Oh My Gubeundari

This is my new home. It is quite nice. The picture is from a couple days after arriving but it is starting to shape up. There is a lot of space. I have three rooms: the bathroom, the balcony, and the living space. In the picture you can see the kitchen reflected in the doors to the enclosed balcony. I have a large refrigerator, a nice sink and two counter-top burners. The bathroom is awesome and spacious. It is a big shower with a toilet in it basically - the shower is attached to the sink and there is a drain on the floor. It makes cleaning the bathroom so easy. The balcony has a washing machine and i use the drying rack in the picture to hang the clothes. I live in the same building as my school so my morning commute is 3 steps: 1. walk out the door 2. walk down one flight of stairs 3. walk into my classroom. It is really awesome. Also the is a small fake soccer court on the roof and some really great people I work with that make my job great.

My job is tough to start out because I had no idea where the last teacher left off, but I made new lesson plans and it should be easier to deal with from here on out.

Right now it is Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving. Koreans know how to make thanksgiving rock. I have off 3 days from work = 5 days weekend. I will spend it trying to figure out Seoul (Renae said "with my girlfriend Renae!) and settle myself in a new home.



My vegetarian meal on my way to Seoul on Japan Airlines. I want to fly Japan Airlines for everything. They were the best.



Cool street art in Insa-dong.
Renae took me to a cool market in Insa-dong, Seoul. The market was great I want to go back. I think what I want to do with the rest of my life is just sit on the side of the street and sell things. There are a lot of markets in Seoul and I am going to have to stop myself from going broke on cool stuff from street vendors. We went out to eat at a nice restaurant on a side street.



The silverware is usually spoons and chopsticks and are at the table already. These were in a drawer under the table.

I was feeling a little uneasy about eating seafood. I am still trying to eat veg but had some seafood that evening. It was good but I didn't feel to happy about it. The prickly pear wine (the pink drink) was strangely sweet and I didn't like it too much. Despite all of this it was still a wonderful dinner. I like the way Korea does its dishes. A lot of it is communal and there are plenty of side dishes. We went for pizza today and it was so good. Sweet potato pizza with mushrooms, onions, and peppers for 8900 won ($9) and it came with salad and pickles (I was very happy about the pickles) I am not sure if it was just because the owner was so nice but he gave us free soft serve ice cream and I think he was doing it for everyone! It was soooooo awesome.

Maybe next time little friend... I almost cried for this tiny octopus thing.


Some crazy photo op at the largest underground mall:



This sign warns of how foreigners can summon flames from there bare hands and light midget construction workers on fire and at the same time humiliate them to the point of crying... or it is just me wanting to be Jimi Hendrix and make fire come out of anything I touch.


Speaking of Jimi Hendrix...
I went to a bar called Freebird, with my friend Lauren (a teacher at my school from Texas) and she accurately describe it as looking like a hookah bar with large b&w pictures of rock stars like Jimi Hendrix. It was a great time, two bands played called:

I am still learning Korean so I will get back to you with that one. (Note that happy hour is from 11-12pm = the subway stops at 12pm so they try to keep people in there i think. On another not I love the subway here. More on that later)

The first band was awesome funky dance rock and came running out after the set in a big picture frame - I didn't have time to change any settings before they got camera shy but I am happy I got this photo.


The second band opened with a folky version of:!!!!!!!

the video is too big and i am too tired right now

and if that weren't awesome enough, the singer broke out a:!!!!!!!

ditto

So it has been a lot of fun. I went back to the area (Hongdae) where Freebird is the night afterwards to see The Queers at a venue called Skunk Hell which was really amazing (almost as good as a New Brunswick show) with Renae and Jesse and two friends, Deanna and Lana. I forgot my camera but am glad because it would have been destroyed. But i took pictures of the area the night before and there is an awesome park where kids hang out and it is right next to a huge art college that has "Free Market" every Saturday where people sell art and stuff they made and I don't know what else... I can't wait till next Saturday. I just heard about it so didn't go today. In the park a band brought a generator and rocked out. It was beautiful to see a space alive like that. Also, you are aloud to walk anywhere with your booze so some people make a night of it to hang in the park. (Who needs to pay a cover and too much money for drinks when you have friends, a mini mart that sells drinks and a guerrilla band with its own generator!) I think this will be my favorite place to be in Seoul but I have soooo much to see. Outside of Skunk Hell and in the park there were awesome murals:
I think the first one is a Nike ad but the artwork is cool and I don't have picture from SKunk Hell... next time.





Also after researching some other info about Korea, I saw some pictures of people who dye their dogs' hair. I witnessed this today in the form of a poodle with yellow ears crossing the street. I love it and wish I thought of that.

Today, after a long night last night, Renae and I, Lauren, Deanna (another teacher from my school from CA, who is awesome) and Lana (a teacher who was fired from my school but found another one, and is also awesome) had an omelet picnic on the roof with fresh pineapple for dessert. It was so nice I am feeling everything all at once but optimistic even when I am scared or sad. I spent the day exploring my neighborhood with Renae. I am so sad that I lost my new glasses before I came to Korea - I will never find a more perfect pair. But I bought new glasses today to. They give you a free eye exam on the spot and I like my new glasses almost as much as my missing pair. I will go take a picture now even though I am tired and then it is off to bed. I have been here two weeks and sorry I havent got in touch with everyone personally yet. I am doing a lot, learning a lot and working a lot too. I am sure there will be more time once I feel settled but I am enjoying the process of discovering a new place and new people.

I Love you all, (even the strangers,)

p.s. the heart came with my bathroom and Gubeundari is my yuk (subway stop)

Trials of Travelation

Welcome friends and family and strangers! This is about how I got to Seoul, in the Republic of Korea and what I am doing here.

For those of you who know my circuit bending exploits, (whereheremeetsthere.blogspot.com) you can imagine getting through airport security was a bitch. The lady took one look at "The Awesome-ator" and said "Are you kidding me!" She didn't even say anything else before that... Well they let me on the plane after I played all the instruments for them and they ran samples to test for explosives... you know the usual. The first flight from Newark, NJ to Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN was really smooth. I didn't have to go through security for the transfer to Tokyo but the plane was behind. They said there were some "minor checks" that had to be run; nothing important, 'just for their paperwork.' Well, with the hour delay it was a fat chance i was getting through security in Japan in order to get to my connecting flight in Seoul so I was a little stressed. I had no cell phone or any way of contacting anyone.

It was supposed to be a 14 hour flight. I was really happy when the hit TV show "The Office" had an episode on my plane. I was laughing obnoxiously while all sorts of people were trying to sleep around me. The flight was supposed to have sunlight the entire way through. I thought that was awesome: No nighttime for 32 hours or so! I thought I might not go to sleep but the first movie was Spiderman 3, which I saw once and knew it would be more enjoyable to sleep through even if I wasn't watching it. So I fell asleep and I wake up to that horrible feeling of your head crushing itself while a plane descends. "Holy Crap," I thought to myself, "that was easy! I slept through the whole thing!" Moments later the pilot came on the intercom and said "Uhhhhhhh, folks, you've probably noticed" in his pilot-type voice "that we have begun a decent a little earlier than expected..." He continued to give no information except that we were making an emergency landing in Anchorage, Alaska and that he was going to be too busy to tell us what was going on while they landed.

I had to stop myself from writing letters to all my loved ones and putting them in plastic bags, which I consider doing about three times before I thought I would just accept my fate and see them all somewhere on the flip side... To make a long story short, Anchorage looks nice from inside the cabin of a plane and everyone on the flight missed their connections. We stayed in a Radisson Hotel in Narita, Japan where I saw these guys:



Oh man, totally cool Japanese Jazzers. They were layin' it down and I was soaking it in. Also I told the bartender I was with the airline and he accidentally gave me my beer for half off because he thought I was on the crew = Colin, the pilot. The bass player had this sparkly, America-colored bass with 'fuckaholic' and 'thc' stickers on it. When I turned on Japanese TV, I saw the phenom of saw players ripping it up on the saw with a bow and a hammer. ( I will post a video of this later - I almost cried because of how awesome this guy is. ) So I got free dinner and free breakfast and a free trip back to the airport. Also with a crap coupon the airline gave me I bought a beautiful bottle of Japanese 'shochu' which I am still not sure of, except that it tastes flowery and alcoholic.

I told the security at the Tokyo/Narita airport that I needed to see a supervisor because of the suspicious nature of what was in my bag but she said "just try once." So they pushed me through the detector and I saw them scrutinize my bag full of wires and buttons in homemade cases for all of two seconds before passing it through like it were a bag of candy. What a huge relief and a horrific reality at the same time. That shit could have been anything. They could have at least asked wtf it was.

I got to Seoul on Sunday afternoon after leaving home early Friday morning. A driver was waiting for me at the airport with my name (customs didn't even bother with me) - and I took some pictures on the way in to my crazy new life...






The pictures are from the airport to my place bottom to top, jsyk (just so you know)

While I was in the airport I spoke to a Chinese woman who said that Seoul buildings were too big and too small at the same time. I saw what she meant and someone here elaborated: 20 story buildings go up 10 at a time, all right next to each other in such a small amount of space. And all the buildings are the same. If they didnt all look exactly the same they would be ugly plain buildings with no relation to the land or skyscapes but because there are so many all next too each other, they create this weird bouquet of buildings that is at least interesting to see all uniform and scattered over a small space.

I want to tell you about the rest of my week but alas there is so much and my time here is but little in the scope of life. So until next time, Annyonghi gase yo (stay in peace)