The view is impressive

Hello all(maybe that means just mom, maybe that means 100 people, who knows),

Hopefully this will be the last of the Monday updates. For better or worse I think I’ll be writing more regularly starting this week. I finally(FINALLY!) got paid this weekend, so I’ll be getting my very own internet connection at my apartment this weekend.

Furthermore, Im finding this once a week updates nearly impossible. There’s so much I want to talk about that to sit down and write it for one giant update is unreasonable both for me and for you. So, instead I plan on doing two, three, four-whatever strikes my fancy-shorter updates a week. Just, whenever I get an idea I’ll put it down. So, you’ll checking of this site is going to have to increase, but it shouldn’t be a forty-five minute read anymore.

Anyway, I had a weekend full of discoveries, so here’s another long read. My week sped by as usual. Kids are always fun, adults can be a struggle-but what’s work without a little struggle.

Friday night Alex and I wanted to celebrate getting paid, so we went in search of a social place to be in Nowon.(Where my office is for those of you not keeping up) Long story short we discovered that, except in Western influenced areas, the bars are not the happening scenes. It’s the restaurants. All the bars we tried out were dead, then we noticed all the eateries were happening (this was around midnight). Alex and I were trying to find a restaurant we could navigate when we were greeted by the owner of one who knew mediocre English, and decided to go in. I think I’ve been too worried about going into places without English menus. Like every person in the joint spoke English, or at least enough to know what “more water” is, and that’s about all you need.

This is a good discovery for me. I go to bars not because I enjoy sitting and drinking, but because I enjoy the social aspect, so if I can get the social aspect and eat food-and have a beer or two-all the better. It’s just a bit shocking to me that Koreans eat dinner at like midnight. I’m not sure if they’re eating a 4^th meal or what, but this isn’t like a small midnight snack. Our dinner consisted of Galbi(Spare Ribs), KimChi(can’t describe it), Cabbage and yogurt(Better than it sounds), Spiced sausage, rice cakes, and spiced bean sprouts. I’ve been meaning to do an update solely to the food over here, but for now lets just say when you go to a high quality restaurant the food is superb.

And yes, you do eat everything with chop sticks, and yes you sit on the floor, and yes you cook the meat in the middle of the table. It’s not really novel over here, it’s just the way you eat.

Feeling confident of our first discovery Alex and I decided to be a tad bit more daring Saturday night. Taran was busy with work things, so are usually Saturday night group was just Alex and I this time. Not shaken we decided to head to Myong-Dong, which I’m discovering is basically the Lower Manhatten of Seoul, for dinner and then to Seoul tower. We were both feeling bold from last night’s successful diner navigation so we found the first place that looked good and marched in. Luckily the menu was in English so it wasn’t THAT bold of a move. It was a Chinese place, good food, better tea served with the food. I have to say authentic Chinese food actually doesn’t taste that different than American Chinese food. I mean it tastes better, but it at least has the same types of tastes.

We messed around the Myong-Dong scene for awhile(pic included below) and checked out the shops.

Which reminds me, shopping is going to be the end of me here. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, dresses immaculately. Even in their equivalent of Wal-Mart they only sell what we would consider dressy clothes. I love this, back home if you dress up too much you’re ridiculed, here if you don’t dress up you look like a bum-actually that’s an injustice to the bums, some of them look quite nice. Anyway, there are hundreds and hundreds of stores that make Old Navy or A&F look like Wal-Mart everywhere you go. It’s not all cheap, but a shopper with a keen eye-such as myself-can get by quite cheaply. For instance, this week I picked up a jersey(not sports, the real kind), a dress shirt, and a tie for a total of $40. Their regular total prices $133. I am a shopping maniac. If this keeps up my wardrobe will be entirely transformed and tripled in about 3 weeks. That and travel are my money cripplers, but man do I look good.

Okay, back to the story. After a couple of purchases, we went to Seoul tower, which is kind of the centerpiece of the city. It’s on top of a hill and rises another 210m, so it’s about 400 meters above the rest of the city. It was a bit odd because for the most part it was couples going up for a romantic night view-but Alex and I wrote it off as reconnaissance on our part for possible future dates, which seemed like an acceptable answer for the both of us. The whole experience was mostly standing in lines, and then a fairly bad view because it had clouded up a couple of hours before we got there. Still, you could probably see about 70% of the city, and that’s still 15 million people-which is obviously something I’ve never seen before. There’s actually not much of a “skyline” to Seoul-its tallest building is only 63 stories, but there’s thousands upon thousands upon thousands of 30-50 story apartment complexes, so the massive sites just stretch on forever. I included some pictures below, but it was difficult to take them because without a flash they were blurry, and with a flash they just reflected the window. Eh, I guess I can’t share everything.

Yesterday, Sunday, I was feeling adventurous. I live relatively close to the mountains, and they’d been calling my name for awhile. I was a little timid to go hiking up them because A) I don’t know the way B) I have no cell phone if I get lost C) I DON’T KNOW THE LANGUAGE. But it was nice out today and I couldn’t help myself. I went with the intention to simply investigate the scene. It actually only took me about 3 minutes to get to the foothill of the nearest mountain. I walked along that road for a couple of miles, noting the multitudes of trails. Finally I came across a trail that seemed to be filled with hikers. Well, perhaps I’ll just go a few meters up and see what it’s like I thought. I did so, but just a hundred meters up I could see a clearing with a good view, so I talked myself into going up there. I reached that spot and looked out over the city-it was a better view than the night before, I’ll be sure to take a camera next time. I was content with that, but then I turned to look up the mountain and just a couple kilometers up was an awesome rock face I could see people sitting on. I wanted to go there, so higher up I walked. I’m not a good enough writer to accurately describe the view from that position. It was, literally, like looking down from atop a mountain onto twenty million people.

I’ll take my camera next time I go(soon). My only wonder is what it would have looked like 100 years ago. There’s hundreds of rolling hills and mountains in the area. I’m sure it was even more impressive before the ten thousand apartment complexes when up. After I had spend 20 minutes or so there I decided to head back down. I have to admit I was tempted to go on further. I think that’s a fault of my personality-if I see a point higher or better than where I’m currently at I have to go for it, but I convinced myself I’d leave that accomplishment for another time, and headed down.

I’m going to be addicted to hiking I think. Where I was seated was the peak of that mountain, but there was a path down into the valley and across to another, higher, mountain. On the other side of the mountain was a much more difficult climb consisting of mostly a granite face, and a couple miles to the south there’s the biggest mountain in Seoul which is huge and ominous, and which I feel I must climb.

(Quick geography lesson. Seoul is divided in two by the Han river. I live in the north east corner of the city. The city has tons of little hills, seven(I think) major hills within the city, and is surrounded by mountain ridges on all sides. The mountain peaks in the north east side(my side) are the tallest)

And that gets us up-to-date on exciting things. I’m not sure what I’m doing next weekend, but the weekend after I know I’m going to a Korean baseball game on the south side of the city with a student turned friend of mine, I’m looking forward to that. There’s only 7 stadiums in all of Korea and I can get to any of them in like 2 hours or less, so I’m contemplating trying to get all the Korean stadiums to go along with my American collection.

Which reminds me, my favorite baseball team over here, I’ve decided, are the Hyundai Unicorns. http://www.hd-unicorns.co.kr/ Don’t skip the intro-and yes, this is fairly accurate as to what Korea is like...

“Those wacky Koreans” anecdotes: both from my 6^th grade classes this week.

1. I ask my class the question “What would you say as an icebreaker when you met your sister’s boyfriend for the first time?” Male student answers: “Was she good?”

No, no son, I’m pretty sure you’d never ever want to know that…

2. I ask “Where is your dream vacation”

Female student asks me: “Teacher, would you say your dream vacation is to be inside

Me?”…Not if I want to keep my job I wouldn’t…(I still don’t know exactly what she was asking with that one.

Oh, one other. I was looking at shampoo the other day. There was this product, I never figured out exactly what it was-it said “Green Tea hair helper”. Anyway, the directions were: “Towel dry hair, apply, then shave head.” Again, I don’t know what they were even trying to say there, unless the green tea helps you to shave your head better or something.

Non-Korean note: Alex and I watched Blood Diamond on Thursday. This is funny because any time anyone from America meets Alex their first question is usually “Have you seen Blood Diamond?” He hadn’t. Now he has. Anyway, a general smug comment when I was back home from Americans was “Dicapprio doesn’t sound anything like a South African.” Like movie critics, or just people who like to bitch in general had that opinion. Alex disagrees, he says he actually did a pretty good job, so poo on you all you smug Americans. Although, if you’re smug you’d probably say you know better than someone from there. Also, some stuff which was gibberish to me the first time I watched it makes sense now. South African English has a lot of Afrikaans(African+dutch) in it. For instance, don’t ever call an African a Keffar. (Afrikaans for My Ni****)

K, that’s enough for now. More later. Pictures below

The view from the outside


The view from the inside

Just a reminder of how far away I am.