Seodaemun Prison Museum, Changdeok-gung and Dick Beer

Two months down, who knows how many more to go? Life in Seoul is settling into a decent routine for Mel and I: work, eat, shop. Does this make for interesting blogging? I'm not so sure but I'm pretty happy with my growing collection of cheap watches. We're still managing to do the odd touristy thing on the weekends though, and last weekend we visited the Seodaemun Prison Museum and Changdeokgung Palace.

The prison was built by the Japanese while they were all up in Korea's bid'ness in the '20s-40s. It was built to hold Koreans that caused them trouble. And if you know anything about Koreans, it's that they love to cause trouble.

They sell Hello Kitty balloons and cotton candy at the prison, which I'm just going to go ahead and say is a little messed up.

The prison held once around 500 prisoners and there were a few long buildings like this one to look through. Most of the cells had wax mannequins in them recreating something bloody. They were also pumping the sounds of tortured screams through the speakers in the cells. If this sounds pleasant to you, why not bring your elementary-aged kids for a visit? Everyone else did. There were dozens of tour groups with little little kids seeing stuff like this:

The "rape room". Bloody hanboks make me sad :(

One of many torture rooms. Points to the guy on the left for keeping his hair looking good despite being hung on a cross.

We visited the leper building, which looked like it would be a nicer place to stay than the cells except for the being a leper part.

This tree was called the "wailing poplar" because it stood just outside the execution room and people would hold onto it and wail for their lives. Did I mention what a bright and sunny day it was on Saturday? Oh, it was such a nice day to be outside.

There were no pictures allowed in the execution room, but here's the body disposal chute. The execution rooms was just a noose with some benches around it to watch the show. And thus completes our tour of the Seodaemun Prison.

After our visit to the Prison Museum we took the subway a few stops to Anguk Station and visited Changdeokgung Palace. This palace is the "back-up" palace to the biggie, Gyeungbuckgung, which we'd already visited the first time we were in Korea. You can only visit Changdeokgung on an organized tour, and English tours are offered daily at 11:30, 1:30 and 3:30. You know we slept in and wound up on the 3:30 tour. While we were waiting for 3:30 to roll around, a lady in a hanbok gave us a free book about filial piety, which is a pretty damn important in Korean society. I've only read a few of the short stories in the book but they are all about Dad being right. If you're interested, you can borrow it when I'm done.

We always look forward to doing touristy things like this and then become instantly bored once we're there. I think we're suffering from temple/palace overkill. I've seen so many that they all look alike to me now. Also, I couldn't understand about 80% of what our guide was saying and I listen and work with ESL speakers everyday. At one point a lady in a wheelchair had to leave because the remainder of the tour wasn't wheelchair accessible and we were sooooo jealous that she got to go. Nice palace though, but I'd strongly recommend Gyeungbuckgung if you can only visit one.

As I mentioned, the weather was pretty nice on Saturday (Sunday too!). It's been unseasonably cold here ever since we arrived so the sunny weather was very welcome. We left the palace and went for drinks with Shanda, Hannah and Pip by the Han River. We sat outside of a 7-Eleven that has beer on tap. A marvelous idea- I'm looking at you, Aylesford Needs.

It started to get windy by the water so we walked to a cozy little bar, Dick Beer. That's right, DICK BEER. You might remember this establishment from such posts as this one. Turns out, Dick Beer has a trick to set itself apart from the millions of little pubs in Seoul- it plays a bit, just a little bit of a song, and then suddenly sets off a deafening buzz of static and distortion through the speakers that brings all conversation to a halt and gives your heart a healthy flutter too. And this keeps happening for hours. Even when there's no music being played. And the owners act like they don't notice. We'll be back.

And hey, just in case you were wondering, here's how Dick Beer is spelled in Korean. Goodnight, internet.

Poster Children

HEY, guess whose unauthorized image is being used to advertise for the Pentaport Rock Festival? They even super-imposed our shadows on the crowd hahahahahaha! I wonder if this poster was printed and hung up anywhere??

After having supper tonight with one of Mel's first ever students from her first teaching job in Canada we went to the salon and I got my hair did. It wasn't long into the cut before I could hear Mel cackling at one of the computers in the lobby and me and the hair dresser went over to see what she was looking at. We're famous!

Pentaport, was a lot of fun but we're probably going to the Jisan Valley Festival if we're not elsewhere on vacation this summer. Vampire Weekend and Belle & Sebastian are playing -FTW!!!

Random

We saw this lady carrying a tray of bread on her head at Namdaemun market this weekend. This is not uncommon, but being fast enough to snap a picture is. Bonus points to the hottie in the bottom left corner.

Actual quote from the cafeteria this week:
Hyundong (a student) picks up an anchovy off his plate and points to the head: "Shawn Teacher- eye!"
Shawn Teacher (in all seriousness): "OK, Hyundong, now eat your eyes."

Also, at school this week is "No TV Week". It might as well be "No Air Week" because it's not gonna happen from me and probably not from them either. Anyway, the kids have all signed contracts agreeing not to watch TV, play video games or use the computer this week. However, little Erik K already plans to break the contract. He said,"My mom says I can watch TV. If I don't see the TV she is very tired." I spend a lot of time with Erik K and although he is really funny, I have to say I can see where his mom is coming from.

Yuna Kim's mug is plastered everywhere. She's the first South Korean figure skater to win an Olympic medal and she is a real hero in Korea right now, although I'm not sure what "be white" is supposed to mean or what that smoothie is going to do to me if I drink it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8uH1seeCL8&feature=player_embedded
This has got to be the most popular song in Korea right now. It doesn't matter what store you're in... it's playing.

It doesn't get laid out much simpler than this.

Breakfast has come to Korea! Koreans eat a regular meat/soup/fish/etc meal for breakfast so the last time we lived here there wasn't a single place anywhere near us that served western breakfast food. We used to make all our breakfasts in our apartment which is okay, but sometimes you just feel like going out. A few weeks ago we found a place called Butterfingers a few blocks away that serves up really awesome pancakes (after you wait an hour to be seated) at really inflated prices. Beggars can't be choosers. Anyway, today we went to a pub called Big Rock, which is also just a few blocks away, for their breakfast buffet. It was fantastic! And cheap, at a little over $10 CAN. There was all-you-can-eat bacon, sausagey, hashbrowns, french toast, muffins, bagels, fruit, an omlette station, and free refills of coffee and OJ. Man, I love progress. It's so tasty.

The picture has nothing to do with anything except that I like it. We started taking Korean lessons with my assistant teacher, Mindy, last week. I previously learned a bit of survival Korean ("here", "there", "hello", "how much", "beer") but I thought the language was basically impossible to learn. Every word seemed to be a real mouthful. But we learned a few simple phrases ("don cho ah hey"= "I like money") and left our class feeling like learning might just be possible. Maybe.

A You're Adorable

Song 1 of 3 that has to be memorized and choreographed for Mother's Day. There's obviously still some kinks to work out, and the kids totally pulling an Ashlee Simpson with that backing track, but damn if it isn't cute.

Chicken Art And Cherry Blossoms

Last weekend, Mel dragged my sick ass out of bed to do some sightseeing. We decided to go see the Chicken Art Museum near Insadong and then check out the Cherry Blossom Festival near the Han River.

The Chicken Art Museum kind of seemed like a place for someone to display their chicken knick-knack collection that had gotten a bit out of control. Unfortunately, there weren't really any funny chickens and in a place called the "Chicken Art Museum" you do expect some foolishness. It's also a very small place- the above photo is the first floor of the museum.

And here's the top floor. There, I just saved you the 3,000 won admission.

I did enjoy this painting. I'd love to hang a print of this fellow in my living room.

After approximately 15 minutes in the museum we traveled to Yeonaru station to see the cherry blossom trees. Mel really wanted to do this. Once again, I have to begin a description of the events with "unfortunately". Unfortunately, the weather in Seoul has been colder than usual for this time of year and there were hardly any blossoms. We were well aware of the weather situation, but the festival had started the previous weekend so we were sure that by now the park by the river would be full of beautiful, photogenic white and pink blossoms. As you can see from the photo, it was a little dead-looking.

We did find a few blossoms, and if you zoom in close enough they don't look too dead. With two fails in a row behind us we got some smoothies in the 63 building and I went home to blow my nose for the rest of the night. Summer, plz!!

All About Suwon

Last Friday, Melodie and I spent the night in Suwon for what amounted to a trip down memory lane. We hadn't been to Suwon in 2 1/2 years, and when we left we honestly never thought we'd be back there again, so it was fun to spend the weekend being nostalgic and checking out all of our favorite hot spots one more time.

When we lived in Suwon we used to take the bus into Seoul on most weekends and now we live on the same street where that bus used to drop us off, so catching a ride to Suwon last weekend was pretty convenient. We'd just missed the bus we wanted to take and it was cold so we hopped on another bus that was also going to Suwon, but to a different area. When we got there we didn't recognize where we were and we had to take a taxi to the area that we actually wanted to visit, but it wasn't too inconvenient.

Our first stop was at a galbi place a few minutes' walk from our old apartment building. We'd only discovered this restaurant a few months before we moved away, but when I was in Canada and dreaming about galbi this was the place I dreamed of. Unfortunately we somehow ordered the wrong type of BBQ... it wasn't the stuff we always used to get, but it was still good. At the galbi restaurant I also saw the first sign of change in Suwon: an English menu! The times they are a-changing!

We decided to spend the night at a love motel, Motel Herb, which is directly in front of our old apartment building. Our old apartment used to face Motel Herb and we always wondered what it was like inside. Well, it's pretty red. There was no doubt about it, we were staying in the red light district- check out the motel hallway!

Our room, for only $35 a night. I turned the red light on for photographic effect, but actually it was quite a nice, quiet and clean room and the bathtub was so nice!

After we dropped off our bags we walked over to our old apartment building, the Songak Whitebil. There's been a lot of construction around the old Whitebil- it's absolutely surrounded by new high rise apartment buildings. I can't decide if it makes the Whitebil look more classy or shittier in comparison... I'm just glad I didn't live there while they were building those apartments. Imagine the noise!

After getting a glimpse of the lovely CVS lady, we went up to the roof to poke around. We spent many an evening on that roof, shooting off fireworks and burying bunnies. When we were leaving and got out of the elevator on the ground floor we saw a foreigner getting on the elevator with a friend. I'm sure we blew her mind and I kind of wanted to ask her how Homestay class is going these days.

We walked over to the Home Plus, which in hindsight, we really took for granted. How awesome was it to live across the road from such a useful store! We spent many nights just wandering around Home Plus for something to do, so it was fun to go back. The store had been changed around a bit, but it was just as good as ever and I was glad to see that they're still selling bottles of Moosehead imported straight from Saint John for less than you pay for them in freaking Saint John.

Home Plus is also selling pine needle pillows, which sounds comfy.

In the morning we each took second baths in that amazing Motel Herb tub, dropped our keys off in the elevator (wouldn't it be nice if check-out were so easy in North American motels?) and went out for breakfast.

We shared an overpriced "dream waffle" at Beans & Berries for breakfast. One thing that hasn't changed in Suwon is that there's still nowhere to go grab a decent breakfast.

We walked up the street, did some shopping in the CGV building, noticed that there's a Thai restaurant now (you current-day Suwoners are so spoiled!), and headed to the old Suwon English Villagey to see what our old school looks like today. It looks the same, except now there's a statue outside that says "drama". Our old boss, Stella would have loved that addition: according to her, "students love dlama".

Another pleasant change in Suwon is that all the bus maps are in both Korean and English. We used to go shopping at this great market near Hwaseong Fortress and we always had to take a taxi, but now it's so easy to just read the map and hop on a bus. There were a lot of perms on the bus with us.

Pretty sure I have this exact same photo from three years ago, just with a different car in front of it. We went shopping at the market around Paldalmun for a few hours and it was a lot of fun. Most of my old favorite stores were still there and we both found a lot of good stuff. People that know Korea would probably laugh to hear me say that I'll probably be going back to Suwon again just for the shopping... it really is good!

We spent a bit of time shopping around Suwon Station (the station is actually a pretty good-sized mall) and then took the subway to Songtan for some Thai food. This restaurant, simply called "Thai Food", is the BEST Thai food in Korea, hands down. We love Thai and have been served some pretty crappy Thai food in Itaewon a few times in the last month, but this place is authentic, the prices are fair and the flavors are amazing. It was where we went for supper on our last night in Korea 2 1/2 years ago, so you know it's good.

Continuing on with our Suwon-themed weekend, on Sunday we went to a Suwon vs Seoul soccer match in Seoul with Shanda and Pip. We had a hell of a time getting into the sea of blue Suwon supporters because the cashier had sold us Seoul seats. How rude! We're clearly the Suwon-type.

The best part about the match (besides the exaggerated fake injuries suffered by the players who would hop off the stretchers and resume playing after an adequate amount of sympathy was given) was the chanting. My favorite was "Suwon happy happy goal", but these fans had a stunning repertoire of supportive songs and chants.

Another chant which didn't really turn the game in our favor. Final score, Seoul-3, Suwon-1 but we were the real winners because we left with free donut coupons from Mister Donut.

After the game we went for some beer and fried chicken (we have been eating WAY TOO MUCH Korean fried chicken lately... it's just so good... there's some in my fridge right now...) at Biergarten and then out for some karaoke to belt out some of those old Suwon hits. It's true what they say- that you can't go home again, but sometimes it's fun to pretend.

Whatchu Tryin' To Say, McDonalds?

April Fools

I've had three colds in three weeks and nothing to show for it except a red nose to rival Rudolph's, a sick day from work, and an empty jar of Tylenol Cold and Flu. There's a doctors office in the building next to my school so I decided to drop by today to see if I could get prescribed something to kill this bug for good.

When I got there the room was full of ajummas so I had to wait quite a while to get in, which was fine because I brought my Nintendo DS with me and the chairs were much more comfortable than the midgets' seats I'd just eaten lunch on in the cafeteria. I began embarrassing myself almost immediately. I blew my nose and threw the kleenex in a garbage can by the front door and sat back down, but the nurses all started laughing and making a fuss. One of the nurses walked over to the garbage can, pulled out the moist kleenex with her bare hands and put it into another trash can instead. I wasn't sure how I'd managed to use the garbage incorrectly but I threw out a few "sorry"s to her anyway and she meekly replied "I'm OK". A few minutes later I saw a patient come in and she put her wet umbrella into the garabge can. It was an umbrella can! Duh.

I knew it was my turn to see the doctor because the fuss started up again. There was pushing and whining and I could hear one of the nurses say (in Korean) "rock scissors paper" as in "let's all play rock scissors paper and if you lose you're his nurse". Well, the loser called me over and in I went to see the doctor.

Doctor Kang preferred to write rather than speak. In fact, everything he said to me he also wrote down on an ever-growing stack of post-its that sat in front of me. From one look at my tongue he could tell quite a bit: first of all, I had "shrink tongue" which is causing me to have chronic fatigue (really?), I need to stay away from cold water, and my kidneys need some kind of pill for 5 days. Also, eat lots of egg. He drew an egg and a line showing me where the "white" part is and where the "yellow" part is. I walked out with a big bag of pills, including a antibiotic- which was all I wanted- so I'll be taking that. And back to school I went.

At this same Melodie was wiring money home. She just got her first paycheck and so this was her first time using our new bank (KB) to transfer money. We were told by a KB telephone representative that you can send money home using the ATM, you just need the branch to set it up for you first. When Mel got to the bank they said this was impossible and she'd have to wire money home the old fashioned way. Except the old fashioned way was a little different this time. The banker wired the bank's money to Canada. THE BANK'S MONEY. And then when he was done he took Mel to the ATM to withdraw her cash so she could pay the bank back. He hadn't even checked her balance or asked for her account information before this, so he couldn't have even known that she'd have enough in her account to the bank pay back. We shall keep this in mind for the next visit.

So, in my afterschool class one of my students told me that it's "Lie Day" today which reminded me that it is, in fact, April Fools Day. If I had known that then maybe I wouldn't have taken all the days' strange events quite so seriously.

Now if you'll excuse me, we've just gotten back from Itaewon with a pile of good books and all the ingredients to make smores... except the campfire. We're going to use the gas range and hope the marshmallows don't taste too gassy. Nom nom nom.