The Adventures of Melodie and Shawn in Korea and Taiwan

The Keddys

2011-09-16T08:38:00.015+08:00

Well, what a difference a month makes! I'm sitting in our new apartment in lovely Kingston, Ontario. For the first time in two years our apartment is NOT the size of a shoebox, and I'm eating a bag of ketchup chips with a cat on my lap. All of these things would have been unthinkable just 6 weeks ago, but it's amazing how quickly things start to seem normal again.

Another big change is that I've gone from being a teacher to being a student- I'm now taking the BEd program at Queen's University. In a random twist of fate, Melodie got a job right away, and she is now teaching for... Queen's! She got a great job at their School of English. Did I mention that we're actually renting our apartment from Queen's, too? I guess they own us now- hahaha.

Oh yeah, one more big change since our last update:

We got hitched!

Vegas was awesome! Can you think of a better place to reunite with 30+ family members and friends after two years abroad? I can't. We got married at the Graceland wedding chapel. We went to the chapel in a white limo- neither of us had ever been in a limo before- and we just barely got to the chapel on time. The whole ceremony was only two minutes and forty-five seconds long, which was just long enough for us! Elvis sang two songs and before you knew it, we were the Keddys!

The wedding after-party was at the Fremont Street Experience, a covered street flanked by flashy casinos, shops and restaurants. The street was full of crazy people (present company included) and impersonators of Michael Jackson, cupid, KISS and more. Loverboy was playing a free show and the ceiling of the covered street had a light show projected on it all night long. It was so fun!!

We ate lots of good food, toured through most of the famous hotels and saw a couple of shows.

The fountain show at the Bellagio was amazing.

We saw the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. It was grand, but all the driving to get there was not.

After 6 days in Las Vegas, we spent a day in Portland before going back to Melodie's parent's in Kingston, NB. Then we visited family and friends in Fredericton, Moncton, Hampton, Sussex, Aylesford, and Montreal before finally winding up here in Ontario. So you can understand why it took me so long to update this blog! I probably won't be updating it too much this year unless something really interesting happens because I'm SWAMPED with all my classwork, plus we're starting sign language classes next week in the evenings. But even if you don't hear from us for a little while, loyal reader, you can rest assured that we are content in Canada- happily eating our Arby's, petting our cat and maybe even day dreaming about the next place to go ostrich riding.

Vancouver

2011-08-05T08:16:00.007+08:00

Jet lag is an evil witch. We thought we’d beat her, but when it came time to get to bed on Sunday night, neither of us could sleep a wink. Frustrated, I got up at 5:45am, made coffee, saw the sun rise and watched a lot of "Breaking Bad" on Grandma’s balcony.

The scene at the Vernon Greyhound terminal was a joke, thanks to the bumbling ticket booth operator, but everyone eventually got on the bus and we were off (an hour late). The 8-hour trip took us through Kamloops, Abbotsford, Hope and Chilliwack and although it was scenic and mountainous, it was hard to enjoy. I was so tired and felt so sick.

We took a taxi from the Greyhound terminal in Vancouver to Mel’s Uncle and Aunt’s house near Granville Island. Man, they could not live in a nicer area. They are right along the sea wall, which has to be one of the most scenic urban places in Canada, and are just a 5-minute walk to Granville Market.

After a BBQ dinner, we took a walk along the sea wall with Mel’s cousin/amateur tour guide Kaleb. We saw some big birds.

We popped some of Rick’s jet lag pills and settled in to a normal night’s sleep. We felt a hell of a lot better the next morning. And there was a lot to be excited about- we were going to ARBY’S!! For two long years, I’ve been dreaming of a delectable beef n’cheddar sandwich, and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Arby’s was located in the Metrotown Mall, which is BC’s largest mall, and Mel was able to check something important off her shopping list: her shoes for the wedding. Later, Rick’s brothers and niece came over for a family BBQ, so we spent the night chatting and getting all the new Canadian gossip.

The next morning, Mel and I headed out on a mission: Operation Taiwanese Meatball. This was our favourite street food in Taiwan, and we haven’t seen it for sale anywhere since we moved. Thank you, multicultural Vancouver! The meat ball was great, and actually, everywhere we went the food looked amazing. Every style of food seems to be represented and we only wish we’d had more time to spend eating!! We've been so deprived!

We took a bus downtown and walked around a very red Chinatown.

Next we went to Gas Town. The streets were very historic-looking. That’s a gas powered clock there in the picture.

Catching some sun on the sea wall on our walk back to Rick and Barb’s.

Surprisingly, there are coyotes on the sea wall! WTF!!

In the evening we watched Big Brother and walked over to a park by the water to watch the International Fireworks Festival with Kaleb. It was Spain’s night and, at 30 minutes long, the show was pretty cool. Another sign that we’re back in Canada: the smell of pot wafting by every 30-seconds. Oh, BC.

After demolishing a bag of dill pickle chips, we tried to get some sleep. It was hard!! I was so excited about Vegas. But, in the morning, we crawled out of bed, packed up and then took a walk over to Granville Island Market for lunch.

This market is enormous and absolutely everything looked amazingly delicious. What we would’ve done for just one place like this in Korea!! For lunch we got a combo of perogies, chicken kiev and salad, which was interestingly served by a Korean family (Why don’t you set up a shop in Seoul? I know a lot of people who’d love you for it!!)

We got a big ass brownie and some coffee for dessert, and sat by the house boats on the sea wall for a while. Just like that, our super quick stay in Vancouver was over, and it was time to head to the airport. It was fun to check Facebook while we were at the airport, as everyone started to update “We’re in Vegas!” “The resort is awesome!” and “It’s goddamn hot!” I’m typing this up during our flight, and we’ll soon be there too! With 33 of our favourite people, and one special Elvis.

Vegas, baby!!

Vernon

2011-08-03T07:38:00.008+08:00

We’re back in Canadia! The trip back was too long, as it always is, but with all the food and comfort we’ve been enjoying, it was well worth it.

We were so excited to get on the plane that we were the second people in line for the day to check our bags and claim our boarding passes. Actually, we were there before the ticket booth even opened for our flight! After missing a flight in Spain a few years ago, Melodie runs a tight ship on days when we’re flying. We were also happy to find that Incheon Airport has a really fast and free wifi service, so we downloaded the new “Teen Mom” and “Platinum Hit” for the flight. Trust me, I’m glad we did. Ten hours is a lonnnng time.

Air Canada predictably offered chicken or beef during meal service. They said the beef was Korean style and the chicken was western. We probably cut the steward off mid-sentence to exclaim “western, please!” -we were so excited. It tasted so great, and there was a little packet of kimchi on the side for everyone, too.

The most exciting product on offer, though, was good ol’ Molson Canadian beer! We were so excited to get a can. On international flights, Air Canada hasn’t yet become the cheapo tightasses they are on domestic routes so we got a couple of meals and drinks for free during the trip.

Our first glimpse of Oh Canada in two years.

We got to Vancouver an hour late, which was only concerning because we thought we might not have enough time to go to Tim Horton’s before we had to be at the gate for our connecting flight. There was a long line at Timmies, but we made it with twenty minutes to spare. It was amazing. And it gave me the shakes.

We had a quick 50 minute flight to Kelowna, our final destination. Mel and I weren’t able to sit together, and I really missed having her hand to squeeze blue during the turbulent flight. We were on such a small plane and it kept suddenly dropping as we descended in to land. I will never, ever fly on such a small plane again!! When we arrived in Kelowna, we were met at the airport by Mel’s grandma and her neighbor Peter, who was giving us a ride back to Grandma’s apartment in Vernon. From getting our four suitcases into the car, to trying to get out of the parking lot, to the frightening drive home, Peter was a very, very interesting character.

Vernon is one of the top 5 places to retire to in North America. Being there after two years in busy Seoul and Taipei was a shock to the system, but a pleasant one. It’s a very quiet place and caters very much to it’s aging community. A brief tour:

Grandma’s apartment building. It's a very, very nice place. I can't wait to retire and live someplace like this!

The motel offers seniors rates.

This Shopper’s Drug Mart van delivers your prescriptions to your door.

Antiques!

The Pantry restaurant. Come here for your liver and onions or turkey dinner.

Retirement planner’s offices.

Vernon Medical Supplies.

The hearing center/optometrist/chiropractor mega-center!

Mel crossing the busy street. Grandma warned her to make sure she stayed within the white lines.

Hopefully that’s given you an idea of the type of place Vernon is. You can also understand why we decided this would be the perfect place to visit to deal with our imminent jet leg. Actually, it felt like being at rehab. It was quiet and serene. No one made a noise. If you wanted to sleep all day, that was fine. If you wanted to read on the balcony and listen to the (one) car drive by, you could. There was no internet and our cell phones don’t work here. We had a 2 hour nap for the first time in 20 hours on Saturday night, which made us feel a lot better. Then, after a late night dinner of Chinese food (I’d forgotten about how ridiculously big Canadian portion sizes are!) we slept for another 12 hours. Now, I think we’re back on a normal schedule and we’re somewhat feeling normal. At 16 hours difference, the time change is a hell of an adjustment.

Mel and I took a little walk around “downtown” on our second day. The first thing we saw when we went into Shopper’s Drug Mart was a life sized cut out of Justin Beiber. The most disappointing bit was to learn that I’m shorter than Justin Beiber.

We walked a bit more and visited the Dollarama and got another coffee at Tim’s. We really noticed how much friendlier the people are that work at stores here. I missed the random banter with salespeople!

Grandma was a great host and even cooked up a roast dinner with Yorkshire puddings for us on our second night.She also entertained us with her tea towel collection and stories of bobby dazzlers and twixie dwiddlers.

Tomorrow morning we’re leaving Vernon to take a bus to Vancouver. Now that we’re out of jet leg rehab, it’s time to visit the city and visit with Mel’s aunt, uncle and cousin. I love Vancouver, and according to my extensive research, I believe they have an Arby’s there. It won’t be long now...

Kept It Interesting

2011-07-30T00:00:00.000+08:00

Before we moved back to Korea, we wrote a list of things we wanted to do and we labeled it "Keep It Interesting". Mission accomplished.

Can't wait for what's next.

Restaurant Bucket List #6-1

2011-07-29T09:35:00.000+08:00

With our umbrellas in tow, we've managed to cross the last six restaurants off our bucket list. This was no small feat, with all the tasks we've had to do in the last week, but (most of) the trips were worth every bite.

#6- Potato Bacon Pizza at Pizza Hut, with lots of garlic sauce. This was a bit of a miss, because they were all out of the 'pan' pizza and we had to go for an over-priced stuffed-crust option. This type of crust didn't have the crispy greasy goodness of Pizza Hut's usual pie, but any pizza topped with potato wedges is okay in my books.

#5- Dalkgalbi- Because of the rain and busy times, we didn't get to go to our favorite dalkgalbi place, Yoogane. We didn't even get to go to our second favorite place because it was closed. This random shop we wound up at served up an okay dish but there was no cheeze-uh and we wound up leaving without even finishing the plate. Fail!

#4- Our favorite galbi restaurant in Suwon. We were going to go to Suwon on our last night in Korea, but we thought that might be a bit hectic so we went there on Monday instead. Most of the foods I've enjoyed in Korea can probably be re-created at home, but I don't know how I'd recreate the food at this place. Honey samgyupsal, yungneum galbi sol, and the best sides in the business- macaroni salad, vinegar soup, lots and lots of grass... amazing. I'll miss this restaurant the most.

#3- Din Tai Fung- A Taiwanese restaurant in Gangnam. We really loved the food in Taiwan, so this restaurant was a real find for us. The lemon chicken, hot and sour soup and beef noodle soup were amazing as always. There's a Taiwanese place we want to check out in Vancouver next week too. We're mad craving some Taiwanese meatball!!

#2- Gostiny Dvor- This place can do no wrong... I mean they completely messed up our order but everything still tasted great. And the company was lovely too.

#1- The last meal... ddoek samgyup and mul naegmyeon. What could make for a better final meal in Korea than bbq wrapped in rice paper with some icy noodles on the side? It was delicious.

Alright, now to mess up our wonderful week of dining with a last meal of airport food! Less than 12 hours to go!!

The Flood

2011-07-27T13:52:00.005+08:00

What an awesome summer vacation this has been so far! Since June 22 (the official start of summer) Seoul's been hit with 1259.5mm of rain... AKA 87% of what the country would normally get in a whole year. And it was grey and rainy in Seoul for at least 3 weeks before that, too. Even now, during our last three days in the country we can't catch a break with the weather. We've had an unbelievable amount of rain over the past few days especially, but what we've been getting in the last 12 hours has caused devastating floods across the city.

Check out these pictures stolen from various news websites (I'm sure as hell not leaving my apartment to take pictures of this mess!):

Yangjae Stream has overflowed. This is what it looked like 3 days ago when we took a walk there.

Here's Gangnamdaero, probably the busiest street in the city, about 15 minutes walk from my apartment. We were going to get some supper up there tonight... but maybe we can just order delivery instead? UPDATE: We walked up here during a break in the rain last night and it was no longer flooded. However, almost all businesses operating on the first floor of a building were closed and full of miserable looking employees trying to clean the shops with mops and sump pumps. What a mess.

Daechi-dong, where Mel went to work today. She had a truly horrible trip to work. You should have heard the sound of the thunder and the violent pour of the rain as she had to leave for work. Not only was she soaked through by the time she got to the subway, but after she got off the train she had to walk for 15 minutes more to get to her school. En route, she lost both of her sandals and had to chase them as they floated away in the current, all while holding an umbrella and a coffee. She said the sewers looked like fountains with dirty water spraying from the tops of the manholes. Dirty water she was walking barefoot in. She and her students were sent home early because everyone was hungry but no one could deliver the day's snack in this weather. So on the walk home she tried to pick up lunch at KFC but they were all out of food! Awesome.

The rain caused a big mudslide at Umyeonsan, near Nambu Bus Terminal. This is only a 5 minute drive from our apartment. One person died in the mudslide and a bunch of apartments were evacuated. I read that 32 people have died so far today as a result of the flood.

The Han River, which runs through the middle of the city, has overflowed and forced people to abandon their cars. Vehicles have had to be abandoned all over the city due to the flooding.

This is truly amazing weather we're experiencing. You've got to hand it to the people who are still out there trying to do their jobs in this mess. Mel said she saw businessmen trudging through the water, their suits knee-deep in water. And just as I'm writing this, my doorbell rang and there was a deliveryman for me. My Gmarket order came in! Should ordered scuba gear...

Ask me if I'm going to miss this weather? My only hope is that our flight isn't affected by this weather on Saturday and that we're not wheeling 4 suitcases to the airport bus stop in the rain.
On the plus side, all this rain has allowed me lots of time to clean the apartment and download some new shows. Breaking Bad is awesome! I'll probably be able to get through the last two seasons by Saturday at this rate :)

Photo Album

2011-07-24T19:53:00.010+08:00

A mishmash of recent photos that don't really belong in any particular post:

A return visit to the War Memorial.

Mel kicks her legs in victory after winning a game of Yut, a traditional Korean game that plays like the game "Sorry" but you use sticks instead of dice. We got really into Yut for a couple of nights there.

POLOPO SPORTS! This elusive popsicle is the yummiest icey treat available on this fair peninsula, in my opinion. It's impossible to find, too. I've only ever spotted it in three random convenience stores and the last time I found them I bought four so I'd be sure to have some on hand. I think it tastes like white freezies, Mel think it tastes like soap. I'm right.

Mies_Container restaurant in Gangnam. I have never walked past this place and NOT seen a line of people wrapped around the building, waiting for a table. Even in the pouring rain. I'm really curious about what they serve, but from pictures that I've seen online it looks like their specialty is potato wedges covered in cheese. That can't be right, can it? Doesn't sound very well-being.

Sparkling tomato cola to quench your thirst in the hot Seoul summer.

We biked from Jamwon to Yeouido last month. That's the 63 building behind me there.

I just really like the name of this convenience store.

We joined a gym, mainly to pass time. Going to the gym in Korea is an interesting experience. There's a woman at our gym that either lives there or has a sick addiction to fitness. Even when it's 35 degrees outside they will not turn on the A/C (one day last week we hit 40 degrees and they turned it on). I've seen a 70 year old man stand on his head. There are some strange humping stretches that the guys do that would definitely impregnate a vagina if it walked by. Many strange.

The last time we went to Paldalmun Market in Suwon, it caught on fire! We were very alarmed, mostly because we hadn't yet had a chance to shop at the part that was burning. It was a minor blaze, and although some of the stores lost power, none of our favorite shops were affected. Watching the fire trucks definitely gave the shop owners something to watch and talk about that day.

Captain Santa Island- we were bored one night so we walked to Nambu Bus Terminal and back and I noticed this Santa-themed golf store. You could get Captain Santa clubs, polos, bags... everything. Because Santa and golf go hand in hand.

A typical payphone, littered with ads for sexy clubs and massages.

Some hospital patients wheeled themselves to this convenience store to smoke and drink in their gowns.

"Little Pussy" sweatshirt. Meow!

I've never met an ugly beer...

I hate our apartment. It wouldn't be so bad if so many gross things didn't happen and if the poorly made fixtures and fittings would stop breaking. Today our laundry room started flooding. It didn't just flood with water, but with old food and sewage that came up stinking and looking like barf. Several dead cockroach bodies floated up too. Then we noticed that bathroom was flooding a bit too. I am not going to miss Korean plumbing. Or the bugs.

Gangnam. I am going to miss the bright bigness of Gangnam. Life is going to seem so much smaller, soon.

Notepad found at Daiso: "Ostrich. A ostrich has a beautiful double eyelid." And since it's Korean, it probably got that double eyelid at the plastic surgeon's office.

This is actually a store and not an image from the new episode of Hoarders. Actually, a lot of stores in Korea look like this. Can you imagine going in and looking for something you actually needed? You'd probably knock yourself out on one of the bags hanging from the ceiling before you got too far.

Yangjae Stream. Mel had been bugging me for weeks to take a walk down there. They've got a nice pool set up there for the summer.

Packing means throwing out a lot of stuff. We made a lot of progress today.

But a lot of tough choices had to be made :(

Restaurant Bucket List #11-7

2011-07-23T12:15:00.010+08:00

We've made a list and we've checked it twice: there are 11 restaurants we have to re-visit before we leave Korea. These are not necessarily our top 11 favorites, but are mostly places we haven't been in a while and have to pay one last visit to. For example, we hit up Yum Thai and Ho Lee Chow a few days before the list was drafted, so we don't need to go back so soon. We've crossed the first five off our list, leaving 6 left in to go over the next 7 days. The results so far:

#11- Everest

Before returning to Korea, I always related Indian food to those TV dinners that might send you to the bathroom within a few minutes of consuming them. We don't have any Indian restaurants at home, so that had been my unfortunate experience. Luckily, Seoul has quite a few delicious Indian places and I've become obsessed with tucking into a nice curry at least once a week for the past year!! Best restaurant by a country mile: Everest near Dongdaemun Station, exit 3. It's a little out of the way for us, but everything tastes fresh and delicious and the prices are half of what you see at Indian places in Gangnam. Love it! We got Chicken makhani, paratha, and samosas.

#10- Popeyes

Actually, Popeyes kind of sucks. Mel hates it. But, for some reason, when we were making this list I decided I had to have their "Cajun Tong Sandwich" again. It's a slightly spicy chicken burger topped with mayo and a slice of ham. Dunno why, but I like it. It was great. Mel hated it.

#9- Pizza @ BBQ Chicken

Their chicken is good, but in my opinion BBQ Chicken makes the best pizza in Korea. At 8,000 Won for a large it's a steal, too. The sauce is amazing. The pepperoni might actually be real! Unfortunately, almost zero BBQ Chicken places serve pizza. The only two we've found are way down in Busan (outside Busan Station) and Dongnimmun Station in north Seoul. We went to the one at Dongnummun and it was, of course, amazing.

#8- Hakoya
Japanese food is my least favorite of the world's cuisine's that I've sampled, but for some reason I love everything at Hakoya. My favorite is the kyushu, a completely unoffensive (try a few Korean soups for an example of 'offensive') pork soup with noodles. The sweet slices of BBQ pork in the soup seal the deal. The gyozas and rice bowls are amazing too. There's one in Yongsan Station and one on the food street behind Gangnam Station exit 7.

#7- Todai

A visit to this place really breaks the bank, at 33,000 Won each, but luckily we've sold a bunch of our old furniture on craigslist and we used the proceeds to fund this trip. Actually, I haven't spent a penny of my own money in 4 days- thanks, craigslist! Todai, near Sinmokdong Station is an amazing dining experience. It's a buffet, but everything looks fancy and tastes fresh. There's so much good stuff here. Examples:

Bulgogi, pork belly, potato pancake, sweet & sour pork, beef teppanyaki, mandarin chicken salad, pizza and a chicken skewer.

salmon sushi, inari sushi, roasted eggplant, salmon salad, chicken skewers, roasted mushrooms and garlic, bulgogi, chicken salad.

Build yer' own pho, more BBQ pork belly, flower bread and another potato pancake.

mango cheesecake, strawberry sweetmeat, watermelon, pineapple, plum, creme brulee and tiramisu.

Cream puff, tiramisu, pineapple, brownie, apple pie, strawberry mousse cake, orange trifle cake, strawberry sweetmeat and a few other cakes that I forget the names of.

All this plus unlimited coffee, smoothies, juices and colas made for a very full tummy on the ride home.

#6-1 still to come. We have a lot of eating to do, and such little time!

Paju "English" Village

2011-07-17T20:10:00.016+08:00

Suwon English Village is closed! There it is, in the above photo, with boxes full of English Village dollars and the old Economy game left outside to rot. We were randomly driving by our old school last week and couldn't believe it when we saw that it was shut down. We made our taxi driver let us out of the cab so we could investigate. Turns out, the school had closed just 2 days before we got there! We were the first teachers at that school, working at our first ESL jobs, so it was a little weird to see that it was closed but we were still here! With a little investigating by Jo, we found out that the teachers had only been given 3 weeks notice that they were out of jobs and that it closed because KBS (who owned the building the Village was in) didn't renew their lease.

It's quite sad, really. I feel bad for the teachers who were probably good friends and were forced to split up all over the country at new jobs or go home. After visiting the Alice in Wonderland English Village just a week earlier, it got us thinking- what's going on with all these abandoned English Villages?

The English Village is a pretty recent idea in a country that's been obsessed with English education for decades. The first one was built in Paju in 2006 as an alternative to sending children abroad for English immersion experiences. The Villages were supposed to be "English only" places where kids could learn from "edutainers" in situational classes. Within a year there were 20 English Villages in Korea, but now they're all closing down. Why? Well, in my opinion they were a fad. A lot of money was spent to make these places look impressive when they opened, but no money was re-invested for long-term success. Plus, when people go abroad to learn a language they often stay for at least 6 months. The English Village programs are never more than 2 weeks long, so it's insane to think a person could improve much in such a short time. And it's a flawed concept if there isn't a commitment to enforce the English only policy. But in my experience, Koreans want to learn English but they almost never want to speak it. The employees at the school don't want to speak English, the bosses don't want to speak English, and it just falls apart from there.

So, having had worked at both Suyu and Suwon English Villages, and having visited the Alice Park English Village, we decided to head north to Paju and visit the school that started it all: Paju English Village.

There's a direct bus (200 or 2200) that you can catch outside Hapjeong Station exit 2, which takes about 90 minutes to arrive in Paju. They leave every 15-20 minutes, so it's pretty convenient. The ride seemed to go by fast, and we were all in a good mood because it was the first day in a month that it wasn't raining. A big draw in the Paju area is the Premium Outlet Mall, which our bus seemed to circle at least a dozen times before dropping us off at the Village. According to the sign, even the mall is into edutaining!

Are we in Hollywood, or is this the English Village? Wow, so overgrown.

Just like at the two English Villages we worked at, your visit begins with a trip through immigration. We were given passports (just like at the other schools) and they were stamped as we went through. There were signs posted that the immigration staff should be wearing uniforms, but they were just dressed casually. We ALWAYS wore an ill-fitting shirt and tie- have some respect for the job, guys! The immigration teachers seemed playful with the Koreans, but when the guy saw me he said, "you don't want an interview do you?" and the girl asked Hannah, "how long have you been in Korea?" "3 years,"Hannah said. "Ugh, me too. it's time to get out!" the girl replied, stamping her passport, before turning back to her macbook. LOL!!! This place was awesome already!

We were given an information pamphlet that said, in bold black print, "Only English, no Korean!" but ironically, the entire pamphlet was written in Korean. And from that point, we never saw a single employee or patron of the Village speak English to another person. The employees at the store and restaurant that we visited spoke in English to us, but switched straight back to Korean when they waited on Koreans. Some little kids at the park seemed interested in us and probably wanted us to edutain them, but it was too bad that there weren't really any foreign staff around for them to talk to.

The first thing we did was stop in a convenience store, which had a cooler full of beer! LOL! Why didn't our Villagey have one of those?

An "English only" sign.

We were hungry so we got some food. I chose a cup full of cola with some chicken nuggets in a bowl above the cola and some cheese sticks (served with ketchup). It was pretty good.

City Hall. The Villagey grounds were pretty impressive, though it was clear that it hadn't been kept up at all since it was built. Plus, a lot of the buildings were closed. Still, this was definitely the nicest of the Villageys I'd been to, though Suyu is quite nice too.

Inside City Hall... if I wanted help, who was going to help me? The building was empty. And actually, besides the two immigration teachers, the only other foreign staff we saw was one girl teaching a "bank" class. There were signs up for lots of different classes that were supposed to be running while we were there, but no one was there. The teachers must have a pretty sweet schedule!

Who could resist a photo op like this?

I immediately regretted posing with the stuffed toys as soon as I touched them. They were so wet, and upon closer inspection, covered in mold.

At the 3D cinema (which was showing a Korean movie) there was a sign explaining what to do with your ticket if the movie was starting, but there was no staff around to collect your ticket. Why wouldn't there be someone to take your ticket?!

The dormitories were all named after African tribe names, which was kind of random because the Village is supposed to be based on a European theme and all the buildings looked European.

Inside one of the dorms. I love what they've done with the place!

This poster was hanging in the "Media" building. The speakers at the Village were also pumping out some hideous songs the whole time we were there that went something like this: "Media! Media! I love media! Science! Science! I love science!" I love media??? Really?

This Museum of English Pub History sounded amazing, and totally age appropriate for the park guests, but sadly it too was locked up.

Across from the Pub museum was the perversely named "Kiddywood".

Stonehenge in the car park.

I absolutely loved the English Village. I love the ridiculousness of it and taking the piss out of everything that was there, but as a functioning business- good god, I'd be shocked if it was still there in a year's time. Go now- while you still can!

But we weren't done with Paju yet! There is so much to see and do there. I'd always heard that Paju English Village is close to the North Korean border, but I never realized how close it was. It's like... across the street. There's a touristy sight close by called the Dongil Observatory, which is only 460m from North Korea, so we decided to check it out. We took a bus there (the ever-convenient #200) and thought the fence in the above picture would be a good place to start our hike up to the entrance.

It was such a long hike up to the observatory! It was so humid today and I was a slimy mess by the time we got to the top. To make matters worse, when we got there we saw a sign for a free shuttle bus that we could've used to get up the hill. Dammit!

Admission was only 3,000Won (I love Korean admission prices!) and we spent some time gawking over at the North. We could see some people walking around in a rice paddy. It was quite thrilling!

North Korea is a fascinating place, and I've read at least half a dozen books about the country and watched any documentaries I can about it. It's so many mystery! The observatory had an interesting little museum to look through, full of North Korean products and even some models of a typical North Korean schoolroom and home (above). Notice the framed pictures of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. You can be put in a work camp if your home is caught without such a photo hanging in it, or even if the frame is a little dusty.

And then you can go to the gift shop and buy some DMZ hand towels or soap.

Next, we wanted to visit the Heyri Art Village, so we hopped on the #200 again. Before long, we'd realized that our trip was taking a bit longer than we'd expected and suddenly we were on the highway back to Seoul! We'd taken the bus the wrong way! It was too late to turn around now, so we had to give the Art Village a pass and continue on home. It seemed so sudden. We didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to Paju...

Here's what most of the drive home looked like: barbed wire and guard posts. Most of the time, I totally forget just how close we are to such a dangerous nation.

Well, after eating some questionable Mexican food in Hongdae we arrived back home feeling a bit weathered from our day of sightseeing. I'm looking forward to relaxing tonight before beginning my LAST WEEK AT PSA tomorrow, with a tall glass of North Korean beer- bought at the observation tower gift shop. I passed on the DMZ soap, but I'm quite interested to taste this beer. They don't sell that in the English Villagey cooler!

A Reprieve From The Rain

2011-07-15T23:09:00.006+08:00

"I love the summer in Korea!"

"I'm so glad we get to have one more summer in Seoul! We'll be at the Han River pools everyday"

This was us a few months ago. Fast forward to approximately now: it's rained for the last three weekends and just about every day in between. It's going to rain again this weekend. The word on the street is that this monsoon weather should end by Tuesday, but a typhoon is expected to hit us the very next day. We only have one more weekend left in the country! Is the only way out of these rainy clouds going to be actually flying through them and moving home? That's how it worked out with our last months in Taiwan...

Last Friday we got a brief reprieve from the rain, so we took a walk by the Han River. We've been busy with all things related to moving home and planning for a wedding/university/a cross-Canada move, all while squeezing in trips to the gym, so it was nice to chill out by the river on a warm, rain free evening.

This is where tourists can catch Seoul's water taxi. Unfortunately, due to all the rain, you might need a water taxi to take you to the water taxi. It was so many flood!

Drinks were drunk. Some nice people shared their Korean Doritos with us.

This dusty old riverboat/restaurant is a bit of an eyesore during the day but looks nice lit up on the water at night.

My most vivid memory from our first day in Seoul was traveling on the bus from the airport and passing by all the colorful, lit up bridges. I hadn't slept in 30 hours but I was pretty sure I was in the biggest city EVAH.

Sunsets in Korea aren't like they are at home, but we were graced with a nice purple on this night.

You can kind of see Seoul Tower lit up there on the opposite side of the river.

I hope we can get a few more nights like this one before we move home because we're running out of dry shoes and umbrellas at this point. I'm one more rainy weekend away from reneging my claim of love for Korea's summers!!

Costco Freakouts

2011-07-10T11:17:00.007+08:00

When we moved to the Gangnam area, Melodie and I were really happy to know that we would be so close to the famed (at least among ex-pats) Costco. We'd never been to one before and we were excited to have easy access to deli meats, cheeses and other hard-to-find items in Korea. Well, I can tell you that after our first visit to the store, the relationship between ourselves and Coscto became strictly business. There is no love between us and that store, in fact something about the shopping experience there seems to be my trigger for pure rage. I'm usually a pretty measured person. If something pisses me off, I can hold that feeling in and vent about it later. But not at Costco. For me, Costco is freakout central.

Why? Well, for starters, on any given day the store has the same number of people (maybe more) that you'd expect to see in a western shopping mall on the last weekend before Christmas. We all know how fun that is, and Costco is like that all the time. The aisles are wide enough for 4 carts to be pushed through side by side, but yet there is always a traffic jam. I've never attempted to use a cart in that store and would probably wind up throwing it at someone if I tried. It also seems like every item in every aisle is being looked at by someone and nobody would ever, ever move out of the way for you to get by or look at something. And people will push their carts right into you, too. A cart in the bum is not cool.

Actually, the first annoying thing that happens when you walk into the store is that the store greeter checks your membership card and, once everything checks out, gives you some coupons. This would be fine if she checked everyone's cards but I find that they only check ours and let all the Koreans go through without saying a word. They still get the coupons, though.

Checking out is very unpleasant, too. Since we only buy a few things, we are always the people in line with the least number of items, but I've never seen a line shorter than four carts completely full of bulk kim and boxes upon boxes of cakes. Why do Koreans need so many cakes? And why is there no express lane??

But truly the most annoying thing about Costco Korea is the food court. Good lord, this place is madness at all hours of the day. There is literally never, NEVER anywhere to sit and eat, but if you look carefully, about 1/4 of the people sitting at tables haven't even bought any food. Why are they there? Well, they're eating a plate of free condiments, of course.

Ketchup, mustard and onions all mixed together. This is SUCH a famous Korean "thing". Every foreigner in Korea has had a laugh about this at one time or another.

I've heard stories that it takes two Costco employees to change the onion machine: one to work the machine and one to fend off the Koreans. It really is that bad: my eyes burn with the pungent smell of onions when we're near the food court (and the food court is right next to the checkout, so now you're waiting in a long line with some ajumma's cart in your bum, and everything smell like onions)! Every single table in the food court will have a plate of this stuff to eat with their meal and I honestly believe that if Costco stopped providing free onions that the whole business would collapse.

As cheap as the food court food is, I find the whole menu very unappetizing. According to Costco's website, their best-selling food court item in Korea is the bulgogi bake (as seen above). Basically, it's a hot pocket filled with beef. It's gross. The bread tastes like it was baked a month earlier and there's no sauce so it's very dry. You really have to chase each bite with a drink to get it to go down. But be careful which drink you choose: the cheap "smoothie" tastes like Flinstones chewable vitamins mixed with ice. The pizza, which is really popular, is also gross (in my opinion) and I'm pretty non-discriminatory when it comes to pizza. The slice I tried was covered in grease and had no sauce or taste whatsoever. Maybe that's why everyone's eating the onions, ketchup and mustard- they may just be the most delicious food court item on offer.

We now travel to Costco for bacon, coffee and granola bars only. Like I said, it's strictly business. We no longer browse through the store or even try the free food samples. Before we go in to the store, Mel rubs my back and reminds me to relax. Yes, I actually need to get a pep talk before shopping there! But, for a few special items, Costco is a necessary evil. I'm looking forward to using my membership card at home where the prices are better and the merchandise is more to our tastes. If you're planning to visit Costco in Korea, I'd recommend going on a weeknight if you can. The few times we've gone on weeknights haven't been quite so maddening. The same goes for the E-Mart across the road. Don't even get me started on that place...

After buying some bacon, coffee and granola bars two weeks ago, I was pretty sure that we were stocked up and done with Costco Korea, but now Melodie informs me that we need to go back this week to buy some bulk "going away cupcakes" for her office. *deep breaths* The things I do for this girl :)

Adventures in Mailing

2011-07-06T19:20:00.006+08:00

When we moved to Korea from Taiwan we were only allowed to bring one suitcase with us on our flight, so we didn't arrive with a lot of stuff. It's a year and a half later and we've grown. Not only are we allowed to take two suitcases and a carry-on home with us, but we're also mailing boxes home and throwing stuff out left, right and center. We're >this< close to being featured on an episode of "Hoarders" at this point. Seriously.

On the topic of mailing stuff home- what a nightmare that's been! I sent home a box in May and then last month Melodie tried to send one too, but she was met with a big "X" at our local post office. Canada Post was on strike and they weren't accepting any international mail. A few weeks later they were still on strike and we were getting worried that we'd have to throw out stuff we really wanted to keep (like Mel's precious Moon or my amazing set of Domo coffee mugs).

This week, Canada Post began accepting international mail again (a week after the strike ended) so today I borrowed a dolly from my school and off we went to the post office.

And didn't we look cute lugging all those boxes down the street. Three boxes, 50KGs (110lbs!!) and 367,000 Won ($330 CAN) later and the stuff left in our apartment is finally down to a manageable amount. With this out of the way, it's nice to have one less thing to stress about. Now there's just 24 more days (11 days of work) before we're on an Air Canada flight (another company familiar with strikes and the cause of many recent grey hairs) headed towards the land of large double doubles and doubly large grey cats that we love. We're getting there!

Midnight Stroll Around Ingye-Dong

2011-07-03T14:23:00.007+08:00

On Saturday, we took our monthly trip to Suwon for our usual shopping and sleeping at the Lucy. There was a slight amount of sentiment involved because we knew that this would probably be our last time at the Lucy before we leave Korea. We brought a bag of plain Lays that we'd gotten at the COEX and planned to eat chips in the jacuzzi while watching "The Godfather".

Well, the thing about Korea is that you can't really count on the things you enjoy to stay the same. Lately, our entire stay has seemed to exist around a revolving door of disappointment: restaurants that used to be great close down and re-open as yet-another bibimbap place, stores you like just disappear, jobs we used to like turn into 10-class-a-day suckfests, and some western grocery items that we always bought are no longer re-stocked. Well, at the Lucy they've installed a firewall. No more downloading movies and watching them in the jacuzzi :( Maybe it was okay that this was our last time.

They offered a small selection of streaming English films, though, so watched "The Blind Side". It was actually pretty good, but afterwards we were feeling restless and the rain had stopped so we decided to take a walk. It was midnight.

Our love motel from the outside: two bums and a Spiderman.

A new statue has gone up in front of our old apartment building. I think it classes the area up quite nicely, though it does seem like an odd fit.

Fountains still going at the park. I remember swimming in this pond and being eaten alive by the fish that live there.

T-Rex-shaped bush at the arts center.

Cool statue in the sculpture park behind the arts center. Yep, it had started to rain a little.

Very strangey choice of graffiti written (in English-why?) on the statue's back: "Mother help us... plesure to us". Pleasure? Really?

The banner advertised a "Human Concert" (Korean signs have a habit of advertising things as being "for humans"), but there was no concert to be seen which made for two disappointed Canadian humans.

Sexy business cards left on every car and on every doorstep near the love motel/night club area.

In the end, we wound up at Home Plus looking for a snack. Good old, 24-hour Home Plus. Though the "poped corn snacks" sounded tempting, I went with cheesecake and a ham sandwich.

We had a good night's sleep. We left the window open so we could listen to the rain all night. It was thundering down, as it has for the last 10 days straight, and in the morning Lucy's poor ceiling finally gave way. Just as were were packing up to leave, a hole appeared in the ceiling and it began raining inside. We weren't even on the top floor. Uh-roh!

Our nostalgic midnight stroll through the old hood perhaps swung back the revolving door of disappointment ever so slightly. I still can't wait to get back home, but every now and then even something simple like taking a pleasant walk reminds me that sticking it out here for another month isn't that bad. There's still (a little) time to find some new groceries before they take them away, and some new restaurants to discover before they close them on us.

Dear Foreigner,

2011-06-28T22:14:00.002+08:00

Today we got some Papa John's coupons in the mail. We get them every few months and tend to promptly use them on free cheesy bready things. This time, I took a closer look at my name on the envelope. Apparantly, to Papa John's, my name is "외국인" AKA "waygookin" AKA "foreigner". CAN YOU IMAGINE, a Canadian company mailing some coupons to a Korean immigrant and addressing it "dear foreigner"? Ohhhh, Korea.

This topic has reminded me of another quick story I'd like to share: last year, Melodie was at a meeting about her summer camp. The meeting was full of 외국인s and there were a few Korean teachers as well, including Catherine- Mel's liaison teacher. Catherine kind of laughed when the attendance sheet was passed around. She pointed out Mel's name on the list and translated the information next to it: it read, "Melodie Erickson, white person". Ohhhh, Korea.

Anyway...I think I'll stop myself from elaborating any further on my feelings regarding this topic. Have a good night, everyone.

Sincerely,

Shawn (foreign white person)

Bang Bang Bang

2011-06-26T11:06:00.009+08:00

Korea is home to three very popular "bangs": Norebangs, PC Bangs and DVD Bangs. You can easily find one of these bangy establishments found on just about every street in the country.

While we've been to norebangs (Karaoke rooms) and PC bangs (smoky computer-gaming rooms), we'd never been to a DVD bang, where you can rent a movie and watch it in a private room. I'm a big fan of value for money (AKA a cheapskate), and since I have my own private room (my apartment) and access to any movie ever made (thank you, internet) I'd never seen the point in going to a DVD bang. But- hey- it's a special Korea "thing" and since we're leaving next month we thought we'd try it out on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

We went to the Happy Zone DVD bang across from Popeye's on the food street behind Gangnam Station, exit 7. First, you choose your movie and give it to the employee who loads it up on a DVD player in the lobby. I guess this ensures that they know exactly when your movie is over and when you should be leaving. The downside of this is that you can't pause your video during a bathroom break, but that's not really a big deal. The whole experience costs 16,000 Won, which is roughly the same price as two movie tickets at a real theater in Korea so... it's a little pricy.

After a few minutes, a room became available and we were ushered in. You can see the projectors in the hallway, and I thought the video quality was quite good.

I was *shocked* at how small our "bang" was. I've had broom closets that were a comparable size. Still, the sofa was pretty comfortable and easily big enough for the two of us. Note that none of the surfaces are stainable. These bangs are widely known as a cheap place for young couples that still live at home to have some sexy times.

The screen exceeded my expectations. I was anticipating a TV screen, but the room had a projection screen that was about 5 feet wide. It was a really cool way to watch a movie, and the speaker system was very good, too. Also, please note the tissue box, to wipe up any mess from your sexy time.

We watched Tron: Legacy. We'd missed it at the theaters last winter and never really thought the effects would look great on our laptop screen, and it did look great on the projection screen. I dunno if anything from the movie is all that memorable besides how they make Jeff Bridges look so young, but it was still a fun afternoon, and I'd recommend trying a DVD bang to anybody looking for something different (sexy or otherwise) to do.

Five Umbrellas Drying

2011-06-25T22:08:00.007+08:00

After a solid two months of hot, sunny weather, monsoon season has officially hit Korea. It's been raining pretty much non-stop for the last 48 hours and from the looks of the forecast... the rain is here to stay (and we might even get a tropical storm tomorrow)!

The rainy weather makes for a nice soundtrack at bedtime, but it makes life a lot harder when you walk everywhere. For one, traffic has been much worse since the rain hit, and walking on the sidewalk in overpopulated Gangnam has gotten even more annoying than usual. Koreans love to slowly mosey to wherever they're going, and the rain has made them slower than ever. Add 50,000 umbrellas to the mix and I might just become a hermit until the sun comes out in a few weeks time.

All I ask is that the rain dries up on July 30th. I really don't want to be wheeling four overstuffed suitcases in the rain up Gangnamdaero!

Abandonded (?) Alice In Wonderland ENGLISH Park

2011-06-19T13:10:00.002+08:00

We'd driven past it many times on the bus ride to Costco: Alice English Park. Who is this Alice? How do you make a park "English"? There were just so many unanswered questions. On Saturday, we finally decided to check it out.

The ticket booth near the front entrance: nobody's home. And it didn't look like anyone had been home in a while.

WTF a playing card man?

OH- Alice Park is an Alice in Wonderland park- of course! How random. Unfortunately, the park entrance was roped off, so it didn't seem like we'd be able to check the place out. But, quicker than you can say "trespass", we'd walked around the gate and were in the park. I thought the guy in the above photo would yell at us, but he didn't so he obviously wasn't an employee. Later, when we were halfway through the park we saw him sightseeing at the other end. He must have thought that if we could trespass then he could too.

The first thing I noticed, besides the overgrown grass and dug-up ground, was a fenced-off area full of bunnies and one pissed off rooster. He tried to charge at me, but he was tied by the foot and couldn't get close. I will not be reporting whether of not I screamed.

Some of the buildings at the park.

What's inside?

Aha! It is (or was?) an English Village! Mel, Hannah, and I are English Villagey veterans so it was funny to randomly find ourselves in another one so many years later. It was also refreshing to see that they also use a passport-based rewards system.

A building shaped like a top hat.

Inside an upside-down classroom- that picture is actually the ceiling. It looked really cool, but imagine trying to keep the children's attentions with this kind of distraction! It seemed to us that these unique rooms were built to look impressive, but with no concept of how they would be used to teach. There were no desks or chairs, and one of the "classrooms" was just full of small inflatable swimming pools. Still... upside down room= pretty rad.

Finally, I find some fruit in Korea and it's got a hole in it. Groan!

Creepy floor hockey playing area. These Alice in Wonderland promo posters are everywhere, so I really hope Johnny Depp is getting his fair cut of the action on this place.

Strange, dark covered area filled with neglected animals.

There were squirrels, birds, lizards, hamsters, mice and these guys (groundhogs?) who seemed pretty upset. The hamster cage smelled TOXIC. The wooden shavings were so piss soaked that they'd turned black.

After that lovely stroll through the animal cruelty tent, we emerged to find some mushrooms and teepees.

Whatchu smokin', Mr. Caterpillar?

Next up was the cat house (I think the cat is missing a tooth).

These poor little guys were caged up and crying outside the cat house. Mel reports that they, at least, had some food.

Some worksheets about the "Homan Brain" and the "tic TAC clock" left out inside the cat house.

Next to the cat building was this boot. We could hear someone watching TV inside the boot, so we didn't go in, but when I took this picture a guy stepped into the doorway, stared at me, and then went back inside. Do you think he lives in the boot? That's so cool.

This log, made out of cardboard and spacious enough for two full humans, marked the end of Alice Park. But wait- what's that inside the "log"?

A flat screen TV, of course! Where, I assume, Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" airs non-stop on a loop all day long.

It was hard to tell if this Alice Park English Village is still up and running. The lights were all on and there were a lot of books and materials left laying around everywhere. But at the same time, it was a really messy, overgrown, and run-down looking place. I can't imagine anyone sending their kid there. When we got home, we Googled the park and we could see that as recently as last summer the Park was holding "Indian" camps... which sounds.. rewarding...

Anyway, if any of you out there send your kid to Alice Park to be an Indian for the day, would you mind sending some animal food along with them. I feel bad for those things. Please don't blame English, little animals! It's not our fault :( What a strange place.

Yangjae Citizens Forest AKA Park of Tragedy and Cosplayers

2011-06-18T20:08:00.008+08:00

I'd visited Yangjae Citizens' Forest, an expansive woodsy park sandwiched between Yangjae Station and the Costco/E-Mart area, a few times before but I'd never been to this section.

Set off from the main picnic and playground-themed area of the park is a small collection of statues built in memoriam of some of Korea's greatest tragedies:

Statue in memory of Korean Air flight 007, shot down by Soviets in 1983 when it strayed off course.

A statue in memoriam of the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995 that killed 501 people. The building had not been built according to code and even when the top floor was cracking and caving in the owners never warned customers or staff because they didn't want to lose business. After the collapse, a major review of Korea's existing buildings was done and more than 80% were found to be structurally unsound. The documentary series "Seconds From Disaster" did a really interesting episode about this, which can be found on any torrent site if you're interested.

Now, on the site where Sampoong Department Store used to stand, is a huge, luxury apartment building. I used to teach a student whose family lived there. My co-teacher told me the apartments are nice, but cheaper than usual because many Koreans think the building is haunted.

The main purpose of our visit to the park was just to enjoy the weather and drink some magkolli, but we didn't realize how great the people watching would be. Turns out, a number of cosplay enthusiasts were also hanging out in the park that day. Cosplayers like to dress up and role play, and it's really popular in Japan... not so much in Korea. The Korean cosplayers were all female, and all were accompanied by armies of male photographers. For every costumed girl, there was 5 men taking her photo. It was strangey. What were they doing with the photos?

These girls were wearing wigs and kimonos. They stayed next to the washrooms the whole time and Mel and Hannah reported that it was NOT easy to get a mirror in the washroom with all this costumey business going on in there.

This group of sailors/soccer players stayed at the far end of the park and didn't associate with the other cosplayers. Even a clique can be cliquey in Korea.

The last two times I was at this park was with my school, for Sports Days. Maybe it's best that we skipped the controversial statues, but I bet they would have gotten a kick out of the costumed girls. If they could see them past the wall of photographers.

Suh-Bees-Uh!

2011-06-11T18:55:00.004+08:00

One of the best things about shopping and dining in Korea is the SUH-BEES-UH, free "service" items, that you get just for shopping at a store or eating at a restaurant. For starters, every traditional Korean meal comes with a table full of "service" food. When we go out for BBQ, as we do once a week or so, we can expect to receive about 6-8 free dishes with our meal. Usually, they are different types of kimchi-ish vegetable dishes, but sometimes we'll be surprised with free soups, a bowl full of egg or a bottle of "cider" (Korean 7 Up). The side dishes are what usually makes or breaks a restaurant for us. We can get BBQ anywhere here, but a place with good sides can expect repeat business from this blogger and his girl.

Sometimes the grocery stores will offer 1+1 deals with a free roll of paper towel taped to a bag of chicken nuggets, or something like that, but by far the best places to get some free swag are the cosmetic shops. Cosmetics shops in busy areas will actually give you free stuff just to go inside and look in their store- you don't even need to buy anything. Anyway, a perfect example of this, today it was really hot and it was time for us to pick up some sunscreen for the summer. We each got a tube, mine from Skin Food, Mel's from Missha:

Total price: less than $20 (yes, I bought broccoli sun cream)

And here's the free stuff we walked away with: an acai berry mask, lettuce and cucumber water drop essence (wtf?), grapefruit body wash, "super aqua" refreshing cleansing foam, BB cream, "sun milk", aqua youth cream, night repair serum (2 packs), "turn over control booster", and night repair lotion. Also, at the Missha (where I didn't even buy anything), the saleslady took one look at me, said "남자" and tossed in a 2-pack of whitening lotion. Should I want to go the Michael Jackson route with my look.

And that's not all, Mel was also given a glass tissue box at Missha. We were going biking and she didn't want to carry it around, so she just left it on a payphone for someone else to find... but really! A glass tissue box. Anyway, we don't even shop at these places all that often and we have a drawer full of free samples from our time here. Anyone out there need some essence of lettuce cream? Some "sun milk"? If you don't take this stuff off my hands, some Seocho hobo is gonna have some really fancy looking skin after they dig through our garbage when we leave.

RIP Express Bus Terminal

2011-06-10T18:36:00.002+08:00

Seoul's Express Bus Terminal underground shopping area, one week ago:

And today:

When we first moved to Korea almost five (!) years ago, it was the land of small shops selling $5 funny t-shirts. Today, it is a land of brands. Our beloved Myeongdong Department Store is now a Uniqlo. The Salvation Paradiso is an H&M. Gangnam Station, and it's underground shopping area of more than 100 small stores, was suddenly gutted a few months ago and blueprints for the new shopping area feature yet another Nike Store and yet another dozen cosmetics shops.

And now, it's Express Bus Terminal. If I'm guessing, the shopping area probably had 500 small, independently-run shops. It was so long that it would take about 30 minutes to walk from one end to the other (without stopping to look at things)... and there were two hallways to walk through! Sure, it was old. It was always boiling hot down there. The hallways were too narrow for the 10,000 shoppers there at any given time, BUT it was kind of a great place to shop. It was one of the last places to find a deal. A place to find something unique that didn't come from a chain store. And how many people are out of a job now that all these shops are gone?

I'm probably in the minority... one of those old fogies that doesn't want things that will inevitably change to change. I'm sure when the Underground Shopping Area Season 2 has it's "refresh open" it will be a big hit. But, to be melodramatic about a shopping mall: it's not part of the Korea that I want to live in.

Here's a sad Mel in front of her favorite, now empty, store: The Gam. Look at that face. How can this be right?

Vibrating Chairs

2011-06-04T09:04:00.004+08:00

Last night at CGV movie theater in Gangnam:

Me: Can we get two tickets for "X-Men" tomorrow?

CGV Lady: Yes, what seat would you like? (in Korea, you get to choose your seat, so she shows us the available seats on a computer screen)

Me: The only seats left are too close to the screen... wait... what are these blacked out seats?

CGV Lady: They're vibrating seats. More expensive.

Me: Ohhhhh... (feeling scared to ask the price) How much are they?

CGV Lady: They are 10,000 Won. Normal seats so close to the screen that you'll be using Wolverine as a footrest are 9,000 Won.

Me: It's $1 more? We'll take two.

This was actually the second movie time we tried to get seats for. I wondered why so many seats were blacked out! Why was this option never offered to us? How poor do I look that I couldn't spend the extra buck to watch the movie while sitting in a massage chair? Can't wait. I'll let you know how it is.

UPDATE: It was good. Also, the vibrating chairs weren't exactly what we were expecting. It was like sitting on a subwoofer with the bass turned way up, so the seats kind of "vibrated" when something loud happened. Interesting...

Hwanseon Cave, Samcheok Beach and a Weird Bus Ride Home

2011-05-29T17:26:00.015+08:00

Since Seoul's forecast for the weekend was for sunny, 30 degree days we decided to go to the beach for the weekend. Unfortunately, the beach we chose wasn't in sunny Seoul... it was in foggy Samcheok instead. Of course, we didn't know the weather would be so different until we'd already paid for our bus tickets so off we went to chilly Samcheok.

We'd been to Samcheok once before and really liked it. We decided to stay at the same love motel as last time, Motel Very 6, and it was very nice (aside from the hot tub that shot out rust flakes when the jets were on).

We had a "Helth Master" brand vibrating bed... a trusty name in beds.

Some suggested positions to use when enjoying the vibrating bed, from a pamphlet left in our room. Oh yeahhh, guess who tried the second position.

I'd gotten really bus sick, so I went to bed pretty early. The next morning we woke up and got a quick breakfast at Dunkin Donuts before catching a bus to the cave (oh yeah, because of the weather we ditched the beach and decided to go to Hwanseon Cave, Korea's biggest cave, instead). Dunkin Donuts not only sells broccoli donuts these days, but they also have super-cute paper cups.

The bus left Samcheok at 12:15 and was the only bus of the day to not go directly to the cave. Halfway through the ride, we had to get off at a corner store and transfer buses. As we got off the first bus, I asked the driver in Korean when the next bus would arrive. He said something that included the words "balli balli" (meaning "hurry") so I guessed that he meant it was coming soon. Then his tone got much more urgent and he pointed at a bus in the distance parked next to some farmland and again shouted, "BALLI BALLI". We had to RUN to get that bus before it left without us. They only run once every 90 minutes or so, so missing it would have sucked!

As you can see, the bus was on a popular route.

The cave is actually located a steep 45 minute hike uphill, so this is the entrance to the park area before you get to the trail.

When researching for this trip, we'd heard many complaints about the rough hike up to the cave. Luckily for us, there was a shiny new monorail at the base of the trail. Not knowing what we'd be getting ourselves into (and being a little cheap), I wanted to try to hike it but Mel wanted to use the monorail. For only 3,000 Won ($2.50) we took the monorail up, and I was SO glad we did. It was so steep, and hikers at the top looked miserable and were covered in sweat (it was quite a bit warmer here than in Samcheok).

Inside the cave. It was enormous! The ceiling was so high.

Random glowing hole with a waterfall.

It wouldn't be Korea if there weren't some neon to guide the way!

As always, the signage was as amusing as the site itself. "a bacon sheet is growing".

The cave had lots of signs posted to point out rock formations that looked like different things: the popcorn rock, a dragon, demon's claws, a bacon sheet, and the above heart shape.

But even better is the sign: Pledge of Love (CORRODED HOLE)!!!

The route got a bit more spooky when we entered the "Valley of Hell"!! This led to the Bridge of Hell, which didn't sound like a safe kind of bridge. It was suggested that we "cast our sins away" on the Bridge of Hell.

The Bridge of Hell carried us over the Pool In Hell!! As the sign above says, it's depth is still unknown.

Looking down at the bottomless Pool In Hell.

At the end of the Bridge of Hell, a sign informed us that we were now free of our sins. Great! And before long we were at a much cheerier bridge: a rainbow.

Cool design on the cave floor.

Soon, a sign let us know that we were about to see the Virgin Mary. What's the Virgin Mary doing in a Korean cave? Well, there she was anyway, whatever she was up to.

I'd thought we'd seen the Great Wall last year, but apparently not. Above is the Great Wall of Hwanseon.

This exhibit is called "Joints".

Near the end of the path was the statue of this monk who'd entered the cave many years ago, but was never heard from again. I don't know how that's possible, given the number of people in the cave. Seriously, we couldn't even go to a dark cave in the middle of nowhere, surrounded in rice paddies, without a thousand people pushing us around. Sigh, Korea.

We walked back down the mountain, instead of using the monorail, and it was a very nice walk.

After our chilly morning in Samcheok and then in a cave, it was nice to get some sun and the lush, green mountainsides were beautiful.

We got downhill just in time to catch a bus back to town (as I said, they run every 90 minutes or so). We waited for the bus with a man who was eating a zucchini like it was a banana or something.

Back in town, we wanted to get something to eat, so we walked to the (very, very small) downtown area- which featured not one, but TWO Batman stores! Which sold zero Batman-related items.

One market store sold hiking and exercise clothes. "The North Face" is a very popular brand in Korea, as is it's local rip-off "The Red Face", but I'd never seen this particular ripoff: The BLACK Face!! I wanted to buy a pair, but Mel informed me that I already have enough pieces of racist activewear :(

The last time we were in Samcheok, we had a really good galbi meal (they served lemon-flavored grass!) so we were hoping to go to the same restaurant again. Unfortunately, it was long gone, so we decided to go to a different restaurant instead. Its' selling point was that they were using a shower curtain for a door, but when I went inside there were only two tables and the owner was laying asleep (dead?) on the floor. I quietly crept back out and we found a different BBQ restaurant instead. It was good, but there was no lemon grass :(

The whole idea of this trip was to spend a sunny day by the sea, but because of the weather we couldn't do that. Still, we wanted to see the beach, so we put on our hoodies and took a quick taxi ride there. It really was pretty, but the weather reminded me too much of our two Saint John summers at home- foggy, cool and depressing.

The beach was in a bit of a ghost town so it wasn't going to be easy to catch a cab out of there. A kind lady at this convenience store, whose bed was set up behind the cash register, kindly phoned a cab for us.

The bus ride home was scenic. I really love Korea's mountainous landscape.

For some reason, our bus showed a movie during our ride: The Fifth Element, starring Bruce Willis. Random! We're taken lots of inter-city buses and they've never shown movies before. Especially not English ones. Also kind of funny, when we stopped for a break at a rest stop, a rather sour looking woman who was traveling alone and sat across from us got off the bus and blew bubbles by herself for a solid 10 minutes.

By the time we left the rest stop it was dark, so the driver turned on the lights. Throbbing, green and orange lights! This lighting suited the bus with purple curtains and yellow flowers in the front window perfectly. Then, The Fifth Element started up again. In total, we saw the full movie three times before we got to tropical Seoul.

Having cast away our sins on the Bridge of Hell, we were ready for a hellishly hot day, so Sunday was spent roasting by the Han with a good book and lots of ice cream. And the best news of all? Next weekend is a 3-day weekend! Woo hoo!!

Today's Socks

2011-05-29T17:09:00.001+08:00

Sniff Sniff

2011-05-25T08:14:00.000+08:00

Any guesses as to how this place smells?

(Cafe spotted in Hongdae last weekend)

The Temple of Heaven

2011-05-24T20:49:00.001+08:00

Last season, the TV show "The Amazing Race" came to Korea. We've watched this show every week since it came on the air, and we were excited to see what locations in Korea the show would visit. Would the contestants have to navigate through bustling Namdaemun Market? Maybe they would take a trip to the Penis Park for a schlong-related challenge? Nope! The cast went rafting, hung out with the US army, and visited the Temple of Heaven. Whaaaaaaa? The least they could have done was hold a kimchi-eating challenge. Anyway, we recently decided to visit the Temple of Heaven since it was Amazing Race-worthy and we'd never heard of it.

Anyone who's been in Korea for a while has seen a million little temples like this one, but the Temple of Heaven feels kind of special. For starters, it's located on the grounds of the Westin Chosun Hotel near City Hall Station, which is kind of random. As a result of it's location, it's not that well-known and there are no crowds around. I'm assuming Phil and the cast were staying at the hotel that night, so that's why this was the pit stop for that leg of the race.

The Temple of Heaven is traditionally where sacrifices were left to ensure a bountiful harvest. Many moons ago, when Korea and China had some kind of split, Korea decided to build it's own Temple of Heaven (we visited China's last year). Though this place has nothing on the spectacle to be seen in Beijing (thanks for destroying everything but the altar, Japan!), it is a peaceful, colorful and impressive little temple.

A haetae statue. There were lots of these little guys, traditional fire-eating creatures, around the temple.

The fire-eater and the HEAT.

The ceremonial entrance which, ironically, you can't enter through. Beautiful, though.

Painting inside the gate.

The Temple of Heaven: we came, we saw, we stood where Phil stood.

1010 Airplane Cafe

2011-05-23T08:16:00.001+08:00

We live just off a really busy street that has a lot of bus traffic on it. Every 10 minutes or so there's a special grey bus that drives up our road that takes people to the airport. Lately, anytime we see it driving by it's become tradition for one of us to moan, "take us with youuuuu". Yep, we're excited about going home!

Keeping with our airplane fascination, this weekend we met Hannah to visit Cafe 1010 in Hongdae... an airplane/traveling-themed cafe. Apparently, there is more than one travel-themed cafe in the Hongdae area- which is either a sign that this is a great idea or that there are too damn many cafes in Korea.

There's some jolly Lego-like men waiting to greet you outside the cafe.

The cafe isn't toooo themey (nothing like the airplane restaurant we ate at in Taipei), but some of the tables are glass with travel-y papers stuffed under them. There's also some Cafe 1010 brand passports for sale (everyone could use a fake passport!), some travel bags with mini-shampoos were for sale, too, as well as some similar knick knacks.

The menu mostly offered drinks, but there were some sandwiches, too (under the heading "In Flight Service").

Our drinks: an affagoto, a cappuccino and a sangria. Pretty tasty, for airplane food.

A nice touch: the receipts looked like plane tickets. The destination? Anywhere. "Take me with youuuuu!"

Lastly, the washroom doors looked like they would on a real airplane. Unfortunately, the toilets inside didn't have the pleasing suctioning sound that an airplane toilet would.

Cafe 1010 was a good place to grab a drink and relax, and the best part was that we didn't experience a single moment of turbulence. If you're in the area you should check it out. Plug this address into google and you'll see a map that can lead you there quite easily: Mapo-gu, Seogyo-dong, 358-8, Seoul

Don't forget your (fake) passport!

Seolleung and Jeonglung Royal Tombs

2011-05-21T18:02:00.008+08:00

I love me a good tumuli. They just look so cool and how rad is it to have a proper hill formed in honor of your burial? We've already been to Korea's tumuli capital, Gyeongju, but we heard that there was a small tumuli park close to home (Seolleung Station, exit 8) so we went to check it out on Saturday afternoon.

We'd just been at the COEX Mall, and since it was a rainy day, the mall was super crowded. This sleepy park was a very nice contrast to that racket, so we enjoyed ourselves very much.

There are three tumulis to visit at this park, and they all pretty much look the same. This first one contains the good King Seongjong (1469-1494).

Some statues guarding the King's tomb from his apparant #1 threat- Seoul's rapid construction of skyscrapers.

Even though the park is in a very busy part of the city, this area has been left completely untouched, and it's pretty big. Walking around the grounds was really beautiful and the lush green colors really made it feel like we weren't in the city at all anymore. Even on a rainy day it made for a pleasant stroll.

The second tomb was for the missus- Queen Jeonghyeon. Can you spot the differences between this one and the last? I can't. Cool, though.

The last tomb was for King Jungjong (1506-1544), and was located on the top of the hill in the photo above. It was blocked off so we couldn't see it close up, but I presume it looked quite similar to the last two tumulis. The striking difference between this park and the tumulis in Gyeongju (besides the fact that the Gyeongju tumulis were 5 times larger) was how fenced off and limited our access was to the exhibits. In Gyeongju, we climbed the tumulis. There was a concert next to one. Go if you can.

We walked down the path in the previous photo, only to find a sign at the end of it announcing that we'd been on the sacred "tomb spirit's walkway" and we really shouldn't have been. Sorry!
From a distance at the end of the walkway, I zoomed in on King Jungjong's restricted tumuli. Yep, looked just like the other two!

The last sight at the park was my beautiful fiance and her lacey Hello Kitty umbrella posing next to a 500-year-old ginko tree. I'm not sure any tree will really impress again after seeing the redwoods at Vancouver's Stanley Park, but the ginko was an "official" park sight so we did our duty photographing it, anyway.

Last but not least, to follow up on a post I wrote last week about ajummas picking grass for supper, here was another one searching for her food in the pouring rain, 5 minutes from one of the city's largest supermarkets where much delicious grass is cheaply sold.

If you're looking for a quiet afternoon, I recommend visiting this park to visit the humpity humps. Sure, admission is $1, but think of all the free grass you can take home for supper. Bring a big bag. And maybe even a lawnmower!

Don't Share Hats...

2011-05-20T11:31:00.000+08:00

...with your taxi driver.

Sign found last weekend in Ansan.

Burger King "Poutine" In Korea

2011-05-16T21:48:00.009+08:00

Last week, Mel and I got a mad poutine craving right around midnight (as you do). With most restaurants closed for the night, we made a really ghetto poutine of McDonald's fries, a mozzarella string cheese stick and a gravy packet we'd brought from home. It was heaven.

So today, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted "poutine fries" on the menu at my local Burger King. Poutine! Really? At a major restaurant chain in Korea? I double checked the Hangul and it said "poo-teen hu-lies". A small picture confirmed it: a bowl of fries covered in brown deliciousness. Yum! I promptly forgot about my planned order and picked up a poutine for take out.

From a distance I could see my poutine being prepared. When I saw two different sauces being squeezed onto my fries from ketchup and mustard bottles I knew something was awry, but I waited until I got home to examine my meal. At first, everything looked right, but then I took a bite.

The first thing that was off was that I bit into an onion ring instead of a french fry! The "gravy" was actually a sort-of spicy BBQ sauce. The "cheese" was mayonnaise. Some fries were buried underneath and were thankfully untouched by the glutinous sauce that congealed on the top level of onion rings.

Thankfully, we can still get decent poutine at New York Fries and Big Rock. It's not something that I need to eat very often and we're lucky to be living halfway around the world and still live near places that serve poutine at all. BUT. COME ON, Burger King! it was like someone saw a picture of poutine, guessed at the ingredients and tried to make a dish that looked like the photo.

Mayo? Really? Somewhere, a maple tree has lost a leaf...

****UPDATE***

Unfortunately, I have another disappointing poutine-related update! Today, we shared an order of poutine from the New York Fries at the COEX mall. We've had their poutine probably more than 5 times in the past year, and while it's not that special, it's always tasted okay. Well, New York Fries has recently done something to their gravy and by "something" I mean they poured a bag of sugar in it. It's absolutely inedible. I would say that the Burger King poutine may have actually tasted better.

Today, somewhere in Canada, a forest of maple trees has fallen down. It's been a sad week for cheese and gravy-based meals.

Ansan Asia Town: An Itaewon For Asian People!

2011-05-14T19:49:00.017+08:00

While hundreds of North American and European expats flock to Itaewon every day for their fix of food from home, hundreds of Asian expats are doing the same thing in Ansan. Ansan is a city about 90 minutes from Gangnam, but it's still connected to Seoul on subway line 4. We'd heard this was the home of "Asia Town" (a funny concept considering that we're IN Asia) and that this was the best place around to get some authentic Asian food.

The culture was noticeable from the minute we left the train station, as a group of Natives were putting on a concert for a small crowd.

We immediately felt like we were in a different place. It was a little run down, but in an exciting kind of way. Nobody really looked Korean anymore, and we overheard different accents being spoken all around us.

We crossed the road away from the station and entered the "Asia Town" food street, which stretches for about 5 or 6 blocks and makes for a sizable international district roughly the same size as the "core" district of Itaewon. It seemed like every store on the street was named "World Food" or "Asia Mart". The shops were full of things that I didn't recognize- import items from the Philippines, India, Vietnam and all over Asia- comfort foods for many, I'm sure.

This Asia Mart even had a row of basic-looking long distance phones outside in case ET would like to phone home.

There were a few Halal shops, too.

The majority of shops seemed to be Chinese. In fact, there was one street where there was nothing but Chinese on any of the signs. Even the local Hana Bank sign was in Chinese only. It was about 1000% more Chinese than Incheon's Koreanized Chinatown, which we visited last summer.

An Indonesian restaurant (I counted 3 in total).

A Uzbekistan restaurant.

One of many Vietnamese places.

Cambodian food.

Food from Myanmar.

One of the restaurants with the best reviews online was an Indian place called Kantipur, so we decided to have supper there. It was really good! We ordered a set for 2 people, which came with delicious tandoori chicken, 2 samosas, 2 sweet lassis and...

...a choice of curry with 2 large baskets of naan. At just over $10 each, this was an amazing meal and we were stuffed for the rest of the night.

There was a small strip of love motels clustered behind the Chinese street, so we chose to stay in the one with the nicest room pictures displayed outside- Best Motel. For $35 a night and a free upgrade to the nicest class of room, we were optimistic.

When we stuck our key in the power grid, everything in the room turned on, including the TV which was already tuned to a hot porno. You know you're in a nice place when!

The room wasn't bad- we've had much worse- but it was so small and they tried to crowd way too many amenities into the space. For example, the computer desk didn't have space for both the keyboard AND the mouse, a sauna room was stuck into an already-crowded bathroom, and the toilet could not be sat on without pressing your forehead to the wall in front of you. Strangely there was also a phone next to the toilet.

The room also had some usually-rare amenities like free kim and shot glasses, a random basket full of charcoal and a VCR. We wondered who on earth would still be using a VCR, but when we left the next day we realized why. There was a wall full of VHS porno tapes by the elevator. If for some reason the porn provided on your TV wasn't enough.

We walked back down the Chinese street in search of a meal for brunch when we spotted a cluster of used clothing stores. Most of the clothes still had their tags and were brand names! I was pretty pleased to get a nice pair of shorts for $3.50.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and the streets were much more colorful and lively than they had been on Friday night. There was many produce stands set up, selling hard to find items like dragonfruit, mangosteen, and mango. Inside, the stores sold lots of different international beers, and I bought a liter bottle of San Miguel (a favorite from our vacation in Spain).

For lunch, we hit up a Thai restaurant called Pad Thai. It was a little hole-in-the-wall with only about 10 items on the menu, but the food was fast and fresh.

Best spring rolls ever!!

A delicious plate of Pad Si Woo. Grand total of around $5 each for our meal.

We rested our legs at a park for a little while. There, this obnoxious sign was displayed by local government near the washrooms: "Your trivial behavior is representative of your country".

This "no spitting" sign was displayed in the park where the older Chinese men were gathered playing mahjong. I'd like to see a sign like this on every street in Korea!! And maybe one over each urinal in every men's washroom. Why do Korean men always need to spit 3 times before urinating? What is going on in their throats?

Before leaving the Asia Town area, we spotted another interesting food item for sale: large cuts of dog meat! It's not that hard to spot dog restaurants in Korea if you can read Hangul, but I'd never seen the meat for sale before. And do the dogs on the box HAVE to look so cute?

Next, we decided to spent the afternoon drinking coffees and window shopping in Jungang, Ansan's main commercial district.

I loved the buildings in Jungang! They're so old school Korea, with signs advertising each business on every floor- signs that seem to swallow whole buildings! The signage is so loud and you see so much that you almost take in nothing at all. You almost never see buildings like this in Seoul anymore, but I think they're great. Busy building photos:

The shops in Jungang were mostly just smaller versions of the same stores we see in Seoul all the time (Korean cities are very same-same), but there were some fun independent stores like the one in the above photo- News Total Fashion Shop. The clothes were the same as we usually see at the market in Suwon and since we'd just been there last week we didn't buy much, but if you're in the area I highly recommend this shop for a funny t-shirt or three.

On one street we saw a small poop-shaped bread shop, but sadly, it was closed. Now how am I ever going to get to try poop bread?!

For supper, we found an all you can eat buffet place that was only 6,000Won! Unfortunately, after our excellent meals in Asia Town, this Korean food did not impress, but it was fine. Everything tasted fine. And for the price, it was a real steal. There was soup, bulgogi, sushi, and you could even make yer own bibimbap.

Above: the world's most logical way to serve peach ice tea.

By 7pm, it was time to think about heading back to Gangnam. We'd been dreading it all day because the train to Ansan had been SO busy. On the way there, we had to stand for almost an hour, and we felt so tired. We'd walked around all day on Saturday and our legs were killing us and once again the subway back to Seoul was super crowded. It felt like torture! I would love to go back to Ansan again before we go back to Canada, though I won't be going again until we find a good bus to take us there instead. But what I wouldn't do for some more of those spring rolls right now...

Where There Is Grass...

2011-05-13T20:31:00.000+08:00

...there is an ajumma picking that grass for lunch.

On Any Given Day

2011-05-12T16:25:00.002+08:00

On any given day, Korea is weird. It's just a different culture. People think differently, react differently and have different opinions than you'd expect. We're so used to it, that it almost never registers any more. But, today, when Mel and I were talking with each other about our days, we realized not only how weird it is to be a teacher sometimes, but also how weird our everyday lives have become. 6 things from today:

1. As my afterschool class was wrapping up, I quickly went over the vocabulary my students needed to know for their homework. One of the last words was "pet" (as a verb). I petted Daniel's head and asked the kids if they knew anything else you can pet. Ryan had an answer. He leapt up and rubbed his crotch: "I can 고추 pet!". The crowd loved it. Ryan's six years-old.

2. In the same afterschool class, Ryan tattletaled to me that Daniel was speaking Konglish. Konglish is a weird sub-language of Korean. It's basically just Korean mispronunciations or misuses of English words like, for example, "fighting!" (used sort of like "go, go, go" or "hurrah"), or "handpone" (used instead of "cellphone").

Ryan, I am much more concerned about your classroom 고추 petting than I am about Daniel's Konglish!!

3. Tomorrow is Teacher's Day. Of course, there is no such a holiday in Canada (unless you count the last day of school, which I'm sure all truthful teachers consider to be their special day), but there should be. Teachahs are important, yo.

Melodie and I are both in positions at our schools that nobody cares about. She doesn't give her kids any substantial grades, so she doesn't need to be bribed with gifts. I don't have a homeroom class this year, so the same goes for me. However, I was surprised to receive some stuff from my afterschool students: flowers, chocolates, a bag full of bread and juice, cards and a $50 (!) gift certificate to Coffee Bean. The best gift, though, had to be from little Wanny. Every day he pokes his head into my classroom during my prep hour to say good morning. It's really cute. Anyway, today he runs in with a single, opened sheet of Pororo stickers that he brought from home. "Happy Teacher's Day!" he said. When you're 4-years-old, a sheet of stickers is very valuable! I will stick them somewhere very nice.

4. Today, Melodie was teaching her class about giving suggestions. In a game, she asked for a suggestion about what she can do if she's hot. One boy yelled out, "Take off your clothes!" He was thirteen. Totally appropriate.

5. On her way home from work, Mel was crossing the road from her school to get to her bus stop when a car stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The driver's side window rolled down.

"Do you believe in Gaw?" the driver asked.

"What?" Mel replied.

"Do you believe in GAW?" the woman repeated.

Cars behind them started to honk. Mel's students, who were crossing with her, were watching everything. The driver offered Mel a book. Mel started to take the book, but the driver held it firmly, waiting for an answer to her original question.

"I'll take it," Mel stammered, as the car drove off and she walked away with a 64-page book about God the Mother. Koreans LOVE God! 9 times out of 10 if someone approaches me in Korea, and they're speaking English, it's because they want to talk about God. And this is the third time Mel has been approached about God the Mother. The last time, the women who approached her even had a DVD player with them on the street and expected her to watch a religious video right there on the sidewalk. Yeah, no problem, got some popcorn too while we're here?

6. For supper tonight we ate at a Mexican restaurant and my quesadilla had PINEAPPLE in it. I should start stopping people in the roads and questioning them about THAT.

A Barbed Wire Tour of Inwangsan

2011-05-08T12:32:00.000+08:00

Thursday was Children's Day, and all the teachers at my school got the day off. Interestingly enough, next Friday is Teacher's Day and not only do we need to show up for work but we need to do a performance in front of hundreds of our peers. I think they mixed up the names of those two holidays.

But back to Children's Day. It was on the 125th day of 2011 and of all 125 days it must have offered us the nicest weather yet. We decided to go hiking at Inwangsan, near Seodaemun Station in North Seoul. As the Buddha's Birthday holiday is coming soon (another day off next week!), a trail of colorful lanterns led us to the temple at the base of the mountain.

This simple gate marked the temple entrance.

With 25 degree temperatures, the hike up to the entrance had us red faced and tired, but then we were met with our arch nemesis STAIRS, of which weaved through some modest residential homes, the temple, and a bell. Beyond these buildings was the real beginning of the hiking trail.

I'm pretty sure that we did this hike ass-backwards. It seemed like many times we were faced with the decision of taking random trails that led left or right, but with no signs in Korean or English we just kind of chose whichever way looked the most promising. The first place our sweaty asses came to was a spring (to refill water bottles) and an exercise park. In case you like to lift some weights and just go into complete cardiac arrest.

Before long we came to a really big, flat rock where we relaxed, snacked and enjoyed the view.

Inwangsan is a cool place to hike because the rocks are NEAT. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but the rocks at the top of the above photo looked like they were really defying gravity by not rolling straight down the hill.

After leaving our rock, we chose a trail going left, but were quickly greeted by the first of many bunches of barbed wire on this trail. Soooo, we turned around and found another trail going straight up. At least I think it was a trail... upon reflection it might have just been a path formed by water runoff. Either way, on our way through, we came across a little family of mountain kitties. They were looking a little ratty, but they weren't freaked out by people the way Seoul city cats usually are.

At the top of the trail/water runoff route were were greeted by two fences (one electric!), barbed wire, and a tall cement wall. We took our chances walking the perimeter.

The fence led to another trail where we could see the real top of the mountain, complete with stairs and everything. Problem is, we hadn't the foggiest clue how to get there. It didn't look too far away but we were obviously in the wrong place and there was no way for us to get there. Instead, we followed a path in the opposite direction, which led to the cool gravity-defying rocks we'd seen earlier.

From the rocks we could see much of the Insadong area from above, including Gyeongbukgong palace.

We weren't really sure how to get down from where we'd gotten ourselves, and we wound up basically rolling down another water runoff trail and found ourselves walking along an old fortress wall until we met up with this cool rock. It's called a skeleton rock, but we thought it looked like Castle Grayskull.

From there, we met up with an official trail, and got ourselves back down to the area with the spring water/exercise machines that we'd seen earlier. From there, we took a trail in the opposite direction from where we started our hike. We quickly found ourselves at one of Inwangsan's main sites, which are really just more rocks- ones where mothers traditionally prayed for sons. The touristy sign says they prayed for fertility but, c'mon, we all know they were praying for a boy.

We followed the trail along a little further and found this Buddha sculpted into rock. Meh, I've seen much nicer. Also, the entire exhibit is surrounded in fence and barbed wire.

Now, my Korean is far from fluent, but I'm pretty sure this sign next to the Buddha is asking people to NOT leave pig heads at the monument. We don't see too many signs like that in Canada.

Since there were no pig heads to eat, we hiked back down towards Seodaemun Station. We'd spotted a restaurant there that we'd been dreaming of since our hike began: BBQ Chicken pizza!!!!!! The loyal reader might remember on our annoying trip to Busan several months ago
one of the few trip highlights was this amazing BBQ Chicken pizza. BBQ Chicken has hundreds of franchises in Seoul, so we were sure that we'd be able to get this pizza whenever we wanted, but we were wrong. I can't tell you how many fried chicken places we've gone into in the past few months looking for this special pizza, only to see it absent from the menu. WELL, the pizza IS available at the BBQ Chicken in Seodaemun. While we waited for our order to arrive we were so nervous that it would be different, but it wasn't. It was perfectly, deliciously awesome. It had SAUCE. It had real pepperoni. It was $9! We. Will. Be. Back.

The day was young, so we went to nearby Samcheong-dong for coffee. We wanted to drink our coffees outside in the sun, but finding a cafe with a patio is not easy in Korea, because Koreans don't like sun. In fact, you will probably see as many umbrellas on a sunny day as you would on a rainy day in Seoul. Eventually we found a place (Coffee Factory) which allowed us to trade $7 each (that's almost a full BBQ Chicken pizza!) for basic coffees and a seat in the sun.

Samcheong-dong is an area that we'd been to once before, to see a hanok village, but we'd somehow missed the main touristy district on that visit. We were so surprised at how busy the area was. Maybe this is because of the holiday, but it was seriously more crowded than the busiest day of any of my trips to Disney World. There were clearly some cool, and quirky places to discover in this neighborhood, but after the peace and quiet of hiking, we felt invaded and annoyed. It was time to go home.

Home featured a viewing of the new American Idol, before a trip back down to Gangnam for supper. We tried a place new to us, called Pasha, which serves Turkish food. At first we were put off by the prices (18-20,000 Won for a main), but when the service started we saw that the portion sizes were humongous. We ordered a delicious mixed grill (served on swords), and enjoyed the excellent free soup and salad bar. We. Will. Be. Back.

Before going home for the night, we made a pit stop at Skin Food. Mel wanted to try some BB Cream, and I wound up getting some good stuff too. I bought some beer shampoo, but also spotted another interesting item: Makgeolli body wash! Shopping at this place was making us hungry again, so it was time to go home and get ready for school the next day. Luckily for us, there was only one day of work before we'd be free for the weekend again. May is a good month.