Weekend in Seoul

   We had a snowy day a while ago and campus was really pretty in the morning.

I decided to find a different path down the hill.

   This Saturday my Crime class met in Seoul to make up for a class period we will miss later in the semester.  There are numerous ways to get to the city from where we are.  Buses run, and we are at the last stop on one of the Seoul subway lines.  From a subway stop not far away you can catch an express train that will skip most of the smaller stops or the high speed KTX (K, Thanks) trains.  Jun and I took the subway in, a two and a half hour trip.  It was nice having a Seoul native with me to explain the system, but I think that now I could navigate pretty well on my own.  Actually, I did get us home without a hitch, so I guess I can!

   Before we left we stopped by a pillow fight organized on facebook.

Fluffy Seppuku

   We met up with one of Jun's high school friends and had 남겹살 (sam-gyup-sal) for dinner.  남겹살 is thick slices of pork belly (basically uncured bacon) brought out to the table raw so that the diners can grill it themselves.  The traditional way to eat it is to lay the cooked meat on a leaf of lettuce and put on whatever sides you want, sauces, onions, garlic, rice, kimchi, etc.  Then you fold up your lettuce and eat the whole thing in one bite!  After dinner we found the 찜질방 (jjim-jil-bang) where most of us spent the night.  A 찜질방 is a popular type of public bath house.  Jun's friend headed home and we killed time in a bar waiting for our classmates to show up.

Favorite beer from London Underground, but they only had the sign :(

   At the 찜질방 you are given a key to a pair of lockers, one for shoes (mine were almost too big) and another for your clothes and anything else you have with you.  After stripping naked you go take a shower and then spend as long as you want in pools of varying temperatures (cold, hot, and hotter) or wet or dry sauna rooms.  Afterward you can spend 1000W if you want to borrow clothes and spend the night.  I should have brought earplugs though, everybody just sleeps in a big room so there's lots of snoring, whispering, and people moving around.  Between that and the hard floors I didn't sleep too well.

   On Saturday we were set to meet at Emart (3 story department store/grocery/food court) at 1130, but Dr. Oh was a little late.  He finally came with a group of military students from Thailand who are studying here in Korea.  We ate lunch, then spent some time wandering the store.  I found a new wireless keyboard that has Hangul characters on the keys allowing me to type in Korean! (hence the fancy letters you see in this post)  After Emart we walked along the Han River that flows through the city.  We came to the an outdoor market and a small indoor art gallery.  The art gallery was connected to a subway station where we began our journey home.

I wasn't the only one tired of shopping

Jun/Nixon

Thai Ninja

The gallery is in the raised tube-like structure.

Reminded me of some of the Prague statues.

There's an ISU Station!

   On one of our transfer stations we said "안녕하세요" (formal hello) to an old man behind us on the platform.  It turned out that he was studying English because his son had recently moved to Canada and he wanted to be able to talk to his future grandchildren.  Our train was literally packed, I would have a picture but I wasn't able to reach my camera.  We found out from our new friend that there had been horse races at one of the stops nearby and that that was where the crowd was from.


   On Sunday I went for another hike with my friends.  I brought my camera and took some more pictures of the scenery around our campus.

Japan Explains Nuclear Problem (for kids!)

This link is to help put to rest any anxiety you may be feeling about the Japanese nuclear power plant issues.  It is a youtube video from Japan explaining the situation to kids using toilet humor.  Entertaining and informative!
 I don't know how well the embedded video works, but you can try that too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXPN4dfBAGU

Hiking

Hey everybody, sorry I haven't posted anything for you in a while.  I was going to put something up early last week but I got sick with some sort of throat and sinus bug.  I felt pretty bad on Monday and Wednesday, and spent all day Tuesday in bed.  I'm feeling much better now, and figured you might enjoy an update.  We didn't feel anything from the earthquake here, and nobody's running for cover from fallout yet, so no worries there.

Classes are going well, although I missed most of them at the beginning of the week.  I had a presentation over the Korean War on Thursday in my film class that I gave along with four other group members.  We got to do our first calligraphy, which is a little difficult.  You have to keep the ink from blotting and it's really hard to get the ends of brush strokes to look nice and rounded instead of jagged.

My best attempt; there are vowels along the top and below is an attempt at my name.

There is a "mountain" behind our dorm that I had heard from a friend had some trails on it.  I call it a "mountain," but it's as much a mountain as Lake Lavern is a "lake."  I looked at google maps and was able to find the trailhead so I went for a hike.  The end I found on the map is near the front gate of campus, but I found that the trail also comes out near our dormitory.  I took a lot of pictures my first time, but didn't take my camera when I went back with a friend.  We followed a branch of the trail I hadn't hiked the first time and found that there was a lot more than the branch running by campus.  The new trail went back into the hills and shows off several vistas and passes what we believe are burial mounds.  We hiked back for almost an hour and still hadn't found the end of the trail, but it was getting late so we decided to head back.  I'll put up some pictures from my first journey and next time I go I'll definitely remember my camera.

Our "mountain"

The landscape reminds me a lot of the woods at home,

except for a few stands of pine trees.

View of town.

Our dorm complex from above.

First Week of Classes

   Calligraphy on Wednesday went pretty fast, our supplies hadn't arrived yet so we got a brief introduction and went on our way.  Thursday was about the same, there was something about the class having too many people in it so it was canceled.  On Friday we actually attended class for the whole period.  The reading and writing classes are currently teaching from the same packet of notes so that we get down the basics.  We learned vowels on Monday and started in on the consonants.  I woke up late that day, and barely had time to get down to class, much less find food, so it was nice that our professors give us a 10 minute break for every 50 minutes of class (the waffle place is right outside the building where we have most of our classes).

   This weekend for me was pretty uneventful.  We haven't gotten our stipends yet because of communication issues and bureaucracy between the bank and the university.  A lot of people went into Seoul to celebrate DAnimal's birthday, but I stayed home to preserve my dwindling funds.  On top of that it seems like most of the Korean students went home for the weekend.  I've gotten a lot of reading done and, honestly, should have written a post before now but I've been lazy.  I anticipate next week to be much more interesting since it will be our first time in our Tuesday classes and everything else should be more or less settled in.  I wish I had more to share with you guys, but I haven't done much of anything noteworthy.  I'm going to go see if I can climb the hillside next to the dorm, I think I saw where a trail head should be on Google Maps.

PS:  One more time warping fact about traveling to this country:  I'm now 23 years old.

First Day of Classes

    I wound up with a pretty good class schedule, 9:00 start on Tuesday, 10:00 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and 11:00 on Friday.  They do classes a little different here.  For the most part a three credit class will meet once a week for three hours, rather than three times a week for one hour.  I didn't think my attention span would last that long.  Two hours of learning how to shape my mouth around new vowel sounds later I was quite surprised to find that class was over.  My first class only lasts an hour and is called CID.  It's basically just a big meeting for all of the international students.  This week we elected three student body representatives, members who go between us and the faculty and handle celebrations as well as concerns.  We also signed up to receive cell phones, which are coming Wednesday or Thursday due to the holiday.

   I went straight from CID to my speaking class which is in the same building.  It was taught all in Korean, except for a bit of translation here and there.  It seems like a good way to learn, your brain doesn't have the English to fall back on.  Then I have an hour break for lunch before Crime and Accident Case Studies.  Dr. Oh was late, he thought he had class at 3 like last semester.  I think it's going to be very interesting and might give me something to argue with Greg about.  It is supposed to last three hours, but we got out in two.  I think he wants to have a lot of discussion in class, which should help the time should pass quickly.

   Tuesday was a holiday, the remembrance of one of the earliest displays of Korean resistance during the Japanese military occupation that happened March 1, 1919.  I could copy and paste more, but if anybody's interested just Wikipedia "March 1st Movement."  I hung around for a while, then went back to Cheonon with more different people around 2:30.  I don't have many new pictures, but I did find a Pizza Hut and I have a picture of the market sign all lit up.  I had cheese ramen for lunch before we left, which was incredible!  For dinner my suite-mates ordered take out chicken, which is essentially a few pounds of boneless wings.  Four of us made quick work of it.  Its tasty, but sadly not very spicy.  One of the included sauces is wasabi based and an unexpected kick in the taste buds for unsuspecting foreigners.  Still better than the spicy version we had the other day, it was so strong even I had a hard time finishing it.  There doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

   Tomorrow I have Calligraphy from 10 to 12, I figured it would be a fun skill I could take home with me.  Hopefully it will help in learning the Korean characters, and maybe improve my own handwriting!

Food In Korea!

Most of the food I've had so far is quite good, although some of it I haven't much cared for.  This post will be continuously updated as I taste and take pictures of different foods and meals.  It is unfortunate that without a rare neurological condition or mind altering drugs to give you synesthesia you won't be able to taste most of them.  Below are what I have so far, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get them reorganized, captioned, stories told, names given, etc.

Meals

Lunch served prior to the Opening Ceremony in Seoul.  Clockwise from top left: BBQ chicken, tiny fishes, pickled radish, sausage, egg loaf (similar to an omelet) fried prawn, orange, kimchi, bean sprout salad, more sausage

Tiny fishes look at you forlornly while you eat.

Carlos with Bibimbap (I think), mixed vegetables, rice noodles and an over easy egg

Octopus tentacles with rice and seaweed

Charlie with pork dumplings

Pork cutlet that was maybe a little westernized, but quite delicious.

Our welcoming dinner after orientation on Friday.  I forgot to take a picture until my second plate.

Kimbop (sushi) and appetizers that are free and served with every meal.  If you want more, just ask.

Snack Food 

First snack I had, Jay shared some from his wanderings before I got here.  They are the most delicious Sun Chips ever, which is to say the most delicious chips ever.

"Bluberry waffle juseyo" and 1500W will earn you one of these, filled with whipped cream and blueberry deliciousness.  There are a wide variety of flavors to become addicted to.

Cheonon street vendor.  Hot dogs are quite popular.

 

         A pet shop.  I think...

Delicious corndog.  As an aside, a surprising amount of people think that Charlie looks like Jesus.

This vendor may know us by name before we leave, we visited both times we went to Cheonon.

Jay had fun in the steam while our food was being prepared.

You get five for 3000W, but they disappeared before I could get a picture.

Marketplaces
This is a sort of hidden market in Cheonon.  We found it our first trip in after wandering aimlessly for several hours, when we went back with Bob (a native to the area) he said he'd never been there.

Beans and spices in the foreground, fresh fruit behind.

This one came out blurry, but I kind of like it.  The apples are delicious, crisp, juicy, and enormous.

Bars
After orientation some of the returning students organized a trip to expand our knowledge of Korean culture.

Everybody sits down for a post-orientation/pre-semester relaxer.

It's like a Lorch-Russell dinner at the dining center, but with beer, soju, and puffed rice.

The pitcher is filled with Cass, a very popular brand of beer.  I've seen signs for it everywhere and not many competitors.  It's really light, but very carbonated.  Better than American "Lite" beer.

Puffed rice is the standard bar snack.

Sometimes night shots require a tripod.

Western Chain Reasturants
I thought it would be interesting to keep tabs on how many western chains have made it into South Korean and which ones.
In Cheonon:

Two stories of doughnuts!

Not a western chain, but I think Friend Chicken could catch on.  They'll need a number that doesn't start with 555 though