A couple of articles from the New York Times online edition, one from today and one that is almost a year old, inspired this post. The article "Ambitious South Korean Parents See Tall as All" was published today and is about a “growing conviction” among South Korean parents that being tall is a key factor in their child’s future success. This conviction is fueling a new industry – ‘growth clinics.’ Some Korean parents spend the equivalent of hundreds of dollars per month for their children to visit growth clinics, which provide “growth hormone shots, Eastern herbal medicine and special exercises to ensure that young clients will be the ones looking down, not the ones looked down upon.” And, as you’ll realize if you read the full article, by ‘young clients’ they mean as young as five years old!
The emphasis on appearance is something I noticed right away when I got to Korea. Almost everyone I see on the streets is very put together; girls and women are in heels and skirts more often than jeans, most of the men are in suits, everyone has matching bags and shoes, the whole nine yards. I very rarely see a Korean in sweatpants, and when the weather was warm enough I never saw flip-flops on the streets. Koreans, men and women, take their image very seriously. There also seem to be a lot more mirrors here than in America (Jeil Middle School, for example, has mirrors in every hallway and even quite a few of the classrooms), and Koreans are never ashamed of checking themselves out. While out with friends at a restaurant last week we saw a girl at the next table over, holding her chopsticks in one hand and a mirror in the other, inspecting herself over her food. I've seen people, as they are walking down the street, stop in front of parked cars to check themselves out and adjust their hair or makeup in the window, or just pull out a mirror while walking around downtown with friends. In Western culture we would probably smirk and call this self-centeredness, but in Korea a little bit (or a lot) of vanity is perfectly acceptable.
On one hand, I think that attention to your appearance is nice and respectful, but sometimes it can be seriously annoying, and even a little scary. Besides the newer growth clinics, South Korea is also famous for plastic surgery. According to the second article I read today, “Economy Blunts Korea’s Appetite for Plastic Surgery,” many Koreans value physical attractiveness for the same reasons they value height – for “providing an edge in this high-pressure society’s intense competition for jobs, education and marriage partners.”
In one of my classes I asked students to plan and write a schedule for a one-week 'dream vacation,’ in which they could go anywhere, meet anyone, and do anything they wanted. Several girls stated quite seriously that they would use one or two days of their vacation to get plastic surgery. And last week when we wrote letters to Santa Claus, several girls asked Santa for plastic surgery. Middle school girls!
But I guess I can't blame them, because like I said, it seems to be ingrained in the culture. One of my coteachers told me that on job applications and resumes, Koreans not only attach a photo of themselves but also list things like their height, weight, and vision. So it’s no wonder that “an estimated 30 percent of Korean women aged 20 to 50, or some 2.4 million women, had surgical or nonsurgical cosmetic procedures last year, with many having more than one procedure.” 30%!!! In one year!!! It definitely makes me wonder – I have four female coteachers, which could mean that at least one or two of them are looking a little bit different now than they would have if I’d gotten here a year earlier.
This article is actually about the effect of the recession on the plastic surgery industry, and cites one woman, “typical of South Korea’s more frugal patients” who has had to choose cheaper, nonsurgical procedures like Botox over her usual surgeries, as well as reduce her visits to the plastic surgeon from twice a year to just once. This just shows again how common these procedures are, and how necessary they seem to women here – even in a recession, it’s not something you give up!
If you read this article, also note the types of surgeries Koreans are getting – “…the wider eyes, whiter skin and higher nose bridges that define beauty for many here” - basically, procedures to make them look more Western and less Korean. Before coming to Korea, I had never in my life gotten compliments on my nose, but according to my students it’s really high and beautiful. Another question I get a lot (right after, “Do you like kimchi?”) is “Are your eyelashes real?” Seriously?
“Ambitious South Korean Parents See Tall as All” by Choe Sang-Hun, published December 22, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/asia/23seoul.html?_r=1&hp
“Economy Blunts Korea’s Appetite for Plastic Surgery” by Martin Fackler, published January 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/business/worldbusiness/02plastic.html?_r=1&ref=world
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Holiday Plans
I definitely got a lesson in humility on Saturday, the four-month anniversary of my arrival in Korea. It came from my amazing friend and co-teacher Bosun, and was definitely something that I needed to hear.
She texted me early in the day (Saturday). She had to be at school that morning and wanted to let me know not to go see the new movie Avatar, because the principal had decided that all the teachers and students will see it together next Monday, the 28th. Because of the swine flu, the school canceled this semester’s festival and sports days, so they decided to take a school-wide field trip downtown to see Avatar instead.
My initial reaction was to get angry. I knew it was a long shot, but I had been really hopeful for a long time that I would be able to go home for Christmas. I desperately wanted to, and I really didn’t see why I shouldn’t. The last week of school is a hodge-podge of exams, special end-of-year ceremonies, the one-day Christmas vacation, and even an overnight field trip just for the teachers. We’ve finished teaching from the textbooks and the students don’t want to listen anymore anyway.
I also felt like I should be able to go home because it seems like Christmas is so much more meaningful and ‘important’ to Americans than it is to Koreans. Bosun told me that gifts are only exchanged between couples or given to small children; I know that Christmas in general has less religious significance for Koreans than for Americans; and besides, they only get one day off from school! How important can it be?
So between all of the end-of-year shenanigans going on around this time, and the difference in attitude about Christmas, it seemed obvious (to me) that my school wouldn’t miss me at all, and it would mean a lot more to me to be able to go home than it would for them to have me there. But it was impossible because there is only one day off for Christmas, and my contract doesn’t allow vacation or personal time except during actual school vacation periods. So when I heard that yet another day of what could have been my precious Christmas time at home, had been devoted to hauling 400+ kids downtown to see a freaking movie, I was so, so upset.
So I immediately fired back a text to Bosun, basically something along the lines of ‘Seriously?!?! I can’t go home for Christmas because I have to be at school on ‘school days,’ and then we all decide to go to the movies together! This sucks!’ Not my most mature or thoughtful moment, considering that: 1. We’d already discussed this whole situation, and she knew exactly how I felt and has been very sympathetic; and 2. All the other teachers work two Saturdays a month, so she was working while I was at home, watching TV and subjecting her to my crabby texts.
Anyway, here’s the response she sent me:
This is how things go at school in Korea. 28th’s movie trip is also kinda school schedule, and 29-30th teacher trip, too. Most people who work for company and school can’t use their vacation. Especially, teachers can’t go anywhere during official school days, even though there is no class to teach. I know how much you get angry, but you have to understand it. Sorry for your Christmas.
So that definitely brought me down a peg or two, especially since she was reminding me of stuff that I already knew or should have known. I’m a teacher like all the other teachers at Jeil, and even though as a foreigner I very often get special treatment, it doesn’t and shouldn’t extend to every issue. Also, Koreans, and Korean teachers especially, are very hard workers and their attitude toward Christmas vacation is just a cultural difference. Lastly, I volunteered to work in Korea, and I knew when I made that decision that this might happen, and that signing a one-year contract might very well mean that I don’t go home for one year.
Now that a few days have passed and I’ve cooled down, I’m starting to actually get a little excited for Christmas in Daegu. I’ll be spending Christmas Eve with friends – we’re doing a Secret Santa and a potluck dinner. And Avatar should actually be pretty cool – we’ll meet at 9:20am at the movie theater downtown, so I can sleep in an hour; the movie itself is in 3D; and after the movie we’ll go back to school for lunch and then the students go home! And the teacher’s trip sounds like it’ll be fantastic – I’m still not sure exactly where we’re going, and the itinerary I was given is in Korean, but I think it’s several hours away, near the shore somewhere, and will involve a ferry ride, some really amazing decadent meals (raw fish!), and an actual budget for snacks and beer. Definitely my kind of trip.
She texted me early in the day (Saturday). She had to be at school that morning and wanted to let me know not to go see the new movie Avatar, because the principal had decided that all the teachers and students will see it together next Monday, the 28th. Because of the swine flu, the school canceled this semester’s festival and sports days, so they decided to take a school-wide field trip downtown to see Avatar instead.
My initial reaction was to get angry. I knew it was a long shot, but I had been really hopeful for a long time that I would be able to go home for Christmas. I desperately wanted to, and I really didn’t see why I shouldn’t. The last week of school is a hodge-podge of exams, special end-of-year ceremonies, the one-day Christmas vacation, and even an overnight field trip just for the teachers. We’ve finished teaching from the textbooks and the students don’t want to listen anymore anyway.
I also felt like I should be able to go home because it seems like Christmas is so much more meaningful and ‘important’ to Americans than it is to Koreans. Bosun told me that gifts are only exchanged between couples or given to small children; I know that Christmas in general has less religious significance for Koreans than for Americans; and besides, they only get one day off from school! How important can it be?
So between all of the end-of-year shenanigans going on around this time, and the difference in attitude about Christmas, it seemed obvious (to me) that my school wouldn’t miss me at all, and it would mean a lot more to me to be able to go home than it would for them to have me there. But it was impossible because there is only one day off for Christmas, and my contract doesn’t allow vacation or personal time except during actual school vacation periods. So when I heard that yet another day of what could have been my precious Christmas time at home, had been devoted to hauling 400+ kids downtown to see a freaking movie, I was so, so upset.
So I immediately fired back a text to Bosun, basically something along the lines of ‘Seriously?!?! I can’t go home for Christmas because I have to be at school on ‘school days,’ and then we all decide to go to the movies together! This sucks!’ Not my most mature or thoughtful moment, considering that: 1. We’d already discussed this whole situation, and she knew exactly how I felt and has been very sympathetic; and 2. All the other teachers work two Saturdays a month, so she was working while I was at home, watching TV and subjecting her to my crabby texts.
Anyway, here’s the response she sent me:
This is how things go at school in Korea. 28th’s movie trip is also kinda school schedule, and 29-30th teacher trip, too. Most people who work for company and school can’t use their vacation. Especially, teachers can’t go anywhere during official school days, even though there is no class to teach. I know how much you get angry, but you have to understand it. Sorry for your Christmas.
So that definitely brought me down a peg or two, especially since she was reminding me of stuff that I already knew or should have known. I’m a teacher like all the other teachers at Jeil, and even though as a foreigner I very often get special treatment, it doesn’t and shouldn’t extend to every issue. Also, Koreans, and Korean teachers especially, are very hard workers and their attitude toward Christmas vacation is just a cultural difference. Lastly, I volunteered to work in Korea, and I knew when I made that decision that this might happen, and that signing a one-year contract might very well mean that I don’t go home for one year.
Now that a few days have passed and I’ve cooled down, I’m starting to actually get a little excited for Christmas in Daegu. I’ll be spending Christmas Eve with friends – we’re doing a Secret Santa and a potluck dinner. And Avatar should actually be pretty cool – we’ll meet at 9:20am at the movie theater downtown, so I can sleep in an hour; the movie itself is in 3D; and after the movie we’ll go back to school for lunch and then the students go home! And the teacher’s trip sounds like it’ll be fantastic – I’m still not sure exactly where we’re going, and the itinerary I was given is in Korean, but I think it’s several hours away, near the shore somewhere, and will involve a ferry ride, some really amazing decadent meals (raw fish!), and an actual budget for snacks and beer. Definitely my kind of trip.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Stuff Korean People Like
I've had a pretty quiet week, so instead of writing about it I thought I'd post this link instead: It's an article called "Stuff Korean People Like" from the Walrus Blog (from The Walrus, a Canadian magazine). It's pretty funny and I can personally attest to some of the stuff on this list!
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/10/stuff-korean-people-like/
Make sure you check out the link to the 'public sculptures' in item number one - I won't ruin the surprise, but I've definitely seen stickers, doodles, and even a kid's plastic coin bank of the same thing!
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/10/stuff-korean-people-like/
Make sure you check out the link to the 'public sculptures' in item number one - I won't ruin the surprise, but I've definitely seen stickers, doodles, and even a kid's plastic coin bank of the same thing!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Dang, I sort of lost track of the time this month. I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post! I don't even have the excuse of any exciting or time-consuming adventures - the last few weeks have been relatively quiet.
After a really beautiful fall, it's definitely gotten cold here. It's still sunny most days and very dry here - I think it's only rained once or twice the entire time I've been in Daegu. Even though it's pretty nice and not even very cold, I might still buy another coat - in school, the teacher's room and classrooms are (usually) heated, but the hallways and bathrooms are not. Everyone just wears coats everywhere - even to teach or work at their desks in. I don't really like it - it's uncomfortable and weird for me to eat and work in a coat, but I'm sure it's much cheaper and more efficient than heating the entire building. Koreans also have a thing for fresh air - outside doors and windows are left wide open in the hallways, even though it's cold, and sometimes there's even a window left open in the heated teachers room. Have I mentioned that everyone wears sandals indoors? Yeah, it's cold.
On the 9th I had my open class. Every native English teacher has to teach a class for at least one supervisor and two other native teachers. I was a bit nervous, but it really wasn't that stressful - Carrie and I chose a lesson that I had already done with my first-graders, and the supervisor and two native teacher were the only people that showed up (my principal didn't even stick around for the whole class). It's all pretty fake - I guess at most schools they take the best students, stick them in the fanciest classroom, and teach an easy lesson. It's definitely not representative of my normal classes or teaching ability!
November 11th was "Pepero Day" in South Korea. Pepero are long skinny cookies that are dipped in chocolate or some other flavor, and since the date is 11/11 and the 1's look like pepero, children exchange it. It's kind of interesting - Pepero Day is a very young holiday, maybe only twenty years old, and in Korea pepero is manufactured by only one company, a huge corporation called Lotte. So a lot of people believe that Lotte started this holiday on purpose to increase their sales! But it really caught on, and at school teachers and students were giving each other pepero (couples often exchange it as well). Like our Valentine's Day, only cheaper and with less pressure.
Last Saturday, the 21st, Mark, Jayson, Vince, Jeannine and I headed to the city of Gwangju to visit some fellow EPIKers there. After a three-hour bus ride we met our host Amanda (the same Amanda that went with us to Busan), and after dropping off our stuff and hanging out at her apartment for awhile, we hit the town for a night out. Gwangju is a smaller than Daegu, but we still managed to keep ourselves occupied until 5:30 Sunday morning! We ate a fantastic Korean meal, hit up a few bars, danced for a few hours at Club Houze, and of course a night out isn't complete without an hour or two of noraebang. We left Gwangju at 6:40 Sunday morning after being up all night, and I slept for the entire bus ride home and most of the rest of Sunday!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I taught my students a little bit about it (they loved pictures from the Internet of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) and had Italian food on the day of with my 'family' here - other EPIKers in Daegu. It wasn't quite the same as being at home but I'm definitely thankful for having such a solid group here.
My new goal here is to write shorter posts more often so it's not such a project anymore (for me to write and you to read!). Thanks for reading, check back soon and keep in touch!
After a really beautiful fall, it's definitely gotten cold here. It's still sunny most days and very dry here - I think it's only rained once or twice the entire time I've been in Daegu. Even though it's pretty nice and not even very cold, I might still buy another coat - in school, the teacher's room and classrooms are (usually) heated, but the hallways and bathrooms are not. Everyone just wears coats everywhere - even to teach or work at their desks in. I don't really like it - it's uncomfortable and weird for me to eat and work in a coat, but I'm sure it's much cheaper and more efficient than heating the entire building. Koreans also have a thing for fresh air - outside doors and windows are left wide open in the hallways, even though it's cold, and sometimes there's even a window left open in the heated teachers room. Have I mentioned that everyone wears sandals indoors? Yeah, it's cold.
On the 9th I had my open class. Every native English teacher has to teach a class for at least one supervisor and two other native teachers. I was a bit nervous, but it really wasn't that stressful - Carrie and I chose a lesson that I had already done with my first-graders, and the supervisor and two native teacher were the only people that showed up (my principal didn't even stick around for the whole class). It's all pretty fake - I guess at most schools they take the best students, stick them in the fanciest classroom, and teach an easy lesson. It's definitely not representative of my normal classes or teaching ability!
November 11th was "Pepero Day" in South Korea. Pepero are long skinny cookies that are dipped in chocolate or some other flavor, and since the date is 11/11 and the 1's look like pepero, children exchange it. It's kind of interesting - Pepero Day is a very young holiday, maybe only twenty years old, and in Korea pepero is manufactured by only one company, a huge corporation called Lotte. So a lot of people believe that Lotte started this holiday on purpose to increase their sales! But it really caught on, and at school teachers and students were giving each other pepero (couples often exchange it as well). Like our Valentine's Day, only cheaper and with less pressure.
Last Saturday, the 21st, Mark, Jayson, Vince, Jeannine and I headed to the city of Gwangju to visit some fellow EPIKers there. After a three-hour bus ride we met our host Amanda (the same Amanda that went with us to Busan), and after dropping off our stuff and hanging out at her apartment for awhile, we hit the town for a night out. Gwangju is a smaller than Daegu, but we still managed to keep ourselves occupied until 5:30 Sunday morning! We ate a fantastic Korean meal, hit up a few bars, danced for a few hours at Club Houze, and of course a night out isn't complete without an hour or two of noraebang. We left Gwangju at 6:40 Sunday morning after being up all night, and I slept for the entire bus ride home and most of the rest of Sunday!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I taught my students a little bit about it (they loved pictures from the Internet of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade) and had Italian food on the day of with my 'family' here - other EPIKers in Daegu. It wasn't quite the same as being at home but I'm definitely thankful for having such a solid group here.
My new goal here is to write shorter posts more often so it's not such a project anymore (for me to write and you to read!). Thanks for reading, check back soon and keep in touch!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
I can now say I've lived in a Yellow Submarine
I have a lot to catch up on, and despite my repeated promises I still haven't managed to update or organize my photos. All I can say is that I haven't forgotten and it will be worth the wait!
Halloween was pretty sweet; I never really celebrated it in college, so I was super excited this year. It's not that big of a deal in Korea, unless you're in a town with a large Westerner population! I had a fun lesson plan about Halloween and Thanksgiving with all my classes, and on Halloween day five of us from Daegu (Jeannine, Mark, Jayson, and Vince - most of the same people I went to Busan with) took a KTX train up to Seoul! I was so excited to finally see Seoul, even though I knew we wouldn't be doing much sight-seeing :) It was raining when we arrived, and we bought or loaded up our T-Money cards for the subway and set off to find our hostel.
We stayed and partied in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul. Hongdae is known for and named after the university there, and besides the university there are a ton of bars, restaurants, shops and clubs - it's a really popular area with foreigners and tourists as well as students. Our hostel was called The Yellow Submarine, and the outside was actually yellow. Despite the weird name, it was actually the nicest hostel I've ever stayed in. It was really more like a bed-and-breakfast, just a big house with a few rooms, a nice big bathroom on each floor, and breakfast and coffee in the morning. The hostels I visited in Europe were much bigger and more institutional, so I had low expectations, but the Yellow Submarine was downright cozy. We all stayed in one room, and there were even extra beds. No one had to sleep on the floor and we didn't have any strangers staying with us (which have also been my previous experiences in hostels).
We dropped off our stuff around 3:30 and went looking for food. Mark had been to Seoul several times before and knew his way around, so we found a samgyupsal restaurant pretty quickly. After eating, we went back to our room and napped for the rest of the afternoon until 7pm (most of us had been out late the night before in Daegu). After dressing up and getting ready, we hit the town! We went for pretty simple costumes - Jeannine and I just wore masks and dresses, Mark had these really nasty fake teeth, Jayson was a one of the JabbaWockeeZ (male dance group), and Vince dressed up like a Korean student in a school uniform.
Hongdae was absolutely crawling with foreigners, and even some Koreans, in costumes. We kept meeting up with other people we knew, that were either living in Seoul or had traveled there for the weekend like us. We went to a few bars whose names I don't remember, and then a club called NB, for Noise Basement. That's a pretty accurate description of the club- it was literally a dirty, noisy basement. It was big but insanely crowded, I mean wall to wall, to the point where you couldn't move or turn around. And since you can drink and smoke on the dance floors in Korean clubs, cups and ash were flying and spilling everywhere (the feathers on my Mardi Gras mask ended up soaked in gin, it's pretty much a lost cause). When we were ready to leave after a few hours, we pretty much had to plow through or literally climb over people to get to the coat check and then the door. It was like the subways in Busan all over again, only darker and full of foreigners in weird costumes ;)
After that craziness we got some street food (gyros) and then hit up a noraebang club to relax a little. The singing rooms were really nice - our 'room' had two floors and two TVs, with pillows on the ground floor and a ladder going up to a loft! There were even free snacks. It felt really good to be able to sit and relax after running around outside in the cold and rain all night or being crushed by the sea of humanity in NB.
I don't remember exactly when we got back to the Submarine on Sunday morning, maybe around 5am. We slept for a few hours and most of us were up by ten to shower and get ready to check out by noon. We checked our bags at the Seoul train station and then headed to another area of Seoul called Myeongdong. It's really well-known as a shopping area, as well as the oldest Catholic cathedral in Korea (we walked to the Cathedral and looked at the outside just to say we've seen it). It had stopped raining by then but was still pretty cold, and I bought two scarves and a big sweater. We also ate in a restaurant whose name I can't remember; we had to wait in line awhile to be seated, but once you're seated you choose from the four items on the menu and get your food in 30 seconds!
Our last adventure in Seoul was the infamous Korean photo sticker booth. Photo sticker booths are really popular here but I had never been to one, and in Myeongdong we found a store that had a bunch of different booths. We found one big enough for the six of us (we had been joined by another EPIK-er from Seoul for the afternoon) and chose from the selection of different backgrounds or settings (everything from ballrooms to stripper poles). We had a few seconds between each picture to pose, and then moved over to the computers to choose from our best shots and decorate them! On the computer you can put different stamps, pictures, backgrounds, borders, word bubbles, and colors over your pictures before printing them off as tiny stickers. It was fun, if you're with some friends and you see a photo sticker booth you should definitely try it!
So Seoul was really fun, and I really liked the little corner of it that I did see. I definitely need to go back at some point, to stay longer than 24 hours and see a little more of the city besides the insides of bars and clubs!
Halloween was pretty sweet; I never really celebrated it in college, so I was super excited this year. It's not that big of a deal in Korea, unless you're in a town with a large Westerner population! I had a fun lesson plan about Halloween and Thanksgiving with all my classes, and on Halloween day five of us from Daegu (Jeannine, Mark, Jayson, and Vince - most of the same people I went to Busan with) took a KTX train up to Seoul! I was so excited to finally see Seoul, even though I knew we wouldn't be doing much sight-seeing :) It was raining when we arrived, and we bought or loaded up our T-Money cards for the subway and set off to find our hostel.
We stayed and partied in the Hongdae neighborhood of Seoul. Hongdae is known for and named after the university there, and besides the university there are a ton of bars, restaurants, shops and clubs - it's a really popular area with foreigners and tourists as well as students. Our hostel was called The Yellow Submarine, and the outside was actually yellow. Despite the weird name, it was actually the nicest hostel I've ever stayed in. It was really more like a bed-and-breakfast, just a big house with a few rooms, a nice big bathroom on each floor, and breakfast and coffee in the morning. The hostels I visited in Europe were much bigger and more institutional, so I had low expectations, but the Yellow Submarine was downright cozy. We all stayed in one room, and there were even extra beds. No one had to sleep on the floor and we didn't have any strangers staying with us (which have also been my previous experiences in hostels).
We dropped off our stuff around 3:30 and went looking for food. Mark had been to Seoul several times before and knew his way around, so we found a samgyupsal restaurant pretty quickly. After eating, we went back to our room and napped for the rest of the afternoon until 7pm (most of us had been out late the night before in Daegu). After dressing up and getting ready, we hit the town! We went for pretty simple costumes - Jeannine and I just wore masks and dresses, Mark had these really nasty fake teeth, Jayson was a one of the JabbaWockeeZ (male dance group), and Vince dressed up like a Korean student in a school uniform.
Hongdae was absolutely crawling with foreigners, and even some Koreans, in costumes. We kept meeting up with other people we knew, that were either living in Seoul or had traveled there for the weekend like us. We went to a few bars whose names I don't remember, and then a club called NB, for Noise Basement. That's a pretty accurate description of the club- it was literally a dirty, noisy basement. It was big but insanely crowded, I mean wall to wall, to the point where you couldn't move or turn around. And since you can drink and smoke on the dance floors in Korean clubs, cups and ash were flying and spilling everywhere (the feathers on my Mardi Gras mask ended up soaked in gin, it's pretty much a lost cause). When we were ready to leave after a few hours, we pretty much had to plow through or literally climb over people to get to the coat check and then the door. It was like the subways in Busan all over again, only darker and full of foreigners in weird costumes ;)
After that craziness we got some street food (gyros) and then hit up a noraebang club to relax a little. The singing rooms were really nice - our 'room' had two floors and two TVs, with pillows on the ground floor and a ladder going up to a loft! There were even free snacks. It felt really good to be able to sit and relax after running around outside in the cold and rain all night or being crushed by the sea of humanity in NB.
I don't remember exactly when we got back to the Submarine on Sunday morning, maybe around 5am. We slept for a few hours and most of us were up by ten to shower and get ready to check out by noon. We checked our bags at the Seoul train station and then headed to another area of Seoul called Myeongdong. It's really well-known as a shopping area, as well as the oldest Catholic cathedral in Korea (we walked to the Cathedral and looked at the outside just to say we've seen it). It had stopped raining by then but was still pretty cold, and I bought two scarves and a big sweater. We also ate in a restaurant whose name I can't remember; we had to wait in line awhile to be seated, but once you're seated you choose from the four items on the menu and get your food in 30 seconds!
Our last adventure in Seoul was the infamous Korean photo sticker booth. Photo sticker booths are really popular here but I had never been to one, and in Myeongdong we found a store that had a bunch of different booths. We found one big enough for the six of us (we had been joined by another EPIK-er from Seoul for the afternoon) and chose from the selection of different backgrounds or settings (everything from ballrooms to stripper poles). We had a few seconds between each picture to pose, and then moved over to the computers to choose from our best shots and decorate them! On the computer you can put different stamps, pictures, backgrounds, borders, word bubbles, and colors over your pictures before printing them off as tiny stickers. It was fun, if you're with some friends and you see a photo sticker booth you should definitely try it!
So Seoul was really fun, and I really liked the little corner of it that I did see. I definitely need to go back at some point, to stay longer than 24 hours and see a little more of the city besides the insides of bars and clubs!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Road Trippin' to Andong
I was able to get out of Daegu again this last weekend (that sounds terrible, like I just count the days until I can leave Daegu – but really I just get very excited for the weekends and the chance to do something a little different). A lady from my school got married Sunday in the city of Andong, and the principal decided to turn it into a cultural experience for me! She’s very thoughtful that way (she’s the same lady who let me tag along to see Jekyll and Hyde at the school’s expense). Sunday morning Bosun, the principal, one of the gym teachers, another lady who works at the school, and I met at Jeil Middle School and drove to Andong in the gym teacher’s car.
My experience of the wedding was very funny to me, and fit right in with Korea’s typical quick-and-dirty methods of making things happen (Korea is dynamic, remember?). Koreans usually get married in a “wedding hall” rather than a church, and they also like to get married on special days that they consider lucky. So yesterday being a lucky day, there were at least two weddings happening every hour in the wedding hall of Andong. The ceremony itself only lasts about 20 minutes – not that I would know, because my group waited for a while in a little lobby of the hall, made quick eye contact with the bride as she was being photographed, and then trooped down to the hall’s cafeteria with our meal tickets to eat at the huge buffet line, along with the friends and family of every other couple who was being married in that time slot! Bosun informed me that this is common if you don’t know the couple that well – just make an appearance and skip the ceremony to make sure you get a seat and some food while it’s still warm!
The others returned to Daegu after our meal, but they dropped Bosun and I off at Andong’s bus terminal on their way out. As I said, the principal was kind enough to turn the wedding trip into an opportunity for me to see more of Andong, at the school’s expense. The city is famous for maintaining a lot of Korea’s culture and traditions, most notably in the form of ancient buildings and folk customs like the mask dances (it’s also famous for its own type of soju and steamed chicken!). Bosun and I took a forty minute bus ride from Andong to Hahoe Village. It’s a traditional village that was built in the 16th and 17th century, and a lot of the original buildings are still standing and people continue to live in them! The village was beautiful – a river wraps around it almost entirely, there’s a large cliff called Buyungdae overlooking the whole thing, and we also had great weather and a beautiful sunset to enjoy it in.
But my favorite part of the day was watching a performance of the Hahoe Mask Dance Drama. I read about mask dances before I even left the States, and was disappointed that I missed the annual Mask Dance Festival at the end of September (cancelled because of stupid swine flu!). So I was really excited to hear that I would be able to see this performance. According to the booklet I bought there, “Hahoe Pyolshin-gut T’ al-Nori is one of Korea’s most traditional folk plays [and] has been performed for centuries as a village ritual…The drama combines shaman rituals and popular entertainment. The village ritual was intended to please the local goddess and exorcise evil spirits…The whole village took part in the event and enjoyed the satirical story revealed in the drama…Each of these characters represents a social class. Conflicts among different classes and individuals were satirized to relieve social tensions among the families in the village.” Pardon my terrible quotation job, but they summarize it better than I can! The show was in a circular outdoor theater and was so cool – I didn’t understand much because it was in Korean and I didn’t buy the booklet until after the show, but it was funny and the actors interacted with the crowd. Not to mention I was watching something that has been maintained and handed down for centuries, not only the stories but the masks and costumes as well. I also loved the live music that accompanied the show – there were drums and some sort of horn that emphasized certain dialogs or the end or beginning of a scene. Not to mention the free concessions – men and women walked along the bottom of the stands passing along warm rice cakes to the crowd, or hurling them at anyone who had their hand out but was sitting too high up to reach (I brushed rice cake crumbs out of my hair that night and shook them out of my purse).
So anyway, Andong was great! I know that reading this without visual aids just isn’t the same, but I killed my camera battery taking too many pictures. I WILL put up pictures of Busan and Andong soon! Thanks for reading these ridiculously long posts and keep in touch! I miss you all!
My experience of the wedding was very funny to me, and fit right in with Korea’s typical quick-and-dirty methods of making things happen (Korea is dynamic, remember?). Koreans usually get married in a “wedding hall” rather than a church, and they also like to get married on special days that they consider lucky. So yesterday being a lucky day, there were at least two weddings happening every hour in the wedding hall of Andong. The ceremony itself only lasts about 20 minutes – not that I would know, because my group waited for a while in a little lobby of the hall, made quick eye contact with the bride as she was being photographed, and then trooped down to the hall’s cafeteria with our meal tickets to eat at the huge buffet line, along with the friends and family of every other couple who was being married in that time slot! Bosun informed me that this is common if you don’t know the couple that well – just make an appearance and skip the ceremony to make sure you get a seat and some food while it’s still warm!
The others returned to Daegu after our meal, but they dropped Bosun and I off at Andong’s bus terminal on their way out. As I said, the principal was kind enough to turn the wedding trip into an opportunity for me to see more of Andong, at the school’s expense. The city is famous for maintaining a lot of Korea’s culture and traditions, most notably in the form of ancient buildings and folk customs like the mask dances (it’s also famous for its own type of soju and steamed chicken!). Bosun and I took a forty minute bus ride from Andong to Hahoe Village. It’s a traditional village that was built in the 16th and 17th century, and a lot of the original buildings are still standing and people continue to live in them! The village was beautiful – a river wraps around it almost entirely, there’s a large cliff called Buyungdae overlooking the whole thing, and we also had great weather and a beautiful sunset to enjoy it in.
But my favorite part of the day was watching a performance of the Hahoe Mask Dance Drama. I read about mask dances before I even left the States, and was disappointed that I missed the annual Mask Dance Festival at the end of September (cancelled because of stupid swine flu!). So I was really excited to hear that I would be able to see this performance. According to the booklet I bought there, “Hahoe Pyolshin-gut T’ al-Nori is one of Korea’s most traditional folk plays [and] has been performed for centuries as a village ritual…The drama combines shaman rituals and popular entertainment. The village ritual was intended to please the local goddess and exorcise evil spirits…The whole village took part in the event and enjoyed the satirical story revealed in the drama…Each of these characters represents a social class. Conflicts among different classes and individuals were satirized to relieve social tensions among the families in the village.” Pardon my terrible quotation job, but they summarize it better than I can! The show was in a circular outdoor theater and was so cool – I didn’t understand much because it was in Korean and I didn’t buy the booklet until after the show, but it was funny and the actors interacted with the crowd. Not to mention I was watching something that has been maintained and handed down for centuries, not only the stories but the masks and costumes as well. I also loved the live music that accompanied the show – there were drums and some sort of horn that emphasized certain dialogs or the end or beginning of a scene. Not to mention the free concessions – men and women walked along the bottom of the stands passing along warm rice cakes to the crowd, or hurling them at anyone who had their hand out but was sitting too high up to reach (I brushed rice cake crumbs out of my hair that night and shook them out of my purse).
So anyway, Andong was great! I know that reading this without visual aids just isn’t the same, but I killed my camera battery taking too many pictures. I WILL put up pictures of Busan and Andong soon! Thanks for reading these ridiculously long posts and keep in touch! I miss you all!
Don't Mess With Busan
Last Saturday people from all over Korea converged on the city of Busan for the Fireworks Festival. This included a group of six of us – Jeannine, Mark, Peter, Dave, Amanda, and I – who traveled together from Daegu. Busan is about an hour southeast of Daegu by the KTX train, or an hour and forty minutes by the slow train. It’s the second-largest city in Korea and right on the coast; although the organization of the trip was last-minute, I was really excited to finally visit. Busan is famous for beaches, mountains, and awesome festivals – the International Film Festival was the weekend just before the Fireworks Festival.
Busan did not disappoint. We got off to a rocky start – of the six of us, Dave barely made it onto the train that morning (he was literally still standing when it started moving) and Mark missed it completely. However, he managed to get a later train and arrived in Busan very soon after we did. We bought our day passes for the subway system and took a long ride to one of Busan’s famous beaches, Hyundae Beach. It was absolutely beautiful, especially after being in all the dirt, noise, and concrete of downtown Daegu for so long. The weather was cloudy and breezy but warm, and we all took our shoes and socks off to wade in the chilly water, take pictures, and collect some seashells. Just that hour (or less) that we spent at the beach made me fall in love with Busan, and I can’t wait to go back – next spring when I can actually lay out at the beach!
Even though the Hyundae was great, the adventures did not end there. We were all hungry, and like any coastal city Busan is famous not only for beaches but seafood! So we found a great restaurant on the 13th floor of a building overlooking the beach. Besides the great view, we had an amazing meal – the waitresses grilled abalone, shrimp, and pork at our table, along with the usual garlic and side dishes. Abalone is a rare and very expensive shellfish, at least in the States, but we had as much as we could eat, plus beer, for about $20 per person. And the abalone was still alive when they brought it to our table! We watched it squirm on the grill and then ate it right out of the shell – a little disgusting but soooo delicious, and again considering the price, probably not something I’ll do often after I leave Korea!
After our meal it was back on the subway to another beach, Gwangalli Beach, for the fireworks show. It was a beautiful setting – Gwangalli Beach is in a little cove, with the Gwangan Bridge stretching across the water in front of it. The bridge was lighted once the sun went down, and there were small boats with giant TV screens placed along it facing the beach. The crowd was unreal – 1.5 million people on a beach less than a mile long – but luckily we had some connections with people who held spots for us. We had just enough room for everyone to sit down, close to the water right in the middle of the beach. And the show was absolutely stunning. It was set to music as well as words and pictures on the TV screens, and just so over-the-top compared to shows that I’ve seen in the States. The pictures don’t do it justice.
Getting back to the train station in Busan after the fireworks was pretty scary. 1.5 million people all left at the same time, making their way for a select few subway stations. The six of us clung to each other and formed a chain, and Mark led the way through masses of cars, vendors, mopeds, and people. There were cops at the subway entrances, and we barely got into one before they started shutting them down! Underground the crowd was just awful – people wall to wall, pushing and yelling and trying to get through the turnstiles with their tickets, and then we had to line up to get into the subway cars, which were also packed. We were going through the turnstile, after having fought our way to the front of that crowd, when Mark realized he had lost his wallet on the beach! Dave went with him to look for it and we agreed to all try to find each other at the train station. Miraculously, our friend Chris, who stayed behind at the beach, actually found Mark’s wallet right after we left, and Mark and Dave also somehow managed to make it through the crowd to find us at the train station in time for our train.
And it was lucky that they did, because we were booked on the very last train out of Busan that night – 11pm. We were in our seats waiting for the train to leave, and for some reason that we couldn’t figure out, Koreans kept coming up to us and trying to take our seats. We argued with them until one passenger looked at our tickets and pointed out that the date on the ticket was for the 16th. And yes, last Saturday was the 17th. Jeannine had accidentally purchased the tickets for the wrong day! The conductor came up and wanted us to get off the train – which was the last train of the day back to Daegu, and just seconds away from departing – to purchase standing-room tickets. It never would have worked, and we would have been sleeping on the beach that night had not Dave been along. He luckily can speak Korean, and he convinced the conductor that we had purchased our tickets just that day, and the ticket office must have made a mistake. The conductor left us alone and we spent an hour and forty minutes riding the rails Great Depression-style – in a compartment between two cars, sitting on the floor and sipping soju from a shared bottle. Jeannine was upset by her mistake but it was honestly pretty fun, not to mention the fact that we were all so grateful just to be on that train in any way, shape or form. Never have so many things going wrong – Mark missing the first train, then losing his wallet, almost being crushed by a major crowd both above and below ground, barely getting a ride home, and the boys also dropping and smashing a glass bottle in a convenience store – provided such an amazing day. We were thankful to make it back to Daegu in one piece, but we also can’t wait to see Busan again!
Busan did not disappoint. We got off to a rocky start – of the six of us, Dave barely made it onto the train that morning (he was literally still standing when it started moving) and Mark missed it completely. However, he managed to get a later train and arrived in Busan very soon after we did. We bought our day passes for the subway system and took a long ride to one of Busan’s famous beaches, Hyundae Beach. It was absolutely beautiful, especially after being in all the dirt, noise, and concrete of downtown Daegu for so long. The weather was cloudy and breezy but warm, and we all took our shoes and socks off to wade in the chilly water, take pictures, and collect some seashells. Just that hour (or less) that we spent at the beach made me fall in love with Busan, and I can’t wait to go back – next spring when I can actually lay out at the beach!
Even though the Hyundae was great, the adventures did not end there. We were all hungry, and like any coastal city Busan is famous not only for beaches but seafood! So we found a great restaurant on the 13th floor of a building overlooking the beach. Besides the great view, we had an amazing meal – the waitresses grilled abalone, shrimp, and pork at our table, along with the usual garlic and side dishes. Abalone is a rare and very expensive shellfish, at least in the States, but we had as much as we could eat, plus beer, for about $20 per person. And the abalone was still alive when they brought it to our table! We watched it squirm on the grill and then ate it right out of the shell – a little disgusting but soooo delicious, and again considering the price, probably not something I’ll do often after I leave Korea!
After our meal it was back on the subway to another beach, Gwangalli Beach, for the fireworks show. It was a beautiful setting – Gwangalli Beach is in a little cove, with the Gwangan Bridge stretching across the water in front of it. The bridge was lighted once the sun went down, and there were small boats with giant TV screens placed along it facing the beach. The crowd was unreal – 1.5 million people on a beach less than a mile long – but luckily we had some connections with people who held spots for us. We had just enough room for everyone to sit down, close to the water right in the middle of the beach. And the show was absolutely stunning. It was set to music as well as words and pictures on the TV screens, and just so over-the-top compared to shows that I’ve seen in the States. The pictures don’t do it justice.
Getting back to the train station in Busan after the fireworks was pretty scary. 1.5 million people all left at the same time, making their way for a select few subway stations. The six of us clung to each other and formed a chain, and Mark led the way through masses of cars, vendors, mopeds, and people. There were cops at the subway entrances, and we barely got into one before they started shutting them down! Underground the crowd was just awful – people wall to wall, pushing and yelling and trying to get through the turnstiles with their tickets, and then we had to line up to get into the subway cars, which were also packed. We were going through the turnstile, after having fought our way to the front of that crowd, when Mark realized he had lost his wallet on the beach! Dave went with him to look for it and we agreed to all try to find each other at the train station. Miraculously, our friend Chris, who stayed behind at the beach, actually found Mark’s wallet right after we left, and Mark and Dave also somehow managed to make it through the crowd to find us at the train station in time for our train.
And it was lucky that they did, because we were booked on the very last train out of Busan that night – 11pm. We were in our seats waiting for the train to leave, and for some reason that we couldn’t figure out, Koreans kept coming up to us and trying to take our seats. We argued with them until one passenger looked at our tickets and pointed out that the date on the ticket was for the 16th. And yes, last Saturday was the 17th. Jeannine had accidentally purchased the tickets for the wrong day! The conductor came up and wanted us to get off the train – which was the last train of the day back to Daegu, and just seconds away from departing – to purchase standing-room tickets. It never would have worked, and we would have been sleeping on the beach that night had not Dave been along. He luckily can speak Korean, and he convinced the conductor that we had purchased our tickets just that day, and the ticket office must have made a mistake. The conductor left us alone and we spent an hour and forty minutes riding the rails Great Depression-style – in a compartment between two cars, sitting on the floor and sipping soju from a shared bottle. Jeannine was upset by her mistake but it was honestly pretty fun, not to mention the fact that we were all so grateful just to be on that train in any way, shape or form. Never have so many things going wrong – Mark missing the first train, then losing his wallet, almost being crushed by a major crowd both above and below ground, barely getting a ride home, and the boys also dropping and smashing a glass bottle in a convenience store – provided such an amazing day. We were thankful to make it back to Daegu in one piece, but we also can’t wait to see Busan again!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)