It's about time for one of these.......

So yesterday was the 2 month mark of me being in Korea, not that I'm counting or anything, so I figured it's time that I do a blog about my thoughts on Korea. I was originally thinking of doing a "what I like/what I don't like" but I have a feeling that could be another novel like last week's post, so I will focus on the positive and hopefully that will keep the post shorter.

#1. Being able to walk everywhere/having readily available public transportation. Ok, so the first part of that has to do with my location in Ulsan, but it is great to be able to do all of my shopping, eating out, drinking/socializing within a 15 minute walk. It's also amazing being able to go to other parts of the city by bus or taxi and have it be under 6 dollars (generally speaking).

#2. Soccer, or as the locals call it, chuk-gu. It's amazing to live in a place that actually cares about soccer. I swear at any given moment there will be something soccer related, whether it be highlights, actual games, repeats of actual games, bloopers, or whatever. I swear of I've seen highlights of the 2002 world cup 20 times by now, and I continue to watch it even though I already know what happens. Fear not you non soccer loving people, they do show lots of golf, billiards, korean basketball league games (mens and womens), and volleyball.... Ok, maybe it is better to be a soccer fan. One more thing on this subject, it's great not having American ESPN, we have MBC ESPN, whatever that means. Just picture waking up and turning on sports and seeeing highlights instead of seeing T.O. breakdown in a press conference, 30 days of Brett Favre footage or baseball players "testify" in front of congress. Awesome!

#3. Gogi-Jip, or B.B.Q restaurants. By far my favorite Korean food and the whole experience is so enjoyable as well. You get a grill in front of you, grill your meat and then wrap it up with some chili sauce, small chunks of garlic, green onion, all in a mint leave. I will now move on or I will end up drooling on the keyboard.

#4 Ondol heating. Most places in Korea have what's called ondol heating which is heating that comes through the laminate floor. At first I was a little reluctant but it's perfect for someone like me that always has cold feet. Plus, you throw your blankets on the floor before you go to bed and they get all toasty. I even know some people use it to dry their clothes.

#5. K-Pop, also known as Korean Pop. This is a guilty pleasure but K-pop is so cheesy but it's so damn catchy and sugary. It's impossible to walk down the streets, especially the cell phone shops that generally play the music, and not hum the music for the rest of the day. I don't even know the lyrics for most of them but that doesn't prevent me from humming them all day.

#6. Korean Baked goods. Who would've thought, right? I've already written about papa roti, which i haven't had in a while but it is delicious none-the-less. I also put in a picture of the delicious fried pancakes on the blog, which are possibly the tastiest things on earth. Hoo-ray street food! Another big thing with my co-teachers are roll cakes, and mocha roll cakes are the best. Lastly, a new favorite are these little croqutte rolls which have savory foods inside. Some of them include spicy chicken, curry chicken, and vegetable. I know it sounds weird and I was reluctant to try but they are tasty. Think of them as the Korean meat pie/empanada.

#7. The English Translations. At my English School, there is a sign that says "Don't open the windows or you will hurt". An English School! Most recently I saw a sign in a restaurant that is on the second floor of a building, that said "When descending, take care the foot". These are the ones that stick out but some people wear stuff on their t-shirts where I'm sure they have no clue what's being said.

#8. The people. I know this is cliché but the people are really friendly and welcoming. According to Lonely Planet, Korean people are innately xenophobic or suspicious of foreigners but most people have been super nice to us. The first instance that suck out was when I was having dinner with some waeguks and a korean guy and the owner brought a bunch of cokes to our dinner table, which is a bigger deal than it would be in the states because fountain drinks don't exist outside MacDonalds or other fast food joints. There's also the owner of the Thai restaurant across the street who will offer me a coke or coffee free of charge and since I'm usually there once a week, he'll give me a small discount as well. Also, my first soccer game with the wonshot wonderers, some team brought us a plate of b.b.q meat, which was a nice gesture if nothing else because I was not going to eat some meat before our game.

Apart from the discounts, most people are excited to see foreigners and love to try and talk to you. If you even try and speak Korean, they love you even more. In some ways it's kind of like being celebrity to a lesser extent. I usually don't mind it but sometimes when I'm eating I feel like people are watching me. It probably doesn't help that I suck with chopsticks so that probably brings some more attention to myself.

Outside of the Koreans, I obviously spend a lot of time with waeguks, and I have met a lot of cool people. I've also met some obnoxious, token Americans, but I've met some cool ones too. I find myself hanging out with mostly British people, it may be from playing soccer, but that's usually how it goes. I've probably spent more time with Alick, a bloke from London, who you all met in my most recent posting if not before, which I attribute to him and I arriving at the same time and kind of being in a similar position. I've also befriended this couple from outside Kent, England, named Mal(colm) and Lu (Louise), and they're a blast to hang out with as well. They actually have been traveling all around Asia, been to China and Russia recently, so they're always good for an entertaining story. And then there is Craig, my co-teacher and fellow country-man who has been like a godsent, as he knows where to go to eat, which buses to take, etc. I'm pretty sure I'd be in a ditch right now if it weren't for Craig.

I'm sure there are some other little things out there that slipped through the cracks of this post, but I think I hit on some key points here. I'm sure I'll post some more little things as they come about. Hope you're all well.

Chris and Alick's trip to Vermont....... errr Gyeongju

I am writing this as a warning as I wrap up this post. This post is quite long so make sure you have some time to read this. I am not to be held responsible for people arriving late to work, missing classes, not spending time with loved ones, etc.

Last week being New Year, our school was given off from the 31st until the Monday the 5th. My English friend Alick, who had a similar vacay schedule to mine, and I decided to get out of Ulsan and see some of Korea. Wagons north, towards Gyeongju.

So we met at 4:00 on New Years Day, which is just an indication of how hard we partied on NYE, and got a cab to the train station in Ulsan. Within 20 minutes we've boarded a train and get to Gyeongju in another 50 minutes or so.

After searching, for what seeemed like hours, for a suitable place to spend the night, we came across a hostel recommended by Lonely Planet. The first night in Gyeongju was pretty mild as we had both been out late the night before.

Before I get into the meat of our journey, please let me give a little info about Gyeongju. Gyeongju is a city of about 270,000 people or so, well according to Lonely Planet it is, but it is a pretty significant city. Back during the Silla Dynasty, which was from around 57 B.C. to 945 A.D., Gyeongju was the capital of Korea. Gyeongju itself probably has more monuments, temples and so forth than any other part of Korea. Once the Silla dynasty fell apart, Gyeonju became lesse relevant.

So day one, Friday the 2nd, we stroll around downtown Gyeongju to what I call "Tumuli Park" which is this park with all these Tumulis, or mounds. The Tumuli mounds are where they buried the kings during this period, much like the Egyptians and the Pharoahs. We were able to go into one which has since been turned into a museum with relics of the period.

We strolled around some more in the park, saw some observatory made of stone, got lots of stares from children and adult koreans alike, all in all a typical day. Next stop was the Anapji pond, which used to have some cool bridges and buildings but they were burned down so all that's left are some relics and some models of the bridges/buildings. I think it was the Japanese that burned it down somewhere in the 16th century, so I'm blaming you, Summer Masuda, for robbing me of this experience.

We then caught a bus from downtown Gyeongju to the outskirts to see the Bulguksa Temple. Bulguksa, much like the other temples, is kind of like a square with a couple of different halls that will have a golden buddha statue inside and lots of candles, incense or both. Also, part of the buddhist experience is buying a corndog on the way up the mountain to the temple.

While in the area we decided to stop on over to Seokguram Grotto which is some buddha shrine in this mountain. It's supposedly a UNESCO site, as is Bulguksa, but is underwhelming, well at least at 4,000 won (3 dollars or so) to enter. I guess carrying a heavy stone buddha statue up a mountain in the 7th century was some kind of feat or something.

After visiting Seokguram, we decided to head back into Central Gyeongju for the evening. The second evening, we stayed in what is called a yeoinsuk, which are these little dingy whole-in-the-wall places right off of the main street in Gyeongu (well yeoinsuks are all over Korea I guess). We tried asking the lady for 2 beds, one room, I actually learned bed and was able to ask that and also ask how much, so my Korean is improving, but we soon realized that it was not possible. To describe it, the room was a closet with a single bed, a stand with a t.v., 3 foot narrow path to get from door to t.v., and then a bathroom about 5 foot wide-5 food long-8 foot tall, with a toilet, sink, shower spray hose and bucket (your guess is as good as mine). If you do ever come to Korea and want to do it on the cheap, yeoinsuks are the way to go. Also, the bed had an electric heating pad on top of the mattress, brilliant.

The following day, the 3rd of January, we head out to the area close to Bulguksa, only a little bit further away from everything, and go to Golgulsa Temple. Alick and I had both heard about a thing called a Temple stay, where one stays in a Buddhist temple for the night and Golgulsa provides such programs so we decided to give it a shot.

We arrived just after lunch time on Saturday but just in time for archery, 2:00. At precisely 2:16 I realized I still suck at archery. After walking around the temple, which has an impressive stone carving of Buddha in the mountain, we had dinner then got ready for the evening chants. We did the chants, which was more or less standing, bowing, crouching down and doing it all over again. We were never explained what was going on so we had no clue the whole half hour. I imagine it would be like dropping a Korean person into a Roman Catholic Mass given in English or so.

After the evening chant we did Sunmudo, which is a martial art done by the Korean Buddhist Monks. Golgulsa is apparently the capital of Sunmudo and never hesitates to mention it. Our training was more or less split up into 40 minutes of breathing/stretching exercises, 30 minutes of martial arts moves that we could not do, and then about 20 minutes of meditation/demonstration. End of sunmudo, return to rooms and go to bed, lights out at 10.

The following morning, it's rise and shine at 4:00 and be at the morning chant at 4:30 in the morning or else it's 3000 bows. After the chants we did some more meditation and walking meditation.

Next we had a ceremonial breakfast which was by far the most complicated eating experience but very rewarding as well. The whole meal was consumed in silence and we were given 4 bowls, all sitting together, and had to take them out one by one with out making a noise. Then the monks would walk by and dole out your portions and you would rotate the bowl to let them knwo you have enough food. You also did not want a lot of food as buddhists don't waste so you have to eat everything. In the smallest bowl, you put your vegetables and kimchi. 2nd smallest was clean water, then the soup bowl and the biggest was rice. You had to take one piece of kimchi and put it in the soup to take off the red pepper and then put it in the rice bowl to save for later as you would use this piece of cabbage to clean your bowl. Then, eat everything in your bowls, bit by bit. Then they would give you some water, take the water and kimchi (holding it with chopsticks) and clean your rice bowl, move the water to soup bowl, then vegetable bowl, then drink it. Then take the clean water and do the same process, thus cleaning your bowls 2 times. The bowls should be pretty clean the 1st time so that by the second time you rinse your bowls they are clean. The idea is buddhism is all about mindful practices, so you should be mindful when eating, cleaning etc. Then when finished, the monks would pick up your clean water and it had to be clean because they give you clean water and then you give them back clean water. Whatever amount of water wasn't clean you had to drink. Confusing right? Just remember to be thankful you have brillo pads and not shreds of cabbage for cleaning!

The temple then had some trips to some local sites, which included the ruins of a great hall from the Silla Dynasty, King Munmu's underwater tomb and Girimsa Temple site. About King Munmu, he was so big on protecting the nation that he told his people that when he died he wanted to be buried in the East Sea (Sea between Korea and Japan) in the hopes that he would turn into a Dragon and protect Korea. So that's what his son did, or so they say. It's never been proven either way but there are a bunch of rocks some 200 meters off the shore which are cool to look at.

Next is Girimsa site, which to paraphrase LP (Lonely Planet from now on will be LP), is about the size of Bulguksa Temple, as far as number of buildings, but is less visited because of it's location. I actually enjoyed Girimsa a lot but I had already taken a bunch of photos so I was kind of sick being a tourist at that point.

Alick and I then got back to the temple and decided we were sick of being buddhists and decided to skip lunch at the temple and head back to Ulsan.

Some things that Alick and I learned that weekend. Number 1, being a buddhist is incredibly painful. We spent a lot of time sitting on the floor "indian style", which stopped being comfortable somewhere around age 10 or so. Also, the whole bowing, kneeling and sitting on the tops of your feet was incredibly painful after 5 minutes, but doing it for a half hour, geesh.

Number 2, it's hard to clear the mind at times. We both said that when meditating how hard it was for us to keep our mind off of our "to do list", women, football, etc. Buddhism is much easier when you live in a temple in a mountain that is pretty far from most of civilization. It's also a lot easier when you do it frequently, I guess the same can be said of the bowing, kneeling etc.

Number 3, the temple stay was kind of disappointing. I thought it was going to be really traditionally but instead I saw the head monk look at his cell phone as we were going to do the Sunmudo. Also, it was hard for me to get anything out of the chants as I had no clue what was going on. For me, the best part was the ceremonial breakfast, I think mostly because that's what I expected the experience to be. Not talking, cleaning everything with cleaned kimchi, etc.

Lastly, Gyeongju is really a pretty cool place. It doesn't have much of a night life, maybe in the university are but not much going down in Central Gyeongju, trust me, Alick and I tried and failed miserably, but there is a lot to see. I think we saw a lot but barely scratched the surface of the city. Apparently there are some hiking trails, waterfalls, some big pagodas, etc. all on the outskirts of the city. The parks are also supposed to be nice when the cherry blossoms come in during the spring. I definitely could see myself doing a one day/one night trip there sometime.

Wrapping it up, if you're still reading this post, #1 hats off to you. #2 some small housekeeping items. Happy New Year to everyone. I'm not big into New Years but I hope you all had a great one and hope this is a good one for you all. And finally, after much failure, I've decided to stop putting up pictures on the blog. I've come to this conclusion for mostly 2 reasons. First of all, I put them all on facebook which is easier to use, and it takes a lot of time to put pics up on both facebook and the blog. Secondly, whenever I try putting the pics up on the blog, it always seems to end up messing up the format and leaving me dissatisfied. I even do a check before I publish and it will look good, and then it sucks after publishing.

If you don't have a facebook account, get one (L\looking at you Marianne Herricht). This is the 21st century, you know. But if you must be stubborn, then send me an e-mail or leave a request on the blog and I will e-mail them to you but I make no guarantee of when you will get them as I am notorious for being slow to respond. If you have a facebook account and you're not one of my friends, what are you waiting for, add me today for the low, low price of 19.99. No seriously, just look up my name and add me, there is no fee.

That is all. I hope you enjoyed this segment of Chris in Korea: The T.V. Miniseries.

Christmas at Bench

On the 20th of December, Benchwarmers, one of the waeguk pubs in my neighborhood, had a formal Christmas dinner. The dinner started off with appetizers like pasta salad, veggie trays, deviled eggs and moving onto the main course there was chicken, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, roast potatoes, cranberry sauce and most importantly the desserts included mini cheesecakes, mini pecan pies, ginger cookies and more. After dinner, we went to the downtown area and sang Christmas carols in various establishments and the Koreans loved it. Here are some pics and vids from the event. Sorry for the shoddy camera work, I was several drinks deep into the night and also trying to walk and film at the same time. Also, I apologize for the singing for the aforementioned reasons.

Most Glorious Day in Korea so Far.

My experience in Korea has been marked by a lot of ups and downs, with the ups coming mostly on Friday-Sunday and the downs from Monday to Thursday. Oh, I'm just kidding, for the most part. Anyways, this past Saturday was the best day I've had in Korea so far so i have a kind of running diary for the day, albeit written the day after. Enjoy!

The day starts with me waking up at quarter to 11:00 and rushing to get my things together to play some soccer. It was a real struggle to do this easy task, mostly because it's so cold outside of my sheets in the morning and I was going off of 5 hours of sleep (I'll leave the explanation to your imagination). Manage to get my things together, get a papa roti bun and some gatorade and water from a nearby 7/11 all in time to meet with some members of the Wonshot Wanderers, a pub soccer team formed by a group of foreigners and koreans by 11:45.

So I meet these two waeguk (korean word for foreigners) guys waiting outside of the local pub and then a van shows up to take us to the sports complex. On a sidenote, to all Callanan/Sepe family members reading this, you'll be happy to know that one of the waeguks, Tom, is from Kingstown Rhode Island. So the van takes the 3 of us, plus 5 korean guys on a 25 minute ride to the sport complex, and to be honest it was the most I had seen of Korea thus far, scenery speaking.

We ended up scrimmaging two teams in a format where we would play one team, then break for a little bit then scrimmage the next, for a good two hours or so. Until this point I have ran once, my third day in Korea, and had not played soccer in some 4 weeks. Needless to say I was a bit gassed and my play, while not horrible, was not superb in anyway. We, as a team, did fairly well, not losing a game all day although to be fair, one of the teams was filled with mostly middle aged men and we're mostly young guys with a few "more experienced" players here and there.

During the 25 minute ride back to the downtown area, I was chatting with Alick (pronounced Alec), the other waeguk in the van, about a turkish-middle eastern restaurant in Samsung Dong, which striked his interest so we decided to give it a try that night. Later on I get a call from Alick and he said that him and some of his British friends were going out to eat and he invited me to come with.

So I meet up with Alick and his two mates, and we go to a Korean kind of B.B.Q place. I was quite content to go to one because I pass by these kinds of restaurants all the time but never go because they're very communal (not all Korean Restos are that way, but the b.b.q places are) and well I'm usually eating out by myself or with Craig, the other waeguk teacher at my school, and he is pescatarian (which means he only eats fish and seafood, no b.b.q). Do you know how hard it is to walk by all these restaurants that look so good but know that you can't eat there? I imagine it would be similar to a lactose intolerant person walking by a bunch of baskin robbins or something, but I digress.........

So the way things go out at this restaurant is you sit around a burner and they bring out the meats that you order and you cook them, wrap them in a leaf (either a leafy romaine lettuce leaf or mint leaf that they call a sesame leaf), put in some b.b.q sauce or chili paste, maybe part of a garlic clove in there, and then eat it fajita style. And to make the experience even better, they brought us these little orange aprins that served as bibs and we wore them as a joke, what a sight! To start, we ordered some tiny thin beef strips and a big thick pork cut which was later cut into tiny little cuts and we continued with the pork rib for the rest of the time there. It was glorious!!

Originally, when thinking about writing this post, I planned on just writing about the soccer and possibly the dinner, but I feel like this next part is classic, and quite essential to my experience, so I can't rob you of this one. After finishing dinner around maybe 9:30, deciding it's way too early to call an end to our Saturday night, we do what any 4 young gentleman would do. Hit the bars!

Starting off we hit up some tiny bar, drink a beer there and then to the next. We then hit up two chain bars which are set up in a western setting, or they call them western bars (but they're not waeguk bars, or owned by foreigners).

After doing the bars we decided to move on to the clubs, Club Orangi to be precise, or maybe it's spelled Orangey, not sure exactly. The club was quite a riot to be honest. The first thing that stuck out was it's like a restaurant in the sense that 90% of the club is booths set up for you to sit down, drink, be merry, etc. The other 10% is a stage and a small dance floor. Then they will play for music 20 minutes, take a break and people will go sit down for a bit until the music starts up again. Kind of different no? Awesome observation #2, this was the only club I've ever been to where they serve you fruit. How crazy/amazing is that? It's like what would go well with this beer, hmm, half a banana, a slice of apple and some watermelon, yes, that's what I was looking for. Only in Korea (one of the most common phrases used by waeguks, or "this is Korea").

We decided to go to the club in hopes of meeting some local friends but the whole language and cultural barrier was....well a barrier. Point in case, there was a group sitting next to us and this girl, Hyun-Cho, struck up a conversation with me, or something close to it. So we try talking for a bit but she knows little English and I know about 4 lines of Korean so our conversation was quite limited. We ended up exchanging phone numbers, so it went pretty well and I was thinking I was looking at my first dip into to the dating world here in Korea. Well, Hyun-Cho called me today and we talked for about 10 minutes and by talk I mean me trying to say that I would like to see her again, if she would like to go out to eat, me saying "hmmm" about 39.5 times and then fumbling through a dictionary to try and look up restaurant, or dinner, or something along those lines, only to get a little frustrated and have the phone call come to a halt. I think I'll try sending her a text but I'm not too sure if much will change which has led me to realize that my pool of ladies to choose from will be rather minimal, from Koreans that can speak English at a good level or waeguks. I guess I thought most of the adult population, well educated, had a good working knowledge of English, not the case. The good news is that I have an extra motivation to learn the language, the bad news is that my learning tool is a book that teaches me things like "how much is this?" and "do you have any milk?". Why can't they teach me useful stuff like "would you like to go out sometime?" or "do you have a boyfriend?" etc........Thanks Arirang (the group that wrote my language book)!!!

Anyways, this post has gone on for far too long so I will let you enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Hope all is well stateside, or wherever you're reading this. Peace!