A Day In The Life

Each morning at around 6:30, I awaken to the frenetic hollering of a man screeching prices over a megaphone, driving a flat bed Hyundai truck full of spoiling fruit. I'm certain I would be on edge too if my livelihood depended on people purchasing black plastic bags full of overripe Korean pears, apples and sweet potatoes... especially when they cost around $2 for the equivalent of almost a two week's supply.

After my rather abrupt WWII propaganda-esque alarm clock is done sounding off on my street, I set about making E-Mart brand coffee in my wee, $50 coffeemaker. To my reasoning, it stands that I should be allowed closer to 6 or 8 cups of coffee just because it's such a weak brew no matter how many scoops I use. Yet caffeine is caffeine, so by the time I am set to go to class I am shaking like a leaf on a tree with energy to rival even my craziest of 1st graders. Mornings are good for blog writing and lesson plans, and catching the conclusions of B-rated American movies dubbed in Korean. To date, I have seen Jaws II, Total Recall, Terminator 2:Judgment Day, Con Air, Speed 2 and a FRENCH version of E.T., dubbed in Korean with British voice overs...

I leave my apartment at around noon to walk to the subway. Because of the stares I tend to generate, I usually wear sunglasses and headphones to appear preoccupied. While this sounds antisocial, it only took a handful of days before my skin started to crawl at the sensation of so many people (men, women and children) staring at me unabashedly wherever I went. Even babies ogle me. I have stood in many a checkout line with a newborn blinking up at me, drool dribbling down their mom's shoulder as they contemplate the strange, sweaty woman above them. I say "sweaty", because I am usually hefting my backpack wherever I go, and I'm often heading to and from the gym. One difference between Western and Eastern culture is the social acceptance of appearing disheveled in public. At the gym, all Koreans shower immediately after working out. The only grungy people I see on the streets are the homeless, and even they keep a tidy area with all their belongings neatly stacked, their hair looking semi-groomed and their clothes all buttoned, zipped and properly fitted. I am an anomaly not only because of my physical appearance, but because I have the nerve to grace the sidewalk in yoga pants with my mascara running from the sweat rolling off of me after a workout.

On the subway, I take the green line headed towards Munyang 3 stops down to the stop called "Daesil" ("tay-sheel"). Maegok is only an 8-10 minute walk from the subway, and it passes numerous high rise apartment buildings, which are occupied by many of my students. School is letting out just as I arrive, so I have to wrestle and contort my way through a sea of children all clamoring for the opportunity to shout "Teacher Katy, hello!" and then run away, screaming maniacally. I have to get my game face on because children are the ultimate predators. If they even suspect that the teacher is tired or is feeling in any way un-enthusiastic about the lesson at hand, they become mutinous. Using exaggerated facial expressions, large, sweeping hand gestures, running, jumping, hiding, screaming, whispering... teaching class is physically-taxing and I find that it takes my vocabulary several hours to recuperate afterward. But the effort is well worth it when just one thing I teach is remembered. I was glowing for the rest of the day simply because my students remembered the word "absent" when I called out attendance for the class.

I have a 20 minute break in between my first and second class, which I use to shovel in a salad as quick as I can. I made the mistake of eating too slowly my first day of teaching. This is what happens: Korean students often arrive 10-15 minutes early to sit close to the front, arrange their books, pencils and stare at Teacher Katy. They want to know what Teacher Katy is eating. Some of them want to eat what Teacher Katy is eating, or at least try to poke it. Many of them try to fortify my meals with melted, lint-covered chocolates and hard candy that they snatch deep from the recesses of their pockets. Ever try to spear a leaf of spinach with chopsticks? It's a laborious process fraught with dropping, so I often will just use my hands to pick up food.... so my lunch is a spectator sport for the kids.

When classes are eventually finished for the day. I usually linger to print out the next day's handouts and to sweep and rearrange the desks and chairs in the room. Ever read the comic strip Peanuts? Remember the character PigPen? I never knew children could be so filthy! There is an unknown sticky substance on all of the name tags of my 1st and 2nd graders... and there is a thick silt of erasers, pencil pieces, bits of waded up papers, spit balls, gum wrappers, food particles and, of course, dirt coating the floor when the students make their mad dash out of the room. Once I've cleaned, I lock all the windows and doors, trade my comfy school-issued flip flops for my running shoes and make the trek back to the subway. Many of my students are already racing bikes, hanging upside down on tree limbs, rollerskating and causing general mayhem on the streets by the time I start my journey home. I often meet the parents of my kids although they act very nervous around me because their 6-year-old knows more English than they do. Usually a nod and a smile is all they can muster.

The rest of my evening is usually some combination of gym, E-Mart shopping, dinner and calling home. Some nights I take the subway to have dinner with friends and sometimes I will meet with people Downtown to have dinner, but week days in Korea are similar to week days at home: I stay in.

For anyone reading this blog considering living abroad, let me summarize the epiphanies you will have during your stay (at least a few of the epiphanies I have experienced thus far):

1.) Friends made abroad are often friends made out of self-preservation. Meaning: you will always pine for the company of your friends at home. Yes, you will meet some incredible people abroad, but no relationship replaces the tried and true friendships you have back at home. For anyone who has gone to college, it's a similar experience as your first semester away. You meet many people and consequently hang out with people that you don't necessarily see yourself palling around with in the future. But the alternative is spending the evening alone with nothing but the internet for conversation, so you go out of your comfort zone in terms of the company you keep.

2.) You will miss the smell of your water, laundry detergent and dryer sheets.

3.) If you are in a country that speaks a different language, especially one you are not fluent in, you will miss sarcasm and witty turn-of-phrase. These are the filigrees in the art of conversation that are lost. Cultural differences and language differences make cliches and the jokes that worked so well with your friends almost impossible to reconstruct abroad. Case in point: I told SJ that a line we were standing in was moving slower than molasses on a winter day. She wanted to know, first, what molasses was, second, why I was outside in the dead of winter, third.... well, you get the idea. :)

4.) You will miss your big gray cat. Or whatever pets you have, if you have them. You will come home and wish they were there for that big, slobbery hello, that motor-like purr or that frantic tail wag.

5.) The biggie: you will miss your people. Of course you will miss your family and friends, but it goes beyond that. You will miss your culture. September 11th just passed, and I felt this desire to be in America. To flip on the TV and be inundated with the same "remember 911" newscast on every station. To be surrounded by Americana, which, honestly if you have not been abroad, you have no idea what America is all about. We are a really vivacious population. We like things faster, bigger, stronger and better than anywhere else in the world. All of those typical, oh just shoot-me-now-I-can't-take-it cliches about America (being strivers, dreamers and people of indomitable, enterprising spirit, etc.) are true. We are different from every culture I have ever experienced because we don't quite grasp the concept of "no". We are a little spoiled... and we live beyond our means because we have the space, natural resources and ignorance that no other country can match. But I miss that. I love my big, crass America. If America were a person, she is the one in the group that everyone loves to hate, but who always has the best stories after a crazy night out on the town. Korea is a lovely stray into a world of modesty, quiet reserve, ancient tradition and introversion...but I will take million-dollar, 30-second Super Bowl commercial mania and deep fried twinkies and Oreos any day... because it's just more fun.

Here are some photos of buildings and other sights I see in my typical day. Already this little corner of Korea feels like home and will be missed once I leave.
Red Moon Fitness is my gym. I would take pictures inside... but I get enough curious stares as it is. What I really wanted to point out is the sign above, "HoneyWell English". This is an example of a "hagwon," which is the Korean term for a private English school. The vast majority of people who come to teach English in Korea teach at businesses such as this one. They can be tiny such as HoneyWell, or be as large as an entire public school and dedicated strictly to teaching English (although these are rare because they are so expensive). Hagwons are about as numerous as hair and nail salons in any city (and are often wedge in between!) Many have poor reputations for long hours, shoddy facilities, unfriendly "hagwon bosses" and most are floundering financially, so signing a hagwon contract can be a dicey venture... one that I did not want to take. The benefit of the program that I am working in is that it's a government contract. The Korean government started the TaLK program 3 years ago and sends participants into public schools in more rural areas. I have a salary, full health care, my flight to and form Korea is covered and my housing is paid for, not to mention the government has a budget for "cultural experiences", meaning I get to take trips several times a month to famous Korean destinations and get a monthly allowance for a Korean hobby. nice.E-Mart, the Korean Wal-Mart. 5 stories of shopping madness accessible via a magnetized escalator that locks your shopping cart to the ground while you are riding so it doesn't roll away from you and mow down unsuspecting shoppers. Also a good place to grab a free meal if you are crafty. There are so many free samples (of everything- fruit, meat, cereal, drinks, etc.) that you can feed yourself nicely if you linger long enough.
A photo that sums up Korea in one shot: Kia and Hyundai vehicles, high rise buildings, mountains in the distance and an orange haze across the sky during sunset. I think the haze is from air pollution, but that could just be a rumor that began circulating during our TaLK orientation.
My bank: Nunghyup Bank. It's known as the rural bank, and more commonly as the "farmer's bank". It exists only in more rural areas of Korea, and on the ground floor of the bank there is a small market where local farmers can sell their produce. And it is only a 5 minute walk form my apartment. Buying "locally-grown" food in America seems like a joke once you have shopped in a market like Nunghyup's. The farmers are all squatting down on bright blue tarps spread across the sidewalk, sunburned with black fingernails from ripping up various roots, mushrooms and other veggies from the ground probably earlier that morning. And they are always so damn happy! I can buy a bag of 10 of the biggest carrots you have ever seen in your life for a dollar. And if I smile and say "hello", the lady who sold them to me will toss 2 more in just because she is so excited a foreigner stopped at her tarp.
This is directly beside my apartment building. Can you guess what type of restaurant it is? Why a poisonous blowfish restaurant, of course! Korean restaurants are all about specialities. There are noodle restaurants, fish restaurants, clam restaurants, beef restaurants, soup restaurants, etc. these blowfish places are incredibly popular, and yes, if it is prepare incorrectly you could have a severe reaction to the fish. but dying is unlikely unless you are really old or a baby. The best part? the blowfish are kept in a big tank at the front of the restaurant, so they are one of the first things I see every morning when I walk out on my way to the subway.

Daegu International Body Painting Festival

If it weren't for the weather forecast, I doubt the body painting festival would have been as successful (or as full of men) as it was. When I left my apartment at 3 in the afternoon, the weather forecasters were promising rain; buckets of it. However, when I arrived at Duryu park, the sun was burning through the clouds... and the male portion of the audience was looking dissapointed. As for the artists and models, it meant that the fashion show would go on!

The commentary for the show was completely in Korean. Thankfully, SJ tagged along at the last minute and brought her boyfriend, Seong Lok (who didn't speak a lick of English). I recruited her (as I so often do) as my personal translator, which was great because I was completely wrong guessing the theme of each painted person. Below are some photos. I tried to snap a shot of the front and back of each contestant, but some were bounding across the stage like gazelles, so excuse some blurriness (I was sitting very far away).



She was definitely a crowd favorite. Her theme was "chameleon". Click on the pictures to enlarge them (you can see a chameleon on her ribcage- I'm sure that's where you are looking anyway ;))Those are the artists who painted him. He is the younger brother of the girl on the right and he was terribly nervous. He said "I am naked on a stage right now! I can't stop shaking."
His theme was "fire", thus the phoenix and fire dragon.
Her theme was a peacock. I didn't see it at all....there was a second peacock entry (scroll down some more) and the second is much more obvious.

"Colorful Daegu" is the slogan/motto for Daegu. It's plastered on everything from buildings to street lamps, sidewalks and even on toilet seats!
This girl was so spicy! She posed and worked the stage for a solid 10 minutes before the host had to wrestle the audience back from her. She is also quite possibly the tallest Korean woman I have ever seen.

He represented animal spirits!! I loved the nails.
They never said her theme :(
Waves of the ocean.

"Chinese spirit"

Native American! No specific tribe mentioned, though.

This guy was all the way form Russia! His theme was "Color, line and pointillism"

"Demented Clown/Evil Circus".....wearing Wonder Woman boots I might add. And very interesting positioning of the um.... pupils of the eyes?

She was sooo dynamic! She did several ballet moves. her theme was "My imaginary butterfly"

Japanese Geisha.

They have not announced the winner yet, so your guess is as good as mine. In my opinion, it is a tie between the Chameleon and the Butterfly. The most intricate artwork was on the "Waves of the Ocean" girl, but you just can't beat the charisma of the Butterfly- she rolled around on stage in nothing but paint for crying out loud!

I'd love to hear your votes for the winner- just comment on this post :o)

Foot-sucking Fish and Maegok Elementary

Spontaneity is usually not my forte. I am a planner with a solid agenda set days, weeks, even years in advance. So, to meet a stranger on the subway and subsequently join him at a sushi restaurants with 9 other strangers is an event for me. Here is how the night panned out:

I was power-walking through the stifling labyrinth of the subway at 11 at night with sunglasses and headphones (to prevent the inevitable stares I attract), on my way to see a friend for a few minutes before I needed to hop back on the metro to ride all the way home when I distinctly heard a man shout "foreigner." Since I'm usually the only Caucasian in a 20 mile radius, I turned around and found myself facing a 20-something-ish Korean guy looking so excited it made me nervous. The look on my face prompted him to spit out an explanation faster than I could decipher: he is an English teacher too and he has only been in Korea for a week. He is Canadian-Korean, has no nearby friends, knows no one and is astonished to bump into me. If it were anywhere else in the world, I'm sure I would have kept on walking but he did indeed look lonely and desperate (and since when are Canadians ever dangerous people?) so I ended up giving him my name for him to find me on Facebook. Sure enough, the next morning he sent me a message inviting me to a sushi restaurant that evening with some other English teachers (whom he had not met either). I had a rousing evening planned of mopping the floor and just generally acting like a bump on a log, so I figured why not and headed into Downtown Daegu after I finished classes.

How can I explain the comforting feeling, the welcoming sensation of hearing "hey what's up?" instead of "Anyong haseo". I felt like I might as well have walked into a restaurant back in the States! All told, there were about 10 of us hogging the tables at a small, crowded sushi restaurant. We exchanged the basics: names, schools, which program we are affiliated with and what subway stops we are close to. And then it was Korea-bashing/whining time! We talked about what luxuries we miss most (cars), what foods (wheat bread and de-boned fish), Korean oddities (we have all fallen into the squat toilet at least once and all of us laughed about peeing on our pants by accident). We exchanged teaching horror stories and made fun of our stunted, Konglish (Korean-English slang) vocabularies: "Katy, you soy sauce pass, yes" or "From Canada. Canada." (repeating words is something burned into your brain when you are teaching elementary school children).
This particular restaurant had a conveyor belt that rotated plates containing 2 pieces of sushi each. According to the color of the plate, that's how much you would be charged. Every so often a random slice of cake or piece of fruit would appear on the belt, but they all looked a little suspect... as though they had been rotating a few hours too many. And by the way, it is much cheaper to just order a plate of sushi. These 2-piece plates can be about 2,000-5,000 KRW each, much more expensive than ordering from the menu. One of my greatest disappointments in Korea thus far is the sushi/sashimi selection. There isn't any salmon or tuna in the roll, usually just some bland, unidentifiable white fish and a lot of spicy mayonnaise sauce and ham. Sushi/sashimi is a Japanese food versus "Kimbap," which is the Korean take on it (no raw fish, ham, egg and a lot of fattening sauce). The evening was a success regardless of the food though because I was in good company.

After dinner, we all decided that since it was a Thursday night and we had class the next day, staying out late was a bad idea. the slow shuffle back to the subway was underway when one of the girls, a kiwi (New Zealander) named Dianna suggested going to Dr. Shin's Fish Cafe. You cannot hear the title "Fish Cafe" without being intrigued, so she hastened to explain that it's a coffee shop where you can buy books, lounge in armchairs and, naturally, have your foot callouses be eaten off by tiny, translucent fish for around 6,000 KRW. Sign me up!
Some of the crew I met up with. They gave us these little shot glasses filled with jelly-like substance and a dollop of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. There were slices of plain white bread on the counter and you could make yourself some toast before getting your feet sucked on 0.o

I posted a video of the experience HERE. I apologize that you can't really see the fish... but I took some photos too, which are much clearer (posted below). I'll attempt to describe the sensation: place your feet in a tub of tepid water that is ankle-high and imagine the slippery/slimy feel of about 200-300 little fish bodies caressing your feet. Spread your toes and imagine them darting and wriggling in between the crevices to pick at the particularly crusty morsels on the webbing between your toes. The fish had mouths that were only a fractions of an inch, but you could feel a slight pull each time they would suck on your foot. The bigger fish had mouths the size of a pencil eraser and about as much sucking force as someone sipping through a straw. It was ticklish and disturbing. And I can't wait to do it again!

They kept swarming the guy's feet! He would dip his big toe, and all the fish would zero in on it. He kept having to take out his feet so I could get some fish love.

Besides my intense bonding with strangers, I have been teaching Monday-Friday, 1st-6th grade for the past 2 weeks. It's astounding how much 1 year can change a child. While my 4th grade students are quiet, studious and still happy to sing silly Disney songs in class, my 5th and 6th graders shoot lasers at me with their eyes all class long. They make no effort to hide their boredom, and the class size is dwindling as they beg their parents to be removed from the after school sessions (I teach directly after regular elementary school hours end). As for 1,2 and 3rd graders...well they are basically on crack. I cannot enter a room of 1st graders without them screaming "Katy Teacher" in unison, barreling toward me and attacking me with hugs, running around me in circles or picking up some random object and trying to say it's name in English. I have students jump up and latch on to my arms to hang from them. I have students who will twist the projector to face me because they think I am a movie star and the projector is a spotlight. I have little girls that want me to brush their hair and boys who want to learn "bad" words (The "bad" words they know are currently: silly, crazy, loco, psycho, bonkers, and the very naughty word "stupid")

Click HERE for a video of my 3rd graders. I have a 10 minute break in between classes to prepare my lesson for the next wave of students filtering in. However, a few spare moments of quiet is difficult to find when certain students come to class immediately after the previous one leaves. These 3rd graders are definitely my brown-nosers. They are always early, always sit at the front and never stop raising their hands to answer questions even for a moment during my lesson.

My school is Maegok Elementary, and it was finished being built march of this year. Everything is new and working so I can't complain about my classroom, especially when I have heard horror stories from some of my fellow TaLKers. For example: Shaina has no Internet access in her classroom. When you are strapped for ideas or need a way to occupy the kids while you revive a frozen powerpoint lesson, there is nothing better than pulling up funny videos on YoutTube.com. The Internet is a classroom Godsend!

While I enjoy teaching because it's a new and different job from all the others I've had, I will say this: I would never teach elementary school kids. Mothers and teachers around the world, my hat is off to you. Young children are absolutely exhausting. They bicker, they physically fight, they cry, they get sick without warning... and more than anything they have very sensitive feelings, which I must be extra cautious with because I sometimes don't know what's going on because of the language barrier. Yesterday, a fight broke out between two little boys (with the older, bigger boy punching the other smaller one with glasses on the head) in my 4th grade class because one kept calling the other "crazy head" and "fat". The boy with the glasses was shaking like a leaf for the remainder of the class and now will not raise his hand to answer any questions for fear of being picked on. The Snell part of me wants to grab the older boy by the arm with a really hard yank and traumatize him in front of the entire class ...maybe by embarrassing him with hard questions and taking stickers away from his name of the sticker reward chart but it wouldn't be fare and children, like puppies, don't understand retroactive punishment.
This is the P.E. for Maegok. Those buildings in the background are apartment complexes, and they are pretty much what house all Koreans who live in the city. Most of my students probably live in those exact buildings.
Those are Korean Hangul letters at the top, but usually names are written in Chinese characters in Korea (2nd line). Why? Because the Korean alphabet is not very old! For a long time, Koreans wrote and spoke in Chinese simply because they did not have a language of their own. And by the way, you pronounce my school's name "May- go-cuc" but say it quickly, so "May-gok"

They had closed the gate, so I apologize for the fence. But note the colors of the school: orange and blue!!!!!!

So, what's the best part of being a teacher you ask? Is it the fact that you finally get benefits like full health care? Is it the the thrill of teaching something to a child and watching their eyes light up when they finally understand? Is is the satisfaction of having a job that impacts society because you are educating tomorrow's leaders?

Sorry, but no.

It's the fact that I get to wear orthopedic sandals at work all day. What could ever top that?
Koreans wear indoor and outdoor shoes. So when I com to school, I immediately take my shoes off and place them in a cubby and get to wear these extra squishy, leather flippy floppies that the school provides. Hell yeah!

Seomun Market and Daegu Arboretum

Ah routine, what a love/hate relationship. I find myself plodding along to the subway station, developing muscle memory when it comes to my morning routine of roll-off-bed-into-kitchen, fix coffee and oatmeal, sit at computer and check Facebook, etc.

Even tasks that were at one point a novelty (ex.- leaving maggot-filled food bucket on street at night to discover it miraculously emptied the next morning) have become mundane. I am quick to be bored. So, I was looking forward to this weekend as an opportunity to strike out and explore all the hidden gems of Daegu. Unfortunately, Shaina's immune system trifled with my plans. For the past week she has been hacking up a lung. For a while I caught the funk, but it quickly passed, and it seems to be lingering for Shaina and some of the other TaLK people... so I am waiting to do any serious traveling until everyone gets healthy again.

Saturday morning I knocked out some sorely needed chores, went running and piddled around cooking an extravagant lunch (tofu scramble with corn, mushrooms and broccoli) to burn time until noon rolled around and all of my normal 20 year-old friends began waking up. The tentative plan was to meet at Daegudong subway station to celebrate a friend's 20th birthday. However, the communication was poor, so by the time we met, everyone was flustered and annoyed at the lack of a formal plan. I did what I am good at doing: abandoning ship and doing my own thing. Yes, I pulled a "Snell", snatched Eunice and Shaina from impending boredom and whisked them away to downtown Daegu to explore some more.... and of course use Eunice's translation capabilities for my own gain.

A while back, my Ipod decided to up and die. Oddly enough, Apple is not very popular in Korea, (which Eunice explained is because Ipods are too big and do not appeal to Koreans who prefer microscopic computers, mp3 players, etc.) so finding an Apple service store was difficult. And pointless as it turned out: I was quoted $135 just to send my Ipod in to an Apple service center in the states. Looks like I know what I want for Christmas!
Eunice wanted me to take a picture of this girl's outfit. This is typical Korean fashion...

After the trek to Apple, we decided to visit Seomun Market. It's exactly the type of market you are envisioning: squawking, caged chickens flapping about in cages, coating the fish monger and his fly-covered catch with a thin layer of wispy down... nameless roots and leaves piled high on old newspapers with 70+ year-old women squatting among the leaves, haggling with locals and ignoring foreigners. Fabric stores, fake-designer shoes, "authentic" Korean antiques.... Seomun Market was a poppin' place on a Saturday.
This is the freshest fish you can get in Korea... and it's on display way underground at the entrance of the subway. Advertising is comical here.

Traversing through a marketplace is more for spectacle than it is for shopping. The Koreans selling food/clothing/God-knows-what know better than to waste their time on a foreigner who probably doesn't speak the language and who has no use for 20 pounds of fermented soybean paste. I was content to snap a few pictures until I saw a cart piled high with these perfect pine-tree green watermelons. Dad, as you read this, know that you have passed the "watermelon hound" gene down to your daughter. Every summer in Florida as well as on road trips, Dad would always track down a lone fruit stand on the side of the road and would stop to buy some of the local fare. Some of my happier memories are of eating watermelon on the deck with dad, juice running down our forearms and a pile of seeds littering the grass and deck railing. So, with an immense jolt of nostalgia, I stopped and pointed to one of the biggest melons the guy had to offer. 3,000 KRW (Like $2.90).
This is an art form in Korea: sweet rice balls/cakes. They are made from sweet rice flour and usually filled with sesame oil. The rice is formed into any shape you can imagine from sushi rolls and Disney characters to entire replicas of octopus. All edible!
Cramped quarters. Not to mention that scooters/motorcycles are allowed to drive on the sidewalk pavement in Korea, too.
Here's that 20 pounds of fermented soybean paste I mentioned earlier :o)
Chicken.... stages 1 and 2.

The first kittens and puppies I see in Korea.... and they are caged right next to the food. I wanted to save them all..
A puppy among some very fat rabbits. Nothing was pinning these rabbits here; I thought it was strange that they weren't constantly trying to escape.
But no oatmeal..
A Korean specialty: caterpillar larvae. It has the most repugnant odor you can imagine. Like putrid, fried mothballs....
Annnnd I made Shaina eat one. The little Korean ladies frying the larvae in a wok said that they cured all illness, so I was only trying to help..hehe.
The fruit of my labor. GET IT!?!? I love puns :)

While the rest of the group bickered about dinner, the Trinity (Eunice, Shaina and I) decided to go off and have dinner on our own. Shaina was feeling very poor at that point, so we rushed her to the nearest subway stop so we could ride back to my place for dinner. I proposed sashimi/sushi because there is a restaurant directly beside my apartment. Once there, Eunice got a call from her boyfriend, so she switched on a video chat application on her phone! I was amazed!--
The sashimi was just decent... it doesn't make sense to me that a country that is a peninsula could be so clueless as to how to do sushi right. What made the meal worthwhile are all the exotic side dishes the server brought out. A Korean meal is synonymous with a meal of maaaaany dishes. So there were the staples: kimchi, sesame-marinated spinach, fermented spicy roots.... and then there was a newbie on the table: abalone.

Abalone is the stuff on the left, and that is the creature's shell that it is resting on. If you are a fan of the Travel Channel and have ever watched No Reservations or Bizarre Foods, I can guarantee you have seen abalone. It's some sort of very thick-shelled sea creature that is considered a seafood delicacy because it must be cooked for hours to become edible. It's slimy, coated in a white mucous-like substance and smells like briny seawater. It tastes exactly like the aforementioned description. All 3 of us discreetly spit the abalone into napkins and hid the wads in our purses because we did not want to offend the server.
This is how they serve fish in Korea. I feel like I am eating fried bait because not only is it tiny, it's just a crappy species of fish. To eat it, you spear both chopsticks into the belly of the fish and rip him apart. You cannot avoid the bones because they are hair-thin, and all the organs, scales and eyes are supposed to be eaten too. I will never shun the seafood counter at Publix again.

Eunice put a hurtin on that fish. She ate every little morsel using her chopsticks!

After dinner, we headed to my apartment for movie night using my computer. Unfortunately, you can never visit as long as you would like to because the subway stop running at around 11:30, and we live over an hour away from each other.

On Sunday, the plan was to go to Daegu Arboretum (the 3 of us) and to spend the day reading on park benches but Shaina texted me early on in the morning to say she still felt like death, so I decided to just go alone. Getting lost on my way to a park is loads better than going stir-crazy in my apartment.

So I packed an extra large carrot in my camera bag, wrote down my address in Korean (if I ever get lost, I can at least hail a cab and just hand him my address) and struck out to find Daegu Arboretum. I had to ride the subway to the very last stop on the line, and when I first emerged from the tunnel I was disoriented because I was suddenly in the country! Stifling the first inklings of panic, I searched for English anything... and luckily found a sign with a picture of lots of trees and the word "Arbo." on it, pointing down a street, reading 150m.

I walked for a half hour, winding through side streets and growing more nervous by the minute. I was just about to use break down and use the 5 Korean words know with the owner of a vegetable cart when I spotted a sight for sore eyes: an aajima! (hajima/aajima- the ladies with the massive visors) and she was dressed to the nines for hiking!
When in doubt, always follow the hajima (and her offspring in hajima-training). Especially when she's decked out head to toe in Northern Face hiking gear. Koreans like to go to extremes when it comes to their hiking clothing. It's still well above 90 degrees right now, but Koreans still don long sleeved, cold-weather hiking jackets and thick, fur-lined hiking boots just for a casual walk in the park.

Sure enough, I was led straight to the arboretum, which turned out to be a lovely day. The park was packed full of families on Sunday outings enjoying the cloudless, perfect weather. For some history in the arboretum: it's a free park that was built over a landfill. It extends over several hundred acres and is part of a tree-planting initiative that the Republic of Korea has begun to be competitive in the new green/eco-friendly trend.
A hothouse filed with different types of cacti.
These metal coils were heating the room, keeping the temperature roasting!
I had no one to take pictures of me, so I contented myself by taking pictures of posing Korean people. This culture has a love affair with photography, and everywhere you looked there were parents setting up tripods to photograph their children, young girls snapping photos that are sure to be their next Facebook pictures and couples trying to take the most cutesy kissing poses in pics possible.

Another thing Koreans love: dipping their feet in water. A few posts back I put up a picture of a stream built straight through the heart of metropolitan Seoul. This concept of an open stream that you can wade into is all over Korea. On this particular Sunday with all the families at the park, the kids were having a ball splashing around in the water.

I found a praying mantis in the grass! When the kids saw me squatting down to take a picture of something, they all started crowding around me, trying to poke the mantis with a stick. This was the only shot I could get without any little hands in it :)

It was a pleasant break from city life. No honking horns or flashing neon lights. No fruit vendors shouting about their prices through a garbled speakerphone like it's a Communist China national rally at 4 in the morning. The only mar on the day were the stares I was getting, not so much because I was the only foreigner for miles, but because of two conspicuously placed lime green band aids on my chest. I'm sure it looked like I was hiding a chemotherapy port or something, when really the band aids are covering a very nasty burn from a hard boiled egg incident.

I have never cooked with gas before, so I must have turned the heat up too high because 3 eggs that I was boiling became 3 temperamental bombs, which exploded and coated my ceiling, windows, pots, pans, sink, fridge, floor and ME with scalding egg fragments. In fact, it was like having eggshell shrapnel lodged into my skin! I had to pull off a particularly large sliver of yolk off my chest, which melted off a huge tract of Katy-flesh: thus the band aids. So, when I come home and reflect back on my myriad of injuries and illnesses that I suffered through in Korea, I can always have a laugh that, no, I never caught Swine Flu... but I did have second degree burns from explosive eggs.