In Bloom

When it's not crawling with cockroaches (we've officially been roach-free for a full week now) or crawling with loud tramps (thanks for the recent silence, apartment 404) there are some things I actually like about our apartment. Right now, we're enjoying this explosion of cheery white blossoms on the tree outside our bedroom window. I'd trade bugs for flowers any day.

Exciting New Product: The Mini Toilet

We stumbled upon an interesting new product at Emart recently: the Mini Toilet. Who could miss this eye catching packaging? Curious, we investigated.

Boy on the sign: "Something about an urgency on the express highway"
Girl on the sign: "Mom- my bathroom! A EEEE! It's going out..."

Turns out, the mini toilet is a plastic bag to pee in! They're quite compact and comes in a pack of three. With an aerodynamically shaped top, the mini toilet would be useful for boys or girls. There also seems to be a grid on the side of the bag so you can measure how much fluid you've put in the bag, if that kind of statistic interests you.
The Mini Toilet is suggested for use almost anywhere: in the car, on a boat, in a tent or even in right in your wheelchair. No word on how the used product should be discarded. This is one of those products that is, while no doubt useful, probably a tricky one to use discreetly. And if someone I know receives a package of these in the mail sometime soon... you'll have to let me know how they worked hahahaha!

The Adventures of Melodie and Shawn in... Kingston, Ontario

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- I just clicked "accept"!

It's official- in September, I will begin studying in the Bachelor of Education program at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. It's only an 8-month program, but I think it's something I really need to do to move forward professionally.

It's going to be a busy summer. We'll be finishing up in Korea, vacationing in BC, getting married in Vegas, I'll be turning THIRTY, and now we'll also be moving to Kingston! I'm SO excited!

And I hope I win the lottery between now and September. That could make being an unemployed student slightly more comfortable...

Seoul National Cemetery

Because we were in the mood to do something uplifting on Sunday, we visited the Seoul National Cemetary in Dongjak. Dongjak Station has a hallway that is strangely decorated with the slogan "Lucky Dongjak" juxtaposed next to pictures of tombstones and war time images of soldiers dying in combat and bombs exploding. "Lucky", indeed.

The Cemetery is located directly outside of the train station (Exit 8), and when we turned the corner and saw the giant gate and monument seen above, we knew that we'd found someplace interesting.

We passed through this gate, where two motionless soldiers stand guard in phone booth-like structures, to take a look at the giant monument behind the gate. Actually, this monument in the rear of the photo turned out to be the entrance to the cemetery.

There were some stairs around the base of the giant monument so we followed them down and saw this impressive statue.

There were colorful murals on the ceiling.

The cemetery is reserved for Korean veterans, and inside the monument there were many hallways listing the names of the dead. There were flowers, bibles and candles left all around the room.

We found another set of stairs that exited to the cemetery itself. The cemetery is enormous, and reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery in Washington. All of the graves are identical and are perfectly geometrically aligned. Either a red or yellow flower is left at each grave.


It could take hours and hours to walk around the whole place. It is an absolutely massive cemetery. I usually find cemeteries pretty creepy, and would generally not spend the afternoon sightseeing in one, but this one was really pretty and peaceful.

Some of Korea's ex-presidents are buried here. This is the grave of Yi Seungman, who was buried with his foreign born wife, Francesca. Foreign spouses are a touchy subject among a lot of Koreans nowadays, so we were really surprised to find out that a president had been married to a non-Korean. I feel like that wouldn't happen today, but maybe that just the pessimist in me.

Outside the cemetery is a nice park where people were picnicking and kids were running around.

There were some cutesy statues representing the army, navy and air force. Our favorite statue by far was this fellow and his tank's suggestively placed gun.

A river ran through it.

On Saturday night we'd gone to a housewarming party in Noksapyeong. Everytime we go to that area we get super hungry walking past all the restaurants but we'd never had time to just stop and eat at one. Well, Dongjak was only 5 subway stops away from Noksapyeong, and with the strip of restaurants fresh in our minds from the previous night, we decided to go there for supper. We went to Fat Panda, which is opposite exit 2 of the station. They serve Western-style Chinese food cafeteria-style, sort of like Manchu Wok back home. It wasn't amazing, but it was good enough for the price (8,900 Won for 3 dishes + noodles and rice) and it's a type of food we rarely get to eat in Korea.

Because I don't really have anything witty to say about cemeteries, I'll just end this blog by saying that Seoul National Cemetery is a nice place to visit. And if you go, you may as well get some Chinese food afterwards.

MGMT

On Friday night, we went to see MGMT (with special guests Snack Soft- WTF?) at AX-Korea in Seoul. This is a band that Mel and I both really love so we knew all the songs by heart and had a great time. The one-two punch of "Kids" followed by "Destrokk" has to be one of my favorite concert experiences ever.

Video clip of "Electric Feel":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-myWxItk9Q

The Great Wall of Suwon

This is what it's come down to: a desk piled high with roach killer. For the last few weeks, our apartment hasn't felt much like a home, thanks to an infestation of giant cockroaches. They've been dropping from the ceiling, crawling on our cups and just generally making themselves at home. It's hard to sleep at night when we can hear them scurrying around our apartment, and when we do sleep we often have cockroach-related nightmares (or worse- I dreamt that we had a scorpion infestation last week!) Anyway- on top of this, the new semester of school has left us both feeling drained and wanting to get away for the weekend, so on Friday night we went to Suwon, our home away from home.

Though we usually stay at the Lucy, we decided to try another hotel on our favorite Love Motel strip- the Pink Panda. We were given the Pink Panda: Black Edition room, though it was curiously decorated with pictures of the Pink Panther and was more pink than black.

Even though we've stayed in dozens of love motels, I'd never noticed that the cars in the parking lot all have their license plate numbers hidden. This helps to keep what happens in the love motel on the down low. I guess most people that go to these places aren't in it for the whirlpool and big screen viewing of Oprah like we are.

We decided to spend the day hiking around Hwaseong Fortress. The Fortress is essentially a wall that surrounds what was once central Suwon. It was built over 200 years ago by King Jeongjo, who had planned to move the capital of Korea to Suwon. That didn't quite work out, but the scenic fortress walls are well worth a day trip to Suwon. We'd hiked there before, but that was almost 5 years ago, so we'd been looking forward to getting a weekend with nice enough weather to do it again.

Just as we were about to start our hike, I was approached as I left the washrooms by a young guy wearing a Samsung t-shirt.

Guy: Hi, how are you? Do you know Samsung company?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Guy: Do you want to do commercial about Samsung electronics? You can dancing with us.

Me: (Nearby, I can see one of his co-horts already getting dressed up in some ridiculous blue costume because he's sure I'll say yes) No, thank you.

Guy: Come on, it is simple dancing. We will teach you salsa (guy starts to salsa dance).

Me: No no no no no no no... have a nice dayyyyy (running away)

I don't like to dance. A lot. Anyway, we started our hike at the Paldalmun gate (there are 4 gates along the wall) which means we started out by hiking straight up 1000 stairs.

Once that part is over, the rest of the wall is an easy hike. There's lots of little towers, platforms and structures along the way to look at (like the one above).

Some more pictures from our hike:

A nice view of Suwon from the top of the fortress.

Lots of flags along the way.

Stopping for a sammich.

Lovely Suwoncheon Stream.

There's an absolutely humongous cathedral nearby. It's black, very gothic and looks like the spookiest church ever.

There are a few random activities to enjoy along the way: there's a trolley ride, museum, dog soup restaurant, Korean archery and even adjoshis playing croquet.

The humorously named Bongdon: five chimneys that puffed out warning signals to locals just in case someone was coming to plunder all of Suwon's famous yumyum galbi.

After about an hour and a half, the trail ends at a traditional food market. There were a lot of butchers set up there, as well at many fruit and vegetable vendors, and the ubiquitous groups of ajummas selling dried things from seeds to peppers to stingrays (as seen above). From the vendors to the little makeshift restaurants with tarps for walls and menus printed in marker on old cardboard, it feels like this area hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Yep, you could buy just about anything there, even... pig heads? For a minute it was like being back in Taiwan again, as I don't think pig heads are a very popular food item in Korea.

It was time for us to head back to Seoul and our cockroach nest of an apartment. If it weren't the last weekend before pay day we probably would have splurged on a second night at the Lucy or Pink Panda, but what can you do? I wonder if leaving a pig's head at the front door would scare all the bugs away? It might at least get the landlord's attention for long enough that he might spring for a little fumigation...

How To Make Your Own Ddong Pen

We were shopping at a stationary store in Suwon on the weekend when Mel spotted a line of DIY pen kits. Who hasn't dreamed of making their own pen? There were a few styles to choose from: a bunny pen, a heart pen, a cloud pen, or a Ddong pen. For those of you who aren't aware of this friendly character, Ddong is a smiling pile of POOP. We bought four pen sets and got right to work that night.

We sat down to create our pens together. The first thing we did was read these incredibly useful directions.

We used the provided ddong stencils to cut out the shape of our pen topper from some brown felt. There was extra felt so we decided to make special sheaths for the inky ends of our pens as well.

Using double sided tape, we unevenly wound yellow ribbon around our pens.

We sewed faces on our felt, glued on some googly eyes and stuffed our friend with cotton. This part took close to an hour to complete!

We attached the ddong to our pen, glued on a bow tie and *ta-da* our poo pens were finished! I wrote my name in Korean on the pen sheath that I made, so no one tries to swipe my amazing pen.

Each ddong had two sides, so we were able to make two different faces for each pen. This one of Mel's is my favorite. He looks like he just poo-ed out his last brain cell.

Can you believe that they sell DIY bunny or cloud pen kits? Who would want to make something like that?

Cat Poop Coffee>Lamb Cafe

A cafe with a LIVE LAMB living in it? We had to go. It took a bit of walking around, but Saturday afternoon we found our way to Hongdae's Famous Lamb Cafe.

Inside, we noticed a large number of people but very few lambs. Confused, we asked our server where the lamb was. We'd checked this place out before we came and pictures of the cafe definitely showed a precious, constantly-pooping little lamb trotting about. From what I understood of our server's explanation, it was the lamb's day off. I guess he had other plans. It also seemed to be decent coffee's day off too, because we were served a weak-ass cup of joe.

The interior featured artwork of a big-boobed goat driving a car.

It was time to move on so I consulted my ipod for a suitable plan B.

This is a cat's butt. If you're like me, and you've always been interested in drinking something that was pinched out of it's bumhole, then maybe our next stop will interest you.

Retro Mama Burger House!

I really liked how they'd decorated the interior, especially the creepy dolls in the front window.

We started off with very normal and yummy burgers and fries that were in no way derived from cat asshole (that I know of).

For dessert we ordered the Kopi Luwak. The coffee beans used to make Kopi Luwak are collected from the excrement of a South Asian cat-type animal called a Civet. They eat the coffee beans and, after they poo them out a day or two later, the beans are collected and roasted. Don't worry, they're washed off first.

How does it taste? Definitely different. Kind of woody. Better than the stuff that sham Lamb Cafe was brewing up... not that I'd recommend brewing your litter box's contents anytime soon.