Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving)

Ok so I made it back to Seoul from Japan.... And here is what happened in between.
      Monday... We left really early for the airport because we thought "oh it's Chusok (largest Korean holiday when everyone and their dog goes home)." Well wrong assumption. We were there way to early so we just worked on homework and waited until we could check in. Getting there was great with no problems. (If you have the chance fly a Korean airline... they are awesome!) Once we got to Japan we were horribly lost in the subway and went the wrong way. Some guy set us straight when he heard us talking about it. Then when we got on the train another guy helped us to get off the right stop. Japanese people were like this all of the time. Everyone was always trying to help the lost foreigners. So our first impression was public transit really stinks and the Japanese people are really friendly. The other thing is it cost us about $5 to get to the hotel and the hotel wasn't that far. Once we got to the motel we laughed for about 15 min at our room. I even took a video of it. The toilet was so cool it was all in one with bidet, some other water shooting feature (both of which you could decide the water pressure), and ran water when you sat on it. This is also in the video so I'm really sorry if what we are saying doesn't make sense. This began our search for funny toilets.
     Tuesday... We got up early and bought a bus pass for the day so we could get around Kyoto. Then we walked to this awesome Shrine called Fushimi-Inari. It was so pretty even though it was about 85 degrees out and we were sweating through our clothes climbing up this mountain.  After that we went to a market because we had heard that they had cheap Kimonos. Well they weren't that cheap but we ate lunch off of a vendor which was definitely interesting. We also went around the temple but we didn't want to pay about $7 to get in. Then we went to another temple which was free to get into. We ended up just sitting there after we had walked through it because our feet hurt so bad from walking all day long. It was so peaceful and nice. Then we went shopping in downtown Kyoto for a while. This was very fun even though I didn't buy anything. The shopping market was really cool because even though it was a bunch of different shops they had a roof over the entire thing so you were always out of the rain/snow. Then we met up with some friends from our university and another Seoul University for supper. We ate Japanese food and I shared a huge meal with another guy from the other university. We had seasoned cucumber, chicken cartilage kabobs (we sent that back, he was German so he didn't know what cartilage was in English), pork loin kabobs, white meat chicken kabob, french fries, garlic bread (these two aren't Japanese but they weren't odd either), and rice. It was a good meal and the manager gave us free drinks. The table was different from the ones in Korea because they were on floor level and then they had a hole in the floor to put your feet. It was very cool. Caroline (the German girl I traveled with all week) tried something new and it ended up being soup with pieces of fat. That one wasn't quite as good as what everyone else ordered. We still weren't sure how the public transit system worked yet so we just rode the train home and I was tired so we went to bed.
      Wednesday..... We were very tired from running all day on Tuesday so in the morning we searched for some camera batteries and lenses for Caroline and her mom. This was kind of nice because it was more relaxing than running all over the place. After that we went to the Imperial palace but we had to have a scheduled tour time. This was O.K. though because it was free to see and we also scheduled time to see the villa. After doing this we went to Gion (the geisha district) but there weren't any Geishas out yet because it was too early. Seeing this we went to another temple which also wasn't open because it was too late. So then we searched for something to eat. Everything in Japan is really, really expensive so we thought we were gtting a deal on this restaurant. Well we barely got any food and still paid like $15. We sat at another one of the funny tables where your legs dangle you take off your shoes beforehand. Then you put your shoes in a cubby and take the key.

The first course (veggie jelly), my $5 coke (no refills) and the key for my shoes

After this we went to a book store to find out that Japanese kids read the same books as we did as kids. Like Good Night Moon. Caroline said that German kids do too. We got to talking and come to find out they also translated all the Disney movies and songs into German for German kids.

Maybe Obama reads this to his children??

Also the books in Japan have the binding on the right side. They are read from right page to left page and up to down. Everything in Japan was backwards. The street people drove down the left side. This really threw me off directionally. After this we went back to the motel.
    Thursday....We went to Nara (pronounced Nada, I think). We had very high expectations that it didn't exactly live up to. We were really tired by this point so we had slept in and then we went there around noon. There were sooo many deer just there to feed and pet. They were minis of our deer and they were cute. You could get up really close to them. That was definitely the highlight of Nara because then we paid $7 to see the big Buddha. He was huge. There was another highlight though. All of the deer posters. They were so funny.

Then we visited another random shrine where we took hilarious pictures of tourists that looked ridiculous. We also got to see a wedding party and the bride and groom all dressed up. This was kind of a bum day so when we were done with Nara we just went to mister Doughnut in the station for "supper". Supper proved to be very interesting due to my doughnut choice. I thought maybe I would be safe with a streusel doughnut. But of course not. Instead it had curry on the inside. It was so disgusting. After that I went with the safe choice and got a chocolate one.
     Friday... We went to the palace in the morning and it was far less exciting than I thought it would be because we weren't able to go into anywhere. Only see the outside. I guess the inside wouldn't have been much better because the emperor didn't have the money the Shogun did. We also went to a park awhile waiting for our time at the villa. This park was so desolate but there were still Buddhist shrines everywhere all over the park with equipment also. This was really nice to relax again but we got eaten up by mosquitoes. Then after this we went to the emperor's villa. This was pretty because there were beautiful gardens all over. One thing the Japanese know how to do it is gardening. The funniest part is there is a tree in all of these places that looks very similar to marijuana leaves.

Notice the woman in the cap...Her son's name was Gasper

Another really fun part of this day was looking at the tourists and what they were wearing. They all were so funny to watch. One guy was really odd and he was there with his mother. He was wearing a pearl harbor hat which seemed to be very contradictory. The other thing we have noticed a lot of is the Nazi symbol because Hitler stole it from the Buddhists and flipped it. That has been interesting while touring with a German. On this day I also took a great picture of a woman's urinal. I've always wondered why we don't have them and now I know. Because EVERYONE misses which makes the thing smell horrible. They are the sure way for the smelliest bathrooms. This is the cleanest one we found.

On top of this they usually don't have soap to wash your hands with when they have the smelly bathrooms or tp. This took some getting used to. After going to this bathroom and the villa we went to the Manga museum. This was sooooo much fun. Manga is the Japanese anime drawings/books. This museum was worth the $7 because it was very interactive for all ages and it was just a blast. They also had books in all languages that were available to read in a court yard in the middle of the facility. It was so relaxing after walking around for 4 days. After this we were obsessed and tried to find a store that sold Manga. We did but it was far too expensive so I think I'll try to find a store in Korea that sells it (everything is cheaper in Korea). This place was very nice and the toilet here made noise when you sat on it so no one could hear what you were doing. It also had the bidet and other water shooting thing.
      Saturday.... We attempted to get everything else we possibly could do in. In the morning we went to the golden temple. This was a major disappointment because we paid $7 to take pictures of the thing and that was it. There was nothing else on the grounds except for very funny signs. This is one thing that I will definitely miss about Asia is the signs. The ones in Japan were much funnier than the ones in Korea but both are hilarious.

Where are we not supposed to scribble? The tree?

After going to the golden temple we went to the Shogun Palace. This place was very very cool. They had the nightengale floors which were very cool. Whenever we stepped on them they sounded like the birds so that when the shogun was there he could hear intruders and not get killed. There were also paintings by famous Japanese artists all over the doors and they were gorgeous. This was where the money in Japan was so everything was really nice. We couldn't take pictures of anything. As in everywhere in Japan we also took off our shoes to walk around in the building. It's always really nice to take off our shoes after walking so much. It was also nice to be able to go into the buildings because usually in Japan you can't. After going here we were hungry and we wanted to eat some Japanese food so we ate at this really nice restaurant and I had pork, rice, and salad all mixed in together. While we were waiting an older lady gave us an origami bird that she made right there while also waiting. It is so amazing how nice the Japanese are. After this we went to a temple but everything was closed for the day. So we went on the Philosophers walk. It's pretty much just a walkway with cherry trees so we weren't in the right season but that's ok. It was still a really cool area to walk around in. After this we went on a search for Geishas. This was awesome because we actually saw 5 or 6. They were so pretty with their kimonos on and they looked exactly like in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. They were also so timid looking.  That might have been the highlight of the trip with the Manga museum.
       Sunday.... We were nervous about getting to the plane on time so we just left after our check out time. This was again too early but on the bright side we got exit row seating by the window. That is one of the best benefits to being really early to a flight. We just sat around and studied/killed time in the airport all day. It was really nice to have a bum day before coming back to school. We made it back safe and sound. It was a great trip and I'm glad that we went.

Culture in Korea

Eating my cake in the little box they wrapped it in.

       Well now that I've been here for three weeks it feels like it has gone by so fast. So far everything is still going really well. Last Friday we went to karaoke and I got a roomie.
       On Saturday morning I got to talk to my roommate more and she is really nice. She is Korean from about two hours away. She has been to school before for math and now is going for English Literature. She has also taught school for a few years in between there. We have so much fun hanging out and I'm really really glad she came. It is so much less lonely with her here. She is also really helpful with culture and language class and such. I told her she should come visit Iowa but that it's not that exciting. She also invited me to her home to have a home cooked meal with her family. After that H.U.G. (foreign exchange club) went out to see some sights. We saw Namdemun market which was really busy and has so many shops. There are a lot of small shops in Seoul and this was one of the areas. It seemed more for older women so we went to a department store and drank coffee. In the basement of the store there was a huge bakery/pastry/everything edible store with different venders all having many different treats. Katrina and I bought some cute little cakes which I couldn't fit in my bag so I just ate near the palace. The palace was so pretty and we even got to try lots of things. There was Chinese printing (Korea used the Chinese alphabet before Hangul) and we could try on clothes. We could also try a traditional alcohol which was very strong and not good. It tasted like the Korean beer soju which is very, very bad.

Koreans in western military clothing due to Japanese rule.

After that we went and ate a another pork place where you cook the meat yourself. These are everywhere and actually quite good. They have a spicy soup there that I really like called twenchanggike. It has vegetables, tofu, and red broth. I usually avoid the tofu but the rest is really good. After that we went to Namsan tower/Seoul tower. It was too cloudy and rainy to go to the top though so we just walked around it and went to the gift shop.
     On Sunday we went to Dongdemun. It was so hectic. There are literally shops wall to wall for seven floors all selling clothes, shoes, accessories and everything you can imagine. There were probably 20 of these buildings and they were all probably the size of a mall. Although this was an experience I don't think I would ever do again. It is way to overwhelming and they can tell I'm not Korean so haggling the price is really hard. They think, "oh foreigner lets try to get lots of money out of her." I only ended up getting one skirt which was plenty. We ended up just going to Edea to shop because there are plenty of shops for just as cheap and less overwhelming.
     This week was pretty uneventful other than having a friends birthday party on Wednesday. Dan, Caroline and I went to Dunken Donuts to get a cake. We have a community fridge that people have been stealing out of but we needed to put the cake in there so we wrote notes all over it.

No one stole the cake and he was very excited to get the cake and had a very good birthday.

Caroline, Dave (the birthday guy), and I

Also earlier that night I forgot to mention we did a Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving) educational session where we ate normal Chusok food (rice cakes, rice milk), tried on traditional clothing and played traditional games. The games were really fun with one of them hopping on one foot and knocking everyone else over.

In traditional Korean clothing

Then the weekend came again. On Friday night we just hung out with people and got lost finding the place even though we had already been there once. Saturday we went to Insa-dong to a tourist place with lots of shops. I bought a tea pot set there which we've been enjoying tea out of. It is so cute.

We ate at a place where we sat on the floor and Gina and Caroline had octopus. It was so spicy that they were sweating and turning red. Gina is even Korean so she should be used to spicy. I stuck to Bulgolgi soup which is not spicy at all and is just really tenderized beef with vegetables in a broth. For sides we had Kimshi (always never fail to have), seasoned broccoli, brown sugar seasoned something, vinegar radishes, and chung (cold ham covered in egg). This is common with every meal and we usually have soup. For the foreigners they usually get us seaweed soup because its not as spicy. Then afterwords we took Caroline home and then went to coffee with one of Gina's friends. I ate my first Dunken Donuts here, it was so delicious. After we got home we stayed up late talking. Today we just bummed around. We had fun attempting to study and then going to the store. I also got ready for Japan.....
    About Japan... I leave tomorrow and we are flying to Osaka. Then we're going to take the train to Kyoto. We have our hotel and everything booked. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes!      

Oh Korea....

The weekend:

This is what the table looked like with the sides.

     On Friday we went to the city hall district where we went to an art museum and walked around a lot. We tried to go to the temple but it closed right as we got up to it. Even so we saw a statue of the man who came up with the current system of writing for Korea and we also saw two U.S. embassies.
   For supper we went out as a group to a "pork" restaurant which consisted of very thickly sliced slabs of bacon which we cook ourselves. There is also an over abundance of stuff to dip the pieces of meat in and put on a lettuce leaf with the meat to eat in a ball in one bite. They offer kimshi, stringed cabbage with 2 different sauces, pink radish slices, rice, lettuce, garlic, tofu, and a lettuce chopped up with sauce on it.
    The girl cooking was a group member's buddy and she was really nice. The girl to he left is one of my friends Caroline from Germany. At this restaurant there was table seating or floor seating. Also notice the tin thing in the picture to the right. That is the cups they use here. All restaurants use them and so does our cafeteria. They are really cute like everything else here. Everything comes in little size.

This is What the meat was cooked on and looked like.

  After going to the restaurant we met up with some more people to do karaoke. Karaoke is different here than it is in the states and way more fun. You get a group of people together here and then rent a room for like 25,000 won which is less than $25 dollars. They had tons of American songs and two mics which we could sing in. The chairs in the room were velvety and cute like everything else and they had fun lights like a DJ has to go with the songs. The only odd thing was the movies playing in the background. They had video of new york playing for Hey Jude and Nemo footage for I Don't Like Your Girlfriend  by Avril Levine.
     The next day we went to the Korean folk village. It was interesting but probably not a place I'd go again. They had old houses and we got to see how Koreans in the old days used to live. At one point we found out that fermented urine was used to cure bruises. We also saw a tightrope walker, this drum show, a horse show, and an old wedding. This part was interesting because the tightrope walker was just on a rope held up by two posts on either side and screwed into the ground. He jumped on the rope and sat on the rope.

Tightrope Walker.

He was pretty cool. There was also the horse guys who stood on the horses, picked stuff up off the ground while still on the horses, and laid down across the horses backs.There was a wedding that was pretty uneventful. The drum guys also put on a good show. Here is a video of it for you to see.
      Once we had seen all of that we came home and went to go eat supper. For the people at school the french boy didn't understand me when I said supper only when I said dinner did he finally get it. I thought that was funny. Anyway we were really hungry for something not Korean so we went to eat pizza and we found a pizza hut. Pizza here is an experience in itself. We had a pizza with corn, potato wedges, peppers, hardly any sauce, Canadian bacon (looks like American bacon), and pepperoni (ham slices). For the first time since being in Korea I drank water in a normal American glass (still much smaller than the normal pizza hut cups). After we got done with supper we came back and met up with a group to go out. First we went to Ipub and some people played pool and just talked there. Side note: In Korea people don't hang out at others places. Ever. Its a social rule that you go somewhere public. Anyway then we decided to go to the club but some of the members of the group wanted to go to Itawon. That's the district of town where all of the foreigners are due to the military base. This is the first time I've been in Seoul that I didn't feel safe. There were people everywhere and none of them looked like upstanding citizens. The Korean women everywhere else in the city always look very nice and put together but here they looked bad. We went to a very crowded club and I was very glad to leave when we did.
    The next day we went shopping in a district (I'm having troubles remembering names of all these places). We ate pizza again and again this was way different than anything in America. It was a Korean chain called Mr. Pizza and we had the shrimp king. It was good. There were lots of groups of friends having birthday parties and bringing little cute cakes in. Also everyone here is couples so they have things in twos. The salad bar is called Love Salad (salad for 2) and lots of food in restaurants comes in portions for two people. Then we went to forever 21 which was kinda expensive compared to the states and way expensive for shopping here. There were lots of high end stores in this district but I ended up getting a pair of vans due to the massive blisters on my feet. Hopefully these let my feet heal. While we were there we met up with Emily another girl from Creighton who is at another university here in Seoul. It was really nice to see another familiar face. Once we finished we came back and relaxed. It was the best feeling to relax after that jam packed weekend. 

All Things Korea

Days 2 & 3 of being in Korea:
    These days I went exploring with Nina, Katrina, and John. On Monday we went to the girls school district where there was good shopping. The shopping in Korea is amazing! Everything is really cheap and cute. They also have all sorts of variety. While we were out we stopped in one store and they had head phones for just 9,900 won or under $9.
    While walking the streets to get to the shopping district the one thing I really noticed was how crowed everything is. Everything here is packed together like sardines. Each business has one floor of a building and then there's four or five floors in each of those buildings. The apartment complexes are huge with five or ten buildings that are twenty stories high.
    On Tuesday we went out for supper. This was an experience in itself because you cook the meat yourself. They put charcoal in the table then put a grate on top to cook these big slabs of beef that they bring to you on a plate. They then have a bunch of sides which you can put on lettuce and eat with a piece of meat in one bite. They gave us garlic cloves which reminded me of grandpa and his hatred of garlic.
   Wednesday was pretty uneventful other than breakfast at the dinning hall which was a lovely breakfast burrito. Sounds awesome right....except for the chicken which looked like synthetic crab.  And the pickles. And the salad. And a few other things which I wasn't sure what they were.. all on the same burrito. Another fun thing about Wednesday is that I experienced my first typhoon. It came in the night and I heard it on Thursday morning. Apparently they hardly ever hit here because both of my buddies said the last one was 10 years ago. It was kind of like a sever thunderstorm warning with high winds so actually not as bad as what everyone thinks of when they think typhoon. Just a few branches down and public transit stopped for about thirty minutes.

This is the hallway outside. Everyone's doors are painted a different color. In Korea people leave things outside their doors because people don't ever take things. Women will even leave their purses to save seats at tables in restaurants.

    Last thing.. I took some pictures and a video of my room so you can see what a Korean room looks like. I apologize for the terrible filming.