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I swear this is my last teenybopper post. No seriously–I need to cool my K-pop jets before I leave Korea. Something tells me that the only people who will appreciate my pre-teen tendencies are the Koreans who own a nail salon in Kingston. And that’s only because I’ll have to take of my shoes, revealing my socks, before I get a pedicure.
Song Woo Bin and the pink Boys Before Flowers logo on my sock!
It should be noted that I now own four pairs of BBF socks–Geum Jan Di, So Yi Jeong, Yoon Ji Hoo and Song Woo Bin. (It should also be noted that I didn’t have to look up any of their names while typing that sentence. True fan right here.) Still looking for a pair of Gu Jun Pyo socks, but haven’t yet found a street vendor that sells them.
The boys (and girls) of F4 are all over Seoul. An afternoon in Myeong-dong resulted in me frantically looking to each storefront for a poster or advert featuring one of the guys. Mimsie can even spout off the names of the guys and the products they advertise for.
The love of my life, Kim Hyun Joong. And don't tell me he looks like a girl. I've heard it enough, people.
Even in Hongdae, an hour away on the subway, I know exactly where to find the larger-than-life posters of Kim Hyun Joong:
Even if I didn’t watch the show religiously, even if I didn’t shed countless tears over the Ji Hoo/Jan Di/Jun Pyo love triangle, even if I didn’t spend my breaks chatting up the students about the show, I still would recognize these guys because their faces are plastered all over this city.
The SEV nurse has a Kim Bum mousepad!
And Gu Jun Pyo at the check out at 7-11!
Speaking of Gu Jun Pyo/Lee Min Ho, to-scale cardboard cutouts of him are EVERYWHERE:
At Dunkin Donuts...
...and absolutely everywhere at Etude House (a women's cosmetics store))
These photos pale in comparison to the recent Anycall commercial featuring three of the guys. Kim Bum, Kim Hyun Joong and Kim Joon all dance around and do weird things with their pointer fingers. Weird? Possibly. Do I care? No, Kim Hyun Joong is still sexy as all hell.
Though the show ended six months ago and there’s relatively no chance of a reunion, the F4 hype hasn’t faded. A few weeks ago we had a student who, at the ripe age of eight, had a perm that added a good four inches to his height. The kids on his team (as well as some of the teachers) called him Gu Jun Pyo all week, and he responded to it every time. Girls still carry around F4 stickers and are quick to try and steal the teachers’ stickers. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to bat away grubby little kid hands from my nametag, the front of which displays not one, not two, but three stickers of Kim Hyun Joong.
I have plenty more pictures that I didn’t post here–Geum Jan Di on boxes of hair dye, lovebirds Yi Jeung and Ga Eul appearing together in ads, the plethora of cell phone charms with pictures of the guys (full disclosure: I own one), calendars, folders, etc. There really is no limit to what can be found in this crazy country, at least pertaining to the men of F4.
Like I said in the beginning of the post, this is my last crazy teenybopper post. At least until Kim Hyun Joong moves to America to study English. I’m throwing my English-tutoring abilities out there. I’ll do this one pro-bono, guys. Call me!
A few days ago, Jeanette showed me her travel kit, a plastic box filled with toiletries and various odds and ends one may need whilst backpacking. Jealous of her handy-dandy kit, and convinced I needed to get my ass in gear with this whole packing thing, I headed to the local dollar store to pick up a few things for the trip. En route to the store, I swung by the local supermarket that we’ve taken to calling “Hidden Grocery.” The fastest way to walk from SEV to Suyu Station is through this little alley, and inside one of the buildings in the alley is this grocery store. How we ever discovered it, I have no idea, but it’s been a constant source of milk, meat and half-price ice cream this year. The alley itself is one of my favorite parts of Korea, because it’s one of the places that hasn’t been heavily westernized. Save for the pizza place and newly opened hair salon, most of the shops in the alley are run by ajummas and agashis who are willing to bargain on the various fruits, fish and raw meats they sell. Until last month, the road wasn’t even paved! Friends who have lived in Seoul for years have said that the city has changed drastically in the last decade, and I think Suyu is a prime example of one of the areas that’s just starting to modernize.
Once I finally got to the dollar store, I spent an hour there, bopping my head to the beat of the F.T. Island music playing on the sound system. Picked up a plastic kimbap tray, which is now living a new life as a toothbrush/aspirin/Band-aid holder, and a cheap, inconspicuous wallet (something tells me a hot pink Coach wallet might draw attention in the third world). Noticed the setting sun on my way home and snapped a few pictures. I’m pretty partial to upstate New York sunsets, what with the mountains and all, but this was damn good.
Oh, and I made my last trip to the clinic this week. Big shock–another infection. Something involving coughing Here’s the requisite photo of me with some breathing apparatus:
NINE days until Thailand!!
We’re in single digits, people. Nine days till I fly the coop!
It feels too negative to write a 10 Things I Hate About You–Korea post, so instead I’ll write the top three things that really irk me. Still a Debbie Downer, but fair is fair.
3. Smelly food. There’s a restaurant down the street from school that seems to be very popular with our neighbors at the rehab place across the street. The place is always doing business, though I’m not sure how. Five meters before reaching the front door, you’re hit with the most pungent, unappealing smell you could ever imagine. I think the place serves octopus or squid, so maybe that’s where the smell comes from? I’ve taken to holding my breath when I walk past, or even crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the smell. This restaurant is really one of the worst. Most Korean foods don’t smell quite this bad, but the certainly don’t smell good–especially kimchi. That’s why I love this woman. She’s created an odorless, just-add-water kimchi. Brilliant, not to mention kind to everyone around her. If only all Korean foods were odorless…
2. Social structure. In Korea, it’s common for someone to live with his or her parents until marriage. Unfortunately, that aspect of Korean society is moving along with the West. Many of the Koreans I know have not married young, and are still living with their parents, despite their age. One friend, a 29-year-old former coworker, still has a curfew. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been out with Korean friends, only to be interrupted by a cell phone around 11 p.m. or midnight. “It’s my mother–hold on a minute” is usually the first thing out of their mouths. Much as I love my family, I think we’d all go crazy if I lived at home until I was 30. Agree or disagree, Mom and Dad?
1. Culture clash. Duh. The problem here is that I work for an English school. They strive to make this a Western environment–yet it’s run entirely by Koreans. Throwing foreign teachers into a building and having them speak English doesn’t always work. I’ve done a lot of complaining this year on the subject, but sometimes it seems as if there’s no thought put into what we do. We have teachers making bullshit lesson plans (an Alternative Lifestyles class for elementary school students?) when instead they could be bettering the lesson plans and materials we already have. We’ve got some great classes, and if we had variety within those classes, then they would be really enjoyable for both students and teachers. But at some level, Western ideas clash with Korean business. At the end of the day, this isn’t a feel-good institution for kids and foreigners. It’s a business. A Korean business. And working six or seven hours a day with these kids, you forget that you’re not there to fill some gaping need in the system. You’re there to show your Western face and make money for the company.
That’s not to say this hasn’t been a good year. My year in Korea has been full of ups and downs, but the positive outweigh the negative. There have been a lot of changes this year, which I’ll post about sometime in the next week, but this has been an overwhelmingly good experience. We’ve all got our down moments, our I-hate-Korea moments, but you can have that anywhere. We’ve all had a few I-hate-America moments (especially around the 2000 election, eh?) or I-hate-Kingston moments–we’re only human, it happens. The only thing you can do is make the best of the situation at hand. Korea’s not a bad place to spend a year. Would I do it again? Absolutely not. But do I wish I hadn’t done it? Not in the slightest. This was the right place for me to be this year. For someone not used to making good choices, Korea was definitely the right choice for me.
If one were to head to SEV in the evening, say around the dinner hour, one would notice a large amount of foot/auto traffic on the corner near the closest bus stop. The first few months I was here, I’d try and peer inside the building on the corner to figure out what was going on. Church services? Cult gathering? Kimchi party? No, none of the above. When my Korean-Canadian friends Joyce and Hannah came to SEV this winter, they told us that it was a soup restaurant. What sort of soup? I’m still not sure the name, but I bet as soon as Joyce reads this, she’ll comment with the answer. It’s basically noodles or dough flakes in a sesame broth, sometimes with shellfish, served with a side of…uh…barley. Sounds a bit odd, tastes delicious.
EDIT: (From Joyce) “it’s called kal gook soo (literal translation is knife noodles). kal= knife. gook soo= noodles. the soup base at this restaurant is sesame, and it was the first time i had it like that because kal gook soo normally has a fish/seafood base, so it is not as thick. both are incredibly yummy!”
I threw some spicy red sauce on the barley and the ladies at the next table looked at me like I was crazy. Oh, Korea.
The first time we had this soup, we were in Samcheongdong with Karen, who told us that in the leaner years of recent Korean history — the 1950s and ’60s — Koreans ate this soup often. Now that diverse, hearty food is no longer a scarcity, the soup is a bit harder to find. Older Koreans, reminded of the occupation, tend to stay away from it. Erin blogged about the soup the first time we had it, and her memory at the time is much better than mine is ten months later.
We were lucky to discover the restaurant early on this winter. Whenever we were in need of a warm, filling and incredibly cheap meal, we just walked down the street. Any farther and we would have froze to death (damn you, awful Korean winters!).
After winter camp, I stopped going to the restaurant. I thawed out after the miserably cold winter and ventured into Suyu and beyond for meals. As it got warmer, my taste for hot soup waned. I didn’t have the urge to eat there again until a few weeks ago, when camp friend Sandy brought some back to SEV in Tupperware. I finally managed to get there, dragging Jeanette and Mimsie with me. The soup was exactly how I remembered it–thick and hearty. Not necessarily what you’d want to eat on a warm summer night, but a good dinner nonetheless. The whole meal (including a side of mandu–dumplings) cost just ₩5,000, around $4 US.
Sadly, the corner restaurant isn’t on my must-do list for the next week and a half. There’s just not enough time to do everything I still want to do. Dolsat bibimbap, chicken soup and galbi are all must-eats, but fitting them into my schedule is proving to be awfully tricky.
I guess I’ll end this post with the most Melissa conversation ever:
Melissa: Should we go get Vietnamese one last time before I go?
Sarah: Aren’t you going to Vietnam?
This was going to be a real post, but then I found out Patrick Swayze died and my world came crumbling down.
1. Day two of the adults, and I’m loving it. This morning I played ultimate frisbee with seven of the guys. Am now calling it Adultimate class. They were–I dare say–better than me. Also, one of them is named Great Root. Apparently that’s a direct translation of something very good in Korean.
2. Right, Patrick Swayze. No words. Only tears. Planning to watch Ghost and Dirty Dancing by the end of the week. (Sidenote: According to IMDB, Dirty Dancing went up 299 percent in popularity this week. Can’t imagine why.) EDIT: Coworker Randy just sent me this: http://imgur.com/h9Guq.png. Look and laugh!
3. Check this out. Someone in College Park redid a Jay-Z song and came out with this:
Kristi did a DBblogK about it, so check that out too. The Diamondback gets a shoutout, hollaaaa: “When you see us, call us Black Diamond. Catch us on the cover of The Diamondback shinin’.”
4. Went to the clinic yesterday for what I hope to God is the last time. Have some sort of infection, am on antibiotics. Excited for the crazy dreams to come.
5. My flight to Phuket is reserved for September 26. I’ll have the e-ticket in just a few short days. Woooo!!!!
Orphans. Blind kids. Russians. Japanese. Hormonal high schoolers. After a year here, I’ve learned to be prepared for anything and everything. If you had told me last year that I’d be teaching anyone other than elementary school kids, I’d be shocked. Nowadays, sure, why not?
For the next two days, we’ve got students (can I call them students?) who are Seoul government officials. We’re talking people who are my parents’ age. Imagine my disdain when I walked into my class this morning and realized that I was teaching nine men. No women. Still traumatized by the high schoolers, I immediately tensed up. Luckily, there are no downward dogs or body arches in the Bank lesson plan. The guys were actually really nice. They hardly spoke English, but they listened and tried to complete the worksheets and participated when we used the dialogue boards. At the end of class, they even took out their passports for stamps. As we left class, I got a chorus of “Thank you”s.
I’m at the point where I’ve mentally peaced out. Since the high school boys came, nothing has fazed me. There will be no more orphans or blind kids or foreign students. The toughest weeks are long gone, and now it’s virtually smooth sailing until I leave. Which is, by the way, in twelve days. Must book my ticket to Phuket this afternoon…
I’ve made many mentions of Seoul’s hot, muggy summers. Many afternoons were spent debating whether or not to go for a hike, to walk into downtown Suyu or to head down to 7-11 for an ice pop. The threat of a mid-afternoon rainstorm, plus the added effect the humidity had on my thick hair, encouraged me to stay either poolside or in my air-conditioned apartment.
On a recent day off, a few of us planned to metro out to a park to ride bikes and have a picnic. Some morning drizzle and oppressive humidity canceled those plans, so instead Jeanette and I decided to check out a local site neither of us had been to. Erin recommended going to the 4-19 Cemetery just up the road from SEV. A five-minute walk away, the cemetery was the last thing I expected to come across in the back roads of Suyu.
Beyond the front gate is a gorgeous park, complete with a pond, benches and picnic area. Past all of that lies the actual cemetery. From what I’ve been able to gather, the cemetery is a final resting place for the students who died during the April Revolution, a 1960 protest against corrupt government practices.
The largely student-led protest in Seoul, which consisted of a three-mile walk from Korea University to the house of the president (known in Korea as the Blue House), ended when soldiers fired on the mass of demonstrators, killing 125 students in the process. Many of the students are buried at the cemetery, their faces etched on headstones, brightly colored flowers resting in vases next to each grave.
Check out the mountains in the distance
After walking around the cemetery, Jeanette and I sat in the park. We walked the old ajummas picnic, we nearly got killed by some little boys who were throwing toys into the tree above us, and we rejoiced in finding a new place spend time on a too-hot-and-humid-to-function summer afternoon.
I forgot to take a picture of the pond, but Jeanette was testing out camera settings and shot this on her digicam. She actually took half a dozen photos just like it, but this is the only one that made it online. Not pictured: the fountain that I was blocking, and the fish in the pond. Or as we say in Korea, "pishh-uhh."
It felt weird and a bit wrong to let the day slip by without saying anything. This is my second September 11 abroad. I don’t remember anything about the first time, other than the fact that I was in Prague. Coming from a country in which the day is practically sacred, where it is a day to wave flags and play Lee Greenwood and have moments of silence, it was weird to be in Korea and to only notice the date on my iCal. I should have turned on AFN, but my television hasn’t been plugged in for months and the thought just slipped my mind.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re going to be defined as the Sept. 11 generation. Wikipedia tells me that according to one analysis, I am a part of Generation Y, but it (and Elwood Carlson) also says that generation ended in 2001, a result of ” ‘political and social challenges’ after the attacks of September 11, 2001.”
You don’t forget where you were. You don’t forget Mr. Sullivan’s world history class, or Mr. Mooney bursting in and yelling, “Two separate planes just hit the Twin Towers! Turn on CNN!” You don’t forget Mr. Sullivan telling you that this is history in the making. You don’t forget the next class, Mr. Stein’s honors English class. You don’t forget Stein’s words to you: “JFK’s assassination was defined my generation. This will define yours.” You don’t forget looking up at the clear blue sky the next afternoon, shocked at how clear and blue it is, when only 90 miles south the sky is gray and filled with smoke and ash. You don’t forget worrying about your uncle who works in the city, and who, you learn later on, got home safely by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. You don’t forget the memorial services or the breaking news updates on CNN, or watching 7 World Trade Center fall, or wondering in the days and weeks following if fires were still burning.
After Sept. 11, everyone said “Never forget.” A search of that phrase pulls up dozens of sites about Sept. 11. I think that perhaps those words aren’t an order to remember, but a statement of fact. Never forget. It’s not that we run the risk of doing so, it’s that we can’t forget it. Now, eight years later, we are saying those two words. But we’re not going to forget, much as some of us may want to. It’s a part of our history as a nation and as a generation. It set the stage for the next decade–wars, invasions, and a word that until that day in September had rarely been used: terrorism.
I guess we are the September 11 generation. My kids will ask me about it like I asked my parents about JFK and Camelot, like I asked my grandparents about the second World War, and I’ll tell them what I remember. Which is, for better or worse, almost everything, because like most Americans who watched the towers fall, I can’t forget.
It’s been a big week in the K-pop world, friends. Two of Korea’s hottest young stars made headlines this week, but no good news was brought to their fans.
Kim Hyun-joong, the object of this blogger’s affection, who has been mentioned here many, many times in recent months, was diagnosed with swine flu earlier this week. I first heard about it from Donny on Tuesday. Since that night, virtually every Korean teacher has said something to me about poor Hyun-joong (yes, my crush is well-known amongst the teachers). Students who saw the Kim Hyun-joong picture on my nametag have all said the same thing to me: “Teacher, jgskfjhgdkfjghd plu!!” I understood ‘teacher’ and ‘plu’ (Konglish for flu), but the gobbledygook in between the two was beyond me. But I knew what they were trying to tell me, and that was enough.
Last weekend, I went to that big concert in Incheon. One of the groups that performed was rising pop sensation 2PM. Two of the guys in 2PM grew up in America. The lead singer, Park Jaebom, was born and raised in Washington state and didn’t move to Korea until fourish years ago when he was in high school. Around the time he moved over here, he wrote a message on a friend’s Myspace that said, “Korea is gay. I hate Koreans.” The post was recently discovered and caused such an outrage (among who, I’m not too sure) that Jaebom fled the country. The group has since stopped all of their activities. Three days after I saw him perform in Incheon, he was on a plane back to the States. Could it be that I saw Jaebom’s final performance in Korea? That’s sort of like seeing Michael Jackson’s last concert, right? Right?
You can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Korea’s a hard place for foreigners to live, and sometimes even worse for kyopo (Koreans who were born or raised abroad). Jaebom went from being one of the most famous guys in Korea to being a virtual nobody in America, all because of something he said in a moment of discontent that occurred four years ago. If I had to leave the country because of something I’d blogged about or written on someone’s wall that showed Korea in a negative light, I probably would have been out my first week here.
Not all Koreans are pleased with his departure. Young, crying fans shouted and screamed for him not to go as he walked onto the plane. I even found a petition to keep him in 2PM (still 49,869 supporters away from the 50,000 goal). I secretly hope he’ll be back, because 2PM’s song “Again and Again” is so damn catchy and I want to hear more.
And that’s your local K-pop roundup, folks. Anyone who still wants to be my friend despite the fact that I’m secretly totally bummed about Kim Hyun-joong and Jaebom, I sincerely thank you.
I’ve hit that point, folks. I’m at that pre-adventure breaking point, as I described to my friend Carla, “where the excitement and stress combine to make one angsty, tear-filled night.” I’ve spent the past few days trying to get things figured out–geographically, financially, emotionally–and have ignored the fact that I’m not making as much progress in any of those areas as I should be.
Until now.
With Tuesday being my last weekday off until I finish my contract, I had planned to get some of the official-document stuff out of my way. I subwayed an hour into Itaewon, where I met with my travel agent (because I’m a 60-year-old woman) to get my visa for Vietnam. She said all I needed was a picture and 80 bucks. No prob, Bob. Until I realized I didn’t have any ID-size photos left. Seoul subway stations are littered with tiny photo booths (likely just for serving all of the cheap, ill-prepared expats), so I figured I’d save money by not having to go to the Kodak store and shell out $15 for four photos that take an hour to develop.
Then I realized the Itaewon station doesn’t have a photo booth. What the hell, right?
By the time I realized this, it was too late. I’d already made plans for a goodbye lunch with my friend Alex. We settled down on the patio at Le Saint-Ex and enjoyed the lunch set (delicious and only slightly too pricey). A bottle of wine later, I spoke to a friend who told me to head to the photo booth-equipped Yaksu subway station, about 10 minutes away from Itaewon. Tipsy as hell, I agreed, but only because he told me he would pick me up from Yaksu and drive me back to Itaewon on his motorbike.
An hour later, I was back in Itaewon, chatting it up with my travel agent, Bona. She looked through my passport and told me the last thing I wanted to hear. I had run out of pages for a visa to fit on. Apparently, all of the pages in the damn thing have some sort of stamp or visa on them already, and the Vietnamese visa will take up an entire page. So before I can get my visa (which can take up to nine days), I need to go to the U.S. embassy in Jongno to get extra pages put into my passport. Of course, I haven’t got another weekday off from work, and the embassy isn’t open on weekends. Not sure how I’m going to make that one work, but I need to figure out something fast. Hoping for a break in next week’s schedule that will allow me the couple hours I need to get down to the embassy. Barring that, I may have to mail my passport and hope the Korean mail system is foolproof. (And yes, I’m realizing the absurd–but note, unintentional– bitchiness that must drip from this last paragraph. “My life is so hard because I have too many stamps in my passport.” I get it. I acknowledge it. Whatever. It remains unintentional. All joking aside, I need to figure out what to do, or else I’m pretty effed.)
Earlier today, Erin and I headed to the local bank to send money home for the first time. Yes, it’s been 11 months and I haven’t sent a single dime back to my Bank of America account. I’ve been hoarding my won, hoping for significant movement with the exchange rate. But, of course, no dice, and I lost 20 percent of what I transferred in the exchange process. Damn you, Korean won. Early on in our friendship, Lauren weighed her wealth in burritos. And I quote: “My bank account only has about 7 burritos left.” Well, suffice it to say I lost out on about 140 burritos. I repeat, damn you, Korean won.
In the midst of all this craziness (plus pre-packing, looking up flights, figuring out what I’m going to do for however many weeks in Southeast Asia, etc.), I realized I need to get my bank card situation sorted out. My Bank of America card expired in March, and I never saw the need to renew it until a couple months ago, when I realized that I would be transferring a large sum of money into my American account and needed a way to access that while traveling. The stress of activating the damn card (though not really doing it myself, what with being on the other side of the world and all), the Bank of America customer service run-around (thankfully put to an end an hour ago by Mario) and all of the other things that accumulated over the past few days–well, it took me to that breaking point I began the post with.
My voice started to crack as I finished up my first Bank of America call tonight, and I knew it was all downhill from there. A subsequent Skype argument with the parentals only led to my own self-diagnosis–a case of the pre-adventure freakouts. Haven’t felt this way in a long time, and to have these feelings again is akin to running into that catty, bitchy girl from high school. You know exactly what’s gonna happen, you know it’s gonna be painful, but you also know that it’s a fleeting thing that you can forget about soon after.
So for now, it’s 1 a.m. here in Seoul. In eight hours, I’ll be teaching Bank class, entirely aware of the irony of the situation. But the freaking out has ceased, hopefully for a long time, and that’s about all I can ask for right now.
