Saturday, March 31, 2007

Shrimp DO NOT have EYEBALLS in AMERICA.

Dear Korea,
We need to talk. I've been seeing you for over a month now and I think things are going pretty well. I really love your heated wooden floors, easy subway system, cherry blossom trees, gochujong and yogurt. I'm even getting used the smells down pig alley and the men spitting hockers on the ground in front of me as I walk to catch the bus. But some things have got to change if we're going to fall in love. I took this picture while you weren't looking. I think it represents everything that's lacking in our relationship: School lunch on Monday of this week. what's that you say? You want me to be more explicit? ok. you asked for it. A closeup.
Yes, that's right. Your fish flavored gray gelatin cubes topped with some sort of red seed jam is offensive to me. And that, combined with fish flavored seaweed Han River Water Soup and a slab of some sort of fish that probably had hair before you served it to me is unacceptable in our nascent affair.
I'm sorry to admit that in an attempt to punish you, I let Lumina take me to VIP's (yes, in your jealous rage, you might think it's pronounced V.I.P.'s, but you are wrong...this is viiiiips) where we attempted to enjoy a fresh time with "western style" food. I realize now that it was wrong especially because I was lured there under the pretense of "mexican food buffet" only to find that the "taco" meat was really pork barbeque with corn and korean pepper sauce and the toppings included shredded sesame leaves and cheese whiz.
And when I saw the shrimp with legs, eyes and guts intact billed as "shrimp coctail", I sort of missed you.
I really want to try to work things out. Can't we meet halfway? I'll try to eat the mini fishes fried to look like shredded wheat topped with sesame seeds (fish eyes) and then dipped in sugar??????, if you will warn me the next time you want to serve me something that looks like desert but tastes like rotten human flesh. Thanks.
Wanting to love you,
Beth-Ninny


I'm A Teacher. I Teach.

Right before I left Salt Lake, I was telling everyone proudly that I was going to seoul to work at a language academy that uses art to inform language acquisition. Well, the part that I forgot was that *I* had to figure out a way to inform all that language acquisition with said art. Every day is different...I'm starting to get the hang of somethings at the school and still most days my job leaves me feeling like I came to school in my underpants and the fat kid stole my lunch money. Any new job will do that to you, but the difference here is that the fat kid at this job is 48 kindergarteners. But then there are days like these...days when my job makes me clap my hands and scream cause I got the holy ghost in me. We've been learning the concept of pretend and studying "characters" in our book all month and the most amazing thing happened when we did face painting...




THEY PRETENDED!!!!! Please see the pictures below and try to ignore the fact that I am probably flashing you ala sharon stone. I was too busy being a cat to care.
Next month we are doing a book about animals and doing a dance production that uses animal movement. This should be interesting.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

It's like, totally, like being in college, dude

Remember when I had that ridiculous list of things that made you a grown-up?
1. bed bigger than a twin
2. flip cell phone
3. car with 4 doors
4. 401 K
5. furniture not made out of crates and not found in a dumpster

At one point, I was 2 away from acheiving true adulthood...and now I live in an officetel which is basically a glorified dorm room. sigh. I don't even own a cell phone of any kind let alone a room big enough to house a bed bigger than a twin. Let's take a tour (this is for you, alie)
OK, so Seoul is really dirty. people spit on the streets and do other things on the streets and then you walk on it with your shoes. remember the acid rain theory? So every house has a spot to take off your shoes. And restaurants too. And schools. Remember how I bought all those cool shoes? I should have been buying socks. Now to the immediate left as you walk in the door is my bathroom/shower. Please note that the showerhead is attached to the sink. You just let 'er rip and the whole bathroom becomes your shower stall. It's kind of convenient except when you are walking around in your socks later and have to go to the bathroom. Tricky.The kitchenette is on the right across from the bathroom (again, very efficient people, these koreans) and then you enter the full glory of the dorm room. desk, two shelves, armoir and bed. Stone bed. I'll show how that works another time. It's late, I need to sleep. And there you have it. The dorm room. cozy. teeny. mine.

Chawaheyo!!!!

I have no idea if I spelled that right, but it means "I LIKE IT!" and I'm talking about korea, my life, this day...everything. Ok, now before I get started, I need to make something clear. This will be a long post simply because I am using my blog as a record of this experience more than as a sounding board for loyal readers...so if you get bored or think there is too much writing, oh well.

This has been such a good night. I'm not sure why. It shouldn't have been anything special especially because it has been rainy all day and I am sort of losing my voice from yelling at kids and singing "Mother Goony Bird" about 6 times a day over the giggling of 6 year olds. But for the second night in a row, I ate really good Korean food that didn't have any eyeballs lurking under the mushrooms AND when I stopped in the street to buy some really yummy smelling flowers from a vendor, an old woman said in korean that the flowers were beautiful. I understood her and I said, ippoyo, which means beautiful and she said in korean back to me, "oh my goodness, so beautiful!" and then told the other two women standing there that I speak korean or something like that. They all smiled politely at me and the woman walked off without buying anything. I bought 2,000 won (about $2) worth of the flowers and as I started to walk back home, I saw the woman up ahead. In a fit of gratitude for the small exchange we shared, I tapped the woman on the shoulder and handed her the flowers . She said in english..."no thank you" which she is supposed to do when given a gift, but I pleaded with her to take them and she did, giggling and smiling and laughing. I walked away feeling absolutely in love with my life and in love with people and so much myself. I felt like myself! HALLELUJAH!

This sounds really dumb, but maybe it's about being able to do nice things for someone else. Ever since I have been here, I have needed other people to take care of me and that has been really humbling. In fact, two sundays ago, a sweet girl in my ward brought me a bag full of groceries after I jokingly told her that I was grocery shopping at the 7-11 (THEY HAVE THEM HERE!) She handed me the bag and I started openly weeping in the middle of the chapel. I couldn't help it. But I've been here almost a month! I have an alien resident card. I have a hana bank account and check card. I meet friends for dinner in strange parts of town. And yesterday, I made a jazz cd for the restaurant owner down the street who wears cowboy shirts and calls himself Richard. It felt good to be on the giving end of kindness. It felt like me. And then there are the kidlets...

OK, so some people have been asking about work. This is a small sample of what I do...these are some afterschool kids (6-7 years old). They are my favorite class...silly and funny and inventive. We sing and paint and learn letters and numbers and we practice saying things like, "Hello. My name is....." You would think that it's not that stimulating, but watching these kids "get it" is the most amazing thing ever. I still need to learn how to balance my energy. I really have to use my voice ALOT and it's taking it's toll. I can barely speak today and I'm sure tomorrow will be no better.

I spend a lot of time planning theater lessons for the kindergarten. It's really very challenging, but again, soooo rewarding when someone understands the concept of "pretend vs. real" and then asks if we can pretend to be a monkey or something like that. Theater is such a demanding thing to teach with kids let alone kids who don't speak your language. You have to rely so much on your body and your tone of voice. I'm learning so much about the value of communication. I think that is why I am finding esl teaching so meaningful.

Oh, and not surprisingly, the kids have a hard time with my name. Some kids can say KaRyn but most just call me Korea Teacher. They get that it's funny since I am so very ani Hangumal and man do they make themselves laugh everytime they say it. Who knew 7 year olds could be so funny? This is a green tea birthday cake and ironically it's the first cake that I have had in Korea that actually tasted like an american cake. What this poor poor picture is not showing you is that the cake is an eery shade of green with green frosting. I was afraid that like most things in Korea it would look really funky and yummy and then turn out to be a barley wheat cake made of rice with no sugar. BUT NO...it was masshasoyo (delicious)!
I took this on the bus today. Domino's right next to kia motors. Don't you find the cross pollination of our cultures intriguing? Almost as intriguing as the fact that if you didn't know I took this in asia, you would be hard pressed to know that it wasn't america or canada or australia.
Everyone keeps telling me that I'm in the honeymoon phase and that culture shock is going to hit in THREE months. that's right, three months and I will wake up and say, "what am I doing here? I want to go home." I don't doubt that the day will come, but I also have a new theory. Seoul is a big city. It's subways and walking and shops and street vendors and weird smells and crazy taxi drivers and bad people and nice people and weird people. A lot of being in Korea for me is adjusting back into city life, not really so much the korea thing. I wonder if the people who have a hard time here are not from cities or don't enjoy cities. Perhaps the problem is population rather than culture? Just a thought.

AND here is my kitchen. Sink? check. microwave? check. minifridge? check. hotplate? check. washer? CHECK CHECK CHECK. conspicuously missing: pots, pans, oven, dishes, food to cook. Please let me know if you have any microwave recipes that have ingredients I can buy at 7-11.

My first homemade korean meal. eggs, seaweed something or other, diet coke. You know you want to come over for dinner....

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Random Korea 1

Tiny Grist Mill? Medeival Torture Device? No. Tape dispenser. This baby takes up half of my desk and makes a loud whirling sound when you access it's magical power. Regan says they have these in the U.S. but I ain't never seen one in my broad traveled 29 years...anyone else? A candid, probably illegal shot on the 5500-1 express bus. I'm sitting on the throne chairs up about it all at the back of the bus. So, I guess you are supposed to be quiet on the buses in korea which is near impossible on these back of the bus seats...especially with Lumina and Regan when we are a little giddy after a particularly crazy work day. Yesterday we got an evil stare from a man approximately 20 rows up.

Well, this picture is going to ruin your surprise at Christmas...don't these look tempting and pretty and yummy? korean traditional candy. We walk by 5 of the best shops in Seoul on our way home every night. I have always wondered what they taste like. I have to wonder no more. Regan bought some for Lumina for her birthday. This is the highly coveted "Essense of Seoul" collection. The black ones, those taste like dirt. The green ones, those are a delicious mix of cabbage and ass. There are two yellow because they couldn't possibly capture the flavor of asphalt covered in cigarette butts with less than 8 "candies". We loved the brown ones (bean and fish) so much that we ate them all. Sorry.
PS. I am only being flip because we asked our Korean co-workers if they liked them and they said no...they said they were very healthy but not very good. And as an entirely side note, I love Korea even if I don't agree with their choice of labels for "candy".

I Think I Might Just Be Too Old For My New Life

Last week it snowed!!!! I think it was friday and the kids were totally distracted by the snow. I guess it's not too common for there to be snow in mid march, but there it was....Having lived in portland, I am reluctant to use any sort of umbrella for torential downpouring rain let alone snow, but evidently the snow here is feared to be acidic enough to melt your skin off if should touch you. And so you will see a regan, my coworker/neighbor with an umbrella in the snow.
Saturday after a delightful bellydancing class for enrichment in my new ward (yeah, you thought there would be pictures??? ha.) I met Lumina and some other girls at Club Cargo in hongdae for an evening of very cool DJ's, Facepainting, graffitti art and generally more city culture than I have experienced in a long time. And why is this post entitled, "I Think I Might Just Be Too Old For My New Life"? Well, we met at the club at 10:15. The real DJ's hadn't even started yet...it was some scary be-leathered foreigner guy playing scary goth triphop crap...and the real action was slated to start at 2:30!!!! A. M. in the morning. TWO. THIRTY. And it turns out that the subways in seoul stop running around, oh, let's say, 11:30 pm just for kicks. Rumor has it that most club goers just stay at the club, get wasted and then take the subway home at 6 am when they start running again. A ploy by the city to appease needy cabbies? hmmmm...
Anyone who knows me even remotely knows that I am usually in my bed around 10:15 even on the weekends. You practically have to tell me that Hugh Grant will personally be ripping my ticket at the movie theater to get me to a late show. So how did I fare? I stuck it out until 2 am tanked up on diet coke and whatever was in those brownies that they were selling at the bake sale. Here is the outside of club Cargo. So very very cool...this is the seoul college town and it's amazing that "college town" translates... Lumina and Josie belly dancing! Check out my facepaint. Sorry for the uber sex-kitten pose. Ok, maybe not so sex-kitten, but definitely making a face. It was late!
My new friend Chan-Su (on loan from Lumina!) and Lumi's graffiti art...chan-su is proof that real men wear flowers...on their faces with glitter. I loved that he was willing to get his face painted!

Me and Stella...Stella is a total rockstar...she works with me at changwehakyo (Creativity School) and is lovely.
How many zombies can you find in this picture? Circle them and then realize that they are just really really drunk Koreans and Foreigners listening to seriously entrancing DJ Venus. This was actually after I left...(it's magic) probably around 3:30 am.Lumina, Vincent (the korean-french artistic director) and me outside the club. Vincent is deliciously French...ponytail and everything. He art directed a few of Lumina's photographs this evening and refused to actually take the pictures because we were using my tragically inferior camera.
And I actually had a real dilemma of thought the next day. I got home and into bed (after showering off the second hand smoke and quarantining the tainted clothes so as not to infect my 10 x 10 cell with the stench of "late night partier") after 3 am. I woke up for church which is at 11am and felt totally and completely devoid of the spirit.
I remember once when I was in college that my mom called at 7 am on a saturday catching me barely walking in from a late night with my friends...She started to lecture me and I think I said something like, "WHATEVER mom, I'm not drinking and having random sex!" and she said pointedly, "KaRyn, I know you are a good girl, but you can not continue to put yourself into places where the spirit can not speak and expect that it will not affect your spirit." Strange that 10 years later, I am thinking about that. I didn't really pay attention in college, but I came to Korea a changed woman with a purpose and a goal. I know who I am. I know what I want to do. And I have to decide what my life will look like here. Perhaps you will say that I am jumping the gun. "Ninny Beth, " you will say, "this is your first real weekend in Korea! Live it up and leave the heavy decisions for later." Yes, Yes, perhaps, but I don't want to FALL into a life in Korea. I want to choose it and I think that means that I have to make some decisions now. I will still have fun and do it all...but maybe I will plan to be home at a decent hour so that I can wake up and really celebrate the sabbath each sunday? Hmmmm...something to think about.

Friday, March 09, 2007

A Day in the Life of Lumina

I thought it might be worth it to chronicle a day in the life of Lumina since I got to tag along...she is an amazing hostess/ tour guide...AND her life is just as exciting, artistic and wild as her blog makes it seem. First to her friend, Yu Bin's art studio to see if it would work for her...
We talked about art, Korean, English, Food....

And then we went to eat food. Being with Lumina means eating REAL korean food. No fake stuff and no american cop outs...she's authentic. This is Bosun Kimchi which means "Covered kimchi". It's very special because the kim chi has RAW oysters in it. Oh, I tried to be okay with it, but I just couldn't do it. I discovered this night that I have a Korean Food Quota and I had finally reached it. The next night I ate a panini from a non-authentic Korean food restaurant down the street just to cleanse my palate. At church, someone who has lived here for 5 years encouraged me to balance my meals 50% Korean, 50% Western. Good idea and probably doable since when I am on my own, I am too scared to go to a Korean restaurant by myself and end up eating at Macadonaldee's (Korean pronunciation) or the like. I can't even get up the courage to eat Korean street food alone. Sigh. I hope that changes.
I think in this next picture, I somehow ended up teaching YuBin what the lyrics to "Solid as A Rock" mean. I don't really want to go into details about how it came to this, I would just like to acknowledge that it is very difficult to explain 70's soft rock hits to someone who doesn't speak "lame". Also, Lumina and I were trying to explain the word "cheesy" but stopped in the middle when we realized that Koreans don't really see things as "cheesy" the way we do. I mean, this is a culture in which boyfriends and girlfriends increase the level of their committment by purchasing "couple's shirts" and wearing them proudly in broad daylight. cheesy does not translate.

Up next: a quick trip through Myong-dong...OH I LOVED IT! you start on an unassuming street. it looks like any other and then WHAM! you head up a hill and at the bottom is the most amazing, bazaar-like carnival of a city street you can imagine...Times Square on Asian crack. vendors and shops and crazy people....I was in heaven. And looking at these pictures, I realize that it is impossible to capture the feeling of cresting the hill and heading down into Myong-dong. Bummer. I really wish I could share it with you!









more creepy caucasian-asians. everything looks white except for these charlotte's web eyes. It's so strange and disturbing and wrong.
Probably no one else will think this is funny, but a vendor had earrings that ran approximately USD$1 (1000won) and the sign said, HANDMADE. right. handmade. by small children in taiwan?
I bought some anyway! Come on. They were $1. (you'll probably be getting some for christmas so don't knock it.)

Outside a store. I thought this picture made me look a little like punkrock. I dig the lighting.
And the next day, I went to church. This building is nestled in an alleyway somewhere in seoul. I have no idea how we got there...I just came along for the ride.

DON't CRY! There will be more seoul to come. This weekend...I am sick, but resting up to paint the town some color tomorrow night. It's an art exhibition in hongdae.