The Joys of Fishbread

There are a variety of street food options in Gunsan, but my personal favorite is fish bread. And no, it isn't bread with fish in it. The bread itself IS a fish!



Okay, not a real fish. It's essentially a waffle made in an iron with a fish mold. You can buy them in little plastic tents, which, in the winter, are hot and steamy from the fry. You can get three fish for 1,000 won, which is approximately one dollar (I use rough mental estimation here). They come in two varieties: bean paste-filled, which is brownish-red and slightly gritty, and 슈크림 (this is my best guess on how to spell it; it sounds like shukeureem to me), which is bright yellow and gloppy.

I personally enjoy the yellow goo. So strange, and yet so good! Perfect for a cheap, hot-off-the-griddle snack in winter.

What a Juxtaposition

So often my experience in one of the more rural provinces in Korea:



A busy intersection, a vast field, and a towering apartment complex all back-to-back.

Kim Jong Il is Dead

The leader of the North is gone.  This is definitely an interesting time to be in South Korea.

Snow!

It's snowing tonight! None of it has stuck yet, but the afternoon flurries graduated to real snow “showers” by the time I left work today. They're calling for some real stuff tomorrow...maybe I'll wear my PJs inside out and flush the toilet at midnight in hopes we'll have a snow day, heh.

(Note: This post was written days ago, but for some reason wasn't posted.)

One More Reason Not to Bring Your Dog When You Teach English in Korea

Eat them in the summer, recycle them in winter.

Now that's sustainability!

Could It Be? A Positive ID?

Remember this fruit, the one no one can identify?

My father suspects it might be a lychee.  It may be, although so far the kinds I’ve seen have had longer, hookier protrusions from their outer “shells,” and the seed inside the one I ate was light brown, sort of like a long, thin almond.

Apparently it’s not a chestnut either way, though, so at least one point’s settled!

A Sofa Story

On our way home tonight, my coworker and I stumbled across a decent-looking sofa set out with the trash. He thought he might want it, so we looked at it a minute.

Then we piled on the pieces and lugged it to his place.



I think it looks great in his apartment. What a neat adventure!

Monthly Tests: Windows to My Students' Souls

And that's the fate of all good things, apparently.

I hope I never get this pessimistic!

The Underworld

I've always wondered what's underneath those manhole covers. Now I know:



I think the men explained to me that they were doing something related to the phone lines. Here they are cutting some:



So fascinating!

Hug Garlic

I needed a place to sit down and grade tests while I ate dinner tonight, so I decided to check out a new restaurant that just got built over the summer.

It's billed as an Italian restaurant, and on the sign it advertises pizza, pasta, and steak in English.

Once I got inside I realized it was quite the upscale place (at least compared to usual for me). All the waiters had vests or tuxedo-imitating shirts and tiny black bow-ties. The place was dark and beautiful and boasted wine bottles from all over the world. Practically invisible grates hung from the ceiling with latticed lights to look like stars. It was a classy place.

I ordered the soup of the day (which turned out to be some sort of pureed mushroom thing--and yes, I did eat all of it) and the caesar salad (which turned out to be massive but quite good, and filled with all kinds of plant leaves and stems that were, to me, wholly unidentifiable). But before those even came, the waiter brought some kind of soft nut bread, still warm from the oven and fresher than I'd known that bread could be.

To dip my bread in he supplied a dish with oil and what I think he called “balsamic,” and since we're in Korea, naturally it was super cute. I only regret smudging it with my first piece of bread before I thought to take a picture:



Afterwards I used the restroom and found, near the sink, a “gargle dispenser”! You know the place is fancy then!



I availed myself and found out it was some kind of mouthwash, and the flavor and the feel of it reminded me of being at the dentist.

All in all, it was a good experience, and not that much more expensive than a meal at Subway (although that's very overpriced). Hopefully they didn't mind serving the foreigner in jeans and baggy flannel, heh.

Mystery Fruit: Left by Aliens?

Remember this strange fruit?

Today at the 1st Birthday Party, my friend had some.  I asked her what they were, even in Korean, figuring at least then I could look it up.  She didn’t know.

She asked her sister, who didn’t know.  She asked her other sister, who didn’t know.  She asked her sister’s husband, who didn’t know.  She asked an older woman sitting with us, who didn’t know.  She asked the waiter, who didn’t know.

But the waiter went and asked someone who knew.

Apparently their name is 람푸탄.  My phone’s Korean-English dictionary has no translation.  Google Translate has no translation.  Someone, somewhere, must know what this is, but for now I’m at a loss.

1st Birthday Party

My good Korean friend invited me to attend a very exciting event with her family.  In Korea, festivities occur to celebrate a child’s first 100 days, and a huge blow-out is held to celebrate their first birthday party.  My friend’s twin nephews’ first birthday is on Tuesday, so today their parents rented out a nice space at a party hall with an amazing (and I’m sure expensive) buffet.

 

Her other sister and brother-in-law picked me up, and I got to ride with them and her, along with her other nephew and niece, to the location of the party.  It was in Jeonju, 50-60 minutes away by bus and less by car, and we got there an hour early.

 

So we spent our time enjoying the weather and the view at a park near where my friend attended college.  Here are some photos for your enjoyment.

 

An interesting tower by a massively great bridge:

 

The view of the bridge from said tower:

The duck boats all in a row:

Other duck boats on the lake:

The bridge spanning the vast graveyard of lotus flowers:

Graffiti on the tower, the bridge, and the sea of lotus skeletons:

Apparently earlier in the year this whole place is flooded with lotus flowers:

A quaint set of wooden steps under a pretty orange tree:

An interesting, more traditional pavilion:

There was also a traditional swing there, which you ride standing up.  It was a lot of fun.

Then we went to the 1st Birthday Party!

The mother wore her traditional hanbok, and the twins wore cute little baby hanboks, too.  Photos were taken of the parents and the twins in front of a huge table on a stage and then the grandparents came up and posed with them.

I’m sorry that I don’t have any photos from the birthday party itself, but I was busy enjoying the festivities and didn’t know if I should be snapping pictures in the middle of it all, considering I’m a foreigner and just a friend of a relative.

After that we all went out and ate and the buffet was amazing and intense.  All kinds of food was there, from escargot to spaghetti, from Oreo cereal to Japanese raw fish (sitting in ice on HUGE—REAL—clam shells), from cheese fondue to Chinese flower bread.  It was good and I enjoyed it.  I have no idea how much it must have cost to feed so many guests at such a high-end buffet.  Experiencing this at all, especially considering the costs I can’t imagine, was an incredibly great privilege.

After that an MC in a Santa suit came.  He didn’t have a beard, glasses, or false fat.  He was just wearing the suit.  He had three earrings and talked fast, I guess because he was an entertainer.  He said a lot of things, introduced the twins, and let the parents say some things.  He led the room in the Korean happy birthday song and he and his lovely female assistant, also in a santa suit (she with a santa hat), did a crazy-looking dance.  It looked like something from a boy band concert, it was so perfectly in sync and complexly choreographed, and it was upbeat enough.

At some point an interesting traditional ritual took place.  Tradtionally, on the baby’s first birthday, you put a bunch of objects on the floor and see which one the baby crawls to and chooses first.  If it’s a pencil, he will be a good student.  If it’s money, he will become rich.  If he picks a string, he will live very long.  Nowadays people don’t seem to put much stock in this tradition’s predictive ability, but they do it just for fun, and it was fun to watch.  As history plowed on, the ritual’s been modified.  The basket they could choose from on the stage today, for example, included a stethoscope to be a doctor, a microphone to be a public speaker or an entertainer, and a computer mouse to be a programmer (or, as I think the MC joked, to spend all day in the PC rooms playing computer games).

The elder twin had a hard time deciding what he wanted, even after the MC held up each item and danced it around in front of him.  At long last he chose money, but I think maybe he felt it was too soon to commit to a career.  The younger twin seemed ready to grab almost anything, but once he saw the microphone he stole it like a thief.  While the MC was asking the parents something in Korean, the younger twin was trying to get his mouth all over the mic.  Later, when it was time to put it back into the basket, his mother had to pry it away from him.  It was funny to me how different they were in their decisions.

After that the MC asked a series of questions for entertainment gift card giveaways.  At one of them my friend and her sister looked at me and said, “Put up your hand!”  But I didn’t know yet what was going on and I couldn’t hear them very well so I kept asking them to tell me what they’d said again.

It turns out the MC had asked, “Who came from the farthest place?”  Technically I didn’t come that far for this event, but I am from very far away, and I was the only foreigner in the whole room.  So when I said I was from America, I guess I took the cake.  I got to wish the twins a “Happy Birthday” (alas, I don’t know how to say it in Korean) into the mic and gained a 10,000 won (about $10) entertainment gift certificate to use in bookstores, movie theaters, etc.

After that we saw a slideshow with pictures of the mom and dad before and after they were married, then the sonogram of the twins inside of her, then several different slideshows of them from their first year on planet earth.

At the end we were given party favors to take with us, and for some reason I was given two.  The favors were jars of grain, which you can wash and cook with rice.  My friend told me how to do it, so sometime when I have a chance I’m going to make rice with grain.

Each one had a commemorative label on it so you would never forget the twins’ 1st Birthday.

Shabu Shabu

There's this awesome food I love to eat, and I've heard it's actually Japanese. Everybody calls it shabu shabu, apparently based on the sound the meat makes when it's cooking, but I don't know the food's official name.



You get a big pot with soup, green “sticks” (onions? shoots? I don't know what they are), mushrooms, potatoes, etc.

You also get some heavy noodles and a plate (or more) of thinly-cut raw beef. When the soup is hot enough, you boil the meat and eventually the noodles.



When you finish eating all of that, they take the pot and pour the soup into a bowl for you except for one spoonful of the broth. Then they cook rice in the pot and bring it back and you can eat it with the soup.

I've never had rice as good as this. My favorite parts are the rice and the meat, though the potatoes and the noodles are good, too.



Even though it involves sitting on the floor, I have to say that eating at this place after a long day's work just really hits the spot.

A Fruit New to My Vocabulary

The other day I tried a new Italian restaurant out here, and near the end of my meal the server came and set this down in front of me:



Were they chestnuts? I had no idea. I attempted to eat one, and the white, fleshy part tasted a lot like an oversized, tough grape to me, except it was both tarter than I wanted and sweeter than I had expected.

The next day I was grading tests from a unit about food, and in a list of fruits one student wrote chestnuts.

Normally I would have marked it wrong and said, “No, chestnuts are nuts!”

But this time I thought, Huh. If those things I had last night were chestnuts, there's certainly an aspect of them that is undeniably fruity...

So, were they chestnuts? Are chestnuts fruit? Maybe so.

And if not, I apologize for setting loose a student who now confidently thinks they are.

An Aside About the Sides

Every “Italian” restaurant I've been to in Korea always serves two side dishes with your meal:



Pickles (I guess those are Italian?) and kimchi (that's definitely not).

(Just between you and me, I don't particularly enjoy either of them.)

Edible Ooze

Does this look like something you should eat?



I knew what it was so I had no problem eating it, but I had to stop and take note of how much it resembled some sort of inedible, moldy thing that had gone very bad due to negligence on the part of whoever should have cleaned the fridge (oh wait...that's me).

It's actually just kiwi yogurt. There's probably kiwi yogurt in America, but the first place that I've eaten it is here.

No-Name Student

One of my kindergarten students (no, not THAT student) is always eager to point something out to me.

All the students have activity books, colored pencils, “big files” (big binder-like folders with plastic page protectors in them, for keeping pages that they’ve colored and whatnot), and various other items that they keep at school and have had since they began the year with us.  When they graduated from scrawling things in colored pencil to learning how to write with real pencils, however, their mothers bought them pencilcases, pencils and erasers, and labeled everything using their English names.

Some time ago, I was walking around, making sure everyone had everything they needed to complete whatever their activity had been, and this student held her pencil up to me and said, “Teacher!  No name!”

Sure enough, her pencil had no name.

A few days later, she showed me another pencil that was new.  “Teacher!  No name!”

From time to time she’ll get a new eraser or new pencils, and every time she’ll eagerly point out to me, “Teacher!  No name!”

Almost all the other items of all the other students do have names, however, so it’s not really that big an issue, since I know the ones without a name must belong to her.

It’s interesting to me, though.  I wonder if her mother doesn’t have time to write her name on everything, or if she just forgets or doesn’t think about it, or if my student actually likes not having her name on her school supplies so much that she requests it.

It seems almost to be a matter of pride for her to announce, “Teacher!  No name!” about a new supply she’s brought.

Maybe someday she’ll be like the Nittany Lions, who pride themselves on their blank helmets.

Lately in my mind I’ve come to think of her as “No-Name Student,” because she tells me that so often, but I hope she knows that I will always know her name.

Emergency Numbers in Korea

For quite some time now I’ve known the emergency number in Korea is 119, and I’d tucked it in my head as the Korean parallel to 911 in the U.S.  I’d never had occasion to test this knowledge, however, until today.

From time to time I hear yelling and thuds coming from somewhere above my apartment.  Up until now I’d assumed it could be anything, ranging from hearty furniture revamping to heated discussion.  I can’t make out the words, and I don’t know Korean anyway, so really, who am I to say?

But today the sound of a woman screaming and crying was indisputable, and regardless of the reason why, she was very clearly distraught.  The voice of a man yelling—more loudly and more intensely than I’ve heard before—was also indisputable.  The thudding I kept hearing could have been from furniture or someone stomping on the floor, but considering the other factors I didn’t think that was a safe assumption anymore.

A lot of thoughts ran through my head.  I don’t know if domestic violence is a concern in Korea.  I don’t know if it’s something the police would handle or if there is another number I should call.  I don’t know if I could communicate well anyway.  I don’t know how to explain that I don’t know if it’s violence or that I don’t know exactly where the noise is coming from.  I don’t know if just suspicion counts as an emergency enough to tie up 119.

But in the end, I realized that it would be a pretty big deal for me, morally, to suspect that something bad was going down and walk away.  It’s one thing if there’s no reason to suspect anything.  It’s another if I’m totally oblivious to begin with.  But if I really think that something like that’s going on, and I don’t do anything about it, is that really okay?  Should that really be a choice that I could live with?

So I called.

And I found out something useful!  119 is actually the number that you call when you need an ambulance sent out.  If you only want to reach the cops, the emergency number for police in South Korea is 112.

The police came and talked with me, and checked the apartment above mine, but as I suspect is often the case with these things, they didn’t find much going on because it had died down by the time they arrived.  (The yelling, screaming, and crying went on for what I think must have been a good 20 minutes before they came, though.)  They left and told me I should call again if I hear anything again.

I still don’t know what number you would call if you needed firefighters to come save you, but, fortunately, I haven’t needed to know that one yet.

It Really Sucks

Since I moved here I’ve been sick with a variety of minor illnesses, but almost all of them have been somewhere in the specialty of Ear/Nose/Throat.  The ENT doctor I go to here is fairly good at English, never rushes me or makes me feel like I’m a waste of time, and is an easy bike ride from my work, so when I need to see a doctor and my symptoms are the ENT variety, I head over to his practice.

Sometimes when I’ve gone with severe congestion, he’s shoved this strange stick up my nose.  It always felt like maybe he was sucking the snot out of my head, but then I thought, “Eh, that’s probably my imagination.  It’s probably just some camera tool, or some other weird device that helps him see inside.”

Today, though, I finally asked him what it was, and what he uses it to do inside my head.  So he showed me a diagram of a person’s head and pointed to the sinus cavities.  (He had already given me a nice little explanation when I went on Saturday detailing what sinuses were, what the different ones were called, and what a sinus infection is and does to other parts of you (such as your ears).)

He reiterated what he’d said about the sinus infection, that the mucus membrane around your sinus cavity excretes some sort of discharge when you’re sick, and he said that yes, he uses that strange tool as a suction device to “vacuum” (my word, not his) the excess discharge from my sinuses.  Apparently it’s better for them to get “ventilated” (his word, not mine) that way.

Since I’d been wondering for quite some time if the tool really sucked the snot out of my head or not, this was actually quite a satisfying revelation for me, and I left feeling good because my curiosity had been appeased.

I’m still toting all those bags of pills, though.  You win some, you lose some.

This Job Ain’t For the Weak, Ya Know

For those of you who think that leaving everything you know and flying solo to a country on the opposite side of the world—where you don’t know anyone and don’t speak the language—is for the faint of heart, think again.

Today I came back from running errands on my break at work and was called into the director’s office.  I thought maybe it would have something to do with asking me to renew my contract, since I’m over nine months in, and I’m technically supposed to leave in February.

No.  It was nothing so easy or so simple as asking, “Won’t you stay another year?” to which I’d likely reply, “Yes, I will!”

It was an entirely different proposal.  Well, except that my two options were accept, or else…accept.

“My sister wants to improve her English skills!  So, on Tuesdays and Fridays, you will have a new class, teaching her, one-on-one.”

Gahhh!

It’s one thing to be confident around children (especially young ones who don’t yet know I don’t know everything), but it’s an entirely different matter to be confident around a successful business woman, much older than myself, who happens to be my very shrewd boss’s sister!

Let me repeat:

Gahhh!

I’ll admit that I feel slightly doomed…

Paying Tribute

Look what I got yesterday! Can you guess who gave it to me?



That's right, the Phonics Pirate!

I didn't even ask her to pay tribute. She just offered me a portion of her bounty loot of her own free will. I'm telling you, this girl has her priorities straight! I'm raising these marauders right.

The North Issues Poetic Threats

This New York Times article is interesting, albeit not all that suprising:

North Korea Warns South on Maritime Drills

I found the language of the statement issued by the Supreme Command of the North's People's Army to be strangely poetic.

“If one single shot drops in our sacred waters and territory again, the sea of fire on Yeonpyeong-do will spread to a sea of fire on the Blue House, and that deluge of fire will sweep away the stronghold of the group of traitors,” the Supreme Command of the North’s People’s Army said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

(Essentially, the Blue House is to South Korea what the White House is to the U.S.)

Thanksgiving in Korea

All week I've been so busy and so stressed that Thanksgiving was the last thing on my mind. Since the week began I was just waiting for it to be over. (I wish I could link you to some previous posts to explain my busyness, but I've been so busy I haven't even written those!)

My newest coworker, an American who arrived here in September, was very gung-ho about putting together a big Thanksgiving feast in his apartment Thursday night. All week long he was talking excitedly about it and I just didn't have the energy to look forward to it at all. I felt bad because I could tell my weariness was something of a downer, but I was just so tired.

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, however, he persevered and really championed Thanksgiving for us. We had six people in attendance: two Canadians, one Korean, and three Americans. I acquired three roast chickens hot off the rotisserrie, our host prepared amazing mashed potatoes and refreshing salad, our other coworker (famous for his patio kebabs) brought corn with sweet syrup and pork, and the Canadian-Korean couple brought a fantastic chocolate cake.

We drank Pepsi, orange juice, and boiled water and populated our friend's dining room with forks, plates, knives, and chairs from our apartments and from work. To make a table big enough for all of us, he moved his desk and drew up an elaborate construction using wooden boards and an old chair.

We swapped all kinds of stories and I think that it's been months since I laughed as hard as I did tonight. It was really a great time and, also, it was good for me. It seems a bit redundant, but I have to say that this year I am thankful for Thanksgiving.

The Times

The more I hear and read about the U.S. and the world, the more I think about the way the times are changing and wonder what the future holds. I continue to come back to an incredibly apt line uttered by my coworker the other week:

“It's an interesting time to be alive, and a good time to be in Korea.”

I couldn't put it any better.

The Phonics Pirate

My hilarious kindergarten student has done it again.

She was playing during snacktime, prancing around and trying to look formidable. Then she called out to me, “Teacher, I am a pirate!”

I said, “Really? You're a pirate? What letter is for pirate?”

She planted her feet firmly on the floor, stood staunchly with her fists on her hips, puffed out her chest, and bellowed with the grim face of a conqueror:

“HA! HA! HA! P is for pirate!”

It's been two weeks, and I'm still cracking up about it.

Millennium Pepero Day

November 11th is already a more sober holiday in many places in the world, but in Korea it is also Pepero Day. Pepero, or 빼빼로, is the name of a sort of snack here, essentially thin rods of cracker (or cookie?) dipped in chocolate. There are various kinds (I enjoy the ones with almonds in the chocolate) and they come in small boxes.

On Pepero Day, people give out boxes of Pepero. It's almost like Valentine's Day back in the U.S. The boxes even have places to write the giver and recipient's names.

Since it is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the (two thousand) eleventh year (11/11/11), today was an even more special holiday. Millennium Pepero Day only comes once in your lifetime!

I was almost shocked at how much my kindergarten class gave me. They always give me cute little things here and there, but I was overwhelmed.





If I was shocked at my kindergarteners' outpouring, I can only say that I was floored by my afternoon classes'.

I ate some of them during the day, so my count might be a little off, but I think I got around 25 boxes of Pepero today.

I had no idea my students liked me this much. It really made me happy, and it really made my day.



Happy Millennium 빼빼로 Day!

Samsung Passes Apple in the Smartphone Arena

You can read the Reuters article here.

This was interesting to me because Apple products (especially the iPhone) are intensely popular here.  Granted, Samsung is a South Korean company, but I see so many Apple products everywhere I might have expected them to be more coveted.

I personally have a Samsung smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy S II), and I've enjoyed my experience with it.  Two of the main reasons I'm not ecstatic about Apple products include their exorbitant prices and Apple's poor (and frustrating!) customer service, even to the point of ignoring consumer complaints about new products that don't deliver straight out of the box.  I enjoyed the line in the article that said Samsung "tries to offer the Apple experience at a better price with better functionality."  It's a good time to be in South Korea.  Congratulations, 삼성!

The LED Festival

Today my Korean friend and I went to the LED Festival.

We took the bus, so I got to practice using my new electronic bus pass:



On the way to the bus stop we saw the remnants of what I think are Lotus flowers. Their leaves are huge, some of them wider than six hand-breadths in diameter.



We also saw some gorgeous trees. It's definitely autumn now!



The LED Festival had massive light displays, some elegant, all elaborate.



While we were there, we took a carriage ride (pulled by a donkey), saw a very impressive Chinese circus show (by which I was too captivated to take pictures; sorry), and witnessed a myriad of singing acts from famous Korean artists, the breadth of which spanned several genres.

It was a great time, and I'm so glad I went.

Glorious Gunsan

I really hit the jackpot when I rode downtown today!

I found a fabric shop (which I'd heard only existed up in Seoul, and which will compliment my earlier discovery of a sewing machine shop nicely),



new running shoes (I've gotta find some way to stay in shape, and so far two of my coworkers seem to have been running successfully out here),



a beautiful view of the water (and mudflats) in a blue-collar fishing area,



the other end of the Jinpo Maritime Theme Park (which includes an entire theater and museum inside a decommissioned landing ship, not to mention some great views!),







free 빵되기 and a fascinating look at how these discs are made,



and a huge festival celebrating the opening of the seawall road,



where I got one fingernail painted for free and watched a girl p0wn all the guys at Xbox games.



All in all, I'd say it was a satisfying trip!