Uniquely Korean

When you live somewhere long enough even the strangey things can start to seem commonplace. There are many things that are uniquely Korean that I never post about because they happen everyday, but today I thought I'd share some interesting things about Korea that I've never seen anywhere else.
Fan Death- Many Koreans believe that if you leave a fan on overnight in your bedroom then you run a good chance of not waking up at all the next morning. It's an urban legend that is widely regarded as fact. In a heroic act of saving face many authentic-sounding justifications have been used to explain why 700 people a year die from this problem (from Wikipedia):

* That an electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.

* That an electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe.

* The fan uses up the oxygen in the room and creates fatal levels of carbon dioxide.

* That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.

* That fans contribute to hypothermia, or abnormally low body temperature. As the metabolism slows down at night, one becomes more sensitive to temperature, and thus supposedly more prone to hypothermia. If the fan is left on all night in a sealed and enclosed room, believers in fan death suppose that it will lower the temperature of the room to the point that it can cause hypothermia.

* That fans contribute to prolonged asphyxiation due to environmental oxygen displacement or carbon dioxide intoxication.

* That fans directly on the body deprives "skin-breathing," leading to suffocation.

And the scariest fact of all:

Fan death is frequently cited when police detectives are unable to determine cause of death.

We often sleep with a fan on in the bedroom year-round to help drown out white noise, but maybe we're just lucky to have survived. Another result of this belief is something that is also uniquely Korean: to have the heat pumping in the winter but to leave a window open in the same room. After all, you wouldn't want to create a heat vortex.

Double Eyelids- I've been told that about 50% of Koreans are born with single eyelids and 50% are born with double eyelids. Maybe your parents will have double eyelids but you won't- it's really the luck of the draw. Everyone wants a double eyelid... it's considered to be very beautiful. Well, plastic surgery is very popular in Korea (there are even clinics in the COEX shopping mall, and I once saw one above a bakery near Sinsa Station) and the most popular surgery to have is the double eyelid surgery. A Korean friend once told me that she thought about having the surgery for a long time and decided against it, but all of her friends had done it. If you don't want to go under the knife you can buy double eyelid tape at any convenience store or pharmacy. If I used it do you think I'd have a triple eyelid? Would that just be the most handsome thing the country had ever seen?

Small Face- We hadn't been in Korea for very long before perfect strangers started to tell Melodie that she had a small face. At first she was offended because she thought they were calling her a pea brain. A lot of Koreans will be brutally honest and say things about your appearance to your face that the rest of the world gossips about behind people's backs instead. "Oh, you look so tired" or "nose isa very very big," on a day when you feel fine can really change how you feel about yourself at that moment! Anyway, having a small face in Korea is a huge compliment. This is probably because, in general, Koreans have pretty big heads. I mentioned earlier that plastic surgery is pretty popular here and another surgery you can have is to crush all the bones in your face so that it becomes smaller. Or you could just have your cheeks and jaw shaved down to thin out your face. I've never been told that I have a small face (probably because I have a melon head) so maybe I should look into this.

Fake sleeping on public transportation- Koreans work long hours so I really understand the need to steal a couple minutes of rest whenever you have the chance, but it's funny how asleep a Korean can look one minute and how awake they can seem the next. I can't tell you how many times I've sat next to someone on the bus or train and they're slumped over and their head is bobbing around all over the place. Their heads will wind up an inch from your shoulder, or sometimes, your lap. Then -ding- their stop is announced, they perk up, adjust their tie and sprint to the door to be the first one out of the car. Amazing.

Yogiyo Buttons- "Yogiyo" means "come here" in Korean, and a lot of restaurants in the country have these buttons on every table that you press to summon your waiter or waitress if you need something during your meal. Anyone who's ever sat in a busy restaurant trying to get their waiters' attention for a re-fill of pop can understand what a great invention this is. In Korea, restaurant service is amazing anyway... if we finish one of our side dishes it's usually refilled quite quickly... but the yogiyo button takes it to another level. It's never been easier to get a refill of fresh kimchi.

Korean Showers- Korean showers are attached to the sink and drain onto your bathroom floor. Koreans think this is cleaner than the western style bathroom but to me it just means my whole bathroom is wet for most of the morning and instead of just having mildew in my tub I have it everywhere. Not a plus.

Old School Brooms- Cleaning ajummas in Korea use these old archaic brooms out of the 19th century for their sweeping needs. Normal, modern brooms are available everywhere but these are the preferred model.

Uniquely Korean Phrases- A lot of Koreans speak basic English because they have to study it in school, plus we live in the hyper-educated Gangnam area so the English level here is more advanced than in other places in Korea. Still, there are some phrases that you hear over and over when Koreans speak with foreigners in English. The first two are "You must understand..." and "It's the Korean way", which are usually used when some bad news is about to be given. "Awww, shh!" seems to be the Korean version of "Awww, shit" and "_____ is come" is a common mistake. For example, if one of my students wants to tell me that Max has just arrived at the school, they will say "Max is come". This problem comes because the students are directly translating the Korean word order into English. If you want to saw "it's snowing" in Korean you say "눈이와요"(I think that's the right spelling) which translates to "snow is come".

Konglish- It's pretty easy to get by in Korea without knowing any Korean, but once you can read the language life here is a breeze. An amazing number of things written on signs and menus here are written in Korean letters, but when you sound out the word you realize you're actually reading an English word! Wow, Koreans sure do love English. Some restaurant menus are entirely written in Konglish. At Smoothie King all of the smoothies on the menu are written like "stuh-raw-bare-lee buh-leez-zuh suh-moo-dee" AKA "strawberry breeze smoothie". This seems odd to me because Koreans have their own words for "strawberry" and "breeze"... they shouldn't need to write them out in some mutated form of English. When Melodie asked her co-workers if older Koreans (who would never have studied English in their youth) would understand the menu at Smoothie King they said "no". Writing a menu that is impossible for non-English speaking Koreans to understand seems like an odd marketing strategy to me, but whatever- it makes my life here easier!

Other fun Konglish words:
cheechuh ubben suhpahgetti- cheese oven spaghetti
beedeo tape- videotape
handuh pone- cellphone
bussuh- bus
copy- coffee
kae mae lah- camera
eentah net- internet
ehm pee suhlee- mp3
ohlanjee joo suh- orange juice

this list could really go on forever, but you get the idea :)

Tofu Donuts at Dunkin Donuts- for well-being with delicious taste. Tried one today and it was pretty good. You'd never know it was tofu.

Carrying stuff on your head in public- because that's got to be the easiest way to walk around with a tray of food.

Intervention Needed

Number of jackets owned when I moved to Taiwan: 2

Present number of jackets found while cleaning today that are taking up valuable space in my small officetel: 15 (not including hoodies and cardigans!)

Somebody stop this madness! I can only imagine how many boxes of crap I'm going to be mailing home at the end of all this.

And don't even get me started on the number of man bags in this apartment.

Namdaemun Market

Recently, we spent an afternoon shopping at Namdaemun Market in north Seoul. We'd visited the market 2 or 3 times before when we'd been looking to buy specific things and, trust me, Namdaemun is a mess- it's not the type of place that you want to look for anything in particular or you'll get frustrated. There are quite a few department stores in the market that are crammed full of vendors that have no prices on their products, and the merchandise starts to look very same-same quite quickly. We've wasted a lot of time in those stores on our previous visits and I think that's what soured us on Namdaemun. On this visit we just stuck to visiting the outdoor vendors and we had a lot of fun.

Many vendors in Namdaemun seem to make their living from selling one specialized item. The ajumma in the above photo is in the sock business. They were a dollar per pair and you could get any number of fake brand names printed on your tube socks. I bought a pair of "Louis Vittous".

The belt man.

With Halloween coming, there were a few stalls set up selling great costumes and decorations for low prices. The horse heads here were almost 10,000 Won cheaper than my supplier in Hongdae!

There were a few alleys full of gift wrap. There was certainly no shortage of selection here.

Could they have found a more suggestive looking root of ginseng to represent their store?

Namdaemun has got to be the place to buy your rip-off LV, Coach or whatever brand name bags. Mel was shopping around for one and she was quoted prices much lower than in Itaweon or Myeongdong.

There must have been a dozen identical hat stalls.

Inside one of the department stores was a basement full of international food items, but even in October it was steaming hot down there and they were selling things like unrefrigerated slices of cheese. I'm not sure how you'd feel after eating anything you bought down there!

This pile of winter jackets in a bin in the middle of the road made me sentimental for a good Frenchy's run.

We bought some Christmas presents and had fun exploring a place we thought we'd already explored well. Namdaemun Market- give it a fourth try, it's a good time.

The Panda Class Variety Hour

Last Wednesday night was Parents Night at my school. We had an event like this in May for our students' Moms, but this one was aimed at the whole family. We put on a bit of a variety show. The class performed three songs, one play and a (heavily orchestrated) lesson. It's amazing how much time has to go into practicing for a night like this, and even though we spent all the free time we had for two months practicing, my students never got bored of it! They would cheer when I told them it was time to practice their play, so at least they had fun with it.

On Wednesday night I was too busy to video tape the show, but I did record a few non-dress rehearsals. It's just as well because the rehearsals turned out to be better than the real show! Kids have a weird way of switching personalities when their parents are around, and some of my good kids clammed up on that night and then my most annoying student found a way to be even more annoying. The parents all said they enjoyed it, though, and thanked us for our work so overall it was a success.

My class sang "Tomorrow" (from Annie), "Hello To All the Children of the World", and "I Love You 5" by Nevershoutnever. Yep, I'm slowly turning them into little emo kids. Here's "I Love You 5" (and no, they were never able to synchronize that opening dance):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UORShlb0cR0

And here's the play we did: "Clang Clang Rattle Bing Bang", which is based on the Robert Munsch book "Mortimer". I know it's a little hard to understand them, but keep in mind they're speaking in a second language, and they're really only 5-6 years old. On Parents Night they did a better job on this play than in the video below... probably because my co-teacher threatened to take away gym class and free choice time forever if they didn't shape up when she took them to a room away from their parents to get into costume before the play. I love Jamie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8sAShTS7_Y

Culture Clash at the Talent Show

On Thursday, Melodie's school had a talent show. This was good news because she didn't have to teach any classes all day and got to enjoy a free show. Some of the acts, like the traditional drum players, magicians and orchestras were good and others had to be blogged about.

The performers at the show all take part in Saturday club activities and were on stage with their respective clubs. All of the handicapped students in the school found their way onto the stage together and Mel's co-teacher whispered to her: "That's the handicapped club". No kidding. I wonder if they were allowed to join the soccer club or guitar club if they wanted to or if they were just forced to be grouped together in this handicapped club. They were fashionably dressed in German costumes and proceeded to perform a yodeling song. The star was a student Mel affectionately named "ship-pal", which means both the number 18 and the word "motherf***er" in Korean. The girl screams this word at the top of her lungs through most of Mel's classes. That's one way to earn a nickname. Yodel-ay-ee-hoooo!

After the handicapped yodelling was over, the school's soccer stars took the stage. They just did some coordinated passing tricks which aren't nearly as notable as the perks they get because they are soccer prodigies. Because Korea loves soccer and these kids are in training to possibly turn pro at the sport they don't have to wear the school uniform jacket, they are excused from attending most classes, and they act like complete assholes with their teachers and get away with it. What are the odds that these kids are all going to become soccer stars? Oh well, at least they're pretty good at kicking a ball around. Who needs science, English and math when you're good at kickin' a ball?

But it was the last act to take the stage that was really shocking. As the four girls stepped onto the stage let me describe their clothes, and keep in mind that they are probably only 13 or 14 years old. They had on black stilettos, ripped fishnet stockings, black mini skirts, black make up and lipstick and a loose fitting off-the-shoulder shirt that showed off their bra straps. They performed a k-pop song while grinding the air and just generally parading around the stage in a really inappropriate way. Basically, the only thing that was missing was the pole. Nobody in the audience saw anything wrong with this at all. In Canada, a student would expelled and the teachers would be fired, but here the teachers smiled and clapped along to the music. As they left the stage and the boys in the front rows drooled and smiled like they'd just won the lottery and Mel turned to her co-teacher and said, "Well, I bet they just got a lot more popular".

It was time for lunch, and lunch at a Korean school cafeteria is always very red. Food is usually pretty spicy here, so it's important to have a pile of tissues and a supply of water close at hand when eating. Mel is really a trooper and has resolved to eating most of the lunches that are served to her (some of the stuff she describes sounds like something out of my worst nightmares- if I worked there I'd have to pack my lunch everyday). Mel's school cafeteria has recently moved into a new building where the students and teachers eat together, and it has gotten a lot louder as a result, but most importantly- the water supply has nearly been cut off! The one water cooler is now on the opposite side of this massive room. Koreans often eat all of their meal before *maybe* having a drink of water at the end but this is clearly abuse for a foreigner.

Starting Monday she's taking a Nalgene bottle to work. She can handle rude soccer stars, yodeling handicaps and trampy 13 year olds, a lack of water during a kimchi-based meal is uncalled for!

My Humps: A Day in Gyeongju

Last Friday was Melodie's birthday so we decided to go away for the weekend. We headed 4 hours south-east to the city of Gyeongju, because who doesn't want to spend the better part of their birthday on a slow moving, jerky bus? I know how to show a lady a good time.

As we left the Express Bus Terminal in Seoul and merged into busy traffic we wondered who was flicking through the channels on the TV at the front of the bus. To our horror we realized it was the bus driver. I would have liked to have seen him caring a little bit more about the 5 lanes of traffic we were navigating at the time. He finally settled on a baseball game, which managed to last for our entire bus ride (baseball games play for 4 hours?) and the passengers started getting pretty rowdy near the end of the game as the Samsung team tied up their match with the Doosan, Lotte, Wal-Mart or whatever corporate team it was that they were competing with.

We were pleased to find that directly outside of the Gyeongju bus terminal was a street full of shiny, new love motels. Some of them were surprisingly expensive (we were quoted 100,000 Won at the Sugar Hotel!), but we got a whirlpool room at the Icarus Hotel that we thought was really nice for 70,000 Won.

My camera had been slowly dying so I'd bought myself a new one on Thursday night. I sold cameras for years and knew better than to buy a Samsung camera, but I got suckered in by the fact that the camera had a front LCD screen. What a cool idea, but what a crappy camera! I had to take most pictures 3 or 4 times because the focus was so blurry. I returned it (not easily, eff you E-Mart) on Monday but I must have said "I hate this camera" a hundred times on our trip.

On Saturday morning we woke up to rain- don't you hate it when the weather forecast lies to you? It was really pouring so we decided that instead of going to see (the outdoor) Bulguksa Temple as we'd planned, we'd go to the Jasujeong Amethyst Cave in Eonyang instead. After we got back to Gyeongju we had dinner at a cheap galbi restaurant and then walked around the town for a bit. We'd been in the Gyeongju area for close to 24 hours by this point but hadn't seen a bit of the city. Gyeongju is a small place, but it's a popular destination for Korean tourists travelling in Korea. Why? Gyeongju used to be the capital of ancient Korea and many of the country's oldest cultural sights are located there. It's so many history!

The historical feel extended to the look of the city and the products that were sold. At one store I found the doghouse that I want to buy if I ever get a dog- it even has a traditional roof!

We came across this apartment building... the New Brunswick Ville! In Panda Class we've been learning about the flags of the world and one of my little girls asked me if I cry when I see the maple leaf. No, I don't, but for some reason seeing this apartment building (of all things) made me a bit sentimental. Maybe I felt like I should be living there.

We were still wandering around when we noticed some giant mounds peeking out from behind a gas station. We took a look and found that there was a whole park full of these mounds called tumulis, which are ancient burial grounds. That means there's bodies inside!

We decided the best thing to do would be to climb one of those suckers.

When I was at the top I realized we probably shouldn't have been climbing up ancient burial sites (nobody else was!), but we were already there so it was time for a photo shoot. The tumulis really transformed the landscape of the city and made for such an interesting-looking place. It was amazing how Gyeongju was just built around all of this interesting history.

At the park there was a stage set up where some Vietnamese musicians were performing a concert. There were even some dudes in dragon costumes dancing around the stage. It was cool.

It was just us and the adjoshis of Gyeongju enjoying the show.

On our second night we decided to try another love motel. Icarus Hotel was very nice but we always like to try different places. We stayed at Will Hotel, which was just a few buildings down from Icarus. It was the same price and looked very similar but it didn't have a whirlpool tub. Most love motels were built with some strange quirk and Will Hotel was no different: the bathtub drained onto the floor of the bathroom instead of down the pipe in the tub! The floor of the bathroom was soaked, along with the clothes I'd left there to change into.

Sunday morning we woke up a little bit late so we got a quick, pre-packaged lunch at a convenience store before heading to Bulguksa Temple (pretty much the main tourist destination in the area). My lunch was a hamburger-in-a-bag, an apple, some ice tea, and a bun called "the Color". Despite how it sounds, it was still pretty good!

Unfortunately, after our 7-Eleven lunch we found this note on the window of the tourist information booth. The bus company was on strike! What are the odds? Since there was no bus to take us to the temple on that day we could have taken a taxi for over 20,000 Won each way, but neither of us cared enough to see the temple for that price. We decided to spend the day seeing some of central Gyeongju's sites on foot.

First, we walked about 10 minutes up the road from the bus station to Tumuli Park. This park was a lot like the one we'd visited the night before except it was now daytime and you had to pay 1,500 Won to get in. The park grounds were a lot larger and more nicely landscaped, though it was a lot busier. Still, I love me some tumulis, so I thought it was well worth a walk around and was very cool looking overall.

The main draw of this tumuli park is that you can actually go inside one of the burial mounds. You can't take photos in the tomb but I can report that inside there are a bunch of old treasures (crowns, swords, plates- that sort of stuff) and a replica of the buried remains.

We left the Tumuli Park and walked a few minutes to Cheomseongdae, the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in east Asia. It was built in the 7th century! Did they even have stars back then?

We had some snacks in the Gyerim Forest, which was close to the observatory and then I spotted an ajumma selling Vietnamese-style cone hats! Mel had bought one at the Jisan Valley Festival and I really regretted not buying one too- let's face it, they're so wearable- so I bought one too. Wearing it was easier than carrying it, so for the rest of the day I was given even stranger looks than usual. At Anapji Pond (above) a couple of complete strangers even asked us to take photos with them. Can you imagine stopping a random Asian person on the street in Canada and asking them to take a photo with you? Oh Korea, you're so sheltered.

Conehead @ an old ice storehouse.

With another hour left to kill before our bus ride back to Seoul we hung out next to yet another one of Gyeongju's over-400 tumulis. At this point Mel was getting sick of looking at them while I was still smitten with the interesting landscape and the many opportunities to hum BEP's "My Humps". After eating it was time to catch our bus home...

...and we are never, ever taking another long-distance bus into Seoul on a Sunday evening ever again! Because of the traffic, it took 6.5 hours to get home and we felt super bus sick by the end of the trip. We also had to listen to the foreigners in front of us inanely jabber on about mayonnaise and book genres for so long that by the time we got to Seoul we swore this was really the last time.

Until next time.

Strange Things In An Amethyst Cave

On Saturday, Mel and I visited the Jasujeong Amethyst Mine in Eonyang. Eonyang was about 30 minutes outside of Gyeongju, where we spent the weekend. We took a bus from Gyeongju inter-city bus terminal, though we almost didn't get off in the right place. The bus driver announced that we had arrived in Eonyang but he may as well have farted into the bus's microphone because it would have been just as comprehensible as the words he had said. We started to leave town and merge back onto the highway when Mel and I both noticed at the same time that we were driving past Eonyang Hospital and Eonyang meat market, meaning we'd missed our stop. "잠시만요," I pleaded as the driver let us off on the side of the highway. We got a taxi and 5,000 Won later we were at the Jasujeong Amethyst Cave. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

The cave site has been transformed into a sort-of theme park, which is so random because the place is literally in the middle of nowhere. There were a few carnival-style attractions, pony rides, some restaurants, a cave full of ice sculptures and the amethyst cave itself, which you could explore for 5,000 Won. Please note that all the attractions I mentioned seemed to be simultaneously run by the same Chinese family of 4.

Maybe it was the language barrier, but we were led to believe that touring the cave had to include a little jet boat ride around the cave tunnels. This inflated the price a bit and turned out to be totally unnecessary. We zipped through some cool canals in the amethyst cave and at the end of the ride our driver spun us around in circles, and while one of the passengers looked like he was about to barf from our complimentary spins, it was pretty fun.

When we were done with our boat ride, we wandered over to the cave entrance, where we covered the rest of the area by foot. Please keep in mind as you look at the pictures below that all of the things we saw were in an amethyst cave.

One of the first things we came across was the Egyptian section, where we posed with these friends in an amethyst cave.

Mummy remains in an amethyst cave.

Dinosaur mural in an amethyst cave.

Early man builds a fire in an amethyst cave.

We found this random lit-up Christmas ornament all alone in the corner of a tunnel in an amethyst cave. Ho ho ho!

This was my favorite find: a patriotic recreation of DOKDO, the disputed rock in the middle of the Sea of Japan East Sea... in an amethyst cave.

Nearby was a model of this creepy guy... possibly the fellow who watches over Dokdo? A strange man to find in an amethyst cave.

Next, these statues showed the evolution of man from monkey to...

...a naked guy holding a cellphone in an amethyst cave.

We followed a long, low tunnel lined with lotus-shaped lanterns where we found this Buddha at the end. This is convenient if you'd like to pay your respects while touring an amethyst cave.

Lucky for us there were vending machines in the amethyst cave. We got a couple of coffees since it was cool in the cave. I'm sure those machines get cleaned pretty often...

There was a section devoted to African art and sculpture in the amethyst cave.

We came across this one random room with a small heated floor. A cozy, yet random place to relax in an amethyst cave.

At 3:30, the Chinese family stopped selling pumpkin taffy and put on an impressive acrobatic and contortionist show. Please note E.T's head in a fish tank at the back of the stage. I took a video, which I'll put up later. I can't say that I expected to see a contortionist show in an amethyst cave.

On the way out of the cave I spotted something on display behind glass in a corner of the cave. Guess what it was? We saw a few dull crumbs of amethyst in an amethyst cave!

Jasujeoung Amethyst Cave: totally random, totally recommended.