The temperature has started to hover down in the low 30's during the day and the high 20's at night. The air is dry and the wind creeps up on you like that creeper guy who always finds the unattended lady at a club to creep up on. I was out for five minutes before, I couldn't feel my extremities. What extremities? Hahaha sorry, I had to go off on a Seinfeld tangent there.
It is freezing though. Even though I have thick mittens on the cold seems to find its way and attack my poor little fingers. And on top of it all, my school doesn't put on the heater for some reason. I had to beg them to close some of the windows. Thank god they are catching on now.
And everywhere you go in Korea, there is a little restaurant. All these "greasy-spoon" restaurants everywhere. I don't understand how this city has so many restaurants. Where do they get all their food? Well, I guess since 95% of their meals consist of rice, roots (kimchi), and water (for soups) it's not that difficult. But literally, every corner, every street, every alley way will have lines of greasy-spoon and normal restaurants.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Getting the hang of Korea
There really isn't a more bizarre place than Korea. Well, at least in my travels, and I feel like I've been to a decent amount of places. I haven't been doing much lately. I've been strapped with tending to lesson plans that I do not want to do and going to functions with my co-teachers. Although, a couple of weeks ago I did go hiking. Now, if you do not know, hiking is the national pastime here in Korea. They take it seriously, and I mean bloody seriously. This isn't a baseball game where insouciant people carelessly watch a ball being thrown and hit for three long hours, sitting on terribly uncomfortable plastic chairs. However, I do like doing that from time to time.
Koreans have a sense of pride in their hiking abilities and the many mountains soaring from every orifice of this countries terrain. From the big, bitter cold mountains of the east, to the dewy sweet hills of the south, to the smoggy yet elegantly beautiful rocky points of Seoul, Koreans are scaling these soaring, jagged mountains. When attempting to climb these mountains, you will pass by a bountiful number of Koreans, from ageless grandmothers to tiny little grandchildren and great grandchildren. They all have the best equipment, from head to toe. On the way up you'll find it to be fairly easy going up rock after rock, step after step. Koreans do love their steps. Once you get to midway point, you'll find that someone is waiting for you up there with a mid-sized cooler and a fanny pack. Open it up and it's full of popsicles. What a treat huh!?! I got a melon popsicle, honeydew melon to be exact, and was energized and ready to scale the rest of the mountain.
It gets so steep towards the top of the mountain that it looks like im climbing the back of half dome (Yosemite). On one side of the top of the mountain, it's so steep that you have to climb up using a rope. Once you get to the top of the mountain it's pretty breathless; it will take your breath away...no really, it's really smoggy up there. You look around to the other mountains and you can barely see them because of the pollution. Gross for sure!
Check out this dude pretty much climbing a vertical rock wall.
Coming back down was actually more difficult than climbing up. The narrow paths, which fit one human being, that lay between giant boulders makes it pretty difficult, not to mention the other hundred Koreans using the same narrow path to climb up. You get huge traffic jams and countless situations where you have to squeeze between rock, person, and nothing under you. It's pretty freaky. I thought I was going to tumble down the mountain a few times like a snowball gaining mass and speed down a snowy ski run. At least there are metal wires implanted in the ground to help you hold onto something. I definitely need gloves for my next climb.
Oh guess what?!!? I got a bike. Yep, I bought a cheap Lespo road bike. For less than 140 bucks it's more than anything I could have hoped for. I haven't ridden it much yet, just back home from the subway stop. The tires are kind of flat and I haven't had time to find a bike shop around where I live.
This Saturday, Halloween, I plan on doing a road race, fixies included, from one area in the east of Seoul to the west. Winner gets free brakes and a hub, I believe. Probably won't win because I have never ridden along the streets of Seoul yet. Should be interesting.
Anyways, I'm getting pretty sick of eating MSG in pretty much everything that I eat. I buy fresh fruit, vegetables, and greens for dinner at home. But since Koreans are obsessed with MSG and I eat lunch at school everyday, I consume my fair share of MSG. Go to the market, anything that is in a package has MSG. They are in love with it here. How do they not know it's a killer. I asked my co-teacher about it and she said it is almost impossible to avoid it. She doesn't like it as well but most people in Korea doesn't give a rats ass about it's negative health effects because it makes everything "taste good." That's what everyone says. I have to disagree completely. It makes everything taste the exact same. It's gross. Add some salt and some garlic and you have the same exact thing and one gajillion times better for you. Ugh! Don't like that at all. Complete detoxification when I return home.
Alright, it's time to take to my lesson plans. It never ends. I'm hoping to go to the Speedom this weekend (Velodrome in Seoul). Wish me luck!!! I've been putting it off the past two weeks. Hopefully I won't have anything to do Sunday so I can take the hour long subway ride there.
Check you guys out later.
Ciao
Koreans have a sense of pride in their hiking abilities and the many mountains soaring from every orifice of this countries terrain. From the big, bitter cold mountains of the east, to the dewy sweet hills of the south, to the smoggy yet elegantly beautiful rocky points of Seoul, Koreans are scaling these soaring, jagged mountains. When attempting to climb these mountains, you will pass by a bountiful number of Koreans, from ageless grandmothers to tiny little grandchildren and great grandchildren. They all have the best equipment, from head to toe. On the way up you'll find it to be fairly easy going up rock after rock, step after step. Koreans do love their steps. Once you get to midway point, you'll find that someone is waiting for you up there with a mid-sized cooler and a fanny pack. Open it up and it's full of popsicles. What a treat huh!?! I got a melon popsicle, honeydew melon to be exact, and was energized and ready to scale the rest of the mountain.
It gets so steep towards the top of the mountain that it looks like im climbing the back of half dome (Yosemite). On one side of the top of the mountain, it's so steep that you have to climb up using a rope. Once you get to the top of the mountain it's pretty breathless; it will take your breath away...no really, it's really smoggy up there. You look around to the other mountains and you can barely see them because of the pollution. Gross for sure!
Check out this dude pretty much climbing a vertical rock wall.
Coming back down was actually more difficult than climbing up. The narrow paths, which fit one human being, that lay between giant boulders makes it pretty difficult, not to mention the other hundred Koreans using the same narrow path to climb up. You get huge traffic jams and countless situations where you have to squeeze between rock, person, and nothing under you. It's pretty freaky. I thought I was going to tumble down the mountain a few times like a snowball gaining mass and speed down a snowy ski run. At least there are metal wires implanted in the ground to help you hold onto something. I definitely need gloves for my next climb.
Oh guess what?!!? I got a bike. Yep, I bought a cheap Lespo road bike. For less than 140 bucks it's more than anything I could have hoped for. I haven't ridden it much yet, just back home from the subway stop. The tires are kind of flat and I haven't had time to find a bike shop around where I live.
This Saturday, Halloween, I plan on doing a road race, fixies included, from one area in the east of Seoul to the west. Winner gets free brakes and a hub, I believe. Probably won't win because I have never ridden along the streets of Seoul yet. Should be interesting.
Anyways, I'm getting pretty sick of eating MSG in pretty much everything that I eat. I buy fresh fruit, vegetables, and greens for dinner at home. But since Koreans are obsessed with MSG and I eat lunch at school everyday, I consume my fair share of MSG. Go to the market, anything that is in a package has MSG. They are in love with it here. How do they not know it's a killer. I asked my co-teacher about it and she said it is almost impossible to avoid it. She doesn't like it as well but most people in Korea doesn't give a rats ass about it's negative health effects because it makes everything "taste good." That's what everyone says. I have to disagree completely. It makes everything taste the exact same. It's gross. Add some salt and some garlic and you have the same exact thing and one gajillion times better for you. Ugh! Don't like that at all. Complete detoxification when I return home.
Alright, it's time to take to my lesson plans. It never ends. I'm hoping to go to the Speedom this weekend (Velodrome in Seoul). Wish me luck!!! I've been putting it off the past two weeks. Hopefully I won't have anything to do Sunday so I can take the hour long subway ride there.
Check you guys out later.
Ciao
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Bikeless for a year leaves me with other adventures
Being without my bike for one year is really sad. Like, I kind of get depressed sometimes. It may sound laughable, but when you are super passionate about something and it's not in your midst than you will understand. So, being bike-less gives me the opportunity to explore more by foot, and bus, which is awesome. Traveling around by foot gives you a different perspective. You can stop whenever you want and explore something you might have missed by biking or even taking a bus.
This past weekend was Chuseok holiday in Korea. It is termed as the "Korean Thanksgiving." Everyone goes back home to visit their parents. And if you are married or have a significant other, you must go see their parents as well. So, I had a 4-day weekend and decided to go to the east coast with two of my friends for a little getaway. We stayed in Donghae and visited Samcheok just 20 minutes south by bus.
Donghae has amazing natural beauty along the sea. It was a pretty cool place but also a pretty weird one, too. First of all, there are mostly men living in and/or visiting this city. I guess there are a lot of Russian prostitutes around that Americans, French, and other vacation-goers frequent according to our taxi driver. City officials wanted to make Donghae a very pretty resort town, somewhat like the coastline of Dana Point-Laguna-Newport. But it either failed miserably, or they are "still working" on it. The main beach there is pretty empty. There are a couple convenient stores, coffee shops and restaurants along the boardwalk. There's also a small, half-assed fair along the beach. There are only like five or six rides and a couple of mini-games. It's really barren and looks as if a tornado went through it and they just left it as is, still working the few rides that remain. On a bright note, I fit inside this tiny-spaced Korean Robocop and enjoyed myself pretending to shoot evildoers; not too bad.
My friends and I visited the Donghae port and witnessed what goes on in a Korean port. Lots and lots of different types of fish and squid. Oh how they love their squid here. Buckets and buckets of fresh squid. Not to mention the gazillion dried squid hanging above you at all times wherever you go. It was interesting to see how a small Korean port functions like and what it looks like. After exploring the fish/seafood market, our stomachs screaming for fish carnage, we stumbled into one of the restaurants across the street from the market. We ordered sashimi. When you order something in Korea, it ALWAYS comes with side dishes and/or kimchi. While waiting for the cook to cut the live fish just caught hours ago, they served us fresh squid, seaweed soup, and what I could only describe as a seafood ceviche. Everything was amazing! Then the sashimi came, on a bed of what looks and tasted like plastic, see-through noodles. This plate was huge. We ended up eating probably a whole fish worth of sashimi. We were beyond satisfied.
The next day we took a bus to Samcheok. Traveling by bus is great. You get to see things you definitely cannot see by plane and even by train. We arrived in Samcheok and were on our way to Hwanseongul. This is the biggest limestone cave in Korea and one of the biggest in Asia. This cave is immense. Incredibly beautiful as well. There are some openings and areas in the cave that are probably 100 meters in width and height. Truly amazing place. The cave is lit up with hot colors of green, blue, red, and orange along the bridges and stairwells. It makes the cave look like a Nike sneaker. It's actually pretty cool. Here is a link to my pictures of the cave.
That night we went back to Donghae and went to Chuam beach. It was my favorite beach. Pretty small but very quaint and it reminded me of the beaches and coves of Laguna Beach and Corona Del Mar. After taking a bunch of pictures of a famous rock structure jetting from the ocean floor, we ended up at this small little family owned restaurant that also had two rooms upstairs if you wanted to stay over. It was across right on the beach. Incredible views from dinner. It was so pleasant. We ordered sashimi again, go figure. It was great because it was so fresh. We met and talked to an older couple sitting behind us and at the end of our meal they must have ordered us fish head soup because it wasn't on our bill. As the waitress, a high school aged girl who was most likely the daughter, cleaned up our table she kept asking us if we wanted something. Not knowing what the hell she was asking us she pointed to this big bowl of fish head soup that the couple behind us was eating. They said it's good for digestion, so we obviously said yes. Wow, it was soooo good. The broth was absolutely exquisite. So many pleasurable flavors roaming around in my mouth. I could down a huge bowl of that. The green veggies made it light and the fish head added all the great flavor. The fish was tasty too. We were so satisfied. We said farewell to our friends and went to have some coffee at this little place on the cliff overlooking the water and beach. Great way to end the night.
The next day we went back towards Samcheok and went to Haesindang Park, a park dedicated to phalli). This park has many wooden, granite, and plastic statues of penis's. There is a legend about the reason for this park here, check it out, it has a good short version of the legend and some really good pics. We toured this park for a short 40 minutes, messed around, as one could imagine, and headed back to the bus stop to catch our bus back to Seoul...we were late. Nevertheless, we reconciled being late by buying 5 grilled whole fish from the street market in front of the park for less than five dollars. It was damn good. We got back to Samcheok bus terminal and caught our bus back home to Seoul.
Arriving back in Seoul felt overwhelming to the say the least. After spending the weekend on the beautiful east coast, roaming around the picturesque beaches, eating fresh fish, looking at penis statues and exploring a massive cave, coming back one of the most dense cities in the world just suffocated me. I had to close my eyes for a moment and catch my breathe. Then, I was back on the packed subway trying to get home. I was so tired. I then managed to drop off my things at my apartment and join my friends for a night of karaoke. I guess I wasn't tired anymore.
After a nice, relaxing weekend, I thought it would be difficult getting back to work but it wasn't too bad. The morning was horrid, but once I got to school my mood changed for the better, thanks to Jess mostly:)
Click here to view my pictures of this past weekend.
I still miss my bike. At least I know it's in good hands. Thanks Urs!
This past weekend was Chuseok holiday in Korea. It is termed as the "Korean Thanksgiving." Everyone goes back home to visit their parents. And if you are married or have a significant other, you must go see their parents as well. So, I had a 4-day weekend and decided to go to the east coast with two of my friends for a little getaway. We stayed in Donghae and visited Samcheok just 20 minutes south by bus.
Donghae has amazing natural beauty along the sea. It was a pretty cool place but also a pretty weird one, too. First of all, there are mostly men living in and/or visiting this city. I guess there are a lot of Russian prostitutes around that Americans, French, and other vacation-goers frequent according to our taxi driver. City officials wanted to make Donghae a very pretty resort town, somewhat like the coastline of Dana Point-Laguna-Newport. But it either failed miserably, or they are "still working" on it. The main beach there is pretty empty. There are a couple convenient stores, coffee shops and restaurants along the boardwalk. There's also a small, half-assed fair along the beach. There are only like five or six rides and a couple of mini-games. It's really barren and looks as if a tornado went through it and they just left it as is, still working the few rides that remain. On a bright note, I fit inside this tiny-spaced Korean Robocop and enjoyed myself pretending to shoot evildoers; not too bad.
My friends and I visited the Donghae port and witnessed what goes on in a Korean port. Lots and lots of different types of fish and squid. Oh how they love their squid here. Buckets and buckets of fresh squid. Not to mention the gazillion dried squid hanging above you at all times wherever you go. It was interesting to see how a small Korean port functions like and what it looks like. After exploring the fish/seafood market, our stomachs screaming for fish carnage, we stumbled into one of the restaurants across the street from the market. We ordered sashimi. When you order something in Korea, it ALWAYS comes with side dishes and/or kimchi. While waiting for the cook to cut the live fish just caught hours ago, they served us fresh squid, seaweed soup, and what I could only describe as a seafood ceviche. Everything was amazing! Then the sashimi came, on a bed of what looks and tasted like plastic, see-through noodles. This plate was huge. We ended up eating probably a whole fish worth of sashimi. We were beyond satisfied.
The next day we took a bus to Samcheok. Traveling by bus is great. You get to see things you definitely cannot see by plane and even by train. We arrived in Samcheok and were on our way to Hwanseongul. This is the biggest limestone cave in Korea and one of the biggest in Asia. This cave is immense. Incredibly beautiful as well. There are some openings and areas in the cave that are probably 100 meters in width and height. Truly amazing place. The cave is lit up with hot colors of green, blue, red, and orange along the bridges and stairwells. It makes the cave look like a Nike sneaker. It's actually pretty cool. Here is a link to my pictures of the cave.
That night we went back to Donghae and went to Chuam beach. It was my favorite beach. Pretty small but very quaint and it reminded me of the beaches and coves of Laguna Beach and Corona Del Mar. After taking a bunch of pictures of a famous rock structure jetting from the ocean floor, we ended up at this small little family owned restaurant that also had two rooms upstairs if you wanted to stay over. It was across right on the beach. Incredible views from dinner. It was so pleasant. We ordered sashimi again, go figure. It was great because it was so fresh. We met and talked to an older couple sitting behind us and at the end of our meal they must have ordered us fish head soup because it wasn't on our bill. As the waitress, a high school aged girl who was most likely the daughter, cleaned up our table she kept asking us if we wanted something. Not knowing what the hell she was asking us she pointed to this big bowl of fish head soup that the couple behind us was eating. They said it's good for digestion, so we obviously said yes. Wow, it was soooo good. The broth was absolutely exquisite. So many pleasurable flavors roaming around in my mouth. I could down a huge bowl of that. The green veggies made it light and the fish head added all the great flavor. The fish was tasty too. We were so satisfied. We said farewell to our friends and went to have some coffee at this little place on the cliff overlooking the water and beach. Great way to end the night.
The next day we went back towards Samcheok and went to Haesindang Park, a park dedicated to phalli). This park has many wooden, granite, and plastic statues of penis's. There is a legend about the reason for this park here, check it out, it has a good short version of the legend and some really good pics. We toured this park for a short 40 minutes, messed around, as one could imagine, and headed back to the bus stop to catch our bus back to Seoul...we were late. Nevertheless, we reconciled being late by buying 5 grilled whole fish from the street market in front of the park for less than five dollars. It was damn good. We got back to Samcheok bus terminal and caught our bus back home to Seoul.
Arriving back in Seoul felt overwhelming to the say the least. After spending the weekend on the beautiful east coast, roaming around the picturesque beaches, eating fresh fish, looking at penis statues and exploring a massive cave, coming back one of the most dense cities in the world just suffocated me. I had to close my eyes for a moment and catch my breathe. Then, I was back on the packed subway trying to get home. I was so tired. I then managed to drop off my things at my apartment and join my friends for a night of karaoke. I guess I wasn't tired anymore.
After a nice, relaxing weekend, I thought it would be difficult getting back to work but it wasn't too bad. The morning was horrid, but once I got to school my mood changed for the better, thanks to Jess mostly:)
Click here to view my pictures of this past weekend.
I still miss my bike. At least I know it's in good hands. Thanks Urs!
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
 |
| From New Folder (2) |
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Beginning of a loooongg year on Mars...aka Seoul, Korea
This post was written August 31th.
Soooo…
I arrived in
My room was pretty nice. Clean, air-conditioned, nice desk, the fastest internet ever. No complaints. We were fed a traditional Korean meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In other words, kimchi three times a day. Hahah, the main dish was different everyday, though. So, all 450+ public school native English teachers were trained at this campus. We had classes from paper craft to classroom management. It was all very informative. Met so many awesome people along the way, too.
So, after a week long of waking up, eating kimchi for breakfast, going to class, eating kimchi for lunch, going to class again, and eating kimchi for dinner, we finally got to leave Saturday to meet our co-teachers and to move into our apartments.
Both my co-teachers are amazing. Their English is excellent and they are way too nice. Thanks SMOE for confusing the hell out of everyone and scaring everyone about bad co-teachers. Anyways, they showed me around a bit and took me to get my subway card. I said farewell to them and then went on my way to find the school I am going to teach at for a year. Ha, funny to see in writing that I’m going to be teaching English. Kind of weird. Oh and by the way, I teach at an all girls middle school. I’m pretty much a celebrity.
The area I live in is not bad. I guess it’s kind of poor, but not too poor, I mean there aren’t gang shootings and bums everywhere (see
That night I went out to the foreign district of Seoul called Itaewon and went to an Irish Pub to meet a bunch of the other English teachers from orientation. Cheap booze and loud obnoxious music, what more could anyone want? Right…I then went to this hooka bar afterwards because I couldn’t hear myself think at the pub. I never really liked hooka until that night. It was super relaxing and very cheap. I took a nap, most probably because I was still jet lagged, or maybe it was the “California Dream” flavored hooka.
That night I slept in the subway with some other English teachers because the subway closes way too early and I was about 45 minutes away from my apartment. It wasn’t bad. We woke up to about 50 people waiting for the subway. Interesting night.
The next day I went to the Costco here. Wow. 2 stories. Food on the bottom floor. You have to go down this magnetic escalator with your cart to get to the bottom floor. There was a sashimi/sushi section. I wanted to go get something but there were so many people there. It was like someone threw a bloody piece of meat inside a piranha tank. I bought some salad ingredients, go figure. It’s like a freakin zoo at the Costco here. Crazy stuff.
Today was my first day of work. I don’t teach until next Monday. I met all my other co-teachers and some other teachers. I also met the principle and vice principle. It was kind of intimidating to meet the principle. It was like I was being interviewed by the CEO of Google for a high position. Some lady brought us hot green tea. We drank.
I then sat around until 2pm. My main co-teacher took me out for lunch. I ate bibimbap. It was good. I don’t really like eggs or ham, otherwise it would have been awesome! It's like a salad with a bunch of different veggies mixed with rice and topped with hot pepper sauce. Bomb! All day while I walked through the halls all the students would stop and giggle at me and yell HI! HI! HELLO! NICE TO MEET YOU! And wave at me vigorously. It was fun. I’d be super enthusiastic back at them. At one point some girl saw me, ran from her class while the instructor was teaching to come and meet me and say hello. Ok.
Anyways. I’m done for now. I got a big presentation tomorrow. Presenting to like 50 teachers about where I’m from, where I graduated, blah blah blah, all that good stuff. Should be interesting.
I’ll try to do an entry at least once a week. Enjoy.
Ciao
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
