Soju cocktails

Last night a whole bunch of people met up at a bar for a going away party for 2 people. I got there early with a few others which was good because it ended up quite crowded. One good thing about this particular bar is their variety of soju cocktails. Soju is a rice alcohol, tastes sort of like cheap vodka, and is a Korean staple. Most Koreans get a bottle of this and do shots at dinner, along with whatever beer they're drinking. This bar mixes pitchers of slushies with soju - kind of like flavored frozen magaritas, but with soju not tequila (so even better for me!). We had lots of pitchers last night, and I tried 3 flavors: strawberry, kiwi and pommegranite (all good, all tasted like jolly ranchers). I forgot my camera, so I didn't take any pictures, but it was a cute bar with a wooden front porch that will be nice in the summer. So, here's a picture about the legend of a specific brand of soju from the resturant Jeff and I had lunch in in Daegu.

Korean lessons

So to try and meet new people and to attempt to figure out what's going on around me, I went to church tonight for a free Korean lesson. I thought this would be simple type things - directions, food, the alphabet etc. Nope. Well, maybe that's what it was 10 weeks ago when they started. Now they're saying sentences and learning the past tense of verbs etc. The people were nice, but basically I sat there for over an hour staring at the dry erase board. Two of the students were husband and wife who are the pastors (well the English pastors) at the church. They have an English service earlier in the afternoon which I didn't attend (although I might start going there to meet people instead). The other American guy was interesting - he really seemed to want to learn Korean and studied a lot. I'm not sure if I will go back or not because at this point it seems like kind of a waste of time since i don't understand anything that is going on, nor can I pronouce the letters or syllables yet. So we'll see. At least I tried right?

Farmers market and Korean Chinese food

Today I decided I would go to the farmer's market. I left myself enough time to walk through the street and to try and find the post office before school. The farmer's market is down the length of one street - maybe 2-3 blocks long. I didn't take any pictures today, but I might some other time. I didn't take any because I sort of stick out and it felt a little bit mean to stop and take pics of weird things I saw - like dried octopus and mini dried fish and lots and lots of fresh sea creatures.

Which brings me to my next point - it might be awhile before I hit up the market because 3/4s of it smells like fish. The worst "fishy" smelling thing was the bunches of dried seaweed. They did have a large selection of mushrooms that looked good though. The other part that might be hard about buying things at the market is lack of cash register. In most stores, I can look to see how much stuff costs, but in the market it would end up being lots of fingers being held up. Also, lots of sellers are old people and they get more confused than young people when it comes to trying to communicate. On my way to the market a mom and her son got off the bus in front of me. Now, most people who know me know that I love baby jeans. Jeans and overalls on little kids cracks me up. This little boy didn't just have jeans - kid had skinny jeans. And no, they weren't too small - they fit him. See:

Skinny jeans

After walking through the market, I walked around trying to find the post office. Good news, I found it. Bad news, I still didn't find post cards. I will try to find some type of envelope/card etc. this weekend and attempt the post office again. On my walk back to work I saw my first real Jinju graffiti and it made me think of Jeff (for those of you who don't hang out with him, he says this a lot).


Was Jeff in Jinju? Has he started a gang?

 After work Claire and I went and had Chinese food. Yes, Chinese food made by Koreans. I forgot to take a picture, but it actually looks like Chinese food we get at home. We had sweet and sour pork (good - had sliced cucumbers, mushrooms and pineapple pieces), soup (ok - clear broth with scallions and egg bits, like egg drop and wonton combined) and fried rice (good - it's like our fried rice before they actually fry it. So it has the veggies and the cooked egg, but it's just cooked rice, not fried. Plus the serve this weird brown mushroom gravy on the side. It was ok, but not needed). They also gave us pickeled radish slices and tea. No fortune cookie.

The plan for the weekend is to do some laundry. I know how to turn the washer on, but I don't know how to start it. So we'll see what happens.

Bean sprouts

I went to dinner tonight with Claire. We don't leave work until right around 10, so a lot of places are closed. We ended up at a bbq (beef and leaf) place. We got a menu without any English and without any pictures, so we really had no idea what we were getting. Luckily we ended up with pork slices. The bad part was that the table next to us had the same meat we did, but also had some good looking veegies - squash, mushrooms etc. But we were fine with all out stuff. This place gives a spicy chili type sauce and it's pretty good. They also serve sesame leaves alongside lettuce leaves. I don't really care for the sesame leaves - they are slightly fuzzy and have a bitter taste to me. They also had a kimchi soup which was ok, but I prefer the black bean soup.

Salad ,sauce, pork

This place serves 2 types of bean sprouts - regular and "kimchi" sprouts. Kimchi really means fermented, but usually refers to the cabbage (which I discovered I like better when cooked on the grilled, but it still isn't my fav). I liked both kinds of sprouts.

Regular on left, kimchi on right

 The best part (or funniest part) of the night was on our walk home. This younger girl (maybe late teens) (in acid washed jeans btw) was running past us trying to get somewhere. As she passed us, she stopped, bowed to each of us individually, then turned and kept running. It was very bizarre.

Diary of a wimpy Ry

It's almost the end of my third week here. So far things are pretty good, but there are still a few issues that need to be worked out. Namely, I don't have a passport or alien registration card right now and thus still don't have a bank account here. Those things will be worked out soonish (I hope).

Apparently my teaching skills are ok, although sometimes I have no idea if these kids are actually learning anything from me or just repeating what I say. I've had this conversation with a few people here and it's interesting to see the difference between American/European kids and Korean kids as far as school goes. Korean kids have an incredible amount of work. They go to "regular" school every morning, go home for a few hours, then go to English school for 3-4 hours. They have massive amounts of homework that no American kid would do (at least I wouldn't). But their style of thinking is very different. They memorize and regurgitate, instead of thinking critically. And it's not a critisim, just an observation. For example, we had a "mystery" unit last week and the idea was to find out who broke into a store. The dective asks kids where they were at specific times. One kid said he was at the movies at 10pm, but another kid said he couldn't have been there because the theater closed at 9:45. So I asked, "Where was Simon at 10pm?" "the movies" "Well the movies closed before 10, so could he have been there?" Silence. True, these are youngish kids, but they don't really have reasoning skills. And that's hard to teach when it's not part of their culture.

My other issue is meeting people. Now I don't need to be around people all the time. I'm pretty content to stay at home at play on the internet or watch movies or read etc. But, I wish I had someone (or a couple of someones) to go to dinner with. Claire and I go out occasionaly, but I feel bad about following her around all the time. I'm not someone who is totally embarrased to do things alone either. I've been to the movies by myself on a number of occassions. But here, dinner/lunch is a social event. Meals are usually designed to share with at least 1 other person, if not more. So it's awkward to go to lots of resturants by yourself. Pizza places or fast food type places are different - you can normally get take out there and it's not so bad. It's the places where you go and sit, the places with traditional food - the places I want to try out, where it's better to have someone else. And for some reason, I don't mind being "different" as much when I'm with someone else who is also "different". It's like, we can be awkward and point at things together. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's how I feel.

Hopefully I will be able to branch out some, but that's part of the reason there aren't that many posts - I don't go anywhere. I go to work, then home, then back to work. I'll explain more later...time for work!

Weekend in Daegu - Part 3 - Muju and Yeongdong

After the park we decided to drive on to Muju. Jeff had Monday off and was planning on skiing at Muju. There is a large resort there and decent skiing/snowboarding. It is also somewhat between Daegu and Jeff's house. I decided to go with him since I didn't have to work on Monday until 3, although I wanted to be back around noon so that I could get dressed and finish some work. I had heard there was a bus from Muju to Daegu and thus I would be able to get home. We took one of the back roads (but not like a country road or anything, more like a state road v. an interstate) instead of one of the major highways. It was very twisty because we were driving through the mountains (although 80% of Korea is mountains anyways).

View from highway 30

View from road to Muju from Daegu

We passed through a few small towns, but didn't stop. There are multiple stations where you have to drive over a speed bump then wait while your car gets misted like a car wash. This is to prevent horse and mouth disease. Over the course of the afternoon we probably got misted about 10 times.

Horse and mouth car wash

Muju itself is divided into 3 seperate parts - Muju proper, Muju resort, and a village outside of the resort. We knew there wouldn't be buses from the resort, but thought there might be buses from the village. Nope. So we decided to eat dinner at the resort because the afternoon ski session had just ended and traffic down the hill was pretty bad. There was a Domino's at the resort and we decided to split a pizza. I told Jeff he could pick as long as there was no fish on it. He chose a Swiss fondue pizza. It had cheese, ham, mushrooms, these long potato strips that we somewhat sweet and, of course, corn. It was also served with pickles. It was pretty tasty.

Swiss fondue pizza - the yellow stripes are like mashed potatoes but kind of sweet



Muju ski slope


Then we drove to Muju proper, which took about 30 minutes. We drove around the town trying to find the bus station. We finally decided to try a main building and pushed the doors open. It was the building for local government workers - the library, attorneys, civil works etc. There were people in cubicles and we asked one how to get to the bus. They wanted to know where I was going and I said Jinju and they freaked out and started speaking rapid Korean to each other. Jeff and I tried to tell them we needed to know where the terminal was, not how to get to Jinju. Finally a guy who spoke some English came in, walked outside with us and offered to give us a ride to the terminal, but we declined. Directions included going over the rainbow bridge which was a bridge that lit up in various colors. It was the most interesting part of Muju. We found the terminal and found out they no longer provided bus service to Daegu. Rats.

So we went on to the next town, Yeongdong. This is where I have to say how awesome my brother is. While he can annoy the crap out of me sometimes, he was willing to drive another 30 minutes out of the way so that I would be able to get to work on time in the morning, and he didn't complain about it. We found the train station at Yeongdong and assumed there would be buses nearby. Nope. So I bought a train ticket to Daegu leaving just before 7 am, so that I could then take a train to Jinju. They did have a train to Jinju, but it didn't arrive until 4:30 and I would have missed work. We booked a room at the Hotel Dubai. Nothing says class like hot pink and zebra stripes.

Hotel Dubai room

This room was about half the price of the room in Daegu, but in my opinion was just as good. They gave us an amenities bag and drinks etc. There was a dirty glass in the fridge, but otherwise it was pretty good. We had already eaten dinner, but decided to go out to the GS 25 (convience store) to get some drinks and snacks. Jeff got some beers and I got a vod/ice - like a wine cooler. It tasted like grape soda and vodka - very sweet. The guy at the counter was using his limited English and Jeff was using his limited Korean to have a coversation about numbers and where we were from. He gave us free candy - chocolate bonbons. We walked back to our room, drank, watched some Rocky V and Jeff watched his "stories" (he still hasn't told me the name of the show) on his computer while I took a bath. Then we went to bed because we were waking up so early the next day. We got up, Jeff dropped me off at the train station and went skiing. He said it was pretty good. I caught the sunrise, took the train to Daegu where I met an army guy going to Seoul, got on the correct bus home (sitting across the aisle from a monk) although I almost missed it because it was going to "Jinjoo" not Jinju, and caught a local bus home to my house. All in all it was a fun weekend, even though what we mostly did was drive. At least we like the same music and Jeff's Ipod was charged.


Sunrise at the Yeongdong train station



Weekend in Daegu - Part 2 - Palgan-san Park

We woke up around 9 or so Sunday morning, got dressed, checked out and walked to get breakfast at a little place called Sunshine Toast and Coffee. I had a latte and strawberry jam on toast. Jeff had coffee and Sunshine toast (or toast with cabbage, pickles and some kind of sauce in the middle. He wanted a waffle but they were out. He was not expecting pickles). Then we walkd over to the bus station to see what time the last bus for Jinju left.

On our way to the correct terminal we witnessed a cabbie fight. One cab driver honked at another and made him move. So the second cab driver pulled out, got out of his car and walked to the first one. Then he girl slapped him on the face a couple of times and wouldn't let him out of the cab. Then he got back in his cab. They were yelling at each other the whole time. This apparently happens often because Jeff and I were the only ones paying them any attention. Nobody else even looked at them, but we stopped walking to watch.

After figuring out the correct terminal and bus times, we got back in the car and drove to Palgong-san provincial park. This is one of the bigger parks in Daegu and has a big Buddha statue. It look about 30 minutes to get to the park. Once we got it, we found a tourist information center that had a map of the park in English.


Mini Shelby at tourist building



Park Map (we were not on the map during the initial hike)

The map wasn't laid out very well and Jeff and I went the wrong direction and ended up hiking to the monks living quarters and various hermitages. It wasn't off limits, it just wasn't the touristy park (not to mention it was very uphill).


Graves with ancient writing



Living quarters

Jeff was a trooper and put up with my slow walking. By that I mean when I stopped to rest he threw mini pine cones at me. 

Crossing a bridge to a hermitage

Figures at the base of a grave marker

View from the top hermitage

We also saw these 3 cats, which made me think of mom. Partly because it was cats, mainly because we watched this one cat stalk the other for about 5 minutes and I could picture her yelling at us for watching cats instead of looking at the buildings etc. (a la Venice pidgeons). We then took the "senic" route back and climbed up on top of the hill instead of on the paved path. I was proud of myself because I don't like narrow paths where you can fall off the side of things and I actually made it up without having a total panic attack (although it took some coaxing and repeated you're not going to fall offs from Jeff). I mentioned before that Koreans are into hiking. Well this place was full of people with fancy walking sticks and hiking gear.

We finally figured out we were in the wrong place and walked over (easy walk) to the main buildings. People were drinking from this fountain from those plastic bowl things.

Center fountain with drinking cups

They were also touching this rock, which according to the pamphlet is the tail of a phoenix and the little rocks are eggs (the pavilion is supposed to be shaped like a phoenix).

Phoenix tail rock and "eggs"

Dragon stairs

I wasn't sure what I could take pictures of, so I didn't get the 3 really cool gold Buddhas inside the main temple (national treasure 1563). These are pictures on the doors of Daeungjeon main worshipping hall.

Roof of main hall



Door painting on main hall

Door painting on main hall



There is a large circle with a bunch of buildings in it. There was a gong, an individual bell tower and a large beller tower coupled with a drum. There was also a room with 4 large bright colored painted guys. People would walk in the room and bow to the guys.

Gong tower

Bell and drum tower

Door of back hermitage

Two of the big guys

Then we walked around to the lower section with the big statue. We passed the flag poles which were built at the end of the Silla dynasty and the Priest Inak monument.

Flag poles

Priest Inak Monument

Frozen waterfall near flag poles

The main area was roped off, which sucked, but you could still see the Tongil-daebul Buddha. It's 30m high and was finished in 1992. It the world's largest Buddha. Supposedly 2 of Buddha's bones are in the body of the statute. 

They also have a little museum and told me I could take pictures with no flash. You had to take your shoes off and wear slippers to go into the musuem. After seeing the big Buddha we decided to skip the 108 steps and some of the smaller temples and instead started on our way to Muju (next post)

 

Claymation of monks in musueam with gods looking down on them

Piece in museum

Fountain outside of Buddha statue. People were offering water in the silver cups and drinking from the plastic ones

Weekend in Daegu - Part 1

Jeff and I tried to meet up last weekend, but he called an audible and we switched it to this weekend. We decided to stick with the original plan of meeting up in Daegu. Jeff drove and I took a bus to Dongdaegu station where we met up. I got my bus ticket with no problem, but thought the trip was off to a bad start when I started to get car sick (can't read on the bus - not even the nook). It didn't help matters when the two ladies across the aisle broke out their hard boiled eggs and tomato juice for snack. Luckily I fell asleep for awhile and everything ended up fine. Jeff and I met in the upper part of the train station and counted no less than 5 coffee places in a 100 yard span. We got in his car and set off for Camp Henry or Camp Walker.


Sweet 1999 Galloper

 

Face in Daegu

Jeff had been to the camps before, but he took a helicopter the previous time. So we ended up driving around Daegu for about 2 hours trying to find the camps. I was told to look for checkerboard water towers - like UTs endzones. After driving around for awhile and getting nowhere, we saw the Daegu tower - it's a 202m space needle-like structure with a resturant and observation platform and optional bungee jumping. It was one of the things I wanted to see in Daegu. So we drove to Duryu Park and up to the tower. The base of the tower is already pretty high and has views that overlook the city. When we crossed the street, Jeff saw the water towers (there are 4 in all). I was already getting vertigo from just standing at the base of the tower so we decided not to pay $4 each to go up another 77 floors.

Daegu Tower



View of Daegu from tower parking lot

We hopped back in the car and drove south and eventually came upon Camp Walker. I had to get out of the car and stand by the front gate while Jeff drove in. Then I wasn't allowed on the base because I didn't have my passport or alien card (see previous post). I didn't take a picture of the camp because I was nervous about taking pictures and getting yelled at. Jeff went to get gas while I walked down the street.

Dress shop near Camp Walker

He picked me up on the side of the road and we found a "beef and leaf" place for lunch. Jeff called it that because you cook your beef (or usually pork) and then roll it up in a lettuce leaf to eat it. We were both hungry so we split pork shoulder, steamed egg (which is kind of like a scallion quiche with no crust. And I was informed that Jeff would probably love quiche but it's too uppity so he won't eat it) and black bean soup (with nicely seasoned tofu). They always give you a bunch of other sides too - we had pickles, pickled raddishes (I like them, Jeff doesn't), bean sprouts, kimchi, spinach, hunks of garlic, this awesome bean paste stuff and onions and peppers in a sauce and sticky rice.

Lunch Menu

Lunch

Steamed Egg (don't know why it won't let me rotate it)

Resturant sign

 After lunch we went to look for a place to stay. We ended up back near the train station and decided to stay at a place called Motel Top. My guidebook was basically worthless when it came to lodging. The room was kind pricey, but really nice (we were VIP - it said so on the door). We were pretty sure that it was designed as a place to entertain mistresses. It wasn't trashy like a motel six, but there were some red lights and other things that aren't needed in a regular hotel room. It had a jacuzzi tub, a body shower, sitting area and personal karaoke machine (although there wasn't a mike).

Sitting area

Window between tub and bed

After dumping off our stuff, we went out to scope out the downtown area. We passed a fish resturant that had tanks in the windows. I would have taken more pictures, but there were people inside eating next to them and I didn't want to be rude. But I had to take a picture of these things. I'm sure I could google them and figure out what they are, but it's almost better being creeped out.

Sea creatures

We stopped in a bar with a knight outfront. It was practically empty but was a great bar - super nice seating and a decent beer selection. We each had a beer and shared some macaroni noodles (kind of like Kix cereal but not as sweet). Then we went to look for another bar when Jeff remembered he left in cell in the car. We went back to get it and he had a missed call from his boss. So I watched some TV (How I met your mother) while he "made shit happen".

Me and a knight in shining armour

Then we went back out for dinner at a place called Cheers, although this was the logo out front. We shared some popcorn while they brought out drinks (KGB for me - basically smirnoff ice). We then shared a fruit plate and sausages for dinner.

Cheers logo

Sausages - 4 kinds

Fruit plate

We were both really tired so we went back to the hotel. I took a bath (when you hit the jets, colored lights come on). They gave a complementary face mask, which I thought would be a cream or something, but was an actual cloth cut out thing to put on your face. It was very nice. Another weird/interesting thing about hotels is what they provide. They have all the essentials - toothpaste, soap, hairbrush, lotion etc. but most of that is shared stuff, i.e. they just leave a comb in the room all the time. That squigs me out a bit - I mean lice anyone? There is another packet that they give you at check-in with packaged toothbrushes, condoms, bath gel and a razor. They also leave you some drinks in the mini fridge (I took 2, but forgot the 2 from the second hotel...more about those in another post). That was the end of Saturday/Day 1.