ohhh korea: you so random

Koreans also use the word "sexy" a lot.  I think it is a lost in translation use of the word.  For example I was showing a power point on opposites: tall/short, big/small etc.  One of the slides was of Snow White (pretty) and the Hag (ugly).  When Snow White was displayed, one of my 2nd graders said, "Sexy".  It's used to express pretty, more often than not.  Unfortunately, "sexy" and "pretty" have different connotations.  The other day Son Meyoung-ai (Kimbap store owner that I frequent), told me that I was sexy.  I went ahead and made the leap that what she really meant was "pretty".  So I tried to show her the difference between sexy and pretty by drawing pictures of 2 different cartoon-style pictures depicting each.  Initially I named a few big names like Madonna & Marilyn Monroe, but she had not heard of them, which is why I resorted to drawing terrible pictures.  Anyway, she understood it.  Once again, I am amazed at how easy it is to transcend language barriers through drawings, tone of voice, & gestures. 

When Dan was packing to come visit me, I put in a few food requests (forever a foodie).  I asked for oatmeal, popcorn and vanilla protein powder.  A few days before he came to visit he asks me, "Um, do you think it is a really good idea for me to come to Korea with white powder"?  It never even occurred to me that it was a really, really, really bad idea to come through customs with  white powder in zip lock bags.  Anyway, I did agree and took that demand off the table!   :)

Well, many weeks later from when I started writing this post, Dan is now, officially here!  It was amazingly wonderful to see him.  So far we have not done a great deal of things, but in typical Christine fashion, I have managed to incorporate massive amounts of food excursions into pretty much every last corner of free time, whether we were hungry or not.  I am trying hard to be respectful of the fact that he has an outdoor survival camp coming up soon, and needs to stay in good shape for this, so I am managing to not try to talk him into eating waffle pies, donuts & ice cream and every other amazing Korean treat that had me cornered for quite some time.  Otherwise though, we are discovering new little restaurants along the way.  Dan introduced me to the beauty of Mon-du!  It is this dumpling textured treat that is steamed and filled with pork, onions and a few unidentifiables.  It melts in the mouth in pure bliss!   It is insanely cheap too.  We can easily have dinner for 2 on about $4=$5 dollars a night if we choose our restaurants right.  It's great.

The other day we went to a Mon-du shop and like most small ma/pop restaurants here the kitchen is pretty much in the dining area.  Well at this particular restaurant there was a hamster living in the kitchen!  Normally, I am certain this would have freaked me out.  I am now concerned that I am not nearly as worried about this is as I should be.  This is just part of Korea, where it is okay (i guess) for animals to be living in the kitchens of restaurants.  Sanitary food prep stations are for the weak of heart!  :)

Speaking of weird things related to animals:  There is a cafe here called "Cat Cafe".  Where cat's just live in this cafe/coffee shop (at least 10-15 as near as I could tell) and jump on the tables, while you're having your coffee drinks and snacks.  It's really most bizarre!  I also thought it was kind of funny that they sprayed our hands with sanitizer when we walked in. 

Here are a couple of photos of cat cafe.

This cat declared himself King of our table.  He was kind enough to allow a small photo shoot.  Barely.

This cat with the stubby ears, was one grumpy cat.  He was not a happy addition to Cat Cafe.

This cat right here cracked me up.  He was not an exclusive "member" of cat cafe, but was hanging outside of the store just looking in.  I imagined him saying something like, "hey guys, whatta 'bout me?".  I actually felt a little bad for him.  :)

We also went to a baseball game here.  Talk about a really, really good time!  I can't remember the last time I had such a fun evening.  Certainly I have never enjoyed a baseball game as much as this one.  It is so different from an American baseball game.    The crowd here, shouts, sings & chants throughout the entire game.  They also go nuts and yell when their person is up to bat, which seemed a little different because I would assume it would be distracting for the batter.  There is also a "ring leader" type of guy who gets the crowd going and soon thereafter the cheerleaders (YES, they have cheerleaders at baseball games here) start rocking it out and the crowd goes nuts for it.  They also have about 5 or so of these little weird mascot creatures.  I don't know what they were.  2 of them looked like ducks and the other ones looked like a cross between a tella-tubby and marvin the martian.  I love Korea.  You can also bring your own food & drinks to the game!  So people were coming in with full-on picnics of pizza, kimbap, mcdonalds and even beer & soju.  You also can't buy hotdogs at these games, but if you were looking for squid man, they're selling it all over the place.  The vendors walk through the stands selling squid & beer throughout the game.  What is nice about the beer here is that it is about $2 dollars for a beer vs. a US game where it would easily cost $5 or $6 bucks.   Also, at the end of the game the crowd slowly, but surely starts to turn orange.  Is what happens is people start handing out orange grocery sacks and people blow air in them and stick them on their heads and tuck the handles behind their ears.  :)  Dan and I had no idea why they were doing this, but we decided to go with it and tied our bags to our heads as well.  Sadly, this will likely be my only Korean baseball game as the season is about ready to wrap up.  Happily, I will always have this great memory. 

Squid & Beer vendor! 

It was pretty neat seeing the scoreboard in another language.

Me and the family that posed in my photo.  They were great!  Proudly displaying the orange bags on our heads.

Mascots! 

There are some petroglyphs that are really close to where I live.  This past weekend we decided to go see them.  It took a couple of hours to get there because we had to change busses several times.  When we finally got off the final bus, like the guide book told us, at the entrance.  What the guide book failed to mention is that from here we would have to walk a couple of kilometers to the museum.  I was wearing inappropriate shoes with no socks and it was a million degrees with 100% humidity.  About part way through the walk I mumbled something like, "watch it be closed on Mondays".  Well, as fate would have it, the museum portion is closed on Mondays.  From this point, we looked on the map and it looked like we could walk another kilometer in either direction and make it to the petroglyph sites.  The kind security guard then tells us, "ohh they are under water right now".  So that was our BIG exciting petroglyph trip!  We then asked the security guard if he would call a taxi, because there was NO way I was hiking back down to the main road in that heat. 

Fortunately this trip was not a complete miss.  Even though it was hot and miserable, it was so gloriously beautiful.  There were sounds of frogs and cicadas.  I also saw the biggest black butterfly I have ever seen (actually I have never seen a black butterfly!).  It looked more like a bat.  There were trees that had leaves that were bigger than my head and vines all over the place and a beautiful stream running through it all.  So, I actually enjoyed the entire experience.  I now have the petroglyphs to look forward to. 

After the cabby picked us up we had him take us to a 500 year old ginko tree that was shown in our guide book.  It was set back amongst some rice fields and old houses.  I am forgetting the history behind the tree, but I think a king 500 years ago had it planted.  It certainly was one glorious tree. 

This was one of the views on the path to the petroglyphs.

The huge leaves and a dan's hand to show how big they are.

It was all incredibly lush and alive like this shot.

Truly not a bad photo in the bunch!

This is the 500 year old Ginko tree.

Rice fields surrounding the tree.

A nice path through the rice field.

An old farm house right by the tree.

At the end of this trip on our way back to Ulsan, I realized I did not have my camera with me.  I remember taking a picture in the taxi, so I knew it was in there.  Like a true shopper that I am, I was already picking out my even better, bigger and more expensive camera!  I made a phone call to one of my Korean friends and she called some taxis for me with no luck locating the camera.  Dan was convinced that he would get it back to us because the driver had Buddist beads and books in his cab, so based on the fundamentals of that religion he was pretty optimistic about the outcome.  We ended up taking a bus back to the town we were in to ask some taxi drivers and also check at the bus station, since that is where he dropped us off at.  While I was in this town, I texted my friend a few phone numbers from various taxis I saw around town and fortunately one of them was the one we took.  Long story short about 5 hours after the camera went missing, the taxi driver met me at a hotel in downtown Ulsan and brought my camera back to me.  It was so wonderful.  It's just nice when things like this work out and such a good reminder that there are truly decent and honest people out there!  It made my month! 

This is the picture that I thought I just had to take in the cab too!  It's a TERRIBLE photo.  So not worth the 5 hour freak out.  :)

tidbits

Today my Korean co-teacher had on a shirt that read, "Iiontellectually and Physically Superior".  (oh goodness)