Santa is Korean...No English...

This week started out a bit stressful. I spent all day at work alternately teaching and studying for my finals. After work, I went to school, studied for another hour, and then took my last two finals. I was much better prepared for the second two finals, and it definitely showed in my scores. For the Writing and Speaking tests we took on Thursday I got 86% and 84%. For the Listening and Reading tests we took on Monday I got 93% and 100%…not too bad if I do say so myself. I beat all of the overseas Koreans in my class on those two tests. If only I could match their speaking skills, I would be unstoppable.

Tuesday was my last day of Korean classes for the term. It was a little sad. We all kind of bonded with each other over the course of the term, and now a lot of people are leaving Korea, or moving on to other things. After class on Tuesday we all went to this German place, and just hung out for almost two hours. Even our teacher came, as much as we annoyed him at times, I’m pretty sure he liked us. On Tuesday, my teacher handed me a tiny piece of paper and told me I needed to go to this room at 8:20. Turns out he recommended me for a scholarship, so I had a surprise scholarship interview. There were a lot of candidates, so I doubt I’ll get it, but it was nice to be nominated nonetheless.

The rest of the week went on as usual. It was odd having free time after work on Thursday, but I think that this week is going to be even more odd. I have to do a lot of studying to prep for level 6 of the language program, so I should be using my free time for that…however I’ll probably end up watching Korean drama instead, because that’s what I do.

This week wasn’t very eventful. I am growing ever more frustrated with the child in my class that cannot behave, and is in turn corrupting all the hard work I put in to get the other students to behave. I’m so frustrated that there’s nothing I can do. There’s no principal I can send him to. If I send him to a Korean teacher he just gets baby talked to and told not to do it again. I can’t punish him, he doesn’t respond to yelling, he rarely listens when I’m talking to him. I’ve run out of things to do except ignoring the kid, but I don’t want to completely give up hope on him, or else he will stay like this for the rest of his life, and he will never have any friends.

This week I had a terrible craving for chicken Caesar salad. So I went to the store to see if it would even be possible. I easily found lettuce, and assorted veggies for the salad part. Chicken was easy to come by, I even managed to find a bottle of salad dressing that said “American Caesar” on it. Then I went on search for cheese, and in the back corner of the store, I found a whole block of feta cheese…it cost 10,900 won($10), but I didn’t care. I went home made my salad, listened to Christmas music, and spent the evening wrapping presents. It’s fun how just a small taste of home, can improve my mood and give me a small sense of Christmas spirit. Last year I had no Christmas spirit. This year, however, I am REALLY excited. Probably because my favorite little sister is coming to visit me, and unlike last year, I don’t have to work on Christmas Day.

This week I was trying to use Santa as a threat to get my children to behave in the classroom. So I told the kids that I had Santa’s phone number and if they were bad I would call him, and he would bring them rocks on Christmas. One of my students looked and me with this knowing look on his face and said, “But teacher, Santa is Korean…no English.” I didn’t fight the Santa is Korean thing, because to each culture their own, but I did explain to the student that Santa is a genius and he can speak any language in the world. After I explained that, they took my threats more seriously.

I hope you all have a wonderful week. And remember that the best way to spread Christmas Cheer is by singing loud for all to hear.

Love,

Jessica

In Which North Korea Does Not Blow Up South Korea

This was a pretty good week. I think. It all went by so fast that I don’t really remember what happened. I started practicing our winter play with the students in my class. It’s going to be an unmitigated disaster. The performance will require my ten 5 year olds to stand in a straight line and only move when it’s time for them to deliver a line, or complete and action. My students are a very energetic bunch of students. They can’t stand still in a line for 5 seconds much less five minutes. It’s not going to be a fun next couple of months.

This past Thursday was my speaking and writing finals for my Korean class. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had much time to study…it definitely showed on my speaking final. I went into the room for the test and the teacher asks me a question that I don’t understand. It was apparently about family reunions, which I only understood after clarification. It was rough, and I ended the interview by apologizing to my teacher. I think I did a bit better on the written test. And I actually made some time to study for the reading and listening portions this weekend, so I hope that they will go better tomorrow.

On Friday night I went to the really fancy part of Seoul to meet some friends for dinner. This is the part of Seoul with Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Mercedes parked all over the place. I thought I knew how to get to the place I was going, but I was mistaken, so I ended up wandering around in the bitter cold for over an hour. I tried to flag a cab but the cab driver refused to take me because I was a foreigner traveling alone. I even talked to him in Korean, so it can’t be because he was afraid to speak English. I was lucky enough to be raised in a place where I didn’t have to encounter racism, but coming to Korea has truly been an awakening experience on what it’s like to live as a minority. People often refuse to sit next to me on the train, cab drivers refuse to stop for me, I get lousy service at restaurants, people at stores ignore me until they have no other option but to talk to me. It hurts my feelings sometimes, but at the same time, I’m grateful that as a white middle class suburban female, I get the chance in my life to experience this racism so that I will NEVER treat anyone like I am often treated here.

Saturday I slept in which was glorious. I haven’t had more than 7 consecutive hours of sleep in about a month, but I slept for almost 10 hours on Friday night. It was amazing how much energy I had on Saturday. Saturday afternoon I went with some friends to the Embassy housing on the military base, and had Thanksgiving dinner with a family from church. They are both Foreign Service Officers working at the US embassy. One of them is one of the leading North Korean experts (you may have seen some of his work on WikiLeaks). We asked them about the North Korean situation, and neither of them seem to concerned, which was comforting, because if anyone knew, they would know. They briefed us on what we should do if something does happen. The place we have to meet to get shipped out of Korea is only a 25 minute walk from my house. Then they filled us with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie…all acquired from the military base…it truly is a magical place. Walking through embassy housing was like walking through suburban America…a car even stopped at a cr

osswalk and waited for us to cross instead of trying to run us over. It was shocking.

Saturday night guess what I did? If you guessed another K-pop concert then you are right. But this one was a pretty extreme K-pop concert. If you know anything about K-pop at all, then you know about Big Bang…I saw Big Bang!!! and 2NE1 and Se7en, and Gummy. It was a really good concert. My favorite Korean musician is TaeYang, and he is a member of Big Bang as well as being a solo artist, and I got to see him again! We were even closer to him this time. I may or may not have screamed like a teenage girl when he came over to our side of the stage.

Now that it’s December, it’s time to get into the Christmas spirit. So I would just like to tell everyone how thankful I am for the savior and his birth and all of the many possibilities that are available to us in this lifetime because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope everyone will take this Christmas season to think not about gifts, and shopping, but about what you can do to help others, and to feel the true peaceful spirit of Christmas that can’t be found in the crowded stores.

Big Bang Dancing it up on Stage...crazy costumes and all.

Even North Korea Couldn’t Keep Me From Harry Potter

As anyone who pays any attention to the news whatsoever knows, this was a bit of a rough week for the Korean peninsula. The week was going along as usual until Tuesday. During my afternoon class, I was teaching, and all of the sudden, the power went out for a second and we heard a big bang. I jumped, and all of the students laughed at me. We never did figure out what had caused the short power outage, and the bang, but it set me on edge. After class was finished and I had sent all the children on their way home, I entered the teacher’s lounge to discover all of my coworkers deep in conversation. North Korea had bombed an island of the coast of Incheon.

My co-workers who haven’t been in Korea for very long were really afraid, and one even left early to call her mom. For some reason, despite this being the worst attack since the Korean war, I didn’t feel any fear. I am a bit worried about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks. The whole city is going about business as usual, but everyone is definitely on edge.

This weekend I went out of town with some friends and their friends, and as I was packing for the trip on Friday night. I made sure to include my passport, all of my financial information, and my college diploma, just in case something happened on Sunday before I got back. Luckily nothing has happened as of yet, but it’s a strange feeling having to think about these kind of possibilities. I’ve never checked the news so much in my life. I hope that just like the last major incident in March, everything will quickly return back to normal, and we can all go about our lives again without having to worry about North Korea pulling the trigger.

This past Friday was a very happy day for me. Due to the extreme cruelty of the Harry Potter Release Date planning commission, Harry Potter 7 will not be released in South Korea until December 15th, almost a month after the rest of the world has seen it. I was devastated when I heard this, luckily I have connections. Once the military had released the base from its North Korea imposed lockdown, one of my military friends took us to the theater on the military base, and for only 5 dollars, I got to sit there for 2 and a half hours eating concession stand hot tamales, and watching Harry prance about on screen.

The theatre was filled almost entirely with Americans. It was really weird. I haven’t seen American teenagers in almost two years now, I forgot how annoying they are. It was nice to be able to disappear into a crowd for a few hours, but it reaffirmed that I’m not quite ready to go back to being a full time American yet. I am going to have a very rough readjustment when I get back to the US.

This weekend I went to Namisum, an island in the middle of Bukhankang. It was really pretty with lots of trees and fresh air. There was even some snow blowing around on the ground. We also got the go to La Petite France. It’s this whole little village in the middle of no where that some Korean guy who really loved Le Petit Prince built. There are little statues and buildings dedicated to parts of the book. It’s a really cute place, even if it is pretty odd to find it in the middle of nowhere, South Korea. I went with two friends from my Korean classes and two of their friends from work. There were two Koreans, a French Korean, a Korean-American, and me…an incredibly pale, very non-Asian red-head. It was really fun though. Almost all of the conversation the entire weekend was in Korean, and I managed to hold my own quite well. I was probably the quietest member of the group, but that also had something to do with the fact that I am completely exhausted. I am now going to try to alleviate that problem by going to bed. Good night.

Too Tired to Think of Creative Title

This is going to be an incredibly short post because I am completely exhausted and just want to go to bed. This week was much better than last week. I was pretty happy, not too many complaints about work. The child in my class who is driving me insane is starting to calm down a smidgeon of a percentage, he still drives me crazy, but slightly less.

School is going alright, but I’m so tired in class that I’m not soaking up as much as I would like. I have to give a three minute speech this Thursday about anything I want. I’m open for topic ideas.

This weekend I went to a co-worker's wedding. It was interesting to see the Korean wedding. There wasn’t even really an officiator, they didn’t say “I do” or anything like that. Basically it was a giant photo shoot in a big hall with an amazing dress, some of their family performed songs for them, and both the bride and the groom’s fathers gave them lectures, then they bowed to each other’s parents, and that was the end of the ceremony. They then had a wardrobe change, came downstairs, cut a fake cake, drank a glass of champagne, and called it a day. Apparently there’s a private family ceremony where the parents throw grain on their daughter’s skirt, but other than that, Korean weddings are simple and fast. They also have an amazing buffet afterwards, with lots of delicious food. I ate a lot of sushi.

I also went to another K-Pop concert…This time it was Lee Seung Gi. I’m trying to see concerts from all different genres, so far I’ve got amazing solo act, band, and now versatile momma’s boy. It was a good concert in which the entire cast of one of my favorite dramas made an appearance on stage. One by one all of the main characters in 내 여자 친구는 구미호 (My Girlfriend is a Nine-tailed Fox) came out on stage, and they performed the entire soundtrack. It was pretty awesome. However it went on for over 3 hours…

All in all, life is good, I’m still happy and trying not to stress out too much over what step I need to take next.

Top: The whole cast of the drama, it's fuzzy because I was far away.

Bottom: Lee Seung Gi and Shin Min Ah

스트레스가 많이 밀려요… Stress is Piling Up

This week I was in a pretty foul mood all week. Finally I came to the realization that I am in severe need of a vacation…sadly my next day off work isn’t for another month and a half. Oh well. This semester of my Korean classes will finish in about three weeks, so I should gain a little bit of free time then. I think big city life is finally starting to get to me. Every day I am pushed and bumped, and rudely swept aside by thousands of people. Being from the Midwest, I’m not used to these kind of cramped quarters, and while it was novel and exciting at first, I think I’m finally getting tired of it. I am not a city girl, I’ve decided.

This Thursday was Pepero day. Pepero as I’m sure I mentioned last year on November 11th, is a delicious chocolate covered cookie stick. I bought a lot of Pepero to give to my students. However, my students also brought Pepero for me, so I ended up leaving school with more Pepero than I started the day with. I even tried to give some away to my Korean classmates, but they all had the same idea, so we just exchanged boxes, and all left with the same amount. I don’t think I will be eating Pepero again until next November 11th. Although, next year’s Pepero day is going to be amazing. It will be 11-11-11.

Thursday was the beginning of the G20 Summit in Seoul. Luckily, for the ease of my life, it was on the other side of town, and apart from the amped up police presence in the subways, I barely even noticed that a bunch of world leaders were here. Although they did pull out a bunch of stops to make Seoul look like a more exciting and nice city than it really is. Don’t get me wrong, I love Seoul. There is culture, and fun things to do and see almost everywhere. But they went a bit overboard for the summit. On Friday night, I was out with some friends, just walking around an area, that I’ve been to a million times before, and all of the sudden out of nowhere we see a hot air balloon, so we go over to check it out, and lining the small stream are hundreds of lantern floats depicting scenes from all over the world. It was beautiful, but if it hadn’t been for the international press present in the city, it wouldn’t have been there.

Saturday I went out for Greek food with some friends found a purple coat, then went home and holed up in my apartment. I’ve started being really greedy with my little free time. I should probably stop that. Today I went to church. Apparently for the Christmas program, the choir is performing selections from Handel’s Messiah. I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I have made it through 25 years of life without ever having heard anything from Handel’s Messiah, needless to say, the sight-reading today did not go well, but I am determined that next week will be much better.

Today after church, I came home, made so tuna rice balls…they were yummy. Then I watched the first episode of the new drama Secret Garden. There weren’t any subtitles yet, as it just came out yesterday, but I was able to guess most of the plot. Then all of the sudden, the concert scene came on. I was shocked, I wasn’t expecting it to be in the very first episode, but there it was, I watched carefully, sadly unable to pinpoint us in the large crowd shots. As I was beginning to lose hope a five second segment appeared, it was at just the right angle to be right behind us, and there silhouetted against the lights of the stage were two very tall, obviously not Korean girls, which I am positive were my friends, which means that the slightly less obtrusive figure to the right of them is ME!!!! I made a 3 second appearance in a Korean drama…my life is complete.

One Step Closer to my Dreams of K-Pop Stardom

This week was another exhausting, but mostly good week. I’m still having some trouble controlling one of my students. But I hope that eventually something will click, and he will realize that he has to sit down and be quiet or I’m just going to keep yelling at him every day for the rest of the school year. Other than that work is going well…the job part anyway. There’s been a bit of drama amongst the teachers lately. It’s caused this horrible division between the foreign and Korean staff, and I hate it. It feels like someone is always angry at someone else. I’m trying to play it neutral, but being Switzerland is really hard. I don’t want to upset any of the Korean teachers, so I’m being nice and helpful to them as much as I can when they come to me to complain about the other foreign teachers. Then the foreign teachers complain to me about the newest misunderstanding with the Korean staff, and I can see their side, but if I take it, then I’ll alienate the Korean staff…I hate dealing with drama, and being stuck in th

e middle of it.

School was pretty good this week. After class on Thursday as a class we all went out with our teacher. I wasn’t going to go, because they were going to a bar, but someone dragged me and promised we’d sit in a non-smoking section, so I went. It was interesting. I’ve never hung out with a teacher outside of the classroom before, except for that awkward subway ride a few weeks back. I didn’t stay too long, because I don’t enjoy being around people who are drinking, but I got to practice my Korean a little bit, and see my teacher in a different light.

Friday night I went to see my musician friend perform again. He really is a fantastic musician. Every time I go, even though it’s pretty much the same show, I still walk away in complete awe. I can do a lot of things well, but there’s not one thing in this world that I am simply amazing at, and I’m always in awe of those people who have found their niche, and can just do that one thing so well that it blows people away. Before the show I was waiting for some of my friends in the subway, and I witnessed Korean police using force for the first time since I’ve been in Korea. Some man was causing trouble, and he started shoving the police officer, so they had about four people forcibly restraining this guy, and he still managed to throw one of them to the ground. Good to see that the police here are top notch, especially with the G20 summit happening this week.

Saturday was an amazing day…quite possibly in the top ten of my life. It started out as any normal Saturday would. I slept late-ish got up and made myself some pancakes, got dressed, then caught the subway to meet a friend. We did a bit of shopping, then went to her side of town and hung out at her house for a little while. At 4 we went to meet a new friend. She just got to Korea, and we’ve decided to take her under our wings…basically because she shares our love of Korean dramas and Asian pop music. So we had dinner then all went to a K-Pop concert.

We saw a group called FT Island. They’re one of my favorite Korean pop bands; they even play instruments. Most of you have probably never heard of them, but just to give you an idea of how popular they are in Asia. While we were standing in line waiting to get inside we started talking to this Asian woman, whom we had assumed was Korean. However, she spoke flawless English, and turned out to be from Singapore. She has flown all the way to Korea from Singapore (a 6 hour $900 flight) just to see this group in concert. There were people from China and Japan, all of whom had traveled overseas just to see this group perform. You should you tube them, it’s definitely worth it.

Their concert was really good, and we had a great time, but what pushed Saturday into the top ten was what happened after the show. They played their encore, then the lead singer (who has an amazing voice) said that he had a friend who had come to the concert who wanted to come out and sing something for us. So this guy in a terrible shirt walks out, and I think, “Hey, I recognize him…he’s not a singer, he’s an actor.” So I was really confused because they started hanging all of these posters about this guys comeback album around the place and all of these girls appeared with signs that said OSKA on them, but the actor’s name isn’t OSKA it‘s Yoon Sang Hyun, so I was even more confused. Then through my limited Korean, I managed to understand that they were going to be using us to shoot a scene of a drama. Then this REALLY famous Korean actor walked into the room (Hyun Bin), and everyone starts screaming. So for the next half hour we got to be extras in a crowd scene for a Korean drama called Secret Garden. Dreams really do come true.

The drama starts airing this Saturday, and I don’t know what episode the concert scene will be in, but if we make the cut, I’ll definitely know, because I was standing by the only two ridiculously tall foreign girls in the audience… It was a really nice surprise ending to our happy day, and a nice welcome to Korea present for our new Drama loving friend.

So, now that I have been an extra in a Korean Drama, can I put that on my resume?

Have a good week, and bask in the knowledge that your degrees of separation from the world of Korean Drama stars just got one step shorter.

(Left= Hyun Bin, Right= Yoon Sang Hyun, Below= FT Island)

Sword on the Subway

This week was a hectic week. I worked six hours more than usual, plus it was Halloween, so I had to do a bunch of preparation for that. I had to decorate my classroom, perfect my costume, help the students make candy bags, plus find time in there to have a social life.

Monday because I had to teach an extra class, I was late to my Korean class, which was kind of embarrassing, to come in and interrupt the lesson. Then as usual I went out for dinner with my classmates after class. That’s where I practice all of my conversation skills. So, I didn’t get home until very late, then the next day I did the same thing.

Wednesdays I don’t have class, but this Wednesday, I kind of had a date. I went out to dinner with a boy one of my friends had introduced me to. It was an interesting dinner. He was really shy and Korean, and I am really shy and American, so there were a lot of barriers to be overcome. I was so tired that my Korean skills were not at their best. But in the end it turned out to be a pretty fun evening. Thanks to him I found a Kyobo book store in my neck of the woods, that probably has a pretty nice English section. I’ll have to go back and check it out another time.

Thursday was our Halloween party at school. It was pretty fun, the kids were all really cute in their costumes. I however, managed to walk away with the best costume prize amongst the teachers. I even got a cookie for it. I went dressed as a ninja, and I was a pretty convincing ninja if I do say so myself. I dressed all in black, I had a sword and a belt, I had the mask I had bought when I was in Japan. Then after work they announced that my classroom had won the best decoration prize too…my boss presented me with a bottle of wine…my co-workers weren’t too bitter about my win because I gave the bottle of wine to them to enjoy so it was like everyone had won.

Thursday night, while we were in our Korean class, the power suddenly went out. However it only went out in our wing of the school. Apparently we had been running a few too many space heaters, and blown a circuit. So we sat there in the dark for a little while, until our teacher found a new freezing classroom for us to study in. I was so tired that it was a good thing our classroom was so cold. It kept me awake.

Friday after work, I went home and did nothing. I cleaned my apartment. Did some laundry. Watched some TV…It was relaxing and refreshing. I need at least one evening a week to detox from my weeks here. I love my life in Korea, but it definitely isn’t conducive to relaxation. I learned in my Korean class that in Korean there is a word for someone who dies from overwork…Apparently it happens often enough that they needed a word for it. That’s just sad. I’ve decided that if I am going to stay here for a while longer I should work on sleeping more and eating right so that I don’t add to the statistics.

Saturday I just hung out with friends all day. We went to the temple in the morning, went shopping in the afternoon, had pizza in the evening, then went to the Halloween Performance of NANTA at night. I of course went decked out in my ninja costume, which meant that I was carrying a sword around with me all day. In about a week and a half Seoul will host the G20 summit, so they’ve really upped security everywhere, especially in the subways, so I got a lot of calculating stares from all of the police in the subway, until they realized that my sword was a wooden replica of a drama prop, and I don’t look like I would hurt a fly. Good thing I didn’t wear my ninja mask on the train. For a while I was afraid they were going to stop me and question me about why I had a sword, but no one said anything, they just gave me stranger than normal looks.

Well, that was the extent of my week. One of my favorite people that I’ve met since coming to Korea goes back to America tomorrow, and I’m very sad about that. Korea is going to seem a little more empty without her, hopefully the economy will remain bad enough to force her back to Korea…

The World at Dusk

This week was another week like every other. Teaching, studying, watching too many Korean Dramas…

I went out to dinner with some people from my class a couple of times this week, it was pretty interesting. Because everyone is from different places all over the world, the only language we all have in common is Korean, so we are all forced to practice our Korean. I can feel my conversation skills slowly getting better. I still have a long way to go, but I’m not as hopeless in conversation as I was a little while ago. My favorite classmate is this girl from France. Sometimes I get to practice my French with her too. We were walking to the subway station on Thursday, and anyone listening to our conversation would have been really confused, because we were alternating between French, Korean, and English.

My kindergarten class, which was once so wonderful with my 6 students, has finally increased to its full capacity of 10 students. It’s been a bit stressful, and the classroom feels so crowded, but the students all seem to get along pretty well. The only problem is this one student who apparently lacks all muscle control. He can’t sit or stand still. I took him out in the hallway to lecture him this week, and as I was yelling at him about standing still, his legs were slowly sliding apart and he was sinking to the floor. I don’t even think he noticed. He’s not a bad kid, but it’s so frustrating to be yelling at him every ten minutes to sit still, and on top of that the kid can’t be quiet. He’s such a talker that he has the best English in the class, but it’s really annoying trying to teach.

Friday night at work, we all had to stay an hour and a half late for a meeting. Our boss sat down with us, and invited us to air our grievances, mostly about the communication issues on the staff. I doubt that anything will be fixed by it, but it was a nice gesture that he sat down with us and listened. It’s definitely quite a change from ICEV where we were told we couldn’t even vent our grievances amongst each other while on school property. It’s nice to be in a better place.

On Friday I was walking back to the school for the meeting, and it was dusk. I’ve never walked to the school at that time of day, and the way that the setting sun hit the buildings made them look completely different than what I am used to, and it hit me, I am living in South Korea. I’ve been here for long enough, that I’ve become accustomed to pretty much everything around. However, every once in a while, the light will hit something differently, and I will look around me in wonder that this is where I am living. A semi-shy girl who spent the first 20 years of her life living in the Midwest, where the population is nice and spread out, and you can walk down a street without seeing a single person. Now here I am in a country crammed full of people who don’t look anything like me, and act nothing like me. I’ve become so used to everything here, that sometimes I’m surprised by my own foreign reflection as I pass a window. The other day I found myself referring to an American made movie as a foreign film…When I do finally decide to come back to the US, it’s going to be a rough transition, I already feel it.

Saturday I celebrated two of my friends birthdays. We went out to lunch, then wandered around Insadong. We then went to see this show called JUMP. It was hysterical. It’s a martial arts comedic performance. They have all of these people who are well-trained in Taekwondo, and they act out this story. I spent the whole 80 minute show in tears I was laughing so hard. If you ever come to Seoul, I definitely recommend it. After that we went to dinner with a bunch of other friends, then spent two hours doing karaoke…I usually get burned out after the first hour, but I stuck it out trying to be a good friend. After that we went and hung out in this funky area of Seoul called Hongdae for a while. It’s where all the artsy type college students and musicians go to hang out, and it’s a pretty interesting crowd on the weekends. By the time we were finished there, the public transportation had shut down, so we had to take a cab back to my apartment. The cab driver was a pretty chatty guy, so I spent the whole 30 minute cab ride talking to the driver in Korean. It was probably my favorite part of the whole night.

The Great Kimchi Crisis of 2010

A great and terrible tragedy has struck the Korean peninsula. It is disrupting the daily lives of all of its citizens and has thrown the country into complete turmoil. Due to the heavier than normal rains of the wet season, the lettuce and cabbage crops suffered massive devastation. Anyone who knows anything about the Korean palate knows that everyday, with every meal Koreans consume kimchi. There are many different kinds of kimchi, but the most common it the cabbage kimchi. Due to the rains, the prices of lettuce and cabbage have skyrocketed, and by default the price of kimchi. Some schools have even stopped serving kimchi with their school lunches. They are hiding the kimchi in the grocery stores, and you have to ask for it behind the counters. Much like rising gas prices in the United States, the price of kimchi has become a daily topic of conversation. I don’t ever buy kimchi, so it hasn’t really affected my, but it’s kind of fun to hear my Korean co-workers complain about it so much.

Other than the price of kimchi, things haven’t been too exciting around here lately. This week I studied my Korean, taught…On Tuesday I tried to go see a friend of mine perform his traditional Korean music, but I was too late to catch the performance, so I just met up with some other friends who had seen the show. I made a new friend, and managed to spend almost an hour talking to him in Korean…I’m sure it wasn’t very impressive conversation, but it was good practice for me.

The next day I made sure I was on time, and managed to catch my friend’s show. It was really cool. There were hundreds of people there to cheer his band on. He plays the Korean Flute, I can’t remember the traditional name for it, but it has this haunting mournful sound, it’s really beautiful. They also all play the drums. If you ever get a chance to see a Korean drum performance it’s really impressive. It’s so loud it vibrates your chest.

Thursday I had my Korean class so I headed to campus. On my way there I got a call from my musician friend saying that he would be performing on my school’s campus that evening. Sadly I had class, so I couldn’t go, but I met up with him on my way to class and practiced my Korean a bit more. It’s fun having Korean friends with which I can practice my conversation skills. My new Korean class is a completely different dynamic than the other ones I was in. There are more students, and the teacher is moving at a really slow pace, at least it seems like it to me. However, everyone in the class converses in Korean. Even at break time in between class we all talk with each other in Korean, almost never switching to English. It’s going to be really good for my speaking, which is my weakest point.

This weekend I hung out with some friends. We went K-Pop CD shopping, which is always fun. Then we went shopping in Myeongdong. We decided to cap off our evening by going down to the Han River and watching the displays at the 2010 fireworks festival. Apparently it was a bigger deal than we had realized. The subway was so crammed that it took us a half hour to emerge from underground. Once we got outside, the normally spacious park was crammed full of people. We scouted out a spare bit of grass, barely big enough for the three of us to sit on, and then waited for the display to start. When it finally did we stayed for 15 minutes, and left in disappointment. It was not worth battling the hundreds of thousands of people who had shown up to see the show. I expected a lot more from the continent that invented the darn things.

Today was general conference which means I got to stay home and watch church on the internet. I love days where I don’t have to leave my apartment. It rarely happens, but when it does I take full advantage. I made French toast with banana milk, some alfredo, and since I ran out of peanut butter, I invented a new sandwich which consisted of a banana, strawberry jam, and syrup…it was actually quite good. All in all in was a pretty good day. Tomorrow starts another week. But they all go by so quickly that I’ll be writing an e-mail again before I know it. I love you all. Have an amazing week, and join the Korean nation in prayer that the kimchi prices will drop.

And we're back!!!

One of my friends suggested I restart the whole blog thing. Since I write a weekly e-mail anyway, I'm just going to post the e-mails on the blog and kill two birds with one stone.

Korea Year 2 Week 26: Kyoto and K-Pop

I don’t know why I love alliteration so much, but I just realized that I’ve been using it for a lot of my weekly e-mail titles lately. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Korea so long, and teaching extremely simplified English so long that my personal ability to produce language is deteriorating…sad. My chances of acing the GRE are growing ever more dim.

I left off as we were on a train headed for Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto is the former capital of Japan, which means that unlike Hiroshima, it was full of beautiful historic buildings and temples. Almost every street we wandered down had a random temple located on it, which made finding the ones we really wanted to see a bit more difficult, because we weren’t sure whether or not it was the famous one, or just another neighborhood temple until we found the English signage, which was few and far between. I’ll give Korea this, they are definitely a more English friendly country than Japan.

Within our first few hours in Kyoto we looked at about 4 different Temples, the Golden Temple, a Zen temple, a random neighborhood temple that we thought was the Zen temple until we realized that there were no other tourists there, and the Japanese people were actually there for worship and not sight-seeing. It wasn’t long before we realized the one thing that every tourist to Japan eventually realizes about it’s Temples…they are beautiful historic structures, but…they all look the same. Each may have a slightly different look to it. One might be caked in gold, another in silver, one may have over 5000 orange post things, while another only has about 50, but on a basic level, once you’ve seen three or four, you really don’t need to go out of your way to see anymore. Don’t get me wrong, they were beautiful, and if I didn’t live in Asia, I might have appreciated their beauty a lot more, but I see Asian architecture every day…so the awe that most western tourists feel when visiting Asia wore off quite a while ago, and all I could think when I saw all of the pagodas was, “that’s nice…another pagoda.”

We discovered very early on in our trip that the language barrier in Japan is not as easy to cross as it is in Korea. Luckily, due to my supreme nerdiness, I am the proud owner of an electronic translation dictionary. It is a Korean/English dictionary, but it came fully loaded with travel dictionaries for over 15 other languages. One of which is Japanese. This came in very handy. Whenever we wanted to communicate with the people. I would locate the phrase in Korean on my dictionary, and point at the Japanese underneath. It was very useful when we wanted our check, or wanted to know how much something cost. They could just read it, and we didn’t have to worry about mispronunciation or everything. Sometimes being a huge linguistic nerd is a good thing.

On Tuesday we decided that we should use up the remainder of our Yen by buying souvenirs. My friend was looking at all of these beautiful Japanese things, wall hangings, chopsticks, pottery. Whilst she was looking around, I was in search of my ideal souvenir. I wandered from place to place, but all I could think was how much cheaper I could get all of this Asian-type stuff in Korea. Then I saw it, and I knew it had to be mine. A ninja mask. That’s right a real Japanese ninja mask. I bought it, stowed it, and have future plans to use it as my Halloween costume.

Later in the day we went to yet another temple to wander about, this one’s unique selling point was the fact that it had been made without using nails, which was quite a feat as it had been built up the side of a very large hill. A hill so large in fact that a resident of Southern Missouri might even term it a mountain. Guess what…this temple looked remarkably similar to all the other temples, but don’t tell the Japanese I said that.

Once we had exited the temple we were on our way to find some food for lunch when I saw two good-looking boys sitting on the side of the path looking at a map. They were handsome Asians so I of course turned for a second look. This time I thought, they look kind of familiar. Then it hit me, it was the Mormon guy and his friend that we had met in the airport in Osaka. Weird. What are the odds, that out of the millions of people all over Japan we would run into these guys twice. We talked to them for a little bit, pointed out a temple that actually was quite a bit different from the others (Fushimi-Inari shrine if you’re interested), then once again went our separate ways. I wonder if I’ll ever randomly wander into them in Seoul.

On our way to find lunch we continued the great souvenir hunt, this will be my final anecdote from my trip to Japan, as I have waxed quite wordy, and have yet to explain my references to K-pop. In a shop along the path to the nail-less temple, in the far back corner I found a miniature Japanese men’s traditional shirt that came with a miniature katana blade. I saw it and knew that I must have this for my other traveling companion, Ken. So I purchased it, and later that night presented it to my plastic fellow traveler, then put it in my luggage and forgot about it until I reached the Osaka airport the next day. As I was going through security, they pulled me and my bag aside and asked me to open it. They asked me if I had any knives in my luggage and that’s when I remembered the fake mini-sword. Apparently the tiny Ken-sized blade was considered a security threat, and would have to be confiscated. However, I didn’t want to give up the whole sword, so I asked the security guard if we could some how break off the plastic pieces so I could glue them to the sheath when I got home, and it would still look like a real sword. After about ten minutes of being laughed at by all the security guards in the place, we got it apart. I gave him my blade, took the hilt, and went to board the plane.

What makes the above story even more amusing is that only a few weeks before they took my blade, they confiscated some Japanese throwing stars from Steve Jobs at the exact same airport as he was trying to get on his private jet. Basically the moral of this story is that I am just as cool as Steve Jobs, even if I don’t have billions of dollars backing me up.

It was good coming back to Korea, and once again being able to read the signs, and understand to a certain extent what was going on around me. Friday I worked. Saturday I made cinnamon rolls at a friend’s house, and watched The Office. Then around 5:30 I left to meet my two friends who are just as obsessed with K-Pop as I am, and we went to our first ever K-Pop concert. It was the first concert I’ve ever actually paid money to go to, and it was for my favorite Korean singer. His name is Tae Yang, if I had to compare him to anyone in the western world, I would call him the Korean Usher, but in my view Usher can’t even compare. The concert was amazing. We were on the second floor, but we still had a decent view of the stage. The best part about our seats, however, was their proximity to the center aisle. Seated about 10 rows in front of us was G-Dragon…Yes, G-Dragon. For those of you not well versed in the Korean music scene. G-Dragon’s fame is only second to Rain. He’s the front man for the band Big Bang, and branched out into his own solo career as well. He kept walking past our seats the entire concert. If you were all 14 year old Korean Girls, you have no idea how jealous you would be of me right now.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first K-Pop concert, and have a slight suspicion that there will be many to follow. Next we have to figure out a way to see Rain before he goes off to join the military next year. I shall keep you all abreast of future developments in that department.