Click HERE for a video tour of my apartment.
Below is my address in both English and Korean. I believe it should be fine if you simply write my address in English. However, to be on the safe side, maybe use the Korean version as well. You can print out the Korean version and tape it to the envelope/whatever or laugh at your inability to write it as I just did. :o) Good old-fashioned snail mail is much appreciated. I would love to hear from everyone!
Katy Snell
PYUN-AN HOUSE 300, 1000-365, IGOK-DONG,
DALSEO-GU, DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA
704-929
Korean version:
대한민국 대구시 달서구 이곡동 1000-365
편안오피스텔 300호
704-929
Katy Snell
Remember the girl I mentioned in my last post? Let me explain a little more about Seong Ji. She is my Korean co-teacher, so she will be my translator in class. Seong Ji (I gave her the nickname of SJ) was placed with me through TaLK, so she is not required to be anything more than a coworker.. but that has not been the case.
Every day, SJ calls me, e-mails me and basically makes sure that I am alive and well. I enjoy her company because she is the epitome of a Korean woman: not a smidgen over 100 pounds, pale white skin and exceedingly demure and modest, often covering her mouth and bowing her head when she speaks which is a sign of humbleness in Korean women.
I love SJ because despite our immense culture clash, I can tell that she is a wonderful, caring person who wants to be my best friend in Korea more than anything else. She helped me move all of my things, negotiated with the gas company (she put my utilities in HER name!), showed me how the garbage system works, took me to the bank, took me food shopping, got me my address, hails taxis for me... the list is embarrassingly long. Not to mention that it is exhausting to communicate with each other. While SJ is fluent, I have to use dramatic hand/facial gestures to make sure my point is understood. Cliches, euphemisms, metaphors, similes, references to any type of Americana and large words are all lost on her, so basic speaking becomes physically taxing. This will improve with time once we get to know each other better, but I have a perfect example of the sort of misunderstanding that can happen between us: A very common expression used among friends in America is to say "Oh shut up!" or "Be quiet" and laugh afterward. I noticed a horrified expression on SJ's face, and when I asked what was wrong she wanted to know what that person had done to offend me so deeply. Often, SJ will take words at face value, so when she hears "shut up", she thought I was telling my friends off!
By the end of the moving day, I could tell that SJ was bone-weary and near collapse from chauffeuring me all over Daegu. But she never said a peep and was nothing but smiles from 8 in the morning to 8 at night. When it came time for her to leave, I gave her a hug which surprised her. I thought I had been too forward, but then she looked at me, smiled and said "We will be good friends, Katy. I want be your friend but also your mom in Korea make sure you ok all the time. We will learn much from each other." I don't think I can describe her personality any better than with that statement :o)
Sorry for such a short post, but I am busy unpacking and food shopping. I plan to go to the grocery to get things to make SJ spaghetti bolognese for dinner. While it seems like a plain meal, it is VERY difficult to find decent Italian food in Korea and the ingredients for the meal will probably scalp me for around $30. But SJ is excited and it is the least I can do to show her my gratitude. I will make sure to take pictures of our dinner night together.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Donghwasa Buddhist Temple, POSCO, Folk Village
IMPORTANT: If you click the pictures, they will enlarge so you can get a better look at everything!
I know where Buddha got his belly. A few days ago, my fellow TaLKers and I along with our Korean co-teachers (the Korean people who will be our translators in class) got to take a trip up into the mountains to visit a famous Buddhist Temple to observe a tea ceremony and Monks dressed in baggy gray outfits performing their daily prayers. And of course we got to eat too! I was in heaven (or I had reached the sublime as the Buddhists would say :o) ) because Buddhists are vegetarians and they eat laaaarrge quantities of food. But let me recount the day before I dive right into food descriptions and pictures.
Geographically speaking, Daegu is situated in a basin, with mountains encasing the city. In order to get to the temple, we took a charter bus up into the mountains, barreling up the squirreliest roads fathomable, dodging old ladies with baskets of vegetables precariously balanced on their heads and children playing stick ball in the streets. Thank goodness I had the foresight to pack a lot of Drammamine.
Once we arrived, it was a steep uphill climb to the pavilion where we to participate in early morning prayer. There was a lady dressed in traditional Buddhist garb who taught us the correct way to praise Buddha when you first enter the temple (a man strikes a small, hollow wooden gourd over and over while you kneel and place your forehead on the ground 3 different times).
Sound easy? Hardly! My knees were shaking with the effort to keep my feet close together while simultaneously squatting down onto my knees, bending over to touch my head to the floor and never once using my hands to assist me. And the woman who was giving the lesson performed the prayer around 7 times... (that's 21 bows for all you mathematicians out there ;) ) yet by far the most comical element of the prayer is going into what I like to describe as "trance" mode. You must sit on the wooden floor, Indian style as we would call it (by the way, the lady kept saying "yoga..yoga!" to me- yaaaay flexibility!) with ramrod straight posture and you must try to focus your gaze on the tip of your nose and keep your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth. You should try this right now.... stop reading and give it a shot!. We had to hold this position for 5 minutes at a time. I'm not sure about enlightenment, but I definitely felt dizzy.
After prayer, we had a waif of a woman give us a tour of Buddha's stomping grounds. This particular temple is touted as being over 1,500 years-old, and to see it is to believe it. As the story goes, long ago a phoenix landed in this sacred spot and became one with the surrounding mountains. A phoenix is the fabled flaming bird that symbolizes rebirth and renewal (HUGE tenets in Buddhism), and on the eaves of every building, there were brightly painted birds symbolizing the phoenix. Coolest of all was the phoenix tail though- there was a hefty slab of reddish rock jutting out of the stone staircase leading up to Buddha's effigy and below it were three oval-shaped white boulders. This was the phoenix's tail and 3 "wishing" eggs that you could touch for wishes.
I touched each stone and wished for the continued good health of all my loved ones, so I hope everyone is feeling extra blessed ^.^
Here are some photos of the scenery. It was a gray, damp day, which was nice since Korea has been every bit as sweltering as Florida.
There were 4 of these big dudes, and each one serves as a protector for the temple.
I always love to photograph the ceilings of temples. look at how ornate the patterns are! By the way, the flower is a lotus, the holy flower of Buddha.
Each roof tile has a hand-painted prayer on the underside. Similar to La Segrada Familia in Spain (google it!), many Buddhist temples seem to be funded by donations. So visitors can purchase a tile for like $5-$10 and it will be fitted to one of the buildings in need of fresh roofing. It's a means of inexpensive Korean health insurance :o)
Buddhists revere all lifeforms... even creepy, man-eating spiders. (Ok, so it was the size of a quarter... but it looks huge in this picture!) When we had tea later in the day, our host explained that hot water leftover from afternoon tea cannot be immediately tossed out because it could inadvertently kill an ant or worm. Whoa.
Look very closely at the top of the temple and you will notice a swastika. The swastika is all over Korea from cell phone accessories to swastika sweet rice cakes and children's underwear. It even signifies vegetarian food on packages! What the swastika actually means is eternity, and literally translates to "ongoing luck". Because the Nazis generally used a right-facing swastika, the Buddhist religion usually uses a leftward-facing swastika to differentiate it from the horrific stigma the rightward symbol carries (however, the swastika was NEVER meant to represent anything but positive qualities). An interesting note: I looked it up and the leftward facing swastika means mercy and love while the rightward-facing one signifies strength and intelligence...
MASSIVE BUDDHA! (Think University of Florida Century Bell Tower huge..) He had multiple neck rolls and huuuuge, drooping earlobes. Probably the only respected fat person in Korea ;)
This tasted like river water.
My completely vegetarian Buddhist meal. Tofu, cabbage, spicy curried rice (the red stuff), potato-leek patties and lotus root! The lotus roots are the circular, tan things with black sesame seeds on them. You can't eat just one.
The lady who gave us the praying and subsequent tea ceremony demonstrations. Tea ceremony lasts for about an hour just to make a single pot of loose-leaf green tea. (Buddha seriously needs to be introduced to sugar and cream..) But it was fun and incredibly authentic. I just had a numb butt for a solid 2 hours afterward.
You must offer 3 cups of tea. One to your neighbor, one to God and lastly one to yourself.
Korean people are cuddly. They have no concept of "the bubble" and are constantly in your personal space. I have no clue who this girl it, but everyone here likes to take pictures with foreigners. Great for times when you are feeling lonely... not so good for times like, oh let's see.... showering! At every hotel, I had a maid walk right into the bathroom while I was showering to restock towels and check the shampoo bottle.
Remember to wash your hands :) I love this!
After our temple visit, we drove to a nearby museum that housed all the greatest brass works of Korea. Apparently, Daegu is famous for it's brass bowls, chopsticks, cymbals, etc. Here are a few of the more impressive pieces in the museum.
This is how many dishes are served in a typical, traditional Korean meal.
Funeral candlesticks
My battle cry. This gong made your ears ring!
So funny! This mat (and those 4 sticks flying through the air) are a traditional, ancient Korean board game. You had to move pawns across a map and these sticks told you how many spaces to move (like dice). However, each wooden stick had a blank side too, so you had to toss them a certain way to get high numbers. Enter in this insane little Korean lady. She is a prime example of what we would call a "Hajima". Notice the large, Poker-player visor, the socks paired with flip flops and the baggy, elastic waist pants. These are the traits of all Hajimas and they are to be feared! These are the type of women who will snatch you by the ear and holler at you in public... and consequently the types of women who will snatch board game dice from you to show you how the game SHOULD be played. Every time she threw the sticks, she shouted some kind of unintelligible hawk-like screech. And she won. Every. Time. Fear the Hajima, for she is very crafty!
After this day, we had another 'adventure" day where we visited an ancient folk village and Korean steel mill. I like to refer to this day as Korean good PR day because, honestly, why the heck else would we visit these places?
Unfortunately, they would not allow us to take photos of the steel mill, but it turned out to be fascinating. The mill is called POSCO, and it is the 4th largest producer or steel in the world. The complex is located on the northern coast of South Korea, and it is as large as Stanton Island in NY. They lead us on a five minute walk through one of the steel-processing buildings, and I have never seen anything like it before! A 4 football-fields long-conveyor belt was carrying these yacht-sized molten plates of steel across a constant flow of freezing-cold water. The steel was neon orange, and the water would skitter across the surface like oil in a frying pan. 70% of the steel produced in the plant is utilized domestically, but I will note that on my new KitchenAid stand mixer that I received form my birthday (Thanks Mom and Dad!) the mixing bowl comes from Korea!!
Below are some photos of the Ancient Korean folk village that we visited. People actually still live and work in these villages, and they seem to me to favor the hippie communes on the 60s. Everyone lives and works together, sharing everything and becoming one giant, extended family.
In Korean culture, only the mentally-unstable wear flowers in their hair... which my tour guide pointed out to me directly after I took this photo.
Kimchi pots, which are buried in the ground for 6+ weeks to create the spicy fermented cabbage dish that accompanies every meal.
Meryl Streep's Korean twin was our tour guide!!
Can you tell who is Korean and who isn't?
Rice fields!
I would like to introduce you to someone: Seong Ji. She is a very special person: my Korean co-teacher. Since starting this post, I have already moved into my apartment. That blog update will come tomorrow, but just know that absolutely nothing would be possible with Seong ji ("sung-gee"). She and I are becoming fast friends, and I will talk about her more in depth in my next entry. This could be one of the few pictures where I catch her off-guard though, because Koreans hate not posing for photos.
As for now, I am off to tackle the subway and try and navigate around town to meet up with some friends. Wish me luck, and I will post the saga of my apartment-settling experience soon.
I know where Buddha got his belly. A few days ago, my fellow TaLKers and I along with our Korean co-teachers (the Korean people who will be our translators in class) got to take a trip up into the mountains to visit a famous Buddhist Temple to observe a tea ceremony and Monks dressed in baggy gray outfits performing their daily prayers. And of course we got to eat too! I was in heaven (or I had reached the sublime as the Buddhists would say :o) ) because Buddhists are vegetarians and they eat laaaarrge quantities of food. But let me recount the day before I dive right into food descriptions and pictures.
Geographically speaking, Daegu is situated in a basin, with mountains encasing the city. In order to get to the temple, we took a charter bus up into the mountains, barreling up the squirreliest roads fathomable, dodging old ladies with baskets of vegetables precariously balanced on their heads and children playing stick ball in the streets. Thank goodness I had the foresight to pack a lot of Drammamine.
Once we arrived, it was a steep uphill climb to the pavilion where we to participate in early morning prayer. There was a lady dressed in traditional Buddhist garb who taught us the correct way to praise Buddha when you first enter the temple (a man strikes a small, hollow wooden gourd over and over while you kneel and place your forehead on the ground 3 different times).
Sound easy? Hardly! My knees were shaking with the effort to keep my feet close together while simultaneously squatting down onto my knees, bending over to touch my head to the floor and never once using my hands to assist me. And the woman who was giving the lesson performed the prayer around 7 times... (that's 21 bows for all you mathematicians out there ;) ) yet by far the most comical element of the prayer is going into what I like to describe as "trance" mode. You must sit on the wooden floor, Indian style as we would call it (by the way, the lady kept saying "yoga..yoga!" to me- yaaaay flexibility!) with ramrod straight posture and you must try to focus your gaze on the tip of your nose and keep your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth. You should try this right now.... stop reading and give it a shot!. We had to hold this position for 5 minutes at a time. I'm not sure about enlightenment, but I definitely felt dizzy.
After prayer, we had a waif of a woman give us a tour of Buddha's stomping grounds. This particular temple is touted as being over 1,500 years-old, and to see it is to believe it. As the story goes, long ago a phoenix landed in this sacred spot and became one with the surrounding mountains. A phoenix is the fabled flaming bird that symbolizes rebirth and renewal (HUGE tenets in Buddhism), and on the eaves of every building, there were brightly painted birds symbolizing the phoenix. Coolest of all was the phoenix tail though- there was a hefty slab of reddish rock jutting out of the stone staircase leading up to Buddha's effigy and below it were three oval-shaped white boulders. This was the phoenix's tail and 3 "wishing" eggs that you could touch for wishes.
I touched each stone and wished for the continued good health of all my loved ones, so I hope everyone is feeling extra blessed ^.^
Here are some photos of the scenery. It was a gray, damp day, which was nice since Korea has been every bit as sweltering as Florida.
There were 4 of these big dudes, and each one serves as a protector for the temple.
I always love to photograph the ceilings of temples. look at how ornate the patterns are! By the way, the flower is a lotus, the holy flower of Buddha.
Each roof tile has a hand-painted prayer on the underside. Similar to La Segrada Familia in Spain (google it!), many Buddhist temples seem to be funded by donations. So visitors can purchase a tile for like $5-$10 and it will be fitted to one of the buildings in need of fresh roofing. It's a means of inexpensive Korean health insurance :o)
Buddhists revere all lifeforms... even creepy, man-eating spiders. (Ok, so it was the size of a quarter... but it looks huge in this picture!) When we had tea later in the day, our host explained that hot water leftover from afternoon tea cannot be immediately tossed out because it could inadvertently kill an ant or worm. Whoa.
Look very closely at the top of the temple and you will notice a swastika. The swastika is all over Korea from cell phone accessories to swastika sweet rice cakes and children's underwear. It even signifies vegetarian food on packages! What the swastika actually means is eternity, and literally translates to "ongoing luck". Because the Nazis generally used a right-facing swastika, the Buddhist religion usually uses a leftward-facing swastika to differentiate it from the horrific stigma the rightward symbol carries (however, the swastika was NEVER meant to represent anything but positive qualities). An interesting note: I looked it up and the leftward facing swastika means mercy and love while the rightward-facing one signifies strength and intelligence...
MASSIVE BUDDHA! (Think University of Florida Century Bell Tower huge..) He had multiple neck rolls and huuuuge, drooping earlobes. Probably the only respected fat person in Korea ;)
This tasted like river water.
My completely vegetarian Buddhist meal. Tofu, cabbage, spicy curried rice (the red stuff), potato-leek patties and lotus root! The lotus roots are the circular, tan things with black sesame seeds on them. You can't eat just one.
The lady who gave us the praying and subsequent tea ceremony demonstrations. Tea ceremony lasts for about an hour just to make a single pot of loose-leaf green tea. (Buddha seriously needs to be introduced to sugar and cream..) But it was fun and incredibly authentic. I just had a numb butt for a solid 2 hours afterward.You must offer 3 cups of tea. One to your neighbor, one to God and lastly one to yourself.
Korean people are cuddly. They have no concept of "the bubble" and are constantly in your personal space. I have no clue who this girl it, but everyone here likes to take pictures with foreigners. Great for times when you are feeling lonely... not so good for times like, oh let's see.... showering! At every hotel, I had a maid walk right into the bathroom while I was showering to restock towels and check the shampoo bottle.
Remember to wash your hands :) I love this!After our temple visit, we drove to a nearby museum that housed all the greatest brass works of Korea. Apparently, Daegu is famous for it's brass bowls, chopsticks, cymbals, etc. Here are a few of the more impressive pieces in the museum.
This is how many dishes are served in a typical, traditional Korean meal.
Funeral candlesticks
My battle cry. This gong made your ears ring!
So funny! This mat (and those 4 sticks flying through the air) are a traditional, ancient Korean board game. You had to move pawns across a map and these sticks told you how many spaces to move (like dice). However, each wooden stick had a blank side too, so you had to toss them a certain way to get high numbers. Enter in this insane little Korean lady. She is a prime example of what we would call a "Hajima". Notice the large, Poker-player visor, the socks paired with flip flops and the baggy, elastic waist pants. These are the traits of all Hajimas and they are to be feared! These are the type of women who will snatch you by the ear and holler at you in public... and consequently the types of women who will snatch board game dice from you to show you how the game SHOULD be played. Every time she threw the sticks, she shouted some kind of unintelligible hawk-like screech. And she won. Every. Time. Fear the Hajima, for she is very crafty!
After this day, we had another 'adventure" day where we visited an ancient folk village and Korean steel mill. I like to refer to this day as Korean good PR day because, honestly, why the heck else would we visit these places?
Unfortunately, they would not allow us to take photos of the steel mill, but it turned out to be fascinating. The mill is called POSCO, and it is the 4th largest producer or steel in the world. The complex is located on the northern coast of South Korea, and it is as large as Stanton Island in NY. They lead us on a five minute walk through one of the steel-processing buildings, and I have never seen anything like it before! A 4 football-fields long-conveyor belt was carrying these yacht-sized molten plates of steel across a constant flow of freezing-cold water. The steel was neon orange, and the water would skitter across the surface like oil in a frying pan. 70% of the steel produced in the plant is utilized domestically, but I will note that on my new KitchenAid stand mixer that I received form my birthday (Thanks Mom and Dad!) the mixing bowl comes from Korea!!
Below are some photos of the Ancient Korean folk village that we visited. People actually still live and work in these villages, and they seem to me to favor the hippie communes on the 60s. Everyone lives and works together, sharing everything and becoming one giant, extended family.
In Korean culture, only the mentally-unstable wear flowers in their hair... which my tour guide pointed out to me directly after I took this photo.
Kimchi pots, which are buried in the ground for 6+ weeks to create the spicy fermented cabbage dish that accompanies every meal.
Meryl Streep's Korean twin was our tour guide!!
Can you tell who is Korean and who isn't?
Rice fields!I would like to introduce you to someone: Seong Ji. She is a very special person: my Korean co-teacher. Since starting this post, I have already moved into my apartment. That blog update will come tomorrow, but just know that absolutely nothing would be possible with Seong ji ("sung-gee"). She and I are becoming fast friends, and I will talk about her more in depth in my next entry. This could be one of the few pictures where I catch her off-guard though, because Koreans hate not posing for photos.
As for now, I am off to tackle the subway and try and navigate around town to meet up with some friends. Wish me luck, and I will post the saga of my apartment-settling experience soon.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Lotte World, Prince Hotel and Clubbing in Daegu
As I write this, I am looking out my 9th floor hotel room window at metropolitan Daegu city on a sunny, clear day with mountains dotting the horizon just behind the skyscrapers.
Orientation at Kyung Hee University is finally over, and on Friday we traveled by bus to Daegu, which is the province where I will be teaching. before I talk about Daegu though, I wanted to tell you about my fun weekend in Seoul visiting a cooking school, Lotte World and walking around the Business District in Seoul.
First stop was the Soomin cooking school of Seoul. This was one of my favorite activities! the menu for the day was kimbap and bulgogi (Korean sushi and stir fried meat- veerrrryy common food in Korea). I felt like I was on set for a Food Network cooking show. There was a little Korean lady all done up in pink (pink lipstick, pink apron, pink gloves, etc.) at the front of the room who had a video camera suspended over her cutting board and skillet. She gave us a demonstration on how to chop the onions, mushrooms, etc. for the bulgogi and then showed us how to pat out the sushi rice onto seaweed papers and roll the mixture up into neat and tidy Kimbap rolls using a bamboo mat. Traditional Korean kimbap is filled with ham, fried egg, pickled radish (neon yellow!), cucumber and krab (the fake crab meat made out of white fish). Of course I adjusted my recipes some, omitting the ham, stealing krab from other people's plates and doubling the veggies until I had a roll so monstrous it barely held together.
See the lady in pink behind me?
Shaina, washing her hands. Look at the yellow strips of pickled radish- that stuff is the bomb!!
A very hastily cut roll.
After scarfing down our creations, we loaded back on to our bus to head to the theme park: Lotte World. Lotte World is just another example of how this company called "Lotte" owns all of Korea. I am chewing Lotte pomegranate gum, sipping Lotte bottled water and I can count about 8 Lotte billboards outside my window right now. So, it figures that they would have a theme park too, right?
Lotte World has two areas: an indoor park geared towards little kids mostly (pictured above- with an ice skating rink for crying out loud!) and an outdoor park with some more extreme rides and your basic Disney-knockoff Cinderella castle. (below)
The characters for Lotte World are all in vague violation of copyright.. they have a green grasshopper, a boy and girl raccoon, a tall GOOFY looking dog character, etc....
As for the rides, hang on to your stuff! The one rollercoaster Shaina and I rode nearly made us sick. To put it in perspective: both of her earrings flew out of her ears by the end of the ride! And by the way: the rollercoaster was named "The French Revolution" with absolutely nothing connecting it to the French in any way. :o)
We didn't stay at Lotte World long. With Shaina and Eunice being from California and me coming from Florida, we tend to be cynics when it comes to theme parks. So off we went to board the metro (subway) and take a 30 minute ride with like 12 (ok...3) transfers to a very large book store that offered "foreign" (English) books. I looked at cookbooks for an hour, drooling on the pages, slipping in and out of consciousness with dreams about oatmeal, blueberries and extra chunky peanut butter. And salad dressing (they mix ketchup and mayonnaise together for salad dressing). Most of the books (and this goes for clothes in stores too) are kept in plastic wrap to prevent people from bending the pages and dirtying the covers, so only cookbooks and art books could really be read.
After reading, we decided to take a walk down through the heart of the Seoul business District. With "Simply Italian: A guide to Everyday Italian Cuisine" fresh in my mind, I craved non-Korean food so badly it hurt. So Eunice, Shaina and I pledged that we would splurge and eat Western food no matter the cost! We chose a swanky little Italian place called "Antigone" (a Greek play...) and were immediately chastised for not having made reservations even though the entire restaurant was empty. After huffing and puffing, the server showed us to a window seat that overlooked the city, which was glowing with the setting sun.
How can I describe the happy, no, ELATED feeling of seeing bread after a month of rice? After ordering our meals (salad with Italian dressing and mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinegar), the waitress brought out a plate of bread (and a potato!). We wolfed down that bread quicker than a homeless Korean man can down a bottle of soju (and that's FAST people...) And then... delirious off the rush of starch through my system, I had the audacity to ask the waitress for another plate. She wasn't happy... but I think I had a hostile glimmer in my eye because she hurried right back with another plate.
The salads were pretty good. Small, but honestly the bread was the star of the show. The damage came out to be about $22 a person for a side salad and some rolls. But damn if we weren't feeling fabulous afterward. We even topped the night off with a stop at Starbucks!
The long one was a squid ink breadstick!
Getting my money's worth.
The picture below is a stream that runs straight through Seoul. Apparently, the last Korean President wanted to beautify the city, so he converted one of the most dilapidated ghettos of Seoul into this scenic, peaceful stream. At all hours of the day, you can see people strolling along the water, resting with their feet in the stream, etc. It was a beautiful juxtaposition to have this tranquil stream running directly below the most hectic, traffic-clogged streets in all of Korea.
Now fast forward to our 4 hour bus ride into Daegu. The best way I can describe Daegu is like a more city-ish Jacksonville or a small scale Orlando. It has every convenience I could ever need, but we are literally encased by a sprawling mountain range. We are staying in a hotel called "the Prince Hotel of Daegu" that feels like the Ritz compared to our dorm rooms. Ah, how little it takes for me to be happy. I can actually control when my AC shuts off, I have a mattress that actually has some squish to it and lo and behold: cereal at breakfast!!!!! Unfortunately, we will only be here for a week. Our province is giving us a week more of orientation before we move to our apartments this Friday, but I really feel like our apartments are going to be nicer than expected.
I met my co-teacher. her name is Seong Ji ("Song Jee"), and she is 27 in Korean age (Koreans are considered to be 1 year old when they are born). She is quiet, reserved, and covers her mouth often when speaking English. This is a mannerism that most Korean women have when they are embarrassed, but the longer I talked to her, the less she hid behind her hands. She is excited to teach the kids, and wants to take me out to dinner to meet her friends :o) I probably won't be seeing her again until I move to my apartment, but we will have plenty of time to get to know each other over the next few months.
All in all, I am so incredibly pleased with both my Province and my co-teacher that I feel giddy. Yesterday we took a walking tour of Daegu, went and saw G.I. Joe in a movie theater (they even bought us Krispy Kreme doughnuts!) and went to a night club called "Frog" with my girlfriends. I can see myself loving Daegu (and I bet I will love the city I will be teaching in, Dalseong). More updates are to come, but for now, enjoy some snapshots of our day of exploring.
Single-ride tokens for the Daegu metro. Or monocles if you're me :o)
There are 14 TaLK scholars assigned to the Daegu area. This is our last week being all together like this. Our POE (Provincial Office of Education) treated us to a traditional Korean meal for lunch. Korean-style eating is the best! Relaxing, barefoot on a floor mat with all your friends and family, stealing morsels off everyone else's plate.
Bibimbap, kimchi, naengmyun, water kimchi, steamed dumplings, pickled radish, fermented peanuts, galbi (raw beef) and cinnamon soup. This was a fraction of the meal; there are many side dishes that I cannot even explain.
Look how many plates, bowls, cups and utensils are used. Korean bus boys and servers have a tough job- especially since there is no tipping!
Downtown Daegu.
Our hotel- look at the welcome banner!
Our club of choice- known for being a haven for foreigners. I will definitely go again!
And keeping faithful to my habit of ending on a funny, slightly gross note- this was the sign for a clothes store:
Hehe ;)
Orientation at Kyung Hee University is finally over, and on Friday we traveled by bus to Daegu, which is the province where I will be teaching. before I talk about Daegu though, I wanted to tell you about my fun weekend in Seoul visiting a cooking school, Lotte World and walking around the Business District in Seoul.
First stop was the Soomin cooking school of Seoul. This was one of my favorite activities! the menu for the day was kimbap and bulgogi (Korean sushi and stir fried meat- veerrrryy common food in Korea). I felt like I was on set for a Food Network cooking show. There was a little Korean lady all done up in pink (pink lipstick, pink apron, pink gloves, etc.) at the front of the room who had a video camera suspended over her cutting board and skillet. She gave us a demonstration on how to chop the onions, mushrooms, etc. for the bulgogi and then showed us how to pat out the sushi rice onto seaweed papers and roll the mixture up into neat and tidy Kimbap rolls using a bamboo mat. Traditional Korean kimbap is filled with ham, fried egg, pickled radish (neon yellow!), cucumber and krab (the fake crab meat made out of white fish). Of course I adjusted my recipes some, omitting the ham, stealing krab from other people's plates and doubling the veggies until I had a roll so monstrous it barely held together.
See the lady in pink behind me?
Shaina, washing her hands. Look at the yellow strips of pickled radish- that stuff is the bomb!!
A very hastily cut roll.After scarfing down our creations, we loaded back on to our bus to head to the theme park: Lotte World. Lotte World is just another example of how this company called "Lotte" owns all of Korea. I am chewing Lotte pomegranate gum, sipping Lotte bottled water and I can count about 8 Lotte billboards outside my window right now. So, it figures that they would have a theme park too, right?
Lotte World has two areas: an indoor park geared towards little kids mostly (pictured above- with an ice skating rink for crying out loud!) and an outdoor park with some more extreme rides and your basic Disney-knockoff Cinderella castle. (below)
The characters for Lotte World are all in vague violation of copyright.. they have a green grasshopper, a boy and girl raccoon, a tall GOOFY looking dog character, etc....As for the rides, hang on to your stuff! The one rollercoaster Shaina and I rode nearly made us sick. To put it in perspective: both of her earrings flew out of her ears by the end of the ride! And by the way: the rollercoaster was named "The French Revolution" with absolutely nothing connecting it to the French in any way. :o)
We didn't stay at Lotte World long. With Shaina and Eunice being from California and me coming from Florida, we tend to be cynics when it comes to theme parks. So off we went to board the metro (subway) and take a 30 minute ride with like 12 (ok...3) transfers to a very large book store that offered "foreign" (English) books. I looked at cookbooks for an hour, drooling on the pages, slipping in and out of consciousness with dreams about oatmeal, blueberries and extra chunky peanut butter. And salad dressing (they mix ketchup and mayonnaise together for salad dressing). Most of the books (and this goes for clothes in stores too) are kept in plastic wrap to prevent people from bending the pages and dirtying the covers, so only cookbooks and art books could really be read.
After reading, we decided to take a walk down through the heart of the Seoul business District. With "Simply Italian: A guide to Everyday Italian Cuisine" fresh in my mind, I craved non-Korean food so badly it hurt. So Eunice, Shaina and I pledged that we would splurge and eat Western food no matter the cost! We chose a swanky little Italian place called "Antigone" (a Greek play...) and were immediately chastised for not having made reservations even though the entire restaurant was empty. After huffing and puffing, the server showed us to a window seat that overlooked the city, which was glowing with the setting sun.
How can I describe the happy, no, ELATED feeling of seeing bread after a month of rice? After ordering our meals (salad with Italian dressing and mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinegar), the waitress brought out a plate of bread (and a potato!). We wolfed down that bread quicker than a homeless Korean man can down a bottle of soju (and that's FAST people...) And then... delirious off the rush of starch through my system, I had the audacity to ask the waitress for another plate. She wasn't happy... but I think I had a hostile glimmer in my eye because she hurried right back with another plate.
The salads were pretty good. Small, but honestly the bread was the star of the show. The damage came out to be about $22 a person for a side salad and some rolls. But damn if we weren't feeling fabulous afterward. We even topped the night off with a stop at Starbucks!
The long one was a squid ink breadstick!
Getting my money's worth.
The picture below is a stream that runs straight through Seoul. Apparently, the last Korean President wanted to beautify the city, so he converted one of the most dilapidated ghettos of Seoul into this scenic, peaceful stream. At all hours of the day, you can see people strolling along the water, resting with their feet in the stream, etc. It was a beautiful juxtaposition to have this tranquil stream running directly below the most hectic, traffic-clogged streets in all of Korea.
Now fast forward to our 4 hour bus ride into Daegu. The best way I can describe Daegu is like a more city-ish Jacksonville or a small scale Orlando. It has every convenience I could ever need, but we are literally encased by a sprawling mountain range. We are staying in a hotel called "the Prince Hotel of Daegu" that feels like the Ritz compared to our dorm rooms. Ah, how little it takes for me to be happy. I can actually control when my AC shuts off, I have a mattress that actually has some squish to it and lo and behold: cereal at breakfast!!!!! Unfortunately, we will only be here for a week. Our province is giving us a week more of orientation before we move to our apartments this Friday, but I really feel like our apartments are going to be nicer than expected.
I met my co-teacher. her name is Seong Ji ("Song Jee"), and she is 27 in Korean age (Koreans are considered to be 1 year old when they are born). She is quiet, reserved, and covers her mouth often when speaking English. This is a mannerism that most Korean women have when they are embarrassed, but the longer I talked to her, the less she hid behind her hands. She is excited to teach the kids, and wants to take me out to dinner to meet her friends :o) I probably won't be seeing her again until I move to my apartment, but we will have plenty of time to get to know each other over the next few months.
All in all, I am so incredibly pleased with both my Province and my co-teacher that I feel giddy. Yesterday we took a walking tour of Daegu, went and saw G.I. Joe in a movie theater (they even bought us Krispy Kreme doughnuts!) and went to a night club called "Frog" with my girlfriends. I can see myself loving Daegu (and I bet I will love the city I will be teaching in, Dalseong). More updates are to come, but for now, enjoy some snapshots of our day of exploring.
Single-ride tokens for the Daegu metro. Or monocles if you're me :o)
There are 14 TaLK scholars assigned to the Daegu area. This is our last week being all together like this. Our POE (Provincial Office of Education) treated us to a traditional Korean meal for lunch. Korean-style eating is the best! Relaxing, barefoot on a floor mat with all your friends and family, stealing morsels off everyone else's plate.
Bibimbap, kimchi, naengmyun, water kimchi, steamed dumplings, pickled radish, fermented peanuts, galbi (raw beef) and cinnamon soup. This was a fraction of the meal; there are many side dishes that I cannot even explain.
Look how many plates, bowls, cups and utensils are used. Korean bus boys and servers have a tough job- especially since there is no tipping!
Downtown Daegu.
Our hotel- look at the welcome banner!
Our club of choice- known for being a haven for foreigners. I will definitely go again!And keeping faithful to my habit of ending on a funny, slightly gross note- this was the sign for a clothes store:
Hehe ;)
Monday, August 17, 2009
Kyung Hee University, Seoul Tower and Gyeonbok Palace
To start with, here are the pictures I promised of Kyung Hee University. After running, I snatched my camera and decided to take some pics of the most popular parts of campus.
Go Kyung Hee Lions! This is in the gym where we were taught Tae Kwon Do.
Here are a few of the TaLK coordinators who are constantly manning the desk to answer our questions, tell us where our next class is and make sure we sign back in to make curfew. They have been rebelling one by one against the yellow and purple Lakers jerseys, so it is hard to distinguish them any more from the rest of the group.
The first portion of the trail leading up and over to the cafeteria.
The girl's dormitory is the building in the middle. The guy's dorm is to the left and the majority of our classes are in the "multimedia building" to the far right.
Entrance to the school (taken from inside campus)
The spot to be :o). Beer Plus is directly across from campus. TomNToms is like Korean Starbucks.
My saving grace: GS 25. It's a convenience store located on the first floor of the girl's dorm that is open 24 hrs. I can get my lowfat milk, bananas, $1 kimbap rolls AND dried squid ( just kidding) whenever I want.
The clay track that I have been running!
This past weekend, we decided to take another trip to Seoul to do some more exploring. We started the day off with a bang by grabbing some coffee at Dunkin Donuts. It's about $4 for a plain coffee (no, they will not add milk- go figure. So I am constantly steeling milks from the cafeteria). It's kind of crappy too because when they make a coffee, they fill the cup halfway with hot water and then the rest of the cup with regular drip coffee. I have no idea if this is to save money or if they believe the coffee is too strong. Luckily, Dunkin Donuts has about triple the caffeine of other coffees, so I still got a good buzz going.
After coffee, we packed out things and took an hour and a half long bus ride into Seoul. Everyone was hungry so after navigating the underground maze that is the subway station, we emerged into sweltering, blinding Seoul right in front of Lotte Mart- what would be the Kroger's/Target of America! Lo and behold, the first restaurant we saw was a Bennigans. We made a bee line for the menu, but were immediately discouraged when we found even the appetizers were $25-40 a pop. As much as I crave Western food right now, I couldn't bring myself to cough up so much money for a single meal. Instead we headed to the food court of Lotte ("low-tay") Mart and had....... SURPRISE! Korean food. When all else fails, I always order a dish called "bibimbap", which is rice with shredded vegetables in spicy chili paste with a fried egg. I was dreaming of grilled salmon over spinach but, alas, another day.
So, onward to Seoul Tower. In the middle of metropolitan Seoul, there is a mountain. At the mountain's peak, there is a relatively small tower (small simply because I've seen other towers such as the Eiffel tower and I have a spoiled American sense of grandeur). You can choose to either hike the mountain or you can take a cab. I was hoping to hike it, but on Sundays our curfew is 9p.m., so we had to take a cab to insure making it back in time. We hopped into a cab with Eunice translating to the cab driver and making sure we didn't get ripped off. Now here is the weird part: we get to the top of the mountain, to the entrance of Seoul Tower Park, and the driver is stopped by several guards. The driver pulls forward and opens his back windows where Shaina and I are seated. The guards look us over, then look at Eunice, hesitate, but ultimately let us pass. When we started driving again, Eunice explained that only foreigners are allowed to take a cab to the top of the tower, and that it's a sore spot for Korean natives who have to hike to the top. This favoritism towards tourists popped up again when we bought tickets to go up to the top of the tower. Foreigners get a 15% discount whereas Korean natives don't get squat.
Inside the tower, overlooking all of Seoul.
What better way to pay tribute to America than a Charlie's Angels stance? The room that we were in had the names of famous cities all over the world. While it looks like we had a clear day, the tour guide mentioned that during pristine weather conditions, you can actually see Pyongyang, North Korea (the capital city on the border).
I've noticed that I enjoy taking pictures of children. In this particular photo, this little boy was squealing and running up this very steep hill to his Dad. I wanted to post it simply because about 20 minutes later after we finished exploring the tower, I saw this same father with the little boy passed out in his arms :o)
New meaning to the term "blue-haired old lady". Whoa!
After the tower, we decided that while we were in Seoul we would make a trip to Gyeonbok Palace. There are 5 palaces in Seoul, but this is the most famous by far. It was only about a 20 minute ride on the Subway, and we all had lost our enthusiasm after traipsing around in the sun for hours. However, our spirits picked up when we realized the Subway let off DIRECTLY at the Palace- no haggling with a cab driver necessary!
It was beautiful... and peaceful. The sun was setting, the cicadas were humming and there were monks chanting in the distance. It was the perfect ending to the day watching some seriously overweight koi splash around dozens of ponds, eating fistfuls of Korean sweet puffed corn and taking bajillions of pictures. Here are a few of the best.
We were grillin. Apparently, this is a statue of a turtle?
This little girl said hello to me!
Ok, humor me here: I thought this looked suspiciously like a marijuana leaf :o)
And to end on a funny note- this is a device that I have found in several public restrooms. When you push the button, a fake flushing sound plays. Great for shy bladders the world over!
Go Kyung Hee Lions! This is in the gym where we were taught Tae Kwon Do.
Here are a few of the TaLK coordinators who are constantly manning the desk to answer our questions, tell us where our next class is and make sure we sign back in to make curfew. They have been rebelling one by one against the yellow and purple Lakers jerseys, so it is hard to distinguish them any more from the rest of the group.
The first portion of the trail leading up and over to the cafeteria.
The girl's dormitory is the building in the middle. The guy's dorm is to the left and the majority of our classes are in the "multimedia building" to the far right.
Entrance to the school (taken from inside campus)
The spot to be :o). Beer Plus is directly across from campus. TomNToms is like Korean Starbucks.
My saving grace: GS 25. It's a convenience store located on the first floor of the girl's dorm that is open 24 hrs. I can get my lowfat milk, bananas, $1 kimbap rolls AND dried squid ( just kidding) whenever I want.
The clay track that I have been running!This past weekend, we decided to take another trip to Seoul to do some more exploring. We started the day off with a bang by grabbing some coffee at Dunkin Donuts. It's about $4 for a plain coffee (no, they will not add milk- go figure. So I am constantly steeling milks from the cafeteria). It's kind of crappy too because when they make a coffee, they fill the cup halfway with hot water and then the rest of the cup with regular drip coffee. I have no idea if this is to save money or if they believe the coffee is too strong. Luckily, Dunkin Donuts has about triple the caffeine of other coffees, so I still got a good buzz going.
After coffee, we packed out things and took an hour and a half long bus ride into Seoul. Everyone was hungry so after navigating the underground maze that is the subway station, we emerged into sweltering, blinding Seoul right in front of Lotte Mart- what would be the Kroger's/Target of America! Lo and behold, the first restaurant we saw was a Bennigans. We made a bee line for the menu, but were immediately discouraged when we found even the appetizers were $25-40 a pop. As much as I crave Western food right now, I couldn't bring myself to cough up so much money for a single meal. Instead we headed to the food court of Lotte ("low-tay") Mart and had....... SURPRISE! Korean food. When all else fails, I always order a dish called "bibimbap", which is rice with shredded vegetables in spicy chili paste with a fried egg. I was dreaming of grilled salmon over spinach but, alas, another day.
So, onward to Seoul Tower. In the middle of metropolitan Seoul, there is a mountain. At the mountain's peak, there is a relatively small tower (small simply because I've seen other towers such as the Eiffel tower and I have a spoiled American sense of grandeur). You can choose to either hike the mountain or you can take a cab. I was hoping to hike it, but on Sundays our curfew is 9p.m., so we had to take a cab to insure making it back in time. We hopped into a cab with Eunice translating to the cab driver and making sure we didn't get ripped off. Now here is the weird part: we get to the top of the mountain, to the entrance of Seoul Tower Park, and the driver is stopped by several guards. The driver pulls forward and opens his back windows where Shaina and I are seated. The guards look us over, then look at Eunice, hesitate, but ultimately let us pass. When we started driving again, Eunice explained that only foreigners are allowed to take a cab to the top of the tower, and that it's a sore spot for Korean natives who have to hike to the top. This favoritism towards tourists popped up again when we bought tickets to go up to the top of the tower. Foreigners get a 15% discount whereas Korean natives don't get squat.
Inside the tower, overlooking all of Seoul.
What better way to pay tribute to America than a Charlie's Angels stance? The room that we were in had the names of famous cities all over the world. While it looks like we had a clear day, the tour guide mentioned that during pristine weather conditions, you can actually see Pyongyang, North Korea (the capital city on the border).
I've noticed that I enjoy taking pictures of children. In this particular photo, this little boy was squealing and running up this very steep hill to his Dad. I wanted to post it simply because about 20 minutes later after we finished exploring the tower, I saw this same father with the little boy passed out in his arms :o)
New meaning to the term "blue-haired old lady". Whoa!After the tower, we decided that while we were in Seoul we would make a trip to Gyeonbok Palace. There are 5 palaces in Seoul, but this is the most famous by far. It was only about a 20 minute ride on the Subway, and we all had lost our enthusiasm after traipsing around in the sun for hours. However, our spirits picked up when we realized the Subway let off DIRECTLY at the Palace- no haggling with a cab driver necessary!
It was beautiful... and peaceful. The sun was setting, the cicadas were humming and there were monks chanting in the distance. It was the perfect ending to the day watching some seriously overweight koi splash around dozens of ponds, eating fistfuls of Korean sweet puffed corn and taking bajillions of pictures. Here are a few of the best.
We were grillin. Apparently, this is a statue of a turtle?
This little girl said hello to me!
Ok, humor me here: I thought this looked suspiciously like a marijuana leaf :o)
And to end on a funny note- this is a device that I have found in several public restrooms. When you push the button, a fake flushing sound plays. Great for shy bladders the world over!
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