Jin nay nay and the chicken.

She goes by many names: J dog,  Jin nay nay, baller, nay nay, J… and many more. On this evening she went by only one: CHICKEN KILLER. It all started when we saw a man dressed as a chicken. She immediately went in for the obligatory picture… but then she stopped the innocent act…

 

and then this happened…..

 

 

She finally got him in a choke hold. 

 

 

 

He seemed confused and upset but was unharmed. I doubt he understood any English, which just compounded the confusion. 

 

And thus was the tale of the chicken killer. 

New Years part two.

After our day of sledding and going to the spa, we headed to the beach near Ulsan… which I think is like north of Busan… we might have been in Omsan. 

 

In any case, we drank a lot of soju and ate a lot of ramen. After playing charades with the Koreans ( there were tons of dragons, and tons of Psy impressions) we celebrated at midnight. But the best part, and the reason for heading to the East, was that we got up really early to see the sunrise! 

 

 

Here is an idea of how crowded it was. It was very popular to come and watch the sunrise, but this picture is from before the sun came up. But then….. 

 

… and then…. 

 

 

 

WOW! so pretty. Then we headed over to the main festival location and had rice cake soup with egg in it. ( this is the traditional soup for the new year). And we turned to each other and realized that our Korean ages ( click the link for more info) were now one year more than they had been mere hours before. 

 

 

Finally, we watched some traditional drumming and dancing ( if you look closely, they’re on stage in the background). 

 

New Year’s adventures part one

( both the previous post and this one are woefully late…. I’ve been busy ) 

 

So for New year’s eve day, we met up with some Korean friends that we met through our American friend. They rented a van and we drove to a spa/amusement park. 

 

 

That’s a picture of the car from where I was sitting in the back. Our expedition was composed of myself, Honnie, Ugene, Tom, John, Jin nay nay, Jay-hoo ( honnie’s boyfriend and the brave diver), and Ugene’s sister Che-yae. 

 

First, we went sledding… 

 

 

You see Jay winning the race at the bottom there. 

 

 

and there are some of us re-cooping after having finished a race. Most of us were fierce competitors. Jin-nay nay for example thought it was her job to take out at least one Korean child ( and Tom) every time she went down the hill whereas Tom and John usually aimed to knock me off my sled… :(. I tried to avoid others…. 

 

Once we were all icy and covered in snow from the sledding races, we sat around a fire for a while. Then we hit the spa. All I have to say about the spa was that there were a lot of naked Koreans and one naked J-bizzle. 

 

Then we headed to the beach for midnight…. but I’ll show you that in part TWO! 

Snow yoja.

It is hard to see our wondrous creation’s form from this close-up. I should tell you that we placed the giantess squarely on the running track at our local park. If this wasn’t funny enough to us, I built a snowMAN or snow namja on the arm pressing machine. We also gave our yoja breasts ( you should assume at this point that yoja means woman in Korean…. think of every line of Gagnam style and how it ends ‘ bla bah blah blah blah blah blah blah yoja’ )

(I love these Korean socialized- work-out machines that you can find in any park or even at the top of any mountain. )

During our snowman endeavor, we were approached by several curious Koreans. They commented on how curvaceous our snowman was ( using hand gestures) and I responded loudly in Korean that it was a woman person. Which, upon reflection, might have confused her more. This prompted us to add some more female characteristics to our snow yoja so that nobody would mistake her for a man.

Then we were approached by a man who asked us if we were used to the snow. I told him I was and J-dog just ignored the Koreans, as she does. Changwon is NOT used to snow. The roads and sidewalks remained unmolested, I mean un-assaulted, I mean unsalted. (my father will love that remark, which is why i’ve included it). Seriously, no snow plows here. They were using back hoes to clear the roads that afternoon. When Ja-nay nay and I walked to school that morning I slipped like 4 times, though my coffee only went flying once! The sidewalks were not only chock-full of black ice but ALSO they’re all sloped. It was the WORST.

The snow still hasn’t melted, they try to get it off with pick axes rather than salting or sanding…..

Sadly, we went to visit our snow woman after work that day and somebody had karate-chopped her to death. Seriously, she was in tiny pieces all over the running track. We went into a mournful rage and decided to vengefully knock over somebody else’s snowman. We did but the score doesn’t feel even because nothing can bring her back to life.

All the young punks/ Bi bim bap!

I was debating whether this post would be more Clash– inspired or Ramones– inspired. I settled on using both titles because they’re both witty. ( Click the links if you don’t get the references, I swear they’re quite good)

Last weekend a couple of new friends and I headed out to Busan for an evening of Korean punk rock at the Vinyl underground, which is a small smoke-filled club close to KSU ( or a university area in Busan). The trip to Busan was quick and painless, about 40 minutes on a bus and only about 4,000 won.

We arrived and were hungry. We went to a happening restaurant and ordered what turned out to be A LOT of food. 

Everything was SUPER delicious. Some of the bones in the meat were less than expected but I’m getting better at it. I like that there are bones in their meat, it makes me feel like it isn’t too processed. Anyway, once we were satiated, we left to go on a short adventure before heading to the concert.

Looking at the subway map, we decided to explore Hyundai beach because it was on the same  subway line as where we were going. Here are some picture of our adventures on the beach:

… and finally what esteffie would call ‘hood rat things’

The one where I’m posing with the statue was pretty cool, yeah? We sort of assumed that it was a famous statue because ” not only just white tourists were taking pictures of it”. Meaning that the tourists who were in the know were also taking pictures of it. Therefore we assume it’s important. oh assumptions….

Next, we headed back to the subway to go to the club. The concert was just as it promised to be, Korean punk. The musicians were super talented and the energy was very punk. I think most of the songs were in English? In any case, there were a lot of foreigners there supporting the bands.  Here is a picture of me with some of the musicians from one of the bands:

( I stole this picture from Tom, and the next one, too)

The show was pretty great: 

And when I finally got home… after happening upon a Kiwi who lives in the same building as me in Changwon ( what good fortune I have!)…. I was exhausted! What an amazing night I had!

Market day!

Ladies and Gentlemen, mark your calendars for 4’s and 9’s, the traditional market comes to town! Located a spit away from my school this wonderful place of commerce feels like a spicier  version of any market i’ve been to, except maybe in Istanbul. But there is remarkably more kimchi at this one. It’s winter here but the colors were not in short supply… 

 

 

 

I made my way through the row and rows of stands and poked here and there to see what they were selling. As always, people turned to look at me when I passed because I’m suspiciously not Korean (surprise!). The old men who were hawking their wares were silenced when they saw me because they knew that whatever they were saying wasn’t as convincing to my ears. 

Then I turned a corner and happened upon row and rows and rows of fish and octopus and every manner of sea life you can imagine fitting on a table (no whales). I only took some pictures of the fish, but I plan on being more thorough in the future about what exactly you can buy … so hang on until later posts for more pictures of the sea life they sell. 

 

 

 

 

 

Another tid bit of my adventure at the market today was that an old man shouted ” HELLO” at me. As always, I smiled and said hello back. I usually get this when I’m out running or in the park, but today I was the shy one who was frightened he would speak more to me! I’m still fine-tuning my Korean to be able to comfortably shop at any stand at the market…. I’ll get there

CHANGWON LG!

 

On Sunday evening my friend John and his co-worker and I headed to city seven to go see a basketball game! Changwon was playing the Seoul  Samsung Thunders who are ranked higher than them. Changwon is called the ” Changwon LG Sakers” which is a play on the Lakers, but SA means bird in Korean. So their mascot is a bird. You can see him carrying the flag in the second picture that i’ve posted.

We got carmel popcorn and beer and battered squid as we enjoyed the game. Very Korean…. I think?

Every Korean pro basketball team has foreigners on their roster, and Seoul and Changwon are no exception. In the first photo above you can see a foreigner from Changwon taking a free throw. ( Chanwon is red and Seoul is blue).

Everybody knows that I like sports and I don’t care who knows…… but this was actually fun to attend because there was so much cheering and so many mini-competitions as the game went on.  At some point they made strangers hug and if they did, they won a gift certificate to a restaurant. They also had a free-throw competition and also a cheering competition where you could win bananas ( no joke, Delmonte bananas).

Well the game was pretty dramatic with Changwon down at the half and only sort-of following Seoul’s lead. BUT in the fourth quarter Changwon made an amazing come back and WE WON THE GAME!

 

 

Snowy mountains

Last weekend our Korean co-workers were kind enough to show us how pretty the mountains around Changwon ( more acuratly, Masan) could be with snow on them.

We woke up early in the morning and I made sure to drink coffee. It was cold to say the least. I was glad that I wore about a thousand layers. We hiked up the mountain close to where one of our co-workers lives.  Here is the view of what we saw as we began to hike up.

Here you see Audry explaining the importance of this place to traditional Korean dramas. We all encouraged each other to jump in, but nobody took the leap.

This is a river but right now it is not moving very much because there is little water. In the summer it will be full.

 

Then we happened upon a temple and a spring with water we could drink. So we poked around and took a drink.

We had a long discussion about weather or not the Korean forest scape was similar to that of the American one. I think our conclusion was that it was hard to compare the two because there are so many different forests in America. In any case, it looked different to me. I thought it was beautiful and I’m looking forward to being able to go hiking in spring and summer. After reaching some semblance of a summit, we hiked back down and got lunch.

Our Korean informers told us that people usually drink soju after hiking, but we had Korean class later that afternoon and so we didn’t partake.

It was such a perfect fun time hiking adventure!!

 

Being a spectacle.

A lot of Koreans wear glasses. It seems like there are more bespectacled people over here than what I’m used to. I feel like I’m in good company. Just for fun I got my eyes examined today after grocery shopping ( shopping in Korean is ‘shopping hayo’.) They have an eyeglasses making section in our local Lotte as well as E-mart. They will tell you your prescription right there, and make your glasses for you! Does Walmart do this in the United states? I’m unsure. In any case, it seemed really novel and was a good adventure. 

there was alot of beeping and some red dots and a balloon. All of the sudden the lady then put different lenses over my eyes and had me read some numbers. I alternated between Korean and English because I was afraid that she would think that I was blind if I only counted in Korean.

There is a picture of the lady’s hand. She switched out the lenses over and over and then finally…..

we were done and she had decided what my prescription was! I have to say that it was about a billion times less painful than any other eye exam i’ve ever had. Nobody puffed air in my eye and nobody dropped things into them. It was simple and sweet and the woman was so kind. Perhaps the best part was that I got to look like part man part machine when I wore those glasses. Maybe in a few weeks i’ll buy some glasses here. In any case i’ll hang onto my Korean script.

… and those were my happy fun time adventures for today.  Tomorrow we’re going hiking! I can’t wait!

A room of one’s own.

 

I took several pictures of my apartment for those who are interested. I would say that it’s about 600 to 700 square feet. I live in a bestell, which is both and apartment and an office building in one. It’s pretty funny to see other tenants go down to our first floor store in their sweats while there are business men about. 

My kitchen is bigger than some I’ve had in Manhattan, and even though it has no oven, I have nothing to complain about. One thing I LOVE about my kitchen is this drying and sanitizing contraption above my sink. 

You can see it’s full of dishes right now. What it does is use a UV light to sanitize and dry dishes after i’ve washed them. The light is on, so you know it’s working right now. 

 

That’s my bed with rabbie sound asleep. I have about 20 more blankets that are hiding behind my dresser. My director was worried that my blanket was not thick enough so she keeps on bringing me more and more blankets! :). 

 

 

Here is the bathroom complete with washing machine. As you can see on the upper left, the shower is just a shower head attached to the sink. When you shower the entire bathroom gets wet. At first it seems scary, but it works incredibly well as long as you remember not to keep anything that can’t get wet in the room. 

 

here’s a section of my view. It’s actually snowing right now, which is supposedly not usual for Changwon. I’m safe and warm in side though. 

 

Some unusual ( by american standards) things about my apartment to round out my post:

* the heating system is in the floor. So if I’m super cold I turn my heat on and lie on the floor. 

* The door across from mine is an office that opens pretty early in the morning, so they get to hear me practicing my Korean. I fear one day I might bump into them in the hallway.