EPIK 365 Day 35: Look Out Brain Cells, Here Comes the Soju!

Really, the title says it all.

EPIk 365 Day 34: Makggeoli

Because nothing says "birthday" quite the same as drinking rice wine in the middle of the streets of Seoul.  Wow, if that doesn't make me sound like an alcoholic...

EPIK 365 Day 33: Korean Snacks

Korean snack...we got these at orientation...I still have the cookie/cracker/food item, but drank the juice.  I just wasn't hungry when they gave them to me and I just found them hiding out in my bag.

EPIK 365 Day 32: Korean Coke Can

I was kinda hoping that the Korean Coke can would be a little more, errr, "ethnic."  I mean, the Fijian can is all colorful and says "Bula!" and all.  Anyway, this is the Korean Coke can to add to my collection.

Birthday Blog

What has two thumbs and can have an amazing birthday experience on a Monday...during a business trip?

 

This girl!

 

This past Monday was my birthday...so I was so excited to get to have a Korean birthday until I realized I was expected in Seoul for an orientation seminar.  I did kinda want my first Seoul adventure to be a little more exciting than that, but not the type to just let life happen I decided to make the best of it.  So, Monday night I hit the streets of Seoul with some of my new friends.

 

Apparently the theme of the party was “Homelessness.”

 

We headed to the Myeongdong area of Seoul, which is a glitzy, shopper’s paradise.  Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, was shiny and/or cute.  We passed a man selling makggeolli, rice wine, in the streets and we bought a couple of bottles to celebrate.  So, now we take off down the street with two bottles of wine in tow.  How New Orleans is that?  Or Beale Street?  Memphis, Tennessee, REPRESENT! 

 

Unfortunately, we had a curfew at the seminar, so we grabbed a Paris Baguette cake and headed back to the dorms.  We had cake in the dorms with some of the orientation guides (or OGs, as I called them) and others at the seminar.  Doesn’t sound like much, but I loved it!  And I love all the wonderful people that went out of their way to make sure I got a proper birthday celebration!  Truly, this is a special breed of people!

 

What else happened this week?

 

I took a taekwondo lesson and, heck yeah, I broke a board!  (I am small but mighty!)  AND...I sang at a noraebang.  Clearly, I am a girl with many talents.

 

EPIK 365 Day 31: Jincheon Birthday

 

 

 

Oh, I am so loved!  Got back to Jincheon and the girls has another birthday for me!   Really, I know know the most wonderful people!

 

EPIK 365 Day 30: The Streets of Seoul and Best OG's EVER!

 

 

 

In the streets of Seoul...happy that I am just a short bus ride away!

 

 

And John and Jin...aka, the best OG's (orientation guides) ever!



EPIK 365 Day 29: McDonald's in Korea

 

 

McDonald's in Korea...see those scooters?  They offer delivery service!

EPIK 365 Day 28: Norae Bang Stars!

 

 

Yes, that is me rockin' the norae bang...think karaoke on acid...but I love it.  Hello, my name is Betsy and I am a norae bang addict.  Also, that is one of my new friends, Krista...she is awesome!

EPIK 365 Day 27: Drinking in the Streets

So, it's not illegal here...how New Orleans is that?  We had birthday makgeilli in the streets of Seoul.  And yes, that is me drinking in the streets like a homeless person! ;)

EPIK 365 Day 26: Birthday Two-fer

Well, the upside is that I got to spend my birthday in Seoul.  Pretty cool taekwondo demonstration in the morning...a dragging day of lectures...but then I got to drink makggolli on the streets of Seoul and and birthday cake with my new friends.  All in all, a fantastic birthday! :)

EPIK 365 Day 25: Seoul Manhole Cover

In Seoul...yay...sorta.  I kinda imagined that my first trip to Seoul would be for something a little more exciting than orientation...

EPIK 365 Day 24: Mybee Card

My Mybee card...for public transportation.  How cute that it's a panda?

EPIK 365 Day 23: Korean V8

The Korean version of V8 juice...not too bad.

Cliff's Notes

Hello, my dear readers.  I have been lax on the blog-front lately.  Not because I have nothing to say or no adventures to share, but because it is a pain to write a blog, save it to my jump drive, go to a pc bang or wait until I get to school, and then upload everything.  In short, I’m lazy.

Anyway, that trend my soon change.  I finally have my Alien Registration Card and can get a phone and internet…

Oh, internet.  I asked my coteacher about setting up my internet and she looked a little confused and then said, “Oh, I think it may be included with your apartment.”  Really?  I mean, really?  Because that would be awesome to not have another expense each month...but really?  Because I have been living in a veritable Fortress of Solitude since I got here.  I mean, no big deal, because I have gone without much more for much longer, but still.  Ah, such is life.

Anyway, for you my dears, I am presenting the Cliffs Notes version of my top 3 adventures since my last post:

1. I washed my hair with conditioner.

So, I only brought travel-sized shampoo and such.  I ran out of shampoo and since everything is written in Korean could not decide what to buy at the store.  So, after a good 10 minutes of staring and pacing in the aisle, I picked one at almost random.  I go home to take a shower and the stuff doesn’t feel quite right.  I think that maybe Korean shampoo doesn’t lather the same, so I squirt some more out (it comes in a pump, by the way, so you can’t smell or check it in the store) and scrub away.  My hair feels super sticky after its dried.  So I ask my fellow GETs and they agree that they think I jut washed my hair with conditioner and go with me to buy the right stuff.  I washed my hair three times after that...yeah, it was that good.

1. 2. I have been to two Buddhist temples.

So, just like I like going to Catholic churches for the beauty and the symbolism, I love going to Buddhist temples.  However, unlike the feeling that I could be smitted...smote...err, that God will smite me...at any given moment in a Catholic church, I feel relaxed and at peace at the temples.  I would like to do a temple stay while I am here and learn more about Buddhism and the practices.  And the temples are just beautiful...colorful and happy...even when crawling with tourists.  The one on Songrisan Mountain was where a Bruce Lee movie was filmed and home to a giant golden Buddah.  The one at Botapsa is run entirely by female monks, and I am told is absolutely gorgeous in the spring.

3) The ATM ate my bank book.

I went to the ATM after hours, mostly because despite having a school job I work 9 to 5.  I just wanted a little cash and to update my bank book.  Korean banking is really a thing of wonder.  You can do everything from the ATM: take out money, deposit, transfer money, pay bills, and yes, update your bank book.  You are supposed to just put your book in, press a couple of buttons and the ATM prints out all your transactions since the last update.  Pretty cool.  Anyway, I thought, “I can do that” and proceeded to insert my bank book, press a couple of buttons, and...nothing happens.  No-thing.  So, I fight down the urge to panic, cry, and scream and look around for context clues (like a big red help button).  So, there is this phone thing in the ATM with me, so I think that it must function like the help button in an elevator (BTW, they do work if you are ever stuck on an elevator) but all the buttons are in Korean.  So, I push one at random.  A Korean woman picks up and does her spiel in Korean.  I apologize that I don not speak much Korean and ask if there is someone who speaks English.  She repeats her Korean greeting a couple of times.  Finally, I just hang up.  Now, I am dangerously close to crying.  I look around and there is a young-ish Korean woman also in the ATM vestibule and I stop her with a very polite and timid “excuse me, but my Korean is bad.”  Turns out she has enough English to get the help line woman to send someone to come get my bank book for me.  My new friend told me to wait, someone would be there in 20 minutes and I thanked her profusely, which she was super-gracious in accepting.  Sure enough within 20 minutes a security officer had shown up, gone inside the back room and, bank book in hand, I was back on the streets and on my way home.

EPIK 365 Day 23: Curtains



Add caption

 Well, shades, really...not the darkest ones I have ever had (they still let in quite a bit of light) but are definitely the cutest ones I've had.

EPIK 365 Day 22: THE Coffee Shop

Not just any coffee shop, but THE coffee shop.  We GETs go here...ALOT.

EPIK 365 Day 21: Wishes

Because, I mean, really...everything in Korea is so beautiful.  The lotus lamps are a Buddhist tradition for making wishes.

EPIK 365 Day 20: Botapsa Pagoda

Botapsa Temple is just a very short ride away from Jincheon...really just over the (small) mountian.  It is run by femal Buddhist monks only.  Very pretty!

EPIK 365 Day 19: Jincheon Park

Jincheon Park is just a short walk away from my apartment...a nice little walking track, some weird outdoor public gym equipment, basketball and soccer areas, a little playground...all in all, a nice little park.

EPIK 365 Day 18: My Building

So, it occurred to me that I haven't shown you my building yet...here it is.

EPIK 365 Day 17: Songrisan National Park

Because, I mean, really, it's just gorgeous!

EPIK 365 Day 16: Golden Buddah

There is a giant golden Buddah at Songrisan Temple...so pretty!

EPIK 365 Day 15: Songrisan Temple

Another holiday took me to Songrisan Temple...it is nestled away in the mountains about an hour and a half drive from me.  It is so beautiful and peaceful there...I couldn't quite get over the feeling that I had stepped into a movie!

EPIK 365 Day 14: Why I am Going to Get Fat in Korea

I get a food gift everyday!  Really, everyone is too nice and going so far to make me feel welcome here.    What can I say, I'm a lucky girl!

EPIK 365 Day 13: Look Ma, No Fork

I've been able to use chopsticks since before I left the states, but I am becoming super-good at using them here.

Also, I've changed the settings on my blog so you can leave comments here even without a google account.  So feel free to leave me some love. :)

Jincheon Festival and Eating Contest

This weekend was the Jincheon Festival.  So, festivals in Korea are a little different from what we have back in the States.  In American its mostly games and special events with  a few food stalls and “fair food.”  Here in Korea it is food, food, food, and more food.  With a little karaoke and Kpop thrown in for good measure.  A handful of rides and other things, but really, it’s all about the food.

 

Friday night there was a short Kpop performance by some girl group...again, no clue what was going on, but had a good time anyway.  After the show, there was a little old woman trying to make her way to the top of the stadium and we decided to help her climb.  At the top she called us all her “angels” and insisted on buying us these giant (and I mean, like, 2 feet long) hot dogs on a stick (no bun, in case you were wondering how that worked).

 

It seemed so horrible to refuse to take and then eat them, so we walked around Jincheon festival nibbling on these things.  Just to make to comment, it was not the worst tasting hot dog I have ever eaten.  As far as processed meat products go, it was not bad.  That being said, back home I have to be VERY hungry to eat a hot dog...they are just not really my thing.  But I digress…

 

Anyway, we decided to go get coffee, but two of us still had most of our hot dogs on a stick.  So, it was suggested that we have an eating contest and, of course, we thought that sounded like a good idea.  Not the smartest decision I have made since I came to Korea!

 

I already don’t eat a lot...and after dinner, forcing a giant hot dog into my already packed stomach was neither easy or pretty.  That being said, I WON!  By a bite, but winning is winning.  Yeah!  Represent!  Oh, no...I was dog-sick after.  A little bit of pain from being so full, but a whole lot of nausea from all the meat and grease that was then swimming around inside my body.

 

After a full night’s sleep and a lot of Pepto Bismol, I was still pretty queasy, but I got myself up and went down to the store.  I was looking for a ginger ale (which Koreans apparently don’t have), but got a Coke instead and proceeded to burp up hot dog fumes all morning.  I was much better after that.

 

I went back to the festival on Saturday night.  We (some other English teachers and myself, this is not a royal “we”) had dinner at one of the vendor booths.  Really good food.  When we left I asked if I could take his picture, which he said yes and then posed (apparently, Koreans love to have their pictures taken) and told me that he was the “Jincheon Psy.”  And, ok...he really does look a lot like Psy.

EPIK 365 Day 12: Jincheon English Teachers

The Jincheon EPIK and TALK teachers...I love these guys so much already!!  I would be absolutely lost without this group! :)

Past to Present: Sangdong to Kpop

The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Korea as a place of contrasts...I can’t say that its an inaccurate description.

Thursday was a holiday for us.  “Opening Day of Korea”, which a kinda Founders’ Day thing.  Anyway, a few of us decided to go hiking along Sangdong Fortress in Cheongju and then meet up with some other foreign teachers for dinner.

Sangdon Fortress is beautiful!  It’s over 1000 years old on top of a mountain just outside of Cheongju.  There’s a small touristy area around the base to the hiking trail, but once you head up the hiking trail you step back in time.  The views are absolutely breathtaking...and not just because you have scaled a mountain to get there.  I mean, I may have like to have been placed in a major city, but you just can’t get these kinds of views there.  I didn’t climb all the way to the top because I was hurting a little from my injury and will be going back once I am 100 percent.

We headed back into the city to meet up with some other teachers, some I knew from Jincheon but some were located in Cheongju.  This is really once of the best groups of people I have ever met.  Really...everyone is just wonderful and I am so, SO lucky to have them in my life!

So, after dinner, we took the world’s longest cab ride to a Kpop concert.  This was my first real exposure to Kpop.  I mean, Southerners don’t have a lot of exposure to Korean people, culture, etc...and short of Gangnam style and a few random songs, I was (and largely still am) Kpop illiterate.

Kpop is bright and bouncy.   Catchy, even.  It’s flashy and fun.  Maybe nothing I would spend a lot of money on, but it was more fun than my angst-riddled, deep and meaningful music background would have let me believe.  Yeah, a lot of it is “canned music”, but I had a really good time...except…

So, let me make this clear.  I am from MEMPHIS.  Aside from not being Kpop savvy, being from Memphis means that when a crowd of people surges forward your natural instinct is to head the other way.  You cannot...and I mean, CANNOT, do that at a Kpop concert.  The crowd periodically surges forward...I have no idea why, by the way...and when that happens you MUST go with it.  It took quite a bit of self-control to not freak out and start trying to fight my way out of the crowd.

Also, it is a little unnerving to see full-grown adults...and I am talking middle-aged and older...freak out over boy/girl bands.  Its gives a distinct air of pedophilia, but probably because most Kpop artists are altered to the point of being plastic.  But definitely surreal.  And mad props to the security guards there in their three-piece suits and earpieces...those guys kept order like a BAWSE.  One security guy would LITERALLY point, then wave his hand, and the crowd would obey.  Intense.

EPIK 365 Day 11: Jincheon Festival

EPIK 365 Day 10: Two-fer, Shandong to Kpop

An interesting day of contrasts...I went from hiking a 1000 year old fortress to a Kop concert in a single day.  Look for a full length blog on this soon.

Also, I am about a day behind on my 365s, but I will be more diligent once I can access the internet in my apartment...in another week or so...hopefully.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again...

Just an FYI, this and the last 2 posts were all posted within the same hour.  The dramatic jump in time is because I finally got around to changing the time setting on the blog to Korean Standard Time.

EPIK 365 Day 9: Office View

I got moved to a new classroom/office...and new room means new view.  My new room looks out over a Buddhist temple.  I can't wait to go there!

Betsy be Trippin'

I hurt my fool self Saturday.  It was completely random and, most likely, I couldn’t repeat it if I had to.

 

I took to the streets of Jincheon to start exploring my new “home.”  I walked quite a bit, probably 2 hours before I stopped in the pc bang to check emails and chat with my mom, but mostly to check up on my cats.  I was there about an hour and a half when decided I was feeling pretty hungry.  So I start for home and stop in the grocery store.

 

I consider myself pretty grocery-store savvy, but...and I can’t emphasize this enough, everything was in KOREAN...and my Korean skills are painfully lacking.  I managed to pick up a few familiar-looking things to keep myself alive and made a mental to note to start researching food words in Korean.  So, on to the apartment where I get in the door,  put my grocery bag down, reach into my pocket and realize….I left my jump drive in the pc bang.

 

Shoes go back on, back out the door, down the street, and up three flights of stairs to the pc bang.  So now the challenge was communicating what had just happened to the guy at the desk who only knew enough English to know that was what I was speaking and I wasn’t speaking Korean.  He seemed to think that I had lost files onto the computer and I couldn’t find the words to tell him I just wanted my jump drive back.  (The Lonely Planet Korean phrasebook does not cover “I am the idiot who left a jump drive in the computer.”)  It took 15 minutes, the worst game of charades EVER, and an ill-fated attempt at Google translate for him to finally walk over to the computer I had been using and pull my jump drive out of the USB.

 

I got back to the apartment feeling pretty accomplished.  I ate a quick bite and then decided I would walk in the opposite direction than I had in the morning.  So, I walked...and walked...and walked.  I was headed for the edge of town where I thought I had seen a “mart” and hoped it would have a small drip coffee machine to fill my deep-seeded need for caffeine.  They did not, but I did pick up a few hand towels (apparently Koreans do not use bath towels?) and a jar of peanut butter.  It had started to rain just a little and I decided to head back to the apartment.

 

Then, LITERALLY, across the street from the apartment I slipped on a crack in the sidewalk.  I didn’t fall, but the way I managed to catch myself pulled/strained/sprained something in the arch of my right foot.  It really hurt...bad enough for my to consider crying...but I sucked up all my self-control and limped across the street and up the stairs to my apartment. 

 

I managed to get to the bed and get my shoes off when I remembered I should wash my new towels before using them.  (Sometimes manufacturers spray a stain repellant on them before shipping to keep them clean, but then comes off in the wash.  You have to wash them first or they don’t absorb any liquid.)  I couldn’t stand back up!  So I rolled off onto the floor, and dragged myself back to the washing machine.  So, I had to do this twice because I used too much soap and after the first wash there were soap suds trying to come out the door.  (Never mind that the directions on the washing machine are in Korean and I selected a setting at random...since I’m the first GET in the school I guess that means I am also the first one in the apartment, so no helpful previous tenet to guide me.  Something else for me to work on…)

 

At this point I gave up...drug myself back to the bed, took a Unisom and two Aleve and tried to sleep off the pain.  It kinda worked.  I woke up at 3AM and it still hurt to walk, but I crawled across the floor to get the towels out of the washer and onto a bar in the window to dry.  Another Aleve and back into bed.

 

I spent most of Sunday doing nothing in particular.  I managed to limp back to the pc bang for an hour or so and then back home.  If I walk on the edge of my foot it hurts a little less, so I think I will be able to manage to get to school in the morning.  I watched one of the movies I brought...and I was so happy I did decide to bring a few, I realized how spoiled to internet I am.  Even if I didn’t have internet where I was back home a short drive would usually produce a wifi hotspot.  Here, even if I get to somewhere with internet it is probably wired and I would have to have walked there.  Not being able to log on to Facebook whenever I feel like it or be connected to something almost instantly has been an adjustment, but I will make it.

 

So a day of limited mobility did provide a chance to rest and recover from some jet lag.  I am still tired by 5PM, but it is getting better.  More than anything this is going to take time and patience.  Maybe it took hurting my foot reminded me of that.  I am in a place with a slower pace and I need to match.  Back in the States I was so used to being in high gear from the time I woke until the time I managed to cram in a few hours of sleep that I forgot just how much I do enjoy a full night’s sleep.  I was (and still am) used to having something to fill every waking hour and then some, and have time to just “be” is good for me.

 

I am better today...almost as good as new.  The good thing about hurting yourself as often as I do is that there is a quick recovery time.  I am headed to Cheongju today with some fellow GETs to do some hiking and probably other things.

EPIK 365 Day 8: Manhole Cover

If you aren't familiar, I have a slight fixation with manhole covers.  I don't know why other than they tend to be unique to the place they are from.

EPIK 365 Day 7: Yapbap

When I got to school this morning, Mrs Next Door had left a yapbap cake on my desk.  Sticky rice, slightly sweet with nuts and spices.  Different, but good.