Tidbits from Korea

The holidays have come and gone, and winter is in full force here in Korea.  Before I came here, I read that winters are "mild."  Great, I thought.. What I should have thought was, mild compared to what?  Compared to Alaska, perhaps, this could be considered mild.  Compared to Dallas, it's a frozen arctic tundra.  Luckily, I escaped to Cambodia for a few days over New Year's (not to be confused with Lunar New Year, which is a much bigger deal here).  Cambodia was a much needed dose of flip flops and tank tops and laying by the pool, but posts and pictures will have to wait for next time.

Despite the weather, the Koreans continue to wear next to nothing.  Some of my kids come to school with socks and flip flops (a very common occurrence in Korea) and thin sweaters.  Keep in mind, these aren't poor kids - they are coming to a private school solely for the purpose of learning English, and many of them attend more than one of these specialized private schools.  But what really gets me is the Korean women, who insist on wearing tights and leggings year-round, which they cover with a short skirt or jean shorts.. They'll wear a huge poofy jacket and massive woolen scarf, but next-to-nothing on their legs, some with boots, but most with heels..  heels! In the snow.  Just one of the mysteries of Korean fashion, along with the aforementioned socks-with-flip flops, and the matching couple outfits. 

Aside from strange clothing choices and frigid weather, Korea is still as amazing as when I first arrived.  I learned how to read and write Hangul my first month here, and it took all of about two days.  They are very proud of their written script because it was actually invented much later than the spoken Korean language.  And they should be proud, because it is incredibly easy to learn, as it is completely phonetic.  My boss laughed at me when I told him I can read Hangul now, and said, "Well you can read it, but you don't know what it says!"  But that's not entirely true.  First of all, I do know several words now in Korean.  Secondly, they actually write a lot of English words in their script, and once you sound it out, you'll find out that it says "bus" or "chicken" but it's just written out in symbols.  It's quite funny sometimes when you're standing on the street sounding out letters from a sign and after five minutes, you go "Oh!!  It says coffee!"  It definitely comes in handy, as well as the few phrases I have learned.  I've got greetings, some directions, "I don't know," numbers, which isn't easy here because they have two systems, and tons of restaurant vocabulary because I do love Korean food. :) 

For now I'll leave you with a few beautiful scenes around Seoul and Suwon (a city closer to where I live).  I promise to write more in the next few weeks, as I've finally figured out how to switch my blog settings from Korean into English.  Hope everyone is well, wherever you are in the world.

Hwaseong Fortress Wall, Suwon

Seoul Lantern Festival, Cheonggyecheon Stream, downtown Seoul

Namsan Tower (South Mountain Tower), Seoul

First Impressions

I have officially completed one full month teaching in Korea and there is so much to tell.  Korea is an awesome place and I'm experiencing, observing, and tasting new things daily. 

So first things first:  my apartment.  My apartment is small, which I was expecting, but after one month here it is feeling quite large.  I haven't seen many other apartments, but the ones I have seen are smaller than mine, and people who see mine think it's big.  It is technically a "studio" although the rooms (kitchen, bathroom, patio, and main room) are somewhat separate.  I have a teeny little kitchen, with two burners, a sink, a medium size fridge (bigger than a dorm fridge, but smaller than a normal fridge), and absolutely zero counter space to prepare anything.  My shower consists of the entire bathroom.  When I shower, the whole bathroom showers.  It was a little weird at first, but now it seems completely normal.  When I want to shower, I have to change the water setting on the wall.  It's like a little thermostat, but it controls all of the water in the apartment, which includes the shower, washing machine, and floors.  Floors?  Yes, floors.  My feet stay nice and toasty thanks to hot water pipes under the flooring.  This is actually how my entire apartment is heated.  In the main room I have a twin bed, small table, dresser, TV, and shoe rack, which you must have because you remove your shoes when indoors.  My patio is really just a separate area that can close off from the mainroom if I want to.  This is where I hang my clothes to dry after washing, because I can open the windows even if it is cold outside.  The patio is actually large enough for some storage, another small wardrobe, and my clothes rack (most people keep this in their mainroom because we don't have closets, but I am lucky that I can put it away somewhat).  My apartment is located directly above a restaurant, which I can always smell throughout the hallways, but luckily, I never smell inside my apartment. 

The neighborhood I live in is small, compared to others nearby, and especially Seoul.  For such a small "neighborhood" it really has everything.  There are convenient stores on every corner, little boutiques, restaurants of all kinds, a movie theatre, grocery stores, bars, you name it.  I can walk downstairs from my apartment, walk two blocks and be standing on the corner of the main street.  Looking down the street it is hard to believe it is a small little community.  There are neon signs, flashing, spinning, and blinking, music blaring from every store, and people hustling and bustling up and down the street until late into the night.

My school is actually in a larger town, about 15 minutes away by bus.  There are several foreign teachers who work here and live in my neighborhood.  Most of us work in hagwans, which is the name for private language schools.  My hagwan is a little different than others, as I am the only foreign teacher.  There are three other Korean teachers who teach English.  Their focus is grammar and writing, whereas my focus is speaking and listening.  This is where things get interesting.. The other teachers at my school are pretty far from fluent.  They generally don't understand me, and I rarely understand them.  How they teach English, especially any kind of pronunciation, is beyond me.  Most hagwans have several native English teachers, and a few Korean teachers, so my experience has been quite interesting.  I wasn't really given any kind of orientation;  I was just thrown to the wolves.  This would have been less of a disaster if I had been given the curriculum anytime earlier than an hour before classes started.  The first few days were pretty miserable, but by the end of the week, things were looking up.  Now that I've got my bearings, things are great, although the kids are complete hellions.  Some of them want your approval so bad, it's sad.  But some of them act like they ate a bowl of sugar for bed the night before, then another for breakfast.  For the most part, the kids are really great, but it seems to be a common problem among foreign teachers (in hagwans anyway) that the kids are unruly and hard to discipline.  It is kind of funny though when they pretend they don't know what I'm saying just so they don't have to work/sit down/shut up.  When I call them out on it, they can't keep a straight face, and it's quite cute.  I would try bribing them with candy if I didn't think it would send them into a diabetic coma. 

I'll leave you with this for now, with more to come on food, fashion, and cultural oddities that I find interesting. 

Annyeonghee gyeseyo!

Kimchi, K-pop, and Karaoke

So the countdown continues for my departure to Seoul.  In 19 days, at the wee hour of 6am, and after several hours of morning angst, I'll finally be boarding my flight to The Land of the Morning Calm.
In my preparation I continue to come across random, intriguing, and sometimes just weird tidbits about Korea, and I can't wait 3 weeks to tell you all about them, so I've put together a little compilation of the things I can expect to encounter.  Consider this a "before" look at Korea, with an "after" soon to follow.

Fermented cabbage? Why of course I'll have another helping!

Anyone who has spoken to me in the last six months has heard the word kimchi, but you ma y not know exactly what it is.  Kimchi is a staple for Koreans, and is usually eaten as a side dish with just about any main course, and often.  Although there are several different varieties, it usually consists of cabbage that has been stuffed with any number of ingredients, then put into clay pots and buried in the ground and fermented.  I've tried an American rendition of Kimchi, and it was about as tasty as it sounds.  From what I hear, it's an acquired taste, so check back with me in a few months.

I'll drink to that
From what I hear, Korean beer is terrible, and soju is the way to go.  Soju is a rice wine, and is compared to vodka in flavor, although it is supposed to be slightly sweeter.  Drinking soju is a social event and is usually taken as a shot, and it is rude to refuse a drink if someone offers it to you.  Although it is usually not mixed, it's not uncommon to drop it into a beer for a sake-bomb-esque drink.  At 1 to 3 bucks a bottle, it sure beats crappy Korean beer.  Soju, I look forward to you.



Spice Girls, eat your heart out

My first encounter with K-pop started with the question, "I wonder what
the music scene is like in Korea?"  A google search and a few youtube clicks later, I found Dong Bang Shin Ki.  There are no words to describe the Hello-Kitty-meets-Nysnc type music/videos these people are producing.  I thought I hated Katy Perry and Britney Spears...  Try Katy Perry and Britney Spears' Korean lovechild on a handful of cocaine vomiting gummy bears and bubble gum.
K-pop (Korean Pop, if you haven't picked that up yet) is a phenomenon I don't yet understand.  In a country that is so progressive in terms of technology and such, they seem to be stuck in some sort of 90's boy band era when it comes to music.  A few other oddities about these groups:  Most of them have several members..  Like 17 members.. And all of their songs have English titles, although they are sung mostly in Korean.  They do usually throw in a few English words, but I'm pretty certain they don't really know what they're singing.  Maybe it's the cool thing to do?  While it goes without saying that I'm not exactly a fan, these groups are uber popular inKorea, and are probably not going anywhere for awhile.


She bang She bang

While in Dallas I had to drag my friends to karaoke just to be the only one brave/fun enough to get up and belt my heart out, I will not have that trouble in Korea.  Karaoke is a favorite pastime, and once again, it is impolite to refuse.  Karaoke rooms, or noraebangs, are all over the place.  Although I think part of the fun of karaoke is listening to random drunk people at the bar, the concept in Korea might play to the timid. You and your friends rent a room privately, for 10 to 20 bucks an hour and just sing the night away.  So why don't they just stay home and play rock band with their buds? Well I just don't know the answer to that yet..    And if there's any doubt in your mind about how much Koreans love their karaoke, they also have "coin noraebangs" which are basically like a sing-along jukebox, but they are located in random public places.. like the train.


On a different note,
I thought I'd tell you guys a little bit about the size of Seoul.  Seoul is a lot more concentrated than what I am used to, with a population of 10.3 million just in the city proper.  For comparison's sake, New York City has a population of 8.1 mil, and for all you Dallasites, the entire DFW metroplex has a population of 6.3 mil - and that's spread over several thousand square miles.  If I were to include the metropolitan areas surrounding Seoul, the numbers pass 25 million.  Wowza.

DMZ
Just north of Seoul (30 miles-ish) is the Korean Demilitarized Zone.  This is literally a buffer zone between North and South Korea, heavily guarded by soldiers from both sides.  I've read a few differing articles about the width of the DMZ, but it seems to be somewhere between 2 and 4 miles, and of course it runs the length of the Korean border.  Although it is the most heavily armed border in the world, there are actually tours offered for the area.  It sounds about as enticing to me as the tours they are now doing for Chernobyl, but I'm kind of considering it.  The tours allow you to see tunnels that were attempted by North Korea into South Korea, and get a glimpse of North Korean soldiers on watch from the other side.

  Here is a pic of the border at Panmunjeom, which is a joint security area.  The North Korean soldiers are on the far side; South Korean soldiers in the foreground.  Stepping over the line in between means being shot.
Ironically, the land that makes up the DMZ has become one of the most well-preserved habitats in the world due to the lack of human presence.  It is actually home to several species of endangered animals and plants.



Konglish

Perhaps my favorite subject so far is Konglish!  This is definitely something I will have to follow up on once I arrive, but every blog and forum I have read has mentioned it.  Konglish = Korean + English.  Apparently Koreans try to use English, even when they don't know what it means, or they have been taught an English word with the wrong meaning, and the result is pretty funny.  They play American songs with cuss words in family settings, wear inappropriate T-shirts, or make signs that definitely should have been proofread by a native English speaker.  The funny part is that they really don't have any idea.  I've seen several examples, but I'll just wait to share my own with you once I come across them.  Consider this my cliffhanger.  :)

Banpo Bridge Moonlight Rainbow Fountain

I haven’t even made it out of the country and I am already finding so many awesome things about Korea.  Banpo Bridge is one of the most rockin things I’ve come across so far, and is a must-see as soon as I get to Seoul.  While “longest fountain bridge” is probably not the most difficult world record to beat, it’s still a pretty unique sight.  The 1,140 meter double-decker bridge is lined with roughly 10,000 LED nozzles, which light up several times a day for a multi-colored musical water spectacle that puts the Bellagio to shame.  Seoul I’ve got two words for you:  Rainbow Radness.

Anyonghaseyo!

This is my first experience with blogging, so bear with me.  I decided to create this blog so everyone can live vicariously through me.     Okay, so not exactly, but I do want to be able to keep in touch with everyone and show you all where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to.

As you all know, I will be leaving for South Korea soon (fingers crossed).  It has been a long and frustrating process, but I know it will all be worth it.  Thanks to all of my friends for helping me through this transition.  It has definitely not been easy detaching myself from all of my material belongings, saying goodbye to my baby Roxie, and crashing on couches.  I have also had to come to terms with knowing I will most likely miss Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family, and the birth of my very first neice/nephew.  I’m so thankful for the help and support of my friends and family, and I hope to see some of you on the other side of the world!