Juniperus Josh

Cute Poop

2009-01-08T08:05:00.003-05:00

Hi. Sorry it's been so long since an update. When it gets so dark in the winter, I tend to hibernate and eat carbs and sleep all day. And with a full time job on top of that, who has time for blogs? But anyway, now that the darkest days of winter have passed and each day gets lighter out, I have more energy. So yeah. Don't worry, I'm still alive.

But very busy. My work switched over to the morning schedule (you know, 10-5 type of stuff, instead of 2-9), and on top of that, I have been teaching an extra class in the morning BEFORE the school opens to a 15 year old Korean student who is preparing for an interview for a visa to study in America. (Whew, that was a long sentence.) So I have to get up at 6, be at school at 7:45, teach the middle school student for 2 hours going over and over the same interview questions, then teach my regular job all day. It makes me really tired. I don't like getting up at 6. Or going to bed at 10. Or teaching for 9 hours.

So I haven't really taken any new pictures since... November. But I found one that maybe you will think is interesting.

This is a hand warmer that one of my students brought to school one day. You know, one of those ones with the liquid inside. And you click the metal button and it turns solid and gets hot? Yeah, that kind.

Maybe you're thinking, "What is it? Is it brown ice cream?" No, it's poop. And I think that's a soybean sprout sticking out of it. In Korea, poop is cute. Kids love to draw it. They like have it on their pencil cases. The like to see cartoons about poop. They just love poop. Poop is cute. In English, we don't really even have a word that we can call poop without getting a little grossed out. (Well, maybe droppings or dung, but who even says that besides people who are tracking gorillas through the jungle?). I mean, I don't even like typing the word poop. But their word for poop, 똥 (ddong), is just dandy. They can say it all day long and no one cares. Ddoong ddong ddong. I went to the park today and saw so much ddong. Oh really? that's nice. Yeah, isn't it? Anyway, what's for lunch?

It becomes a little bit of a problem when my students are writing their English diaries, because if they want to write about ddong, they look it up in their dictionary and don't really find a suitable English substitute. Apparently their dictionary doesn't even list poop, which I think is probably the closest translation. For instance, one day I was checking my 4th grade student's diary and he wrote something like:

I went to the park today with my family. There was so much duck shit on the ground.

I almost peed my pants laughing. Anyway, I am off to bed now. I have to get up and teach in 7 and a half hours. Goodnight, and I hope you are all doing well.

Eggplant

2008-11-21T07:00:00.004-05:00

This morning I was making gaji namul, which is Korean side dish made from eggplant. I've made it before, and really liked it, which surprised me because eggplant is... kind of gross. It has a tendency to turn to slime when you cook it, the skin is bitter, cut eggplant turns brown when exposed to air, and one time I undercooked some eggplant when making baba ganoush and it made my mouth itch.

Anyway, to make gaji namul, you need to steam the eggplant for 15 minutes. I put the eggplant in a pot and let it steam on the stove while I took a shower. After I got out of the shower, the eggplant was done and I took it out of the steamer. To my great surprise, the water in the pot had turned BRIGHT GREEN.

Isn't that amazing? The color was even more vivid in person. I told some of my coworkers about what happened, and one woman told me that usually the water turns purple, but occasionally it will turn bright green. So I guess it's normal. I have a feeling it was some sort of chemical reaction with the aluminum pot that I used. Last time I made it, I used a smaller enamled pot, and it definitely did not turn that color. The end.

PS. Thanks to Maangchi for her great gaji namul recipe: Gaji Namul

My Birthday

2008-11-06T08:28:00.009-05:00

I've had a lot of bad luck on my birthday in previous years. My first year in college, I started dating someone ON my birthday, and then it quickly went downhill and ended horribly a month or two later.

The next birthday, I was dating someone else and got into a giant fight with him, in an Indian restaurant, in front of all of our friends (and some of their parents), and we broke up that night.

The next year, I was in Sweden. I went to this birthday party that I thought was a double birthday party for me and an Indian girl that all of my friends knew. When I got there, I found out the birthday party was ONLY for the Indian girl, and not for me, and she got presents and a card signed by everyone, and I didn't get anything. (Well Emily did get me a Daim Torta (a kind of ice cream cake thing) and Erica made me a card, but including that in this story ruins the drama.)

Last year, it started to get a lot better. I was dating yet ANOTHER person, and he threw me a giant birthday party with all of my friends. It was super great, and I made a giant smoky cheese ball and stuck googly eyes on pumpkins and acorn squash. And then we played werewolf. Does it get better than that?

This year, I had ANOTHER good birthday. Two in a row!

My birthday was on a Monday this year. I went to work and no one said happy birthday to me, so I thought maybe they forgot or didn't notice. I started reading Harry Potter in my office on my break, but then someone turned the lights off and I thought it was one of the children messing around. I turned around and... all of my coworkers were there with a cake with birthday candles on it, singing me happy birthday! I was completely shocked and almost started crying. It was so nice of them. I couldn't believe it. Then they shot some party poppers at me and gave me a bag of oranges. I was speechless. Korean people are great.

Here is the picture of the cake that they got me. It was some sort of pound cake / yellow cake type of thing with whipped cream and fruit on it. It was yummy yummy.

Then, two days after my birthday, my Korean monk friend had me over to his temple for lunch. He made me seaweed soup, which is a traditional Korean thing to eat on your birthday. I've heard the reason for this is that Korean mothers eat seaweed soup when they are pregnant. I'm pretty sure my mother ate raisin bran and bagels when she was pregnant with me, but I still really like seaweed soup.

Then on that weekend, 5 days after my birthday, my monk friend had me over AGAIN to have dinner for my birthday. The women at his temple made a giant dinner, and one of them got me ANOTHER cake. Here's a picture of all them at dinner. Sunim is wearing a hat that I recently knit for him.

We had rice, japchae, clam soup, squid, shrimp, radish kimchi, lettuce to wrap things in, and pineapple. And cake!

The woman who is putting the candles in is the one who bought me the cake. She is really wonderful and nice and takes care of my when I need help. She bought me a mosquito net when the mosquitos in my apartment were attacking me every night. If only I knew enough Korean to have a conversation with her!

The woman lighting the matches is one of Sunim's relatives and she is almost ALWAYS at the temple. She is really great and takes care of me, too. I can't remember how many times she has made dinner for me and everyone else. And I don't know enough Korean to have a conversation with her either!

Anyway, about the cake.

It was very unusual. It was a SWEET POTATO cake. Unlike the giant orange sweet potatoes we eat in America, Koreans prefer smaller, yellow ones. You can see some slices of them decorating the top of the cake. Again, the main part was a kind of pound cake or yellow cake, and on top was something like whipped cream. But see that layer of filling toward the bottom? That's creamy, mashed sweet potatoes. Isn't that weird?! It was good though. It took some getting used to, but then I was back to my usual cake inhaling self. I took a huge piece of it home and couldn't even wait until the next day to start eating it. I'm a fatty.

To the Koreans though, it wasn't weird at all. They are like, of course it's a sweet potato cake, silly! What else would it be?!

And then they started eating it with chopsticks! That was too much for me to handle, so I dug into mine with my soup spoon. I got of picture of them in action though. They can even cut things with those chop sticks!

And here's a picture of me in my birthday hat for fun.

So that's how my birthday was. It was great and I was really touched at the kindness of the people around me. I was lucky to have such a nice week!

Draw the teacher

2008-10-22T09:19:00.005-04:00

A while ago, I had the students play 'draw the teacher.' Draw the teacher's head! Draw the teacher's nose! Draw the teacher's ears! Etc.

This is what they came up with:

Now, I had always thought that I hid my stress well. When I worked at the medical supply company, they acted SHOCKED (or at least pretended to) that I could have high blood pressure. But apparently these children see right through me. Do I really grit my teeth at them like that? I wonder...

Fireworks Day

2008-10-19T08:07:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was the annual Busan fireworks festival. I hadn't planned to go to it, because over a million people crowd into one small area to watch them and it sounded dangerous and scary to me. However, Busan has many mountains and I thought it would be a good idea to watch the fireworks from the safety of a mountain. I called my monk friend and asked him what he was doing Saturday, and he had the same idea.

So I went over to see him on Saturday, and someone had left a surprise for him on the doorstep of his temple: a big box of durian. Durian is a fruit that is grown in tropical countries that is famous for smelling bad and making people hate it, while some people love it and can't get enough of it. I have always wanted to try durian and be one of the cool people that likes it. So I was excited.

So one of the women at the temple cut it open and served some to us.

I was disgusted. It smelled like a cat peed on a trash bag, and it didn't taste much different. I tried to like it, I really did. But I just couldn't take another urine-y, oniony bite.

So after that was over, we went to go watch the fireworks. Sunim had made sure that I had a proper jacket, because it was going to be cold on the mountain. So you can imagine my surprise when, after walking some distance, we arrived at Gwanganli beach, the center of the fireworks festivities, and the location of over 1 million people. But Sunim, I said, weren't we going to the mountain? Yes, but I thought this would be better, he told me.

It was pretty scary. At one point, people were so cramped and agitated and pushing each other so much, that it was hard to breathe. My arms were pinned against my chest, and people were gasping and crying out in fear. And there were children and babies in the crowd too. So that was scary.

Anyway, I took some video of the event so that you can see how many people there were, and also see some pretty fireworks. Notice toward the end where there is a group of people standing ON TOP of the bathroom. That was pretty funny. The music that they played along with the fireworks was also funny, too: From Queen to the Lord of the Rings sound track.

Colpop

2008-10-13T10:53:00.010-04:00

I love Korean food so much. But I usually only love real Korean food. Korean adaptations of Western food are often boring to me and usually involve ketchup. And you know how I feel about ketchup. Like eggs on toast, slathered in granulated sugar and ketchup. That was a disappointing day.

But anyway, this is a pretty funny Korean invention, if you are into chicken nuggets:

It's called Colpop. It's a cup of cola, with a plastic tray on top filled with chicken nugget balls. There's some spicy mustard sauce drizzled on the nuggets, and a space in the tray for the straw to come out. I understand where the 'Col' in Colpop comes from, but what is the 'pop' for? Popcorn chicken? I don't know. But the kids at my school are always eating it, or being hungry and talking about it. I mentioned it to my coworkers, and they decided that the next day was going to be Colpop day. So that's what happened. Chicken balls.

Apparently I am not the first one on the internet to notice this fast food invention, though. Here's a very thorough article about it, including a great video and amazing diagram.

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/02/bbq-chicken-all-in-one-chicken-nugget-drink-cup.html

Check it out.

Trip to Jeolla Province

2008-10-03T07:07:00.007-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to Jeolla-Do, which is a province in Korea. It is on the other side of Korea (the West coast, I am on the East coast) and it took 4 hours on a bus to get there. I don't have very fond memories of this trip, honestly. It started at 6:30 in the morning and had an overly ambitious itinerary. We visited three major temples, but because of having to travel four hours away and then getting stuck in insane tourist season traffic, we only spent 45 minutes - 1 hour at each temple. The temples were SO busy, too, and had giant tents set up everywhere where people sold food and other things, and then some tents even had singing contests in them. And it was HOT. And then we got home around 11:30 pm.

I was so stressed out and tired when I got home, vowing never to go on a trip like that again. My friend that took me is a great friend, but she really likes history and architecture and traveling and has the stamina of a bear. She actually enjoys taking trips like this EVERY weekend, and thinks they are relaxing. I wish I knew her secret.

But after going through the pictures to put up here on the blog, I realized that I actually saw some pretty cool stuff and am kind of glad that I went. Kind of. I don't know why I let myself get so stressed out over being on a bus. I should have just tried to enjoy myself more. And I really did enjoy looking at the temples. But I still don't think I'll ever go four hours on a bus in the heat of summer during tourist season to spend 2 or 3 hours at a few packed temples.

One of the main reasons it was so packed was that it was the season for a certain wildflower to appear. In America, we call this flower Red Spider Lily or Hurricane Lily. The flower is unusual because the flowers and the leaves appear separately. Hundreds of flowers appear out of the ground suddenly in the fall and last for a few days. Then the flowers die and the leaves come out of the ground. In Korean it's called "Lovesick Flower" (상사화 or 꽃무릊) because the leaves and the flowers never meet. The first temple we visited (I think) was Seonunsa (선운사) and it had lots of spider lilies.

Then we looked a place where the cremated remains of important monks are kept. (I think.)

Here's a good view of the rest of the temple. It was very beautiful, with a very large hall for the monks to teach the people.

Then we had lunch. It was yummy, but I kept ungraciously spitting fish bones out all over, since I am not Korean and have no idea how to eat a fish that still has bones in it.

Then on the way to the next temple, we passed by a field of buckwheat that was in bloom. The Koreans on the bus started gasping and exclaiming "MAEMIL!!" and going crazy. We had to stop the bus for an unplanned field trip. All of the Koreans got out of the bus, and ran into the field to get their pictures taken. I was amazed. I had never seen anyone so excited over flowers. I was starting to understand why there were SO many people at the temples today. Koreans are crazy for flowers.

After a little while, I figured out that this place was actually a tourist destination in itself, with paths through the buckwheat, and even a big store that sold various buckwheat (and barley) products, and a restaurant that had various barley and buckwheat food.

There were even buckwheat and barley mascots.

The next temple we went to Bulgapsa (불갑사). That's where the biggest spider lily fields were, and it was also the busiest and loudest.

Everyone wanted their picture taken in the middle of the flowers. Like these ladies:

My friend STRONGLY suggested that I take one of her, so I did.

Here are two pictures of the temple. I have no idea what the face is about, but don't let the swastika freak you out. It's a symbol of Buddhism (and Hinduism and Jainism for that matter). Hitler just took something that didn't belong to him.

And here are some pictures of the last temple we visited, Yongcheonsa (용천사). I think it was my favorite. There were less people, and it was much more peaceful. And they fed us dinner.

So that's all. Go outside and look at some flowers and be excited.

Jeongrohwan

2008-09-14T10:38:00.009-04:00

In case you didn't know, I have irritable bowel syndrome (that's 과민성 장 증후군 in case you are Korean). It doesn't usually bother me (much) unless I get stressed out or eat beans or cabbage. I was kind of worried about what would happen when I moved to Korea, because I know that Koreans eat a lot of cabbage and that I would probably be a little stressed out.

I was fine for the first three weeks. I would even brag about it to myself in my head. "This is totally the right country for me. I haven't had a painful bowel explosion once. And I had kimchi soup for breakfast! I must be meant to eat Korean food."

Then, a week ago, something changed. Out of the blue, I would get horrible pain and um... "urgency". Every single day. It even woke me up once. I was starting to really freak out. What if this happens in the middle of a class? And then it did! So that was bad. I had say, uhm, I'll be right back, and run away.

So anyway, today was Korean Thanksgiving. It's the biggest holiday of the year. Everyone goes back to their home town and visits their families and has a nice time. My family is on the other side of the world, so I went to my temple and hung out with my Korean monk friend and the people that were visiting him. Several of them were traditional Korean/Chinese medicine doctors and while we were all sitting around the table, I mentioned to Sunim (that means monk in Korean) that maybe they could help my stomach problems.

"Well, what's wrong with your stomach?" Sunim asked, while the herbal doctors just stared at me. I explained the situation to him and looked up irritable bowel syndrome on my phone dictionary to show him. This is the point at which everyone else became very interested in the conversation. He asked me if it was my stomach or "the colon", and when I told him it was the colon, he asked me if I had "the stool". I think at first he thought I was not having "the stool", so I had to tell him OH yes, I am DEFINITELY having the stool.

Then he told me he was going to give me some medicine. I explained that my stomach didn't hurt right now, I just have attacks of pain that make me run off to the bathroom. That didn't seem to matter, and he came back with a bottle of traditional Korean/Chinese herbal medicine called Jeongrohwan or Jeongnohwan (정로환).

The "pills" inside look like rabbit poop, and are made of a moist black clay-like substance. The smell is completely overpowering. It smells really smoky, like what your clothes smell like after a camp fire, except multiply that times a thousand and add a dash of ferret. You can even smell it when the bottle is CLOSED. And your fingers never lose the smell once you have touched these things. It's worse than garlic.

Sunim commanded me to take FOUR of them, immediately, and handed me a glass of water. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had no idea what was in them, and no time to stall and do some hypochondriac internet research. What if he is confused and they make me explode diarrhea? What if they make me throw up? What if they give me an intestinal blockage? What if they have something in them that is going to give me a panic attack? What if the simple fact of not knowing what is in them gives me a panic attack? So I took two and told him that I would "wait and see", and then maybe take the other two later. And he told me, no, take all four, NOW. Everyone was waiting (or trying not to laugh at me) so I just took the rest and crossed my fingers. You have to respect your elders.

It ended up being fine and I didn't explode diarrhea or throw up or hallucinate. He gave me the bottle and told me to take four a day, for one week. When I finally got home, I was able to figure out what I had taken. The main ingredient in these pills (and what is responsible for it's strong smell) is wood creosote. Wood creosote is like... tar, distilled from wood. Or something. Creosote from coal is very poisonous and causes cancer, but wood creosote is apparently not the same thing and is popular in Asia for diarrhea and stomach pain. The more internationally well known version is made by a Japanese company and is called Seirogan. So if you're interested, look that up.

So that's what happened with my colon. I don't know if the wood creosote is going to make it better or not, but please send kind thoughts my way.

Geumjeong Mountain

2008-09-02T21:32:00.026-04:00

On Sunday, I hiked up a mountain. I had put an ad on a website for foreigners living in Busan saying that I was looking for friends to visit Buddhist temples with. A Korean girl answered my ad and said that her and her friends were going hiking this weekend on a mountain that had Buddhist temples on it, but that they might not visit them and just go hiking instead. So I said sure why not!

It ended up being this really nice group of people from all over Busan who have been studying Chinese together. So they were all ages, from younger than me to at least 60 years old.

We climbed up and up the mountain for at least an hour straight, and I thought that I was going to pass out. The Korean people could tell that I was out of shape and struggling, so they kept feeding me cucumbers and water and candy and whatever else they could find. Here is a picture of us taking a break. You can tell everyone is eating.

Then we finally go to a level part called the North Gate.

Behind it there were lots of people hanging around:

In Korea, everybody likes to go hiking. So when you go hiking, especially if it's on the weekend, it's going to be packed. Can you imagine this ever happening in America? The only time people in America gather outside in the wilderness like this, it's called a "festival" and people wear hemp necklaces and listen to alternative music.

Here's some pictures from the rest of the way up the mountain:

Then we got to a high spot on the mountain that is famous for it's magical well. It is said that a golden fish from the heavens came down into this well and that it never goes dry and is always golden in color.

I took a video of the view from up there:

Then we had lunch up there too. My lovely Korean hosts brought kimbap, which is like Korean sushi, but without the raw fish. They add things like cooked meat, or canned tuna, or fake crab, and lots of vegetables. It's pretty healthy stuff. Here's a video of lunchtime

Then we continued climbing to the summit. Here we are drinking water out of a... water place. I've never really seen anything like it, but I think it's a type mountain well or spring.

Then we climbed some more:

Then we took pictures at the summit:

Then we visited a small Buddhist temple that was somewhere on the mountain.

Then we walked through a village and I took a picture of these ladies taking the stems off of chili peppers.

Then we went back into the city and ate a giant famous green onion pancake.

While we were waiting for the food to arrive, one of my new friends decided that he wanted to burn me and I decided to let him. It's called moxibustion, and it's part of traditional Asian medicine. One takes a piece of mugwart (an herb, ssuk in Korean), places it on an acupuncture point, and lights it on fire. It's a very ancient practice (since BC times), predating acupuncture, and it is said that acupuncture evolved out of it. Anyway, he wanted to help my blood pressure, and who am I to say no to that. So I took a video of it. It's kind of hard to see, but look for the glowing orange ember on my skin. He did it five times to each arm and leg!

And that was the end of the night. I learned why Korean people are not scared of cliffs, and it is because they climb mountains every weekend.

I have to make a note though. I can't keep making really long entries like this. This one took me at least 4 or 5 hours, with editing the pictures and uploading the videos. Thinking about making another entry like that makes me feel burnt out and not want to make any entries at all. So expect shorter ones.

Last time I got obsessed with taking pictures and making photo albums, I got stung by two hornets and my leg swelled up like an old lady. I think it was a warning.

Taejongdae

2008-08-24T06:26:00.013-04:00

Today I went on a field trip by myself. I went to a place called Taejongdae, which is famous for its "Suicide Rock". It's a park on the tip of Yeongdo Island, and it's famous for people being sad and jumping into the sea. It's also famous for being beautiful.

Over Korean dinner in Michigan, a Korean friend of a friend from Busan told me to check out Taejongdae. He said that the famous beaches were crowded and that I should head to Suicide Rock instead.

So I thought that I was going to a magical, secret, unknown place. You know, a special little place that only the locals know about, and even then, only those that were really into cliffs and relaxing. I imagined I would be laying on the beach, enjoying the soothing ocean sounds, and then heading up to a magical restaurant on the top of the rock (which would be in a log cabin) and eating hwedupbap (raw fish with mixed rice and vegetables, ahhhhh, fresh from the ocean). Then I would watch the sunset through the restaurant window, feel sleepy, and decide to head home.

That's not what happened, though. I'm surprised I even made it there. It was a half hour subway ride to the Jagalchi area, where I then had to figure out which bus went to Taejongdae. While I was on the subway, a man came through selling cucumber slicers, demonstrated them in front of everyone and stuck paper thin cucumber slices to his face. No one bought any.

Anyway, somehow after a half hour of searching, I had deciphered enough Hangul (Korean writing) to figure out which bus to take. And when I did, it was ANOTHER half hour ride to the park. But I finally got there.

There were lots and lots of Korean people there. Most of them were families with children or young Korean couples having a bit of weekend fun. I felt like the only person there that had come alone, and that was pretty much the case. I saw a couple of other foreigners there, but both times they had a Korean friend that came with them. So I was a little sad. But oh well.

You had to buy a ticket for the shuttle up to the top of the lookout point, or walk 2 miles uphill. I chose to buy a shuttle ticket, as I am prone to heat stroke (self diagnosed) and I was already tired from all the bus searching anyway. But first I went to the snack counter and got some patbingsu, because I was hot and the sugar and bean protein were sure to help keep me from being hungry up there. I went and got in line for the shuttle bus (which took like... another half an hour), and I noticed that I was the only one eating patbingsu. All of the other Korean people were drinking iced coffee or eating popsicles. Even the old people. I would say that maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I have a feeling that I just looked like some jackass who was out of the loop.

The shuttle (which ended up being a bright yellow trolley made to look like a train) made a couple of stops before it got to the top. One was a beach and one was a Buddhist temple, and I wanted to see both. But none of the Korean people did, and I didn't want to shove my way out of the trolley and look like a jackass again. So I stayed put.

We got to the top, and I was already disappointed. The magical log cabin restaurant was actually an overpriced cafeteria and gift shop and looked more like an airport terminal. And the lookout point was PART of the cafeteria. I was still full from my patbingsu, so I didn't to eat anything.

The view was beautiful though, and I was very happy to look out over the ocean and breathe the fresh air. Here's a picture of what I saw. By the way, you can click on any of the images that I put on here. They are much bigger than what is actually shown. Do it!

Outside of the lookout point/cafeteria is a statue of a woman holding two children. She is supposed to commemorate a woman who waited so long for the return of her captured husband that she turned to stone. According to something somewhere on the internet, the actual stone she turned into is a rock formation nearby, and the statue is in her memory. Here she is:

(By the way, Korean ladies love umbrellas.) From this point, you can head down towards the lighthouse and Suicide Rock. So I did. I was really impressed by this lady so I took a picture of her. She is hiking around a mountain in high heels and a dress, while eating corn on the cob.

This is Suicide Rock. Isn't it pretty? See all the people on it?

When I got down closer to it, I was struck by the fact that there are no railings or anything on the actual rock. You could just fall right off. And it was VERY windy! And there were kids everywhere on it! Jumping around, going to the edge, running away from their parents. It interested me more than the actual rock did. I guess it's all that anthropology I took. The people were more interesting than cliffs. So I took some pictures of them. Don't these people look like they are having a lovely date? I am sort of jealous of them.

Here is a picture of a man risking his life:

Daddy, can you get a picture of me by the deadly ravine? Sure, honey.

I also climbed down another part of the park and found an amazing view of the park and Busan:

That's the kind of magical thing that I was looking for. Over on that side too, there were a bunch of women doing something down by the water:

I think they were catching fresh seafood and serving it. There were some people down there sitting on the ground in open tents and it looked like they were eating, but I couldn't tell. The ladies kept waving at me and other people to come down there, but I was too scared. I kind of regret it now. I don't even like seafood, really. Unless it's dried and served as a Korean side dish. But wouldn't it have been cool to eat fresh things out of the ocean with the fisherman-ladies?

So after that, I left. On the way back down, a Korean band had appeared on one of the decks of the light house, and they were playing a cover of the Cardigans "Lovefool". It was weird. The Cardigans are actually a Swedish band, too. So that was more weird. Cause I lived there a year ago. In Sweden. Remember.

On the subway ride home, no one sold any cucumber slicers. But a man who was missing a leg appeared in the subway car, and slid on his butt, propelled by his hands, down the aisle, handing out pamphlets to everyone. While that was odd enough in itself, a minute or so later, he slid back the opposite way, collecting all of the pamphlets that he had handed out. And then he left.

So in summary, these are the things that I learned today:

Travel guidebooks never give accurate directions, so you better learn how to read Hangul.

Sightseeing is better done with a friend.

Tourist destinations are not magical and relaxing.

Learning how to enjoy yourself when there are a bajillion other people around is a skill worth developing.

Patbingsu is not cool anymore.

Korean people are not afraid of cliffs.

For my relatives

2008-08-21T07:49:00.002-04:00

For my relatives that don't really know how to use the internet:

The way this blog works is that the newest posts are posted on top, and the older ones toward the bottom. So go down until you find the first one that you haven't seen. And then read up. I know, it's annoying. I tried to change it but I couldn't.

Also, if you want to see all the posts from a certain month, they are archived on the right. Just click on the year and the month.

Love,

Josh

Chicken Syndrome

2008-08-21T07:48:00.001-04:00

Lolz. This is right around the corner from my work.

Sundubu

2008-08-21T07:35:00.004-04:00

Another thing that I wanted to try once I got to Korea was sundubu. Spicy tofu stew. Not that I really like tofu that much. But for some reason I just had to have it.

I went to the restaurant that is next door to my school. The American teacher that I replaced told me that their thing was sundubu, so I had to try it.

In most Korean restaurants, you have to take off your shoes in the entry way, sit down on a mat on the floor, and eat on a low table. That's how this one worked. It was fun to be barefoot in a restaurant!! You can't do that in America!

This is what I ate:

The spicy tofu stew is down in the right hand corner. When you order something in Korea, most of the time you get a bajillion complimentary side dishes, too. They are called banchan (which means... side dishes). This one came with a whole fish (which I had no idea what to do with, so I didn't eat it), kimchi, pumpkin, tofu, some green vegetable thing, some red dried fish/squid/something thing, and some brown thing. I ate all the brown thing and all the pumpkin, so they brought me more! That's how it works! Isn't that awesome? Guess how much this whole meal cost me? Six dollars! No tip either, they don't do that here.

Then I went shopping at Lotte again. I am still amazed every time that I go there. The Korean grocery stores in America are as big as gas stations. This store is as big as Costco. Look at how big the aisle is that is devoted entirely to SEAWEED. It's like a mile long.

Patbingsu

2008-08-21T07:16:00.005-04:00

There's this Korean dessert that I was just dying to try since before I even got here. It's called patbingsu. It's shaved ice with sweetened red beans on it. Or at least it used to be. Now you get it with a bajillion things on it besides just sweetened red beans. And it's good.

I finally got to try some in the Lotte food court on Monday. The American teacher that I relplaced was still here, so he was showing me around and took pictures of me eating it.

When the lady brought it out to me, it was WAY bigger than the one that I had pointed to. Later, I was told by the American teacher's Korean girlfriend that the lady said she gave me the big one because I was a foreigner. Awwwwwww.

Anyway, it was shaved ice with red beans on it, green tea ice cream, gummy candies, fruit cocktail, and CORN FLAKES. Here I am eating it:

Mmmmm yummies. It was expensive though. $4.50. That's a lot considering you can have a giant sit down dinner for like $6-8 dollars.

Chomp chomp chomp.

Update!!!

2008-08-21T06:42:00.009-04:00

Hi Everyone That Loves Me,

I haven't been able to update my blog since I moved out of the motel. The internet in my apartment is messed up, and it doesn't let me get on any websites at all. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I can check my email and use Skype. But not today. My school is going to fix it for me, it's just taking forever.

So anyway, I left my apartment and went in search of a "PC Bang". PC Bang (pronounced Bahng, not BANG!) means "PC room" in Korean, and it's basically an internet cafe. The one I found is full of Korean boys playing computer games and they are very loud. It kind of feels like I am in a bar because it's in the basement of a building and you can smoke in here.

Anyway. My apartment is nice. It's small, but I like it. It just one room, with a bed on one wall, and a sink and a stove on the other. But when I moved into it, it was horrible. I think that the guy that lived there before me had not cleaned it in the nearly two years that he had lived there. It was dirty, and I'm talking piles of moldy clothes in the laundry room dirty. So when I first got there, I wanted to cry. But the director of the school, the head teacher of the school, and two cleaning ladies from the school came over two nights ago and cleaned for three hours. Then the head teacher bought me dinner, some groceries, a vacuum cleaner, a towel, and a new small dresser. It was great. They had no idea that the last teacher was such a mess. So now I am happy.

Here is a picture of what the bathroom looked like to give you an idea of how gross it was:

Yes, he duct taped the showerhead to the wall. And a little of that stuff on the floor is stains on the tile, but most of it is not. Most of it is filth.

I don't have any pictures of my clean apartment yet, mostly because I am not done putting all of my stuff away. Almost though!

I live right buy a giant mega super huge department store called Lotte. It's very convenient. It's like... 8 or 10 floors tall. One floor is a grocery store, one floor has a food court, one floor is a theatre, one store is a swimming pool, and the other floors have everything else you could think of. But a lot of it is really expensive, cause Lotte can be fancy like Macy's. Anyway, it's huge. It looks like a hospital. This is the part of it that I see on the way to work. I don't think I have even seen all sides of it yet, it's that big. It's like trying to see all sides of U of M hospital.

This is my desk at work. But that's not my juice. Cause I don't buy juice.

I like my job so far. It's easy and the kids are nice, and my coworkers are nice too. I'm the only foreigner there. One of the teachers is quitting after this week though. and I'm going to be teaching by myself a lot. Which will be weird. But we'll see how it goes.

And oh yeah. This is what it looks like when I walk to work. See the mountains?

First Day

2008-08-18T05:31:00.008-04:00

Going to another country gives you a lot of stories. I have been here for less than 24 hours, and I feel like I already have an overwhelming amount of stuff I could talk about. So I don't know where to start, but here's some stuff.

First of all, I am in Busan. It's the second biggest city in South Korea. It's got like 4 million people, and is one of the largest ports in the world. Korea has a bajillion mountains going through it, and Busan is full of mountains. So that's neat. And I live next to the tallest one in Busan.

So anyway. When I got here, I thought that I was going to my apartment right away. But the teacher who I am taking over for isn't leaving until tonight, so I am in a motel for these first two days. The motel that I am staying at is called the "Oriental Motel". It's kind of seedy and has complimentary condoms in the room and three channels of free Korean girl porn on the TV. Here's a picture of the inside of it:

I don't know what's up with the circle bed, but I don't like it. It also doesn't have sheets on it, just that weird pad and then a weird matching pad-like blanket.

Anyway, this the view from the window. It's kind of a gross day out, as you can tell, and more humid than anything that ever happens in Michigan.

Okay I have to go move into my apartment now. Here's a funny picture from the grocery store. Mmm sand.

Yeolmu Kimchi

2008-07-10T11:10:00.004-04:00

So I guess I don't really write in here a lot. Or ever. But I'm moving to Busan in a month, and that is an adventure. So there should be lots of writing.

Anyway. I love Korean food. It's basically... 85% of the reason that I want to teach English in Korea. And the best Korean recipes that I have ever found have come from this lady: Maangchi. She is amazing. Her recipes are better than any Korean cookbook that you could buy at the store. And they are in video format! And she's cute!

She has a recipe video for kimchi made from young radishes. Here it is: yeolmu kimchi. Apparently it's a very summer thing to eat. Well, on Monday I'm going over to my Korean friend's house and we are going to make some sort of Korean feast. I thought it would be funny to surprise him with yeolmu kimchi, and making kimchi is fun anyways.

So I used Maangchi's recipe. And I made a video of it. It's over two hours of cooking, compressed into 4 minutes. It was so much fun! I hope you enjoy it.