Almost halfway there

So I arrived here in late August, which means that as of now mid-February, I've been here about five and a half months. During lunch, I was thinking about the Koreanisms I've adopted, which I'd like to share with you.



1. Hair

If any of you are my Facebook friends or have Skyped with me recently, you know I've cut my hair Korean-style, that is, I've gotten bangs. I love my Korean bangs! When I walk around town I really do feel like I fit in a little bit better, although I'm probably deluding myself.


2. Clothes

I've had an easier time finding clothes here than I would have thought. Of course, I can't find t-shirts, comfy pants, or shoes to save my life, but I've lucked out in one important way... well, two important ways. One - Korean fashion tends toward big, baggy sweaters/tops, which means of course that they fit me! Two - Koreans love leggings and tights, and I have been converted. Especially thermal leggings! Did you know you can buy leggings with fleecy insides? Because I like them even better than jeans. They're really comfortable and so warm. Although I have to be careful because sometimes leggings that are meant to fit Koreans like to only go down slightly below my knees as opposed to my ankles. However, this can be solved with smart shopping.



3. My newfound love for rice

I love rice. I eat rice literally every day. If I don't eat rice, I feel weird and will crave rice. It's so much better than the rice at home. This stuff is sticky and therefore very easy to eat with chopsticks. At school I get white rice, purplish rice (with beans or something), rice with sweet potatoes, and more kinds that I can't even describe. Rice goes with everything! You can dip it in soup, eat it with kimchi, mix it with tuna, put a sunnyside up egg on it... you name it, you can put rice with it.


I even eat rice for breakfast, that is how Korean I am. Yes, if I am too lazy to make eggs I just heat up rice and eat it with seaweed. And chopsticks. With my morning coffee.


4. My newfound love for seaweed

Earlier this year, for Chuseok back in November, my principal gave me a box of seaweed as a present. That box sat untouched in my pantry for about a month before I finally decided to try it. Let me tell you, SEAWEED IS AWESOME. This particular seaweed is toasted and salted and perfect with rice and some soy sauce. I sprinkle soy sauce into my rice, pick up a chunk with my chopsticks, and then wrap it up in seaweed. I eat this for breakfast and dinner all the time. I'm still not crazy about seaweed soup, but this stuff is fantastic. My principal just popped in to wish me a happy New Year (lunar New Year is coming up) and give me... wait for it... SEVEN packages of seaweed! I'm completely stoked. This is what living in Korea has done to me. Luckily, I googled it and apparently seaweed is really good for you and full of trace minerals and stuff. The salt can't be so great, but it's basically salty, toasted vegetables!


5. I miss Korean food

When I go away on the weekends or on a trip, I miss Korean food. If I eat Western food all weekend, I can't wait to get back and get some kimbap or something. (Kimbap is like Korean sushi.) I love kimbap so much, and it's so cheap it's ridiculous.


6. The way I eat food

Even the way I eat food is more Korean. I'm typically a pretty picky eater, especially with meat. Koreans are seriously less fastidious about preparing their food than Westerns. What I mean by this is that they don't care about deboning things or cutting off the fat. Every time I get fish it's basically just the whole fish, minus scales, plopped on my plate or in my soup. You have to use your chopsticks and dig through organs, spines, bones, the works. You even eat the fish skin! In seafood soup there's often these miniature shrimp that you eat whole. Yes, you just pop the whole thing in your mouth... eyes, feelers, crunchy shell and all. I tend to avoid those though, they're not tasty. Today at lunch we had seafood soup, and there were crab legs and body parts all in it, and it was the first time I could bring myself to eat it like the Koreans do: you just put the leg in your mouth and attempt to suck out the meat by gnawing on the leg like a drumstick, sort of. Next time you eat crab, try it. Just grab a leg and chomp down. Also try eating a whole fish with only chopsticks, yet managing to not swallow fish bones.


Korean barbeque is delicious, but like I said, cutting the fat off meat isn't high on a Korean's list of priorities. When we go out for meals it's really nice because the other teachers will put pieces of meat onto my plate, but this means that I have to eat them or be rude. Often the pieces are 50% meat, 50% pure fat. Sometimes even pieces of gristle. I kind of just choke them down in the name of politeness. Back in the States I would literally never eat such fatty meat, but here it's just so typical that I don't even notice it.

7. It doesn't seem weird to not have a separate shower

Korean bathrooms don't have a separate room for the shower. The shower nozzle is attached near the sink, and you just shower right there. I'm actually a pretty big fan of this setup because it means cleaning the bathroom is easier since everything can be hosed down with the shower nozzle. A negative is when the nozzle gets out of hand and your toilet paper gets soaked.

8. I don't expect toilet paper in any bathrooms

In the West I'd be deeply irritated if I went to use a public restroom and there wasn't any toilet paper, but in Asia they maintain a firm BYOTP policy. I'm genuinely pleased when I pop into a restroom to find toilet paper in the stall, and I consider it my lucky day if that particular stall contains both a Western toilet AND toilet paper.

9. Giving and accepting items with two hands is second nature

In Korea it's rude to accept or give something with only one hand (especially the left hand). Even when my students take scissors or a piece of paper from me, they always do it with both hands, sometimes even with small head bow as well. The bow is usually reserved for actual gifts though, like if I give them candy or something. I think it's very cute and interesting that even my most badly behaved students still are very respectful of anything I give them. You can tell that it's a deep-seated cultural thing.

10. You can (and will) find anything and everything on your pizza

Corn, sweet potato, spaghetti, honey mustard... you name it, it's been on a pizza I've had in Korea. Corn especially is the worst culprit. I'm of the opinion that a lot of Korean restaurants just don't really understand Western food. They understand the individual components, but then they choose to put these components together in any which way. As a Westerner, sweet potatoes and pizza do not go together, but Koreans find this in no way unusual.

Thailand

So I recently went on vacation to Thailand, and it was great. The weather there was really nice, about 80-85 degrees (I think). I stayed in Bangkok Saturday night-Monday afternoon, then went to Koh Phi Phi, an island on the southwest side of the country, then back to Bangkok Saturday to fly back to Korea.

Bangkok was a very cool place. It's literally lousy with temples... they're just everywhere! And they're absolutely beautiful. I've been to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, which is my favorite church ever (well, possibly the Sacre-Coeur in Paris for a tie), but Asian temples are just so very different from Western churches. They're just all covered in mosaics and gold and mirrors, and they're incredibly intricate. Bangkok itself though, I was glad I wasn't there for too long. I felt like every single Thai person I met was trying to hustle me one way or the other, and it got really tiring having to be on my guard all the time. The cab drivers were the worst - sometimes they'd refuse to turn on the meter so I had to argue with them until they'd finally turn it on, and often we would just negotiate a flat fee before getting in, and then I'd find out later we got ripped off. The good thing is that getting ripped on in Thailand is kind of a joke since everything's so inexpensive, but it just got old. For example, the security guard at our hotel called us a cab, and he told us how much it would cost to get from the hotel to the temple we wanted to visit, and so we got in the cab and drove for like five minutes, then the cabbie pulled over and was like, Oh sorry the car's out of gas. Huh? Then magically another cab pulls up in front of us and our driver was like, Oh you can go take that one. Well thanks, cab driver, now we have to pay you to get here and pay a whole new starting fee. Scammed much? It could have been legitimate, but it seemed very fishy to me. I think if I lived in Thailand I would figure out how to keep from getting hustled all the time, but just being there for a short period of time made it hard. Also Thai cab drivers are even crazier than Korean cab drivers.

The hotel we stayed at had this deal where you could take one free tour, so my friend and I decided we'd go on the gondola tour. I had heard that Bangkok was called the "Venice of the East" because it used to rely primarily on waterways just like Venice, although they had moved away from that system. Anyway, we went out on a longboat ("Just like in James Bond, the Man with the Golden Gun!" our tour guide assured us). It was cool to go out on the boat and see houses and such. The tour group had picked us up from our hotel and was supposed to drop us off as well. So we were done with the tour and headed back to the van, and once we were inside the tour guide told us that we were going to head to a gem factory to learn all about Thai gems, etc. then they would drop us off wherever we wanted to go. We go to the gem place, watched a seven minute movie on Thailand and gems, and then were invited to walk into the stonecutting room, which actually was interesting. However, immediately I knew why we got a free tour - they wanted us to buy jewelry! As soon as we stepped into the stonecutting room a woman working there was like, Oh come look at the finished pieces! We went into the next room, and it was absolutely crammed with foreigners and jewelry. Like I said, everything in Bangkok is some kind of scam. If you can't trust your hotel staff, who can you trust? My friend and I just said we were too poor to afford anything, so could we just head out? So our tour guide showed us where to get a ride back.

Anyway, Bangkok was a really interesting place to visit. On Monday we took the overnight train south to get to Koh Phi Phi. In the long run this turned out to be a massive mistake. Take my advice - the overnight train itself is fine, but if you're short on time, don't take it to Phuket or Koh Phi Phi or basically anywhere on the west coast. If you're staying on the east coast on Koh Samui or Koh Phangan you'll be fine, but getting to the west coast was a nightmare. First of all the overnight train was really full so we could only get one sleeper seat and one sitting seat. I volunteered to sit in the sitting seat first with the idea that my friend and I would switch about midway through the ride (which was about 11 hours). So I sat in this rickety old train car, no AC (but it wasn't that hot), in this dingy old seat. I did manage to get seated next to the only other foreign girl in my car though. She was English and very pleasant. It was handy because she watched my luggage when I went to the bathroom or to go check on my friend. Anyway, it was unlucky for me because they locked the sleeping cars, presumably to stop the sitting people from swiping empty sleeping bunks or from robbing those who were sleeping or whatever. So I ended up having to spend the night in my sitting chair, which reclined farther than airplane seats but not much.

The train was supposed to leave at 7:30pm on Monday and arrive at 6:30am or so Tuesday morning. It left about 30-45 minutes late and arrived about an hour and 15 minutes late in Surat Thani, this town on the east coast. We had bought our bus tickets at the same time we got train tickets, and so we put our luggage on a coach bus and boarded. Whoops - turns out there wasn't enough room, and our luggage was already buried on the bus. The driver told us that another bus would show up to get us, so don't worry, our luggage is going to the same place. Well, we were nervous about this but fortunately a second, smaller bus showed up five minutes later. We drove to yet another station about 15 minutes away and phew, our luggage came too. So from there a midsize van comes, we load up, get on - whoops, AGAIN there isn't enough room for everyone. Of the four people in our group, only two of us fit. The woman in charge told us we had to go because the van needed to be full, but I was like, Lady you are crazy if you think I'm about to split our group in half, travel three hours across the country, and hope to find each other? So we hopped off, insisted we grab our luggage, then had to wait and hop on an open-air truck that took us 15 minutes back into town where we started. Then we got on a coach bus and rode three hours to Krabi, our next destination.

We arrive in Krabi and then buy ferry tickets. We had to wait for maybe an hour at this little gas station/bus station/dropoff point place until yet another open-air truck pulled up to take us to the ferry. We drove maybe five minutes and finally arrived at the ferry station. We got on the ferry, which took off about 45 minutes late, then the trip itself was an hour and 45 minutes. FINALLY we arrived on Phi Phi.

Phi Phi was gorgeous. Thai islands are absolutely amazing. However, I've never been to the tropics before - I've never been to Hawaii, Bermuda, the Bahamas, heck, even Mexico, so maybe I haven't seen that many beaches. Regardless, these were ridiculously nice beaches! I had read that the Thai islands had been "ruined" by tourism, but frankly I didn't think they were too bad. Was Phi Phi jammed full of tourist booths, restaurants, bars, shops, hotels, and spas? Yes, it was. However, I didn't think there was an insane amount of people, and honestly, what do you expect from a tropical paradise like that? That it will be secluded? I mean, it draws tourists, so I would think there would be a lot of people there visiting.

Thai food is delicious. I had a lot of curries and fried rice as well as fruit shakes. One of my favorite parts was how there was pineapple everywhere! You could buy half a pineapple for less than a dollar! I think I was having reverse scurvy because I definitely broke out in a minor rash on my face, which I think you can get from overdosing on vitamin C. Whatever, it was worth it. We went on two snorkeling tours. They were also super cheap - $1 is about 30 baht, so $3 is about 100 baht, and a half day snorkeling trip only cost 250 baht. They provided masks and snorkels, and they took you out in groups of maybe 8-12 on these longboats for a few hours. There were tons of fish as well, and it was such beautiful scenery and such clear water. We went to Maya Beach, which I guess is where Leonardo DiCaprio filmed the movie "The Beach," which I've never seen. Either way it was gorgeous.

The first day we just did the snorkeling tour, but the second day we went cliff jumping! They provided us with rubber shoes and gloves, which I quickly found out was because you had to scale a rock wall to get to the jump site. At first I was NOT okay with that because I am a terrible rock climber, plus there was no equipment or anything, so if you fell you'd basically just fall straight onto razor sharp rocks. Great. Anyway, it was actually much easier than it looked. The rocks were super sharp, yes, but they were really jagged and easy to grab. The hardest part was getting started because waves kept crashing around you and you had to be careful that you weren't thrown onto the rocks because you'd really get cut up. Just brushing against them gave me scrapes. So I got to the top and there were three jumps: 8 meters (26.3 feet), 10 meters (33 feet) and 20 meters (66 feet). I had planned just to go off 10 meters straightaway, mostly because I wasn't sure if I wanted to climb the rock face again. However, the tour guide wouldn't let me! This scrawny little Thai guy who looked younger than me was like, "Oh no miss, you have to go off the 8 meter." "Do I have to? I can't just go off the 10?" "No miss, 8 first, then 10." I was irritated because I'm positive it's because I'm a girl, since I was the only girl jumping and he didn't make the guys go off the 8 meter jump first. Whatever. So I jumped off and it actually wasn't that scary. Before I could chicken out I quickly swam back and started climbing up, all the while questioning what was I getting myself into. So I popped up at 10 meters and the guy gave me the go-ahead, though he did say I had to go to the boat after I jumped because we were leaving. I jumped off and swam to the boat. I wasn't happy though - even though I wasn't sure if I could handle the 20 meter jump, I would have liked to at least have the chance. Because I had to do 8m first, all the guys did 10 and then straight to 20. Plus they were up there for ages debating about jumping, and I definitely would have had time to climb back up. But I'm not going to kid myself, 66 feet is insanely high.

I was very nervous about traveling back to Bangkok, mostly because there were so many transfers we had to make and no one seemed to be able to give me a straight answer on what to expect (remember how I bought my bus ticket in advance only to have the bus be full?). I was NOT going to miss my flight to Korea. We took the 9am ferry on Friday from Koh Phi Phi because there were only two ferries, one at 9am and one at 3pm or so.
Ferry ride - 9am to 10:45ish
Anxious milling around after the ferry, waiting for truck pick up
Open air truck to bus stop
More milling around at bus stop
Uncomfortable van ride from Krabi to Surat Thani town - 11:15-2:15pm
Open air truck from Surat Thani town to train station - 2:15pm-3pm
Milling around train station
Train - 7pm-6am Saturday (sleeper car this time though, thank goodness)
Taxi - 6:30am-6:50am
Flight - 11:55am-11:05pm (thanks, layover in Hong Kong plus time difference)

Phew. We left Koh Phi Phi at 9am Friday morning and I arrived back in Buyeo at like 2pm on Sunday. Like I said, a truly ridiculous amount of traveling. The only upside is that from now on, if I want to go home for a week, a 12 hour flight no longer seems like such a journey! Now that it's over, it really wasn't so bad - the majority of the stress came from just not knowing if it would work out. Would the bus really show up? Would there be enough room for us? Would the train be massively late? All that stuff is where stress comes into play.

What I've learned from my Thailand trip is a lot about traveling and planning and knowing how long it will take to get places. Thailand is an amazing place that I think everyone should go to - the food and sights are just incredible. I wish I would have had more time there. I really hope to go back, especially to the islands, but I also want to go to Chiang Mai in the north, plus there's so many other awesome Asian countries and so little time. Pictures to come soon - I'm currently deskwarming, so I'm at school and don't have access to my pictures to upload.

Christmas in K-town

The first of several outdated blog postings :-)


So as you may or may not know, this was my first Christmas away from my family. Sorry, by the way, because it's my fault that this is also the first Christmas that my family has ever not all been together. Luckily, we got together on Christmas Day (me) and Christmas Eve (my family) via skype. I opened some presents, and they made our traditional post-mass pizza and cheese and sausage. We even had a trans-hemisphere cheers! After talking to my family, I had to rush out the door to meet up with other people to go out of town. A group of perhaps 40 foreigners from Buyeo, Nonsan, and a handful of other places went to the nearby town of Boryeong to a "pension."


A pension in Korea is basically just a rented cabin. The pension was really nice - we had rented two on account of having so many people, and the cabins were located in this nice resort-type area. It even had a swimming pool and hot tubs, but due to the cold weather everything was closed. It started snowing just as we pulled up and proceeded to snow almost all night, giving us a wondeful white Christmas. Our gathering included Americans, Englishmen (and women), an Irishman, South Africans, New Zealanders, and Canadians. The Saffers and NZers were very excited for the snow because in SA and NZ Christmas is a summer event - lots of barbeques and pool parties, so they were all pumped for their first white Christmas.

We made a Western dinner - my first mashed potatoes in months! Delicious! Also salad, macaroni and cheese, turkey, and vegetable kebobs. We also had a Western breakfast. I made bacon for about 40 people... never again. It was a really great time though. We did a secret Santa as well - I drew another girl from Buyeo, and I bought her fake Uggs to wear in school because she was always saying how cold it was in her school. I got, among other things, a pair of blue fleecy pants, a most excellent present.

Overall it was a good Christmas for my first time away from home.