gwangju-si

The town is live in is called Gwangju. If you google Gwangju, South Korea, however you will find a much bigger city to the south with the same name. My city is much smaller. It has around 200,000 people living here, but in Korea that is a semi-small town. South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with 48,379,392 people crammed into an area the size of Indiana. My city, therefore, may sound as big as Madison and there may be just as many people, but it feels much smaller. Most Koreans live in apartments and not houses, so the city is much smaller area wise.

Map of South Korea: The orange part is Seoul, and Gyeonggi-do surrounds it.

My city is located in Gyeonggi-do province, which is the province surrounding Seoul. Most cities in Gyeonggi would be considered suburbs of Seoul. In order for me to get to Seoul I have to walk about a block to a bus station and take a red inter-city bus for 40 minutes. This bus drops me off at Gangbyeon Station, which is on the Green Line on the subway. The Green Line is the central loop through Seoul so from there I can get almost anywhere in about 30-40 minutes. It's really easy to get downtown and the subway is HUGE but really easy to navigate since it's all in english. I go to Seoul at least twice a week nowadays.

Map of Gyeonggi-do: My city is to the Southeast. Gwangju.

As for my actual city, I don't live in the main downtown drag, but on the main street we have faves like Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. An E-Mart just opened which is like a Korean version of Target meets Meijer. We have most things you could need.

a lesson in k-pop

k-pop is basically the only music everyone in Korea listens to. It's basically like the music I listened to when I was in middle school, like nsync and britney spears, but even more over the top. The singers are usually groups of 5 of more girls or boys and the music is very very poppy. Some of the groups (like super junior) have up to 13 boys in the group.

The funniest part of k-pop is that everyone here listens to it. the teachers at my school have the songs as ringtones, the old men blast it in their cars, and the business people are listening to it on their ipods on the subway. most k-pop also has at least a few english words in it as well and sometimes it's not very correct. for instance a group named KARA sings a song called pretty girl and the chorus goes "if you wanna pretty, every wanna pretty". which obviously makes no sense.

my favorite 2 groups are 2NE1 (4 girls) and big bang (5 guys).

my current favorite, however, which is much more poppy, is called "gee" by a group called girls generation which has 9 members. check it outtttt.

korean bbq (aka samgyeopsal)

So i've been here for 2 month already this Friday. A lot of the things that seemed crazy and foreign to me when I got here are now normal to my everyday life here. I forget that most of you still would like to hear about the little Korean things, food, and traditions that happen on a regular basis so I am promising to try and do blogs about things like that during the week and not just about my life on the weekend.

This first post is going to be about samgyeopsal, or Korean bbq. One of the most common foods here is called samgyeopsal and it involves pork or beef you cook yourself over a grill at your table.

After you cook the meat, you take it with your chopsticks and put it in a lettuce leaf. You add a whole clove of garlic and some hot bean paste sauce (and whatever else you might want) and pop the whole thing into your mouth at once.

The Korean's love this dish and there are resturaunts on almost every corner serving simply samgyeopsal. If you're ever planning on coming to Korea, plan on eating it. It's actually really really good. The great thing about going out for samgyeopsal is that it is served family style and the side dishes are free refills. That's all for now, more Korean tidbits soon!

english names.

This week in school I am really enjoying the lesson I am doing. I am giving all of my kids English names. I made a list of my favorite English names (my friends, family, and fave celebs). I pass out the list at the beginning of class and tell the kids to pick an English name and then make a name tag for their desk. Some of the kids know some American celebrities and what not and make up their own names too.

My favorites so far are:

Jack Sparrow
Ron Weasley (My girlfriend is Emma Watson)
Michael Jordon
Barack

It's also funny when the kids are named after my friends. Like today in one of my classes the front row was Nicci, Alan, and Matt. I couldn't help but laugh and i was wishing I had my camera. And in another class the girl named Lauren wouldn't stop talking, so typical. Its funny because I don't even assign them names, they pick them. Noone has picked Barney yet though, sorry Barn.

Anways I'm probably having too much fun suggesting that kids name themselves Tayshaun or Justin Bobby, it might be bad karma. But they are having fun with it too. Maybe I'll take some pictures tomorrow and put them up here.

midterms, cocoon, and gyeongbok.

last week was midterms for my school so i only had to come to work until noon everyday, which was awesome. on wednesday i went shopping in myeong-dong and spent way too much money (oops) and on thursday rebecca and i ventured to a vintage market. this is one of my favorite finds so far in Seoul. Dongdaemun market is one of the world's largest wholesale markets and you can find basically anything on the planet there. In one building of the market (called Gwangjang market) there are 2 floors of secondhand clothes. The only way I found the place was because i researched it on the internet, its actually really secluded. The market smelled like mothbolls, which was awesome, and had tons of vintage leather bags, jackets, boots, t-shirts, and all around awesome things. I could have spent hours upon hours there digging through all the things. At the market I got a sequined vest, shirt, a little purse, and a Detroit Tigers shirt.

The weekend officially started on Friday and we headed to Hongkik University or Hongdae as it's called (Dae means University). We went out to dinner and then hit the bars and clubs. We met some Koreans who took us to a club called Cocoon. It was a packed dance club that reminded me of London+Acapulco. We eventually went to Burger King around 4:30AM to wait for the subway to open at 5:30 and then all went home. I walked into my apartment around 7AM. Killer.
That day I mostly slept off the night, but then it was the guy I work with, Luke's birthday. We all went out to dinner in Bundang for some Indian food and it was sooo good. After dinner the group was headed back in Seoul to Hongdae and I decided I couldn't do it again (i know im old) so i met up with Amy, Adam, and Rebecca around the corner at a bar. We hung out at the bars for a little while, smoked some apple hookah, and then all hopped in a cab to my house. We had a slumber party at my place and in the morning cooked some eggs and watched Michigan lose to Iowa. We had woken up in the middle of the night to see if Wisco was worth watching... aaand it wasn't obviously.

On Sunday Me Amy and Rebecca decided to keep to our tradition of not wasting Sundays and doing something touristy and went to Gyeongbok Palace in downtown Seoul. This palace is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Seoul and it's HUGE. We walked around for a few hours taking pictures and enjoying the perfect fall day (sorry to all you at home, its still around 70 during the day here). The palace literally took 2 hours to walk through and was full of doors and colorful fun things to take pictures of.

After the palace we walked around the main drag of Seoul. The downtown area acutally reminds me a lot of Chicago. I could tell it was going to be a cool sunset so I wanted to watch it. We happened to be walking near one of the tallest buildings in Seoul so we decided to try and see if we could get to the top somehow. We took the elevator to the top floor and stumbled upon an amazing resturaunt with 2 story windows overlooking the whole city. We decided to have some expensive glasses of wine and enjoy the sunset. Sometimes spending money on something like this is worth it. We also made reservations here for November 6th (yeayuhh).

Chuseok present.

I just received a Chuseok present from one of my kids... its colored pencils, candy, and a small notebook. But the best part is the letter he wrote me in English, so I thought I'd share:

To Sara:

Hello! Sara!
I'm daniel Kim (Korean name kim in tae)
Last weekend is Korea traditional special day Chu-seok
So, I'm giving a present to you.
I'm not sure what my present means in America. But my present contains a lot of my true heart.
I hope we stay in close.
I wrote it Last Friday in school.
But i heard "you didn't come school" at after school.
So i give this today.

Sincerely, Daniel Kim (kim in tae)



so precious, right?

chuseok weekend

This past weekend was Korea's biggest holiday of the year: Chuseok. It's a celebration of the harvest and everyone travels to their hometowns to honor their ancestors. For this reason, traveling anywhere was out of the question and we stuck around Seoul/Geyeonggi-do. The holiday is kinda comparable to our Thanksgiving.

Saturday morning I met up with some of my friends and we headed to the Korean Folk Village in Yongin (south of Seoul). We were expecting a traditional village full of Korean history, however, it was a little more commercial than expected. Kids in traditional hanboks were feasting on corndogs and churros.

The whole day wasn't a waste, however, we got to see some pretty cool things like traditional Korean dance, herbs, holiday attire, and games. It was kinda comparable to Disney World meets Greenfield Village... but in Korea.

That Sunday Me, Amy, and Rebecca decided to head to the World Cup Stadium used for the world cup in 2002. The stadium itself was closed but we got to walk all around it and take in the asthetically pleasing area they chose. It was a brisk fall day and being outside and walking around the park area was nice. The stadium sits on the west side of Seoul and you can see the mountains peeking up behind it (to the left under the trees in this picture).

The weekend was a nice long break from work, but now I am back. Although this week is midterms so I am not teaching at all, just sitting at my desk all day everyday. I am about to go out for a traditional korean dinner with the English department. Fall has begun and I officially feel like I am not a tourist here anymore. That initial excitement/fear has worn off and now i acutally feel like a resident of Korea.