Pantsing

I just got pants'd by my 12 year old host brother. Except he did it wrong and pulled my boxers off too. This all happened while I was standing in the living room talking to my host Mom.

That pretty much sums up my homestay. They're awesome haha.

LSATs

I took the LSATs in Seoul yesterday. I've been studying a lot, and not doing anything interesting which is why there haven't been any posts in a while. I'll get back on the blogging train soon.

Thanksgiving in Seoul

This past weekend the vast majority of the Fulbright ETAs went to Seoul to enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. The first year ETAs (yours truly included of course) were invited to the US Ambassador's house. We had met Kathleen Stephens once before when she hosted us for a pool party to kick off our grant year.
Upon arriving to Seoul on the KTX (first time!), Jim and I went to the Fulbright building to catch the second half of the first Fulbright Forum. This particular one was about Buddhism and in particular, a modern Buddhist Monk's travel journal. I found this presentation to be quite fascinating and was upset that I wasn't able to arrive in time to see the beginning of it.
After the forum the Fulbright office prepared us an awesome spread of Thanksgiving foods (supplemented by some of Costco's finest staples). However, things got even better the next day when we went to the Ambassador's house for a Thanksgiving feast. There were so many delicious options that it rivaled the Thanksgiving my Mom puts together with the help of Costco and Stew Leonard's every year (she's the only Korean Mom who has no idea how to cook, but I love the woman anyway).
After the dinner ended, Tim and I did a little sightseeing and visited Deoksu Palace, the National Palace Museum near Gyeongbok Palace, and tried to find Changwadae (The Blue House) but a) had trouble locating it in the dark and b) had many interesting encounters when police officers kept stopping these two sketchy looking foreigners tentatively wandering around the President's neighborhood in the dark speaking broken Korean.

Changing of the guards at Deoksugong

Ambassador's house and my soon-to-be-empty plate

Ambassador Stephens' residence

Ambassador Stephens' residence

Deoksugong

National Palace Museum - for you '88 kids

National Palace Museum - '88!

National Palace Museum - Royal Rides

First self perpetuating water clock. It's as big as a house

Dakgalbi with Jing

and Jim and Neill - sweet bibs

Film in NK

http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom/north-korean-film-madness-part-2-of-3

Some reading on NK

Many of you will find fault with reading about the NK-SK situation through CNN and its obvious slants, but for the purposes of simplicity, read on if you're interested. Just take everything with a grain of salt. I find that many of these articles lay out the facts of the current events better than their competitors.


http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/05/25/us.korea.crisis/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/06/03/china.northkorea.diplomacy/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/05/27/north.south.korea.explainer.background/index.html

NK fires on SK military drills

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/23/nkorea.skorea.military.fire/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1

This on the heels of the revelation that NK has started up its Yongban plant again would increase tensions, don't you think? Well I haven't heard a peep about this from anyone in Korea, yet

Bowling

Last night I went bowling with the other male teachers. My time in Korea has brought me to the conclusion that all Korean men love to gamble and see it as a very masculine thing to do. Not only were the bowling stakes extremely high, but also the karaoke stakes (one gets an arbitrary score at the end of a song). They were willing to bet on anything and everything. After bowling, we ate raw fish. Aside from your standard Korean raw fish, I tried a few new foods, including고동 (conch?), 소라 (conch too?), 매추리 계란 (some sort of small hard boiled egg), 멍게 (raw sea squirt) and raw oysters. All were certainly "experiences" to say the least but I wouldn't recommend any to my friends.

Conch

Conch too apparently

Sea squirt - real salty

Fresh, fresh fish

Prior to today, I thought I had eaten fresh fish before. However, tonight, I was taken to new levels. First I went to my Sunday volleyball game and ate 회덮밥 after, like we always do. For dinner, my host family wanted to go out to eat and eventually after bouncing around from one crowded restaurant to another (when the weather is nice, everyone likes to go out, right?), we settled on this raw fish restaurant. I was a little disappointed at first because the 오리 (duck) restaurant was too crowded for my host family's tastes. However, the raw fish place ended up being quite the experience. First you go into this aquarium looking room and go over to a bunch of tanks filled with particular fish. Then you point to the one you want and this guy with a net fishes it out for you. He weighs it, tells you how much it is, you agree and bring your basket filled with fish (note: these fish are flipping violently, sort of like fish out of water would) to the first guy of this conveyor belt of butchers. The first guy cuts off the head and guts the fish. The second guy cleans it a little more thoroughly, the third guy fillets it, and finally the last guy makes it look presentable by slicing it up and wiping it down with a wet towel. Sound too mechanical to be true? Yea, well it was pretty much all business. You sit down for a while and voila, out comes a heaping platter of raw fish. It might go without mentioning, but I'll add it in anyway: it was flippin' delicious.

The first 3, while the 4th has his own work station to make everything look good. The man in the blue jacket is the "fisherman" or person who plucks the fish out of the tanks.

The first guy's job is the most gruesome.

My host mom was petting the flat fish (that's what she called it) saying, "Sorry but soon you'll be really delicious."

The bowl at the bottom of the picture is a hot stone bowl with rice and roe, while the bowl in the center is soup made from the fish's head. The platter of raw fish had been cleared away by this time. I was so hungry that I forgot my touristy instincts to photo-document every meal I eat.

I might not be needed here much longer...robots taking over the classroom

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/10/22/south.korea.robot.teachers/index.html?ref=nf

A love story

On Tuesday, my co-teacher had her open class. She said it went well but on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, she was in an awful mood and rumors have been circling around the office as to why. I was worried that perhaps I did something wrong, but my host Mom claims she's in a bad mood towards everyone.
The teachers all have different theories, but the students are in agreement as to why my co-teacher is in a sour mood (apparently she's standoffish towards them too). On Tuesday, she came in with a new haircut, and on Wednesday I came in with a new haircut. There was absolutely no correlation here but in Korea, one gets a haircut when something goes badly, like when a couple breaks up. Since there were already rampant rumors about some sort of relationship between us, this only fueled the fire and my host Mom shared the following story from her Korean language and literature class today. She's a Korean teacher at my school and 3 times a week, the students write a journal entry. This is roughly translated from Korean.
Baek teacher and Mr. G broke up which is why they cut their hair. There was a relationship between them but now it's over, because of Jun Hoo-nam teacher (my host Mom). Now their love is broken.
I hope that this student continues this tale next week. Stay tuned.

Dinner tonight

It was so good that I ate half of it before taking the time for a picture

낙지볶음밥 (Octopus fried rice)

Two things I want to note: 1) My family thinks it's cute/weird that I take pictures of food
2) This blog is turning into a journal about the different things I've been eating

Halloween weekend in Daegu (minus the Halloween)

Gatbawi

This past weekend, a bunch of ETAs converged on Daegu under the auspices of celebrating Halloween. In reality, it was just an excuse to see everyone.
Friday night we went to the Keimyung University area, which I really enjoyed. It was filled with a younger crowd and didn't have as many obnoxious foreigners around (as opposed to the downtown area). I'm not saying that all foreigners in Korea are obnoxious, but for some reason when they band together downtown, this often becomes the case.
Another ETA, Neill, stayed with my homestay during the weekend and on Saturday we went with my homestay family to Palgong Mountain to see Gatbawi. Gatbawi is a 4m tall Buddhist statue with a large flat rock or hat on its head. It was made during the Unified Silla dynasty era and is said to grant visitors one wish. Obviously I can't tell you what I wished for or else it won't come true. Everyone knows that.

The plastic boxes are filled with red envelopes containing money for Gatbawi

Fall in Korea

The family+1

On top of the mountain there were crowds of Korean parents praying for good scores on their kids' college entrance exams this month. That added to the allure of Gatbawi and his wish granting powers.

This 100 won coin stuck to the side of Gatbawi's rock grants me one (1) wish!

On top of the mountain, a KBS 2 "reporter" started filming Neill, asking him to repeat various phrases in Korean. Neill proceeded to massacre the Korean language (in his defense the cameraman was asking way too much and speaking way too fast). Neill is apparently going to be featured on KBS 2 this Thursday at 7 AM. I, on the other hand, was not of any interest to this cameraman. He seemed to only be fascinated by the "real" looking bearded American.
On the way back to Daegu, we stopped at this interesting restaurant. It was a huge garden with a stream running through it. It had various huts or houses that a group could sit in to dine together. My host Mom ordered a duck soup for us that would take 50+ minutes to prepare. She told us it would be worth the wait and she didn't disappoint us. It contained many different herbs and even pieces of wood (that Neill tried to eat). The aroma coming from the soup was pretty unique and Korea has proved to me time and time again that duck can be prepared in more ways than the peking duck one finds in American-Chinese restaurants.

Duck Soup

Article on NK-SK family reunions

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/30/nkorea.skorea.reunions/index.html?hpt=C2

Jukjun English Teachers' Dinner

Seahouse Restaurant

A while back I went to dinner with the other Jukjun English teachers. This is a picture from that evening.

A busy weekend

On Saturday, I went to Busan with some friends for the fireworks festival. Living on the East River in NYC has allowed me to see spectacular firework shows every July 4th, but I had never ventured into the masses to watch them from the ground level. We gathered on Gwanali Beach in Daegu to watch the hour long show amongst 3.5 million people (that's what the Busan tourism website claims, although it can't be accurate). The show was pretty good, minus the pushing and the close proximity to a man who smelled like he had just bathed in kimchi. Busan itself is a pretty lively city. It's the second biggest city by population in SK and had a lot going on. I met up with Jim, who missed the fireworks but not the evening festivities.
Jim and I took the KTX back to Daegu in the morning and we both promptly fell asleep. Somehow, by a stroke of pure luck, Jim woke up while we were sitting at Dongdaegu station and he dragged me off the train (although we forgot our kimbap). I got home and went back to sleep for a few hours before waking up for lunch and to go hiking with my host family. However, it was raining so we decided to visit 부석사 in Yeongju, which is about 2 hours north by car. Since it was further north, the leaves were already starting to change colors here and the scenery was beautiful. This temple is one of the more famous ones in Korea (although I'm starting to think that Koreans say that about all their temples). While there, they bought me a 죽비 or a stick that's used by monks to wake each other up with a quick thwack. While sitting in a small restaurant after the temple visit, one of the waitresses approached me and asked me to help her with her thesis on rural tourism by foreigners in Korea. I agreed and she gave me an 8 page survey of almost incomprehensible English. After I finished, she gave me a small Andong mask as a token of her appreciation which was pretty cool.
Upon arriving back in Daegu, we went to a 오리 (duck) restaurant, which was one of the best meals I've had in Korea. I've never been a huge fan of duck because of how fatty it is, but Korea has desensitized me to eating fat off meat because Koreans don't really differentiate between fat and meat. With that said, there were two kinds of duck on the grill: regular and smoked. Both were delicious, although I think the smoked duck pleased my Americanized palette more than my Korean host family's.

Gwanali Beach

Aquarium

Aquarium

Aquarium

Aquarium

Aquarium

Aquarium

Aquarium - What the hell is this?

Aquarium

Interesting "No Smoking" sign

A sea of people

Fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks

Busuksa Temple

Busuksa Temple

Busuksa Temple

Busuksa Temple

If you can get a coin to stick to this "floating rock" you get a wish!

Busuksa Temple

Cute sign on the duck restaurant