"Made in Korea, Very Good!"

Careful, this could be your Christmas present!

Thanksgiving was just any other day for me. I was so busy, that if it weren't for the Thanksgiving lessons I was teaching, I would have forgotten all about it being Thanksgiving. I was so tired at the end of the day and still pretty sick (another cold), I just grabbed a couple rolls of kimbap from downstairs. That was my Thanksgiving meal. I also passed out quite early.

Friday was a nice elementary school holiday, so K and I went to explore the Gwangjang Vintage clothing market. The street level of the market is full of Korean street food vendors and various other food and wedding textile stalls. Apparently, the Korean food is pretty famous in this market, but K and I took one look at the various intestines oozing out of bowls and pigs feet hanging from some of the stalls along with mounds of blood sausage and decided to pass on lunch, especially after passing the fish stalls. The street level opens up in the middle to a cross roads. Here there are a couple of buildings that look like old brick factories. One side is marked Hanbok (traditional Korean wear used for weddings) and the other side is marked textile. We stalked a few people before we decided that the vintage market was in the textile portion--we were right. We were not prepared for the sight that met us, though! Tiny, narrow pathways lead through a maze of vintage sweaters, jackets, jeans, shoes, and bags of various fabrics (leather, cashmere, wool, flannel, jersey, cotton) mostly dating back from the 80s and the 90s. It brought back many memories of "Full House" and "Growing Pains." It was quite an overwhelming experience.

Gwangjang Vintage Clothing market

Saturday, I continued shopping with M, who was in need of winter wear and an external hard drive. We made our way to Yongsan, where there is a huge technology mall with apparently very discounted items--not for external hard drives. We wandered a bit, gave up, and went to Dongdaemun for winter clothes. This is a maze of proudly sported clothes Made in Korea. Here the country pride shows clearly as vendors show off various Abercrombie and Fitch sweater knock-offs for 40,000 won. The clothing is quite poor quality most of the time (but sometimes no worse that what is found in America these days) and can be quite expensive (unless you can haggle the vendors down). The vendors love to say "MADE IN KOREA, VERY GOOD!" And you kind of want to say "Where is the shit made in Indonesia, it's cheaper and just as good of quality." But M did get some good deals on a coat and some sweaters, so it was a good day. And a bonus about Korea is that you never have to worry about it being a man's or woman's outfit, because every thing is pretty much unisex (unless of course it is skirt or dress).

An uncommonly spacious isle at a Dongdaemun store

We then headed to Myeongdong, the classy shopping area. It was packed with Christmas shoppers and the stores had pretty good Christmas deals. We managed to kill four hours shopping in Myeongdong and grabbed a pretty good pizza meal. All, in all, a pretty nice and exhausting weekend!

Seoul

This is a video someone made of Seoul, I thought you may be interested in seeing the city I live in.

Seoul Time Lapse 2011 from Oh Choong Young on Vimeo.

My Lesson in Korean Culture

Today one of my co-teachers announced that she is pregnant. This has come after a long struggle of trying to keep babies and to get pregnant, so the joy is mixed with quite a bit of apprehension. She will take next week off to go through a battery of tests to make sure the baby is ok. My other co-teacher shared a bit of culture with me today. Apparently, in Korea if a woman dreams about dragons, a special kind of fruit, or a particular food, then she is pregnant. My co-teacher dreamed about peppermint, that is how she knew she was pregnant (but I knew she was because she's been sicker than a dog for quite a while now).

Some other Korean culture I learned today: at the end of a festival or a big birthday (1st birthday and 60th birthdays are important here), anyone who participated gets a gift of towels from the host. My co-teacher got a lot of hand towels for participating in a festival the other day. She handed them out because she thought they were ugly. I am inclined to agree: they are this bight coral pink with red and blue dragons and the festival printed on them... not pretty... but it is a towel, I'll use it.

As I was leaving work today, the art teacher gave me some rice cakes (tteok) with chocolate in them. She was giving them to all of the teachers today because she is super sweet and her younger siblings had very important tests today. Firstly, today was the SATs. It is such a big day that people go to work an hour later (unless you are giving the SATs or are a civil servant) to avoid traffic jams. Elementary schools started an hour later, and middle school and high school classes were canceled (since they are taking the exams). Apparently on days like today, with big exams, students are given tteok as a wish that their knowledge and studying will stick long enough to pass the exams. I don't know how to describe tteok to you... I want to say it is like Flubber, but it doesn't bounce, it goes "splat" but still retains it's shape. I'm pretty sure that NASA uses it for something. Sadly, I have eaten three of these because I don't want to waste the chocolate inside.

I will regret this overdose in chocolate tomorrow, because I am counting on all of my sweet students to give me Peperos. If they don't, I'll flunk them all. Tomorrow is Pepero Day, like a Korean Valentine's Day. The stores have huge pink and red heart displays with baskets of stuffed animals and Peperos (a cracker stick covered in chocolate). I'm pretty sure if I went to a shopping center, there would be his and her underwear in the basket with the Peperos. I'm not so gungho over them as Koreans seem to be (Peperos or his and her underwear), but again it's chocolate (at least for the Pepero... I'm not sure about the underwear).

As promised, pictures of the cat cafe and the trick eye museum. To see more, go to my fb.

 

This is the "Would you just ask for directions" glare

Good Weekend

This weekend has been quite a weekend! Friday I was still pretty sick, so one of the teachers took me to the hospital. Hospitals in Korea are just like going to a medical center, there are specialists all over the hospital. I went to the ENT, waited an hour for the doctor to get back from lunch, and then got right in. The doctor's and nurse's desks are in the same room with the examining chair and medical equipment. It is not a fancy office full of private rooms, in fact, there was another patient waiting in the same room while I got examined. After a quick examination and prodding around in my mouth, the doctor started telling the teacher my problems (in Hangul). My teacher kept on saying "Oh my God! Oh my God!" and then look at me. I struggled to keep down the panic, thinking I was dying. But it still didn't soften the blow when the teacher told me that I have to come again on Wednesday to see how bad the infection in my saliva glad is and how easily the stone can be removed. Apparently, it could be super simple case of medication or "simple" surgery, or major surgery. So that made my Friday, as you can imagine :S But luckily M arrived Friday night to help calm me down.

Saturday M and I decided that we'd start knocking things off the "things we want to do in Seoul" list. We met K in Gangnam and went to a cat cafe (pictures later). A cat cafe is an apartment or office space turned cafe. It is pretty clean, but does smell like cat. And of course cats will jump on the tables, chairs, and kitchen area where they prepare your drinks. For eight thousand won you can pet all the cats you want and drink some fairly good coffee. You sit on the floor and drink your coffee and play with cats. It was good to be around cats again, and I cannot tell you how many cats there were, there were a lot.

M and I then headed to Hongdae to the Trick Eye Museum (again pics coming soon). This is an art museum where all the art has been made interactive. You can crawl through the art, do creative poses with the art, or try on the art. It was a great time and well worth the 13,000 won! Plus it was fun to watch others make creative poses with the art as well!

After the museum we wandered around Hongdae checking out various shops and cafes. Then we wandered over to Dongdaemun to the lantern festival. None of our friends showed up, so we headed out on our own, walking all the way past city hall to Changdeokgung Palace. There were so many lanterns and so many people! It was quite maddening having to elbow people for a photo. We took pictures of every single lantern, until we finally just had to stop! What will we do with all these pictures! But I will post some up here for you to look at! We couldn't ask for better weather either! It was supposed to rain, but instead it was amazing, the sun shone all day, and it was around 50 degrees all day.