Under Attack

I'm fine.

Yesterday the North Koreans fired artillery at Yeonpyeong Island. The news does a better job explaining these things.

Nothing has changed in my world. I've brought it up with my students in some of my older classes. Most of them seem pretty unfazed about it. Considering a ship filled with South Korean soldiers was sunk several months ago, this is relatively small I think.

I'll let you all know if anything happens else happens, although you'll probably hear about it from somewhere else first.

Jungle Fish

So when I first got here, I used to go this diner near my house almost every night. I would always go at the same time, and they'd always be playing a Korean drama/soap opera. It's set sometime in the middle ages - everyone is wearing these flowing blue robes. I can't understand the words, but it's pretty easy to understand the show. The actors expressions tell you exactly what you should be feeling at any given time. It's chalk full of meaningful glances, furrowed brows, and really wide open surprised eyes.

The main character of the show is my favorite: he has the really wide open surprised eyes down pat. He can open his eyes wider and fill them with more surprise than I've seen by any actor in the States (possible exception: Mel Gibson in Hamlet).

The other day I was at Whoever, my favorite local coffee joint, talking with my friend Michelle. She told me she knows a TV star who is looking for a female English teacher to help him with his new role as an English teacher on the popular Korean high school drama "Jungle Fish." I told her about Bettina, and a few texts later we arranged a meeting.

The four of us met yesterday at Whoever. The TV star introduced himself by his nickname "Simba" (like from the Lion King). He offered to take us to dinner, so we went to a nearby seafood place. We ate some live octopus, and many other ocean creatures.

Simba showed us some pictures from his TV shows, and - lo and behold - he's the main character from the soap opera I used to watch! I didn't recognize him at first without his traditional clothing and without his moustache and goatee.

Simba's writing a show about a foreign girl and a Korean man, so I told Simba all about the play I starred in as a ten year old, hoping he could make some room for a foreign guy somewhere in there.

So now I have new goal in Korea: weasel my way into writing/acting for Korean TV. (I'm only mostly joking about that).

Two Crashes

First I crashed somebody's birthday party. In my defense, I had no idea I was going to a birthday party, or that me and my friend would be the only guests there for the first thirty minutes.

In either case, our hosts were real good sports about it. I didn't know either of them - I was there with my friend who plays soccer with the guy. It was that guy's wife's b-day. They're late late 30s. He might be 40 years old. He's British and his wife is Korean. They live in a nice condo with their 5 or 6 year old son, and her 12 year-old daughter from her first marriage.

As the party progressed, more guests showed up. Every one of them was either British, or a Korean married to a Brit (all the Koreans were women and the Brits were dudes). They were all at least few years older than my friend and I.

Sometime later we were in a cab. The cab driver had tried to take us to the wrong place, and was now driving like a maniac to get us to Hongdae. He merged without looking and grazed another taxi. They pulled over and the other driver started yelling at our driver, who was clearly at fault. We couldn't leave, and soon a policeman showed up. He asked my friend and I if we were "sick" (sick and hurt have the same word in Korean, so sometimes Koreans say sick when they mean hurt).

We weren't. It was only a slight bump, and neither car had not so much as a scratch on them. However, we were told that if we felt "sick" tomorrow, we could call the police station. We considered calling the next day in order to shake some money out of the cab company, but we didn't. We're just really honest people.

Pepero Day

11/11 was Pepero Day. Students bring in thin cookie sticks dipped in chocolate called pepero for their friends and teachers.

You're probably wondering more about pepero: who makes it, where can I get some, and why is it a holiday? Pepero Day was invented by the Korean company Lotte. The Lotte company are also the only ones who make the "real" pepero sticks. I don't know where you can buy pepero unless you have an Asian market near your house, or you want to order some online. They're pretty good, but probably not worth your trouble.

Anyway, on Pepero Day, students, teachers, and anyone near a school, eats a ton of pepero that day and for the next few days.

Kimchi and so forth

This weekend I studied Korean for a little and then taught an art class with Yung-he. Immediately after that, a Korean man I had not met before took me to his family's house on Ganghwa island, where I met my coworker Bettina. We ate like kings and drank like Koreans (except for the soju at breakfast time - we both passed on that).

Yung-he's art class. It was Barney Bear's Birthday Party. "Birthday? Birthday. Today is Barney Bear's Birthday. Surprise, surprise for me!" (I sung that. Apparently dignity does not follow you when you come to Korea).

Grating the turnips.

The purpose of our visit was to participate in making kimchi - the traditional Korean side dish. We helped a little (Bettina probably a lot more than I, since she got there way before I did), but for the most part, the Koreans had their system, and we only got in the way.

The woman on the right was described as the "neighborhood grandmother." She didn't take kindly to the idea of me making kimchi. She actually yelled "hajima!" "Stop it!" when I started. Haegyeon smiled at me, and encouraged me to keep going, but I felt awkward crossing the neighborhood grandma, so I stopped shortly after. Also, she was scrutinizing my kimchi quite closely - no cabbage I seasoned was seasoned good enough for her liking. Her main objection to me was that I am a man, and men should not be doing the kitchen work. As soon as Haegyeon told me this, I said "What about him?" and pointed to her father in law. "It's okay. Grandmother age man."

Although maybe it was that they just didn't want our inexperienced hands on their precious supply of kimchi, because they figured out a way to get Bettina out of there too not long after me.

In the outdoor picture with the two kids, you can see Haegyeon on the left, her kids Jay and Ryan (their English names - I never learned their Korean names), and her husband on the right. Haegyeon is the only person whose name Bettina and I could remember through the duration of the trip, which I feel a little bad about because I spent so much time bonding with her husband on the drive up. We were behind a truck full of Korean military. He told me that he was still in the military, as all Korean men are required to do at some point, and that didn't really enjoy it. He was telling me that the soldiers we were following were going to be performing reconnaissance missions on North Korea.

Seoraksan

I climbed Seoraksan with some friends yesterday. Seoraksan translates to "Dinosaur Mountain." I don't know what fascination Koreans seem to have with dinosaurs, but I like it.

We got up at 3:20 AM, and we were at the base of the mountain by 4:30 AM. We were in darkness for the first couple hours of the hike. We were just reaching the first peak by the time the sun rose (around 7 AM).

It started raining - not very hard, but enough to make the ground wet. I was wearing my five finger shoes, which were not perfect for the weather. They don't really have any traction. When we reached the next big peak at around 11, it started snowing. It was the first snowfall in South Korea this year, but it was hard to appreciate this at the time. I was wearing only two shirts, and they were soaked through. At this time, our party of five split up. I went back down the mountain with two others, while the other two went on the longer trail.

I slipped at the top of a metal staircase, and fell forward down three stairs, but the mountain gods were with me, because I caught myself without getting hurt. We finally got down at around 1 PM, and the other two got back at around 3:30. It was the stupidest, and coolest thing I've done here.