Here is another one of my mass e-mails to inform you my adventures
here in Korea. First some housekeeping kinds of things. For anyone who
doesn't know, my Skype address is stephanie_unger. Skype is like an
online telephone and chat service and you can make free computer to
computer calls with just voice (requires a microphone) or with voice
and video (requires a mic and a web cam). I also have Digsby, so all
my other online chat and social networking sites are linked on my
computer. My g-chat (ungersj9530@gmail.com), aim (sjounger9530), and
facebook account (under my e-mail address) are linked so that I can
talk to people super easily, so if you want to chat I'm excited to
talk to you. That's about all, so on with stories!
On the 17th of April Sam, Tom, George and I met up outside German bar
at 11 am to go exploring. From there we headed to the U-square bus
terminal, which is far more than just a bus terminal. Yes, it's where
all of the buses from other cites like Pusan and Seoul come to drop
off and pick up people, but it also has a huge movie theater with 2
IMAX screens, an arcade, a large number of restaurants and coffee
joints, a huge book store with a decent English section, a play/music
hall, several hair salons, and it is attached to both the Shinsegae
Department store (the really fancy department store) and e-mart (which
is like Walmart). We wandered around and admired the awesomeness,
shopped for essentials that we didn't have yet, and caught a bus to
Sam's place. Sam lives by the World Cup Stadium here in Gwangju (built
for the 2002 World Cup) and the Pungam reservoir. Sam's place is huge
for a Korean apartment, he has 3 rooms! We moaned and groaned about
his good fortune and then went to explore the reservoir. The Pungam
reservoir is actually really pretty. There is a nice walking path that
goes around the lake, 2 little park areas, and several gardens. Korean
parks are a little different than American parks. Alot of them don't
seem to have jungle gyms or play areas for children, but work out
machines for adults. Well, I say work out machines, but I don't really
think the machines exercise anything. The lack of child centered areas
doesn't seem to bother anyone though, because the kids just play on
the exercise machines. We spent alot of time trying to figure out what
the different machines did by watching the kids. We also learned that
Korean Kids are experts at hula hooping. Seriously, they can go for
like five minutes no problem. Tom and I tried to hula hoop, but we
failed miserably and were laughed at by the kids. When we were getting
ready to leave the park a bunch of the kids we were playing with ran
up and gave me flowers they had picked, I laughed at the boys because
they didn't get any flowers. After the park we headed back downtown
for dinner at a hot pot restaurant. They brought out a big wok looking
thing filled with delicious seafood, noodles, and broth on a burner.
It was spicy (like most food in Korea, but really good. After dinner
the British folk were craving "a pint," so we went back to the German
bar. I will probably regale you often with how Korea is a very random
country, where extremely random things will happen to you and you just
sort of have to go with the flow. This was really my first taste of
the randomness. As we walked into the German Bar, we heard our names
shouted from across the room. Apparently the entire April EPIK crew
had managed to wander into the German Bar at about the same time. It
was extremely random because no one had planned it, the biggest group
that had come together was like five people, and there were close to
30 of us there. We ended up staying a while and sharing our stories
about our first few weeks in Gwangju. I finally went home at about
11:30, just in time to catch the last train. I'm super sad that the
subway and buses stop so early here.
The next day I met up with Leah, a girl from South Carolina that lives
down the street from me. We decided to explore the downtown area a
little more because, although Leah has taught in South Korea for a
year already, last year she lived in Mokpo, a beach town about 40
minutes from Gwangju. We got downtown and started walking around the
fashion street and we ran into more randomness. Apparently it was some
kind of festival day, I have never found out exactly what festival it
was for, and we got to see a really cool dance exhibition and a
parade. I managed to film some of the dancers, who were really good
for middle and high school girls, the videos are up on my facebook
page. It was really interesting that the girls were allowed to wear
some rather revealing dance outfits, Korans have fairly conservative
standards of dress. Leah said that Koreans seem to separate dancing
from most of everyday life, so risque costumes or sexy dance moves are
not really considered anything taboo. Kind of like how renaissance
paintings of naked people are art, not vulgar. The dancers had to stop
several times to let the parade through, I really don't know what the
parade was for though. There seemed to be some costumes, but they
looked more Chines than Korean, and there were some people wearing
panda shirts. It started raining, so we ran inside one of the many
Dunkin' Donuts here in Korea for a snack. Dunkin' Donuts in Korea is a
little different than it is in the States, its more like a cafe here.
Many DDs are 3 stories, with the counter on the bottom floor and
tables and couches on the top two floors. The donuts are also a little
different too. They have glazed and old fashioned donuts but they also
have apple, kiwi, watermelon, mango and some that are covered in pop
rocks! They also have a blubbery yogurt donut that is half blueberry
filling and half yogurt filling. So delicious! There are also some
really wird one like kimchi donuts and curry chicken donuts. We tried
the kimchi donut...yup, tastes like kimchi. DD also has churros, which
made me laugh, who would have thought that the only Mexican food to
make it to south Korea would be churros? That was pretty much our
Sunday, watching the dancers and the parade, eating donuts, and
exploring.
The next weekend we went Damyang, a small city a little under an hour
away from Gwangju. Damyang is famous for its bamboo forests.
Apparently the best bamboo sticks for beating unruly students come
from Damyang. We got alot of requests to bring back bamboo rods for
our co-teachers. We wanted to go to Soswaewon garden, a national
historic site that Sam had read about, but we were rather unsure of
how to get there. After being thoroughly confused by the bus map, we
finally signaled a taxi. One rather epic taxi ride later, we were
outside the gates of the Soswaewon garden. The garden was built by a
Korean dignitary when he retired from politics, it's supposed to be
one of the best examples of traditional Korean meditation gardens
still in existence. It was really beautiful. There were several
pavilions, for meditation and poetry writing apparently, a stream and
a small waterfall, and a really cool bamboo aqueduct going over the
stream. We wandered around the garden and took lots of pictures and
video, all of which are up on my facebook page. After we saw the
garden we had a super traditional Korean lunch of smoked salted fish,
rice, kimchi and bamboo shoots. Not my favorite lunch in history, but
interesting certainly.
After the Damyang weekend I kind of needed a weekend to finish buying
essentials for my apartment, to clean, and do laundry. My first week
in Korea I bought a broom and dust pan, but Korean brooms are about 2
feet long, so you have to hunch over to try and clean. After a half
hour, a sore back, and a still dirty apartment, I broke down and
bought a damn vacuum. Yeah, screw that sweeping mess. Sadly, vacuums
and other appliances are super expensive here in Korea, which is
rather odd considering that many of them are manufactured here. But
now I have a lovely pink Electrolux bagless vacuum that matches my
apartment. It also makes cleaning ridiculously easy, so I'm happy with
it.
Besides cleaning and shopping, George, Tom, and I decided to meet up
with a bunch of the other April EPIK people and go to the jimjilbang.
Jjimjilbangs are aparently one of the truly unique aspects of Korean
culture. They are large, gender-segregated public bathhouses complete
with hot tubs, showers, Swedish-style saunas and massage tables,
similar to what you would find at a mogyoktang (a.k.a. public bath
house). However, after putting on your relaxation uniform, you get to
go upstairs to the unisex areas. The unisex area has a snack bar,
ondol-heated floor for lounging and sleeping on, wide-screen TVs, a PC
bang (PC room or internet cafe), a noraebang (karaoke room), and
sleeping cubbyholes with sleeping mats. Most Jimjilbangs are open 24
hours a day and are great places to stay for travelers because they
are cheap (only 6,000 won!) and offer bathing and eating facilities.
They also rock my socks because facials and massages are dirt cheap!
It was 10,000 won for a half an hour facial and 20,000 won for a deep
tissue massage for a half an hour. The saunas were also really neat.
At the jimjilbang we went to, called Hyundai Well Being Land, there
are about a half a dozen different saunas. All the saunas are
different temperatures and have different decorations or themes. There
is one that is completely made of black marble and has little black
stones that you lay on. You have to be careful though, because the
little pebbles will burn the shit out of you if you aren't careful.
There is also a pink stone room that is done in what I think is rose
quartz. It is a little cooler than the black room but still pretty
hot. The coolest sauna (in temperature) is the adobe room, which has
bamboo mats and what looks like an adobe ceiling and walls that have
Chinese characters for health, wellness, and peace on them. There is
also a large wooden sauna that kinda reminds me of a porch if a porch
could be indoors. It has a hole in the middle of it where heated
ceramic plates are kept which is surrounded by a wooden railing.
Unlike saunas in America, none of the rooms are steam rooms, they are
just hot, so you don't pour water on the ceramic plates. There is also
a room I call the oven room, because to get into it, you have to crawl
through a small door way that looks like the door to an old fashioned
wood fire oven. After crawling through the entrance, the room opens up
into a huge high ceiling dome chamber that further resembles a wood
fire stove by being (to my mind at least) oppressively hot and having
bamboo mats with wooden bundles at the top to be used as pillows.
Apparently, back in the day, Koreans slept on pillows made of either
wood or porcelain, so wooden bundles are a totally sensible pillows
here in Korea. The oven room is neat to look at, but it gives me the
creepy feeling that I'm about to be incinerated and wooden pillows
really aren't my idea of comfort, so it isn't my favorite sauna. My
favorite is the jeweled room. The jeweled room is completely covered
in rough cut stones of different colors in an awesome multicolored
mural. There is amethyst, rose-quartz, black and white marble, and
some kinds of blue and green stones. It's really beautiful to look at.
There is also a cold room. The cold room is actually covered in ice
and has a snowman in it! It feels really good after hanging out in the
saunas.
We have kind of become addicted to the jimjilbang and our Korean
co-teachers mock us for it. We usually head to the jimjilbang at least
every week or two to hang out and be pampered. The baths downstairs
are another reason we love the jimjilbangs. Most apartments in Korea
do not have bathtubs, but Korans love hot baths. Jimjilbangs and
regular bath houses make it possible for all Koreans to enjoy hot
baths. The baths are a little disconcerting at first because you walk
in and...naked people everywhere! You get used to it pretty fast
though, since everyone is naked and no one acts like its a big deal.
Before you get into the baths you have to scrub down so you're
super-duper-uber clean. You do not want to skip this step. If you do
the ajimas (it means old auntie, but is the term for an old woman)
will humiliate you by sending you back to the showers to scrub
yourself until they are satisfied or they will try and scrub you down
themselves. You don't want to be scrubbed by a Korean, ajima or
otherwise. Korean scrub clothes have more in common with the green
scrubbies on the backs of American sponges than they do with bathing
paraphernalia. They are seriously harsh. Furthermore, Koreans don't
play when it comes to scrubbing people down. They go to town on each
other! I'm surprised that any of them still have skin left by the time
they have been scrubbed. I worry about some of the kids that are just
being scrubbed raw by mom's and grandmas, but no one complains so I
guess they are used to it. Once you have gotten all clean you can go
in the baths. Our jimjilbang has about 7 or 8 different baths that
range in temperature from cold to scalding. Some of the baths also
have minerals in them that are supposed to be good for your skin.
There are even 2 baths (a hot and a cold) outside in a fenced in
garden! The outside ones are my favorite.
On the 14th, 15th and 16th of May I went Incheon to visit my friend
Ansaria and go to the Lotus Lantern Festival in Seoul. Incheon, where
Ansaria lives, is about 40 minutes away from Seoul, and the two cities
are well connected by train and subway systems. We spent Friday night
in a series of random encounters with random foreigners, going to
random foreign bars, eating random ice cream cake and corn dogs. It
was an interesting, but very odd night. Saturday we got up and visited
Ansaria's school, then headed to Seoul to see the parade for the
Lantern festival. The parade was really amazing. There were dozens of
different huge paper lanterns. Several were almost as big as the
parade floats you see during Mardi Gras. Some were of historical
figures, some of gods and other characters form myths, some were of
animals like elephants and tigers. There were really beautiful and
almost looked like stained glass. There were also hundreds of people
marching in the parade wearing different types of traditional dress,
dancing, singing, and playing instruments. I'm not even sure if all
the people were in traditional Korean dress, but I saw many of them
wearing hanbok. They were also all carrying lanterns of some sort that
matched their costumes. After the parade, there was a traditional
Korean dance show. We started watching the show from the crowd next to
the stage, but as the show went on more and more people kept coming
and it became impossible to see. We ended up retreating to a coffee
shop close by to decide what to do next. Once we were inside we
realized we actually had a great view of the screens from shop, and
that we might actually be able to see the dancers from the second
floor. The second floor did offer a great view of the show, and it was
packed with foreigners who had the same idea we did. We started
talking to some of the other people there about the show and how they
liked Korea, and had another completely random experience. It turns
out the group of people we sat down with are actually all teachers
from Gwangju that arrived the month before I did, further more there
were also friends with some of my friends. Even weirder, two of them
were actually from south Florida, one form Margate and the other form
Plantation. We had a blast comparing experiences and stories, and
after the show finished we decided to get dinner together. We went to
a Korean BBQ place and had yuhwang-ori-jinheuk-gui, which is basically
BBQ duck that you grill yourself on a convex hotplate, along with
onions and mushrooms, then wrap in lettuce or thinly sliced radish
wrappers. It was amazing! The best duck I've ever had. After dinner we
went out for ice cream and exchanged contact info, then Ansaria and I
headed back to Incheon before the trains stopped running. We had some
minor troubles when we had to change trains, but we eventually got
back to Ansarias place and crashed. On Sunday we didn't do much but
get me packed up and have bulgogi for lunch. WE also checked out the
absolutely enormous underground shopping center in Bupyoeng, the main
subway station in Incheon. The shopping center there is rediculous, it
dwarfs the one in Gwangju, takiing up over two entire city blocks. It
was a fun weekend but rather exhausting, so I was glad to get back to
Gwangju.
The last adventure I have to share involves me being kidnapped by well
meaning Koreans. My friend George's landlord wanted to take him to the
beach for his birthday and he invited George's friends along. I ended
up being the only to be able to make it, so George, George's landlord
and his family, and the owner of the construction company who built
George's apartment and his family, all piled into cars at 9 am to go
to the beach. I was under the impression that we would go see the
beach and come back to Gwangju for lunch. I was wrong. We went to the
beach alright, we played on the rocky shore and the kids looked for
crabs and shells, but we didn't go back to the city for lunch. Instead
the landlord took us to a super fancy western restaurant and bought us
a rediculously expensive lunch. Then they took us to Mount Bulgap to
see the Bulgap-sa Buddhist temple. The temple was really neat, it had
a museum and beautiful paintings and architecture, but it was a
complete surprise. After the temple we went back to George's place and
the Korean family insisted I stay for a bbq. We had samgyeopsal gui,
which is Korean bbq pork belly. It was good, but it is still awkward
to be kidnapped by super nice Koreans who don't speak English and then
force fed all day.
About two weeks later George gave me call and said he and his landlord
were at my place and I needed to go shopping with them. I was a little
taken aback because a) I had not made any such plans with George and
b) I wasn't wearing pants. But a few minutes later I was ensconced in
a car with George and his landlord, once again kidnapped by super
nice Koreans. This time I was taken to Shinsegae, the very fancy
department store here in Gwangju. When I was told we were going
shopping, I thought it meant that the land lord would take us to the
store and we would each buy things. Wrong again. Apparently in Korea,
going shopping means that Korean people will just buy things for you.
I managed to make it out of the store with only a new shirt and
groceries for the week, but that took some doing. George ended up with
an entire new outfit plus the groceries. Then we were taken to Outback
Steakhouse (which is very expensive here in Korea) for lunch. All in
all George's landlord must have spent over 150,000 won on us and he
would not let us say no! I really don't know what to do when Koreans
kidnap me and buy me things, but as problems go I guess it's one I can
live with.
That's about all of my adventures here in Korea for now. I'm sorry
this e-mail is so late getting to you all, I'm going to try and be
better about sending out updates. But again, feel free to write me,
contact me on face book or aim, or give me a call on Skype. I also
have a blog that I may have to start updating as it will remind me to
send out e-mails more often. You can find it at
http://ungeradventures.
isn't too put off by my incredibly late e-mail and it's hulking
hugeness. More updates will hopefully happen soon!
Love,
Stephanie
