xteethx

and now back to our irregularly scheduled program

you missed me?!?
I’ve been busy having too much fun. and having some technical difficulties. and being lazy. sorry. here are some of my winter pics.
New years part deux:

My aunt and her daughter making dumplings.

I love hanging out with my cousins. They’re witty, loud, and can drink like fish; what more entertainment do you need?

my cousin and her hubby

haha one of my aunts shows how it’s done.

unabashedly asking for some money…

My cousin cheyoung is seemingly harmless but she can kick your 엉덩이, trust me. Here she is admonishing me not to take her picture.

at the sauna… or 찜질방

the next morning i went snowboarding with some friends…breaking all the way down the mountain is more like it though ^.^

At 노량진 (Nolangjin) Fish Market. Not as awesome as tsukiji market in Tokyo but the food we had was so good nonetheless…

our dinner before:

And after you can pick out seafood goodies at the market and you can have it cooked or cut up at a nearby restaurant. The restaurant will charge about $2/person and whatever drinks you order.

it was indeed jumbo, unless my hands are really small.

king crab was so good…

Sean’s fiance, Kana. If i look like I didnt take a shower for a couple days and I look really tired, it’s most likely to be true.

Sgt. Patton.

After the fish is all cut up in sashimi pieces, the restaurant will make spicy soup out of the leftovers/bones and add some vegetables. It’s pretty good actually; perfect for the winter.

남대문

I can’t believe it is gone…it was a really beautiful gate. This is really tragic…

Monday Morning Football

i can’t believe I got up at 6:40 AM to watch the game but THE UPSET WAS COMPLETELY WORTH IT YOU STINKIN CHEATIN PATRIOTS

It was neat to see the base again. The only thing that sucks about watching it there is that they don’t broadcast the commercials.

Anyhow the Yongsan army base is its own isolated American bubble in the middle of Seoul, with its own high school, middle and elementary schools. It completely felt like being in the US; Asians were in the minority and the food was all American fare. For the first half of the game I went to the Main Post (which caters mostly to the army) with Patton, Ruth, Charles and John. It was amusing to see everyone help themselves to beer 8 in the morning. I helped myself to some wings and nachos. I guess as an additional boost to morale, the St Louis Rams cheerleaders were there; i didn’t know they get to make their rounds to US army bases around the world. It makes me wonder what the career path of a cheerleader is after 30…

At the army base:

For the second half, we went over to the Navy post which was much better. (and there was no little girl screaming for the Patriots for every down for every little thing) The facilities and food were better. I helped myself to some scrambled eggs and waffles and it was nice to see splenda for coffee.

Navy base:

Of course the game was more exciting second half too. Mostly everyone was a Giants fan although there were some sporting Patriot jerseys. I couldn’t believe the Giants came back with just two minutes and 40 seconds. It was a really good game for both teams but the Giants delivered today. It was definitely a comeback worth waking up to. (How’s that for an in-depth, technical, postgame analysis?)

Cosmopolitan

almost.

Although Seoul still has a ways to go in becoming a cosmopolitan city compared to other Asian cities, it has come a long way when I stop and think about what happened in my day.

On my way to church, I met an African-American couple from Georgia on the 2 line with their two year old son. Afterwards I went to a meeting about North Korea with Americans, a Brazilian and a South African. I never thought one of my close friends in Korea would be from Brazil, but Glau and I click in many ways. We blew about $100 at kyobo book store (always a foreigner convention going on there ) and then went out to eat pork bbq and these sumptuous desserts, including fondue, at Hagaan Daz, which for some reason are unavailable in the US. The couple cakes look amazing and the espresso with ice-cream is the perfect combination of my two favorite vices:

Anyhow, best news is I may have found a roommate for grad school in Maryland right here in Seoul. Looking forward to exploring DC and MD, but nothing is like Seoul of course.

Internet Famous

If you haven’t watched his video by now, you either lead a busy, respectable life or you live under a rock.

For those of you who fall in either category, Matt Harding is just a regular American guy who took clips of himself dancing in random places all throughout the world. He put it in a video and set it to music and it became a hit. It  caught the attention of the media; from the news, NPR and of course the venerable Ellen Degeneres Show. To make a long story short, he is traveling to make a third video, this time with the sponsorship of Stride gum and the time and energy of dorky volunteers from the Matt Harding fanbase.

Matt was scheduled to be in Seoul and film in front of Namdehmoon (south gate) on the 29th at 6PM but he was at Dongdehmoon instead. (East gate) So there were a bunch of us waiting for him on Tuesday. After a half hour, we decided to film without him. It was a lot of fun actually; it must have been posted on youtube somewhere by now. It was nice to meet and chat with all these different people and talk about what they were doing in Seoul. I met a really nice German woman who taught German at a university and her gregarious friend who is teaching music and has been in Seoul for 5 1/2 years. As I said many times before, it is easy to make a lot of interesting friends here.

here’s a bunch of us wondering WHERETHEHELLISMATT?

Apparently Matt sent an apologetic email the next day, explaining that when he realized he was at the wrong place, he ran over to Namdehmoon but found very few people left. He arranged to try to shoot the video again on Thursday the 31st at 10.

This time Matt was there. We took a few shots dancing, took some pics, talked some, and went home. It was nice to meet him; he’s really personable and courteous. It felt like there were more people the first time around on Tuesday and as I was talking to someone I met then, we thought that Tuesday actually seemed more fun. I guess its because this time around we were taking instruction from someone but when Matt wasn’t there, it was completely spontaneous and we didn’t know what the heck we were doing but it was ok.

Just another night in Seoul.
Here’s an unflattering pic of Matt with harsh flash

He looks more like ‘Matt’ here but it is blurry

oh and this is a tribute to my student (but my older ‘brother’) Inkyu who pointed out that I had no pictures of him on my blog:

My cousin introduced me to Inkyu, who is a professional pool player and he’s really eager to learn English as he plans to compete internationally. He is also a very ambitious businessman who owns a couple pool halls and plans to open more.  I hope he does well in everything he pursues. ^^

Speak Korean

So this is the show where non-Korean women speak in Korean about their experiences of living in SK. The title of the show is roughly translated to Chatting with Beauties (which some are not) but it’s really interesting to hear them speak because they all have their own unique accents or intonations when Korean should be monotone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXB2qhwX4wAÂ

For instance, the blonde girl from South Africa (who also tries to play up the dumb blonde too much like whats her face on Friends)  often drawls out the last syllable of  sentences which is usually 다  (‘da’) from ‘입니다’ (ibneeda), the formal ending for declarative sentences. The formal tense is always used since they are on air.  Anyhow, the S African woman tends to sound stacatto:
daaaah … dahhhh ….. daaaah …. daaaaaah
What’s more disturbing to me is that many of them also adopt the rather cheesy gestures, body language, facial expressions etc that I loathe and thought could only be innate to Koreans. It’s new for me to see white people say ‘Fighting!’, a common expression used to cheer or encourage. For some of them (esp. the Asian non-Koreans) I wouldn’t be able to tell they were not Korean if I only heard them speaking w/o seeing their faces.
It’s also interesting to see Koreans’ attitudes toward foreigners who stay here for a long time. Most of them respect them for speaking Korean and in a way I think most want to emulate the western countries. But Korea is still a rather homogeneous society, and there are still many who would never want their kids to date or marry a foreigner. There’s also some who think that those who stay here too long, (esp. teachers) couldn’t be successful back at home. When I read message boards out there from non-koreans who have been living in Seoul for years and keep complaining about Korea or Koreans, I can’t help but to think that that viewpoint is true. I don’t understand why they don’t go back home if they’re griping about Korea all the time. On the other hand, I think most people are here cause they’re interested in Korea or need to pay off their student loans or for any other good reason.
My friend and I were talking about how fun it is here because you can easily meet all sorts of interesting people you can learn a lot from.  It’s one of the reasons why it’s fun to be here. I can understand how people can just stay here for years because it’s an adventure being here. It reminds me of my cousin who has been living in Japan for 10+ years. I dont think he can imagine any US city being more exciting than Tokyo which shares its similarities with Seoul. Though I love Korea I dont think I could ever make it my home. i’m ready to go back and get ready for grad school and do taxes lol. My classes are ending next friday. I’m happy. I’ll miss my students. I’m going to play and travel for a bit before i go back. I’ll say my goodbyes then.

A Day in the Life

…of a wandering tourist/expat/hyphenated-american in Seoul
7:30 – Think long and hard about getting up

8:15 – Take the subway and get stampeded by the public masses
9:00 Teach English to kids who don’t want to learn
1:30- Lunch with unemployed restless friend or w/private students. Today was with restless friend.
2:00 – Still discussing bad and good movies over sulong-tang

3:00 – Follow up lunch with overpriced coffee at Homestead
4:00 – Unsuccessfully tried to work on poster for NK ministry at church.
5:00  – Eat early dinner of spicy chicken with some interesting church folks.
7:00 – At NK prayer meeting listening to Sue from Lighthouse Foundation speak about running three bakeries, serving orphanages and starting a disability center in the NK.  Learned that only high-level diplomatic talks can change anything for that regime is completely wrong; real change happens in the heart, one person at a time.  Authority is in truth; truth is love. MLK. Mother Theresa. Sue. The work of NGOs, non-profits, churches, ministries, missions, ordinary people are not just band-aid short-term solutions as I once believed but is productive in the long-run.

i’m hopeful again.

Dr. Fish

I’m back online….my modem is back up now. (I didn’t ask how it got fixed; it’s how things are done here) I managed to snoop from someone’s wireless router here and there but it’s a weak signal.
Wow what a boring lead. I’m sure all 7 of you out there who read this would be more interested in my Dr. Fish experience!!!!!!!!! woot! (Woot was merriam-webster’s 2007 word of the year! do you know how many times i used that frikin word?http://tinyurl.com/2qqust )

anyways, I heard about these fish who nibble your calloused skin off your feet and how much of a fad it’s become in Korea. It’s waning out now though since I heard that it doesn’t really work but I went to go investigate myself.

There’s a Dr. Fish cafe near the pool hall that one of my private students own and it turned out to be really nice. It’s two floors and has a ton of books and magazines to peruse through. There’s also complimentary coffee and toast. I could probably live there every day. The little spas for your feet are upstairs, right in front of these huge windows overlooking a busy street in the Chongno intersection.
After i was instructed to wash my feet (no soap) I was able to put immerse my feet in the spa that contained the fish. For some reason it eluded me that having all these fish suck on your feet would be a gross experience albeit an interesting one. As soon as my feet hit the water, the fish swarmed to it as if by magnetic force. I became squeamish as it felt kind of gross and ticklish. But I forced my feet down as long as possible since I paid $5 to have them suck my feet for 15 minutes.

my view

my pedicurists…

My conclusion is that to get the best result you’d have to scrub your feet a little bit before going in the water; it’d be easier for the fish to eat the calloused skin that way. You’d also have to go for a few sessions to get real results. In other words, you should just keep a fish farm at home. Of course if you dont like the idea of fish sucking on your feet, you could always soak them in the fish-free spas for your feet.
Nothing new is going on…I’m still meeting up with relatives I haven’t seen yet, and I’m really touched at their hospitality and love for me even though I don’t know them that well. I’m also getting to meet new people at the NK church, Mulim and Eun-gyung. In these meetings I’m always afraid that there’d be a language barrier but I find that my Korean and their English is enough for us to find common ground. I suppose my one regret was not knowing enough Korean to understand Mulim’s ordeal when he escaped to Mongolia. He shared some wild stories about being on the run. I told him he should write a book…he said after he makes more money. He said he had an easier time making money in China than in Seoul but of course he’s safe here.
I realize that beneath all the glitter of Seoul, it is extremely hard to make enough money to fall in the middle class bracket, even if you graduated from a good school. If this is the case for South Koreans, I can’t imagine how competitive it is for the North Koreans, who have to adjust in so many ways to a new society. They’re also behind in English and education in general since they missed school for the years they spent in hiding in China. The problem for most North Koreans students is how they’re going to support themselves after graduation when the government will no longer subsidize their housing or tuition expenses. I wish I could tell my high school and elementary school students how lucky they are to afford going to private academies when they don’t want to be there. anyhow I think this post-graduation dilemma for N. Koreans will be on my plate when i get back to the US…

I also realize that the places I’ve hung out in in Seoul are the richer parts of the city which led me to believe that all of Korea’s economy is growing. Anyhow it doesn’t seem as if any economy is doing that well at the moment. Must be a heyday for shortsellers; And to think that that dow was going to break 14000

Happy New Year jiggas

 

about 16 days late but better than never. aight so lets see where I left off…

Christmas! Well on the sunday before Christmas, we had a gift exchange at the North Korean Hanaro church:

Afterwards i went to see my church Jubilee put on a great Charlie Brown Christmas play. It was quite amusing and entertaining as the setting was changed to Seoul; Charlie was a hakwan teacher going nowhere. The cast also did a good job in portraying the nuances of living here including loud and annoying sales girls doing the Wonder Girls song, not being able to catch a cab if your Korean pronunciation sucks, girls who takes pictures of themselves at cafes and on the subways, etc. The props and the music were impressive too..

Charlie trying to catch a cab to Kangnam…

버스

This guy Lucas was incredible with the guitar…

Actual Christmas Day was good, busy and a bit lonely as it is every now and then. Sometimes I feel so busy and pulled in different directions or dying for some alone time and then there will be times when no one can have dinner with you.. haha. But Christmas service was really good nonetheless. I went to a joint English service with about 30+ English-speaking churches in Seoul. It was exciting to see such a large and diverse congregation meet together to sing and worship in one heart. People from different churches came up on stage to rap, perform body worship or do skits but the main feature was a choir that came from Indonesia; they were awesome. One guy I used to go to church with more than 10 years ago played the guitar…such a small world after all.

죽 (juk or rice porridge) in Myungdong. It was at one of those franchises that I was curious about and it exceeded my expectations. I had the seafood type; I’ll have to try their other varieties later on.

Afterwards I fought through the ridiculous crowds in Myungdong to get to the train station to go to the NK prayer meeting. The way it can be crowded here is way busier than the way it can ever be at Rockefeller the week before Christmas. I learned a long time ago just to shove back, even if they’re like 80 years old because no one will fight back or even say anything; they just yelp at the most.
Christmas was nice with Tim Peters & gang. I met some interesting gals…a law student at American U. who’s here on vacation, a government employee, and an English teacher who asked me if my teeth were real and told me I should be a teeth model. That made my day. We shared stories about damaging our teeth and getting root canals.

New years day was also fun; couldn’t have been better actually. I stuffed myself on BBQ at the North Korean pastor’s house. Pastor Yoon had people over for dinner. Afterwards I went to Kelly’s where Kelly, Adrianne and I talked over wine and cake. I was dead tired and went in and out of sleep…then they decided to get samgyupsal (pork bbq) at 3am in the restaurant downstairs. I went with them although I didn’t have a bite since I was still stuffed from dinner. They both cracked me up; but then again, I’m easily amused at anything, especially when I’m half asleep. We went back up to the apartment where we tried to watch Guys and Dolls but ended up konking out. In the AM I went home after some coffee and toast…

My work schedule became crazy for the first two weeks in January since a lot of students go to 학관 (hakwon or private academy) when they are on vacation from school. The education and competition here is so ridiculous. A lot of teachers are working without breaks and so are the students, and half of them don’t want to be there. I had to teach history on the fly as well as anthropology. I lost it one time I started laughing during anthropology because my student and I were both exhausted and hungry. I was trying to stuff dumplings down my throat because I was starving by the time 3:00 came around and he looked miserable and sleepy. We were both haplessly in this unwanted ridiculous situation because of Korea’s competitive culture of studying…

The crazy hours are over now; I’m only teaching English from 9-1 now although I do have my private lessons too. This doesn’t leave me with a lot of spare time; esp. with all the preparing I have to do for teaching. I definitely have to continue my Korean studies when I go back home, which might be in a month or so. I enjoy it here and I know once I’m back in the US, I will miss the reliable and speedy transportation, the food, the shopping, and the people here but there is a time for everything.

Have to leave a sampling of what I’m eating here:

i went to one of those ghetto cheap restaurants with the plastic chairs and plastic store front and you put your jackets in plastic bags cause there’s no room for it elsewhere and it will reek. But the food was so good…the LA style kalbi was so good.

soondooboo near my 학관;so lovely…

This spicy chicken killed me last night but it was still addicting and good.I must have gone through 100 tissues to wipe the sauce off my fingers and lips and to blow my nose that was running like a faucet; I also sweated a lot and teared….it was such a workout.

And for some dang good gelato in apgujung:

p.s. So what are your thoughts on the taiwan’s parliamentary elections?

For auld lang syne

It’s nice to be able to meet up with an old acquaintance and talk hours over korean bbq, gelato and whiskey+coke+lots of ice =). I feel stuffed, tired and content.
On another note, my skin has been flaking like mad over here. I guess it has to do with the korean floor heating. While it makes the room nice and toasty, I guess it dries up your skin a lot faster so there are dried skin cells and dandruff everywhere on my desk and all over my clothes. TMI but we all do it.
Sean told me to put a damp towel on the floor to put more moisture in the air. I might try that tonight…