Travel Rabble

Schezuan Hot Pot Adventure

2012-01-23T18:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Lunar New Years everyone! Lunar New Years (best known throughout the world as "Chinese New Year") goes by the name of 설날 (Seollal) here in Korea and is culturally much more important than the solar new year celebrated by most of the west.

It is mostly a family holiday for most Koreans, but foreigners like it too because we don't have to work! The problem is there isn't too much going on (it would be sort of like going out on the town on Christmas), so this entry is about a "happy accident" we had while trying to eat at a popular sushi restaurant on the holiday.

We had met up with another couple (an American and a Korean) in the Sincheon area of Seoul (near Jamsil) and began our search for Sushi Nori, a very nice sushi roll restaurant by Seoul's standards. But alas! It was closed for the holiday! With limited options and pushed for a quick decision by the -10 C degree temperature, we jumped at our friend's suggestion of Chinese lamb "shabu shabu", or "hot pot" restaurant. Shabu shabu is actually the Japanese take on thewe thought we understood what we were getting ourselves into. It turned out this was more of an authentic hot pot and we were in for a little surprise.

We ordered the basic hot pot and out came a fairly large pot and a portable gas stove. The pot was divided into two different sections down the middle and in each section was a different kind of broth, one with seafood and green onion. The other side we weren't so sure. It was a deep red and had a big metal mesh ball floating in it filled with an unknown substance (sort like a giant tea ball). Oh, and chiles, lots of chiles. At first taste we noticed a sort of strange taste but we carried on in normal hot pot fashion by adding the vegetables and slowly dipping in the thin slices of frozen lamb. The seafood broth was quite nice and palatable, but as time went on, all of us started experiencing a strange sensation with the red broth. At first we thought it was just spicy, so we took out all of the dried chiles that were floating on top. But as it continued to boil, the sensation became more intense - it felt sort of like the broth had tannin in it, the sensation you get when drinking dry red wine, but it was also very different as there was also a slight numbing sensation. At that point we decided to withdraw the mystery ball but the damage was done and we sort of just avoided with red broth from that point out.

Well, after dinner we did a little research and discovered the culprit. The contents of the mystery ball was sichuan pepper, or "flower pepper". While not technically a pepper, it is used a lot in schezuan style cooking. Here is the wikipedia description of their effect: "they produce a strange tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue). Sanshools appear to act on several different kinds of nerve endings at once to induce sensitivity to touch and cold in nerves that are ordinarily nonsensitive. So theoretically may cause a kind of general neurological confusion."

So, while it did sort of surprise us, we would consider visiting such a restaurant again armed with our new knowledge of what we had. Game plan for next time: remove the flower pepper immediately and put all vegetables into the seafood broth.

Christmas 2011

2012-01-22T19:50:00.001-08:00

One of the nice things about having a tiny apartment is that it's easy to decorate!

Give the bus drivers a break!

2012-01-18T20:56:00.000-08:00

Riding a bus in Seoul can be a terrifying experiences. Most bus drivers here drive like taxi drivers. They speed up to get to the next bus stop, they cut off cars, make jack rabbit stops and starts and creep up on cars that are in the way and then honk their horns. If you don't have a seat on a bus within 3 seconds of stepping on you had better be holding onto something or you will fall over. It's a ride. A wild ride. In fact, this experience is so universal that a very clever man made a cute comic about it here.

Perhaps we've mentioned before though that Koreans work long hours so I imagine it's the same for the bus drivers. I'm guessing that they work longer than 8 hour shifts, that they get few breaks and that the job quickly gets frustrating. This is my assumption. I'll have to ask around. One of the more novel things about riding a bus is Seoul is the driver smoke break. Occasionally, as with any big city, there will be a traffic light where you will have to wait 5 minutes for it to cycle around. When this happens, it's not uncommon to see the bus driver turn the bus off and step outside for a cigarrette while they wait for the light to come around to them. If you look at the picture below, you will see the green bus. If you look closely, you'll notice the bus driver standing in front of the bus smoking a cigarette.He isn't parked there. He's in a traffic lane. You might also notice that traffic is still flowing. Also, the bus is full of people. I'm not certain why I find the so hilarious. It makes sense, driving a bus is stressful, and I'd rather my driver take a five minute smoke break than using the bus to run down pedestrians. But for me, it's funny to see.

A foray into "Alternative Medicine"

2012-01-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

Hello!

As some of you know, Jamie and I are planning on hiking the Appalachian Trail next year. In preparation for that we have both been exercising and trying to be a bit more healthy. Collectively, we've lost 50 pounds. We're pretty proud. Through the process of exercising however, Shannon has been having some low level hip joint soreness. Not wanting to create any long term damage and just make sure that everything is OK, she went to our local joint doctor. This lady has, on many occasions, helped us through sprained ankles, knee pain, back and shoulder pain-a variety of things. We went to her for this hip issue. She took some x-rays and told Shannon, "oh! this is very serious! you need surgery!" She then offered up these two random therapies that haven't really been seriously explored or tested. Neither of which would cause any serious harm but both of which would cause MORE pain and one included a shot INTO my joint. (cost would be around $80 each time and she wanted me to go weekly for a little more than a month) .

Having gone to her for very minor soreness (and I mean like a '1' on that little doctor chart of pain), Shannon was taken aback and really upset by what the doctor said. SO, we decided to try the general hospital in our area, Asan Medical. She went to the international clinic and talked to the General Practitioner. She said she'd have a radiologist look at my X-rays (after I re-took them at Asan) and sent me to the rehabilitative specialist. The next day, I went to the rehabilitation specialist who said the radiologist said there is some calcification and tearing in the joint but neither he nor the radiologist can tell if it's serious, so he sent me up the line to the Orthopedic Surgeon. Currently I'm waiting on my appointment with the surgeon (scheduled on January 26th).

After losing faith that anyone knows what they're talking about and deciding to see the surgeon but ignore whatever advice he gives me I talked to a friend who had some great success managing low back pain at an Alternative Medicine Clinic.

He suggested Jaseng Clinic in Apgujeong (a ritzy area about an hour away from us). I said, OK. Really, what do I have to lose.

The clinic is huge. It consists of four buildings of clinics, various research facilities and, luckily for me-the only foreigner practicing alternative medicine in Korea, Dr. Royer. I have my third appointment this coming Wednesday. I go for a Chuna Treatment (similar to but different from regular chiropractic) and acupuncture. Costs me $38 each time. Dr Royer also wanted to give me a "herbal injection" but as I'm already at the limits of my belief and I'm here to avoid injections I opted out of that. Here's my experience so far: It hasn't hurt and it hasn't hindered. I will say that I told him of some low back pain after walking for any length of time. He "treated" me for that and after my 3 hour walk home I had no pain. Coincidence? You decide.

Anyway, I'll continue to visit him until I leave Korea. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

P.S. We're still planning to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Harvesting City Trees in Korea

2011-11-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

Recently, many of the trees that produce things have been doing just that. Producing things. It's generally pretty great except for the ginko trees which produce a small orange nut surrounded by an orange pulp that smells like a combination of vomit and feta cheese.

It's pretty disgusting. And unfortunately they are everywhere. My school has a row of them on the way into the school and almost every street has, at least, a couple.

But I digress. They produce a foul smelling but edible nut. Jamie and I have both eaten them-they get served in rice, in soup and just recently we got a Ginko Nut Bread. Without the gross pulp, the actual nut is quite tasty. It tastes like soft mellow chestnut. Which is why I have a post about harvesting city trees in Korea. The ginko nut is tasty and people harvest the city trees.

Just recently I was walking along a ginko nut strewn street trying my best to avoid stepping on the nuts. Behind me comes a brazen middle school boy with complete disregard for the thousands of nuts on the ground. He tromps through and steps on quite a few of them. Both myself and the little old lady near me give him looks of horror. I know that his shoes are going to smell all day and his mother will probably kill him. The lady next to me has been harvesting the nuts from the sidewalk and she's angry that he has stepped on her supply.

If you look closely, by the tree in the middle, you can see the lady collecting Ginko Nuts. This is also a great picture to illustrate how the nuts cover the sidewalks.

In the past, I've only noticed people harvesting the Ginko Nuts but this year my powers of observation have gone up because I've noticed people at all the trees in our area. A little old lady in our apartment complex brought a massive stick to beat some nut down from the tree in our apartment playground.

I saw a man climbing into that same tree a few days later and recently I saw a man stop his car in the middle of an intersection-grab a net out of the car trunk and go to the side walk to get these huge, inedible yet sweet smelling fruits. His son also got out of the car and tried to help by round house kicking the trees (it was ineffective).

The Seoul Horse Track

2011-09-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

Last month we headed over to the Seoul Race Park with our friend Josephine on a fine summer Saturday afternoon.

Located just south of the city in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi-do province, the park can be found just one subway stop away (Line 4) from the lovely Seoul Grand Park which we had visited earlier in the springtime. The Race Park is really the only attraction at Seoul Race Park station, and you can take any exit and easily find your way.

The outskirts and the entrance of the park are quite lovely, adorned with many varieties of bright flowers and equine themed statues. We first stopped into the information booth outside the park and learned that their is actually another one just for foreigners in one of the main buildings.

Jamie and Josephine at the entrance

Map of the track and park

The two main buildings are right next to each other, each one being 5 or 6 stories tall. In the above picture you can see “Happyville” on the left and “Luckyville” on the right. I feel that these names are not representative of the occupants, however, as most people in Happyville didn’t seem very happy (except us!), and most people in Luckyville didn’t seem particularly Lucky. However, there was no smoking in Happyville, so perhaps the happiness stems from their slightly better standards of health. NOTE - surprisingly enough there was no drinking at all at the park!

66% of the people enjoying themselves (the remaining 33% is holding the camera)

So we learned at the first info booth that the foreigner friendly information could be found in “Luckyville”, so that was our first destination. The ladies at the desk were extremely helpful and gave us racing sheets that had information on each race in English. The information included the type of race (length, age of horses, handicap, and whether or not the race was live at the track or telecasted from the sister track in Jeju-do), the names of the horses and jockeys, and a quick winning history of said horses and jockeys. The ladies at information also told us how to place bets using the betting cards and turn them in (with money) for a ticket.

These are the betting cards - one can place up to three different bets on each card

Armed with our race sheets and our betting-how-to knowledge, we found some nice outdoor seating up in Luckyville and proceeded to place our very first race bets!

Placing a bet is fairly easy and we quickly picked up the Korean words for the different types of bets (I’ve of course forgotten by now!).  Here were our options:

Win: Bet on a single horse to come in first place. Place: Bet on a single horse to come in either first, second, or third place (same payout for each scenario) Trio: Bet on three different horses and if all three come in first, second, and third place, in any permutation, you win (and usually big - Jamie and Josephine managed to hit this one)! Quinella: Bet on two horses and if they come in first and second place, in any order, you win! Exacta: Bet on two horses, one specifically to come in first and the other specifically to come in second. It must be exact (hence the name!); if both come in first and second but you guessed it backwards you don’t win anything (this happened to me a couple times)! Quinella place: Bet on two horses (like the quinella), but if they come in first, second, or third place, in any order, you win!

With a betting card and payment you can get these, betting tickets

You can also make miniscule bets, I’m talking 100 won, which, depending on the exchange rate of the moment, is about 8 or 9 cents. This meant that we could make lots of little interesting wagers on different outcomes (I liked the quinella place and exacta bets as they were the most dramatic). One other important point: you need to use a special betting pen to fill out the cards - the ticketing machine must read the specific ink. These can be purchased on sight for about a quarter.

Shannon posing with her ticket, looks like a winner!

What we didn’t understand initially is that horse race betting is not like betting in a casino. In a casino your odds (or rather, how much you will win from any given bet) is pre-determined by the casino (and are generally standard). For example, if you win a normal hand of blackjack they pay you 1:1 (bet $1 and gain $1 on top of your initial bet). This is not so with horse races, as there are obviously so many variables. The system they use is called parimutuel betting. In a nutshell, this system has the bettors pretty much defining the payouts for each given bet and the race track makes money by taking a percentage of the total amount placed on all bets. All bets are placed into a giant pool (picture the one that Scrooge McDuck swims in - just kidding!), the track takes their cut, and then the remainder is divvied up to the winners. This means that if a really popular horse wins, the bettors don’t make much off of their bets. But if an unpopular horse wins and only a few people placed bets on it, the payout is often much higher.

That screen showed the payouts for most bets in real time

Leading up to a race (which were held every half hour, by the way), the payouts for each bet was displayed in real time meaning that they continually changed until the betting closed just before the race. This meant that many last second bets were placed and the betting areas were just crowded with tons of ajashis (middle aged men) with all of their race day paraphernalia.

Bettors waiting till the last minute to place their wages

Soon after arriving (we got there around noon) we needed some sustenance so we wandered around a bit and found typical Korean style cafeteria offerings at acceptable prices. Not bad but not great. Their may be some nicer alternatives in a different area but we didn’t look to hard (being the hungry gamblers that we were).

Well, after a few races in “Luckyville”, we’d had enough of the smoke clouds created by all the nervous gamblers and took for greener pastures: Happyville! Happyville is more or less an exact replica of Luckyville, but it has nicer outdoor seating and no smoking, which made it much more comfortable for the remainder of the day.

Race in the background with the Happyville "smoking police" in the foreground

We really enjoyed placing small wagers and rooting for our horses to come in - we stayed for the remainder of the race day (it ended around 5). Jamie and Shannon both ended up losing a small sum, but Josephine in her trio moment of glory was up something like 30,000 won! That is near enough to 30 USD. I believe it was won on something like a 500 won bet - not bad for 50 cents!

There were many different race lengths throughout the day; this one started right near us

Afterwards we decided to make the trek underneath the racecourse to the family park area and wait for the subway rush to end. The family park area actually was closing as well, but we managed to sneak in for a quick stroll to check it out. In the middle of the track is a sizable playing field, a pony riding area, some cafes, and of course betting stations (come now, it couldn’t be 100% wholesome, its a race track after all). We did see quite a few families and children in the area.

Mountains! Also, that screen on the left was used to simulcast races from a sister track in Jeju-do

Final thoughts: while we did manage to have a lot of fun, it really wasn’t the happiest of places. My perception of race tracks is perhaps antiquated, with couples in their best Sunday hats viewing their pocket watches through a monocled eyes to check the time before the next race. Yeah, that was not the case. People were spread out all over the floor inside looking stressed out, not a lot of smiles. Tons of smoking made the first area we set up basically unbearable. Even the races that seemed to work out for a lot of people didn’t produce a net amount of happiness. Basically it seemed that a lot of folks seemed to be there for the wrong reason (expecting to actually make money versus have a good time). That being said, we had a blast and I (Jamie) wouldn’t mind going again before the season ends (Shannon could pass, however).

YEEEEEEHAAAAAWW!

Track and Field World Championships 2011 Daegu, South Korea

2011-09-27T19:06:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, September 3rd Shannon, myself, and six friends all headed down to the central city of Daegu to attend the 13th annual IAAF Track and Field World Championship. Held every two years at

different locations around the world, this is arguably the biggest/most important event for track and field after the Olympic games.

Most of the group, Shannon, Jamie, Melissa, Julia, Josephine, Shelly (missing is Frank and Mark)

We took the high speed KTX train from Seoul to Dongdaegu station (East Daegu) and arrived in about two hours time. I had previously booked a couple of motel rooms via the internet (which was way more complicated than it needed to be, but I was eventually successful) and managed to get a nice enough place right by the train station.

The entire event actually spanned the course of a nine day period, and they would typically hold both morning sessions and evening sessions. The morning sessions would generally be only qualifiers and heats, and the evening sessions were made up mostly of semi-final and final events. We had chosen the final weekend of the championship meaning that only evening sessions were being held, but all of the events were either semi-finals or finals. Being the end of the meet, we also got to witness some of the popular favorites (women's 4x400m, men’s 200m, men’s and women’s 4x100m).

The facility is really quite beautiful; it was built for the 2002 World Cup that was co-hosted by Japan and Korea and is one of the more interesting structures I’ve seen over here. That being said, the spot they chose for the construction is a mystery to me, as it was a good 15 kilometers outside of the city and fairly inconvenient to get to via the normal public transportation system. Luckily for us the city had organized free shuttle buses directly from the east Daegu train station, so it really wasn’t such a bad commute.

Day 8 (well, day 1 for us) - Saturday September 3rd

We arrived at the facility an hour or so before things got underway. On our way to our entrance, we ran into a volunteering group that were doing free face painting as a way to advertise their organization (brilliant!). A few of us took them up on their offer.

*Yes, Shannon’s flag really does have 50 stars - perhaps it was that face painter’s masterpiece?

We sat in the A section, which meant we were fairly close to the track but on the opposite side of the finish line. While the picture of the stadium makes the place look really big, it really didn’t have that feel and I must say we had pretty decent seats for the price. Our view of the men’s javelin throw was really great, but it was sort of hard to give women’s high jump our full attention.

Women's high jump, to our right, on full zoom.

Great View of the screen and the mountains behind.

Julia and Melissa. More of the stadium

And there was a lot to see! There were two wheelchair races (800 and 400, men’s and women’s, respectively) that were I believe a first for a championship event. Following that we saw a young American (Matthew Centrowitz) take bronze in the 1500 (after a close finish with two Kenyans).

Centrowitz, Second from the right.

Things really ramped up next with the women’s 4x400m (US team: Sanya Richards-Ross; Allyson Felix; Jessica Beard; Francena McCorory), where we saw the USA set a world leading time (world leading means best time of the year, FYI) to take the gold, a narrow victory over our ever more competitive rivals, Jamaica.

Perhaps the most impressive feat of the evening, though, was next in the 100m women’s hurdles. Sally Pearson (Australia) has really been shining in the event and she looked just liquid in this race. Her hurdling was so fluid, the hurdles might as well not have been there at all. She was seriously playing with the world record and did manage to set a championship record (CR, this is the best time ever run at the world championship event) which so has it was the fourth fastest time in the event: EVER. It was seriously a sight to see. The US did try to keep up and managed to take silver and bronze with personal best times (Danielle Carruthers and Dawn Harper, respectively), but they were outshone by Pearson.

Following that, the men’s 200m was nearly as exciting - we (and the world) finally got to see Usain Bolt in action after his unfortunate mishap in the 100 a week earlier. He performed much as expected (19.40), totally blowing away our US competitor, Walter Dix, by a third of a second (19.70) to leave us with silver.

Usain Bolt in the middle in yellow and Walter Dix to his right facing us.

This was really funny, Usain was literally playing with the paparazzi during his victory lap; at one point he took a photographers camera and took a picture of the photographer with it.

At some point in the evening we notice a guy wearing a USA coat sitting in front of us, and after a few double checks we realized that it was Bershawn Jackson, Olympic medalist in the 400m hurdles and co-gold medalist of the men’s 4x400m the day before. On our way out of the stadium we managed to strike up a conversation with him while he was waiting for his wife in the bathroom. He was really a nice guy and he explained what it is like to come to these events (they had been in Korea for a month prior to get ready and acclimated), how sponsorships work and some other business related things (apparently there is a huge monetary reward to the athletes for winning at an event). Anyways, we were chatting for a bit and he offered to show us his medal! After 30 seconds of taking pictures with it, he was MOBBED by other attendees, so we sort of let him go so he could be fawned over. I wish him the greatest of luck in his career!

Day 9 (Day 2 for us!)

Second day, woot! We got there a lot earlier this day and also met up with an additional friend at the track (he couldn’t manage to get a ticket for Saturday). Getting there earlier meant we could explore some of the attractions they had set up around the facilities.

In our wanderings we also stumbled across a Swedish film crew. They are currently making a film that is investigating the issue of doping (in all forms) in sports so they interviewed Shannon and I regarding our opinion. Personally having a strong negative opinion on doping it was kind of fun to talk to them about it (although I must say they were a little bit leading in their set up before the interview and with their questions, not that I needed to be lead). I hope it works out for them.

OK, then we finally made it into the stadium! Our seats for the second day weren’t as good, so we sort of just moved to the prime seats in front of the triple jump pit - best. decision. ever. We had perfect seats, and apparently the jumping teams (who had since finished with their events) from a bunch of different countries were hanging out all around us. Having been hooked on the championship events all week back in Seoul (we had been watching them pretty much each night), we recognized a handful of faces. Also the triple jump coaches were just crawling all over the place, hanging around the edge of the stadium to give advice to their athletes. At one point we looked back and saw a familiar face: Dwight Phillips, Olympic long jump gold medalist and four time Championship gold medalist (most recent one being only days before) sitting behind us 2 or 3 rows back. He seemed to be secretly enjoying his victorious performance with a concealed celebratory brew, so I bought him another and passed it up to him! And gosh darn it, I’m pretty sure he drank that beer!

Dwight Phillips

And to the events! In the middle of the field was women’s hammer throw. Since my high school league didn’t participate in this event, this was actually my first time ever seeing it. OH! And they had this little robotic car that they would load the hammer’s onto after each throw and send it zipping back to the throwing area! They had done this for the javelin the day before as well, very fun to watch!

If you look closely, you can see the little electronic cars ferrying the javelins back and forth.

As mentioned before, right in front of us was the triple jump and we had two amazing jumpers from the US, Christian Taylor and Will Claye. Taylor was way behind the UK favorite, Phillips Idowu, up until his fourth jump when he absolutely flew, an astounding 17.96m to firmly clinch the lead for the rest of the contest, the fifth longest triple jump of all time. Will Claye couldn’t manage to follow suit though and had to settle for bronze behind the Brit. Again, we had amazing seats to see all of this!

The men’s 5000m saw us again battling with Britain for the top spot, but this time we were on the losing side to their star, Mohamed Farah, who narrowly beat our veteran distance man Bernard Lagat. Lagat had paced himself very well throughout most of the race which had fooled us into thinking he was out of the running as he stayed in the middle pack for quite a few laps. But he turned on the heat later on which made for a really spectacular finish against Farah.

While the next event, the women’s 800m, didn’t see an American placing, it was interesting nonetheless as it saw the performance of, up until very recently, a controversial South African athlete Caster Semenya, who was also expected to win the event. HOWEVER, she was “outkicked” on the final stretch by the Russian athlete Mariya Savinova to make it an upset victory. Very exciting race.

Caster Semeyna is the third one back.

To close the entire championship up, we saw some of the most anticipated events: the men’s and women’s 4x100m relays. The women were up first and it was a tight one, with Jamaica pushing themselves to a Jamaican national record time (41.70). Luckily for the US (Bianca Knight; Allyson Felix; Marshevet Myers; Carmelita Jeter), we were even more formidable that night, pushing it to another world leading time (41.56) to secure gold (the second in two days for Allyson Felix who was also a member of the winning 4x400m team).

Finally that brought us to the end, the men’s 4x100m. It turned out to be a disappointment for the US fans, as we had a collision at the hand off between the 3rd and 4th legs of the race, knocking us out. But Jamaica upped the ante over their women’s team counterparts, not only setting a Jamaican national record but also bumping up the world record as well (37.04). Anchored by none other than Usain Bolt, and setting the only world record of the entire championship, the crowd went wild after the feat.

Having seen all the events, we opted to skip out on the K-pop and final awards ceremony in an attempt to get home a little earlier. We managed to get onto one of the shuttles in good time and even managed to change to an earlier train back home. We were in bed by 1:00AM!

I really must say that this was my favorite sporting event that I’ve ever attended and it has served only to increase my desire to see the Olympic games. I highly recommend that if you find yourself near an Athletics championship in the future that you try and budget it in, as it was really, really worth it.

Achasan

2011-09-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

Hi!

I went for a hike on the mountain near our house, Acha Mountain, hither to known as Achasan. It was a normal hike for me. But then I started to wonder, is it normal because I've been in Korea so long? So, with fresh eyes, I thought, what might I have found fascinating when I first arrived here. This is what I came up with.

At the bottom of the mountain, a fun performance. Usually they sing folk songs and everyone in the audience cheers and claps along.

As I reached the summit I found ANOTHER singing group! What!?

It's really common to have exercise parks in Korea. Our friend Matthew made a fun video of Jamie and I exercising. One day I'll post that. For now, look here. This is at the TOP of the mountain. As if hiking the mountain wasn't enough!

Please note two things.

One: Look how huge that woman's hula-hoop is. She didn't carry that with her (thank heavens!), it's just there for you to use. She's currently paused from hula-hooping because she is talking on the phone. I'd like to note that she, by my count, hula-hooped for 20 minutes. She didn't look like she was ready to give it up anytime soon.

Two: The man that is lying on the sit up board. He's napping. Upside down.

I'll leave you with this city scape.

Great Tee-Shirts

2011-09-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

So, as you may know, the language in Korea is Korean. There is, however, a fair amount of English written on signs and tee-shirts. Restaurants often have English name, street signs are in Korean and English, and tee-shirts often have English written on them. Fortunately for ouramusement, the English on the tee-shirts is usually just for decoration and not necessarily for message. Some of them are hilarious!

Here's one:

And another:

And one last one:

More to come!

The Recycling Claw

2011-08-29T23:51:00.000-07:00

I think we've already posted about recycling in Korea. If not, feel free to leave a comment about how you really love our blog and would love a post about recycling (or any such thing). You can even be snarky about how I rarely update. This is me shamelessly trying to use you to motivate me to update the blog more.

right-o.

The recycling claw!

Who doesn't love a machine on wheels? Certainly not us!

Eating Live Squid

2011-07-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends!

The foreign language department recently went out for a department dinner. We went to Garak Market, a massive wholesale seafood and produce market. I had previously driven past it before, it's enormous and looks fairly overwhelming. Jamie and I have never ventured there as a tourist destination so it was exciting to be taken into it by my co-teachers.

I've been told you can buy produce there, but we only wandered in at the seafood stalls. Near to the venders is a vender resturant area. It pretty much consists of benchs all crammed into one area with signs hanging from the ceiling to tell you which vendor will be serving you. It looked confusing and not so friendly for those of us that haven't put as much effort into learning

Korean as we should have.

My co-teacher, Mika, had called ahead and we had a table all set and ready to go. The kimchi, baby seafood pancakes, tiny steamed clams, quail eggs, and soybeans were ready for our consumption the second we sat down. Shortly afterward, the waitress came over to ask us to come and choose our fish. I walked over with Mika and we chose the fish that looked most aggrieved at their situation so as to put them out of their misery more quickly (that and the price were the main considerations). We chose bass and cod. We were going to eat them as hweh, Korean for raw (and DELICIOUS!).

As we were waiting for the fish to be sliced and diced we were given MORE tasty treats. Lots of things from the sea. Everything was delicious! Super fresh. So fresh it was, infact, still moving. Here's a little video:

Yes, the raw (practically still alive) squid is delicious.

After all the raw fish and lots of other dishes we were given the rest of the fish in a soup with rice on the side. This is common with any meal in korea. After you are finished, you order soup and rice. Mika tells me the rice helps to settle the food in your stomach.

The soup was SPICY and hot! When you order the soup (any soup like this) , it comes practically boiling but just to make sure it says bubbling, you'll get a burner on the table so that your mouth knows no rest from the spice and heat. That just makes it more great. There were lots of unrecognizable things in the pot of hot but an equal amount of things that I knew. There was: fish heads, fish intestine (surprisingly delicious), turnip, bean sprouts, tofu, red chili pepper, fish eggs, potato and others. Since we had a fair amount of raw fish from earlier left over, we threw that in as well and flash boiled it. SO GOOD!

In the front is the raw fish, the center is our "rest of the fish" chigae (soup).

To be honest, I was full before the raw fish even got to our table. Every traditional style meal in Korea always starts with me thinking the same thing: Look at these tiny plates. I'm going to go home hungry. Every traditional style meal in Korea ends with me thinking the same thing: I have never eaten so much food in my life. And now they're giving me MORE RICE?!

I always forget that the plates are tiny but they are never allowed to be empty!

I love eating. Everyday I'm thankful that we are not picky eaters (thanks to mom and dad keller and mom and dad Lyon for not allowing that)!

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this latest post.

Take Care!

Interesting side notes about the raw squid:

It tastes super fresh. Obviously.

No, you can't feel it squirm in your mouth.

No, the suckers don't stick to your cheeks.

Yes, they DO stick to the plate.

Yes, the head and eyes were included in the plate and Yes, I avoided them.

I have heard experiences where the whole squid is put on a plate and people just snip off a piece as they want to eat it or just bite off a tentacle. I'm glad we didn't do that. I'm not certain I'm brave enough to kill my own food yet. And certainly not brave enough to torture it. I imagine it could live though losing a few tentacles.

Snacks at school

2011-07-07T02:08:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends!

I have a fun little school snack experience expanded into a talk about Korea culture. Enjoy!

In Korea it's common to share everything you eat. At the dinner table, people all eat from one main dish. You'll have a small plate in front of you to avoid slopping red chili paste onto the table, but it's rare to pile things there so you can eat from it. This sharing of food at the dinner table carries into the everyday process of eating snacks. If someone has a snack in their office, they will share it with you-even if you aren't there when they are eating it. I've come back from class to find a small pile of nuts at my desk or a quarter of a slice of cake. I have seen students break up one piece of hard candy to share with friends and adults split a tiny 6 oz drink with the person sitting next to them.

So, more often than not, if you're going to have a snack in your office, you'll bring enough to share. Which means that there are often snacks in my office. When people plan ahead and bring a big snack you get all nature of exciting things. I was once given a frosting sandwich. Yes. That's right. It was toasted white bread with white butter frosting as the filling. More often I'm given a tiny sweet potato or piece of fruit. Often someone will buy a cake and bring it to the office to share.

If someone is bringing in a Korean snack it's usually ddeok. Ddeok is any form of rice cake. (do not picture puffed rice in a round flatish form) Ddoek is glutinous, chewy, and heavy and it is THE go-to food for Korean snacks. (it's also pretty good) If someone is giving gifts to the whole school, they will give ddeok. If someone is bringing something that is not western in style for a snack, they will bring ddeok. I think one Native teacher has a ddeok count of 17. She's been given ddeok 17 times this semester! Most westerners like ddeok, but not to the extent that Koreans do. I can eat it once in a blue moon, but not once a week. More than once a month is pushing it.

Ddeok is usually given as a gift or for some special affair so, usually, snacks are a western variety. Chips, cakes, breads, sweet potato (kidding about that last one). Sometimes, however, aside from the usual snack like a tiny sweet potato or a cake someone will make something. Like I said, snacks are usually a western variety so if someone is making something unique they will make it from "western" style things. There's lots of western food in Korea, but in general it's new to the culture so people do fun things with it when they are making it. Like the frosting sandwich.

Jamie has a great snack to share. One of the teachers in his school brought a platter of little finger foods for people to eat. I'll leave you with the list of delicious that she brought in:

dainty open faced tuna sandwiches topped with whipped cream and a dehydrated grape
crackers topped with ham, "bugles", orange, and wafer cookies
bread, topped with a cracker, spam, chili sauce, and orange
cracker topped with ham, whipped cream, and chocolate
Cracker, slim strips of cheese, two small cubes of bread, a slice of cucumber, sprinkled with crumbled tortilla chip
bread, ham, whipped cream, pickle

One of the plates was garnished with what looks like loose candy.

Until next time!

Random Encounters

2011-05-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last night we were up in Nowon coming home from a friends Half-Birthday. When we were leaving we decided to cut through the park. On the way we passed a lovely pagoda made even more lovely by the group of college students playing guitar and singing songs. On the off chance that you don't know, we LOVE singing. So we, naturally, wandered over to say hello. We chatted for a bit and they confessed that when they saw a group of foreigners they started playing louder in an effort to bring us over. They were all friends from Middle and High School, all currently attending different colleges. There was a business major, a tenor singer, a Poet, a guitar player, a computer programmer. They were quite an eclectic group. We sang with them for about a half an hour and then continued on our way home. What a great way to end a great night!

Flowers from Students

2011-05-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

For Christmas Jamie gave me a desktop flowerpot. It was supposed to grow a sunflower. It sprouted and grew 4 leaves but then, before it even really surpassed the lip of the pot it died. A few of my students were following my plant's progress and we were all sad when it died. Yesterday I came back to my office and one of my students revived the flower pot with flowers from the school garden! They can be so thoughtful!

Cambodia: Prologue

2011-02-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends,

This is not going to be a full entry about every part or trip. This will be like the trailer for that, but we're having such a good time already that we thought we could do a like snippet of our time. That and the fact that if we don't our entry will be so so so long you'll get bored and not finish reading. I get sad when that happens so we'll try to avoid that. OK, so Cambodia.

The whirlwind version of the vacation so far:

Phnom Penh

Tuk Tuk rides and Incense:

We hired a tuk tuk for $25 and he drove us around all day. Tuk Tuks are very exciting. Each country has it's own style, in Cambodia, They're like mini 4 seat carriages that are pulled by a scooter. The sides are completely open so it's easy to hope in and out. It's also easy to taste the flavor of the city in a tuk tuk. I mean this quite literally. If you keep you mouth open it will be filled with dust and city grime. MMM! However,while there are all the city smells that you would expect: exhaust,restaurants cooking delicious things, garbage, road-side BBQ. There's a pervasive smell of incense. Anytime another smell fades away its almost immediately replaced with incense. When you get out into the country with less traffic and population, it is almost the exclusive smell. It's really lovely and pleasant.

We believe this is because of the next nifty thing we want to mention. Temples and Shrines. Cambodia is almost 90% Buddhist and there are always little shrines around. Almost on every corner and even when you are driving through the country side with farmlands and small ramshackle houses you will find a beautiful temple. Anyway, in almost every shrine, and certainly every temple, there is lit incense. Making the smell of Cambodia unique and pleasant.

Siem Reap

Boatrides and Where's Waldo

Shunning the advice the that the boat ride from Phnom Pehn to Siem Reap was not worth the extra money we paid our $35 dollars a piece and hopped a Tuk Tuk for our 7:30am departure. We settled into the boat with a resigned fate thinking that perhaps we should have taken the advice. We sat in our enclosed and uncomfortably warm seats eating our picnic breakfast and gazing out the grimy windows to watch the men load the boat. As we finished the last our grilled tomatoes we watched the french tourist run outside. Not speaking French but not wanting to miss any excitement we followed them. To our delight they had discovered you could sit on the roof of the boat! LOVELY! And that's what we did. We sat for our 6 hour boat ride on the roof watching the city fade to country and playing "Spot the waving child." I think Jamie and i waved to more than 100 people on our boat ride. It was certainly fun and helped to pass the time. When they were wearing brown or red shirts it was like camouflage but i feel we stepped up to the challenge. When we realized we were both facing the same side of the river we sat back to back so as not to miss any waving opportunities. When we came to the large lake that had no people around we decided it would be smart to try and sleep. Smart for our tired eyes, not so smart for our pale pale skin. Anyway, Shannon's got a burn on the lower half of her legs, Jamie's got a strip burn on the part of his belly that got uncovered by the wind. But we feel that they are nice souvenirs of the ride.

So what did we do in Phnom Penh and when we finally arrived in Siem Reap?

Well...you'll have to read the day by day adventures that we will post later.

Wow-Toilets

2011-01-11T14:47:00.001-08:00

Ok, so obviously there are squat toilets-they don't involve a "wow." They're just there. That's not what I want to talk about. Maybe one day I'll do a video about how to use a squat toilet...but you and I both know my habits about follow through.

This post (that is not about squat toilets) is to show you a little something that made me go "Wow!" You can guess what the follow up sentence was after the "wow!" I don't want to spoil your creativity.

OH MY GOD!!!! SO CUTE!

Ok.Ok. That was my follow-up sentence. I just couldn't help it! It's so cute and hilarious!

Thai Fisherman Pants

2010-12-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

Remember back in January (2010) when we went to Thailand for our Honeymoon? Well, when we were there we bought these awesome and super comfortable fisherman pants. Here's an awesome video about how to wear them.

WOW-Mosquitos

2010-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

Korea has the healthiest, heartiest mosquitos I have ever seen in my life.

It's December. There are STILL Mosquitos out hunting. Thankfully, now that it's snowed there have been fewer and fewer. But, really, up until 2 weeks ago I was killing a Mosquito every night.

Why am I capitalizing Mosquito? Because they deserve it! They're like Godzilla Mosquitos.

They demand respect.

I'm afraid.

Hiking Seoraksan

2010-10-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

(NOTE: written three days after the hike, posted 3 weeks later)

Hello Friends!

I am in so much pain today! Three days after our sunrise hike to Seorak Mountain and I'm STILL feeling the pain. Stairs are so daunting and difficult that I missed my train because i couldn't speed up! Wow. All that being said though, it was a wonderful and beautiful hike.

We (myself, Jamie, and Christina) traveled with a new group for this trip, the SeoulHiking Group. It was exciting to meet new people and I really like the organizer, he's aKorean and is Fluent in both Korean and English so it made for a nice trip. Warren (the organizer) is an avid hiker and this group has a hike almost every week. It's nice to have finally gone somewhere with them so we'll be more comfortable attending these hikes in the future.

We met everyone Friday night at 11:30 and hopped on the bus to Seoraksan (san means mountain). We arrived around 2:30AM and promptly began to hike (after being shocked by the winter weather - Siberian winds, literally). The hike started with this HUGE

staircase. I was soon regretting starting off so quickly and was thankful when I got to the top so I could begin to just walk, but oh my, was I wrong. The entire hike, both up and down, was essentially straight up (or down). It was like 15 hours on a stair master. I'm not used to such a hike. I'm more familar with a hike that includes a few plateaus or slight upgrades. Maybe some switchbacks to cut the intensity. OH NO. Not to be had. When we first arrived we had started out with the idea of doing the 16 hour hike. About 20 minutes in I realized that I was SORELY mistaken. We re-adjusted our plan and instead did the 11 hour hike (well... 11 hours for the seasoned hiker, it was about 15 hours for us). Almost 20km all told. WOW.

Aside from the strenuousness of the hike, the mountain was beautiful. It's like every corner was a "OH!" or "WOW." It was really cool because we were hiking in the dark for about 5 hours and when the sun came up it was really remarkable. We hardly knew where we were going in the dark, so when the sun finally came out, we were all of a sudden 1000s of feet up in the sky. And is was peak foliage time! The Korean country side has an abundance of the Japanese maple (don't know what it's called in Korean, I'd wager something totally different...), which turns a beautiful flaming red, so those were interspersed with some yellowing oaks and aspen-like trees, but there was certainly a higher percentage of evergreens. The cliffs were unbelievable, a lot were so sharp and jagged that they were bald, so they stood in great contrast to the trees, and there was something going on with calcium leeching out in some areas, because in places these huge cliffs were just bleach white. So gorgeous.

So aside from being a really interesting hike in terms of physical endurance and the crazy start time, there's the uniquely Korean aspect of this trip. This mountain is sort of like the Korean Mecca (Koreans are huge into hiking and this is considered the best place to go, and this was the best time to go). This means that we were not the only people starting at hike at 3:00AM. There were 1000's of people hiking. When we got to the first peak you could you could just see this endless snake of flashlights on the trails ahead and behind. Wish our camera was better at night photos!

However, part of the joy and struggles of hiking with thousands of other people is that you constantly feel like you're going slow because you're being out-paced by these 60 year old women (no offense to the age-it was just shocking) BUT there's ALWAYS a line of people behind you. So you're really ahead of someone at any moment. HOWEVER, in Korea, it is perfectly acceptable to just push past people when they are walking to slow. Which, on a sidewalk is annoying-but relatively safe. On the side of a mountain, in the middle of the night with a hefty breeze and a paltry little flashlight it makes it terrifying! I started running my hand along side the mountain so people were forced to pass me on the outside. Thankfully, everyone was going in the same direction so it was only one way traffic.

OH! and becuase there were so many people and only one narrow trail twice we got stuck in traffic and had to stand in line for 20 minutes. That was potentially the worst park of the hike because you were so sweaty from CLIMBING STAIRS for 4 hours and you just stand still with the wind blowing. BRRR!

Anyway, we made it to the summit (5 hours AFTER our group leader) And, Ok. Fine. Not really the summit. The summit was an extra 20 minutes up, but I had no interest and people told me that it was cloudy and you couldn't see anything. I'm not upset to have missed it. SO, we made it to the "almost summit" 7 hours after starting. 7 HOURS. I did mention it was almost completely VERTICAL. Oh man. Of course the summit shelter was packed with people eating. (If we were really korean, we would have packed a 7 course meal like almost everyone else was eating, complete with camping stoves and all that jazz). AND, had we gotten there two hours earlier we could have taken a nap. They had nap rooms! Unfortunately, when we arrived they were cleaning so that in an hour when the people who started on the OTHER side started to arrive the could nap.

So, we munched on some almonds and we started down the other side of the mountain. Listen. Going down is NO easier that going up. In fact, I think I rolled my ankle no less than three times and my knees were seeing a constant song to the rest of my body, "idiot" "moron" with each step. Right. So again. 7 hours later we arrived at the bottom.

Yes. That math comes out to 14 hours. Yes, this was the 11 hour hike that took us 14 hours! Um. Remarkable. My legs hurt for 3 days straight. Of course, now that it's over I'm already looking at the next hike this guy is planning. It's impossible for me to remember the pain clearly now. Obviously I need to learn my lesson two or three times.

In reality though, it was a beautiful hike (aside from the thousands of people) and I'd even say that it was worth it.

The next day we went to the beach and a few of us went swimming. The rest of us played beach volleyball. That was pretty awesome and potentially where I sustained the most injuries.

Exciting things About Korea:

Hiking Age:

Hiking is not a past time for young people. The avid hikers in Korea all seem to be middle aged married couples.

Hiking Snacks:

As I mentioned above there is no 'light' meal on the mountain. People bring full a full on meal to be cooked, INCLUDING side dishes.

Masks and Weddings

2010-10-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends!

We've been having a really jam packed October thanks to our friend Meaghan Shanahan who is a Number 1 planner! Literally every weekend we've been traveling. It's been great. This coming weekend we're going on a surise hike to Seoraksan- a gorgeous mountain about 3 hours away from Seoul and in two weeks

we're going to the Busan International Fireworks Festival! YAY! Anyway, i'm sure you're dying to know what we've been up to so dive in!

WEDDING

This past weekend a friend of ours got married so we went to his wedding. His wife's family is from Daegu-a city about 2 hours south by the Highspeed train. Anyway. Wedding. Wow. I've been to about 3 weddings in Korea-all of them being a Koreanized western wedding. White gowns, father walking the bride down the aisle, speeches and songs, bowing to parents, all that jazz. there are, of course some very different things about it but, more or less, it all looks familar.

ANYWAY, we went to a traditional Korean wedding. They're so infrequent now adays that almost none of my coteachers had been to one. So first, let me say that I had no idea what was happening or why. There was a man explaining the ceremony to everyone present but he was, of course, explaining in Korean.

Ok. coolest part of the wedding you ask? Um, the Palaquins obviously! They were both carried in on Palaquins. How cool is that?

Oh! and the live chicken and rooster that were on the wedding table. I asked the women who worked there why and she said she didn't know. I'm guessing fertitlity. Isn't that usually the chicken thing?

ANYWAY,they were carried in. Desmond went and bowed to a duck (wooden, not real) that was carried in by our friend Eric. Then he walks back up the aisle to meet his bride. She gets carried in, steps out and follows him down the aisle. They sit on either side of the wedding area with the wedding table between them and blocking their view of each other. I really like that. I think it makes it so much more exciting when they can finally stand up and face each other. (it imagine it's a throw back to when you really never saw your bride/groom until the day of) Ok, so now there's lot's of ceremony happening, and lots of bowing and rinsing of hands and sipping of tea and eating of cakes that they are doing simultaneously or right after each other. I really liked the part where they took a sip of tea and then the cup got passed to the other so they could sip from each other's glass, and then the tea got mixed and they drank again. As a side note, there's no "rehearsal wedding" in Korea so poor Desmond, who doesn't speak any Korean has this women , who I don't think speaks any English gesturing for him to walk here, bow, eat this. Everything a complete surprise to him as it comes up. (my favorite being when he had to eat an obviously unsavory egg cake) Anyway, after all this, they finally stand up and face each other at the table. Really exciting. Desmond was smiling real big. Super cute! And then I think they're married! Desmond's brother gave a speech at the end and Desmond started to tear up. Jin, another friend, was translating and there were lots of appreciative nods from the audience. It was really lovely and beautiful.

After the wedding we went into Daegu to drink. We opted for discount bar-drinks from the family mart and hanging in the park. However, not before we stopped at the bar with adult juice boxes and SPARKLERS! wow. And the wedding couple came out to hang with us. Awesome.

We retired around midnight to our cozy Korean style room for 7 of us. We have this great group of people we hang out with here. I'm glad we all get along well enough to sleep in one room and share a bathroom together. It makes everything so much more lovely.

ANDONG MASK FESTIVAL

Ok. so that was this most recent weekend. The weekend before we were in Andong, the most traditional city in Korea, for the Korean Mask Festival. Again, good thing we get along with our friends because we spent the nights (2 of them) together in almost one room. Korean style house and there were 10 of us.

We tried to go to the mask festival last year but it was cancelled due to swine flu. BOOO. Anyway, we went this year. Awesome.

Imchang Gak

We got there Friday night, settled into our hundred year old Korean house. The main room having no insulation so you could see through the wooden floor boards to the ground. PERFECT! We drank and chatted until bed time in the ondol heated side rooms. We woke up the next morning to boiled potoates with cinnamon sugar (a combination I never thought of before) green onion pajeon (Korean pancake) and shikae (Korean sweet rice tea). It was wonderful!

Hahoe Village

We then grabbed cabs to the Traditional Style Village. Think Plymouth Plantation except people actually really live here. It was beautiful. I think, hands down, the prettiet place I've been in Korea. There was this gorgeous river next to it (the name "Hahoe" is actually a word for how the river curves around the village. It's surrounded almost on three sides by the river). And mountains all around and TREES. Only trees. No apartment building, no factories, no highways. It was amazing as to not see any of those things is extraordinarily rare. Usually they pepper any view. Anyway, we watched the Chinese mask dance at Hahoe and then hopped a bus back to the main festival site.

OH! And we played some traditional games.

FESTIVAL SITE

The festival site was super fun. It was like a country fair back home. Lots of food and games and people selling handicrafts. It was great and I was so happy to be there. We watched belly dancers (lots actually), the Mexican dancers (my favorite), the Thai Dancers (OK, but the fake fight scene with audience participation was hilarious) and a bit of "Buy a Happy Flower" "a mask dance about how Koreans had to part with cows who used to be part of the family." Yeah.

Anyway, my favorite performance was the JaJang Nori. This was a traditional "game" that they playpretending to be the east and west. If the east (or maybe the west) wins, they will have a good harvest. It consisted of hundreds of men carrying the two leaders on platforms shaped like triangles and they would regularly get raised straight up in the air. At one point they attach to each other at 45 degree angles and then all of the people run in a circle. Quite a site to see 100s of people running. wow!

Also, the Korean foods convention was great. We sampled a number of tasty and not so delicious ingredients. One of the most interesting, and not terrible, was the chocolate covered black garlic. It tasted a bit like chocolate covered gummies.

So, as you can see we've been busy. It's been a fun second year in Korea. We've decided that since we're staying a second year we really don't want it to go to waste.

Exciting things about Korea:

Hottoek: It's this rice cake that they fry and with cinnamon sugar in the middle. Oh my gosh! it's so good. It's like fried dough except the delicious isn't ontop it's gooey and hot in the middle! MMMM!

Deom: Free things. I knew this was part of Korean culture as you get something free whenever you go anywhere. Extra samples at the cosmetic store, sodas at a resturant, but it's really much bigger than a casual small thing. It's so common in Korea that there's a specific word for it and it's part and parcel of Korean Customer Service (which is EXCELLENT). I think it fits in with the concept of Gift Giving. People are constantly giving gifts. Today every teacher in the school got a yogurt from a Teacher who won an award and last week we all got rice cake from the principal because her father-in-law had passed and she wanted to thank everyone who came to the funeral.

GPS: Everyone has a GPS in their car. (at least all the cars I've been in or have awkwardly peered into) They great for directions in Korea becuase addresses are organized a little differently here. There are no street names and numbered houses on the streets. Instead blocks are numbered within districts within larger districts. And the buildings on the blocks ARE numbered but they are numbered by which ones were built first. And of course, I use the work "block" loosely. It's more like an area that has streeets and alleys all through it. So you can see how a GPS would be handy.

Beijing, Day 4

2010-09-25T19:39:00.001-07:00

DAY FOUR (Free Day)

We started our last day in Beijing with a bit of a sleep in (always great on vacation) and then we asked our hotel to get us a few taxis. We hopped in and headed out to the CCTV tower. This was potentially not the best choice for the day as it was the ONE cloudy day we had the whole time but it was fun to look out as far as the eye could see (not far) and gaze down at the wedding below with a really cool tent that sorta looked like a flower. Also being up there allowed us to espy the park across the street so we took off in that direction when we finished acting like news anchors and weather people.

In the park we decided the best use of our time would be to rent an battery powered boat (a nice follow up to our battery powered car ride). We spent our time trying to get as close to things we weren't supposed to and trying to position the boat for a perfect background.

Lama temple

Next we hopped cabs over to the Lama temple. (one L, not two). It was gorgeous. Favorite parts? Gazing at the three story buddha carved from ONE tree while listening to the the monks chanting drift in with the breeze. wow. Beautiful.

Hutong area

After this we decided we wanted to wander back into Old Town so we found this really cutsey cafe on a side street. Dutifully occupied the two chairs oustide and drank a lunch of beer while reading the English Newspaper and trying to ignore the seven old men staring and talking about us.

After finding the fun Art Section with every other closet sized store selling some homemade art/food/clothes we made our way back to Hotel area.

Hotel and Birthday Party

We had a fun shopping district near our hotel so we wandered there for a bit for a few end of the night beers before finding a restaurant near out hotel for dinner. This was a great find! There happened to be a birthday party happening and one for them 8 young men "LOVES foreigners!" and convinced the restaurant owner to go out and buy us noodles because they didn't have any in the restaurant. Then he ordered us cold beef (delicious) some amazing chicken dish and some fried dumplings. Finally they gave us two beers, shared their cake and left us with more food than we could possibly manage between the two of us. It was a pretty awesome end to a great trip!

Exciting things about Beijing:

Chopsticks: Chopsticks are larger-both in length and width. The end doesn't really taper to small. I found I was not so proficient at chopsticks in Beijing.

Bikes: In Beijing, they have bike lanes on all the major roads, and we're not talking tiny little bike lanes where you're afraid of passing someone. We're talking like a full lane of traffic full of bikes. And it is FULL of bikes. People of all ages, clothing styles and bike maintenance.

Traffic Management: There's lots of cars in Beijing as you can imagine so in an effort to limit cars on the road they have certain days when different cars can't drive. It's organized by the last digit (or maybe the first) of your license plate. For example, on Mondays 1 and 9 can't drive, on Tuesdays 2 and 8. and so on. However, our tour guide pointed out that most people get around this by owning two cars.

Subway: Which we unfortunately managed never to ride-only costs 2 yuan. Pennies.

Beijing, Day 2

2010-09-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Day two

We started our second day with the Buffet in our hotel- A lovely combination of Chinese and western breakfast ideas. You could eat eggs and toast or noodles and vegetables. You choose!Anyway, we left the hotel at 8am to get to the Great Wall early.

JADE FACTORY

On our way to the Great Wall we stopped at the “Jade Factory” AKA live informercial and store. Little did we know this was to be our fate throughout our time in Beijing. ANYWAY, we got this unintelligible history of Jade in China and then were harangued to buy jade. While no one in our group bought anything we did get to heAr the difference between cheap and expensive jade bangles. Literally hear. When you chink them together the cheap one clinks and the expensive one chimes. Also we learned that Chinese love Jade. Women wear jade mostly on their left wrist because that’s closer to the heart and jade is good for circulation. Also we learned that jade is usually passed down through families. The jade absorbs things from the earth and therefore from people so it is best to pass it through families and not to wear a strangers jade.

ANYWAY, after our Jade infomercial (but don’t worry, we’re not jaded-ha!) we went off to the great wall.

GREAT WALL

We arrived at the great wall around 9.30 and were given two hours to wander about as we pleased. The section we visited is, essentially, a big circle. The part of the wall that we walked encircles a valley which housed troops and soldiers to protect Beijing from Mongolia, it’s one of the new sections of the wall. 400 years old-you know, still older than America. . Hiking the wall was so interesting. Maybe you know, but the wall travels along the tops of mountains so there’s a lot of stairs. And just to make it more fun, each step is a different height. They go from 4 inches to 2 feet. CRAZY! You couldn’t look anywhere other than the steps you were climbing or else you would fall. At times if felt like you were walking STRAIGHT UP! It was pretty cool.Otherwise the wall was, well, a wall. If we had more time and could have done the entire loop I think it would have been more amazing, but the section we were in didn’t really allow us to see the wall wandering away into the distance. It just looked like a circle filled (packed) with tourists. That’s not to say that it wasn’t remarkable. It was still remarkable.

VASE STORE

After the great wall we piled into the car to go to lunch. Lunch was on the second floor of a vase factory. You know those beautiful Asian vases that look like everything is outlined with metal paint? Those are the vases we saw and let me tell you the process is remarkable! So, you have the vase and then you glue on the detail that you want with copper wire so the design is raised up from the vase. And then you hand paint the detail, but because the copper wire is raised, you have to paint it up to 7 times so that the paint is level with the copper and then you fire it.Wow. I had no idea. I was so impressed. Anyway, when our infomercial was over we went upstairs for our buffet lunch. Delish. Nothing crazy or way out there- just good savory deliciousness.

SUMMER PALACE

When we finished with lunch we headed back into Beijing to visit the summer palace. The summer palace is where the emperor used to live in the summer. It was beautiful. There’s a750 meter covered walkway so during super sunny or super rainy days you can still walk outside.There’s a huge manmade lake and lots of green space. It was beautiful. The strangest thing we saw was this bizarre building, shaped like a boat and half in the water – made out of 100% marble. One of the empresses had it made for her 50^th birthday. Oh to be that demanding.

PEARL STORE

After the summer palace we were brought to the pearl store. The talk beforehand was interesting. Many of the oysters come from the summer palace pond. She had us guess how many pearls would be inside. Wanna take a guess? Go ahead. Let me tell you it was the biggest oyster we could find in the tank. Ok. Done guessing? More than 20! Wow! Because they are in it to make a profit, obviously they force the oysters to make the pearls. How you ask? Well, they insert muscle from another oyster INTO one of the oysters they want to harvest. The foreign material annoys the oyster so they coat it. In a similar way that we make tears if something annoys our eyes. Anyway, the oyster coats the foreign material and that coating makes the pearl. Neato. We all got a small pearl as a consolation prize for guessing the wrong number.

KUNGFU SHOW

After pearls we went to dinner-back to the same restaurant of the first night- and then we went to a Kung-fu show! The show was about a little boy who joins a monastery (much to his chagrin) but then goes on to study King-fu and become a master! The audience was filled with foreigners. The show was actually in English with Mandarin subtitles. It was pretty fun.

At the end of the night we came back and collapsed into bed.

Beijing, Day 1

2010-09-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

Preview:

We decided to go to China when we realized we had a week off for the Korean holiday

Cheosok. The only problem was that we didn’t want to plan a trip so soon after getting back from Japan. Feeling lazy, we looking online and-lo and behold- we found a 4 day package trip to Beijing! And that brings us to our trip.

Day 1

We arrived in China to our first ever experience of having someone holding a sign with our names on it. It was very exciting and a wonderful way to start our journey. Our tour group is only 5-us and three other NSETS from Korea. Our tour guide is a Chinese woman who’s English name is Wendy. She’s lovely. She herded us to our van and we met our driver, Mr Saun

CHINESE CIRCUS SHOP

We started day one with a Chinese Circus Show at the Heaven and Earth theater. It was a wonderful show in a charming little rundown theather. We saw general acrobatics made more exciting with the use of Diablo and spinning plates. We saw

a balancing act where a 10 year old girl was thrown (and then balanced) onto a three high tower of men. The three main attractions were a juggler, umbrella juggling, and a bicycle act. The juggler bounced, at one point, 9 balls-WHILE tapdancing. The umbrella juggler spun four umbrellas, one in each foot and hand, and the bicycle act had 12 women on one bicycle! It was a fun way to start our evening.

DINNER

Afterward we were taken to dinner. We had duck. Apparently the way the duck is prepared is very special. They are all smoked in a huge oven, many many ducks together. They have no

seasoning added so they use fruit tree wood to smoke the duck and when it comes out it gets cut into exactly 120 pieces. The duck has three layers of delicious. 1^st layer-skin, 2^nd layer-fat, and 3^rd layer-meat. It’s an excellent combination! They serve it with a thick version of soy sauce (imagine the consistency of A-1). We at our dinner and then went to wonder in our area.

NIGHTTIME WANDERINGS

At the end of our street is a lovely church and on the black stone steps in front of the church this man was using water to paint words. He wasn’t using a small paintbrush, it was a large-almost comically sized brush. Imagine the size of a child’s broom. Anyway, the whole processwas beautiful because the water made the stones a nice dark color but by the time he got to the the last step the words on the first step would begin to fade and he would start again. He had three paintbrushes so periodically people on the street would add their words to his.

After watching him for a while we went on a hunt for a sweatshirt. China is cold! Apparently they’ve gone from 90 degrees to 60 in a week! Anyway, we needed to find Jamie a sweatshirt so we braved the mall, found a department store with a hugely aggressive woman who sold us a nice long sleeve shirt for more than half the original price she quoted us.

Warm and ready for adventure we wandered out into the night, found us a little beer stand and drank a beer while watching the female weightlifting championships that were being shown on a massive screen on one of the buildings. When we tired of that we decided to brave the night food market. WOW! Live scorpions on sticks, starfish, flayed geckos, duck fetus, and seahorses-I think that’s the end of the crazy list. Everything else was pretty normal, but it was so crowded that it felt like a fair. We wanted to try the scorpion but had no camera. Soon. Soon.

Beijing, Day 3

2010-09-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

Day three

TIANANENMEN SQUARE and THE FORBIDDEN CITY

We started the day at 8:30 and headed over to Tiananmen Square. We knew it was a large area but the enormity of it was impressive. Wendy told us that it could hold as many as 1.2 million people. She also told us that the trip to Tianenmen square is, for many Chinese, a place they feel they must go at some point in their lives and there are as many people traveling there from within china as there are foreign tourists. Right next to Tianemen square is the Forbidden City. We took about an hour to walk through the residence of the last Emperor. The forbidden city is 1 square kilometer and separated roughly into four sections. The first area is where the guards stay, protecting the palace. The next area is where the politics happen, behind that is the residences and sleeping quarters and behind that are the gardens. The emperor could, obviously, visit all the areas but mostly they were separated by gender. The first two being only men and the second two being only women. Aside from the Emperess there were around 3000 concubines living in the palace.

Some of the more interesting stories we were told about the Forbidden City and it’s inhabitats. The emperor chose many of his concubines from the daughters of his ministers. Many of them would only see the emperor one time-the time they were chosen to be concubines. The life of a concubine was often fraught with danger as there were many schemes and plans to get close to the emperor. The concubines often lived in the midst of murder plots, conspiracy, and distrust. When an emperor finally died the concubines were all sent to become Nuns. As they had belonged to the Emporer they could no longer belong to anyone else.

TEA STORE

After the forbidden city we were taken to another live infomercial but this one was participatory and tasty. A tea store! We sat in a little room with a pretty table and a pretty woman and she told us all about different teas and what they are good for and how to drink them and what temperature you should have them at. It was so captivating that I was convinced and bought tea! We bought the pretty one that is a roll of three dried flowers and it opens up to beautiful in water! Oh. And they gave us a little ceramic boy that you pour water on and he pees if the water is hot enough.

LUNCH

Lunch was a buffet. The food was fine-nothing spectacular or crazy. We ate a lot.

TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

We spent all of 20 minutes here but the time we spent was lovely. There’s a massive temple in the middle (a temple to heaven) and the building is so important to Beijing that it’s the symbol of the city. It’s a three storied circular building painted mostly blues and whites. Beijingers believed that heaven is a circle (hence the circular shape) and that it covers the earth (a aquare). The park is supposedly huge, but-well-we can’t speak to that.

SILK STORE

After the temple of heaven we went to a silk store. This was riveting! I had no idea how silk was made! So, there are two kinds of silk worm cocoons. One kind it used for silk tread and the other for silk stuffing. It looks like (and is used for) comforter batting. So, the silk thread is taken from the cocoons. Literally the pull a strand of the cocoon off and then just keep pulling to make a thread. The thread from one cocoon can be 650 meters. WOW! But it is so thin that the combine the threads of about 6 or 7 cocoons to make a thicker strand.

The other cocoon is used for silk batting. They wet the cocoon and then just pull it apart! That’s it. The stretch it into a thin cloth and put it over a wicker frame (shaped like an inverted U.) the do that with 10 cocoons because it’s so thin and then take that and put it on a larger frame and put 10 more to make a thick batting. Once they have that done, you take it over to a big bed frame. Four people stand around the frame and they put the silk batting in the middle and the women then pull it to stretch it out to the size of the quilt. WOW! Just wow. While I was sufficiently impressed, I still didn’t buy any silk.

OLYMPIC PARK

The silk store was our last organized stop for our tour so our driver dropped us off at Olympic Park for us to wander around. It was lovely! The olympic area in beijing. There's the places everyone know and reconginzes like the Nest and the Watercube, but the whole area extends way past that. Behind (or infront of depending on your direction) is the Olympic Green which is this lovely walkway along a maintained river and then farther on is The Olympic Forest. We almost didn't make it to the forest. I'm glad we perservered through the hardships of the green. what hardships you ask? Well, although Olympic Green is beautiful apparently China and Korea have the same habit of broadcasting pop music thourgh speakers in beautiful settings. Although unlike Korea this particular park only had 3 (THREE) songs that it played on repeat. Anyway, we beat a hard and steady path through the Green to Olympic Forest.

Once in the Forest our day took a turn for AWESOME when we rented Minature electric cars and cruised through park. Amazing. It was so fun. I'm glad we overcame the fear that we felt upon standing in line for the cars. We were so worried (unnecessarily) about how to get one. Oddly, even though the olympics were only two years ago there is almost no English in the Olympic area. Of course, there were almost no obvious foreigners. We saw only one obvious foreigner and he was with his family who all seemed to be Chinese so that doesn't really count. ANYWAY, becuase of that many people found us Hilarious (as we found ourselves) and we many people enjoyed watching us as we PutPutted around the park in our tiny green car.

Hutong city

When we left Olympic Park/Green/Forest we hopped a cab over to Hutong, Old Beijing. Our tour guide recommended the lake front area as a place to go for an evening and oh did it turn out to be fun. It's like any bar scene in any country-you know, except for being in China-with lots of overpriced bars and tons of people wandering around and a variety of smells wafting around every corner.

Our first bar was a rooftop scene-great view of the lake and people and awesome view of the Motorcycle gang that cruised through the area about halfway through our dinner.

Jamie wants you to look at this photo and say:

Who has one thumb and drinks more beer? THIS guy

Our second bar was a hooka bar on street level. This was lovely and pleasant and turned awesome when the people next to us started taking our picture. THEN the guy came and sat next to us to take a picture. THEN he gave us cigarettes. THEN he went and got cold roast beef to share with us. Awesome. It was super fun. Actually, many people were taking our picture while we were sitting there. I hope my hair was OK.

Anyway, we wandered home early. Well, it would have been earlier if we didn't keep getting lost in the tiny little back streets of Hutong but by the time we got back we were wiped from our day of sightseeing and excitement.

2010-09-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

We're finally moving from summer to fall. Thank Heavens. It was so hot and humid here. And then the last few weeks it was raining almost everyday. UGH! Anyway, We've got a few events planned for the fall so I figured it was time to get back to updating about Korea.

We are back at school and for both Jamie and I it's super easy compared to starting here in September last year. It's so strange to be starting a new year again, but instead of thinking "wow another year!", we're thinking "Oh my gosh! Only a year! what are we going to do in August!". OK. In reality, that's more my daily mantra. Jamie's a little more laid back about the plans.

I know your desperate to hear about our latest adventures so I won't keep them from you any longer.

Soccer and Baseball!

We went to a soccer game a few weeks back and a baseball game a few months before that. The soccer game was in World Cup Stadium which was pretty cool in and of itself (Korea co-hosted the World Cup with Japan back in 2002). The soccer/baseball games were fun, like all live sports games are but there are some things that are a little different from other arena games I had been too. If I don't specify, the points apply to both the soccer and baseball games.

First off, Cheerleaders.

Both the soccer game and the baseball game had Cheerleaders!

The had a little stage about 1 quarter of the way up in the seats and they led the crowd in cheering. Not only did they Cheer but they also danced! They had routines for some popular songs that they would dance to. Very interesting.

Leading the Crowd.

I think cheerleaders do this regardless (I'm not real savy on cheerleaders and what they do back in the states), but they had signs that they would hold up with the players names so everyone could cheer and read their name. For example, they would hold up a sign with a players name and we'd all "clapclapclap Ji! sung! Park! ClapClapClap Jisung Park!" and they we'd do the next player and so on.

(BASEBALL) Individualized Cheers

The popular baseball players had their own cheer! There were about 5 different cheers for the various players. But they weren't like a regular chant, they were more like a song. and EVERYONE in the stadium new them. Not only did they have a song, but more often than not they also had some sort of motion that went along with them. Which brings me to the next point.

Crowd Participation

People do not cheer randomly here. Everyone is taught the cheer and we do it together. It's really remarkable to watch and participate in. For both games you could watch the crowd react together while cheering. What makes it even more interesting to watch is the cheering paraphernalia.

Cheering Paraphernalia

Everyone has some thing, specific to the team they are cheering for, to help them cheer and make noise. Popular right now is those big boom whackers. You whack them together and they make noise. Anyway, because almost everyone has them, that's what's included in the synchronized movements for the cheers. It looks so neat to see thousands of people waving those in unison! At the soccer game, the infamous "vuvuzella" was fairly ubiquitous, and the big screen showed a PSA on proper vuvuzella handling prior to the game. They would also periodically flash, "It's Vuvuzella time!", indicating that it was, at that particular moment, time to use the vuvuzella. Also at one of the baseball games, fans had taken orange grocery bags, inflated them and tied them off, and then attached them to their heads! They looked like pumpkins from a far!

Soccer, Fireworks

At the start of each half and each time there was a goal they set of fireworks! Wow! (maybe that's not so uncommon in the states either). It was unfortunate that the stadium was mostly enclosed though, as the smoke lingered for a good 10 minutes each time...

Food

Two things about food. First, bringing food in from outside it totally OK. This means that there's tons of ladies selling Kimbab and Soju and corn and all that jazz right outside the stadium. That's great. But you know what, who cares!? Because the food inside the stadium is NOT OVERPRICED. Let me say that again in case you missed it. It's not overpriced! The food and beer inside the stadium is the same cheap price that you would pay on your own street 5 miles away from the stadium! Oh wow.

Japan Day 10 Mt fuji

2010-08-23T01:45:00.001-07:00

Day 10, August 20, 2010

Our penultimate day! Having sort of burnt ourselves out on the city of Tokyo, we had arranged yesterday to go on a day trip out of the city to the famous Mt. Fuji! Mt. Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan, weighing in at about 12,500 feet. It holds significant cultural value to many Japanese as it is the residence of one of the major Shinto gods (a goddess, actually). We woke up at about 6:30 and made our way down to the southern part of the city to meet up with the tour group and they picked us up there. Our tour guide was really interesting – very serious about her job, yet quite funny. She talked a lot about Japan and its culture on the way there and back, which was actually really nice to learn about about.

Fuji is about 120 KM outside of Tokyo, so we had a little over 2 hours of a drive. Unfortunately when we got there, the mountain was just covered in cloud, so our view was limited to a few hundred feet! We weren’t too disappointed though, as the air quality was superb and it was actually nice and chilly there, an excellent break from the heat of Tokyo (and the heat of Seoul). There were a great many hikers who were starting off their journey up the mountain from our stopping point (we stopped at station 5, about 2000 meters up; the top is station 10, and it takes from 4-6 hours to get there by foot – cars cannot go past station 5).

Luckily our tour was by no means finished! We drove for about an hour to the beautiful mountain town of Hakone where we first had lunch and then took a gondola up towards the top of a beautiful mountain. There we found a bunch of hot springs – REALLY hot springs, one of the only examples of volcanism in Japan (although there are 3000 hot springs, perhaps this is the most visible on the surface?). It looks (and smells) a lot like portions of Yellowstone park, for anyone who has been there. In some areas the scent of sulfer is extremely strong. We walked up towards a little hut at the top of the trail and purchased “black eggs”. These are eggs that have been hard boiled in the hot springs, which turns them black. Legend has it that eating one will make you live seven years longer, two will make you live fourteen years longer, and three will make it so you’ll never see a doctor again. We bought a five pack and tasted one while still near the mountain (they were SO HOT); tasted pretty good actually!

From the volcanic, we took a “pirate” ship (a ferry) across the lake in the middle of the town. It was GORGEOUS, set right in the middle of the mountains. It is fed by a spring, which makes it so it does not freeze during the winter, which is pretty interesting. It turned out to be a really lovely tour and we’re glad we took it.

We arrived back in Tokyo around 8:45 and found a really funky Japanese-Korean food place (although it didn’t seem very Korean). A lot of different kebab dishes and our waiter spoke English and had some good suggestions for us. A fantastic last dinner in a fanstastic food country

We leave tomorrow early afternoon, so we are hoping to get one more sight seeing objective accomplished in the morning.

Japan Day 9

2010-08-23T01:44:00.000-07:00

Day 9, August 19, 2010

Getting close to the end of our travels here in Japan! Today was our last day to hang out and explore Tokyo, as tomorrow we are taking a day trip to Mt. Fuji. We took our time at the hotel planning our day, and eventually decided on hanging out in the fashion district, another place renowned for its busyness and general chaotic feel. We started off by checking out Shibuya crossing, which you may have seen in popular depictions of Tokyo as it is considered to be the busiest pedestrian intersections in Tokyo. It seemed like a smaller version of Times Square in Manhatten. Near the crossing was a little subway museum, housed in an old subway car. It had some neat before and now pictures of the area, but the funniest part about the museum (to me) was the people who were sitting on the subway car – it looked like they were really riding a subway! Chillin' out, reading the paper, ignoring the people around them. It was a terrible place to rest, too, being a metal car with no AC. Anyways, we visited some shops in the area and then made our way towards the fashionable area, Harajuku.

On our way over to Harajuku, we happened upon an old city park covered with graffiti; upon closer inspection, however, we realized it was a demonstration zone and much of the graffiti and trash were art pieces protesting the development of “Nike Park”, a project that would evict all of the homeless folks living in the area and charge people to enter. Several artists take residence in the park to help prevent the development. We found a little “freestore” in the area and also talked with a filmmaker who is squatting there.

We found this amazing Hawaiian burger place (there seems to be a fascination here with Hawaii) called Teddy’s burgers. The guy working the register was perhaps the most interesting and nice service worker I’ve ever encountered in a restaurant. We forgot to take pictures of our burgers, but my 9 oz classic burger was a formidable serving and it was deliciously simple. After lunch, we finally came upon Harajuku. Shannon likened the general area to Newbury street in Boston, which is a pretty fair depiction.

We also passed by an Airstream trailer a little later in our travels that was surrounded by tables and serving as a tiny little bar! We had a drink and people watched (which is fun in a crazy fashion area!). There are many (overpriced) vintage shops in the area, and they had some pretty funky stuff, much from the US. Apparently boy scout uniforms are a popular item, and I enjoyed looking at all the different district patches (one of which I have!).

We finished up the outing with a walk through a ridiculously crowded shopping road that was blocked off from cars. It was a little much and we made our way out of there pretty quickly. We found our subway, headed back to the Sakura to pick up our luggage, and then made our way to our final accommodations in Japan: the capsule hotel.

Capsule hotels are pretty cheap, and apparently are often also associated with Onsen (spelling), Japanese bath (sort of like a smaller scale Jimjabong, Korean sauna). There was of course a vending machine once we got in there to get a ticket for our rooms, we were taken to the different male and female areas of the hotel (the capsules only sleep one, and the men’s side is sort of connected to the bath area. The capsules themselves are pretty interesting, it feels like your in a spaceship complete with command console for the clock, TV, radio, and light. You also get a key for a locker (in a different area) and a robe to wear over to the bathhouse area. The bathhouse area is public as are all the showers, which is a little annoying to have to go all the over to that part just to take a shower, but the hot bath is nice and I’m pretty sure it comes from a natural hot spring (there are over 3000 in Japan). Shannon’s bath area is actually not connected to her sleeping area and she has to leave the building to get there. Literally. There was a arrow that said "ladies showers" and some slippers to put on. So i put them on and follow the arrow TO THE STREET! i get out there and sort tiptoe to the nearest open door. (thank god i had opted to wear clothes and NOT the bathrobe) I peek my head in the door, it does indeed look like a Onsen. I sidle up to the counter and give the woman a slightly confused look. She points at my hotel bracelet and gives me a thumbs up. Oh man. it was so strange. AND, the womens showers didn't open until 11am. ugh. anyway, back to the story.

We got settled at the hotel and took a little time to enjoy the baths before heading out on our dinner adventure. We’d heard about a fantastic sushi restaurant a couple stops away, but since the station nearest us didn’t go there directly, we decided to try and walk there by going one stop up and exploring the area along the way. We really lucked out with our plan, as the station at which we arrived happened to be right next to the Tokyo Sky tree. The Tokyo Sky tree is a communications tower/ observation deck/ tourist attraction that will almost double the height of the Tokyo Tower, which I believe is currently the tallest structure in the city. The bulk of the work is done, and I think the habitable part (the building area anyways) is finished, but the antenna at the top is not yet finished. I actually have no idea, but it looks pretty far into the project from what we saw and we were literally right next to the base of it.

Eventually we found our way to the area where we wanted to be, Asakusa. We ordered up a storm, and we were not disappointed. It was probably the best sushi I’ve ever had, and our favorite was the fatty tuna and the seared tuna. The seared tuna tasted like a delicious mini-steak, and the fatty tuna was just so rich I wouldn’t have been able to tell you it was tuna had I not known what it was. Oh, and did I mention Japanese beer is awesome? Well it is. Especially with Japanese sushi. We haven’t delved into any sake offerings, which, I know, is disappointing you all, but they are listed like wines, in Japanese, and we have no idea where to start. Our opportunity to try some out probably lay back in Kyoto when we were hanging out with Miho, but that’s OK. We did try socho, which is a different type of Japanese liquor (and it wasn’t that great). And by not that great he means terrible. Worse than Soju. We got one cup and everyone at the table shared it (there were 6 of us).

Anyways, we were so happy with our sushi choice and thank the Lonely Planet guidebook for being so spot on.

Japan day 7

2010-08-23T01:43:00.002-07:00

Day 7, August 17, 2010

We started off the day at Sanjusangendo, having been told it is one of the best things to see in Kyoto. It is famous for the 1000 arms of the Buddha, so going in I was expecting literally a thousand arms. We had also been told that there are 1000 faces, and that people try and find a face that looks like their own amongst them all. So, I expected a Buddha image with a 1000 faces on it. What we found though was simply REMARKABLE. We entered this temple, and we couldn’t really get a scope of it from the outside (I wasn’t even sure it was where we were supposed to be as it was labeled “Worship”). We take off our shoes and go in, and we are greeted by literally 1000 almost life-size, 900 year-old, hand-carved statues. There were 500 on either side of a 3.3 meter tall hand carved Buddha statue. Each of the 1001 Buddhas have 42 hands, each holding a tiny symbol. They are all slightly different, but at first I thought they were all bronze casted statues, it was really hard to imagine 1000 nearly identical statues being hand carved. The scope was simply amazing, and the fact that they survived for so long is, as I said before, remarkable. There were no pictures allowed, but perhaps I’ll find some on the internet elsewhere.

Unfortunately there was very little air circulation within the temple, so it was sweltering hot (I think today was the hottest day yet of the trip and its been pretty hot). We decided to take it easy and made our way to the Kyoto station to purchase our return bullet train tickets to Tokyo. Our plan for tomorrow? Get back to Tokyo and head to Tokyo Disneyland! We’re very excited, they have an adult oriented park called Tokyo Disney Sea. We’ll see how it is!

Anyways, after getting our tickets we headed over to the Kyoto Manga Museum, which is part massive Japanese comic book library, part elementary school museum (its in a 100+ year Japanese elementary school), part art exhibit, and some typical museum fare thrown in. It was pretty neat; I particularly enjoyed the exhibit that explained manga and its history, I hadn’t realized it had been so important to Japanese culture and for so long (it has been enjoyed by youth and adults for over a century in Japan).

We then made our way back to Miho’s house for dinner, where her dad prepared a kind of “Japanese pizza”. Its sort of like Korean “pajeon”, a fried batter dish filled with vegetables and seafood. This dish also was mixed with soba noodles and a couple strips of bacon for good measure. Top it off with a hearty/sweet/spicy sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed powder, and fish flakes and your good to go! It was really good!

It was sort of an easy day (hey, it was hot!), but a really nice finish to our time in Kyoto. We’ve had a real blast hanging out with Miho and we’re just super lucky it worked out (one that she happens to live here, two that she took such good care of us, and three that the festival happened to be happening while we were here). We could easily stay a few more days and still have many a thing to do, but alas, our hotel is already booked back in Tokyo and Miho is actually leaving for Zambia in a few days. Well, good night and see you back in Tokyo!

Japan Day 8 Disney

2010-08-23T01:43:00.001-07:00

Day 8, August 18, 2010

After waking up early and saying our goodbyes to Miho and her dad, we hopped on a city bus and made our way to the Shinkansen (Bullet train). The ride was only about 2 hours or so, and we were in Tokyo station at about noon. From there we hopped on a different rail service to Disneyland!

There are two Disney parks in Tokyo, adjacent and connected to each other by a monorail. There is Tokyo Disneyland, which is almost exactly like Disneyland in LA (which Jamie actually has not visited), and then Disneyland Sea which we were told catered more to adults. It was still for children in many ways and of course there were many of them, but we could drink beer or wine within the park at certain places. Also the quality of the shows /events was really top notch and a couple of them also may have been aimed at adults.

The park is divided into different “Coasts”, like American coast (they have a Cape Cod!), Meditteraenean coast, Arabian coast (Alladin themed), and under the sea indoor area (never made it that far, a captain Nemo area with 20,000 leagues under the sea/journey to the center of the Earth, and a futureland type area. We only really managed to get on 4 ride type attractions (and Journey to the Center of the Earth took us 90 minutes…), but we saw a few excellent shows, one taking place in a sweet theatre with a moving stage (It was a Big Band/swing revue, very excellent). (we went to this one only because jamie loves gambling and it's a lottery to get a ticket)

The evening ended with a neat fireworks/animatronic/light/water show in the central water area of the park. It was pretty neat! (it was about the love affair or water and fire. the water was this massive fountain shaped like a girl with pigtails and the fire was this massive dragon the breathed fire. wow. not only love between fire and water-at least they are both element- but love between people and dragons. Oh disney)

While I don’t remember it being as exciting as Disneyworld was in my youth. Obviously we are much older now and we kind of just went to the park on a whim (vs. driving 20 hours to get there…), so the anticipation level was 0. But I also remember Disney world having lots of little gags here and there around the park, sort of in-park street performers. We saw one really funny custodian going around, but that was it.

Anyways, we had a buffet dinner in the park (delicious) and made our way back to our original hotel, the Sakura Jimbocho, which is just a really nice place with great staff. A very fun and tiring day!

Japan Day 6 Kyoto

2010-08-23T01:42:00.002-07:00

Day 6, August 16

Today we woke up a bit later due to the previous night’s exploits. We eventually made it out of the house and decided to check out the closest things to Miho’s house. The first stop was this café at top of a little mountain that you have to hike up to get to it. (and by hike we mean, stairs and an incline) Totally worth the "hike", the buildings all along the way and the paths were just beautiful, and the view from the café was just amazing. After coffee we went to a free art museum down the hill that is run through Miho’s church (her religion is called Reimei). Very nice, very old stuff. They had a tea room that had a circular window that perfectlly framed the mountain that was going to have the fires on it. So you could perfectly see the character and it was set up so you couldn't see any of the city. It was beautiful.

Later we made our way to my favorite site so far, the Ginkaju-ji temple, a UNESCO world heritage site. While a little small compared to some of the other things we’ve seen so far, the grounds are IMMACULATELY maintained (this despite the throngs of visitors, it is one of the most visited temples in Japan), including some amazing sand works and zen designs that are probably redone every day. The garden was just incredible.

After the temple we strolled a little bit down the way and decided to check out another garden, the one that belonged to a famous Japanese artist by the name of Hakusasanso Hashimoto. Another beautiful site, it was worth the 6 dollar entry fee to just escape the madness of the previous attraction in terms of number of people.

At the end of the day we finally played a little pachinko. It’s like a cross between a slot machine and a pinball machine. We lost and very quickly!

At around 7PM we met back up with Miho and finally met her father (he had been on a trip to a nearby mountain to do some nature photography). A very nice man! He was very appreciative that we had taken in Miho when she was travelling in America and didn’t have a place to stay. Anyways, after our meeting, we walked a few minutes to Miho’s family church where they were having a small party. And by family church, I really mean family church, she had a whole bunch of family there, and we got to meet a whole lot of friends too. It was really nice and we had some food and chatted for a bit. The reason for the party was part of the Obon festival , which actually isn’t observed by her church (her religion is relatively new and I’m not sure how big it is), but they still gathered to view the main attraction. What is the main attraction you ask? Well, some background. Many Japanese Buddhists believe that in mid-august spirits from the spirit realm can return to Earth for a few days and chill out with their family and friends. So families and temples light special fires so that the spirits can find their way. At the end of the festival, Kyoto lights these huge symbols on the sides of nearby mountains so that the spirits can find their way back to the spirit-realm. Its like a, “It was nice, but see you next year” type of thing.

It was really neat and we managed to take a few photos; you can see the fires, but not really the mountain that its on. After that we joined some of the congregation at a nearby park to light off some sparklers which was fun. A really neat experience!

Japan Day 5 Kyoto!

2010-08-23T01:42:00.001-07:00

Day 5, August 15^th

OK, I’m writing this a day after the fact so perhaps my details won’t be that great, but I’ll give it a shot. I also want to get to today’s events too so I’ll be briefer than I have been. So Day 5 was a temple day and we really packed in a number of great ones in a short period of time. Kyoto is just unbelievably packed with shrines, temples, monuments, gardens – it’s kind of unbelievable that there can be so many in such a small geographic area!

The day started off with a quick tour of Miho’s neighborhood, and she pointed out 3 things to do just around her street, one of them being a UNESCO world heritage sight. We then hopped a train and went to Miho’s work area, which also happens to be near 2 other UNESCO world heritage sights (she works at one of the shops in the neighborhood, typical touristy fair stuff, although in Japanese fashion I’d say even the touristy vendors are pretty swanky). The first temple we visited was called Kiyo-mizu and apparently Miho had never actually visited, so she came with us right before she had to be at work. We went up to the first building and paid 100 yen to enter, thinking we would just walk inside. But instead, we followed stairs down into a basement and quickly realized that it was a 100 percent pitch black maze that you had to hang onto a railing the whole time in order to get through. This is funny because we were watching a TV show the night before about haunted houses in Japan. Anyways, a few minutes in we come across a brightly illumintated prayer wheel that we spun and made a wish on. OH! And we happen to be in Kyoto during an important festival (Obon) during which all prayers and wishes are worth 1000X! This day only, get your prayers here, HUUGE SALE, all wishes MUST GO! Sorry, that’s kind of how I interpreted it when she told us that!

OK, so after the dungeon (okokok, the “dungeon” was supposed to symbolize the womb of the Buddha and it was pitch black to help us get rid of all of our attachments before we made our wish), we moved on to the temple (extremely ancient and beautiful, check out the pictures, followed by a near by shrine called the Jinsho love shrine-Home of the Love Stone! This place was a trip, kind of like an ancient Buddhist theme park. It was all about charms and finding love and there were lots of little shrines. There are two rocks in the middle, and if you close your eyes and make it safely to the opposite stone, you’ll find your true love. I missed big time, but then again I’m all set in that department 

We then mozied onto a walking tour provided by the lovely folks at Lonely Planet, enjoying the wonderful architecture of the stores and tea shops. Really, really, really beautiful buildings in this city, it’s a little overwhelming. We made our way to a giant Buddha statue and memorial for all the soldiers of WWII followed by a nice little park where we saw some cats chilling out (we missed cats, they get no respect in Korea, they’re pop icons here). We finished our temples for the day at Yasaka shrine, which I think is close in color to Harley Davidson orange, very cool.

After that, we found our way to the main river, which we later found out used to be lined with the severed heads of folks who weren’t so popular with the crowd who likes to sever people’s heads. Miho told us that people automatically sit along the river at the same intervals apart from one another as the severed heads used to be. Sure enough folks were almost perfectly spaced apart.

From there we met up with Miho and her friend, Now (not sure the spelling, but that’s about right on the pronunciation). He is a little older than Miho and makes custom painted t-shirts (beautiful by the way). He is a lot of fun and knows Miho through a band they used to be in together! We ended up at an Okinawa style restaurant (delicious!) and drank many a beer. We were soon joined by two more friends and continued consuming a delicious Japanese brew called Yebisu. We had a fantastic time with this little group and Miho is really good at translating! I had expected Japanese folks to be more conservative, but these guys were a rockin’ good party group and we just had an absolute blast. We did a second round after that and took a taxi home to finish up the evenin’. One of the friends, named Kazoo-uh (spelling I have noooo idea), was a real hoot and started off by teaching me a completely made up custom called “Spinning kompai”, where you spin your cup when you do the customary “Kompai” (cheers). Anyways, really fun group, really great night!

Japan Day four

2010-08-23T01:41:00.002-07:00

Day 4 (August 14, 2010)

Having only a half day left to hang out with Dave in Tokyo, we got going fairly early and were out of our hotel by 9:30 (early!). After another little run-in with subway confusion, we eventually found Dave at the subway stop at our first activity for the day, a visit to the Mori Modern Art Museum. The exhibit included three installations by three artists around the theme of nature and how Japanese interact with their natural surroundings. The exhibit had English audio guides available so we enjoyed listening to the descriptions of each exhibit (you know modern art, it often requires a little explanation). I was very impressed with this exhibit, though. Shannon and Dave took some pictures (which I don’t think we were supposed to be doing, no one told anyone to stop taking them) so you’ll have to take a look, the most jarring one being the bleeding mountain. Another hit was the 4 walled clear plastic piece, filled with hundreds of pounds of feathers with a fan that turns on every minute or so to simulate snow. Very neat! The museum was located on the 50^th or so floor of a skyscraper, so admission came with free access to the observation areas, so we got a daytime look at the Tokyo skyline. It’s very beautiful!

After the art museum we rushed over to our second museum of the day, the beer museum! This was perhaps the smallest museum I’ve ever seen, and the exhibit took us all of 15 minutes to walk through. Its for the Yebisu brand of beer, one of the first in Japan and its now owned by the Sapporo company. We sampled a beer afterwards (NOT free *sadface*). Nearby was a second beer restaurant so we sampled a couple more offerings and enjoyed some nice german style sausage (also popular in Korea).

After our midday drinks and snacks, we had to say goodbye to Dave in order to catch our train out to Kyoto. We made it over to Tokyo station with little problem and proceeded to board one of the fastest trains in the world, the Shinkasken, AKA the bullet train. It took us from Tokyo to Kyoto in a little over 2 hours, very impressive.

At Kyoto station we found Miho, a woman that we’ve hosted back in the states on a few different occasions. She is super nice and friendly and has given us a splendid room in her lovely house to stay in for a few days. She is also taking us around and coming up with a lot of different things for us to do (which is great, we came with literally a blank agenda). This week is a special holiday in traditional Japanese culture- the O-bon Festival. Families remember their ancestors and it is said that in these few days their spirits can come back into this world. One of the neat things they do on the last day to say goodbye is to create a sort of light house effect for the spirits, by making many large controlled fires on the side of a mountain in the shape of a symbol. We’re really looking forward to seeing that tomorrow.

Anyways, Miho made us dinner and it was delicious – raw fish, rice, meat dumplings and regular dumplings (sort of like fried mandoo from Korea). We chatted and watched “National Treasure” which happened to be on TV. We’re really glad to be here!’

That being said we have a long day tomorrow so its off to bed again! Day 4? ANOTHER SUCCESS!

Japan Day Three, more Awesomeness in Tokyo

2010-08-23T01:41:00.001-07:00

Day 3 (August 13)

OK, had a bit too much whiskey the night before so we were a bit sluggish and vampirish when it came to the sunshine, but we managed to get up and out the of the hotel by about 11 after enjoying the hotel’s breakfast (well, its just toast and coffee). Our first destination was to a water taxi stand in Asakusa area (North and east). We had our first view of the soon-to-be tallest structure in Japan, the Tokyo Sky Tree. It will almost double the current tallest, the Tokyo Tower – I believe it will be over 600 meters tall. The picture is pretty neat, as the cranes sitting atop it give you a sense of the scale of the project.

The water taxi was an OK ride, I can’t honestly say the canals we took were breathtaking, although the bridges offered some variety in their color and structure. Once we hit the financial/ government area though, the scenery changed a lot for the better! The cityscape changed from the Seoul-like ubiquitous 15-20 story apartment buildings to a gorgeous variety of skyscrapers mixed with carefully tended greenspaces. The green space we jumped off at was a wonderful garden called Hama rykou (spelling?)(south and east), which used to be a falconry/ falconry hunting ground for royalty several hundred years ago. Very, very beautiful, well kept, and not very busy. An interesting part of it was an explanation of how they would hunt for wild ducks, using domesticated ducks as “lures” and then unleashing their deadly falcons upon them! Viscous, I know, using birds against their own cousins…but come on, it would be a pretty neat way to hunt. Imagine if bird warfare were used to settle disputes instead of guns today!

After the gardens, we hopped on another subway and traveled over to the “Electric Town, ” Akihabara (slightly north and eastern). OK, so up to this point, Tokyo has been really really chill, well kept, and all-in all, not that busy. Nothing like Seoul, where there are a million people, every where, all the time. But you are now saying to yourself, “But Jamie, I thought it was totally different. I thought Japan is absolutely CRAZY!!”. Well, you are RIGHT! This area is what sort of defines the image that I had of Japan before coming, bright lights, people in ridiculous costumes, anime characters just draping buildings, throngs of people, crazy sex shops, cracked out arcades. Oh man, it was kind of awesome. We only could handle an hour or so of the madness, but we got our fill!

After crazy electric town, we headed back to our first hotel, as we had only booked two nights. We moved out to the Ikebura area (North and west), and Dave moved to a place in the government area (West and central). Well, we had our first travel woes of the trip, as the map we had for the hotel (on the back of a business card) led us very astray! After a 45 minute parlay into an area that looked mysteriously like Newton, MA, we eventually had some help from a nice police officer and a sushi delivery person who directed us in the right direction. We’ll stay just tonight and head out to Kyoto in the morning!

After a little break, we headed out once more to one of the government buildings in the middle of the city (very close to Dave’s new hotel), which happens to be a skyscraper! They offer a free observation deck from the 52^nd floor which was quite beautiful, and the rain held off for us to get a clear view.

We said goodbye to Dave after he gave us a quick tour of his new digs (very nice find Dave, very nice indeed!), and we headed back to our area. Being a little hungry from our activities, we found a cute little Hong Kong restaurant (they had cheap drinks…), but what a find it turned out to be! Some of the best fried rice I’ve ever had, a delicious sweet and sour fried cucumber dish, and a super black-pepper chicken dish. Unbelievable. Food for day 3? 100% success (I’m discounting breakfast, it doesn’t really count).

So here we are, a little after midnight. We’re doing laundry right now (yeah yeah, I know its only day 3, but its just so hot and humid that we’ve been changing during the days so we already have a full load). Our new hotel (which is the same company as our first one, by the way, but we got a really rotten deal on a price this night because we hadn’t booked in advance), has a nice little outdoor eating/drinking area. Very relaxed.

Overall impression so far of Tokyo? It’s just all around great. Language barrier really hasn’t been so much of a problem (hell, we’re kind of used to it), and while the transportation system had us initially flabbergasted, it is a model of efficiency and it’s just super easy to get to all of these places. The food as I mentioned has been great, and all the Japanese people we’ve encountered have just been super nice. The city is super clean (well every part we’ve seen) and just all around nice to walk around in. I’m just really happy with it. We’re also really excited to stay in Kyoto with our Japanese friend and her family for the next few days, we’re heading out on the bullet train tomorrow afternoon. Until then, good night!

Japan Day Two More Tokyo Fun

2010-08-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

Day 2 (August 12)

We had decided the previous night to wake up around 8:30 and we almost did it! We woke Dave up (we only have 1 alarm between the three of us), showered up and enjoyed the 315 yen breakfast (it was really just toast and coffee – maybe we’ll just hit up the Family Mart down the road tomorrow morning instead). We chatted with the guys who run the place and they gave us some suggestions of things to do, very nice of them.

Well we started off at the subway, which are pretty similar to those of Seoul in terms of the stations, but maybe they are a little older. The system seems really confusing at first as there are separate companies that run the different lines, although they often share the same station-or stations with the same name but DIFFERENT exit numbers. We ended up just buying a day pass that works for about 60% of all the lines in the city. The man at the info booth was extremely nice and helpful and took us into the operation center to call a translation service to help us figure out our best option. Once we sort of figured out (kind of )how the system works, the trains seem to be a model of efficiency. They come every couple of minutes and the stops are really well labeled within the city.

Anyways, our first stop was the Imperial palace, which is a really beautifully maintained park type place (People aren't allowed to visit the actual Palace) lots of open space , trees, and beautiful stone walls. And! it is surrounded by a moat! We had a good hour and a half walk in the area and we took many pictures. The structures are relatively simple but seem to be very finely crafted, and I especially loved the gates at the entrance. The beams are MASSIVE and each made from a solid piece of wood (and a fragrant variety at that).

We walked across the street afterwards and found a little fountain area with some neat fountain structures, or rather they would have been neat had they been fountaining. It was to windy. If was like standing in a horizontal waterfall before they turned the last one off.

We then went for our first Japanese meal. Since we weren’t really in the mood to hunt down a side-street treasure, we just opted for the first thing we found which happened to be an upscale department store/mall building with a floor filled with nice restaurants. Luckily one of the cheapest ones really piqued our fancy. I particularly loved the pork ribs dish, it fell right off the bone. The bitter cucumber tasted about as good as it sounds though, so unless you have a thing for bitterness (or maybe even resentment, perhaps) I’d stay away from dishes focusing on that. Shannon and Dave had some sort of papaya and chicken dish that was also delightful. Really looking forward to eating here for the next week!

After lunch we found Tokyo station (its under construction so it really held no splendor at all) and bought our tickets in advance for the bullet train to Kyoto, we’ll be heading over there on Saturday. We then took a quick trip to an area called Ginza which has the Sony building. We were a little skeptical at first, as we really aren’t too much in the way of gadget heads, (that's a lie, Jamie LOVES gadgets) but we were all really happy we made the trip! The building houses the Sony showrooms which span a good number of mini floors each showcasing new and upcoming products. You may have heard of recent advances in 3D technology and it appears that Sony is pushing for it big time. They had a whole bunch of neat little 3D TV set-ups that you could play with. Another really neat gadget was a mike for a video camera that zooms in on sound while you zoom in with your lense. A SOUND zoom. Wow. Very neat.

We then tried to check out the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, but unfortunately it is changing exhibits as we speak. We also tried the science museum, but alas, they closed at 5! By now, of course, there's a downpour to go along with the wind.

After a quick dinner at a ramyeon place (think “ramen” noodles, but at a restaurant, served in a super thick broth with green onion and a slice of pork loin – its pretty good! Ramyeon is served often at restaurants in Korea too, but usually it is much spicier), we went to a little joint called the Cavern Club in the hip little neighborhood of Roppongi. The club has a resident Beatles cover band that plays 30 minutes on and then has 30 minutes off (but they only play Beatles in between sets). It was pretty awesome! The group didn’t dress up like the members to a T (although I suspect a couple of them were in character to some degree), each one did take particular member (i.e. that particular person would sing their personas songs (i.e. “Paul” sang “Lullaby”). The drinks at the place were pretty expensive so it seemed economical for us to just buy a bottle of whiskey, which none of us had ever done in a bar before (you can do this in Korea, but the cost is absurd). However, we were overcharged 40 dollars in the end, so who knows if there is some kind of membership fee for ordering a bottle or what – they did bring out this special bottle necklace with Dave’s name on it… Anyways, we drank quite a bit, stayed for 3 sets, and got a couple pictures with the band in the end, so it was well worth it! We managed to catch the 2^nd to last subway train back to the hotel and made it back safe and sound!

A note: there are LOTS of photos, most of witch are of green things at the palace (jamie loves

green things.) However, if you stick it out to the end you will see the Beatles Cover band. And

some ridiculous pictures of shannon trying to touch the fish. If you want explanations, you can

visit flickr as each picture has and explanation.

Japan Day One

2010-08-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

Before you start reading, i'd like to tell you that we are back in Korea. Jamie wrote these updates every night of our trip. Super dedicated! Anyway, I'm going to post one a day so that all of you avid readers won't get overwhelmed with 12 days all in one post. I'll try to post the pictures for each day with the post as well. Just comment if you want more detail or explanation and I'll try to answer promptly and quickly. (more quickly than normal)

Day 1 (August 11)

So here we are in Japan on the first day of our journey. Well, evening, as we left Seoul around 7:30PM and just arrived in Tokyo at about 9:45PM, a pretty quick and painless flight! We used a smaller airport (think Bradley International or TF Green for all of the folks out in the MA area), and came into a nice little (not so little) airport to the south of Tokyo called Haneda. Getting to our hostel/motel (Sakura hotel) wasn’t too difficult but a little bit nerve-wracking in the moment, as we found the train system is quite a bit more complex than the one in Seoul and there is not nearly as much English (at least on the lines on the outskirts of the city). Anyways, there was actually no problem whatsoever and we made it to our first stop in one piece no problem! Yay! And when we got to our guesthouse, who do we see right in front of the door but our friend Dave! What a small world! OK OK, it was not a coincidence at all, we planned to meet up with him the whole time! We’ll be spending about 3 days with him in Tokyo before we split off and go to Kyoto to stay with a friend and see what that area has to offer. The man who is running the guesthouse is super friendly and pointed out that the Japanese coinage, while almost identical to that of Korea, is about 11-12 X more valuable so don’t mix them up! They seem to use coins much more here instead of small bills – one of them is 500 yen which is more than 5 dollars and I think more than 6000 Korean won. The Japanese had to change their coinage, actually, because Koreans would come over here and use their 500 won coins instead of the 500 yen coins in the vending machines.

Which leads to interesting Japanese things of the day. OK not much to comment on yet as we’ve only been in the country for a couple hours, but one thing we’ve heard about and already noticed is the vending machine culture. There are over 5 million vending machines in Japan, which is about 1 vending machine for every 24-25 people. They bring in over 50 billion USD in revenue a year (or 5 trillion yen), and folks can find anything from soda to fresh vegetables to a wide variety adult oriented offerings ranging from strange to downright creepy.

Anyways, we’ll have much to comment on tomorrow and its approaching 1AM now so we will enjoy sleeping in our tiny cubicle (its like half a dorm room, but its cozy – I love the wallpaper, its textured!). I tried to take some pictures but its too small to take good photos in. Good night!

Drinking and Partying

2010-07-31T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hello friends!

First off, I'm sorry. I've been really lazy lately. More than normal. So, um. yeah. It's not like we haven't done anything. We've done some things, certainly, but well...Ok.

So, in recent news, we've been working at our summer camps which is glorious! We only have to work until noon and we get paid the same. And, more often than not, we also get lunch. Usually pizza or fried chicken. And they give us breakfast-bread and muffins and honey butter. YUM! There is, of course, the problem of weight gain. During our winter camp I gained about 10 pounds; Of course I think it was coupled with learning how to make eggnog from scratch, but you know, I'm still trying to be careful. I only eat the muffin top in stead of the whole thing. :)

Great. So, what else have we been doing that has kept us away from the most read blog on the internet? Partying. Really, I feel like this past month has been constant events or parties. We've hosted a few parties, gone out for a few parties and just ended up chilling with friends until the wee hours of the morning. I think there are quite a few people who really do relish that lifestyle..but for us-we're just tired the next day and then have to take all week to recover. Although, obviously it hasn't stopped us...hmm, well, at least it's fun. However, this weekend has been somewhat mellow. After staying out until 3 on Friday, we opted to say in and watch Trueblood all day saturday and today we're going to watch musicals at a friends house.

But, I digress. Whenever you read anything about Seoul, it's referenced as a city that is awake 24 hours a day. I suppose there are other cities that are also equally caffeinated (or in the case of Seoul, drunk) but there's something more accessible to being up all night here.

One night we were just sitting at a convenience store, drinking on their patio and when we finally looked at our watch we realized it was 2am.
Another night, we were hanging out in our apartment with friends when we got the urge to go singing. We found a singing room and stayed there until 3am.
For a friends birthday we wanted to go dancing and just ended up bar hopping until 4am.

You might be saying, "Well, you could do that in any city! (not if your in Boston) So why is Seoul any different?" And while I can't speak with any real authority as I haven't partied in all the cities of the world, I can speak to the difference in Seoul to some other American cities.

1. You can drink on the street.
It's not that you see many people walking around with cans of alcohol or bottles of soju. (Unless they're foreigners-and then you can almost guarantee they're carrying booze) It's more the fact that all the convenience stores sell alcohol and almost every single one has a little table out front where you can drink it. So instead of spending 5 bucks for a drink at the bar, you can start out cheaper at the corner store.

2. Alcohol is cheap.
Ok. in all honesty, I don't mean tequila and whiskey are cheap, but beer and soju are cheap. A bottle of soju costs a dollar and Korean beer is really affordable too. Also, there's lots of bars that have cheap drink specials. There's a few that have $2 tequila shots or buckets of beverage. MM! But my favorite place has a 5 dollar cover and ladies drink FREE! Yes. FREE. This is remarkable. And wonderful considering that Jamie and I are a couple. Much cheaper for our shared income and because I'm usually there with my husband and wearing a wedding ring I don't have to spend my evening fending off drunk GIs. (well..)

3. Plenty of places to sleep
While you could certainly sleep on a park bench, you could also spend 6 dollars and sleep in the Jimjabang (Korean sauna) or you could spend $30 and sleep in a love motel.

4. Transportation is Cheap.
So, the subway stops running at midnight. (I KNOW, right?!) But you can take a taxi cab! We take about a 45 minute taxi ride and it costs us between 16 and 22 dollars. wow! And, you don't need to tip here. (although we do)

OK. so, all that being said, we don't party that often. This month has been strange for us. It's happened because we don't realize how late it is. The streets never get quiet, the buses never stop running, and the stores never close. Wow. This means, of course, that there is a fair amount of English Teachers that are here, right out of college, who party all the time-call out sick because of hangovers and spend all their money on partying. We don't do that. This month has just been...summertime I guess.

Anyway, we miss you all. We'd love to be partying with you.

Interesting things about Korea.
This addition focuses on drinking.

Speed:
Koreans drink FAST. I mean, like 5 shots in five minutes-and it's not just the 20somethings. All ages. I think Americans settle into one establishment and get big glasses or beer or a mixed beverage. Koreans will visit many places in a night and eat and drink at each one. So they drink fast and continuously while they're in one place but have some time while they transition. Also, the beverage of choice is Soju.

Age:
As I mentioned above, everyone drinks, not just the young people. In fact, if you are the oldest-or the highest authority-in a group, it's customary for you to take a shot with each member of the group. Jamie watched his principal take a shot with every teacher in a group-almost 20 people!

Customs and Politeness:
We're still trying to learn all this-it's all new. I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting.

It's rude to take your shot facing an elder. Turn your head to the side to take the shot.
People (elders usually) will give you their own shot glass, you take a shot with it and then hand it back to them so they can take a shot with it.
It's rude to fill your own glass. If you need a refill, fill someone else's and they'll do the same for you.
Don't top off. Wait until the glass is empty.
When filling a glass pour with two hands and when getting your glass filled hold your glass with two hands.
If someone older or of a higher authority comes to have a shot with you, stand up.

Quick Update

2010-07-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

Hello! It has been a while since the last posting, so we'll do our best to catch up. We haven't embarked on any major adventures in the past month, but we've been keeping ourselves busy nonetheless!
One of the most exciting things is our new air conditioner - please take a look at the pictures, the thing is literally as tall as a refrigerator and has two parts. Well, we're excited about it now, we'll see how excited we are once we see our electric bill for the month! That being said, we feel that since we spent so little on heating this year, we can splurge a bit and life of chilly bliss this summer. Seriously, we could keep a penguin in our room...maybe even a shopping penguin!

Lets see...what else is new in the lives of Jamie and Shannon? Well, we've discovered a couple of board game cafes in the city. Word is that these were really popular in Seoul a few years back, but most places have gone under. The two we have visited are pretty amazing. You pay an hourly fee per person and are free to use all the board games they have, and they have a pretty great collection. They even have a board game "menu", but it is in Korean so not much help to us, but we like the idea nonetheless. Of course you can get snacks and beverages too.

OH and how could I forget World Cup soccer! We thoroughly enjoyed being in a country that actually cares about soccer during the tournament, and it was also really cool to have two teams to root for. We managed to catch almost all of the South Korean games and the USA games (with the exception of the two that were aired at 3:30AM our time). We did stay up for the USA Ghana game, which was also at 3:30, and ended up going to bed at about 6:00AM. We had a little foreigner fan club going for each of the games and I really developed an appreciation for the sport, I can't remember ever really liking soccer until this World Cup!

Wait a second, it really HAS been a while since our last post! We did go on a little trip during Buddha's Birthday weekend. This was around May 21st (Buddha's B-day) I'll recount the week, it was pretty exciting! First off, there was a lantern festival in downtown Seoul. It was probably the longest parade I've ever seen. There were thousands of people just marching with lanterns, alongside groups of dancers, huge paper floats (including animatronic fire-breathing peacocks!), and some international Buddhist communities. Amazingly we managed to snag front row seats, too!

We then made a trip to an island called Muido in the east sea, near the country's major airport. We had intended on staying the weekend, but we forgot to bring enough cash to get us through the entire time (no credit cards or ATMs!). We weren't too disappointed, as the sea retreats a couple kilometers at low tide leaving a massive mudflat for a view. Not that appealing, actually! We did enjoy the daytrip, though, and we were accompanied by some of Shannon's Korean co-teachers and we had a nice time hanging out with them.

We decided to count our losses and just head back down to the coastal city we were a little more familiar with, Pusan. This was our second time visiting Pusan and this time we opted for an ocean side motel (still super cheap). We got in a solid beach day and had some beautiful weather. There were probably more westerners at the beach than Koreans, and it was very easy to tell them apart. Most westerners were sunbathing while most Koreans were hiding under umbrellas and were fully clothed. Our guess is that, while it was a beautiful day, it wasn't technically summer yet and therefore most Koreans were not opting for summer wear. Culturally, there are many different things that fit with each season, so our guess was that beach clothing may be one of them. But who knows!

While in Pusan we found our way to a Westerner owned bar that was having a trivia night! As a trivia fan, I was quite excited and we actually had a really fun time hanging out with other foreigners there. Shannon managed to get us invited to go sailing the following day, but accidentally gave the guy her number instead of mine (she'd left her phone back in Seoul). But that is OK, the following day we had our own adventure in store. After downing a delicious meal of Japanese style kebabs, we went to a two man play called "Stones from His Pockets". We ended up being the only two people in the audience! Instead of just buying us a drink and saying ,"Sorry, its crazy to do a show for two people", they went on with it anyways! Let me tell you, there is a lot of pressure being the only people in an audience. You are solely responsible for all audience reactions, laughing, sighing, heckling. It was pretty intense. A really good show though, and we actually bumped into one of the actors a few weeks later in Seoul. While he agreed the experience had been awkward, he said it was actually one of their best performances so I guess we must been a pretty good audience after all.

So that was our Buddha B-day weekend. Since then we have also: gone to a music festival in the foreigner/ Army base area (very much fun), celebrated several birthdays (also in the foreigner area - we also found a Western country style bar called the Grand Ole' Opry where they encourage line dancing!), attended a two day international breakdancing competition, and had a very nice 4th of July barbeque.

OK, I know. We've been busy after all.

And what is coming up on our radars, you ask? Well, both of our schools are just finishing up their finals for the semester...but there is still two more weeks of school left (strange, I know). We will both be working at district English summer camps (we'll be at different ones, though). We know the drill however, as these camps will be very similar to camps we ran in Winter. We know our staff and the setup down pat, and its honestly a pretty sweet deal. We only teach till about noon each day and then we are home free. So three weeks of half days! Word is though, that this will be during monsoon season and its also been getting mighty hot/humid around here.

What's after camp, you ask? Well we have a little bit of time off before school starts (a little more than a week), so we may be heading off to Japan! Our itinerary is currently a blank slate, though, so if you've got suggestions let us know!

AND, for your viewing pleasure, Shannon and Jamie (mostly Shannon) have been busy putting their creative skills to use. Check out our videos! Most are for teaching purposes, but all are pretty funny/cute. Our real video camera died, though, so forgive the camera quality.

Interesting things about Korea:

Samguk Kimbap (this one's in video form!)

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos

Wine Train

2010-05-05T05:28:00.000-07:00

Hello friends!

Have we got an adventure to tell you about!

Last Saturday, while Jamie was working, I embarked on a journey to explore Korean Wines. From Seoul Station there is a “wine train” that travels south to Yeongdong. The days adventures would include unlimited wine, Lunch and a tour or a winery. I should have remembered that we are in Korea and you always get more than you bargained for.

We arrived at Seoul Station for our 9am departure and after a 10 minute panic attack concerning our missing travel companions and debates about how we could keep the train from leaving, they arrived and we boarded the train for departure.

The wine train is really just a commuter train that has been outfitted with four cars for wine and ginseng. The ginseng cars, where we were sitting, were slightly cheaper but with no less of an itinerary. Both cars have little sofas for 2 people, set up facing each other with a table set with wine glasses between. The main difference between the wine and ginseng cars is that the wine ones were posh and velvety and ours was cloth and denimy. Oh, and had pictures of happy little ginseng people and they had pictures of wine (bor-ring).

So, almost as soon as we left the station they brought us little platters of food and shortly thereafter gave us our first sample of wine. We were given small samples of four wines, three were competing for the category of “sweet like a candy” and one dry. All were red. After our first round of samples they came and filled our glasses with our favorite. Just as our glasses were filled, our host came in to play games with us! We played competitive versions of rock, paper scissors; balloon volleyball, both in pairs and in groups of six and a fun game that challenged our comprehension of Korean numbers. Each game ended with a prize but no one in our group won. Not for lack of effort, mind you, but because we were always two steps behind-not understanding Korean and all.

Anyway, after our organized entertainment we sipped wine, enjoyed the beautiful scenery and played word games that drew the attention of, well, everyone. But don’t worry, nothing dirty. Just the classic alphabet category game.

We arrived at our destination around 11:45 and were shuffled into a gorgeous, huge and sunlight filled patio of the Winery. We had a delicious buffet with about 20 different food options, coffee, tea, dessert and, of course, wine. After lunch we were split into our train car groups and given our winery tour. Unfortunately, the tour was in Korean so we were forced to entertain ourselves. Which we dutifully did by taking pictures of the paintings, pretending to lift wine casks and going on imaginary rides in the golf cart. You know. All the things adults do. Regardless of our inattention, at the end of the tour we were given a wine foot soak and taught how to make the awesome princess leia style hats out of towels(reference in the pictures). After our foot soak we were taught to make Wine Balls that we could take home and use to recreate the foot bath experience with our loved ones and friends.

I bought a bottle of wine before we were sent back to the busses. Almost immediately upon getting onto the bus everyone fell asleep and we woke up 40 minutes later at the Ginseng Museum. Again, we were taught a fun craft, this one being a ginseng sachel (we have no idea what it’s for) and while the tour was lost on us, most of the museum had English explainations. Here’s what I learned about Ginseng.

1. It takes one year for ginseng to grow a leg. So, if you have a ginseng with 5 legs, that ginseng is, at least, 5 years old.

2. Ginseng can cure EVERYTHING. Headaches, cramps, AIDS (potentially), diabetes and many many other things. (I’m skeptical about this point)

3. There are many folk tales about Ginseng in Korean Culture. Let me tell you one:

There was once a young boy who lived with his father in a small village. One day the father got very ill. The doctor said the father would die unless the boy found some wild mountain ginseng. That day the boy went to the mountains to find some ginseng. He searched for hours but was unsuccessful. Not wanting to give up, he slept in the mountains to begin his search again in the morning. That night he had a dream. A voice told him to go to the other side of the mountain. There he would find a cave with 12 bodies in it. He must cut off the left leg of the 12^th body and feed it to his father.

The boy awoke and immediately set out to find the cave. When he finally arrived he went to the 12^th body and cut off it’s leg. As he was leaving the body got up and began to chase him. The body chased him all the way home. When he got there, he grabbed a knife and attacked and killed the body. He then made a soup of the leg and fed it to his father. The next morning when they boy went into the kitchen he found a huge ginseng with it’s left leg missing. Shortly afterward, the boy's father got well.

Yeah. So, after the ginseng museum we were taken to the town and the ginseng market. I have never seen so much ginseng in my life. Where does it all come from? What do you do with it? I hope to have answers to these questions in the future, but I can tell you that Fried Ginseng=yummy.

On our way back to the train we detoured past (and into) a really creepy cave with mildewing bottles and casks of wine. This is the only time I was really sad about not being able to understand what was going on. Regardless of the creepy cave there was a beautiful orchard with gorgeous flowering trees that we briefly frolicked in before our ride back to the train.

We got on the train around 6:45, drank some more wine, were serenaded by an acoustic guitar, got fed some snacks and played some more games. When we finally arrived back in Seoul we decided the best way to end our day was with some beer so we booked it to the nearest restaurant for a cold brew and reminisces of the days adventure.

Exciting things about Korea:

Wine!

Korea has wineries! I had no idea! Most Korean wines, as mentioned above are very sweet.

Bars:

Bars in Korea are called “Hofs.” In many ways these are just like bars in the states but there are some sublte differences. One being that the beer and soju is super cheap. For this reason, you must order some sort of food when you are there. However, because everyone shares food in Korea, you only need to order one dish. But be careful not to accidentally order silk worm larvae. You may be surprised.

Public Drunkeness and Vomiting (WARNING, MAY BE A LITTLE GROSS):

Is not illegal. You see many many many people stumbling drunk and being helped by their friends. Also, in all of Korea you can wander around with open containers of alcohol. However, you do not see many Koreans wandering with beer (although plenty of westerners), because it is sort of a faux pa to eat or drink anything when your walking - we rarely see people even walking with coffee. Anyway, with this being a huge drinking culture and public drunkenness being OK there's often vomit on the streets (not lots, but more than i've seen at home).

Anyway, why this tangent? Well, as we were getting back on the wine train a woman was throwing up and her throw-up was pink. And I realized that ALL the puke I have seen in Korea is Pink or Red. Why? I'm guessing becuase of kimchi and red pepper sauce.

School Follow up!

2010-04-17T03:13:00.000-07:00

Hi friends across the globe,

Jamie's cousin Michelle sent us some questions about your last post so we thought it would make sense to answer then here.

You started your job in the middle of a school year?

Yes. We started our job in the middle of the school year. This was a little difficult for us. We were the new teachers so the students had the upper hand in that respect.

Is the rainbow thing literal, like their actual rainbows have more detail, or artistic?

So, there's some debate here as to whether or not I've been wrong all my life. I was taught (or so I think) to remember the rainbow colors with the phrase ROY.G.BV. Now, as I have never seen the word written, I always pictured it as ROY.G.BV. It may have been ROY.G.BIV and I've been oblivious all my life. Jamie has no clue, I've asked him and he said he'd never even heard of that mnemonic device. So, first and foremost, can someone tell me the U.S. Rainbow has 6 or 7 colors? The actual rainbows look exactly the same (well, we assume - we haven't seen any yet).

How do they deal with the little kids who really always need to be babysat? If the teachers moved around, the kids would be left unsupervised.

The elementary school the system is a little different and is similar to most schools in the states. The class has a homeroom teacher who stays with the class most of the day. There are also some subject teachers who will teach the kids (aside from the homeroom teacher), but we think there is some sort of class trade off involving the homeroom teacher.

Do they prep for science day, like a science fair, or just show up and get kits or something?

(Shannon's School) They just show up and the science teachers have things prepared for them. My science day did water rockets, airplanes and lots of painting. I think there were other things too, but those were the ones that were happening outside and that I could see. However, If the students so the rocketship or the airplane they have to pay for the supplies.

(Jamie's School) The students who were involved in the water rocket activity had all built their rockets from kits. They took 1 liter soda bottles and attached nose pieces and fins with what appeared to be electrical tape. Some of them were really great! Additionally, in the Fall semester the high school does a model project with regular fire propelled rockets. Very fun to watch!

Do the parents have to pay for the 3-day trip?

I don't know. I'll ask. But we guess that they do.

I actually thought you were teaching college kids or other adult learners, for some reason. Do you teach both?

We have both had classes with adults, but only one per week and organized through the school. For example, Jamie is teaching a parents English class for an hour on mondays, and last semester I taught a teachers English class for an hour on Thursdays.

Exciting things about Korea:

Breakfast:

People certainly eat breakfast in Korea, but breakfast is the same as dinner. Rice and Kimchi. The do have a special hangover breakfast. It's this sausage soup with lots of pig bits in it. And sausage. Well, it's pretty unique. There's a picture of it included in the school slide show. Watch for it!

Yogurt Delivery

There are these ladies that deliver tiny little bottles of yogurt. They're like the old milkman, I guess. Anyway, they wear cream colored clothes and push matching carts. My head teacher has one delivered to her every day. I think it's so funny that this lady has to walk around a deliver 4 ounces of yogurt. I mean, I'm sure you can buy whole packages of the little yogurts, but it also adorable to see her carrying one to deliver.

Pets

People have lots of small dogs as pets. If the dog is white and fluffy, some people will dye some part of it a super bright color like pink or green. This fashion statement is not limited to young dog owners nor is it a rare occurrence.

School Time

2010-04-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hello friends across the globe,

I'm sitting at home for my random "discretionary holiday" and realized we had yet to explain the school system in Korea. Last semester we were just learning how things go and now that we're a month into the school year we seem to have a better (but not great) understanding of the Middle School System-at the very least we seem to understand our two schools.

So, the school year goes from March to February. The students get a month off in August and then another month in January. They come BACK to school for one week in February when they have Graduation ceremonies and then have the rest of February off for Spring Break. Strange, i know. It certainly was annoying for our trip to Thailand as it got cut short by a week. Ah well.

BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.

So, March 2nd we arrived back at school and started the School year with the new students. Middle and high school are both three years here-as I think it is in some schools in the states. Middle school is 7th, 8th and 9th (the age range is the same) and high school is 10th, 11th and 12th. When they are referencing a grade in either middle or high school they get called 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. This was super shocking to me. When I first met my co-teachers they kept saying "oh the 1st graders are so exctied to meet you" and I kept smiling and saying "yes, I'm excitied to meet them too" and In my head I'm thinking "WHAT?!" All was clarified when I asked "so, what age is 1st grade here?" Anyway, School starts in March and goes until December.

DAYS OFF and FUN SCHOOL THINGS:

I've already mentioned the major vacations but there's (obviously) very different days off in Korea than their are in the US. (you know, being a different county and having different holidays.) My favorite, so far, is Children's Day. YES! they have a children's day! How many times I asked as a child "Why don't we get a children's day" and being told...well, you all know the answer. Anyway, I come to korea and they have a children's day AND we get the day off from school. It's like a teachers day too! (which they do have and I'll get presents on) Anyway, we also have Buddha's Birthday off (both are in May). I think that's all the big holidays in the Spring Semester. They don't get days off for Easter because, although there are many Christians, it's not a christian country like the U.S. claims not to be.

Also, from talking to my other friends at middle schools, it seems every school has a Science Day where all the students spend all day doing science experienments and getting judged, and then there's an Art's day which is the same thing but for Art. And they also go on a three day field trip somewhere. The whole school. Every year. And, the third graders get a special trip at the end of the year. (I'm gonna try to get in on that.)

TEACHERS and CLASSROOMS:

Every teacher is in two departments. The department of the subject they teach and then a second deparment where their office is that is related to some sort of school function. So for example, I am in the English department AND the Club Activities department. Teachers do work for both departments. So my desk is with the Club Activities Department and their are teachers from various subjects. In my office there are 7 of us: two korean teacher, one music teacher, one chinese teacher, and three English Teachers. Jamie is "in the Research Department", but we don't actually have any responsibilities within the these departments.

So, teachers have offices', not classrooms, from where their base of operation is. Infact, for the most part, the students stay in their homerooms or classrooms and the teachers go to them. The exceptions are things that are location related like music, art, dance or science, but even those teachers don't live in their classroom. The students have homerooms and homeroom teachers, but the teachers go to the classroom. The classroom space pretty much belongs to the students. It's super interesting.

STUDENTS in the SCHOOL:

My first week in the school was shocking. Students literally seem to rule the school. The best example is recess. Students have lunch/recess from 11:30-12:30. they can do whatever they want whenever. They go to lunch anytime during that hour and then go outside anytime they want. They can aimlessly wander the halls, play out in the yard where there is no teacher assigned to control them (although there are teachers assigned in the lunch room) they hang out in their homerooms playing on the computers, they hang out of the windows screaming (literally). It's pretty hilarious. However, once the bell rings, they're in the classroom. In fact, there is no warning bell to end lunch (there is at Jamie's school, though). The bell that rings at the end of lunch is the bell to START class and I have never had a class be late. I think that's pretty impressive. Anyway, one day I'll get a video of it for you to see.

CLEANING

Every day students have to clean. I think it's a great idea and important for them to do (especially because they're super annoying about throwing wrappers or banana peels on the ground) but like most teenagers, they don't really clean very well. It's mildly painful to have to supervise them as it's like pulling teeth to get them to even notice the dust, but I really like that everyday for 20 minutes the students spend time cleaning the School.

OK. that's enough time thinking about school on my day off. Please let me know if I should elaborate on more things.

Exciting things about Korea:

The Rainbow

The Korean Rainbow has 7 colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

I've met people who tell me the Western Rainbow also has 7 colors, but it's news to me.

Easter

Yes, they color eggs for Christmas but the eggs are given out at church. There is no easter bunny, no peeps, no cadbury creme eggs, no chocolate rabbits. It's a solemn holiday-as it should be. I'm sure it will change ultimately.

The Produce Truck

Just like the Ice Cream Truck but with produce. Twice a week this guy with a super loud bell pulls into our apartment complex. He sells various food stuffs: eggs, produce, rice-wine, bread and other kitchen goodies. It's great. Actually, there's trucks like this everywhere. Usually they just park on the side of the road and sell one product. I've seen them selling: tangerines, crab, flowers, apples, and grapefruit. If they're driving by, people just flag them down.

Yellow Dust/ Yellow Sand/ Asian Dust

All the same thing and known locally as "hwan-sa", this is a major springtime phenomenon that plagues east Asia this part of the year. Winds that blow down from the north of China toss up tons of dust from the Gobi dessert. This dust is then carried thousands of miles to the Koreas and Japan, carrying pollutants and even microbes (yes! microbes!) into the lungs of millions of folks. When it is bad, the sky is actually a hazy yellowy-orange color and you'll see most Koreans sporting face masks. We had a pretty bad bout of it a couple weeks ago and we didn't really notice it too much, but soon after many people seemed to get sick over the next week (nothing serious though). Anyways, kind of a bummer to finally make it out of winter to be greeted by decreased air-quality, but apparently it gets better by summer (just in time for the rainy season)!

Thailand! Part one.

2010-02-19T19:04:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends Across the Globe!

As many of you know, we've recently been in Thailand for our honeymoon and yes, yes it was amazing. We had an incredible time and liked Thailand so much that we're really like to visit again. We're toying with the idea of spending some months there when we're finally finished teaching in Korea.
But enough about that. I know you're dying to hear about our adventures so we won't keep you waiting any longer.

I'm going to explain the adventure in a few parts. First is simply a listing of the things we did. it will be slightly boring, but will help me to remember what we did when i come back to make the stories "jump from the screen." ha! Ok. let the listing begin!

Night 1: Arrival
We arrived at the airport at 11pm and found our shuttle to be transported to the "Green Queen Resort."

Day 1:
Explored resort area and then took our first taxi cab ride into the city to find our new digs in the touristy part of town, Banglamphu. Checked into the New Merry V Guesthouse (NOT the Merry V Guesthouse) and set out to explore. We found a walking tour in our travelers bible (AKA the lonely planet) and set out. Partway through we stumbled upon free bangkok bikes and we borrowed two to continue our journey at a cruising speed of 7mph. Finished up back at our hotel and went to get dinner and massage. Shannon got a foot massage and jamie a neck and shoulder.

Day 2: Monday. Bike Tour, ABC Bike Company
Up early to get to the bike company. they piled all 12 of us on bikes and we headed out through bangkok. down tiny little allies with one room apartments, green streets with overhanging balconies, quick stop in the shoe making district, through the market, down a highway, onto a boat and across to the jungle island. Hard Rock Cafe for lunch and then back.
Afterward? What else, drinks and massage.

Day 3: Tuesday
Siloam Cooking Class. Started with a trip to the market, a short lesson on spices in thai cooking and then back to the school for our 5(!) course cooking lesson. Oh man. we were stuffed.

Afterward we headed back to the hotel, took a short nap and then got taken for a ride in a tuktuk. Literally. We visited the standing buddha, the sitting buddha, a travel agency and a thai fashion store (the last two being against our wishes). Afterward it was back to our corner of bangkok for another foot massage.

Day 4: Wednesday Flight of the Gibbon
Up to meet our 6:30 am bus to be taken to the jungle for our jungle zipline adventure.
Um. awesome.
we did the full "adventure" version, so we stayed in the jungle, toured the open zoo both during the day and at night, slept in a 5 star tent (air conditioning and electricity) was given a HUGE dinner and then we to sleep

Day 5: Thursday: Flight of the Gibbon Part two
Woke up early, rode on a elephant, did a ropes adventure course (awesome) and was put on the bus back to bangkok. Arrived in bangkok, headed straight for the train station and hopped an overnight train to Trang in the south of thailand.

Day 6: Friday: Trang
Stranded with no money in trang. We had $30 and an ATM card that didn't work. Stayed at a 5 dollar hotel, ate a 5 dollar dinner, panicked, walked around and called the bank that night to settle the situation.

Day 7: Saturday: Lao Liang aka Paradise!
We took the van to the ferry to the long boat and by 2pm we were eating lunch in the paradise of lao liang. We unpacked and lounged, we ate, we swam, we drank, we relaxed.

Day 8-12: Sunday to Thursday: Lao Liang
Our days we mostly like this:
wake up at sunrise. Eat breakfast. Snorkel OR Kayak OR Rockclimb. Eat lunch. Siesta and drinks until 3. Snorkel and Swim. Eat Dinner. Chat with fellow travellers at the bar. Sleep.
Repeat.

Day 12: Thursday: Lao Liang to Bangkok
We took the long boat, to the ferry to the van to the overnight first class bus that took us back to bangkok.

Day 13: Friday: Bangkok
Arrived back in banglamphu by 6am. slept until 9 (because the bus, albeit first class didn't' cut it). Woke up, ate and headed over to Wat Pho temple to see the 46meter reclining Buddha. Wandered the temple, got a temple thai massage, headed back for dinner shopped a bit and then got another massage before bed.

Day 14: Departure.
6am airport shuttle. Walk through the front door of home at 9pm. le sigh.

Interesting things about Thailand:

Driving:
The driving is by no means as scary as it is in Korea, HOWEVER, people drive on the left with made us chant (outloud) when crossing the street: look to the right. look to the right. look to the right. No car accidents.

Massage:
As you may have guessed, there's lots of massage in thailand. our most expensive one was $15 for an hour. In our time in thailand our combined massage total was 10. Awesome. We would have gotten more but the masseuse on the island wasn't around.

Our adventures continue next time.

Busan!

2010-02-01T18:50:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends Around the Globe!

I know- it's been a long time. I know- I made a new years resolution. Would you believe me if i told you nothing has happened? Yeah. You shouldn't. So. Things that have happened include: winter camp, a trip to Busan, New Years (obviously), record snowfall, jimjabangs and and Dr. Fish. Instead of making an epic entry i'll sum up with the one that encompasses most of the aforementioned adventures.

Busan!

We finally made it down to the seaside city of Busan. We both loved it. Unfortunately we did not get to meet up with some acquaintances we have there as plans changed last minute but we did end up having a lovely time.

KTX and Haotel Motel

So we set out early (kind-of) tuesday morning on the KTX highspeed train. We sped to Busan in our first class seats in three hours at a high speed of 158MPH. It was lovely. Upon arrival we wandered aimlessly looking of the LoveMotel of distinction (according to our Lonley Planet) and finally found it after seeking out the help of a Bakery store owner and buying pastries that looked deceptively like apple (redbean). Anyway, after check in and settle in, we headed out to find a JimJaBang. And find one we did!

Hurshimchang spa and beer garden

The Hurshimchang, aka "the grand spa" was a lovely way to start our evening. The spa part (gender seperated) had 16 hottubs, waterfall showers, outdoor tubs, small swimming pools, champagne (we're not certain) spas and general lovelyness. the ceilings were glass domed and there were fountains and plants and statutues everywhere. There were only two drawbacks to the spa. 1) for shannon, being on the womens side, it meant that there were many children in the small pool so i couldnt' get a "cool down" dunk. 2) it was seperated by gender so when our meet-up time came around and we both wanted to stay longer we couldn't converse and renegotiate. we both walked out saying: "could have stayed another hour!" Regardless, before our forray into waterworld, we did meet up in the common area where we sweated it out in the 88 celcius sauna. (190 for all you farenheit people) and then we visited Dr. Fish. This little gem a of treatment consists of putting your feet in tubs filled with tiny little fish that eat off the dead skin. Awesome you ask? Yes, we say. Tickle you want to know? Of course, we reply. Anyway, it was great and there's a couple of places in Seoul where we can have it done too.

After the spa we went to the

Brewery!

After our relaxing 4 hours at the spa we stepped outside, circled the building and stumbled upon a German Brewery! Yay! We love beer! Let me tell you why this place was great.

1) they brew their own beer (not to shabby either)

2) the waitstaff was wearing versions of Leiderhosen and German(esqe) Dresses

3) there was an expat band playing a combination of korean and american pop songs.

4) The crowd there (mostly korean) was super exciting and upbeat.

5) We love beer.

anyway, after our dinner and entertainment we headed back to our hotel for a little rest and relaxation.

Day Two Beach Walk and More Beer

The next day we woke up early (cough) to go for a hike. However, not having woken up early enough and taking time to eat our Not Quite Apple pastry we decided, instead, to take an Ocean View Walk. We checked our handy dandy tourist map and headed out to the less popular Taejongdae Beach. Successfully navigating both subway and bus we arrived to gloomy (but comfortable) weather and began our 2 mile stroll. We visited Pebble Beach and marveled at the makeshift resturant on the rocks. We perused the temple and listened to the recorded prayers. We admired the observatory and as it began to rain we decided to take the tram the rest of the way. As we tried to buy the tickets for the tram we quickly discovered that we couldn't understand the machine as it was in Korean. Trying to look as confused as possible didnt' work in soliciting any help becuase at that moment the Tram (very full) arrived and people started to get on. HOWEVER, because it was beginning to rain the line was super long and the tram was super full. We decided to continue in the rain on foot. And continue on we did. However, we no longer stopped at the sights but strolled past them pointing and waving. We ended our walk with dinner in town and upon looking through our book found yet another brewery. We timed our dinner perfectly with the passing bus and rode back downtown to our next stop- Unlimited Beer for only $12!

Dojima Brewery

Needless to say-we drank a lot (but not as much as the ladies next to us who got one of those HUGE 4 foot tall pitchers with a little spicket) and then went back to our Haotel.

Day Three Beomeosa Temple and Hea-undae Beach

Waking up earlier than the previous day we headed out for Beomeosa Temple up in the mountains (founded 678AD. We had originally planned on taking a nice long hike but Jamie had sprained his ankle the day before in the rain (BEFORE the drinking). The Temple was beautiful and it was the first place we visited in Korea where you couldn't see one apartment building. We tromped around (respectfully) for a while and then hopped back on the subway to visit the most popular beach in Busan.

Hae-undae beach

It was lovely. There were lots of college students playing team building games, there was a beautiful seaside/cliffside boardwalk and of course lots of seagulls. We climbed around on the rocks, admired the views, rested under the lovely shade trees and then slowly made our way back to the subway to catch the train back to seoul.

We made it back to the big city just in time for the last trains and got home and in bed by 12:30am.

As I mentioned before, our trip to Busan was a joy. The city has such a different feel from Seoul. Seoul has 9 subway lines, busan has 3. Seoul is highrise apartment building central, in Busan you can see the sky. Seoul makes you feel underdressed when you take the garbage out, Busan feels more slightly more normal. Not that we don't love Seoul, but it's such a Huge city and as the Second largest city in Korea I expected Busan to be more similar but the difference was a suprise and a joy. Although I shouldn't have been shocked. Seoul have 10.4 million people and Busan 3.6. quite a population difference. Regardless, we can't wait to go back.

Exciting things about Korea:

Record Snow Fall:

We got record snow fall in Seoul on January 4th. Infact, they hadn't had that much snow since 1937. We got 10 Inches. It was certainly a lot at one time but it was almost all gone within a week. Of course, as i'm trudging to work i'm thinking "wow, winter has finally come. I've got to get prepared for the next few months." Then when i arrive at school my co-teachers are saying "wow! this never happens! what a freak snow storm!" Anyway, with the snow fall not being a common occurrence, there were no snowplows and in fact the next day I saw the military with shovels clearing out fire hydrants and telephone poles. They brought in construction trucks to clear away the snow in some areas (although not near us). Anyway, like i said, in roughly a week, it was mostly gone (having melted, not having been removed).

Design Capital of the World.

As some of you may have seen, Seoul has been designated one of the top 30 places to visit in 2010. In fact, we're number 3. (and you've got a place to stay! come over). Why? You might ask. Because this lovely commercial center has been designated the Design Capital of the world. Here's the Mayor's take on the situation: "With Seoul's designation as World Design Capital 2010, the city will be able to breath creative energy into the design industry and reinvent itself into a globally recognized city of design and collaborate with other cities in the world to communicate with design. Seoul will send out the message that design is the power to change the world for the better." Anyway, there you have it. come on over.

2018 Olympics

Yep. that's right. we're planning ahead. Korea is trying to host the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Know who just when skiing there? Jamie. Who's gonna say be able to say (if the olypmics are here of course) that he scooped it out for the olympiads? Jamie, that's who. Anyway, because they're trying to get the olympics here they're doing tons of competitions in Korea. For those of you that love x-games there was recently an international snowboarding competition in Downtown Seoul that Jamie and I saw. It was super fun and really neat!

Shannon and Jamie Christmas Extravaganza

2010-01-01T22:42:00.001-08:00

While we have already impressed you with a christmas post, we decided to do a second in honor of the epiphany, AKA "Three Kings Day AKA "Little Christmas." This one will be entirely dedicated to our personal christmas celebrations and adventures. So.

Welcome to "The Ultimate Christmas Story"

Christmas Eve:

Great. It all started on Christmas Eve. We both

had to work. Not a big deal. It was only until 12:30 and we weren't having a crowd for Dinner. Which brings us to the theme of our christmas. Eating. We have been eating non-stop since christmas eve. This post will mostly consist of our food menus.

Anyway, Christmas Eve we invited our ex-pat friend Chrissy over for Vigilia-Christmas Eve Fish Dinner for those of you that don't know the polish word.

We ate:

Pierogies (made from scratch- first time ever!!)

Baked stuffed shrimp (medium shrimp because we couldn't find jumbo, but still delicious)

White fish battered and fried (no idea what kind of white fish, we picked one at random)

Mashed Potatoes

Candied Yams

Stuffed Mushrooms

and Bernaise sauce! Yay! my mom sent us some in a care package. What's christmas dinner with out bernaise sauce?! Boring. That's what.

For dessert we had:

sugar cookies (boring i know, but we were going to be so full)

After Chrissy left we opened cards and gifts that we had gotten from our co-teachers and then we watched "A Muppet Family Christmas"

Christmas Day:

We woke up and opened stocking presents. Jamie got me a whole bunch of art supplies and candy and I got him a whole bunch of games and a waffle iron.

So. for breakfast we had:

Peirogies

Potatoes

Eggs (all with bernaise)

and Waffles! I found this great recipie online that is mostly all sugar and milk. Delicious.

We lounged around for a few hours called lots of family and friends and then had lunch.

A co-teacher of mine bought a MASSIVE about of bulgogi (korean BBQ) and gave it to me on Christmas Eve so we ate that.

And then for dinner we had Salmon, Asparagus, the rest of the pierogies and more potatoes. (and salad).

Second Day of Christmas

The next morning we were going to have waffles again, but realized that we had used all of our butter (2 pounds of it) so we suffered with omlettes and potatoes.

New Years Eve

For New Years we went Ice Skating at the Peace Gate in Olympic Park and made Mondu Gu (dumping soup) and White Russians for lunch. then headed downtown to have dinner and drinks with our friend Christina. We ended up at a cozy little Canadian Bar with live music, champagne at midnight and a fun crowd. We hung out, got our New Years Countdown and kiss and then packed up to go back home.

The Rest of the 12 Days of Christmas

Most evenings we've been sitting by the fire (Mom Keller sent us a DVD of a fire place), admiring our charming christmas tree, and watching christmas movies. We're watched one each night for the 12 days.

Little Christmas AKA The Three Kings AKA the Epiphany

In Shannon's house they celebrate three kings, so as you can see we've been celebrating all 12 days. But we also decided to exchange gifts on that day and have a delicious dinner/party. We actually had two. ON the kings we invited our Winter Camp co-workers over for drinks and on Saturday the 9th we invited our Co-teachers over for another little shindig.

Exciting things about the Ultimate Christmas:

Drinks:

We've learned how to make Eggnog from scratch! Of course, without a blender it takes some time, but it's certainly added to the christmas spirit and we're really excited about our new LionKiller Specialty.

Ice Skating:

Super Cheap (1000 won included skate time and rentals) and in korea, the one syllable word "skate" becomes 4 syllables. "suh kA ee tuh"

Snow:

Not a super amount but enough to cover the streets and sidewalks. And thankfully in korea they dont' seem to plow or salt so it feels like a winters worth of snow your trudging through!

Christmas In Korea

2009-12-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends Across The Globe!

Like everyone else this holiday season we, too, will write a holiday edition. This blog will be in sections so you can skip whatever will bore you.

Aaaaaaand.....we're off!

Christmas in Korea:

According to the CIA factbook only 26% of Koreas are Christian (almost 20% being protestant), around 23% buddhist and the rest having "none." That being said, christmas in Korea does indeed exist and seems to be growing in popularity and commercialism.

There are some small differences here but overall christmas is very similar to at home.

Music:

Yes, they play christmas music in the stores (sometimes blaring outside of the stores) and yes many songs are in English although they have many korean versions of the songs we recognize.

Trees:

People do indeed have christmas trees although the trees are often fake and small. And as every student tells me there must be a star at the top of the tree.

Candy:

Heck yeah. Candy Canes exist and are popular here. However, I haven't seen massive store displays selling candy canes, only a few here and there. They do not have ribbon candy. (i knew you were wondering)

Food:

There seems to be no specific Christmas Dinner, however Christmas Cake is hugely popular and seems to be a staple. What is this Christmas Cake you ask? Well, similar to birthday cake it can be anything. There is no mandated flavor (I asked about fruit cake and they simply started at me). Every local bakery (and dunkin donuts) had stacks of Cake boxes outside their doors. You could tell it was christmas eve because every other person was carrying a cake box.

Santa:

Oh yes and he looks the same, still has a sled and 9 reindeer. They love rudolph here and that's one of the songs I recognize in Korean.

Stockings:

Yes, but I haven't figured out if presents go in them. My students seem baffled when i asked about that and said they were just a decoration. (also they called them "socks" and even "red sox" - real cute and, of course, true)

Christmas Shows:

Watching Home Alone! I'm sure there are also US Citizens that watch Macaulay Culkin on Christmas but when I think of Christmas programing I think of "A Christmas Story" and "Charlie Brown". Oh, and lets not forget "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation". Please, let me know if you think differently. Anyway, in Korea it's Home Alone.

Caroling:

Does not happen and my students seemed appalled that I even suggested singing outside and in public.

Outside Decorations:

On people's personal houses, No. At stores and in Churches, Yes. However, the Christmas Decorations are not nearly to the same extent. I was told that outside of city hall they do a pretty good display but I haven't made it there. Near us the only really big christmas display is in front of the massive protestant church (looks like a catholic cathedral) near our house.

Lastly:

Clubbing. It seems that those people who aren't married, don't have children or are old enough to, go the clubs on Christmas. I thought it strange, but Sara and Jill, our friends in Argentina said it's a tradition there too. Needless to say, we did not go out clubbing on Christmas (eve or day).

Exciting things about Korea:

Christmas Songs:

Currently the top two christmas songs in Korea are Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is you" and Wham's "Last Christmas."

Exams:

Christmas, although growing, is still not the only thing people focus on for the December Season. My poor 1st and 2nd graders had National Exams the day before Christmas Eve and there was school on the 24 (although not the 25th).

Hannukah you ask?

Hardly anywhere. There was a small menorah outside one of the downtown hotels in Seoul that was lit nightly. Of course because I didn't want to teach only christmas I also taught Hannukah to my students. None of them (students or teachers) had ever heard of such a holiday. The Jewish population in Korea is very small.