Previously La Dolce Vita, which documented my time spent living in Perugia, Italy, Restless Seoul will be my way of sharing my experiences in South Korea. Enjoy!
This is Taemin's single "Danger." You might (but if you're my typical American reader you might not) recognize Taemin from the group SHINee, who I also love. This is from his solo debut. I always listen to this song after or in conjunction with last blog's obsession, Mamacita by Super Junior:
A lot of my weeks have been spent watching some (read: this) music video or other, since Super Junior can win awards and stuff based on youtube views and album sales and other things that I don't understand but I just like the video so I watch it a lot. Please watch Mamacita if you get a chance!
Anyway, I'm sure that your visiting my blog is contingent upon my kpop recommendations,but I digress.
HAPPY JUST OVER ONE MONTH IN KOREA TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
In just that short (long?) amount of time, my Korean has gone from "non-existent" to "barely existent" (I can read the alphabet), I can use chopsticks reasonably well, and the anxiety level I get from having to go anywhere/do anything/order food by myself has gone from "cripplingly terrifying" to "mildly panic-attack inducing!" Although I do now have my arsenal of Korean foods that I can read, so I just look for those on menus, so I suppose it's down a peg to "really really really really uncomfortable please stop staring at me oh god these people do not want me in their country send help I'm going to McDonald's but even there they might think I'm an idiot since the only way I know how to order is by pointing or saying a number." So things are looking up, really.
In funny news, my bedframe broke when Tina was over last weekend for the holiday:
To update: My school felt so bad that they sent the school maintenance guy over to fix it. I am currently typing this post from my mattress, which is situated firmly on my fixed frame. My coteacher was astounded that I had slept on the mattress on the floor for like a day. Everyone's concern was touching, although I blame Tina entirely. Even though I wanted her to come over, and had her sit on the side of the bed that broke, and in general it was not her fault. Whatever.
Anyways, Korea. Some days I want to curl up in a ball and never leave my apartment because it's really hard to do things here. And some days I want to get on a plane and go home to a country where I speak the (not official) language. Some residual inadequacies I felt during grad school have not been lessened by coming here.
But most days? I love it here. I love my apartment (even with its quirks: my shower has TOO MUCH water pressure), I love my area (I live in Mokdong, which I am beginning to learn is on the higher end of awesome as far as Seoul is concerned), I love my school (seriously, it's the best), I love my coteachers (I finally figured out their names on the messenger app we have on the computer, despite my icon depicting me as a man), I love being so close to Tina (the same timezone is already a relief), and sometimes I honestly love all the attention I get for being a foreigner. It's nice to be told you're beautiful whenever you wear your hair different, or be told how impressive you are when you finally grab a noodle with chopsticks (seriously, they are the hardest thing ever to grab...) or when you utter a phrase in Korean and everyone is astounded. I like hearing that students who used to sleep in English class are now trying, or students who never tried on tests are getting 90%. It's awesome.
You know what else is awesome? 5 DAY WEEKENDS.
We had a holiday called Chuseok, which a lot of people refer to as "Korean Thanksgiving" but that's mildly inaccurate since the holiday predates the Thanksgiving tradition. I don't know much about it since I'm not Korean and haven't been here for too long, but I do know is it results in this:
LOOK AT HOW MANY SEATS ARE OPEN. ALL OF THEM.
Empty subways station.
I don't know if I've ever stressed how crowded Korea is. A freaking ton of people live in Seoul, but are in fact not from Seoul. Go figure. This holiday is pretty important for families, so a looooooooooooooot of people leave Seoul AND IT IS AWESOME. No fighting for seats on the subway. No one shoving you out of the way to get to the door 3 stops in advance. No giant wall of Koreans coming up the stairs as you try to make your way down. It is a ghost town and it is great.
We took advantage of a deal to go to Everland (on Monday, one of the actual holiday days where people would be doing family stuff), which is an amusement park similar to Disney. There are different themed areas (American Adventure, Europe, that sort of thing). We went on quite a few rides and didn't have to wait long for the famous T-Express, which "is the first ride of this type in Asia, and the first to utilize 3 trains. It is the world's fourth steepest wooden roller coaster. It is also the wordl's ninth fastest, fourth tallest, and sixth longest wooden roller coaster."
I took exactly 1 picture at Everland.
This photo, courtesy of Wikipedia, is the T Express.
It was awesome! It was a pretty hot day, but we got to wander and act like kids again. And question our sanity as we faced the steep drop a second time (I believe it went something like WHY DID WE DECIDE TO DO THIS AGAIN/THIS IS WHY I HAVEN'T RIDDEN A ROLLERCOASTER IN YEARS).
The day after Everland (for those of you keeping score at home, Tuesday), Tina took me to see my real living quarters, aka Gyeongbukgung Palace aka a reeeeeeeeeeeeeally famous palace here in Seoul. Strangely (not really) I thought that I should take more pictures here than at the amusement park, so here are some of them with vague explanations since I don't remember what Tina told me:
I am a big fan of the ancient (not as old as you think since it was rebuilt after being destroyed, but still) and modern together
Admiral Yi Sun Shin. Dude was a BADASS. For now, WIkipedia highlights: "Perhaps his most remarkable military achievement occurred at the Battle of Myeongnyang. Outnumbered 133 warships to 13, and forced into a last stand with only his minimal fleet standing between the Japanese Army and Seoul, he still managed to destroy 33 of 133 Japanese warships in one of the most astonishing battles in military history" and "With the Japanese army on the verge of being completely expelled from the Korean Peninsula, he was mortally wounded by a single bullet. His famous dying words were, 'The battle is at its height...beat my war drums...do not announce my death.'"
King Sejong, who oversaw the creation of Hangul so they wouldn't need to keep using Chinese characters.
Look this is Hangul, the Korean language. Yeah, looks kind of hard to learn, RIGHT? But it has waaaaay less to learn that Chinese or Japanese.
We got there at the changing of the guard.
Only the king can walk in the middle of the steps.
The throne room!
My lovely guide. Seriously, her knowledge of Korean history is impressive.
Explaining the floor heating system.
This is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.
This was used to host parties with foreigners.
Authentic Joseon Dynasty CCTV
Look! I can fit through a Joseon Dynasty-sized door!
Authentic Joseon Dynasty emergency equipment.
It's a big deal that this roof is blue because it's suuuuuuuuper expensive.
Seoul streetcar
I was a lion too! They had lion costumes that weren't as elaborate as the one I saw in Jeonju.
Look at all the worlds colliding in this one photo. Beautiful.
On Wednesday I ventured out to Gangnam (yes, like Psy's song) for some brick oven pizza with some awesome orientation people. It was glorious.
I don't think you understand how monumental this is.
After a frantic but short and awesome 2 day week, it was the weekend again! I had a reunion with my people from orientation (SHOUTOUT TO GROUP 2 FOR BEING THE BEST ORIENTATION GROUP EVER!!!) and I got to experience navigating the subway home while slightly inebriated and I still managed to catch the last train to my area! Success!
So overall, I still have a lot of highs and lows here. Still no real internet in my apartment. No cell phone. I am not a registered alien yet. I still am pretty frantic about lesson planning. Some days I notice people staring and sometimes I don't. But I am very happy, especially with so much accomplished and so much to look forward to.
NEXT WEEKEND WE ARE GOING TO THE SUPER JUNIOR SUPER SHOW AND I AM BEYOND EXCITED.
For fun: we were doing some kind of chant for my 6th grade class, and my coteacher made up moves for some of the words. What was one of the words? Sorry. What was the move? Why, the famous Sorry, Sorry dance from Super Junior, and I got to impress my kids by knowing the dance. The album/song came out like 5 years ago, but it's still pretty famous.
Mostly I'm Sorry, Sorry not Sorry,Sorry for always posting about Super Junior. I'm stoked for the concert.
I am not stoked for a full week of teaching, but I finally get to meet my 3rd graders! I also will hopefully be able to get into the swing of things more.
I keep seeing everyone posting about it being Autumn weather back home. Meanwhile I'm over here like oh look another week of all 80 degree weather. -_____- I cannot wait for it to cool off so that wearing pants is not a death sentence. Alas.
If you do one thing today, let it be watch this music video and listen to this song. It's awesome.
It's just a really fun song and I love
the video. It's catchy as hell and always stuck in my head. Whenever
they use English in these songs and it's wrong (shut your tongue????)
I just think, “Oh. You tried so hard.” Then I enjoy the song
anyway.
So I have been pretty busy with
orientation and getting to my school for the first week, and I have
pretty spotty internet connections, so it has been difficult to do a
lot of things. You don't realize how much you use the internet until
you don't have 24-hour access to it.
Anyway, orientation was great. I met a
ton of great people and learned a lot of valuable information. It was
a fairly typical orientation, if a bit longer than normal ones. I
felt like I was in college again!
After orientation, we took a bus back
up to Seoul to find out where we were place. My coteacher had a sign
and flowers for me, and there was great surprise at my lack of bags.
As we drove to the school, I was asked a million questions (do I like
Korean food? What's my favorite? Do I like Kpop? Which group? Who is
my favorite? Do I cook? How old am ? Etc...) for most of the ride. I
spent a lot of the day at the school, and the 6th grade
teachers took me out for shabu (I think???) which is where they put a
pot of broth on the table and you cook your food in it and it is
awesome. Fancy Korean food tends to have a lot of cooking by yourself
I guess?? I did not take any pictures of my food as I usually do
since I did not want to look crazy on the first lunch with coworkers.
The teachers were very concerned about me, asking if I was okay with
communal food (I am), if we did this in America (we don't), if I
needed a fork (I didn't), and if I liked the food (I did). One of the
teachers told me I was good with chopsticks but I hold them like a
first grader. I'll take it!
We hung out for a while then went back
to the school while a service cleaned my apartment for me. My office
is in my 5th/6th grade classroom, so it's
pretty private. Just me and my coteacher. Sometimes we go to the
Subject Teacher's room (for lunch and if there is camp or something
in our room) and I sit with some of the other teachers. Most of the
teachers here are pretty young and/or have enough English knowledge
to ask me basic questions, so I feel pretty included as far as these
place go. Still, sometimes they are all talking and laughing and I
sadly sit there and smile because I know something is funny but I
can't understand anything. That's probably the hardest part for me; I
love being around people but I am not actually communicating very
much. I feel very isolated and lonely, and I don't want to bother my
coteacher by asking her what everyone is saying every 5 seconds.
Alas, I will get used to it. I talk to myself a lot since I have no
one near my level of English to speak to.
I hate to be that guy who keeps
bragging about my apartment, but it's awesome. Tina's friend Lauren
and her boyfriend helped me move (he's Korean and has a car.... gonna
keep him around....) my stuff from Tina's apartment to mine, and
everyone agrees that we are all pretty lucky when it comes to
placements. There were some horror stories out there, but my school
seems to really want me to be happy, so I feel like I'm being
interrogated sometimes with all of the inquiries into my health,
happiness, and well-being. My apartment is awesome. It is a 15 minute
walk to my school. There are tons of little places around my building
that are worth exploring. I love it.
Pictures of my apartment:
Basically my apartment is spacious, awesome, and in a great area. I'm absurdly lucky to have this situation in Seoul.
Though many of my EPIK peers are
deskwarming for a bit before teaching, I got to dive right in... sort
of. My 3rd/4th grade coteacher won't be back
until December (I think?) and the new teacher who is going to be my
coteacher until then didn't arrive til Friday, so I haven't met my
younger kids. I will also be observing her class initially (again, I
think??), especially because next weekend is a long holiday weekend.
I did an intro lesson with my 5th/6th graders
where we played a game: I asked questions about me and they had to
guess the answer. It involved talking, running, and learning about me
without me just spouting a ton of English at them. I showed off a bit
of my Korean skills, and I made the students promise me that I would
work hard to learn Korean if they worked hard to learn English. Most
of them applauded me and seemed enthusiastic about English, but we'll
see how long that lasts. My coteacher was concerned about their level
of English, but they seemed to understand a lot of what I said. I
only needed translations on a few areas, and more for 5th
than 6th. I am excited to work with my students more.
I had a dinner with all the teachers at
my school on Friday. We had to say goodbye to the old Vice Principal,
and welcome the new Vice Principal, the new teacher (who will be my
coteacher for a while), and welcome me. I impressed everyone with my
3 Korean phrases (thanks, EPIK orientation!) and also with my ability
to drink soju/take shots. It's pretty traditional to have a lot of
soju at these things, and once I was polite and drank the whole shot
that one of the important people gave me, suddenly everyone wanted to
see how the non-Korean drank soju. Apparently I am a true Korean.
Yay! I was not happy about this later when the soju caught up to me,
but I had a fun night. There are a lot of younger teachers at school
(by young I mean under 30 I think...) and we played a game called
“Ask Francesca what age she thinks everyone is.” I cannot tell
the ages at all here (I like to say I play the game “14 or 40?”),
so I told everyone I thought they were 26. They all found this
amusing and I think I charmed them with my lowballing of ages (unless
I knew what age they were because of prior information given to me by
my insider friend) and because I stayed out with them the whole time
they were out. I am the youngest person at my school (which did not
surprise me) and also since I am a foreigner everything I do to try
and embrace their culture is well met.
I'm having a hard time adjusting to the
lack of independence, and to not knowing what's going on. My new
coteacher lives near me (yay!!) and loves the area (YAY!!!), and she
told me she thought I was very brave to come to Korea and to come out
to the dinner even though I understand about 5% of what's going on.
That made me feel a bit better, but those moments are often offset
with frustrating ones. I figured out my way to Emart and bought more
things for my apartment, but I can't explain to the security guard of
my building that I cannot get my elevator key to work (I live on the
16th floor...) and that a package addressed to my
apartment is not something that I specifically ordered since I have
only been here since Tuesday while he keeps saying things in Korean
that I don't understand. My school schedule is weird and I still have
to get my Alien Registration Card before I can deal with getting a
phone or internet or anything I am used to having.
Thankfully I got to spend the rest of
the weekend with Tina and among other English speakers. Tina and I
met up with Lauren and went to see Dracula the Musical. I love
Dracula. I love vampire stories. I love the music, set, characters,
and costumes (Dracula wears leather pants for most of it ^___^) of
this show. It is not a great musical. The plotline is essentially
that Dracula gave up on living until he saw/met Mina, then he makes
it his mission to make her his, but then he decides that he can't
condemn her to his lifestyle and kind of gives up again. It is not a
great nor compelling plot.
Also, unlike CATS, this musical WAS ALL
IN KOREAN. I know a lot of the songs and I know the storyline, but
sometimes when it's just one person singing a ballad onstage and I
can't understand anything it's hard to pay attention. That being
said, I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHOW. It's really incredible. The stage has
several rotating parts, handsome men play Dracula and wear leather
pants, the costumes are lovely (did I mention leather pants?), the
score and songs are awesome, and all of the actors were
reeeeeeeeeeally really good (especially when they work the leather
pants) in the show.
Do yourself a favor and listen to this guy (pictured above and in the video below):
This is who we saw: Park Eun-Suk and oh
my lord can this guy sing (and be in leather pants). He's technically
the understudy, but he's awesome. Seriously, I could listen to this guy read my grocery list and be happy. I had this song on repeat all day. I love listening to Koreans sing, and this is an incredible performance. This is my favorite song in the
show (English version here). While I am
more of a fan of menacing, stalker, terrorizing Dracula's one-sided
obsession with Mina, I love this love song where Dracula realizes the
impact of loving her. It's the second to last song, and
even though their “love story” makes no sense (Mina goes from
marrying Jonathan Harker and being upset with Dracula for essentially
murdering her best friend to being in love with him and his Dracula outfit and inviting him
into her bedroom...?), this song is awesome and I totally ship them.
One of the big draws of this show was
the main guy to play Dracula, Kim Junsu from the Kpop group JYJ. I
like our guy's voice better, but this dude is awesome too (read:
LEATHER PANTS). This is kind of long, but it's an awesome
scene:
First, "Mina's Seduction"
"It's Over"
This scene features the moving set for a chase! It was fantastic to watch from the balcony. I think thy do a good job of showing how powerful Dracula is (use the force, Vlad) and the second video shows a cool view of the staging. The first video is just one of my favorite songs from the show (Mina sings "Please Don't Make Me Love You") and it's just cool staging.
Here's a cool scene early on in the show where Dracula
decides he's going to be a fucking badass again instead of a decrepit
old vampire-man and feeds off of Jonathan Harker (who has just been attacked by Dracula's brides), and has a great instance of
quick change and leather pants. It's kind of hard to see the action, but the entire set is moving on 4 different circles while Jonathan tries to escape the castle. It is much more successful and makes more sense to me than the Dracula-being-chased-in-a-house scene.
There is a lot of sexual hugging in this show (some of the scenes were really controversial in the
American version and some of it surprised me with the sexuality in
the Korean version) and a lot of good shots of leather pants and
sparkly costumes.
Seriously, everyone was incredible. I
would recommend Dracula (with it's overly romantic and implausible,
which is hard for a mythic fantasy story, plotline) to anyone.
Especially if you are a sucker for wonderful music, awesome sets,
beautiful voices, incredible costumes, and leather pants.
After the show we got some Indian food
and I met Lauren's boyfriend, which was nice since I was enlisting
him to move a hundred pounds of luggage. Afterwards, Tina and I met
up with some of the most awesome people at orientation, and then
skyped my parents while I stayed over at Tina's.
Sunday was a frustrating day of moving
and completely fucking up my Itunes, but all of my things (except for
the few things I forgot) are in my wonderful apartment. I'm just
trying to take things day by day, but as I've almost been here for a
month I feel like I am getting adjusted in some ways and am super not
in others. Oh well. One day at a time.
Monday was full of me not doing much besides lesson planning and getting some immigration stuff done (thank god for my coteacher. She is an angel for taking me through the whole process even though she lives like over an hour away, has never done it before, and we were there until the office closed) for now, and hoping my internet connects for more than 5 seconds at a time.
Thankfully, my new coteacher is about as lost as I am, since no one really knows what she's supposed to do either. I feel really useless sometimes at school, but we are all trying our best. We are all kind of in the same boat and are all working together to get things done. Fighting!!
Hopefully I will have real internet and
know more about my day to day proceedings soon enough!! See ya later,
and may there always be handsome men singing while looking incredible
in leather pants.
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!
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
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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!
