The day in pictures...

Lunch:


It's always exciting to see somebody you know in the subway station. Especially if they're across the platform. Even if you walked to the station together...

I managed to find a cup of decaf. It was all fancy-schmancy from Peru and single-cup-hand-brewed or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I suppose that explains the $3 price tag. But then again, that's how much a cup of Philz costs. Although Philz lets you put cream and sugar in your coffee.
While I was at the cafe, these two girls sat next to me and then asked my opinion on a T-shirt design they wanted to produce. We started talking and one girl said "I'm so glad to meet you! Let's have dinner some time." Yup! I met a real Korean person! We exchanged numbers! It was very exciting.

I'm going hiking this weekend about 5 hours north of Seoul to see the pretty fall colors. The timing couldn't be more terrible, seeing as I have 3 days of tests next week, have been (so far successfully) fighting off the cold that everybody and their mother has caught, and could really catch up on some sleep. But I'm excited to go. Almost as excited as when I found this:

This will be perfect since I have to bring my own food. I can't imagine anything better than enjoying a nice slice of mozzarella chicken-flavored Spam after 12 hours of climbing up a mountain. It's finding things like this that make me really sad my brother isn't here.

It's the little victories...

Instead of carrying around a gazillion different bonus point or frequent buyer cards, you can get a Happy Point card that works at a bunch of different bakeries and cafes. I wanted to get one because I picked up my teacher's birthday cake at Paris Baguette but unfortunately, the card doesn't start accruing points until you register it. I went to the website but got a little stumped because I still get ridiculously intimidated when I see a bunch of Korean words that I don't understand. So I decided to call the service number.

I know it seems silly to get excited over registering a card, but I was able to do it without looking in my dictionary or having to speak English. There was a minor hiccup when she asked for my alien registration number (I haven't registered yet) but she said I could use my birthday instead. I think I'll celebrate this small victory by treating myself to a hot chocolate while studying for my test at a cafe tonight...

Random Catch-Up

I've been shamefully terrible at keeping up with the little random things I experience on a daily basis. Seoul has been so visually, aurally, and olfactorily (um, I looked it up, I swear that's a word) stimulating that it's hard to keep up sometimes. The days are moving a little too quickly and I feel like I haven't really accomplished much. Perhaps I can blame it on 환절기, the changing of the seasons. All of a sudden it is cold, and I only have one coat and a couple sweaters. Whoops. Also, all my hair is falling out. That's kinda distracting as well. I'm going to blame that on all the stress of dealing with trying to publish my research. ARGH. My cousin says the acid rain will make my hair fall out, so I really shouldn't be so carefree when it drizzles. Acid rain??? I really am quite the sheltered San Franciscan. I suppose I should buy an umbrella.

Last week we went to the fish market to have lunch. Before:

After:

They take the fish skeleton and make a spicy soup with it. My mother was shocked (or rather, horrified) that I ate raw fish from the market, but (knock on wood) if I survived the Epic Food Poisoning of 2001, I can surely handle some sashimi.

Here is a "shortcut" I take to get to class every morning. I'm pretty sure OSHA would deem it necessary to wear a hard hat to walk through here, but Koreans don't seem to pay too much attention to those things. They're pretty lax about construction sites, and I've seen lots of projects go on at night without lights or signs or barriers. At any rate, I always walk quickly through this tunnel, and it shaves a whole 30 seconds off my morning commute.


My cousin's wife plays violin in the Suwon Symphony, and she gave me a ticket to last Friday's performance. It was at the Seoul Arts Center, a huge complex with several theaters and museums and restaurants. The main theater is shaped like a traditional Korean hat, or 갓.


Today was our grammar teacher's birthday. Check out this Korean pear one student gave her as a gift:

Our teacher wears glasses and a little bow barrette in her hair, so this was pretty damn cute.

Here she is, blowing out the candles on her sweet potato cake. Yup, you read that correctly, sweet potato cake:


After class, we went to 압구정. I don't think I've ever been here with my family, and if we have visited, I was too young to remember. There are tons of boutiques, cafes, and restaurants. One girl in our group mentioned cupcakes and then I couldn't stop thinking about them. Luckily we went to this cute cafe called Mug for Rabbit:

Organic carrot cake

Organic pumpkin cupcake (it just looked like a pumpkin, it was a vanilla cupcake)

Upstairs was a wine bar called Cork for Turtle. I love all these cute cafes here - if I had a stronger constitution (my heart was racing from the americano I had) and a fatter wallet (the coffee and cupcake were 10,000 won, or $8.57) you would find me in a different cafe every single day.

When we first got out of the subway station, we were looking for a place to eat, and a very nice lady asked us if we needed help. She spoke a little English and had just gotten back to Seoul after visiting her daughter in San Jose. She was very surprised Lydia and I had already graduated because she said we looked like we were in high school. I seriously almost hugged her.

P.S. Mom or dad, how do you pronounce 눈빛만? I have it written in my notes as 눈변만 but that doesn't seem right. Shouldn't it be pronounced 눈빈만? I have a reading test on Thursday.

Achasan

About a week ago I decided to hike up Achasan. The info I had said it was a short hike, which many people do wearing casual clothes. This led me to believe it would be "easy" but I was completely mistaken. Or I'm just terribly out of shape.

At any rate, I soon learned that there is nothing "casual" about hiking in Korea. Everybody was sporting full gear, down to hiking poles. Well, one guy didn't have a hiking pole so he improvised with an upside-down 5-iron.

To get to Achasan, you get off the subway at the Achasan station and go out exit 2. Walk down the street and take a left at the first intersection you see. The road will be skinny and you'll probably think "this can't be it" but it is.

Keep walking until you hit the end of the road:

I should trade in all my North Face gear for stuff that more accurately describes what I look like after half a shot of soju.

When you see this store, turn right. Walk up and up a hill. You'll pass a temple on the left side of the street. Keep walking on the main road - if you turn onto the little side street near the temple and attempt to hike up Achasan by scrambling through the grass you will most likely bewilder the people in the nearby apartment building who are hanging their laundry out to dry.
Shortly after you pass the temple, you'll see the trail to go up to the peak. The first part is wooden stairs. Enjoy these while they last. Next is a bunch of rocks.

Partway up to the top is this temple-like building.

If you want to go up to the platform, you have to take off your shoes:

There were lots of people picnicking up there. There's even books you can read while you are stretching your legs:

And as you keep climbing to the top, the views are not bad:




Unfortunately, I was concentrating too hard on climbing down the crumbly path that I somehow went the wrong way. Because all of a sudden, I saw this temple, which was definitely not on the path I took to go up:


Which then meant that I had the potential to get really lost on the way back to the subway station. Luckily I inherited my dad's sense of direction and not my mom's and I walked down a tiny street (crossing my fingers) and made it back to the subway station.

Language barriers

1. Volume

You know how people make fun of tourists who go to a foreign country and don't speak the language, so they think that by speaking English loudly that will make everybody understand them?

I think they're onto something.

Or rather, the only way you can have somebody understand you in the first place is if they can hear you.

I've realized that part of my problem here is that when I'm unsure of what I'm saying, or feel like I'll make a mistake and sound funny, I'll speak more quietly. This, of course, makes matters worse, because whoever is listening to me can't really hear me well in the first place, won't understand what I'm saying, and then I'll sit there feeling stupid because I think I'm speaking so terribly that nobody can understand me.

2. Irregular verbs and respect for elders*

So these may not seem related, but I think they are the reason I sound like a 2-year-old when I speak Korean.

I was raised (as were, I imagine, most people of Korean descent) to be respectful towards your elders. Now, this doesn't mean I didn't do that whole rebelling-against-the-parents thing, but if my grandma tells me to do something, I'll do it. Even if it is something ridiculous like schlepping my laundry across the city on two different subway lines even though there is a washing machine in my boarding house about five feet from my room.

Part of this whole respect thing comes with an entirely different way of speaking. If there isn't a completely different verb involved ("eat" has a regular verb and an honorific verb), then there is a way of adding a whole bunch of "shee" sounds to what you are saying that makes it suitable for saying out loud in front of somebody older than you. This makes my brain hurt. I'm already having trouble with the gazillion different verb endings for different situations (polite formal, polite informal, plain, polite informal question, plain question, polite informal command, etc etc etc). If the verb stem happens to have that "shee" sound in it already then I'm really screwed. If the verb is irregular, I just want to pull my hair out. Yes, I can look up somewhere what it's supposed to be, but in the interest of conversing in a timely manner (and not carrying around my grammar book) I'll just guess. But then you most likely end up saying an entirely different verb, then your grandma, I mean, whoever you are talking to, misinterprets what you are saying and hilarity** ensues.

3. Cultural bluntness***
Since I have been here, I've been told various things that acquaintances back home would NEVER think of saying, unless they happened to be rude or wanted to hurt my feelings on purpose. I'm trying to get used to it, but I kinda prefer not being told negative things about my appearance or age. I mean, there's nothing I can do about my age, and if I have a pimple I'm not going to slather tons of makeup on my face (thereby making the situation worse) just to make it easier for somebody else to look at me. I don't really consider pointing out what I already know helpful in that sense.

So my delicate American ego has definitely taken a few hits here, but since this bluntness falls under the "cultural differences" category it's not like I'm picking any fights with anybody or trying to change the way everybody observes things here. But if I happen to be having a bad day, there's only so much patience I can have without shutting down a little.

It's interesting trying to communicate like somebody with who you will always have cultural differences, and therefore, opportunities for miscommunication. Yes, there is something to be said for being in a new place and trying to adapt to its customs and culture. But I don't think this means you have to do or say things that you'd rather not do/say. Here are a few things that I don't think I'll be doing anytime soon just for the sake of that whole "when in rome..." thing:

1. Eating dog soup
2. Smoking
3. Telling people I don't know or have barely met that they've gained weight/should get married/are old/should get something or other on their face fixed.
4. Acquiring a boyfriend, calling him 오빠, then making him carry my purse
5. Watch TV on the subway (I got motion sickness the last time I tried that.)
6. Text-messaging while your teacher is talking during class

I don't mind if other people do these things (well, except for #6), I'm just probably not gonna get to these things while I'm here. And I'm pretty sure Koreans don't care if I do or don't do these things either.

I think the following things I'd like to keep doing but I'm not sure how well they'll fit in back home:

1. Crossing my arms to indicate No/FAIL/Can't
2. Making the peace sign in pictures
3. Spending hours (record so far: 3.5 hrs over dinner) just talking to a friend in a restaurant or cafe
4. Giving up your seat for an older person on the bus/subway without having to be guilted into it by a dirty look
5. Talking to older strangers who ask you questions because they need to know something, as opposed to ignoring those crazy guys on the MUNI trying to score a crack rock.

So these are just a few of the (very small) things that I am struggling with here. As you can see, it's not a big deal, and I'm managing to have a pretty awesome time.



*Respect for elders could also be categorized under opportunities rife with miscommunication.

**And by hilarity, I mean a HUGE kerfuffle.

***I'm not trying to make sweeping observations about Korean people here, it's just based on what I have personally experienced. In other words, n=7. The population of Seoul alone is over 10 million.

My subway is better than yours

It's difficult to explain in just one post how awesome the public transportation system is here, so I'll do it in bits and pieces. This is a picture of the display that shows you where your train is. Some stations have these displays on the outside so you know if you should run for it. For some reason I find it really cute to see your train chugging along at the bottom of the screen. If the next train is an express, the little display train is red.

My 할머니 (grandma) is cute #3

Today I visited my grandma and she wanted to have dinner at Home Plus. She also needed a few groceries which turned out to be quite heavy - a big bottle of water, and two bottles of yogurt ("너 mommy먹는 요구르트!!" to be exact) among other things - so I insisted on carrying the bag home. This was difficult, not because it was so heavy, but because my grandma kept trying to grab one of the bag handles so that we could carry it together. I won out in the end (if only I had displayed such conviction while we were making our dinner choices) so my grandma insisted I rest a little and watch TV before I took the subway back to school, since I must be exhausted from all the effort.

SBS was covering the "red carpet" at the Pusan Film Festival, so we watched that for a bit. All the actresses were wearing beautiful dresses, some of which were quite revealing. I don't think the lack of coverage bothered my grandma so much as how everything was, um, being kept in place.

*Woman wearing a low cut backless dress walks down the carpet*
Grandma: She's not wearing a bra, IS SHE????

*Woman wearing a strapless dress walks down the carpet*
Grandma: Seriously, WHERE does your bra GO when you're wearing a dress like that???

Photographic evidence...

That I'm eating something other than ramen:

See mom?? Tonight I had 떡만두국. Grandma had 순두부찌개, which smelled really good, and was exactly what I wanted, but thanks to my mom's tendency to still think of me as a 12-year old and go around telling people I can't eat spicy food, my grandma wouldn't let me get it. Her exact words were "you can't eat that!!" Sigh.


Um, yeah.



Americano and REAL apple pie. I know it sounds silly to get worked up over something like this, but it's always exciting to find some sort of pastry item that hasn't been adapted to suit Korean tastes - nothing buttery or too sweet. This pie had a really yummy crust (pretty hard to find in a land that thinks castella is delicious) and came with ice cream.


Speaking of pie, how much of a cutie pie is my cousin's daughter??


Her father and uncle are pretty silly, however.


More cuteness: some of my classmates and my grammar teacher before Yonsei's writing contest. You had to write either a poem or an essay - I chose to write a poem, because I figured that you could get away with terrible diction and horrible grammar. Although now that I think about it, it is possible that Korean poetry needs to be written in a certain style and whoever read my poem died laughing.

Ichi-men Ramen

First you order and pay at this machine.


After you get your receipt, you sit at an open stall (there's a sign that lights up when a seat is open) and then further customize your order using this form.


The stall has a curtain that is rolled up so that the waiter can take your order and deliver your food.




Once you get your food, the waiter pulls down the curtain so that you can slurp away in total privacy. The ramen is advertised as "Nagasaki 짬봉" (spicy seafood noodle soup). I ordered the "standard" level (not mild, not spicy) but nearly choked when I took a sip of the CLEAR broth. I decided that mixing in the pile of red stuff sitting on top of the noodles would probably be a bad idea, so I scraped it off.

It was good, but I think that when I want ramen, I want more of a pork-based broth. The interesting thing about this ramen was that the seafood and vegetables were seared on a griddle instead of boiled in the broth, so the shrimp and cabbage had a nice smoky taste to it.

All in all, not bad for 5000 won.

Tales of the Classroom, Part 1

My class is divided into 4 periods, and the 3rd period is reading. First we read about food - how etiquette differs between Korea and Japan, about certain typical Korean foods, and how to make a traditional Korean noodle dish. On Tuesday we started reading different cards sent on various occasions. Today's card was an example of a birthday card a man sent to his wife. Roughly (very roughly - it is late and I'm tired) translated:

To my beloved wife,

You are the person most precious in my life,
when anything good happens you are the person I want to share it with,
when I am lonely or troubled you are the person who gives me strength,
and I am sincerely wishing you a happy birthday.

넉넉하지 않은 생활 속에서도 늘 미소를 잃지 않고 (sorry, having trouble translating that line)
you think of me and the children first - thank you very much.
Ten years have gone by since we got married but I still look at you and find you very beautiful.
I love you forever.

Your husband

Phew. So we finish reading and the teacher says "Wow. What a card! Wouldn't you like to marry a man who writes a card like that? The man who wrote this card is most likely not Korean."