Colorful Daegu, Day 1

A few weeks ago, I went to Daegu for the weekend with some friends. Daegu is the fourth largest city in Korea and the only major city in Korea I had yet to visit. It's only 130 miles away from Seongnam (on the map, I live at the blue check while Daegu is the orange check), which is just a few hours by bus. One of the best things about travel in Korea is a) this country is small, about the size of Kentucky and b) almost everywhere has an express bus linking it to Seoul in just a few hours.

The plan was for Margaret, Veronica and I to meet at the bus terminal in Seongnam after school on Friday and buy our tickets, but when we arrived at 6:15, we discovered that Daegu was popular destination that weekend and consequently, the next several buses were sold out. The first bus could tickets for didn't leave until 8:10, meaning we wouldn't arrive in Daegu until close to midnight. Since we were free spirited ladies and wandering around the Daegu bus terminal at midnight trying to find a hotel didn't much sound like fun, we decided to pick a new destination for the weekend. We wrote down the name of all the cities with an express bus leaving from the bus terminal (including Daegu, because an hour and a half wasn't that long to wait) on pieces of paper. There were four cities with buses still leaving and three of us, so we each picked a slip of paper and decided to go to wherever the last piece of paper told us to go. The last bit of paper was Busan, the southernmost city on the peninsula. The next bus left at 8:00, just ten minutes before the bus to Daegu, but it would take us an extra two hours to get there.

We ended up going to Daegu. Fate, I can take a hint.

We pulled up in Daegu around 11:30 and set out in search of a love motel, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like but, despite the seedy connotations, they are, hands down, the best deal when traveling. Love motels are everywhere - literally on every corner around bus and train stations - and while rooms can be rented in two hour blocks, they're also available for the night. Love motels are cheaper than hotels and even a basic love motel offers better accommodations than similarly priced hotel. Plus, you're almost guaranteed a fun and exciting light scheme. However, multiple beds are obviously not common and we had to visit four different motels before we found one with 방 하나, 침대 두개 (one room, two beds).


Missing from this picture are giant bathroom, creative lighting scheme and the tiny disco strobe lights. We looked at a few rooms that included a sauna, but went with the cheaper, sauna-less room.
Saturday morning we woke up, hit up a convenience store for breakfast and went to the Daegu Herbal Medicine Market. Before we reached the market, we stumbled upon Rice Cake Street. Seoul has these areas with a high concentration of shops all specializing in the same thing. There's no warming: one moment it's a perfectly normal street full of regular shops and then suddenly every shop in sight is selling shoe laces or socks or prosthetic limbs. Daegu is no different, it appears, and Rice Cake street, which dates back to the Korean War, has 37 different shops selling every possible variety of rice cakes. Rice cakes (떡, tteok) are "cakes" made from steamed glutinous rice flour. Because when I think of the word glutinous, I think delicious. There are tons of different types of rice cakes and they are part of many traditional Korean meals. Tteok has no actual relation to real cake, but I've been given many rice cakes in my time here because hey, it has cake in the name and foreigners like cake, right? I'm not a big fan, but it was neat to see the elaborate tteok creations the shops made.


Tteok
The Daegu Herbal Medicine Market, founded in 1658, is the oldest market in Korea. It's suppose to be one of the largest markets in Korea, but it was almost abandoned on Saturady morning. We only saw a couple of other people shopping and lots of the stores were closed. We did, however, see lots of ginseng and reindeer horns (good for stamina, heh heh heh) and bins full of what appeared to be bark (no doubt good for well-being, but please don't ask me how). We also stumbled upon the wholesale market, which was filled with sacks brimming with spices and herbs and bark and what I swear to God was twigs. Korea, I don't *understand* your mania about well-being. There were samgyetang (i.e. the soup with an entire damn chicken in the bowl) restaurants nestled between shops with antlers hanging in the windows. Veronica and I decided that breakfast samgyetang at 11:00 was an appropriate life choice, and while Margaret went to pick up her boyfriend Nick, we had an early lunch of chicken soup. 맛이 있어요!


Left: Jars of ginseng at Yangnyeongsi Herbal Medicine Market; Right: Bowl of samgyetang. Yes, that's a whole chicken in a bowl of soup for one person.
After lunch, we headed off to Palgongsan Provincial Park to hike to Gatbawi, a stone Buddha built in 638 AD. We were under the impression that it would be an easy hike. In Deagu, we were told it was an hour hike. Half an hour up and half and hour down, simple. When we got to Palgongsan, we were told it was an hour each way, not an hour total, but two hours is still a pretty basic hike. Over an hour later, when we finally reached Gwanamsa, a temple on the mountain, we were told that Gatbawi was at least another hour hiking up stone steps. All in all, it took us three hours to reach the summit and because the hill was so steep and steps were so uneven, it took us almost two hours to get to the base of the mountain. It was a pretty beautiful hike, though.



Top: Temple bell at Gwanamsa; Left: Main building at Gwanamsa; Right: Gatbawi. Gatbawi means Stone Hat Buddha because the 15cm thick flat stone atop the Buddha's head resembled a gat (갓), a traditional Korean hat.
When we finally made it back to Daegu, we were starving. The others wanted steak. I, while not begrudging their desire for steak, did not want steak. We all felt that, eh, you know, not sitting on the floor and eating with chopsticks might be groovy, and in downtown Daegu, the first combination of the three was an Outback Steakhouse. Again, 맛이 있어요 if, you know, a bit shameful.


The cheese fries are delicious, the onion rings are not and we were all a bit loopy by that point.
More photos are here.

[everybody scream // it's almost Halloween // do the trick-or-treat]

Halloween isn't a Korean holiday. (October 31st is, however, Ace Day, a day dedicated to eating, giving and generally spending money on Ace brand crackers, a Ritz knock-off.) A bunch of hogwons had Halloween parties on Friday and some public schools had Halloween celebrations during English class, but the thought of buying enough candy, even the cheap stuff, for all 650 of my student was daunting and I'm not organized or creative enough to come up with an actual costume to wear to school, so Friday was classes as normal.

Most of the Halloween celebrations were on Saturday, but I went out to an expat bar in Bundang showing Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday night. It was my first time watching Rocky Horror, and I spent the evening with a lipstick V on my forehead and was drug up on stage to learn the Time Warp. Lots of people were dressed up, including two drag queens and while I didn't dress up per se, I did don red and black stripped knee socks and my red Chucks with the skull shoe laces in honor of the occasion. It was fun, although I couldn't actually hear any of the movie over the shouting and I kept having to ask what was going on. I eventually gave up; no one watches Rocky Horror for the plot.

I spent Halloween Day itself in Hongdae. Seoul SnB has recently found a new cafe that sells yarn and has cats and boys in leather jackets working a knitting machine and bark tea, so obviously it's a great place to meet. It's also conveniently located just down the street from the Habanero taco truck, which has some of the best Mexican food I've had in Korea and also, the chef finishes off the burritos with a blow torch. He also filmed our ringing endorsement of his tacos with his iPhone and put it on Twitter. After knitting, a group of us went for kimchi jjigae, which is delicious, and then Caroline, Audrey and I went for a desert party involving chocolate cake and a detour through an optometry store for an improntu glasses purchase.

즐거운 할로윈!

Pictures from Halloween:


♪It's just a jump to the left / And then a step to the right / Put your hands on your hips / You bring your knees in tight / But it's the pelvic thrust / That really drives you insane. / Let's do the time warp again.♪


Habanero Taco Truck


kimchi jjim: a delicious stew of kimchi, tofu and pork.


Say Kimchi!: Caroline and Audrey taking a picture of themselves with Audrey's phone during our desert party. They've gone native.

and then I cut off all my hair

I got my hair cut this weekend! One of the many ways I fail at being an adult is getting regular hair cuts. You're suppose to get a hair cut what, every six weeks? I can probably count on one hand the number of hair cuts I've had since I graduated college three years ago. I've spend half that time in Korea, where hair cuts are made difficult by the language barrier and hair dressers who don't believe me when I tell them I don't have a perm, just naturally curly hair, but I have no excuse for the year and half I spent in the States.

I went to Bucheon for the hair cut.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the southern suburbs of Seoul (so... most of you) here's a map:


I live in Seongnam, the blue check, and went to Bucheon, the red check. It's not a short trip - between the local bus to the Seongnam bus terminal and the express bus to the Bucheon bus terminal, it took about an hour and a half - but it's worth it for a hair dresser who both knows how to cut curly hair and doesn't charge a small fortune to do so. Also my friend Marie, who was also getting her hair cut, lives out that way.

So right, my hair. It's short! It's a little shorter than I wanted, but after that first snip is made, the die has been cast, and now that I'm use to it, I think really like it. It's been a long time since my hair had a proper style. For most of my life, I had very very fine hair. No, whatever you're thinking, it was finer than that. Then, at some point during high school, my hair started to get thicker. Then it started to curl, and one day I woke up and realized I had a completely different head of hair than I had had a few years previous and I had NO IDEA how to style it. I think this is the first hair cut I've had that properly deals with the curls.  I worry a little that this makes me look like a dandelion, but I like it!


This was taken at lunch right after the hair cut. The hair dresser blew my hair dry and then went back and curled it. He called it "punk style". Then I walked outside into the pouring rain and my hair immediately went SPROING!


This was taken about an hour ago in my bathroom. (You can see the dinner dishes in the kitchen in reflection.) I let my hair air dry and curl as it pleases with just a little product to help combat the dandelion effect. The curls are a bit softer and bouncier than when the hair dresser styled it.


After the hair cuts, Marie and I waded (like I said, pissing rain) to a shabu shabu restaurant for a seriously delicious lunch. Om nom nom.

Samgyetang

Not my picture; I stoles it from Wikipedia.
My school had 삼계탕 (samgyetang) for lunch today and omg, om nom nom. Samgyetang is Korean chicken soup. It's made with a whole chicken stuffed with rice in a broth seasoned with ginsing, jujube fruits, garlic, ginger and unicorn farts. It is amazing and, in my opinion, the perfect chicken soup. It can be difficult to eat, since there is a whole chicken in your bowl and while I'm pretty good at the picking-things-up-with-chopsticks thing, I am less adept at the taking-apart-a-chicken bit. The first time I ate samgyetang I nearly ruined my skirt by repeatedly splashing the broth onto it. Luckily for my limited work wardrobe, this time the chicken was already removed from the bone and I made way less of a mess.

Aside from being delicious, I'm really glad we had samgyetang since, three weeks in, everyone at my school already knows I don't like Korean food. My former co-teacher told my current co-teacher that I don't like Korean food and the current co-teacher must have sent out a memo, because by the end of the first week, the only thing my co-workers will talk to me about is if I'm unhappy in Korea because I have to eat Korean food. (Well, that and today my soldier buddy and I had a chat about why King Sejong was awesome on our walk to school today, but he is the only one of my co-workers besides my co-teachers who really tries to talk to me, so he's a special case.) The thing is, I don't actually dislike Korean food. Sure, there are things I don't like, but there's plenty of American food I won't touch (for example, anything uttered in conjunction with the words bologna burger) and being pigeonholed just because I don't eat kimchi drives me nuts. It's always nice (and delicious) when I get a chance to show my co-workers that see, I *do* like their fermented cabbage heavy cuisine.

Goodbyes, Part 2

I spent the last few day signing the backs of worksheets and blank pages in textbooks and notebooks. Every time I sat down in between class, a line of students wanting my signature instantly appeared. Students have been coming by my office all week with presents; there were a few material items, but it was mostly letters. Wonderful, precious letters full of broken English that they wrote themselves, letters they couldn't have written when I arrived a year ago. I've been torn between wanting to spend the week behind the lens of a camera, capturing every last detail of my school and my kids for posterity, or just enjoying these last few days.

Today was my last day of school and oh, it was hard. I knew I was going to cry when I left and I did. After I untangled myself from students wanting one last hug, one last reassurance that I wouldn't forget them, I sat down on my bus and silently cried, tears running down my cheeks while I watched my school and the town disappear. What I wasn't prepared for was walking into my classroom for the last time, one last quick trip to throw away the last of the trash from my office, and starting to sob. Great, noisy, undignified sobs because despite all the frustrations, I've been so happy here.


The boys were a bit rambunctious and the boy to my right was being crushed. He kept shouting, "Help me, please! Help me, please!" It's a fitting end of my year here: we started studying Chapter 12: Will You Help Me, Please? today.
After school, I went out for samgyeopsal with friends. We ate at an outdoors galbi restaurant along a pedestrian road near our apartments that is overrun every night with dinners. We had beer and pork and kimchi and a metric ton of cooked garlic (that might have just been me) while we talked and toasted Korea and watched squids bob for freedom in the tanks at the restaurant next door. A good way to celebrate the end of a good year.

An Introduction to Korean Barbecue

I've been meaning to do this since I got here, but haven't had an opportunity to take the photos. The main place I eat Korean food is my school and I would be uncomfortable taking pictures there. Because I don't have a homeroom, I eat in the teachers' lounge with the vice principal and the principal and all the administration staff, and they already think I'm a queer bird, what with the whole not being Korean thing. I try not to add to that impression. Also, I rarely know what exactly I'm eating. HOWEVER, I went out for 삼겹살 last night and I remembered to bring my camera with me, so:


I went out for barbecue (technically called gui [구이]) with Tony and Christine. Korean barbecue is some of the more western friendly Korean food. Traditionally, the meat is cooked at the center of the table over a charcoal grill. Like all Korean meals, it comes with banchan (반찬), or side dishes. The number of banchan at your average Korean meal is truly insane. Barbecue only comes with a few banchan (I can see four in the picture), but I've been to more formal meals where we ate side dishes for an hour and by the time the actual meal came, I was too full to eat it.


There are many types of Korean barbecue, but we went out for samgyeopsal (삼겹살). Samgyeopsal is unmarinated thick, fatty slices of pork belly. It's like really thick bacon or, as Tony puts it, super bacon! First you cook the meat in strips. Once the strips are sizzling and brown, you cut them into bite sized pieces and let them cook some more. (You cut the meat with scissors. It's fairly common to be given scissors with your meal. Knives aren't a common utensil, and while the Koreans are very adapt at cutting pretty much anything with chopsticks, sometimes a little extra help is needed.) We're cooking garlic and kimchi along with the pork.


Once everything is cooked, you pile your pork, garlic, kimchi and ssamjang (not pictured, but it's a red paste consisting of red chili paste and fermented soybean paste) onto a lettuce leaf and chow down. Om nom nom nom! It's also tasty to eat the pieces separately.


In addition to the samgyeopsal, we ordered gyeranjjim. Gyeranjjim is a steamed egg dish with green onions and carrots that is oh so tasty. I found a recipe here.


Of course, no Korean meal is complete without rice (left) and kimchi (right). Both are staples of the Korean diet. A bowl of plain white rice (sticky rice) is traditionally served with each meal. Then there is kimchi. Kimchi (김치) is probably the most quintessential Korean object there is. It is certainly the most quintessential Korean food. (It is so common that the KARI [Korea Aerospace Research Institute] developed space kimchi for the first Korean astronaut to take with him to space. Which, ahahahahahaha! Of course they did. Here, let me quote the New York Times: "Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would not put off non-Korean astronauts with its pungency." That pretty much sums up kimchi.) Kimchi is spicy pickled vegetables, the most common being picked cabbage, that Koreans eat it at every meal. According to Koreans, it is basically magic. It will prevent anything that needs preventing and cure anything that needs curing. (I have honest to God been told that the reason there are no gay people in Korea is that kimchi cures homosexuality, although I have on good authority that this is not actually true.) It's not actually as gross as it sounds. I like it in its more diluted forms, such as in soups (although not kimchi soup) or cooked with samgyeopsal. I still won't eat it on its own, though.

Cherry Blossoms @ Children's Grand Park

After a long cold winter, it's finally SPRING! And in Asia, spring means cherry blossoms. Siobhain and I went to Children's Grand Park on Saturday to obsessively photograph see the cherry blossoms, people watch and knit in the sunshine. The park was packed with families and couples and children carrying giant dolphin balloons. And of course, carnival food (or the Korean equivalent). There were a few western staples such as cotton candy, but it was mostly dried squid and beondegi (steamed or boiled silkworm pupae and, no seriously, they are the nastiest thing I've ever eaten. I've only tried it once, will never try it again and the smell of it still makes my stomach queasy). I might not be in Japan, but I'm still surrounded by cherry blossoms.












The full set of photos is here.