Happy Birthday to me!

In the Hobbiton tradition of giving presents to other people on one's birthday, I'm spending part of today on things for all of you. I renewed my Flickr account after letting it lapse for five months, and I uploaded some new pictures which you will see some of below. And I'm writing this post, and I *hope* that I will be better in the future about posting regularly. (Yeah, don't laugh. It could happen!)

Today's post: Shopping in Seoul

Yesterday I went shopping in Seoul. Here is the first area I went to: Myeongdong. To save on loading speed, this picture is much smaller than the original version, but if you really want to see what it's like, you should head over to Flickr and have a look at the original. (Myeongdong-large)

This is one of the main thoroughfares of the most popular shopping district in Seoul. It continues well beyond where the tree blocks the view. And it's just one of several square blocks of stores and street vendors. I've never seen it when it wasn't packed with people. And yesterday was no exception.

As you can see in the picture, there are not only many tall buildings filled with stores (and/or restaurants, and/or coffee shops) on every floor, but many street vendors selling everything from sunglasses, shoes (in the foreground), to stuffed animals, jewelry and hair accessories (middle ground), to food, clothes, DVDs--undoubtedly pirated, to cell phone accessories of all kinds, which are hugely popular here. (Someday I should really write a post about Korean cell phone accessories.)

Skin care seems to be particularly popular these days. I lost count of how many such stores I saw: Nature Republic (which you can see in the foreground on the left in the picture above), It's Skin, The Face Shop (also in the picture on the middle left), Skin Food, and Innisfree all have multiple storefronts in Myeongdong, and I saw The Body Shop as well. Supposedly Lush has a storefront there now as well, but I didn't manage to find it and had to resort to the one in the "Home Living" section of the Shinsegae department store.

I wandered up and down and around, looking for sandals and hair accessories for me, and gifts for a friend. I failed on the sandals--partly due to not many looking like they'd be comfortable, partly because the ones that did look cute and comfortable weren't available in my size. I *did* find hair accessories, though.


And more importantly, I found the gifts for a friend that I was looking for.

I also wandered into the new H&M, which had cute clothes at reasonable prices (though not as low as they would be in the US). They did not, however, have anything I wanted enough to wait in the LONG line for dressing rooms. There are also a couple of Zara stores that I didn't make it into, but may try next time I'm in Myeongdong.

After giving up on finding the Lush storefront, I headed for Shinsegae. By this time it was almost 3pm and I hadn't had lunch yet, plus my feet were killing me and I was on sensory overload from hordes of people, items crammed into every nook and cranny, and pop music playing in every store. Also, it was warm and humid and I was desperate to spend some time in an air conditioned place.

First I had lunch at the Japanese Udon restaurant near the top of the Shinsegae building (I had tempura udon, about $7). Greatly refreshed, I headed one floor down to the "Home" section and stocked up on products from Lush.

I had come to Myeongdong partly to shop for pants, purses, and sandals, but I didn't do any clothes, purse, or shoe shopping in Shinsegae because Korean department stores are woah! expensive! This came as a great surprise to me the first time. As the average Korean income is only 60% of the average American income, I had assumed that Korean department stores would offer Macy's quality at Mervyn's prices. Boy was I wrong! They're more like Neiman Marcus prices! They sell t-shirts for $60. So I never shop in department stores here.

Instead, I headed to Migliore. Initially, I'd thought that places like Migliore, Doota, and AM/PM (not the US convenience store!) were department stores, but they aren't. They're more akin to shopping malls, with many different vendors sharing one building. The difference is that they're not a collection of separate stores, each with four walls and their own dressing rooms, but more like a lot of large alcoves with all the vendors on one floor sharing dressing rooms. Which means they trust you to walk off with their clothes to a dressing room that may be all the way on the other side of the building. You wouldn't see that in America!

Unfortunately, despite four floors of women's clothing and one floor of shoes, bags, jewelry, etc., I didn't find what I wanted, which was a loose-fitting pair of pants that would be cool and comfortable in hot weather but professional enough to wear to work. The style these days is all for skinny jeans and short skirts, so it isn't easy to find anything loose-fitting. And I was looking for a backpack purse, but all the ones I saw were either too big (true backpack size, though very nice looking) or made of fake leather (which will last all of two months before it looks like crap).

So I gave up and headed for my next destination, Insadong. Insadong is the district in Seoul dedicated to traditional and modern Korean handicrafts, and to selling them to tourists. I went with the goal of buying a mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquer box. I've been envying everyone I've bought one for, because they're beautiful and I don't have one of my own. Until yesterday, that is. This year I decided that my birthday present to myself would be a lacquer box.

Behold my selection:


And because I've bought many boxes from them, they also gave me this:

(If you're not sure, it's a compact mirror.)

Then, exhausted from crowds and shopping and walking and heat and humidity, I headed for the subway to go home. After subway and bus, I didn't get home until nearly 9pm, and after dropping off my purchases, I immediately headed back out--to buy milk and birthday cake! I was good, though, and only bought two pieces of cake, one cheese cake which I ate last night, and a double chocolate for tonight. Happily, these were available at a convenience store and a bakery within a block of my apartment, so this errand only took about 15 minutes, and most of that was waiting in line to pay for milk at the convenience store and then deciding what kind of cake I wanted at the bakery.

And now you know what a shopping trip to Seoul is like! Sort of, anyway.

Last Weekend

Last semester I had an extra after school class with several teachers at the school, teaching conversational English. One of them, Kim Moon Seok, is an art teacher.

Last week, he had a showing of his art at the Insa Art Center in Seoul, and on Sunday I went to see it. I liked his work, and enjoyed the chance to see it. He works mainly in frescos, although there was also one sculpture. I was glad that I went. But there was more.

He took me across the hall to another gallery. There, the work of a Buddhist monk was on display. All of them were paintings of Buddha in a pointillist style, but get this: they were done on aluminum panels with nail polish instead of paint. Yes, nail polish, including the glittery kind. Some of them were medium-sized, about 3'x4', others covered almost an entire (large) wall. And they were gorgeous. Some were so convincing that I had to go close to make sure they were really 2-D paintings and didn't have 3-D bits sticking out of them. My favorite was almost entirely done in blues and blacks, 12 separate panels put together into a kind of collage of Buddha images.

I wish I had taken pictures. I didn't know if it would be ok to do so, and the monk didn't speak English, and I didn't want to seem rude or disrespectful, so I didn't try. You will just have to imagine the awesomeness for yourselves.

Hello again!

Ok, I know, I've been bad. I haven't posted in ages. It's because I have a gazillion pictures of cherry blossoms in Seoul Grand Park, and many more gazillions of pictures from my trip to Jeollanam-do, and unfortunately, I also have an absolute abhorrence of photo editing. One day, I may actually get around to it, but I seem to have a truly amazing ability to procrastinate when it comes to photos.

But I feel bad about not having posted in so long, so you get a photo-less post.

Things here are still great! Three weeks ago I had a required 4-day teacher training/orientation session for GEPIK foreign English teachers (GEPIK is public education in Gyeonggi-do, the province where I live). Although a lot of it was stuff I already knew, it did provide many useful tips, plus the best part: the chance to meet other native English speakers in the area. I really like my Korean friends, but it was nice to have a chance to talk to people who don't struggle with English. Also, I met a couple people who live on the same block I do! Yay, local friends to hang out with!

Then I spent the next week getting caught up on things after being gone for four days. This week I only taught a bit over a half week, as the last part of the week, the students were busy studying for finals, which are next week. Like the last part of this week, next week I have to go to work, but don't have any actual classes to teach, so I'll be spending the time preparing for summer classes and for next semester (plus sundry goofing off on the internet). It's almost impossible to believe that we're almost half-way through the school year! The time has flown by so fast.

One of the suggestions I picked up at the training session was to use Korean pop music in my lessons, because it contains a lot of English, and the students will be really into it. So I've been looking into K-pop bands. The downside is that I didn't even particularly like the music of boy bands when I was a teen, and it doesn't seem to have changed much, except for the addition of some rapping, which I don't think improves it. On the other hand, I'm watching videos of really attractive young men who dance well, so it could be a lot worse.

Anyway, to make up a bit for my own lack of posting, I would like to direct your attention to the website of two other foreign English teachers here in Korea. Not only do they post more often than I do, but they make tons and tons of mini-movies about life here in Korea. I met them at the GEPIK training session, and they are very cool and funny, and their videos are a really excellent look at experiencing Korea as a foreigner. It's all there: the good, the bad, and the really weird, and it's all true! So go check it out:

The main page:
http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/

The movie archives (click on the categories on the banner at the bottom):
Eat Your Kimchi Movie Archives

Playing catch-up from early April!

On the week of March 30th, I didn't have any classes on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, because the students were doing testing. (Testing is a big feature of Korean schools.) Although I had to come to work, and did in fact get quite a bit of work done planning for future lessons, I was allowed to leave early on Thursday and Friday. So Thursday I left early to hike up Gwanaksan, the mountain directly behind the school.

Last time I was here, another teacher at ENI and I hiked to the top of Gwanaksan from Anyang. From that side, parts of it were steep, but most were not too bad (until we went down a different, and steeper, path!). From this face, though, the trail is quite steep. It reminded me of Hallasan in Jeju-do, where the trail was almost all stairs. Here is Hallasan:





And these are the stairs on Gwanaksan, going down on my way back. Most of it was stone stairs like these:


And part was wooden stairs like these:


but almost all of it was stairs of some kind! Koreans hikers are in good shape, believe me. I hiked for about 40 minutes, but then something was making me sneeze and making my nose run, so I turned around before it got worse and headed back down. Regardless of that, it was a nice hike and a lot of exercise.

On Friday I left work early and went into Seoul. First I went to the Kyobo bookstore to look for books for learning Korean. I wanted to look for English translations of Korean literature as well, but the frequent fate of foreigners in the English section of Kyobo befell me -- a Korean came up and wanted to practice his English with me. I don't mind that when I have time to spare, but this day I was planning to go to Changdeokgung, a palace which has English language tours, and I needed to get there before the last tour of the day started. So I didn't have enough time to find the books I wanted, and had to hurry off to the subway toward Changdeokgung.

Fortunately, I arrived with ten minutes to spare before the 3:30 tour started, so I bought a ticket and sat down for a bit. It was sunny when I left Gwacheon, but now it had clouded over, and was getting cooler, with a chilly wind. Unfortunately, I had not brought a warmer jacket than the blazer I wore to work, so I started to get kind of chilly. I was hoping the tour would warm me up, as it involved walking 2.7 kilometers altogether, but it moved too slowly to keep me warm, so I was rather cold the whole time. One other difficulty was that I had forgotten to change the battery on my camera, and now it was a bit low, so I had to be sparing with taking pictures. Those of you who have seen the full extent of my Korean pictures know how much I love the Korean ornamentation and decorative brickwork, so you know how disappointed I was to have to limit my picture taking. Still, I did get many lovely pictures of Changdeokgung and its "secret garden".

Here are a sample:
This is the main palace gate, taken from the side. Check out the little forked prongs standing up from the figures on top. I haven't seen those on any other palace.


This is the throne room:


Changdeokgung was the last palace in use in Korea, lived in by the Joseon monarchs into the 20th century. As such, it was modernized to include a driveway for the king's motorcars.


This one is my favorite building at the palace.


I have nothing special to say about this building, but I love this picture:


As you can see from the bare trees in the background, spring had not yet sprung, but the garden behind the palace was still lovely. This is a pond, symbolizing the earth, and the circular island symbolizes heaven.


There are a few more pictures of Changdeokgung at my Flickr page if you want to see them.

Things I love about Korea: heated floors

Please send: Western sheets

 

Around Pyeongchon

Back in March, I took a walk in my neighborhood to a local park. It was long before the trees started turning green, so it will probably be prettier now, and I'll go back and take some pictures soon. But despite the bare trees, empty waterways, and not-yet-green grass, the park still had plenty of interest to offer.


A chance to exercise, without paying gym membership fees:


A playground for the little tykes:


A place to skateboard and rollerskate:


A large open area where kids rode bikes:


And a place to play a game something like croquet (although not croquet, based on the layout of the hoops and the fact that the stake is in the center):


There were also places where water flows in warmer seasons, that will probably be quite lovely once they're filled:



There were also a few in-the-ground kinds of fountains for kids to play in, once they turn them on.

Although not as pretty as it will be when all green and blooming, there were still lovely spots in the park, like this walkway lined with sculpted trees and planters of flowers:


But the most notable feature of the park during winter is all the sculptures scattered around the park. Here is just a sample:





Besides the park, here are a couple of other images from near my apartment.

An odd something (ornament? antenna? something else?) on top of a building:


And a picture of part of Pyeongchon Junction at night:


Things I love about Korea: Insadong

Please send: comfortable shoes

 

Gwacheon

Now you've seen the school, my office, and my classroom, so here's a few pictures around Gwacheon (the city where the school is located).

First, on my walk to work, about half of it (the last half) is on a pedestrian walkway that goes past the school building. Here's what that looks like:



Not bad, huh? Of course, a few weeks ago when the trees were bare, it didn't look nearly so nice.

Along that path, there's a house with a really cool door:



And there are also several bird cages like this one:



This one has three birds in it, they're green with yellow and red/orange heads. (You can see two of them if you look closely in the picture, near the top of the cage on the left and near the center. The one on the left is behind the white strings.)

I tried to get pictures of the birds, but my camera insisted on focusing on the netting the cage is made from. Other cages contain cockatiels, and one has a parrot with a gray body and a red head.

Elsewhere in Gwacheon there is a pedestrian walkway lined with cherry trees that were all blooming a couple of weeks ago, so I went for a walk there one day and took some pictures:





Things I love about Korea: sweet potato pastry filling

Please send: Trader Joe's

 

Finally, a new post!

I apologize for not blogging more. I have been very busy and out having fun, leaving little time for writing up posts and editing and uploading photos. I am trying to do a little at a time, though, to get caught up.

First I will post some pictures of my apartment building and the school.



You've seen the inside of my apartment, but here is a picture of the front of the building.



You don't have to count windows, I'll tell you: it's 20 storys tall. I'm lucky, there's a balcony with trees and bamboo planted in it on the floor below, so I can see them when I look out my window. A funny story about being on the fourth floor: I take the stairs rather than the elevator most of the time, and as I'm usually thinking about something else, I just go around and around until the sign tells me I'm at the fourth floor, without really paying much attention to the stairs. But I was really surprised how tired I was when I got to the top. I thought, "Wow, I'm in worse shape than I thought if I can't climb three flights of stairs without being tired!" Then, one day I actually paid attention to the stairs, and I discovered that the first two floors are double height, so it isn't three flights of stairs, it's five flights of stairs. Then I felt a little better about being tired at the top. Though of course I'm getting in better shape now, anyway!

This one is a picture of the front of the school building where I teach:



There is a "sister school" next to it, the Gwacheon Foreign Language High School. Here it is:



And there's an administration building that I haven't been in, next to the FLHS:



You can see the sports field where the students have PE in front of the FLSH. Both schools share it. The cafeteria is actually located in the FLHS, so I go there for lunch nearly every day, and some dinners, too. The lunch is inexpensive, healthy, and usually delicious. There is always a soup, some sort of fish or seafood, kimchee, and rice. There are always two other dishes, which vary daily, but usually one or both are mostly vegetables, and the other dishes, except the rice, usually contain vegetables also. So it's a lot better than school cafeterias in the US usually are! Lunch is inexpensive, under 3,000 won (around $2.50), and dinner is free. Here is an example of one of the lunches:



Gwanaksan is directly behind the school. Here is the view out my office window:



And here's the view from street level behind the school. It's much greener now, this is from a few weeks ago, but with leaves on the trees you can't see the mountain as well, so I'm using the older picture.



And here's what my office itself looks like:
That's my desk on the left, my coworker's on the right. The tall white and gray thing behind my desk is the heater/air conditioner.



Here's the front of the office (the view from my desk):


And here's my classroom:
This looks from the door at the back that leads to my office, toward the front.


The center section of the board slides open to reveal a big touchscreen computer monitor:


Here's the teacher's desk in the classroom:


Here's the room looking from the front toward the back:


And finally, at the back of the classroom, there are six computers:


So now you know what it looks like where I work!

I love: green tea yogurt

Please send: a translator to explain how to use my gadgets