Celebrating America's Birthday in Korea

So most of you that know me from back home know that I love my country. I felt a bit sad to be outside of America for the 4th of July. Never fear, I came up with a battle plan to combine the two cultures. One of my fellow co-workers is married to a US Air Force guy. She lives very close to the US Army base and has access to almost all of the conveniences of America. We invited all of our Korean co-workers. They kept asking us why we were so excited to celebrate our countries birthday. I found this to be a bit odd since they are a fairly new democracy but we promised them a good time.

I started the festivities on Friday by having my classes sing "Happy Birthday" to America. Here's a video of my favorite class.

We gathered at my friends house and her husband went to Taco Bell to get us some food. There's nothing like eating American junk food on America's birthday. Also you add the fact that Mexican food is non-existent in this country and it made for a pretty nice treat. Our Korean co-workers showed up shortly have that and made the Korean "junk food" called ddeokbokki which is a spicy, rice cake, ramen noodle, fish cake filled, soup-like mixture. I think we really mixed up the cultures!

We also taught the Koreans American drinking games. It was really fun to teach them about America!

When it was time for the fireworks we headed to the roof...I mean helipad to watch them. Yes, my friend's house is so posh it has a place for helipads to land. There were signs everywhere that were written in Korean that I'm sure told us to, "Keep Out." We disobeyed them and went up there anyway. I managed to fall up the stairs since I'm special like that but they view from the top was amazing. You could see the entire city! We watched the fireworks and sang patriotic songs with the fellow military people who also broke the rules.

On a side note, when I returned to school on Monday my kids asked what I had done that weekend. They all knew I was excited about America's birthday and I told them I had celebrated it. I asked them what they will do to celebrate Korea's Independence day on August 15th and they told me they would just stay at home and relax. One girl told me, "Teacher, I think that people in the west like to party a lot on holidays and people in the east just like to relax." My response was, "I think you're probably right. Fair enough."

Comparison--Korea v. Western Countries

Here is a list of things I have seen in Korea that wouldn't or rarely happen back home. I mean there are exceptions to every situation but this is what I've come up with.



1. A 8 year old kid brought a toy gun to school and was running down the hallway pointing it at his class mates. At first, I really freaked out but I had to take a step back and remind myself I'm not in America.


2. Children walking by themselves. By children, I mean first and second graders walking home from school without an adult. There are days I can barely manage to not get hit by a car. I can't imagine being that young and navigating the city by yourself.


3. Children out until all hours of the night. See picture above of a young child who was out for a walk with his parents around 11:30 pm. Here's another example. It was around 10:30 on a school night and we were playing poker at the park near our house and two girls came up to us and started talking to us in Korean. We managed to hear the term "Waygook" which means foreigner and "Migook" which means America, so we told them where we were all from. Around 12:30, they appeared again and tried to talk to us some more. We finally saw one of them go home with her dad around 1:00 am.

3. Having a probation office located within a 1/2 mile of 5 elementary and middle schools. The Seoul Probation office is literally a 5-10 minute walk from my school.


4. Always knowing who the foreigners are. In America, you can hardly ever tell if someone if a foreigner until they speak. Here you can tell instantly since Korea is one of the homogeneous countries in the world. This leads to a lot of stares. The other extreme is people talking to you to practice their English. The other night I was out with my Korean friends and a group of other Koreans started yelling, "Hello!" "Where are you from?"...All the typical questions. I responded and my Korean friend told me that it's not fair that I'm treated like a celebrity in Korea and when she studied in America no one cared that she was a foreigner. My response was that's kind of the beauty of America. You can't tell the difference between natives and foreigners. Anyway, I digress.



5. Crazy superstitions and rules... a) don't fall asleep with a fan on. It will suck all of the air out the room and you will die. All of the fans in this country have timers on them to prevent an unfortunate "fan death." b) Using vinegar to take the sting out of a sunburn will cause worse burning. One of my fellow co-workers got sunburned on the beach last weekend. He was asking for advice on how to cure it from the rest of us pasty, fair headed foreigners. A few of us suggested vinegar and one of our Korean co-workers freaked and told us it would make his burn even worse.


6. Kids going to school or private lessons until 11 pm. I know that the US's education system leaves a lot to be desired but having kids stay in school that late can't be good for them either. If you ask my students what they did on the weekend, they all say something to the effect of, "I went to science academy, math academy, piano academy, Chinese lessons, and another English school. When do these kids get to have fun? They asked me how many academies I went to when I was a kid and I blew their minds by telling them zero!


7) South Koreans don't seem to be the least bit phased by North Korea. Granted, I grew up in America and have been told that North Korea is evil and blah, blah, blah. The first few times my not-so-friendly northern neighbor threatened to set of missiles most of the westerners in the office started freaking out. The Korean co-teachers assured us that there is nothing to worry about and that good old Kim Jong is just trying to test America and specifically our new President Obama but he's not really going to do anything. The threat is always in the back of my mind but I've kind of started to accept their mentality. After all, if something happens, they don't have a place to run. I can at least go back to America. I've talked to my Korean friends and quite a few of them have told me that they don't really think about North Korea and don't really care. Fair enough, I suppose.


This is my list I've compiled so far. I'm sure there will be more to come after I've been here a while longer.

Seodaemun Prison & Inwangsan Shrine

The Execution Stool

This tree is outside the execution chambers. It was the final thing many prisoners saw before they were executed. It's the oldest tree on the site.


The prisoners were responsible for making bricks while they were incarcerated. These are bricks that are in the courtyard today.



View of the prison from the top of the mountain/shrine.

Zen Rock


Today was unlike any other I have had in Korea. My friend and I headed out to Seodaemun Prison. This prison was built by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. It was built in the late 1910's to house Koreans who were trying to start an independence movement. The prison was used to house Korean criminals all the way up until 1987.

The prison has numerous buildings that housed different types of prisoners. They showed prisoners being tortured in various ways including by electrocution. As we were going through the exhibit about how the independence fighters were tortured, one of the Korean workers came up to us and explained how the torture devices worked. There was a wooden box that had spikes in it that they would put people in and have the guards kick the box over and over, so the person would be punctured by the spikes many times.

The cells looked pretty large but as I read more I discovered that they would house up to 40 prisoners at a time and the prisoners had to take turns sleeping at night since there wasn't enough room for everyone.

There was also a reenactment of the Japanese court that independence fighters faced. The Koreans were not represented by attorneys and the only Korean that was in the room was the one that as on trial.

When it came to executing the prisoners, the prisoner would sit on a box with a noose around their neck and the box would fall through the floor killing the person. The Japanese would then take the bodies out of a secret tunnel to be buried.

It was a pretty intense experience. I have to keep reminding myself that all of these memories are still fresh in people's mind since the Japanese occupation only ended in 1945.

After this we headed to the Inwangsan Shamanism/Buddhist shrine which is at the top of the mountain next to the prison. It was quite a vertical climb. The tour book called it a walk so we were in flip flops which were not the right shoes for this hike. We made it up to the temple and drank some water and chilled out. A Korean woman came up and gave us tissues to to wipe our sweat away and offered us cigarettes. She was super cute. We headed further up the mountain and encountered many shrines and people praying along the way. There was a natural spring that we stopped at and we ran into the Korean woman again. She gave us some incense and showed us how we should whirl it around our head before sticking it in the shrine.

We passed the Seounbawi Rock or "Zen Rock" which is supposed to have the power to give sons to pregnant women. Most of the people that were praying here were women.

We made it to near the top and sat and looked out over the city. It was a beautiful view and was very peaceful and quiet. I was able to pick out some different neighborhoods (Gus) within in the city.

We climbed down and had some dinner and headed home for the night.

Soccer, Noraebong and more Randomness

On Wednesday night, I met up with one of my Korean friends for dinner and to celebrate the end of her semester and beginning of summer break. We ended up at our neighborhood chicken hof which is normally rather busy. We wanted to sit outside since it was a beautiful night. However when we arrived, there was only one table left inside. We sat down and there was a huge projector playing the Iran v. South Korea soccer game that was taking place in Seoul. The score was 1-0 in favor of Iran towards the end of the game. (Sorry my knowledge of soccer is rather limited).

South Korea ended up scoring a goal in the final minutes to tie the game. The restaurant exploded. It was a pretty amazing site to see everyone in a place cheering for the same team since this doesn't seem to happen back home too much.

Another one of our friends met up with us but we had finished eating and he was hungry. We decided to try out the "New Zealand House" which is just around the corner from my apartment. They served some delicious ribs that hadn't been "Koreanized" (translation: has something funky added to it) and soju (the Korean traditional liquor) in a CO2 powered bottle. They also had some international beers which doesn't happen too often in my neighborhood. I'll definitely go back.

On Thursday, I met another group of Korean friends in the Kunkuk University area. The areas around universities here are always really trendy and there's lots to do. We went to Ho Bar II and played darts. I have no idea why it's called Ho Bar but it's an interesting name nonetheless.

The night ended at a noraebong or "singing room." Each group gets your own room to sing to your hearts content. The room comes with all of the essential equipment like a TV, microphones, tambourines, and maracas. They had quite a few English songs. We had a blast!

One of the guys I was with speaks about as much English as I do Korean. I always seem to have a great time when I am with him though. We communicate through hand motions and our extensive 20 word vocabularies in both languages. I told his "Canchunayo" which means "it's okay" and I blew his mind. He told me my Korean has improved by 100% (this was translated through our mutual friend who speaks both languages) since I last met him. This isn't too much of an accomplishment since I could like two words last time a hung out with him.

All and all, it was a pretty awesome couple of days. I love Korea!

Another Random Saturday in Seoul

I had an awesome Saturday and one that shows how completely random Korea can be. My friend Madigan (who has only been in Korea for three weeks) and I set out to visit Changdeok Palace and Biwon Gardens. At this palace you are required to take a guided tour, so we purchased our tickets for the next English speaking tour, bought some coffee and waited for our tour to begin.

In the meantime a guy from the Netherlands came up to us and asked if we knew where the tour began. He ended up waiting with us and we started chatting it up. We took the tour together. More on this later.

The palace was interesting because it contained a secret garden and this was the first tour I took that was guided so I got a better understanding of why the palace is designed in certain ways. The gardens were absolutely gorgeous. They had lots of trees and ponds. It was amazing to see so much green in the city.

We finished up the tour and decided to head to Insadong to get some food and check out the stuff people had for sale. The Dutch guy came along with us. As we were trying to figure out how to get there, an American guy stopped us and asked us how to get to Insadong. We told him to join our group. We tried to go to a vegetarian restaurant but went in the wrong door and ended up at an awesome tea house. It was literally a hole in the wall place you had to duck in order to walk through it. We tried some amazing tea and ate the traditional Korean rice cakes.

We then sat out to find the doll for the Dutch guy's grandma. While we were walking to the market, I mentioned that I needed to get back to the baseball stadium to buy some gear for my Grandpa and told the guy how amazing Korean baseball is. He asked if there was a game and turns out there was one that was about to start in 30 minutes. (As with most Europeans, he loves soccer and was disappointed there wasn't a soccer match and he decided he wanted to see some sort of club sport in Korea.) We all jumped in a cab and headed to the baseball game.

We decided to cheer for the travelling team and the game turned out to be amazing. All the newbies loved the game and we had Koreans stopping and asking if they could take their picture with us. It's still so funny that they think we're something special.

Our team lost in the 9th inning after leading 2-0 throughout the game. We stayed behind for a while talking and had trouble leaving the stadium. It was a strange feeling knowing that we might be locked in the big stadium for the night. We finally found an open exit and decided to head to Gangnam to get some dinner.

The night before I had been to a Czechoslovakian bar (shout out to Uncle Larry!) and I decided I should take them back there. They brew their own beer and site and it is far superior to the light beer that is standard here. We order the meter of beer which is 10 beers that the Dutch guy told us really is a meter. (I still have know idea about the metric system!)

The Dutch guy and I moved on to another bar and discussed U.S. politics and how he feels the US is viewed right now in Europe and throughout the world. I was very happy to hear that he had a bad image of Americans and told us that the 3 of us changed his mind.

It was pretty awesome to meet such intellectually stimulating people in such a random way. We had some pretty deep conversations that you usually don't have until you've known someone for a while. I'm glad we stumbled across these people and it showed me that I should put myself out there more in more non-bar and club related places and I can meet some more awesome people!

I'm back!!!!!

So I have fast forwarded back into the 21st century. It was a rough week. I hope this stupid computer doesn't break again. It's only 2 months out of warranty. As my dad would say, "That's the story of my life."

Anyway, moving on. On June 2, I have been here three months. It's hard to believe I'm already 1/3 of the way into my year here. Some days I feel like I just got here, and other days it feels like I have been here forever.

I had an incredible weekend in a small town of Sokcho on the far Northeast corner of the country. It is still much bigger than Yuma but you can walk out in front of cars and they stop for you. There were a total of 7 of us that went and we drew quite a few stares from the locals.

It was one of the fellow teachers birthday's and her birthday wish was for us to all dress in "jorts" (jean shorts) and anything ridiculous we had. I don't any ridiculous clothes but the other teachers really went to town. Their outfits were amazing.

We left Seoul Friday night. We made it on the last bus which left at 11:00 pm. We made it to the bus station at 8:30 so we had some time to kill. We decided to play card games outside the station. We drew large crowds of Koreans who were trying to figure out what we were doing. Koreans love betting so if they would have spoke English I think they would have joined us.

We arrived in Sokcho at 2 am and headed to this awesome bar. It feels like you're some place really tropical. It's very relaxed and you can request music. The birthday girl's favorite song is "We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship. One guy made us all tank tops that had "We Built This City" printed on the front. We sang and danced to this song to pretty early in the morning.

We ended up at a Noraebang (Korean Karaoke bar) and started singing our hearts out. We tried to get out own room so we wouldn't subject the Koreans to our horrible singing and English songs but they kept telling us we couldn't have one. We ended up clearing the bar and seeing the sunrise from the Noraebang. We finally made it home at 6:30 am.

Since our late (early) night, we didn't start our day until around 1 pm on Saturday. There was a big beach party that had been organized by the expats who live in Sokcho. The weather was cool, and gray so we didn't head to the beach until later in the night. We couldn't find a cab to take us. My suggestion was we stop one of the Koreans who was driving an empty truck or van to take us. This guy Joe ran after this van and was screaming, "Take us to the beach-y!" The Koreans were scared to death and couldn't get away from us quick enough. So we hopped on the bus to see if we would end up at the beach.

On the bus, J brought out his guitar and we had an improv sing along. We scared the Koreans again. My favorite moment was this Korean girl who had her head out of the window talking on her cell phone to try to avoid us.

We ended up at the beach where the was a camp fire, fireworks and lots of ex-pats. I met people from all over the world and had a blast. I went swimming in the ocean. They water was really choppy but I had a blast.

We were getting cold so we went back to the amazing bar and danced some more. Around 4 am, we decided to head back to the beach where we watched the sun come up and met some more people. Once again, we made it home around 6:30.

Sunday we started our day at a great Italian restaurant playing card games. We moved to "Miller Time" and continued on endeavor.

We almost missed the last bus to Seoul. It left at 10:05 and we made it to the bus station at 10:00. We were really lucky.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend!

My Computer Died

Hey everyone. Greetings from crazy Korea.

I'm still alive over here, but my computer isn't. It seems as though the hard drive crashed. My only e-mail and internet access is at work.

I'll let you know when I'm back among the 21st century!