Interlude

We just got back from Beijing on Monday and it was a refreshing and fascinating escape from the sanctuary that has become Korea. I feel completely comfortable and at home in this country now, but it certainly is a nice thing to travel elsewhere for a while.

Because it will take me a while to organise the Beijing photos into a coherent narrative, I thought it timely to put up photos for this mini-post. These are from the weekend before we went to China, when we went out in Hwamyeong for dinner and drinks. I don't work for the Hwamyeong branch but Heather does, so sometimes I get to tag along and absorb more than my fair share of their merriment. In this photo are some of the Hwamyeong staff, slightly tipsy after a long dinner and eager to find ii-cha (the Korean word for 'any second establishment to drink at after finishing dinner').

Ii-cha turned out to be a karaoke room. Here food and wine flowed freely and all who were present imbibed dubious quantities while others serenaded dancing co-workers.

That guy with the tambourine is actually a bus driver for the school who became very jovial indeed. He stood up in the middle of dinner and announced to us "I driving Bus Number 2. Berry goot! Sankyou."
We finished up in the wee hours of the morning and I ended up hitting the sack around 5:30am.

That was well planned because the following day I had to get up at 7:30am to get the train to Seoul. At the train station I was feeling a little snoozy, but I still couldn't help noticing the name of this coffee and sandwich shop. I like coffee and I like sandwiches, but coffee in sandwich? What an amazing idea.

We walked into the train station, and with sandwiches on my mind I had to buy one. This thoughtful pearl of wisdom greeted me at the counter of another shop.

I chewed my sandwich a little more thoughtfully after reading that.

The reason we went to Seoul was for leadership training. The company paid for us to go up there and participate in a workshop at the Yeoksam Cultural Centre. We arrived around midday and had a quick lunch before meandering in.

The lecture theatre reminded me a little of my days at university. The presentations weren't too bad, a lot of things were fairly common knowledge but it wasn't a waste of time.
I met up with Ben, who you may possibly remember as my room mate in Seoul from Canada, who I lived with for a while during training. That was a long time ago. He's living in Daejeon now and engaged to a Korean woman.

After dinner we had optional team-building exercises which we were a little apprehensive of, especially when we had to take off our shoes. They actually turned out to be the highlight of the trip (as well as me winning $10 at the casino later that night, hooray).

These were the people running the show, various CDI workers from Seoul who each had a different challenge for us to complete as a team. We, the teams, had come from all across the country even as far as Jeju Island.

Before long we were blindfolded and frantically yelling orders to each other. In this exercise we had to cross an 'acid river' by stepping on tiles that could mysteriously wash away if no one was standing on them. Four out of seven of our team members were blindfolded which increased the difficulty by an order of magnitude. We passed.


This video is from a different challenge called Minefield. The mines consisted of sticky pieces that had to be avoided. The difficulty lay in that one person outside the minefield had to tell two others who were blindfolded how to step across the area. It was also a race, with both teams starting at opposite ends, resulting in an inevitable collision in the middle. The first team to cross the field received 3 points, but there was minus 1 point for every mine stepped on.

Here's the solution to a challenge called Toxic Waste, in which the teams had to dispose the contents of the green bucket into the orange bag while keeping well away from it. The only materials available were some strings and a piece of rubber. Good fun.
I came back to Busan by train the following day and left for Beijing three days later.

The next few posts will be all about Beijing, which is an enormous city of skyscrapers and history. I'll pop them out in succession as time permits.

See you then!

2 weeks in Seoul

The pace of last week has simmered slightly and a few restful days have been obtained. Seoul is still way bigger than I can comprehend, but things are slowly making sense and familiarities are starting to emerge. I moved out of Kylie's place today and into a koshiwon I found called Max Livingtel, near Yonsei University.

These places give you a tiny room which is good for sleeping in. You can touch all four walls if you stand in the middle. There are lots of rooms here, all with shared bathrooms, free laundry, internet access, instant noodles and a kitchen. Students often live at these places when they're studying for a big exam, so that they can focus without distractions. The place is really clean, air conditioned and super cheap, only 10,000 won per night for as long as you like. My plan is to move to Busan, a coastal city on the south of the peninsula in a couple of weeks and get a job. This type of accommodation is a good option until then. But I reckon if I stayed here for a couple of months I'd start exhibiting strange, paranoid, hermit-like behaviour.

On Sunday we signed up for a soccer tournament at Suwon. The tournament had teams of expats from all sorts of countries like the Ivory Coast and Portugal. Some of the players were semi-professional and had proper equipment and coaches. We had matching shirts.

Our team was composed of Korean adoptees and we'd never played together before. We weren't allowed to register as a Korean team because there were already two in the tournament.

Thus, Team Mongolia was born. We figured that no one would expect much from the Mongolians, so with the weight of expectation gone, we were free to kick the ball around and have some fun. I hadn't played in 12 years and was a bit out of shape to say the least.

In the morning, only ten of us showed up so we were a player short. For the first game, we had to borrow a goalkeeper from another team. On the second game, I was the goalkeeper. I didn't have any goalie gloves so we went and bought some ajoshi gloves from the convenience store. I accidentally let 3 goals in during the first 12 minutes of play, but no one got mad.

At the end of the day we were exhausted and had difficulty walking back to the bus stop. We didn't score any goals during the 4 matches we played, but it was really fun. Here we are posing with a curious statue that stands just outside the soccer field.

McDonald's in Korea is having an Australian promotion. For only 3600 won you can get an Australian burger, which is probably somehow related to Australia. The staff are wearing Australian insignia on their hats and bandanas. Now I'm proud to be Australian when I stand in McDonald's. But then again I look Korean, so no one can really tell.

This is us playing Korean pool. We thought it was a western style pool place when we walked in. Then the guy only gave us four balls and we realised there weren't any holes on the table. One of the workers explained to us how to play. You need to get a white or yellow ball to hit two red balls in one shot. Then you get a point. It's actually a pretty interesting game when you get used to it. Thomas is the current undefeated Koroot champion.

This is Sinchon at night. When the sun goes down, younger people emerge from the alleys and reclaim the streets from the daytime crowd. The shop signs illuminate the area with neon light and the atmosphere becomes more vibrant. I still find myself staring at the signs like a rabbit mesmerized by the headlights of a four-wheel drive.

In the restaurants you can choose from all sorts of delicacies, like these worm things in a tank. I don't know what they're called in English, but Maria has tried them and she says they taste like salt water.

And here's a poor little mudskipper stuck in the flounder tank. I'll try eating all these things one day, but currently I prefer not to see my food slain before my eyes. I know it happens to all the meat I eat, but I'm still a fragile bourgeoise Australian. Before long I'll be more Koreanified and then I won't mind eating live octopus whole.

Octopi apparently turn white when they're stressed or frightened. I guess these ones have just given up trying to camouflage themselves.

This is a chilli sausage hotpot. Hotpot shacks always give you more food than you can eat for good prices.

Well I need to log off now and find some food. The good thing about Korea is that it's never hard to find food wherever you are. Seeya.

A New Addition to the Family

Life in Busan is coming to an end. I'm mentally preparing for the move to Seoul and wrapping things up down here. I'll be moving to the capital in around 3 weeks time and am feeling pretty good about things in general. Busan is a great city and I'd prefer to stay down here, but Seoul will also be interesting.

Heather, John, Anthony and I went fishing at Gwangali a few weeks ago. Here's John and Anthony fishing off the artificial rocks. We bought fishing gear and shrimp bait that day and stayed out for a few hours. We didn't catch anything except seaweed, although Anthony did manage to pull in a starfish using the hand reel. Starfish don't make for good eating, so we threw it back.
I wish I had more opportunities to go fishing. As Henry David Thoreau once said "Many men (and women) go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after."

During the weeknights, Anthony will often be over and we usually cook things up together. In this photo, Anthony has grilled his marinated beef to go with my pad Thai. More often than not, things turn out pretty well. Anthony is very easy to please with food, he thinks just about everything tastes 'bomb'.

Even instant noodles.

Here's a dinner from another night. We made grilled hot dogs with sausages from Daejeon Costco and Neapolitan spaghetti.
Normally we watch movies while we eat, or our two favourite television series: Entourage and The Office.

While we're on the topic of food, here's another dish. This one was made by Joon, a new Korean friend of Daniel. It's called naeng chae jok bal, which means 'cold vegetable pork'. It's roast pork seasoned with vinegar, onion and garlic.

Here's a photo of us from a little while ago, celebrating Obama's victory at the Guri Bar in Seomyeon. I was very happy that Obama won the election, and hope that it's the beginning of a new era of more logical American foreign policy. Because he's also the first black president, I celebrated by only drinking black-coloured drinks that day, like Black Russians and B-52s. Photo: Erick Taggart

In some Mega Mart stores in Korea now, the price tags on the shelves are now digital. They're also solar powered, with the fluorescent lighting of the supermarket providing sufficient power to keep them on. If you cover the small solar panel, the numbers disappear after a few seconds but reappear as soon as you stop. I'm guessing that this upgrade also makes data entry much faster.

Three cheers for technology.

Heather and I recently bought this car. It's a 1997 Daewoo Lanos and we picked it up from a very large used car shop in Dongnae. It runs fairly well. On the inside of the back window Heather put up a chobo unjeon (learner driver) sign.

Here's the newest addition to Heather's family. Her oldest sister just had a baby girl and we came to visit them. Now Heather has two nieces.

Birth is a funny thing. I was used to seeing Heather's sister walking around as a pregnant woman. Now the contents of her stomach are out in the world, breathing, yawning and crying.

Her name is Ji-Woo and she was still too young to open her eyes when I last saw her. If you watch her for long enough, she changes facial expressions while sleeping. I distinctly saw an expression of what seemed to be mellow disgust, followed quickly thereafter by one of pleasant exclamation.

While the range of different human emotions are all too familiar to me, I'm sure they're somewhat of a novelty to little Ji-Woo who was having a fun time trying them out for the first time.

And here's her bigger sister, the one and only Ji-Ae. We played games outside the room while the grown-ups talked and rested. I had forgotten how much free fun you can have if you're around someone with enough energy.

Ji-Ae doesn't quite understand how to play hide-and-seek. She knows how to close her eyes, count and look for someone, but she doesn't know how to hide yet. I tried teaching her but what always happens is that when I count (very loudly and slowly), she'll run off and crouch behind something. Then, as soon as I turn around, she'll jump out and yell "RAAaaA!"

Heather also tried to explain the concept of hiding to her, but I think she's getting confused with another game they play at her daycare centre. Still, it was fun to play.

Anthony hosted a gathering at his apartment for the Korean staff of the Busanjin branch. We walked down to the nearby live seafood shop at the end of Gwangan beach and bought around $100 worth of raw fish. That's enough to feed a small army. You can buy around two dozen raw oysters in the shell for $5.

You basically pick and choose which fish you want and the vendors will pluck them out, quench the flapping with a well-placed knife blow to the head, and chop them up into bite sized pieces. You can literally be eating the same meat that was swimming around in the water 10 minutes ago.

Flounders are funny fish. They spend their youth as free-swimming normal looking fish. When they mature, one eye migrates to the other side of the head and they spend their days lying on one side at the sandy bottom of the sea. Looking up into the sunlight, they spot silhouettes of smaller fish and can rise up surprisingly fast. Their two eyes can rotate independently of one another.

I think of them as Picasso Fish, because of the irregular faces they have.


The vendors are nearly all Korean ajummas, who are famous for their fiery personalities. Here's a video of our favourite lady, chopping up a live octopus for us with typical ajumma dexterity and nonchalance.

We brought back our catch to the apartment and feasted on the marine life with wasabi, lemon juice and chili sauce. The five people on the left are all staff from Anthony and John's CDI branch.


We played some drinking games and got a little tipsy. This is a video showing the technique for making a soju bomb. You need two shot glasses, one larger glass, beer, soju (or vodka if you don't have any) and Fanta or Coke. The soft drink goes in the bottom shot glass, followed by soju in the second and then beer is poured on top. If you drink it in one go, the final glass acts as a chaser.

Three of these will assist conversational abilities with any stranger.

Last weekend, Heather and I went up to Seoul to meet my professor. Near the hotel where we stayed, this enormous pot of seolleung-tang (beef bone soup), was quietly bubbling in a shop front window. That's enough seolleung-tang to feed around 50 people.

We also visited the Mok-dong CDI campus, which is one of the seven main branches in Seoul. Donna is the Branch Manager of this campus now. She was our first BM in Busan when we started.

The Mok-dong branch has 1600 students and 40 teachers.

CDI Test Prep is a relatively new program that prepares students for school entrance exams. It's catered toward advanced students and the Mok-dong branch has an entire floor devoted to it. At this branch there are 800 Eagle level-or-higher students. Eagle level is textbook material for high school native English speaking students.

The computer lab. I saw an interesting talk on TED recently, about the misplaced idea that more computers equals better education. Clifford Stoll (an American physicist) says that the increasing number of computers in schools can stifle other important skills that children need to learn.

To a certain extent, I agree.

Donna took us out to lunch at the Del Cruise buffet, a rather flash restaurant near the school. Any self-respecting buffet in Korea these days will have escargots, sashimi and fresh lychee as standard fare.

Heather with her two new friends.

We also met up with Jang-Ho, Heather's younger brother. We drank together at a bar in Myeong-dong for quite some time before trying to catch a taxi to get home. That's him with the scarf, clutching the box of his mother's banchan that we brought up from Busan. Late at night in Seoul, because there are so many customers and not enough taxis, it can take more than an hour before you finally manage to flag one down.

I've started organising my accommodation in Seoul, as well as mentally preparing for the change. To become a student again, after two and a half years of working life means that I'll have to reinvent myself to a certain degree. Deep down, I always was more of the academic type, but a lot of my science know-how has lain dormant since I left Australia. It won't be long until the dusty textbooks of my mind will need to be reopened.

There's a lot of hard work and a big challenge ahead of me. Heather puts up with my occasional complaining about such things, which means that you guys are all spared for the time being. Thanks to her, Lee's Korea Blog is not merely an avenue for the negative grumblings of a soon-to-be overworked Australian Korean student.

See you next time!