Seoul. However, for concealers, powders, and foundations, stores sell very limited shades. They are pale and mostly yellow-based, so I'd recommend bringing your own if you are tanned or not Asian.

- Sunscreen: it can be very expensive here, and sometimes a bit too oily; if you have a preferred brand from home, bring it! On the other hand, high high SPF sunscreens are easily found in Korean stores.

- Bras and underwear: a lot of lingerie store only sell cup sizes A and B, and no matter what size you buy, it's pretty likely that your bra will feel as stiff as 2 coconut shells tied together. Bring that comfy Calvin Klein bra from home! Underwear selection is also limited, and thongs can be difficult to find.

- Pain reliever: many pain relievers are not as strong in Korea, so if you rely on your Advil or Tylenol then bring a bottle with you

- Sturdy clothes: there's definitely a "quality gap" with Korean clothes--good quality clothes are expensive in Korea, usually found in upscale department stores, while the cheap ones off the street will fall apart quickly. Another problem with buying clothes in Korea is that often when you come back home, you'll end finding them a bit too fobby to wear at home.

- Clothes that fit: if you wear size L in American clothes (or size 8+), it can be difficult to find clothes unless you go to Itaewon's special "big clothes" stores. I recommend bringing most of your wardrobe with you!

- Big fluffy bath towel: If you like wrapping yourself a nice big towel when you get out of the shower, bring one. The Korean version of a bath towel is a super-absorbent cloth that's about a fifth of the size of bath towels here.

- Deodorant: not much variety, kinda expensive here

- Nalgene: Take good care of your skin and drink lots of water! You'll be sweating a lot and Nalgenes are guaranteed to not break.

- Your nice handbags and wallets :) Coach, Gucci, and other brand names are super expensive here! And since most women dress up, you'll want to be carrying your nice-looking handbags.

What to Leave: Things it's better to buy once you arrive
- Skin care: Products such as face wash, lotion, and toner are great in Korea. There's a wide variety and most places give out tons of free samples so that you can try what you like best. Shops including the Face Shop, Innis Free, and Etude House sell very reasonably priced skin care products that have extracts of things such as green tea, honey, and all different kinds of fruit--definitely worth trying.

- Nail polish, lip gloss: don't worry about bringing these. The above stores will have them in every possible color of the rainbow! The quality is also pretty good--nail polish doesn't chip too badly and lip gloss is non-sticky. (You can also try makeup products in-store at most of these places--everywhere is kind of like Sephora ^_^ )

- Sponge/scrubber: Italy towels here are great! They're little green scrubby cloths with a pocket. You put your hand inside the pocket, put some soap on the towel, and scrub yourself clean in the shower; it's a great body exfoliator. Found in convenience stores like GS24 or Family Mart, and also jjimjilbangs (Korean sweat / bath- houses)

- Stationery and letter-writing supplies: Pretty stationery is popular here, especially among school-aged and college girls! Stores like Alpha Stationery and Artbox sell tons of cute writing papers, pens and pencils in a variety of colors, notebooks, and desk supplies. You might even want to bring some home for friends before heading back.

- Most toiletries like contact lens solution, shampoo, tampons, and pads can be found at drugstores and makeup stores here, as long as you're not picky about brand. Don't weigh your luggage down! The store Olive Young has a comprehensive selection of these toiletries.

- As a last resort, if you can't find what you need, try going to the district around Ewha College, a well-known women's university in Seoul. The place is packed with clothes, makeup, hair, and accessory stores.

New stuff to try and old stuff to reexperience

2007-05-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

Top 5 things I want to try this summer:

1. A Buddhist Temple

Jogyesa Temple or Bogeunsa Temple

2. A Mud Fight!

Boryeong Mud Festival (보령머드축제)
Goes from July 14 to July 22 on Daecheon Beach. Mega mud tub, mud slide, mud soaps, etc. Supposed to be good for the skin (they sell mud cosmetics there too). Lonely Planet also says something about a "Mr Mud and Ms Mud" contest, haha.

3. A Korean West Coast Beach

Daecheon Beach
Described in the Lonely Planet Korea as "the best beach on the west coast" and the "Las Vegas of Korea"
Features a Mud House and tons of fresh seafood restaurants... a good place to try sannakji (산낙지), literally live octopus. Supposed to be so fresh that it moves around in your mouth while you chew!

4. A Rail Trip around South Korea

Korea Rail has a 3 day unlimited rail pass which I'm planning to get to see the West coast and central area of South Korea. Maybe I'll even get to stay in the 지방, or countryside

5. Waterfalls

Baekundong Valley

Top 5 things I've missed from last summer:

1. Mokyoktang
Korean bath and sauna. Nothing makes you feel quite as clean as sweating like a pig for an hour and then plunging in cold water. Cool floors to take naps on and healthy refreshments like misugaru (a cold drink made from grain) and miyukgook (seaweed soup) make the experience even better.

2. Norehbang
Korean karaoke. Ubiquitous: you can find a sign saying 노래방 every block in Sinchon.

3. Soju, barbecue, and Hongdae club night
Rice liquor, roasted meat, and dancing to Korean hiphop... The three are inextricably linked.

4. Milky Road
The best patbingsoo in Seoul

5. Class at Sogang ( nerd :) )

I miss vocab games and in-depth conversations about random topics in Korean!

Tourist Stuff

It's funny how much of the touristy attractions I didn't see last summer---

Gyeongbok palace/National folk museum

Namsan park/Seoul Tower

Chongdong Theatre

Hangang Park

Fortunately my friends will be visiting for one week in July, during my Korean language program's vacation. I'll be showing them around Seoul, and seeing some of the museums/palaces/traditional performances for the first time as well. Seoul in 1 week? It's gonna be intense.

VIT: Understanding the Shame

2007-04-20T12:23:00.000-04:00

Like everyone else, my first reaction when I heard about Virginia Tech was shock, followed by worry and empathy for victims.

However, my emotions became more complicated when a day and a half later, I found out that the shooter was Korean. Like many Korean Americans, I couldn't help but feel shame and distress, feeling somehow implicated in the incident. In fact, I felt slightly sick knowing that all that carnage was caused by a Korean. Illogical? YES. But it was a natural reaction mirrored by many Korean Americans:

"I think we, as the Korean-American community, hold responsibility to a certain degree," Joseph Juhn said.

"I hope the mainstream American society at large would understand how sorry we feel." - Park Young Sup, president of the Korean Community Center in Doraville.

Objectively, this makes no sense. Why are Koreans apologizing? As Adrian Hong wrote in the Washington Post, Koreans aren't to blame!

Part of the reaction can be attributed to highly collectivist Asian culture, the ingrained emphasis on family and community. It resulted in emotional distress among the ethnic community after the incident, which Cho Seung-Hui's parents felt even more intensely (they were hospitalized for shock). The Virginia Tech shooting was especially highly publicized in the South Korean media. Many Korean officials expressed their apology and regret for the incident.

Much of the emotion, however, can be linked to the the model minority stereotype in America. As stereotypes go, it seems more positive than most. In fact, the image of the intelligent, hard-working, moral Asian is embraced by many Korean American households. Think Ivy League.. think i-banking and med school... Harold Lee in the movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Personally, I grew up with cut-outs of news articles featuring Korean Americans' achievements on the fridge. and always had the vague sense that my high school and middle school academic successes were somehow adding to the prestige of the Korean American community.

Rather than trying to fight stereotype like many groups do, Asian Americans have embraced the idea of a model minority. The result is a strengthening of the assumption that every Korean is representative of Koreans in general. And Cho Seung-Hui, as a mentally unstable Virginia Tech gunner, now stands in the way of the ideal of the professional-career, church-going, compliant Asian.

Maybe it's time we got rid of the model minority stereotype anyway. The assumption that all Asians are anger-less, mentally healthy individuals seems to be a factor in Cho Seung-Hui's inadequate mental health treatment and his subsequent rampage. If any racial implications are to be drawn from the event, the episode has shown that the desire to appear a flawless minority in American society combined with the Korean stigma of mental disorders can have disastrous results.

No matter how positive it may be, the model minority stereotype needs to be de-emphasized, especially by the Asian American community itself. We need to accept that all races have their murderers, their mentally ill, their smart, and their dumb. Even Koreans.

Summer 2007 in KOREA

2007-02-25T20:12:00.000-05:00

Just found out that I'll be receiving the Light Fellowship again this summer to study in Seoul!

Another summer of amazingness.

Last summer--randomly finding my way around Seoul, doing all the tourist-y things, learning how to use the subway--was great (although I really could have done without getting lost trying to find Rodeo Drive in the rain and seeing lots of naked people in mokyoktang!) , but this summer I'd really like to ..

- look into getting a roomier place in Sinchon

- volunteer at a care center, or with a support group

- get FLUENT in korean .. do all my hw for sogang class ;)

- maybe get a nicer cell phone? one of those snazzy korean ones with a built in korean-english dictionary, perhaps..
the LG chocolate in white is soooo nice! although obviously way out of my budget

- eat and drink a ton... (obviously)
although so far me trying to make korean food in my dorm room has actually been working. an attempt to make kimchi chigae is gonna happen before spring break (somehow I managed to get real kimchi from Koreatown in NYC to New Haven)
=P sooo smelly.. but soooo satisfying

and my two amazing friends from burlington are gonna come and visit me for a week too ^^

~ jane

Leaving Tomorrow.. T.T

2006-08-24T09:23:00.000-04:00

Getting up earlier than I have this entire summer -- 4:30 AM!! -- in order to take the airport shuttle from Seoul to Inchon, and then fly to Japan -- transfer --- and Chicago --- transfer -- and FINALLY NEW JERSEY!

Leaving Korea =(
it was definitely the most memorable trip of my life, but at the same time I'm looking forward to going back~

Things I'll Miss from Seoul
- being with halmunee, aunts, cousins, uncles who are all so completely comfortable with each other and spend long periods of time sitting on a hardwood floor joking and eating fruit
- chunsa classroom at Sogang; hearing Japanese-accented Korean, discussing things like "explaining directions" and "eating boshintang" for hours
- eating ddukbokki/ramen/kimbahp/chigae for like $3 at 4 AM
- crass Korean jokes that are nonetheless hilarious
- sparkling clean floors
- Korean barbecue + soju, a perfect combination
- NOREHBANG!
- having everything be little and cute, from stationary to kitchen appliances
- going to a restaurant and finishing everything in my plate without feeling pregnant
- hongdae club night
- working up a sweat in jjeemjeelbang, Korean sauna

Things I Miss in America
- understanding everything that is said around me (at least if it's in English)
- actually seeing people who do NOT have pale skin, dark hair, and Asian features
- hearing ebonics
- home family =)
- friends =]
- clothes in non-pastel or fluorescent colors that don't fall apart after 1 washing
- DRYING MACHINES
- pancakes. fatty breakfast foods like bacon and eggs, especially from Cracker Barrel
- driving
- shopping without having the salespeople tail me.. actually, American shopping malls
- COMFORTABLE SHOES
- fake Chinese food- eg, lo mein, general tso's chicken
- inches, yards, pounds, miles.. not having to convert units in my head

Boshintang: Dog Meat Stew

2006-08-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

So I've managed to be in Seoul for two months without seeing, trying, or catching the faintest whiff of the meat that Korea is notorious for.... DOG.
At the urging of Foster, who was eager to try it, we finally went to a boshintang restaurant today for dinner.

Discreetly nestled between a Japanese restaurant and a small cafe, the "보신탕" sign was easy to find, but also easy for queasy-stomached foreigners to avoid.
And a mere two minute walk from our goshitel in Sinchon!

We got to the restaurant, which specialized in boshintang and other summer dishes. I ordered samgyetang, a boiled chicken soup in which the chicken is stuffed with sweet rice, dates, and ginseng.

Foster stuck with the boshintang, along with an entire table of Korean men who ordered the same.

Boshintang is especially popular with Korean men in the summer because it is supposed to increase virility (South Korean men world's busiest lovers).

The boshintang smelled strongly of pepper and sesame leaf (ket-neep).

The actual meat resembled beef, except that it had pieces of skin still attached to it. And the stew came with a dipping paste for the meat.

According to Foster, the meat tastes like roast beef, but more tender and stringy.

I think he liked it.

Because he ate it all.

$9 a bowl.. try it if you're brave enough.

last week in korea =,(

2006-08-15T08:24:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I only have 9 days left here...
unbelievably sad, but at the same time excited for AMERICA~~ American speech, clothes, people.

Anyway, haven't updated for a while--parents and sister came to visit for a week!! Nonstop eating, traveling, meeting up with parents' old friends, and family.

Especially family.
For my entire life, I'd never spoken to or seen anyone related to my mom.... All of her family lived in Seoul and spoke only Korean. We finally got to meet, over a 6-hour dinner at my grandmother's house near Seoul National University.

It was the first time in our lives for my sister and I, and the first time in almost 30 years for my mother.

Meeting my (adorable) grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins for the first time was an experience I'll never forget. I'm so thankful that I could come to Korea this year, and discover family that I never knew I had.

"Subway Line 1", a critique of Korean society

2006-08-10T02:56:00.000-04:00

Watched the Korean music 지하철1호선, or Subway Line 1, at the Hakchon Green Theater in Daehangro, Seoul last night. Daehangro is the theatre district of Seoul (and if you're interested, has a huge Filipino market every Sunday afternoon).

"Subway Line 1" follows the quest of a Chinese gyopo called Angel, a Korean girl who has been raised in China.

She comes to Seoul for the first time in order to search for a man who came to China and got her pregnant. (The play makes frequent allusions to the Korean folk tale of the woodcutter and the angel.)
Angel sees everything in Seoul with the eyes of an outsider, and as you can tell from the title, the play focuses on the hub of Seoul culture, the SUBWAY.

Because road traffic in Seoul is so bad, everyone in Seoul has to take the subway system at one point or another, whether they like it or not. The play satirizes a wide variety of characters, teenaged schoolchildren, alcoholics, the homeless, army guys, harried mothers, uncontrolled children, desperate housewives..

My particular favorites were the ancient grandmother who launched a 15 minute exposition on healthy poop (this aspect of Korean culture is so true!!), and the group of old, rich widowed ajummahs who were forced to take the subway instead of their usual taxi to catch the latest big department store sale:

(^^ these are all men dressed up as women, by the way)

The ubiquitous pojangmatchas, street carts which sell foods like ddukbokki and soondae.

Act one is hilarious, and act two ends on a tragic but thought-provoking note.
Won't say who dies.. go see for yourself!
By the way, if you're American, you'll find the American parody of the news program in Act 2 pretty interesting ;)

Korean "Summer Dress Code"

2006-08-04T21:49:00.001-04:00

Now that the swelteringly hot weather of Korean August has arrived, the newspapers have been putting out articles about dressing for the heat.
Let me rephrase "dressing for the heat". Dressing to avoid offending people, despite the heat.

From the Korea Times, "Dress Properly, or Don’t Complain of Stares".
By Korean college student Park Yu-rie.

She complains that every day, " A naked leg is plastered on my leg. Another naked arm is stuck on my arm."
Naked leg. E.g. leg in shorts or skirt. Obscene, the nakedness of a female leg.
Not to speak of the fantasies that men have of naked arms.
She continues, "And once again, I close my eyes as to avert my vision from staring at the nakedness. "
Every time I see someone's arm exposed in a t-shirt or tank top, it makes me feel faint as well. Right. This girl had better not go to a mokyoktang (Korean public bath), she'd be scarred for life.

A slightly more useful article, from the Chosunilbo: Summer Fashion No-No's and How to Avoid Them. I completely agree with the "No"'s, particularly:
- "panties visible over a pair of low-rise pants -- plus, for good measure, some excessive flab around the tummy. "
...popularly called muffin tops in America, as shown below

- "wearing shirts so tight they show the shape of your nipples; wearing just a vest without anything inside it."
Men, this is just gross.
- "staggering around in 10 cm wedge heels when you can’t cross the street in time"
Though I have to admit that Korean women are pretty good at running in high heels.

The article also says that, "for men, wearing T-shirts with armpits soaked or discolored with perspiration" is a No, and informs us that "there are sweat-absorbing pads to be attached around armpits available on the market." Wow, having pads strapped to your armpits seems uncomfortable... ever heard of a thing called deodorant?

"Gwoemul", or "The Host"

2006-08-02T07:02:00.000-04:00

I'm generally not a fan of "Godzilla" monster type movies.

But with all the hype about the Korean-made movie "Gwaemul", its breaking of Korean box office records, and its international popularity at the Cannes Film Festival in France (it was called "the hottest title at this year's Cannes Film Festival"), I decided to give it a try.

It was my first time in a Korean movie theater watching a Korean movie.. no subtitles!

On the poster, the girl's screaming "Dad, save me!", as she's being taken away by the monster.

The movie starts out with a scene that made me afraid for Mark, the only Caucasian-looking guy visible in the theater. Haha. A white scientist rather bitchily orders his Korean subordinate to dump hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde into the Han River, despite environmental laws and the chemical's toxicity. As the Korean is protesting that the chemicals have health hazards, the white guy replies, "The Han River is a broad river. Let's try to have a broad mind."

In fact, the movie's attitude towards America and white English speakers in general was a bit confusing. A crazy looking white doctor later reveals to a cooperative gyopo that he is part of a plot to fool the nation of Korea.
However, besides the evil scientist and doctor, the movie also shows a heroic white man who goes against the fleeing Korean crowd and tries to fight off the gwaemul (he is later eaten). I think there is some deep political metaphor here that I am missing.

Anyway, the discarded chemicals and formaldehyde leads to the birth of a huge monster, "gwaemul". The actual gwaemul resembled a large computerized fish, and was a bit unrealistic-looking at first glance. But as the movie goes on, you begin to develop a deep dislike/fear of the monster, mostly because of the skillful animation, sound effects, and compelling plot. You'll be quite satisfied when it's finally killed.

As you can probably tell from the poster, "Gwaemul" emphasizes family, which is a a central concept in Korean culture. The movie focuses on a young schoolgirl and her father, who owns a modest snack stand. The father is rather incompetent and comical at the start of the movie, and his daughter is ashamed of him. But when the girl is snatched away by the monster, her father, grandfather, and siblings unite to look for her in the sewers of the Han River.

"Gwoemul"'s combination of moments of extreme horror or sadness with silly comic scenes is typically Korean. This is something which I found strange at first, being used to American horror flicks which are Serious Serious Serious all the way through. But the juxtaposition adds another dimension to the movie. You get a chance to catch your breath after an exciting scene. And in the end, I guess it makes the movie even scarier because you aren't expecting the horrific moments when they do finally come.

The movie doesn't fall into the pitfall of many Korean movies, that being overly maudlin and dramatic; but still definitely touches you emotionally.
The plot has plenty of twists and turns to keep you interested, and the acting somehow manages to combine humor, tragedy, and horror into one compelling production.

If you're in Korea, GO SEE GWEOMUL. And if you're not, it should be out in America around October ;)

Busan, Korea's Hot Vacation Spot

2006-07-29T10:40:00.000-04:00

Just spent a glorious three days in sunny Busan.

Hot sun, cool ocean, gritty sand, salty air,

the highlight of the trip was the day we spent at the most popular beach in Korea, Haeundae Beach.

Contrary to our expectations, the water was clear, shallow, and seemed clean enough. There were tons of kids and teens in the ocean hanging on to inner tubes riding the waves.

To get to Busan, which is on the southernmost tip of South Korea, we took the train from Seoul Station. The mugunghwa class train takes 5 hours from Seoul to Busan and costs $25.
We managed to escape the rain clouds which poured down on Seoul during the three days that we were gone.

All we had to deal with was lots and lots of hot sun =)
At Haeundae Beach, no one brings their own sun umbrella to the beach. They're all rented for 5,000 won, resulting in the sand being covered with identical red and white umbrellas advertising McDonalds and Lotteria.

We had to find someone with non-sandy hands to take a photo of us. When the picture was finally taken, we found out that you could barely see our faces because of the shadow.
I adjusted the shadows and highlightings to fix the picture, and now we have some kind of weird halo around our figures, like we're angels O:-]

Around Haeundae Beach are lots of small restaurants and vendors. The stores have a somewhat limited selection of beach supplies though. Mark found himself buying a Disney Princesses towel =p

We met up with some native Busan-ers (?) for dinner. They took us to a place that serves a chicken dish which is a Busan specialty.

It was basically pieces of chicken and rice cake in a spicy sauce. The sauce was definitely the best part, I'd never tasted it before; a flavorful fusion that tasted like barbecue sauce and spicy Korean gochujang (red pepper paste). I'm not sure why there are corn kernels and pickles in it though.

After we ate, I had to visit the 붕어빵 (bungabbang~ bunga is the word for goldfish, bbang means bread) vendor down the street.
hese little pastries are delicious!! Batter is poured into a fish shaped mold and baked with red bean in the middle.
To clear up any misunderstanding, there are no fish products whatsover inside.

In the States, there is also an ice cream version of this made by Binggrae.

Oh and I can't forget the sesame ice cream.

AMAZING. Sold by Natuur as a "well-being" ice cream. It's my new favorite flavor.

Gorgeous sunset view.

The not so gorgeous yeogwan (cheap motel) that I stayed at. But for $20 a night and your own bathroom, it's a good deal. Still, I was afraid that something would crawl out of a crack in the wall and bite me while I was asleep.

We also went to Gwangalli Beach, famous for its nighttime view of the Gwangan bridge, the longest bridge in Korea.

Korean palm trees

Near the university district in Busan, we found "Foxy", which boasted both a bar and a dance *cave*.

At Foxy I witnessed multiple male couples grinding enthusiastically on each other. These guys were straight (many Koreans are still deeply suspicious of homosexuals).
And there were no guys and girls dancing together ^^;;

Kaila and I went to the biggest bath house in Asia.... HUR SHIM CHANG MOGYOKTANG! (허심창)

With multiple floors, it is spa heaven. The first floor has a fountain, a beauty salon, small shops, and a yummy bakery =)

Here's a directory.

Sorry, no photos from inside the mogyoktang, I think I would have been kicked out if someone had seen me taking pictures of naked people =p

Basically, one floor has jjeemjjeelbangs, which are different saunas. They're big igloo shaped structures which you walk into and relax in--one is hot and made out of clay, another one is of intermediate temperature (it's called jewelry room and has pretty mosaics on the wall), and the last one is cold with snow and fake ice crystals lining the walls.
This floor also has a lounge area where families sit together, relax, and talk; an ice cream and snack shop; a restaurant serving traditional Korean food; foot baths; an Oxygen room (which is supposed to stimulate growth hormones?); an aromatherapy room; and a DVD room.
The jjeemjjelbang floor is coed--men and women are given gowns to wear while relaxing, sweating, and chilling.

On the other floor, however, you are completely and utterly NAKED. This floor has the "Grand Hot Springs", a huge atrium with different pools and waterfalls. Temperatures range from steaming hot to warm, cool, and ice cold.
There are also "caverns" which run through rocky walls, streams of water coming from the ceilings to simulate waterfalls, and pools with colored water scented with strange herbs that are supposed to have health benefits.

Here are pictures from the Hur-Shim-Chang website:

Not to sound like a nudist advocate or anything, but being naked with 500 other Korean women is less awkward than I thought it would be. First of all, once you see hundreds of naked women, everyone starts to look similar.
And secondly, the people at the hot springs range from infant age to old grandmothers. It was obvious that everyone had been coming to public baths for their whole lives and felt completely comfortable.

Once I came out of the sweating room, chilling room, hot baths, and cold baths (and enjoyed a bowl of Korean miyukguk, or seaweed soup along the way), I felt completely refreshed.

Hur-Shim-Chang was gorgeous and huge and you're free to stay as long as you want. If you tried to go to a similar spa in America, it would probably cost you around $100. Guess how much the bill came to here?
.
.
.
.
.
7,500 won. That's $7.50 in the US.

Ahh, I'm so sad I don't live in Busan =(

More scenic views of Busan taken on the train ride back..

And random photos of the party that my Sogang teacher had at her house for our class a week ago:

It's Daun's birthday and she's making a wish...

I'm going for the cake. By the way, cakes in Korean bakeries are works of art! Not to mention that they taste heavenly.

Our teacher had samgaetang at her house for her, the traditional chicken soup dish which you're supposed to eat in the summer. It's hot, but somehow refreshing. A small chicken is stuffed with sweet rice, ginseng, dates, and chestnuts and then boiled until tender and juicy.

It was a feast:

Sunsengneem's kid is adorable =)

Last week we also met up with Professor Hwang, a professor at Yale/Yonsei for dinner..
and then went to Milky Road.

Milky Road deserves its own blog entry one day. But as you can see, all of our patbingsoo bowls are scraped clean. =P

Sexy, Eggy Americans

2006-07-23T05:01:00.000-04:00

It's funny how people rely on stereotypes in tough situations. In Psych we learned that stereotypes are actually a survival mechanism.. in the majority of situations, our stereotypes are true, and so having them helps us act quickly when we need to.

Well, Koreans have some strange stereotypes of Americans! For example, a Korean friend told me that most people from a certain nation have a defining scent. Apparently the Japanese have a briny, oceany smell; Indians have a pungent, spicy smell; and Koreans have a alcohol-y, garlic-y smell (Okay, she didn't actually say alcohol-y smell, but it's true!).

"What about Americans? Do we have a particular smell?" I asked, curious.
She replied (in Korean, of course), "Ahh, yes! It's hard to describe, but they have this vague odor sometimes...smells just like eggs!"

EGGS?
I was expecting maybe grease, sugar, sweat? But...eggs.. I guess it could be worse.

The other thing I keep hearing is that Americans are very "opposite of conservative". Yeah... this was clarified when I bought a Korean magazine one day. It had a special called "Vacance Sex Report".

It was one of those spreads where they do a whole bunch of polls about what percentage of people wait to have sex before marriage, the preferred location of most couples to have sex, what they like to do afterwards, all that TMI stuff.

Well, this magazine is obviously a Korean magazine and 95% of the models in it are, understandably, Korean.
But when you get to the sex section, everyone suddenly switches to white. Not a single Korean or Asian-looking model in the entire spread. Just a wholleee bunch of white couples kissing, making out, and seducing each other.

C'mon.. are Americans just that sexy? I mean, eggs are hardly considered an aphrodisiac. (Not to mention the fact that white does not equal American.. I mean, what happened to all the blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. I guess they don't have sex either)

Despite America's reputation for romance, I have NEVER seen as many couples walking around on the streets as I have in Seoul. If you're walking on the street in Sinchon, I guarantee that you will be behind a giggling, hand-holding couple who will stop at EVERY stall to look at items and unapologetically take up the entire sidewalk.

Seoul is the city for lovers. Forget Paris or Milan. Here there are multitudes of activities for you and your significant other to bond over. For example, if you want to go to a cafe-- why not go to the popular "Twosome Place"? Or a cozy wine and cake cafe. Even if you want ice cream or patbingsoo, everything comes in "Couple" sizes on the menus.

"Couple" is pretty much a theme here, and one of the English words that every Korean you speak to will know. (Some of the other ones are "complex" as in psychological complex, "multiplayer", "fighting", and "oh my god!").

You can buy "Couple" cell phone charms and from every other street vendor.

"Couple" outfits are coming into fashion too-- basically you wear the same design of clothing as your boyfriend/girlfriend, usually of a bright, fluorescent color with some distinctive image on the front.

Girls are pretty much set here too. Koreans consider it rude to pay Dutch, even when out with friends or relatives. So basically the guy always pays for meals, transportation, etc.
Also, Seoul is literally the only place where I regularly see guys ENTHUSIASTICALLY helping their girlfriends pick out makeup! You will see almost as many guys as girls if you go inside a beauty store. ^_^;; Sometimes the guys even try some of the makeup for themselves..
Guys holding their girlfriends' purses is taken for granted as well. And everywhere you will see couples taking photos of themselves in cute poses together on their cell phones. Haha, these later become cell phone backgrounds.

I think it's cute. 나도 남자 친구를 생기면 서울에 데려가 야될거야! ;)

This Past Week I've Been Eating Non-Stop

2006-07-16T05:02:00.000-04:00

I keep hearing that most of my entries are centered around food.
Josanna: "All you talk about on your website is food. 'I discovered this new place to eat. Look at this special dessert. This food is so cheap here!'"
This really shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me..I love food, especially Korean food..

Anyway, this week is special. I believe that in the course of this past week I've actually eaten more Korean food than I have in any other week of my life. This is pretty serious, and I believe that my achievement deserves its own entry.

Let's start with Tuesday. I went to the DMZ with a couple other Yalies and administrators associated with the scholarship that I am on in Korea.

Ha, so my first photo is not of food. Actually, it's the Peace Bell, dedicated to Korean war victims.

LOOK AT THESE! Silkworm larvae.

And snails. Yum.
I didn't eat those either... I know, I'm a coward.

In this scene, the people of Korea are pushing the two sides (North and South) together. Korean unity! Another non-comestible (no, it's not made out of chocolate or something)

^ THIS IS ACTUALLY NORTH KOREA. Haha, doesn't look too different from South Korea, does it? If you look through the binoculars, you'll see a place that North Korea tells us is one of its "towns". However, this is actually a fake town. Nobody lives there, and the buildings are actually structures with the windows and doors painted on..

South Korea built a train station that says that it goes to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Of course, no train actually exists, but I guess South Korea figures that once North Korea allows such a train to be built, it'll already have a station made.

Okay, now that all the cultural stuff is done with, onto the food!!!

Traditional Korean meal-- you get tons of dishes with "banchan", different types of food, inside of them. The dishwashing afterwards must be terrible..
Basically, there's a lot of kimchi dishes (cucumber, turnip, cabbage, oyster), a type of fish fried in soy sauce which was especially delicious (daegu something), bulgogi (barbecued marinated beef), tofu, fresh lettuce and cucumber, sauces, stews, and much more.
This restaurant (actually it seemed more like someone's house) was located in Insa-dong, a traditional Korean artsy kind of place.

DRAGON BEARD CANDY. It is as fine as hair, and looks just like it.
The guy was showing us how he made it... he takes a cold, hard block of honey and pokes a hole in it. He then coats it with cornstarch powder and makes it into a loop... then he doubles the loop... 2 fibers... doubles again... 4 fibers... again and again until there are 3920840392843092 (or so) fibers and the candy's ready!! Watch the video to see him go!

Insa-dong also sells a lot of yummy traditional Korean snacks on the street:
- shik-hye, or sweet rice drink

- yak-gwa, oily Korean honey cookie

- hodduk, a sweet fried Korean pancake with honey and sugar in the middle (my favorite)

- caramelized sugar candy on a stick with hearts and stars imprinted onto it. If you manage to get a heart out of the candy without breaking the outside, you get another candy for free! This is actually impossible...

- PATBINGSOO: I absolutely love this. It's shaved ice with toppings. Sweet red bean syrup, vanilla frozen yogurt, strawberries, kiwis, rice cake pieces, pineapple. Perfect for hot, humid Korean summers.

Insa-dong also has a good jjajangmyun (Chinese noodles) place where apparently the guy makes his own noodles, so I've gotta go back and try it!

WEDNESDAY, another day, more food.

KALBI. Possibly the most well known Korean food, after kimchi. Marinated, fatty, delicious BEEF.

Roast on your own personal fire, dip in spicy pepper paste and bean paste, transfer to a waiting leaf of red-leaf lettuce, add rice and kimchi, and stuff the resulting huge pocket of lettuce into your face. Bliss that everyone needs to experience at least once in his or her life.

This kalbi place is next to the train tracks in Sinchon, and had the best kalbi that I've ever had in my life. It's called Chulgi wang-kalbisal.

^ We ate that for dessert.

Just playing =p... not ready to eat bo-shin-tang (dog meat stew) yet...probably ever.

Here we had SOJU COCKTAILS. Yes, alcohol counts as food...
So many flavors, but yogurt is the best! Although it sounds gross, it's something you've gotta try.

We went from this:

to this:

It's making Kaila crazy.

It's norehbang time...

Friday.
The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie! Not too bad, although pretty Disney-fied. And the Johnny Depp-Keira Knightley kiss at the end......hot! Seriously, I'm in favor of Keira ditching Orlando Bloom (who makes a stupid bet and dooms his father to lifelong imprisonment... and did he ever stab the heart of Davie Jones like he promised to?? No!) for Captain Jack Sparrow (ahahaha, see this article Knightley begs for Depp Kiss).

Anyway, went to Hilton Millennium Hotel's casino-- only foreigners are allowed in, so bring your passport..

All gyopo =p
There were actually tons of Japanese inside...
The bar was free, and so was the food ^_^ got shrimp curry, and numerous cocktails

The bathrooms....scary
Kaila was inside and I heard her SCREAM
Apparently the toilets have special jets that shoot water at different parts of your rear..
hahaha, you can even choose "pulsating" water flow...

full and happy (if a few bucks poorer)

Saturday
Party for my Sogang writing class... the email containing the directions was 4 pages long =//
Me, forlornly trying to figure out which way to go..

Once we got there there were hot dogs, hamburgers (for the first time since I've been here), soju, juice, Krispy Kreme ;)

This class is so adorable!

Nighttime view of Itaewon

RAIN (monsoon season)

All this food has a consequence though... We went back to the gym today and got retested for body fat, muscle mass, weight, the works. I had the EXACT SAME stats as I did a month ago before I started working out! Haha, oh well... But our poor trainer was pretty disappointed.

Seriously, if I had to choose between Korean food and losing weight... let's just say it's no competition.

Gah..

2006-07-14T07:14:00.000-04:00

Ahh, so many things to write about--trip to DMZ, the most amazing kalbi in Seoul, Insa-dong, norehbang...

No time to update though! This week has been crazy busy- just finished taking Sogang midterms, and I'm scheduled to give a 20 minute "balpyo" (oral presentation) on Tuesday. The topic's kimchi, haha :) Also have our speaking test next week

Anyway, here's an interesting photo from this week....
KOREAN NOREHBANG! I could write a whole post about this... anyway, if you're in this picture and you're reading this, please don't kill me! haha

I'm about to leave to go to this casino at the Grand Hilton Seoul.. apparently you can only get into the place if you have a passport. And free food and alcohol! WOOOOOOO~ will update soon...

What is it with Delusional Celebrities and Korea?

2006-07-09T02:32:00.000-04:00

"I feel like a princess."

News Article (props to Mark for the link)

Above is Britney Spears, a few years back when she came to Korea and tried on the traditional Korean dress called a "han-bok".
She looks so demure and innocent. No one would ever guess that she has a "toxic" side:

Anyway, it was a good publicity stunt on Britney's move. Most Koreans here believe that she is one of the most popular singers in Korea. They usually refer to her as "blonde-haired girl".

But Britney's friendly relationship with Korea didn't last for long.
Recently Britney Spears sued one of South Korea's most popular singers, Hyori Lee. This was a plagiarism suit: apparently Hyo Lee's recent song "Get Ya" sounded similar to Britney's "Do Something".

Hyo Lee: plagiarist?

---------------------

Does this actor look familiar to you?

It's Nicholas Cage, who married Korean waitress Alice Kim several years ago.

I guess this could either be seen as a classic Cinderella story (watch Cage's movie "It Could Happen to You", where he also falls in love with a waitress) or extremely sketchy in an Itaewon-ish way (rich actor picking up penniless waitress with questionable English skills).

I'm leaning towards sketchy since the couple first met at a "booking club", a nightclub where men pay to get waiters to escort a lady of their choice to their tables.
Check out this Wall Street Journal article about Korean booking clubs. I particularly like the quote by Ms. Kim, 'It's embarrassing to walk up to a guy you don't know and start a conversation,' says Ms. Kim. 'Guys will think I'm easy.'

Anyway, the marriage seems to have lasted. The couple had a baby earlier this year!

When a Korean and an American have a baby, there are quite a few possibilities for naming the child.

Maybe a traditional American name like Michael? Or a Korean one like Jung? I have a bunch of friends who even have two names, an American one and a Korean one.

But no.. Celebrities are too special to be like normal people.

They gave the kid a name out of a comic book!

"KAL-EL", Superman's secret Krypton name.

Let's hope this kid doesn't grow up delusional and try to fly from the top of a skyscraper. Or more likely, be so embarrassed by his name that he disappears to some obscure country like Tibet (to a monk: "Kal-el? That's just a typical American name..").

Proud to Be an Oversized American

2006-07-05T06:47:00.000-04:00

The 4th of July in Korea is not a big deal at all. Although Kim Jong Il's missile launch was pretty audacious timing.

But if anywhere in Korea were to celebrate America's Independence Day, we thought that it would be Itaewon. Itaewon is an old GI base, meaning that there are tons of places catering to Americans. We thought that this would mean fireworks, 4th of July food and drink specials, and decorations.

No. None of the above.

Actually, it means:

- cafes named "America". Restaurants telling you "We have English menu for you welcome!!!"

- offices specializing in "marriage translation" and passports/visas for bringing your new bride home

- "Welcome to Korea" archway

Kaila: "What...like the other side of the archway is not Korea?"

- 큰 옷! Tons of signs advertising, quite literally "BIG CLOTHES". Too bad we Americans can't fit into tiny Korean sized clothing.

- scantily dressed Korean women yelling greetings at men to enter their club or pressing themselves against upstairs windows. a disproportionate number of "massage" parlors

...Oh...

So I've just found out that the place that we were wandering was called "Hooker's Hill".
This explains a lot more than the sore calves we had from walking up inclines...

Well, at least there was KFC. Can't get any more American than that:

Actually, we had to order two "Family sized" Combos. For four people. And it was still barely enough.
(^_^;;) Biiiiiig American sizes => Biiiig American people who need to go to special stores to buy 큰 옷!

After wandering around the streets of Itaewon looking for an okay bar (i.e. something with no barely dressed women "entertaining" you), we declared it impossible and went back to Sinchon. Ahhh, lovely Sinchon...

Merlot wine and cheesecake/tiramisu.

Much preferable to prostitutes and sketchy male customers, don't you agree?

Fusion Bar: Under the Sea!

2006-07-02T05:14:00.000-04:00

Went to a pretty unusual bar last night, located in Sinchon. The theme of it is "under the ocean"! The name of it is... Fusion something bar (don't quite remember).. It's in the area of Sinchon on the way to Yonsei, on your left going from the Rotary.

The interior is all curved white forms, that I think are supposed to be coral, and you sit at a table with an island panorama under the table glass.

There's lots of fruit, sides like fried chicken, beers, and soju cocktails!
I got peach last night; it's good!

^ The ceiling has panels with running water going through them.

There were lots of big drunk Korean groups.. with quite a few empty soju bottles on their tables ;)

This is.. ahh... interesting
very purposeful use of color. ^_^;;

The beer pitcher that they brought us was hollowed out in the middle and had a base to make it look higher and bigger (a common practice in Korean bars). BUT, they had put dry ice in the middle, and the vapors came out of a pipe at the top of the pitcher.

We are confused, but happy.

There is a hiphop dance club located IN Sinchon, the area where we live! It's called Zen, and the cover charge is just 3,000 won ($3). It is practically right across the street from our living-tel. However, it doesn't get busy until around 12. We got there around 11:20 and were the first people on the dance floor. American trendsetters!

There were actually quite a few Americans at the club last night.. you could tell from (a) their whiteness/blackness (b) their loud, low-pitched voices, (c) their FREAK dancing! Haha, Koreans need to be very drunk to indulge in such non-conservative behavior...

We were proud to be Americans. 2 days till the 4th of July!

Kimchi Buchimgae Recipe

2006-07-02T04:31:00.000-04:00

I recently discovered that the place that I am staying at, Cherryville Livingtel, has a pretty well-stocked kitchen. In addition to free rice and kimchi, the kitchen also has condiments, spices, oils, and BUCHIM GARU!

Buchim garu is somewhat like pancake mix... "Buchim" means to stick together, and garu means "powder". Basically, you combine the flour powder with water and some type of julienned vegetable (such as potato or Korean zucchini) or seafood mix to make a "buchimgae", or savory pancake.

Kimchi buchimgae, 김치 부침개, is my favorite type-- it's hot, crispy, and delicious! Also great with soju..

Here's how to make it:

Combine buchim-garu powder and cold water in this ratio: add ALMOST (not quite) twice as much water as buchim powder. Knowing this ratio is useful so that you can make however many buchimgaes that you'd like.. as little as two or as many as thirty!

Now mix this until the flour has dissolved and you are left with a white batter. If the batter looks not watery enough, remember that the kimchi that you put in will add some liquid to the batter.

Now, you add the kimchi. Make sure that it is cut into small to medium pieces. Keep adding pieces until it looks spicy enough! Personally, I like adding a lot of kimchi. However, make sure you don't add so much that there isn't enough batter to coat the kimchi pieces, or else you won't be able to make a pancake. Also, if you'd like, you can add a couple spoonfuls of kimchi juice.. this makes the batter more flavorful!

Heat a non-stick frying pan on low to medium heat. When it is hot, add vegetable oil, coating the bottom of the pan. Spoon out some batter onto the hot oiled frying pan and use a wooden spoon to spread the batter out evenly and thinly. THIN is key--the buchimgaes will taste best when they are thin, crispy, and thoroughly cooked.

Make sure the heat is on medium-low so that your buchimgaes don't burn. After about 2 minutes, depending on the size of the buchimgae, one side should be done. Flip the buchimgae over so that the other side can cook. Add oil as needed so that the batter doesn't stick to the pan. Wait a minute or two so that this side can cook, and then transfer onto a plate, preferrably on top of a paper towel (I have to use the toilet paper rolls in the kitchen since napkins and paper towels don't exist in Korea!) so that the oil can drain out and the buchimgaes stay crispy.

Now continue making until your batter runs out! These taste best off right off the frying pan, hot and crispy. If you have leftovers, save them in the refrigerator, and you can refry them when you want to eat them later. Also, if you make a biiiig buchimgae pancake, use a knife to cut it into triangles, pizza style.

I can make this for FREE! Haha, there were two freaking full UNopened big bags of buchimgaru.. nobody uses them. Probably because you have to add oil to the pan to fry them, and oil is fattening. The only things that I see girls doing in the kitchen is peeling cucumbers, making a mixture of seaweed and water, and boiling cabbage leaves..diet diet!

Dwenjang Jjigae Recipe (Soybean Paste Stew)

2006-07-01T06:35:00.000-04:00

Made dwenjang jjigae today in the kitchen!!
Turned out DELICIOUS.
It is also is a lot easier to make than I'd thought. Up at Yale, I always craved dwenjang jjigae, in a kind of helpless way. The only way I could get to it was to pay $10 for a bowl of it at overpriced Seoul Restaurant. Never again....can't wait for my Swing Space in-dorm kitchen next year. =p

Here's the recipe, compliments of my mom:

된장 찌개 / Dwenjang Jjigae

Add two tablespoons of dwenjang, or soybean paste, to two cups of water. Make sure the dwenjang is the kind used to make stew, not the dipping variety. It should have a picture of a bowl of soup on the cover. I used the free one that I got from the Sempio factory tour =)

Once you have the dwenjang and water in a pot, add about three large dried anchovies. You can get these at a Korean market- make sure they're the largest variety, not the small baby ones. These large ones are specially sold for boiling, as a base. If you have red pepper flakes, add a spoonful of these as well.

Mix the dwenjang up in the water. You can use chopsticks for this; just roughly spread the paste around in the water, making sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. IT WILL LOOK GROSS. Don't worry, you'll be left with something delicious. Continue...

Boil the soup for five minutes. When five minutes is up, take out the anchovies and discard.
Add THIN slices of potato (since potatoes take the longest time to cook), slices of Korean zucchini cut into half moon pieces, minced garlic, a sliced hot green long pepper (jalapeno?) and cut up pieces of tofu. Make sure the tofu is the HARD variety, for stews (tofu comes in soft, medium, and hard textures). You'll probably end up using about half of a potato, half of a zucchini, and a spoonful of garlic. If instead of fresh garlic, you can use the pre-minced paste variety sold in a bottle, even better! Oh, and here's a picture of the Korean zucchini that is used:

Yep. I picked it out of the garden myself.

Just kidding... Google image search.
The zucchini also comes in a yellow variety.

Cut these vegetables up and add them to the pot. You should probably do all of the cutting and peeling BEFORE setting the dwenjang paste to boil. Kaila and I were rushing to throw pieces of vegetables into the overflowing pot because we hadn't done this... =p

Boil the vegetables quickly at a high temperature.. this should only take a couple minutes. To check if the stew is ready, use a pair of chopsticks to pick out one of the potato pieces and eat it...is it soft and cooked? Good, your dwenjang jjigae is DONE!

This should feed about two people. Eat with rice and a good appetite =)

Korea's Last World Cup Game

2006-06-25T00:48:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning.... 4 AM!
We were ready the night before. Went to this really good kalbi place, you can get the beef for only $7, including all the sides. It's located near Yonsei, behind TGIF's.

Kaila is showing off her strong, un-Korean-girl bicep.

The bar we went to was MORE expensive for World Cup night! Cocktails, beers, and shots were twice the price...

that's okay, we're happy anyway.

Walking around Hongdae, we encountered Condomania.. the cute animated sperm on the window is a nice touch, don't you think?

We ended up going to Harlem, since the big hiphop club NB was closed. Don't go! The constantly flickering strobe lights there gave us all a headache. They were going to play the World Cup inside the club:

Korea put up a good fight. In terms of patriotic enthusiasm, at least, I think we won the Cup :)

Ah it's Sunday already! Gotta get started on that big pile of Korean h/w which I haven't looked at yet; I'm planning to do it in this place called Mindulay. Mindulay means Dandelion in English, and it's a cafe where you pay about $5 for 3 hours. You stay in a large, decorated building with several floors, eat, drink, and relax. Or in my case, learn Korean vocabulary. Woohoo.

Ganjang Gongjang

2006-06-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

"간장공장 공장장은 간공장장이고 된장공장 공장장은 된공장장이다”
"Ganjang gongjang gongjangjang-un gan-gongjangjang-eego dwenjang gongjang gongjangjang-un dwengongjangjang-eeda"

Say it really fast.. can you do it?

Ganjang = soy sauce , one of the most consumed products in Asia
Gongjang = factory
(dwenjang is soy bean paste)

Sempio is the top producer of soy sauce in Asia. Yesterday my class went to the Sempio factory, located in the countryside, to see how soy sauce is made!

The first thing we saw was boxes and boxes of Sempio soy sauce, being prepared for delivery to everywhere from Germany to Seoul.

When we walked into the conference building we got to try one of Sempio's new products, a cold drink made out of.... VINEGAR.
Yes, vinegar. It also contains black honey. It's surprisingly really good-- sweet, sour, and cold. The rice vinegar drink is supposed to have lots of uses-- an everyday health drink, a mixer with soju, and a hangover remedy.

Can you tell which one is the real person...?

Haha, we all had to wear white hair nets and lab coats for the tour:

Looking up at the giant soybean silos.. they put the soybeans in here to ferment and grow bacteria! Then when the beans are all furry and white with live cultures, Sempio boils them for consumption. Hm... I never knew that I was eating live bacteria in my soy sauce and bean paste.

My 3 Sunsengneems (teachers). From right to left- writing teacher, reading teacher, and speaking teacher. Awww, so cute ^.^

The presentation that Sempio gave us at the beginning was somewhat boring... also I only understood about 60% of it. Here's part of it in video format below... turn up your volume and see if you can decipher what she's saying:

Then we watched a BIZARRE British animated movie about a woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to an infant which immediately dies. Here's a particularly shocking scene:

Yes, you are seeing multiple knives plunge into a baby! The woman's imagining things that could happen to her yet unborn child, such as electrocution, suffocation in a plastic bag, and death by being burned under a spilled pot of boiling oil on the stovetop. ^.^; This was part of a cultural film festival thing.

No photos were allowed inside of the actual factory... basically there were big vats of steaming, fermenting, or roasting soybeans. The smell was yummy!

And then it was time for lunch, which we ate in the Sempio cafeteria.
THEIR FOOD IS AMAZING!

Jun is so happy he's dancing while deciding what to eat.

Ca-uri's quite pleased as well!

Okay, I admit that I was probably the happiest =p

Seriously, I have to get a job at Sempio just so I can eat in the employee cafeteria.. you get reallllyy good kimchi, just the way I like it: not too fermented or soggy, fresh tasting with lots of crunchy little baby pieces. You also get the "yulmoo kimchi", or summer kimchi, fried salted pieces of kelp, these little hush-puppy type things with ketchup, curry rice, and dwenjang chigae (stew) made from Sempio's best bean paste. Mmm..

Our class:

It's called the Angel Class because we're just that great O:-)
....actually it's because we meet in room 1004. The number 1004 is pronounced chun-sa (chun means 1000 and sa means 4). And chunsa means angel in Korean... haha.. because we're *soooo well-behaved* ^.^;;

When it was time to leave, we each got a present from Sempio:

Containers of soy sauce, bean paste, dipping paste, red pepper paste, and Solomon's seal tea! All of my favorite Korean foods.. I just have to go to Grand Mart and buy some cucumbers and red leaf lettuce to eat with them.

Food factories aren't generally on tourists' top attractions, but they can be a lot more interesting than museums or nature scenes! If you come to Korea, I definitely recommend going to one :) Plus you get free food..

I'll post about last night in a bit.. Koreans v. Swiss >.<

shoppers' paradise + korean clubbing

2006-06-18T06:13:00.000-04:00

Only in Korea can clothes shopping become a form of nightlife =)

Dongdaemun Market is a huge area that sells name brand and fashion clothes at cheap wholesale prices! But the wholesale market is only open from 10:30 pm to 8 am, so you need to choose between Shopping or Sleep. Easy decision. We went on Friday night; no class the next morning!

Here are some of my new Korean *yooheng* (fashionable) clothes.. I'm going to return to the States looking like a fob. But I can't help it--all these clothes were so cheap! And so Koreanly cute. Dongdaemun nighttime markets are good places to bargain, getting from 10 to 50% off of the originally quoted prices.. Make sure you call the store owner "Unnie", Korean for older sister ;)

These shoes are impossibly uncomfortable, like all heels here.. See how they end in a small pointy heel? All of your foot's weight is put on this one pressure point. Here's some advice, if you come to Korea, make sure you bring plenty of comfortable heels, as women always wear high heeled shoes here, and the ones sold in the country are torture devices.
Lol, I ended up buying these heels on the way to the club on Saturday, since I had come out wearing flip flops (no admission). Straight off of the street, for 10,000 won ($10).

They sell more than clothes in Dongdaemun--

cute!! But I'm pretty sure that the ones here are too young to be taken away from their mothers =/ They kept squinting in the bright light and snuffling with their heads under the blanket.

The puppy seller pushed one of the puppies at Kaila so she could hold it, a smart selling tactic.

^ Kaila didn't want to let go...

On the subway to Dongdaemun, we were able to see an attractive scene:

Middle aged man passed out right on the floor! People were giving him strange looks and edging away. Then when the subway doors opened, the drunk guy's foot rolled into the doorway and people had to push his leg out of the way..
LOL, he ended up hugging this random stranger's leg.. The poor stranger looks pretty uncomfortable, but he's not pushing the passed out guy's arms away..?

Saturday night we went back to Hongdae, this time to go to some of the dance clubs in the district!
Although we started out with some drinks, I'm proud to say that it seems that I don't suffer from the infamous asian flush.

After the bar, we went to a place called S Club; it cost 10,000 won (about $10 USD) to get in, with free tequila, Sprite, Coke.

Choi Sunsengneem would be proud.

Everyone looks so happy! Thanks for showing us around, Jun!

S Club played hiphop music, and so we got our dance on =p
American dancing stands out in a Korean crowd..

especially because of our excellent facial expressions:

and inventive movements.

The last Friday of each month is Club Day in Hongdae. For $10 to $20 you get admission to most of the clubs in the area. Of course we're going back!

World Cup Fever

2006-06-14T08:11:00.000-04:00

In the past week I've noticed a gradual buildup of red... and more red... until everything finally EXPLODED last night.

Huge crowds gathered all around Seoul to watch the Korean team's World Cup game against Togo, a country that was competing for its first time. We went to the district of Gwanghwamun, where multiple giant television screens showed the game from sides of tall buildings, and spectators were either standing or sitting on newspapers.

There were so many Koreans shoving through the crowds that we were flattened. This is nothing like an American crowd. I was practically sitting on peoples' heads at one point, some people were so close that they could have probably gotten married after being in that crowd, and all you could hear was high pitched "aiiiiiii!!!" (from girls whose high-heel-clad feet were being trampled on) and angry yelling from Korean ajusshis (middle to old aged men).

While the game was going on, a random guy would start banging on a drum, a signal for the crowd to start chanting, "Dae han min gook!" (Our great nation!) Watch the video that I took below to see the chant in action...

Every time a Korean player fell, spectators would, of course, collectively groan and mutter to each other.... After Korea scored its first goal--> hugs and a standing ovation!

First goal scored by Lee Chun-Soo ..the dyed hair makes him stand out.

The winning goal? Scored by Ahn Jung-Hwan, the guy on the team who elicited "wooooowwwww"s from females' voices every time he came on the screen:

Even my Korean teacher has a crush on him! She says that she doesn't mind her short curly perm hairstyle as much, since Ahn Jung-Hwan has a similar one (^.^)

We also got into the World Cup spirit and bought red Korea t-shirts for the game! They were selling these all over the place, along with light-up devil horns, temporary taegukgi (Korean flag symbol) tattooes, inflatable "thunder stick" noise makers (did you know these were invented in Korea?), and bandannas.

We didn't buy horns so I drew some on...

There's even a Korea World Cup dance! It's called the kkokjijeum dance and the characters are doing it in the poster below.

and, Baskin Robbins has been selling World Cup ice cream for a while.

The shirt I bought in the subway was too little-I think the 7/8 that I thought was a size number was actually the recommended age of the wearer. With some strategic cutting on the sleeves, sides, and neckline, it fit!

Some people were too cheap to buy a shirt (starting from only $6!) and wore any old red t-shirt:

"English literature"... very patriotic.

Others saved money on apparel for their lower half. You usually see Korean women wearing pretty modest clothing, but the World Cup seems to be an excuse to break out and support Korea by being scantily clad.

The inspiration? Shin Mina, dubbed Miss World Cup by Korea. First discovered wearing a tube top and Korean flag in a cheering crowd at the 2002 World Cup, she became famous and is now a singer/model!

Lol, truly a rags to riches story..

The next morning we had to get up early again for class :( Then in the afternoon we took a trip to Namdaemun market, the biggest traditional market in Korea.

The weather was cold and rainy... monsoon season.
Namdaemun is huge, disorganized, and full of people ~ vendors are yelling out to you to come in and look at their products, people selling food are pretending that you've already bought it (a tactic to get customers), and the whole time motorcycles and cars and going through the same streets that you're walking through!

I bought a blanket... the bed in my room comes with only a lower sheet. The Korean blankets that they sold are thick and also double as floor mats.

Among other things, you can buy clothes, imitation Coach and Gucci purses and wallets, hanboks (traditional Korean dress), keychains, pottery,

live baby eel,

and ginseng!

Ah, well I'm off to catch up on sleep (World Cup game = sleep deprivation). The next game is Korea vs. France, at 4 AM on Monday morning..

Night!

Hongdae, Hyundai, and Ho Bar

2006-06-11T05:14:00.000-04:00

On Friday my Korean teachers gave us no formal homework...aside from the pages of vocab to learn... and told us to rest and have a good time on our weekend :) So we did just that~
Right after class we went to Yongsan electronics market to get webcams, electronic dictionaries, cell phones, etc.

Webcam: $29 , bargained down from $32

Korean-American Electronic Dictionary (Sharp brand) - $135.. I think we got ripped off. We asked for a discount since we were buying four dictionaries and paying in cash so the guy told us that he would throw in a dictionary case and an extra battery for free. The dictionary case turned out to be already included in the box, and the extra battery we later found in being sold in the subway for $1 for a pack of 10. Hmm... not being able to speak perfect Korean = gullible "waygookins" (foreigners)

Cell phone! $30 + $20 Phone card. We bought prepaid phones; the used phones go from $30 to around $200. It's cute how the cell phones are on display in Korea, they're on little stands with Christmas lights looped around them =)

After Yongsan, we went to a place called "Rotary" for dinner, located on the Sinchon Rotary (the Korean name for roundabout). It has the cheapest Korean food ever! Rotary's always packed with college students, and except for the rice, entrees, and banchan (side dishes), is self-serve. Basically, you get yourself water from the water machine, napkins from a bag on the wall, and chopsticks and spoons from boxes on the tables.

The entrees are similar to those at traditional Korean restaurants in America which range from $9 to $20. Except here they are from $2 to $4!

The Hongdae district, adjacent to Sinchon where I am staying, is the center of nightlife for Korean college students.

If you walk around after 8 pm, every square foot of building will be covered in neon signs advertising "Hoff" (Korean bar), "Soju", "Norehbang" (Korean karaoke rooms), Sports bars, and also random signs that we saw like "Happy Hippopotamus", "Sexy Banana" (?!),

"Cocks"?!

and "Ho Bar III". We now have a mission to find Ho Bar's I and II before we leave..

We ended up going to a Japanese bar called "Aska".

Aska advertised fruit soju, which we got in the watermelon flavor.

Basically they crush up watermelon pieces and add it to a bottle of soju... good! We toasted by saying, "건배" (gun-beh) which is Korean for "Cheers!"

The best thing to eat after drinking is samgyupsal, fatty pieces of pork meat, since the fat absorbs lots of alcohol =) I accidentally broke 2 shot glasses..

Apparently the Korean subway system closes at midnight, so we had an interesting walk back to Sinchon. Since Friday is a big drinking night for Koreans, we passed random drunken couples and even a large male who had passed out on the sidewalk..

Saturday we went to see the horror movie "Omen" at a movie theater located on the 10th floor of Hyundai Department Store.

Ahhh.. it reminded me why I only watch one horror movie per year.. We were practically the only ones in the theater for the "Omen"; I wonder if my low tolerance for horror movies is a Korean thing?

Hyundai Department Store has a pet section! That's like Macy's selling small animals next to the Shoe section.. Since everything is smaller here, they have dwarf bunnies and dwarf hamsters which were right next to geckos, chameleons, and baby hedgehogs! They also had something which I wasn't sure anyone would want as a pet:

WHAT IS IT?!! I asked the department store worker and he said that they were rhinoceros beetle larvae. They grow up into something like this:

Slightly less repulsive..

Almost every time we go out, it's blatantly obvious that we're Americans =p The way we're gawking at things that native Koreans find perfectly normal (Ho Bar III? The bathroom courtesy bell?), taking photos everywhere from movie theaters to the subway, speaking loudly in English, and not knowing how to eat and cook foods like samgyupsaal and shabushabu..
At first, when asked about ourselves, we launched into long, painful explanations about how we were from America, but knew some Korean because one/both of our parents was Korean, we were here for a few months to study the language, etc, etc. But eventually we found the perfect explanation....

GYOPO!

Simply say "gyopo" whenever you get a strange look or inquiry, and the Korean will nod knowingly "ahhhhh". Gyopo = foreign-born Korean
Incidentally, since Mark and Foster don't look Korean (1/2 Korean), they get stranger reactions from Koreans than Kaila or I.. the other night a little boy started laughing, saying, "Where did you pick up the Korean language?" He also called them a name which we never really figured out the meaning of..."bokdo saram"? If anyone finds out what this means, please let me know =p

Korea: Days 1 to 4

2006-06-08T19:18:00.000-04:00

SEOUL!

After a grueling 24-hour plane trip which involved 14 hours of me being squashed next to an obese male passenger in United Airline's child-sized "Economy Plus" seats (what does "Economy Plus" mean anyway?), I'm finally here!

At Newark International, before our looooong flight that stopped at Chicago, Japan, and finally Korea.

I was actually planning on making a post my very first day in Korea, but I didn't anticipate our housing experience when we arrived in Seoul... The description the landlord had given us when we'd made reservations had sounded great--individual air conditioning, internet, safe area, etc. What we saw when we got there was much different, and one of the many amenities that the place lacked was INTERNET. He was pretty mad when we moved out...pissed off Korean=scary.

I'm now in an awesome place called Cherryville Living-tel. Living-tels are one of many "tel" places (like Office-tels and Goshi-tels, hotels, and motels) which rent out small single rooms to students and other Koreans. This place is unbelievably clean, like most of the facilities here in Korea. When we got there, the owner was vacuuming the floors, which were already practically shining. To keep the floor spotless we have to take off our shoes before entering and put them in locked shoe cupboards outside the doors. I have a room key and a shoe cupboard key.

If we want to go up the stairs the owner provides special slippers to wear, and there are also a different set of slippers for the bathroom and shower!

Thinking back on the huge dust/dirt/hairballs on many Yale students' dorm floors, I think Yale could probably invest in a couple thousand pairs of slippers..

My actual room is much bigger than I expected--it has a bed, desk, and furniture along with a TV (Korean TV!! more on this later), a refrigerator, and window. I pay about $325 a month, which when compared to the cost of American hotels and apartments, is minimal.

There's also a kitchen on my floor with a rice-maker that is always full, drinking water, and a refrigerator full of kimchi. =)

But I still haven't eaten in the kitchen yet because there are tons of places to eat in Sinchon, the area of Seoul where I'm staying. Since Sinchon is the student district of Korea, I've been going to a different place for each meal...everything I've tried so far has been inexpensive and delicious! Some examples:

Korean barbecued chicken - Dak Galbi: This is a popular dish which I hadn't tried once in America..

You get a bowl of spicy raw marinated chicken, green onions, mushrooms, and other vegetables, along with a hot wok-type grill. The raw stuff goes on the grill at your table, cooks in front of your eyes, and you can eat the barbecue straight off of the grill!

As you can see, they even give you aprons! If you go around Sinchon, you'll see tons of places with a sign saying Dak Galbi in Korean.

Shabu-shabu: This is similar to sukiyaki, if you've tried it. It's the same type of deal as the dak galbi: the food cooks at your table. We ordered kalbi kalgooksoo shabu-shabu (beef and sliced noodle) which also came with onions, mushrooms, and bok-choy. You put the raw ingredients in a boiling pot of broth, let cook, and enjoy!

"Toast"- This isn't the puny toast that we eat in America with butter and jam. The Korean version includes a hot vegetable egg omelet with cheese, ketchup, and mustard sandwiched between two grilled pieces of bread. Only 1,500 won ($1.50 US)! Lately we've been picking it up on the way to class in the mornings.

And who could forget the food chains?? Korean versions of American food chains:

- Baskin Robbins: Extremely shiny and cute inside. Baskin Robbins is pretty popular in Korea, as are all types of yogurt, smoothie, and ice cream places.

I got a Kiwiberry "cooler", which is a kind of fruit smoothie. Compared to American smoothies, it was much lighter, fruitier, and more refreshing! Delicious, but didn't load up on fat and sugar like a smoothie from a New Jersey Dunkin Donuts or Orange Julius might.

The garbage system here is pretty complicated. Every time you throw trash away, even in a fast food restaurant, you need to separate all of the components, spoons, napkins, cups, etc. They all go in separate bins; Baskin Robbins has a cute little trash container near the exit.

Drew Barrymore advertises for Korean Baskin Robbins..hmmm.

- Burger King:

Instead of the U.S. Burger Kings' light colored orange/red/white interior decorations, it's mainly black and white inside. For some reason, it also has an Elvis (emphasizing American-ness?) shrine on one wall. The menu is similar, but includes orange-ade, which another popular Korean drink, the "bulgogi Whopper", which I ordered (it's actually the exact same thing as a regular Whopper, but with a different type of sauce), and patbingsoo.

Patbingsoo is a Korean shaved ice dessert, and I think it replaces the fruit parfait on the American menu. They top the shaved ice with sweet red bean syrup, fruit, and whipped cream; it's yummy, although the photo does look a little strange.

- Pizza Hut: Because American food is much more expensive than Korean food in Seoul, places like Pizza Hut have turned into semi-gourmet restaurants. The Pizza Hut menu includes five courses PLUS a wine menu!! Anyway, we got the bulgogi pizza for lunch..

The meat on the pizza may look like sausage, but it's actually Korean marinated beef.

The wall decoration confused us..The frame is of cheese, which I understand for a pizza place, but the chef inside is holding oranges...? Also he looks like a pig, an animal which we've been seeing everywhere on posters, decorations, and products here.

When it was time to go, they boxed up our leftover pizza like any other Pizza Hut, but... they put a red ribbon on it like a gift! The ribbon had some Korean on it, which translates into "Let's be happy with Pizza Hut". Haha, as long as I can eat like this I'll be happy!

So, do Koreans really eat dogs? They do in the countryside but in Seoul, dogs get pretty princely treatment! We passed this place called "Tokyo Dog College" with the cutest miniature dogs..

I'm not really sure why it's called a dog college. You can buy puppies and pet supplies there, and also get your dog groomed. Puppies were being displayed out in the windows:

*awwww* These dogs are practically the size of my hand!

Apparently in the region of Seoul called Apgujeong they have dog cafes where owners and their pets sit and enjoy snacks and drinks (doggie snacks for the canines, people food for the owners).

Some people are a bit too lenient when it concerns their pets...see this dog? doesn't it look angelic?

Ha! It tried to bite my hand off when I tried to pet it..the owner's response was an indulgent laugh and petting =p

Here's a gadget that I found in the airport bathroom: the Etiquette Bell.

There's one Etiquette Bell in each toilet stall...the purpose is that if you're concerned about others hearing any noises that you might make while you're in the toilet, you push the button and it makes a flushing noise to mask any lesser sounds. Unfortunately, the sound that emits from the machine is BLATANTLY FAKE! Haha, the beginning of the flush sounds like a bad radio and it ends on static.. I wonder if it's better for someone to actually hear your fart or for someone to hear a fake flushing and know that you've just farted?! Hmmm..

And of course, the ubiquitous Korean version of the American term "sexy"-- "SHEKSHI", which comes up in numerous billboards, advertisements, and even conversations! Shown below, Gangnam district's "Shekshi Club" sign:

Tomorrow's Friday! Class from 9 am - 1 pm and then it's the weekend. More on class and me learning Korean later =)