Someone Skips Leg Day...

Hello all! I am terrible at blogging. I did a lot of stuff this last week and am now settling in at my orientation, so I have a little time to recap.

First of all, toilets. I am still not used to the differences here. I'm positive that this is TMI, but it's actually a legitimate and huge part of my experience. I only had to use a squat toilet at Tina's school and have not encountered another one (thankfully) yet. I'm sure they're lurking though. Other than that, in most of the bathrooms here you throw the toilet paper into a bin next to the toilet instead of flushing it since Seoul's plumbing system is so old and can't handle the volume. You try using a bathroom differently after 20 years and see how much you adjust.

Anyway, since there were a lot of great things about this week, I'll list off some highs:

1. My Love from Another Star: Tina and I visited the set of an awesome and wildly popular Kdrama, "My Love from Another Star." It was so much fun! We got to go into the sets and take pictures and such. It was much smaller than I imagined, so I guess the actors are not as tall as I thought. It was great to see the set though. Some pics:

Me with my main man Do Min Joon, and Cheon Song Yi is also there...

An excellent drama about an alien who has been on earth for 400 years 

Can't go back to your planet if I've got you...

Do Min Joon's secret hidden library

Do Min Joon had South Pacific in his room!

We come in Peace

Tina with the stars

So that was really fun!

On Tuesday we went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was also excellent! I also sat in on Tina's Korean class, which was helpful to see but not helpful since my Korean is still very basic and I didn't know what was going on. Mostly I just wrote out the alphabet a million times.

2. Cat Cafe. Following our endeavor to see CATS (which I have a strong desire to see again, as I always do when seeing musicals), we decided that a week away from real cats was too long. On Wednesday, I was reunited with feline friends. I miss my cats from home, but damn these cats were a good substitute. We stayed for like 2 hours just chillin with the cats. Most Koreans can't have cats in their apartments so they come to places like this (there are dog cafes too), but they are also much more timid around animals than Americans are (which might explain why I was the only one actively chasing cats for attention). Anywho, here are some awesome animals:

Squishy

Sir Derpyface in all his glory

KITTEN

Kitten hogged treats

CATS CATS CATS

I've waited my entire life for this moment

Kitten loved Sarah's skirt

After Cat Cafe we went to the other Korean language exchange thingy that Tina goes to, which was also fun!

3. Food. Now that I can functionally use chopsticks (kinda sorta), I like eating again! I tried some new stuff:

My first street food experience!

 To be honest, the rice cakes in spicy red sauce (pictured above) were not my favorite. It was the first thing I had eaten that did not immediately sit well. I'll have to give it another go.

Chicken and veggies in a sauce (we only got a little of the spicy sauce) and after they make rice and it is incredible.

Dutch Coffee Bingsu, but we did not pour the coffee over it at my request

A hot dog covered in fries, aka the greatest creation in history

So the food situation is pretty great. We also went shopping. That situation is also great.

4. SMTown Concert. On Friday Tina, Sarah (Tina's old roommate from Ithaca, for those who still don't know her) and I went to SMTown's World Tour concert (World tour here means Korea, China, and Japan...) to see all of the major SM groups. SM is one of the major music companies here. They represent such groups as Super Junior, SHINee, EXO, Red Velvet, Girls' Generation, f(x), TVXQ, and many others.  At first these names meant nothing to me, but I really enjoyed the concert... For about 5 hours. It was from 5PM til 11PM and all three of us could barely hold it together for 5 hours. It was 6 ours straight. No actual breaks between groups. Still, it was a really great way to get inundated into the Kpop world.

In case you want to watch some of the videos for these groups:

Super Junior (my current fave thanks to my companions): Swing

Super Junior: Sorry Sorry

Super Junior: Mr. Simple

EXO: Overdose

EXO: Wolf

SHINee: Sherlock

Anyway, it was awesome. Except nothing is awesome when you don't expect it to last 6 hours and it does.

ALSO SOME OF THESE BOYS CLEARLY NEED TO STOP SKIPPING LEG DAY. I FEAR FOR THEIR TOOTHPICK LEGS AS THEY DANCE.

The ones who do not skip leg days are fiiiiiiiiiiine. I can feel my legs getting stronger from walking around Seoul!

Kyuhyun (and all the members of Super Junior...) does not skip leg day

5. Having dinner with Tina's co-teachers. We went for Korean BBQ and had some Soju. They were very excited that Tina was staying and that I was here. They kept saying that Tina's Korean is really cute since she is quite expressive. Also, Korean tends to be one-note when they speak, and English is not, which makes for an interesting change over. So Tina still has English intonation on Korean words, which is apparently adorable. 

Anyway, it made me really excited to get my own school and start having my own experience. I'm currently at orientation, so it will be great to finally get into the swing of things.

I had some lows this week too (in case everyone thought it was all hot dog sticks and shoe shopping).

1. The Korean Language. It's really hard to learn. I'm just getting into the alphabet and words. I know some words, but it's just not going as well as I want it to be.

2. Related, but I feel like I lost my independence. I was at the height of self-sufficiency when I lived alone in Olean. I was doing my own schoolwork, I had a job that I loved at the Iroquois Group, I was teaching and working on a thesis, and I lived alone. Now I can't even read basic words and I was almost totally dependent on Tina during the time I stayed. My residual anxieties from grad school (read: I'm not good enough, I should be doing better, I should be doing more) are amplified here, where I feel like I'm failing by not being better at Korean and living here. I know it's mostly just me, since I've been here for like 10 days and no one expects me to be an expert, but still. I knew it would be hard and I know it will get better.

3. I'm sweaty all the time still. Everyone tells me it isn't too bad this year as far as the heat goes, but try telling that to my face.

4. Toilets.

In conclusion, Korea is awesome despite some minor setbacks. See ya after orientation! 

Arrival in Seoul!

Hello everyone! I'm safe and sound in my twin sister Christina's apartment in Seoul. I'm finally adjusting to the time change a bit, so I have the time and energy to explain what my life has been like now that I moved to Seoul.
First of all, I'm really hot. Like all the time. Koreans don't seem to sweat, but every time I go outside I'm wiping my face and probably look like a lunatic. We try not to turn on the AC very much to keep Tina's bill low, but we cave sometimes. Anyway, my flight from JFK was 14 hours. Oy. That's the longest I've ever been on a plane! I've been in a car for more time than that, but something about being in a giant plane over the arctic circle (seriously, you fly reeeeeeeally far north then swing back down) with no stopping is not fun. The flight also took place from 1PM to 3AM Eastern Time, so I had a really hard time sleeping since that's the time I'm normally awake, even with only 5 hours of nervous sleeping the night before. So I watched a lot of movies: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Lego Movie (EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!), Wreck it Ralph (hi dad!), Divergent, and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. All of them were really entertaining except the last one, but I loved the book and knew the movie was a trainwreck so I watched it last and dozed during it.

It's totally fine, 14 hour flight. I'm good.

The flight wasn't terrible, but after 9 hours I was going nuts. We got two meals on the flight and they offered us water all the time. I was awake, so I drank a lot, which was not great for being trapped in a tiny compartment with limited bathrooms. AND Koreans always brush their teeth after eating (seriously, there were toothbrushes and mouthwash in the bathrooms), it took forever to go to the bathroom. The wonderful flight attendants kept trying to shuffle me around to various bathrooms on the plane (they felt bad for me since I am clearly not Korean??) only to find an equally long line of Koreans waiting to brush their teeth! Yay! Anyway, the food was pretty good and the airline was great and I can't complain.

Sweaty in Seoul.

OH WAIT I SUPER CAN. When I finally got off the plane and to the baggage claim, the suitcases started coming out but my two giant 50 pound bags were nowhere to be seen. After about half an hour of internal panic, they announced that there was a baggage mix-up and they would be delayed. There were only a dozen or so of us left waiting, and I had my first instance of wondering what the hell I was thinking by moving to South Korea. After over an hour, my bags finally showed up and I got to awkwardly and sweatily leave. 

THEN I FINALLY GOT TO SEE TINA AND I HADN'T SEEN HER IN APPROXIMATELY 355 DAYS AND I WAS SO FREAKING HAPPY BUT SO TIRED AND SWEATY AND STRESSED BUT EVERYTHING WENT AWAY WHEN WE GOT TO HUG AGAIN. OMG.

I will never stop freaking out about how much I missed Tina and how great it was to finally see her. We hustled my bags over to the train and took an hour long ride to Hongdae (a popular shopping district near her apartment) and took a taxi to her apartment. I know she got me food and we settled me in, but honestly I don't remember much until the next day. I had been awake for the better part of 29 hours by the time I went to bed at 9 PM in an attempt to reset my sleep schedule to match Seoul, which is 13 hours ahead of New York. So I literally have to reverse my sleeping/waking patterns. yay.

On my first full day, Tina took me to her school for summer camp. It was awesome! All of the kids were totally surprised by how much we look alike, and Tina's coteachers were really nice and welcoming (if a little shocked at the resemblance). Apparently twins aren't very common in Korea, because we get a lot of weird looks that I think go beyond the normal observation of a foreigner. Everyone thinks I'm the older one (HAH TINA) but Tina takes great pride in telling everyone she is the older twin (HAH ME), which delights both young and old Koreans.

After school I was still tired as hell, so we just sort of lounged around and let me unwind until we went out for dinner. We had meat dumplings and some kind of cold soup with noodles and cucumber (seriously cold- there was ice in the broth) and other things that I can't recognize still. This is where I got to try and use Korean chopsticks for the first time. It was so great (read: the hardest fucking thing I had to do all day). Korean chopsticks are reeeeeeeeeeally skinny. They're way thinner than the wooden ones you get with Chinese food and way more difficult to handle than Japanese ones as well. And noodles are about the absolute worst thing to try and scoop up with them, but most places don't have forks. Tina's pretty good with them (I suppose a year will do that to you...) and she helped me get some noodles onto my spoon so that I could try them. After a valiant attempt to reawaken my carpal tunnel, I stuck with the dumplings. I'll master you yet, chopsticks.
  

I also tried an ice cream tube. It was awesome.

On Friday we chilled around and went to the Burger King near Tina, because it had been three days since I had had BK and needed my fix. Just kidding! I wanted to see what it was like. Weirdly, a lot of the products are still the old ones: thin fries, different chicken nuggets. It was like a flashback to 2007 when my life ended and I started working at BK (oh 16 year old me... did you ever think you would be in a BK in Seoul??) with all of the old stuff.
That night I got treated to an awesome Korean experience: Chicken and Beer. It was a thing I had seen from a Kdrama "My Love From Another Star" that is apparently a really big thing. I met up with Tina's friends Sarah (who I knew from visiting Ithaca in undergrad) and Janell (she's from Hawaii!), who are both signed on for a second year. It's really nice to see people who really enjoy being here and who want to stay. It makes me feel like I made the right choice. The chicken was awesome, if a little spicy (the Koreans always flip out when foreigners order "spicy" things since they think we can't handle it), and the beer was refreshing since I haven't been feeling up for alcohol in ages. Apparently the chicken was even spicier than normal, since the veterans had runny noses like I did. Oh well
.
 After chicken and beer we went to a Noraebang, which is Korean karaoke.
I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW MUCH FUN THIS WAS. You get your own room, so it's not super awkward singing in front of people. And you get an hour (plus sometimes extra time) to sing all sorts of fun stuff! The others are actually pretty good at reading Hangul (the Korean alphabet/language) and are also fairly knowledgeable about Kpop, so we did a mix of their favorite songs and English songs so I could participate. Although I helped kill it with Big Bang's "Fantastic Baby" since I did a Zumba routine for it and can make sounds similar to the words said in the song. Here's the video for that song, because it's awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbokV76tkU.
Nothing happened Saturday. I was still not doing great with the whole "reverse your entire schedule in like 3 days" thing, so we cleaned up Tina's apartment since it looked like my suitcases exploded everywhere. We got pizza that had french fries and some kind of sour cream sauce (which somehow merits the name Irish Potato Pizza) since Tina really likes it, and it was actually awesome. I have been trying to study some Korean, so we did that and watched our latest Kdrama obsession, Queen In-Hyeon's Man. All of this relaxing was in preparation for the biggest moment of my life so far.

Mostly kidding, but on Sunday Tina and I went to see CATS!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE CATS SO MUCH. I LOVE CATS IN ANY FORM. I UNIRONICALLY WEAR CAT TSHIRTS BECAUSE I THINK THEY SAY "HELLO I LOVE CATS I THINK THAT IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME ALSO I DON'T PARTICULARLY CARE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THAT SO JUDGE AWAY.

 
 Anyway, I really love the musical CATS. It's got basically no plot, but it is full of catchy songs and awesome dance numbers, plus it was the first musical that made me confused about my attraction to men in tights (especially when they are dressed as cats...?) and it's just a good time. It was in English, and I was surprised by the amount of the show I remembered. Tina and I have a DVD of the musical that we used to watch forever ago, but I hadn't even listened to the songs in years. I moved on from Andrew Lloyd's Webber's musical about cats to his much more sophisticated story about a psychopathic deformed guy who lives beneath an opera house (read: The Phantom of the Opera, which is actually my favorite musical of all time ever), so I hadn't thought about CATS in years. Well, these particular cats.

 The show was incredible. Since we're in Seoul, some of the cats surprised us with singing some parts in Korean (not a ton: the Rum Tum Tugger did lines here and there outside of his song, and the cat Jemima sang a reprise of Memory partially in Korean, much to the utter delight of the shocked and applauding Koreans). Most of the choreography is still the same, and the cats were really interactive with the audience. We were in the balcony, but show cats still made their way up there. One was even on the railings of the balcony at intermission and they climbed into the audience and stuff. It was super cool.

Chillin right in the view. Just like a cat would.

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After the show we went around and took pictures with all of the cat posters. Koreans are a lot shyer about their poses, but I'm not. So I was imitating the cats and doing stupid shit, which made the Koreans around laugh and kind of do the same thing but not as outrageously. It was really fun! Here is a series of pictures of us doing just that:
 

Munkustrap is one of my favorite cats in the show.

The audible gasp when Tina did a split was awesome.

The Rum Tum Tugger is one of my other favorite cats

CATS CATS CATS CATS CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATS!! Time to go sing some Jellicle Songs for Jellicle cats...

It was like a monsoon when we left, so we just went home and have been watching kdramas and bloggin' all night.

And face maskin' 

I want to say I miss home, but so far all I miss is being able to understand what people are saying and maybe the full house air conditioning. But being here with Tina is awesome, and I love the city so far. We'll see what the next week brings!