A Tour of My Home

Yes, this is probably less interesting than my previous traveling adventure blogs, but I know some people are curious as to what the tiny Korean apartment I live in looks like. Well, for starters, it's not so tiny- I've got a separate kitchen and bedroom area, and even a laundry room- BAM! All your stereotyped preconceptions about Korean apartments have been shattered (just wait, I have more crazy things to tell you- like not all Korean clothing is made for four-foot-nothing-size-zero women, who knew?)

Anyway:

My entryway and bathroom door. My entry light is motion-censored, and my kitchen light-switch is by my bedroom door, but I haven't run into that corner yet!

My kitchen (and bedroom door frame) from my entry way. See that tiny broom there behind the fridge? Yeah, I sweep my floors bent in half-and they have to be swept a lot.

Kitchen from bedroom door. You may note the empty cupboards. Because I am too cheap to spend $3 to buy one single item, I have 2 mugs, bowls, and plates; and one of each utensil. This forces me to do the thing I hate the most EVERYDAY!!


My bathroom. Yes, I have my shower/sink/toilet all in one space- but look at the huge mirror I have!

Here's the tour of my bedroom, going counter clockwise, starting at my door:

My bedroom from my doorway. The wall decorations are maps, etc from my travels- an idea stolen from Anna in a beginning effort to cover that huge amount of white wall space.

My bedroom from my bed corner. That's my TV that I don't use, my closet, and my beautiful, beautiful air conditioning unit.

Bedroom from far corner. My laundry room door is on the right, behind which sits a washing machine that weighs the load and automatically determines the amount of water and detergent needed!

Bedroom from my closet corner. My few pictures look pathetic, but I didn't realize how much wall space I'd have. I'm working on it!

In conclusion, my only issue with my apartment is covering the blank wall space everywhere. Any ideas, posters, or pictures you want to send my way will be gladly accepted!

All Play, No Work - Part 2 -Seoul

Ahh Seoul, the city of 12 million people and the cultural centre of Korea. . .you’d think the things we did there would be endless and exciting. Alas, those kinds of doings take planning, and plan we did not until 11: 00 pm the night before we left. This was not intentional, as certain things were out of our hands and we weren’t even sure if we were going to Seoul until we started looking for hostels that night and realized the only available hostels in Korea were in Seoul (and there is a reason our hostel was so available, I think, but we’ll get to that later. . .)

Anna, Kristin, Robyn and I left for Seoul Thursday evening, using the gloriously inexpensive-by-Canadian-standards (and reflective of the cost of all Korean transportation) KTX high-speed train. We conquered the Seoul subway system with its madly-confusing intersecting nine lines and the masses of people (think New York City and then some and with pushier people) to arrive at our hostel which we later found out DID have air conditioning as advertised IF you had hostel companions show up on your second night with a Korean-speaking friend who was willing to argue with the host until he told him where he hid the remote. We also found out that our host liked to stare at people in the morning when they were sleeping and say things in Korean/broken English and then laugh oddly so as to make you wonder if he was all there in the head. Let’s just say we didn’t mind the company of the nine other people crammed into the tiny apartment, just so long as we didn’t have to be alone with him.

We arrived in Seoul late in the afternoon, so the first thing we did was embark on yet another attempt to eat at a Korean restaurant. This had not yet happened on vacation because we cannot read Korean and did not want to risk eating something we would rather not, and because it is more difficult than you may think to find a Korean restaurant menu with English subtitles. But we found one and had delicious chicken galbi with rice fried in an amount of butter that went against everything my mom ever taught me about low-fat eating.

Robyn and I dangerously close to being "matchy-matchy, same-same"

Then we decided to end the evening with a relaxing drink, which of course turned into an adventure. We were turned away from two places (we’re hoping it was only because they were full, except that the one definitely had empty booths) and we left two others- one because it was too expensive and the other because we had to order $14 appetizers to go with our $2 drinks. Walking out of a restaurant/bar is not so awkward when you know people are going to be staring at you anyways because you’re white, plus I’m pretty sure they expect us to be strange. We did finally find a place, at which we promptly caught the attention of some American businessmen whom we escaped- after they paid for our drinks of course!


On Friday we headed out for a hike in Bukhansan National Park. We found the general area easily enough, but wandered around for awhile (nothing new for us) trying to figure out how to get to the hiking trails until a young boy cheerfully told us to “Come here!” and skipped his way through the streets until we arrived at the entrance to the trails.

You will likely be seeing a lot of mountain view pictures over the next year as they run rampant in Korea and I enjoy hiking them.

Afterwards, we spent a while in Myeong-dong Shopping Area, Korea’s “trendiest shopping area” where we successfully searched for and found Forever 21, which I’m pretty sure has to be the largest Forever 21 in the world!! We ended the night walking along part of Cheonggyecheon Stream- something I had circled in my Korea tourism book before I left Canada. We didn’t see the whole stream, so when I'm in Seoul again, I’m going back.

A little haven of peace and quiet in the midst of a busy city.

On Saturday we took it easy and strolled around the streets, checking out little clothing shops and an amazing art free-market which made me wish I had money. In the evening we went to an FC Seoul soccer game- my first soccer game ever- at the Seoul World Cup Stadium during which there were fireworks and confetti for the kickoff and every time Seoul scored- try that at a hockey game!

This is the cheering section that was on its feet the entire game chanting, yelling, and jumping up and down like madmen. They must be very fit people. I got tired just waving my FC Seoul fan around.

Later that night while hanging out on the front step of a hostel we were chatted up by two Korean men who looked not much older than us, but then gave away their age by saying, “I went to school in America for 5 years, and worked there for 10, and I have been back in Korea for 7 years” – that makes them about 40. Yeah, buddy, you should’ve kept your mouth shut. This tip is for Koreans in general, who tend to look a LOT younger than they really are. Anyways, we dodged an invitation to go to some sort of spa and chat by agreeing to meet up with them in exactly three weeks at that same spot. . .yeah, okay.

Thus ended my first vacation in Korea.

All Play, No Work – Part 1- Busan

So before I have to get down to work, I am on vacation! I spent 3 days at Daejeon SLP (Sogang Language Program) Institute, observing the class I am taking over and spent Saturday hanging out with Heather and Katlyn (visiting from Cheongju, where 3 of the 6 Redeemer grads are living) and going on a much anticipated Costco shopping spree. Then Kristin, Anna and I left on Sunday to spend three and a half days in Busan, a beach city on the East Sea.

When we arrived, we did what Busan intends its visitors to do and enjoyed one of its many beaches. At first we thought the Koreans were silly for hiding under their umbrellas on the beach, but quickly realized what a blessed respite they are from the heat when there are no trees in sight to shade you from the scorching sun. Did I mention that it is blazing hot here? And HUMID- as in, your clothes don’t dry, your sweat doesn’t evaporate, when you breathe through your mouth it feels as though you’re breathing in the steam from the bowl of soup in front of you, except when you look down, there’s no bowl of soup because who in their right mind would eat soup when it’s this hot?

Kristin, Anna and I at Gwangalli Beach in the evening

Our second day in Busan, we went hiking. Yes, hiking, because it was supposed to be cloudy that day (naturally we concluded that cloudy= cooler) and our hostel was air conditioned, so we thought it was great weather for hiking. Let me just say a little something here about living with AC- yes, another digression. I have never lived in a place with air conditioning, and my apartment here has AC. Living with AC is living a lie- a beautiful lie, but a lie nonetheless- and we all know that lies always turn out badly. In the mornings I get up and think, “It’s not so bad that I only have dress pants to wear to work, it’s not so hot”. Then I go outside, the truth is revealed, and people get hurt- namely me. Back to hiking the mountain. We had been decieved in part by AC, and so were committed to our decision. It wasn’t so bad, the bus took us most of the way up the mountain, we were walking up only a small incline, there was some shade, and we took our time.

South Gate of Geumjeongsanseong Fortress. The fortress was originally built in 1703 to protect Korea against attacks from the sea by the Japanese and Chinese.

One view from Watchtower 2. You may notice a white haze in many of my photos, thanks to the thick humidity. Regardless, this photo doesn't do the mountains justice.

Then we decided we HAD TO find Watchtower 1, because it had a great view of the city. So we followed our friendly guide who offered to show us the way. He didn’t tell us the way was half an hour straight uphill. But it was worth it, the view was amazing.

Proud of our accomplishment and survival. Also, sweaty and looking disgusting. I'm glad you can't zoom in on this photo.

Our guide and the view of the Busan. Is it poor judgement that we followed a complete stranger up a nearly deserted mountain, and then an hour later, followed another couple of strangers through the back alleys of Busan?

The happy ending to this story was that we took a cable car back down the mountain. Then, later that evening, we rewarded ourselves with another spectacular bird’s eye view of a different part of the city- courtesy of Busan Tower and its air conditioned elevator.

Beautiful view of the evening sky over Busan and the East Sea.

Our final day in Busan we spent relaxing at the main beach – Haeundae Beach. It is insane.

Trying to give you an idea of how insane it was. . .row upon row of umbrellas that were lined up edge to edge and the sea swarming with Koreans and their yellow tubes.

I got to join in the Korean obssession with floating on yellow tubes, thanks to the kindness of our umbrella neighbours.

Then we went to the Busan Aquarium. Some of the interesting things there were a "Fish Car" which was literally a car being used as an aquarium, and an underwater magic show, which we left because we had no idea what was going on- that tends to happen a lot over here, what with me knowing only four phrases in Korean.

Some of the cool and colourful sea creatures we saw along with some very strange and ugly creatures.

The day ended with me attending my very first baseball game ever – go Lotte Giants!! At times the crowd was more entertaining than the game. For instance, the 8th inning came around and they gave out these orange plastic shopping bags. So I thought everyone was meant to clean up their own garbage. But then people started waving them around, so I thought the bags were meant as cheap noise makers to go along with everyone's homemade newspaper pom-poms. Then the crowd proceeded to do this with the bags:

For the record, everyone did use the bags at the end of the game to clean up their garbage. I'm still not sure, however, what the primary purpose of the bags was- to wear or to collect garbage.

On Wednesday, we returned home to Daejeon where Robyn, who had just arrived in Cheongju a few days before, met up with us to head to Seoul on Thursday. Details of that adventure will be coming soon in All Play, No Work - Part 2!