Haircut Pictures

I finally broke down and got a new haircut. I have wanted one for a long time but I have heard too many complaints by foreign girls about going to a Korean hairstylist and getting only a Korean haircut no matter what you ask for. A 'Korean haircut', to us, means bangs that go straight across making you look like you are 10. I was careful to find a stylist who spoke English and in the end, the reason it didn't turn out the way I wanted it was my fault more than hers. I wasn't very clear what I wanted because I didn't really know.

At first I was horrified when I saw it but it has honestly started to grow on me. The huge production my Korean co-workers put on when they saw it didn't hurt. I have also been treated to at least three extra 'Teacher, pretty!'s a day since the haircut so all in all I call this one a win.

Here are some really crappy pictures. The second one was taken by Leslie at one of our favorite dining spots (sadly, we were there without Stephanie and Ryan ~_~ They both went home) the day of the haircut and the first was taken by me a couple of minutes ago. I never did get the hang of those taking-a-picture-of-yourself-in-the-mirror pictures. Whatever. You get the point.

Fortresses, Clams and Hiking

This weekend I signed up to do another trip with Adventure Korea. As much as I dislike going on pre-arranged tours, this company seems to be doing a good job of keeping the experiences real and interacting with the local people. We had to get up at 5am to get to the meet up point on time, but it was worth it. Our group was pretty big this time, consisting of Me, Stephanie, Ryan, Leslie, our other friends Maria, Danielle, and Melina and Leslie's cousin Charlsie who had just moved to Korea. The trip was supposed to be about viewing the fall foliage in the south, but the leaves haven't really turned, so the hiking wasn't as spectacular as it could have been.

We started out at Gochangeupseong Fortress in Gochang Province. The fortress is really just a bunch of low buildings surrounded by a huge wall, but the superstition is that each time you walk around the wall, you get something for your troubles. Once is good luck, twice is eternal life and the third time is your ticket into heaven.

Since Leslie seems to have infected me with her picture taking bug, we only made it once around before we had to meet the rest of our group for a military demonstration. The army did these great Tae Kwon Do demonstrations, with people flipping and breaking boards.

But the Air Force cadets topped them by busting into a K-pop dance number in the middle of their drills. Though it didn't exactly match the sense of decorum of the moment, it was definitely pretty awesome.

As they set up for the demonstration of ancient weapons techniques, Stephanie, Ryan and I took the opportunity, with a couple others in our group, to try on some ancient military costumes. They even made me sit in litter.

This is a good time to mention the clouds of cameras that were following us around all weekend. I'm not sure if they were part of our company's staff or if they worked for the fortress and were trying to get lots of pictures of foreigners enjoying the festival. Either way, I suddenly knew how celebrities feel when they get followed around by people with telephoto lenses. As we did anything at the festival, it was documented and cataloged. I could see the labels: way gook, waygook posing with waygook friends, waygook on litter, waygook tripping over costume.

After exploring the fair outside the fortress for a while – lots of traditional crafts and less traditional merchandise stalls – we all piled onto the bus and headed for the hotel. We had a very Korean dinner – rice, with pork strips, fish and a billion side dishes – we were set loose. We tried to go to the night club downstairs but we were kicked out because we were not old enough – something that hasn't happened to anyone there for a good while. The club was filled with ajimas and ajashis rocking out to old school Korean pop. I guess they didn't want us to disturb them. So, after wandering around a little, I went to bed (remember the 5am wake up?) and the rest of our group went out norebang-ing (kareoke-ing) for about an hour and came back to sleep it off. We were all pathetically in bed by 9pm.

The next day we went on an early morning hike in a beautiful forest near the hotel. There were these little piles of rocks that our guide told us were prayer rocks. You make a wish and you stack a rock on top of another. If its still there the next time you come back, you make another wish and you stack another. There were quite a few very impressive rock piles there.

After getting back from the hike, checking out and having a lunch of bibimbop, we headed out to the mudflats were we went clam hunting.

This was definitely a new experience for me but I quickly got a technique going. You find a big air hole, then you use your claw to catch about a three inch slab of mud off the top of the ground. This would usually reveal what you were chasing – whether it was really a clam, a crab of these stupid worm things that were everywhere. At some point, I hit the jackpot and found a hug bed of clams, I ended up with about 21 chestnut sized clams that I carried home in a plastic bag. All the way sub the five hour drive back to Seoul, the 2 hour subway ride back to Suji and the dinner at Dos Tacos, one of the best Mexican restaurants in Seoul. They are now living in my bathroom sink. Waiting for me to gather enough courage to cook and eat them. I ate some on the mud flats – they had clam soup for us all to try – but that's different than putting live creatures into a frying pan. I'm considering buying them an aquarium... or handing them off to an ajima on the street...

Of All the Gin Joints In All the World...

Leslie and I went out tonight, as is our usual on Friday, to eat at a restaurant and decompress from the week. We found an amazing resturaunt that served the best food I've had in a while. The place was so small that you could probably walk from one end of the kitchen and out the door in ten steps. The kitchen looked like someone's kitchen in their house and you could watch them prepare your food from your seat.

After the meal, which was ridiculously cheap ($6, no tip - in Korea its considered rude) we went for a stroll where we met up with three other people (Roza, Mia, and Jeremy) we knew from various places. It got me thinking about how small the world is in general, not just Korea or the ex-pat world. Its as if, if you are a world traveler, you meet the same people over and over again. And I am not refering to some personality type that you meet often in different people, I'm talking about literally the same people.

For instance, Roza is an Azerbaijani who moved to America in her teens and spent the rest of her student years there. She, some crazy how, knows this girl - Fidan - I went to high school with. The only justification I can wring out of Roza as to how they know each other, is a non-committal shrug and "She's Azeri". Which I suppose is enough explanation for her - she tried to explain how small the country is - but to me, it is not in the least bit enlightening. I mean, she can't know everyone in the country - no country is that small.

Further proof that the world really has less than six degrees of separation is the fact that Stephanie and I learned to ski at the same resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen; and that my first and second grade Music teacher (from Kenya) goes to Leslie's church. Here in Suji. Dare is say it? It's a small world after all.

We ended the night looking into a Kpop dance class for Roza. Roza loves Kpop even more than Leslie does - and Leslie will sometimes stop a conversation mid sentence to listen to a song on a loud speaker. And even though Leslie and Roza have discovered in each other their long-lost Kpop soul mates (Seoul mates?), Leslie doesn't have the energy for Kpop dance class on top of her ridiculous work schedule. She did, however, know of a class that was nearby so we decided to check it out.

What followed was a tri-lingual conversation between the dance instructor, Roza and Roza's friend Mia who is Russian-Korean (born to Korean parents in Uzbekistan when it was still part of the Soviet Union). The Instructor would attempt to start a sentence in English, end up in Korean, at which point Mia would translate it into Russian, and Roza would respond again in English or broken Korean. Leslie and I watched the exchange feeling very monolingual. Wait, scratch that, Leslie speaks Hawai'ian. So, really, I was the only mono-linguist in the conversation. Bleh, I need to get on that.

Mudfest ReCap

So, for those of you who missed the miniscule articles and pictures about the Boryeong Mud Festival in Various news sources, I'm here to tell you all about it.

Our experience started on Friday night when we were looking for our hostel. We were supposed to meet the bus at 7 am and there was no way that we were going to make it all the way there from Suji (the meeting point was about 1-2 hours away from where we live). So I got us a hostel for relatively cheap online and we set out trying to find it.

What I didn't count on - but honestly should have - was that the area the hostel is in (Hongdae) is the university district. That means on a Friday night not only is it crowded, but there were drunk people left and right, carnival game stands and vendors on the street. We saw one couple face plant on the sidewalk right next to us because the guy had been trying to give the girl a piggy back ride. They both ended up with a face full of asphalt.

Through all this madness and the fact that the streets were very confusing and crowded we had very little chance of finding the hostel.

Along comes Korea's best kept secret: the sheer generosity and hospitality that every Korean shows to strangers when given the chance. After about two hours of searching we asked a woman at a nearby food stand. She didn't know either, but she would have rather eaten her own shoe then let us go without knowing we would find the place. She pulled in all the people at the stand and they had a mini conference about it - where was this place? Were we in the right area? Then this one guy who was there with his girlfriend ran all the way back to his car to get his GPS to find it for us. He then led us all the way there.

At which point, it became obvious why we couldn't find it. The entrance to it was down a sketchy alley and literally through a hole in the wall. If this had been India I would have said NO WAY. But Korea, I'm convinced, is one of the safest places on Earth, despite their tendency to fumigate city streets without clearing the people off first.

It turned out to be very not sketchy once we got inside - proving that sometimes you just have to embrace the adventure and trust in the good will of strangers. We slept very well - a lot better than we would have slept had we tried sleeping at the jjimjjilbang (sauna) again.

In the morning we got on the bus and made our way to the mudflats. The beach where the festival is being held is not where the mud is from. It’s from the mudflats about 30 minutes away. The tour we were on was embracing the true spirit of the mud and took us to the flats first. There we were given military looking outfits and told, very casually, that we were now going to run a marathon.

Me: wut?

We were also told that we should be careful and 'walk lightly' because there were sharp shells in the mud that could cut our feet. Then it was explained that after that, we would do some mud games but that we should be careful because last year, 'a man was broken' during the games. Our particular guide had a certain flare for drama - either that or he was taught English by American soap operas. We found out later that the man just broke his leg while playing rugby on the mudflats.

So, we did the marathon - I say 'did' because I walked most of it; but 5 kilometers is 5 kilometers - which the Mayor of Boryeong started off with his pop gun, and got our army uniforms all muddy. I even got a Medal for completing. We then abstained from their organized rugby madness to have our own shenanigans. We started a mud fight just among the four of us (Leslie, Stephanie, Ryan and me) and Leslie's friend Jeremy, which escalated when one of the guides got involved. He lobbed a mud ball at my head and when Ryan turned to throw mud at him, he calmly informed Ryan that he couldn't do that because Ryan was on his team. Thus, the girls versus boys mud fight got pretty messy and ended with Ryan and Stephanie so muddy you may not have been able to tell them apart.

After getting all cleaned up - well, a little cleaned up, they were open air showers at which photographers with telephoto lenses were camped out - we got back on the bus and went to where the actual mud festival was being held.

We got to lay our stuff down in our room - which, by the way, had no furniture in it. No beds, nothing. And we left for the festival proper.

Leslie had been waiting all week to paint herself with the colored mud so that’s what we did first.

The ladies at the stall who were painting people ranged from understanding but harassed to fascist and angry. Stephanie wanted a certain pattern, and the woman who was doing hers listened to her carefully, then completely disregarded what she wanted. Stephanie tried one last time - she wanted a yellow circle around her eye - and the woman nodded and reached for the yellow paint brush. We thought that we had finally made a break through until she plopped the thing down on her hair and started to slather her hair with the thick yellow paint. So much for cross cultural understanding.

For food we inevitably ended up at this one restaurant that had bay windows overlooking the ocean. It was called 'Orange' which follows a long Korean Tradition of naming restaurants after random English food words. This is parallel to the tradition of naming restaurants with English names like Alice and Lucy or Frank.

The problem with the whole adventure was that we were sharing it with some unsavory characters. There were a lot of foreigners there who were doing a bad job of representing their country. I am speaking specifically of some of the Army people we saw getting drunk and shooting fireworks into the boardwalk. It was the only time I've even been cat called in all five months I've been in Korea. When we went back to Orange for dinner that night, instead of a nice relaxing dinner, we were constantly on edge trying to disassociate ourselves with the rowdy meatheads. Unfortunately, this didn't work judging by the fact that our waiter asked us to pay before we got our meal. Its one of my personal pet peeves, being judged on the actions of others and I was just in a bad mood the rest of the night. In fact, I left the restaurant and went straight back to the hotel, not only because I had woken up that morning at 6 am, but also because I didn't want to deal with more American Idiots.

The next morning I was in a foul mood and nothing I did could shake it. Everything anyone said to me was followed by a sarcastic remark in my head. I have learned long ago that the only way out of this kind of pattern was to give myself a time out from socializing. So while Leslie, Steph and Ryan went to the beach and got all muddy some more, I just sat under an umbrella by the beach and chilled. It did improve my mood a little and gave them a chance to have fun without Grouchy McSourpants along. I took some pictures, bought some mud soap and tried to lighten my mood. We met up later and had lunch at the 'foreigner restaurant' set up by the event staff. But all they had was hamburgers so I ended up eating at a Kabob stand down the street - best kabob EVAR.

At this point I was hot and sweaty and I could feel a headache coming on so I just decided to spent the remaining 45 mins of our trip on the air conditioned bus. I guess I wasn't as adventurous as I should have been on this trip but I blame it on the mood I was in. And the heat. But honestly, the heat wouldn't have stopped me if I had been all gung-ho about it.

All in all the trip was a success despite my moodiness and we have some fabulous pictures which I will post at a later date. This is because I am currently in Japan on the second part of my vacation. Be jealous.

Going Places, brb.

The next week and a half is going to be pretty hectic and I don't know if I'll have access to internet so I'm giving everyone a heads up. If I drop off the face of the earth, its not because Seoul has gone up in some sort of apocalyptic explosion.

Tomorrow, after school, I'm heading into Seoul where we (and by 'we' I mean Leslie, Stephanie and Ryan) will spend the night in a hostel in Hongdae. From there, we will catch the bus to Daecheon where MudFest is going down. Basically, ita a bunch of foriegners playing in the mud, which sounds pretty awesome. They have all sorts of activities and apparently I unwittingly signed myself up for Mudfest boot camp, so that should be interesting...

I get back on Sunday night. Monday I go to work and then on Tuesday I am off to Japan! Yes, you heard right, the land of Hello Kitty and super toilets. I'll be staying with my friend Erin in Takamatsu. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing there - other than being a member of the "Eckerd Delegation" for a visiting Eckerd Professor, still not sure how I got roped into that - but it will be fun!

So this is me, signing off for what may turn out to be a good week and a half. I'll try to post again as soon as possible.

Body Language and Random News Post

I'm usually very good at reading body language (when I'm looking for it). Its actually something that I pride myself on. Ne-hyung even thought that I seceretly understood Korean because I would always know what my Apricot class was saying. This is no great feat, however: the thoughts and ramblings of four year old boys are not exactly complex.

Never the less, this is a very useful skill to have when you live in a country whose language you can't even read.

But I got over confident in my success with dealing with Korean people and thought that I could get a cell phone by myself. This wasn't my best decision.

I managed to find the store that spoke no English. Usually when Korean people don't speak English its because they are insecure about their pronounciation or their limited vocabulary. But most Korean people HAVE some sort of English vocabulary. Not so in this case. Between the three people who were on duty at the time, they had not one word of English between them.

Now I realize this is not something very fair to criticize when I, myself, don't speak another language. But it didn't stop me from being severly frustrated.

The man would say something in Korean and, when I would indicate that I didn't speak Korean, he would repeat it again, but slowly. Because, clearly, if I didn't speak Korean, maybe I spoke slow Korean.

Eventually I managed to get a phone, I have no idea what my plan involves or if they charged me a 300,000 won underwater basket weaving charge. I just know that I now have a phone and have been annoying my friends by texting them all day. And, let me just say, that that is a feat seeing as I had a phone with a full keyboard and practically have forgotten how to text with a normal phone.

In other news:

I made my first Korean dish tonight, Kimbop, which is not exactly complex but I was proud none the less. Its like sushi minus the fish.

Debbie asked if I was liking my school and told me I was doing a good job (yay!).

We have been having a twilight marathon because Leslie hasn't seen any of them. Ryan refuses to watch with us silly girls.

Went to the sauna again, this time brought the co-workers. Watched North Korea loose to Ivory coast in a pine wood sauna.

South Korea lost to Uruguay but only because the Uruguayan players were playing dirty. Seriously, the ref was either blind of in the employ of the Uruguayans.

TGIF

There is nothing better than a night out with people who are engaging, articulate and have great senses of humor. I'm so relieved to be making friends outside my little bubble of work - even if those friendships started at an outlet mall.

Over dinner (at TGI Fridays, yeah, they have those in Korea. Same food, same prices, same everything) we talked about everything from Donkey Kong and serial killers, to cell phones and Dog the Bounty Hunter. When they kicked us out, we stood out on the side walk (I'm not sure why we didn't go to a coffee shop) for an hour and a half in the cold talking about other things - disciplining kids, stickers, dog behaviors, Argentinian beef and social justice cooking shows.

Stephanie and Ryan are a couple who came to Korea together. Stephanie likes reality shows and is from California. Ryan moved around as a kid and spent a lot of time in Argentina (not sure why, maybe military?). Leslie, who I met at Lotte Mart, is from Hawai'i, went to a boarding school for people of Native Hawai'i descent and works at a public school while the rest of us work at hogwons.

It was a perfect way to end the week and I'm glad its looking to be kind of a regular thing.