Korean Date Night

We grew bored of the bar scene in Seoul in oh, about 12 seconds. It’s not that I don’t like Hongdae or Itaewon. Well actually that’s total BS because I don’t really like these places at all. But I guess what I’m saying is that it takes quite a bit to convince me that I need to go all the way into Seoul and fork over my entire wallet in order to grab some drinks and chase some tail.

This past weekend Evan had another 10K race as part of his training for this weekend’s half marathon. It was an evening run along the Han again which made us think maybe a picnic and some wine would be in order for afterwards. We managed to get lost, and arrived over twenty minutes into the race. Evan threw on his number and jumped onto the track, managing to actually pass quite a few of the runners that had started on time.

I’ve said this before but this time I’m going to say it with true conviction. The banks of the Han River are (not counting my back deck in Rosemont) my absolute favourite place to be in the world once the sun goes down. During the day the water is murky and everything around you feels like this big and untamed concrete jungle. The sky goes dark and it’s as if you‘re in an entirely different universe. We started off with a few bottles of wine, moved onto some stir-fried chicken on fresh baguette, polished it off with some Ghana chocolate and then as a grand finale took out one of the swan boats for an hour long paddle around the city.



Rocking out with our cooler that is falling apart and covered in plastic tape!

Picture from where we were sitting. No tripod, she's a little blurry.

The Details
Subway + Bus into the city and back again: 3,400 won x 2 (Hwajeong-Jamsil station)
Cab rides to the race once we realized we were lost: 5,000 won
Two bottles of wine of the standard crappy wine found in Korea: 15,000 won
A swan ride for 2: 13,000

Making for a grand total of: 40,000 won (less than 40 dollars people)

Verdict: date night success!

Take me out to the ball game

We may be failing miserably at our bucket list that we made about 6 months ago, but we did manage to make it out to a baseball game this past weekend. On what seemed like the first sunny day in over a year, we saw the Doosan Bears vs. The Hanwha Eagles at Jamsil stadium. The following are some helpful hints for the Korean baseball noob.

Beer is cheap and plentiful.

The beer comes to you!

You're probably going to want to pick a team, and get yourself some of these.

And yes, Korean baseball teams have cheerleaders.

We cheered for the Doosan bears, and they lost miserably. We left halfway through and had some enchilladas at On the Border while we watched them continue to lose via the TV.

Great Korean inventions

The doors that open and close and can stay there

You might not be able to see it in this picture, but the doors used in a lot of offices and businesses in Korea are really cool. They open in either direction, and by pushing them all the way one way keeps them open. No door propping or fancy tricks needed! And then they lock at the bottom near the ground. It's just a small thing I've noticed that I think is cool.

Assigned seating in movie theatres

When you go to a movie, you don't have to arrive 45 minutes early to ensure that you get a good seat. I have a bladder the size of a cashew, and seats where I have to climb over 30 people just don't work. Luckily for me, in Korea the seating is like having tickets to a theatre production. You are given an assigned seat, and you can pick where you'd like to sit. It's a pretty groovy system and I wonder why Canada hasn't quite picked up on it.

Car mirrors that fold in when parked

Koreans are still working hard on their parking skills. However, they've got one very cool invention when it comes to cars. Check out the mirrors on the first vehicle above. See how it folds in? In Korea, even if you decide to park in the middle of the street nobody can take out your mirrors by driving too close to your car! Genius!

Butt Chairs for gardening

I already did an entire post on this, but I'm still blown away by how cool the strap-on gardening butt pad is. No sore knee's for these ladies!

Milkshakes in a pack

This one doesn't need a huge explanation. You pop it out of the freezer and let it thaw a bit, and then you're good to go! These things are the bee's knees. Super good.

Shake it

It's not quite a drink, and it's not quite jello: it's Shake It! Shake It comes in multiple flavors and what you do is shake the can and when you crack 'er open it's like liquidy-jello. It's weird. Evan hates it, and I'm not sure that I love it myself but for some reason try it over and over again without coming to a conclusive answer.

Drinking in Public

This isn't exactly an invention but I had to put in on this list. Last night Evan and I grabbed a bottle of pinot grigio from Homeplus and sat in Lake Park with it, watching all the people and the live music. It was fantastic and it had us thinking about how bad all the North Americans have it with the no drinking in public laws. The last thing I want to do on a nice night is go and sit in a bar. When you don't have a back deck/porch drinking in the park (or similar) is the next best thing.

The expat apartment project

Recently we had a great opportunity to participate in "The Expat Apartment Project." A local photographer/waygook based out of Seoul was putting together a collection of images of foreigners in their apartments all around Seoul. We signed up and Liz (the photographer) came over to photograph us hanging out in our apartment, doing things we would typically do.

You have to click the link here to see the photos, and read her post about visiting our place. We thought it was a brilliant idea for a photo project. We managed to make it out to the exhibition last weekend when we went into Seoul for our anniversary, and it was really cool to see all the other images.....I believe there were over 40 apartments being showcased.  I was definately jealous of some of the sweet apartments that other foreigners have scored while working in Korea.

Anyways, check it out! Again.....click here if you forgot already. Really cool!

Food Sampling at Korean Grocery Stores

Photo courtesy of http://www.holytaco.com/3-suggestions-for-glenn-beck-now-that-he-is-leaving-his-fox-news-show/

One of the things I love about going to Costco back home is the eating-along-the-way part. You know, while you're walking down the aisles getting down to business with your shopping list, you are essentially able to eat an entire meal at the same time via all the sampling.

Korea is awesome in this regard, because it's not just Costco where you can achieve this. Oh no, you can get your snack on at any grocery store that you walk through. There is nothing I love more than wandering around Lotte Mart or Emart and eating my way through the journey. Hey, they make me pay enough for Benjamin's dog food that they ought to be paying me back somehow.

My favorites

1. Iced Coffee
2. Iced Tea
3. Spaghetti with tomato sauce
4. Vinegar water (sounds gross but super-duper yum)
5. Chips
6. Chocolates
7. Weird puffy rice cake thingies
8. Wine (or for Evan, beer)
9. Yogurt (the Korean grocery ladies have me eating yogurt for the first time in my life)

And the best part? (you mean I'm not done yet?)

The outfit

My sampler-friends must wear some of these items in order to sell me on their product. I'm still trying to figure out the costume exactly, and how it's supposed to make me buy what they're selling. I'm not going to go on a tangent about how the majority of the samplers are young females with giraffe legs who must wear these short skirts. However, I am really dying to know about the leg warmers. I'm assuming they are to keep the legs warm in the air conditioning. That begs the question of, "why not just wear pants?"

Photo courtesy of http://www.onourownpath.com/korea-republic-of/good-e-mart-karma/251/post

photo courtesy of http://handmpart2.blogspot.com/2010/08/e-mart.html

Emart and Lotte Mart are not so fond of waygookins (me) swinging a camera around in their store so I had to be a bit sneaky and steal some photos from the braver souls that have been able to carry out mission "take a picture of the sampler ladies" successfully. There's a missing piece in this outfit, though: the mouth guard. I'm going to work on this, and I will keep you posted!

A boiled potato a day, keeps the doctor away

I've blogged before about the amazing snacks and food that parents like to bring to us at work. Kids love to bring the teacher things too, and like to share anything and everything with us. In Korea, it's no red shiny apple. They give us weird things like shrimp chips, weird meat that doesnt look like meat, a teaspoon of mashed up chips that they've retrieved from their bag with a dirty hand, sometimes they even give us things that I can't even identify with my naked eye. It's rude to say no, and it definately takes some brainpower to dodge some of the snacks that are not so appetizing.

Anyways, back to my story. This is my main man. I love this kid dearly. I know some teachers who might say that they don't have favorites but they're full of crap they must just not know some my students. Anyways, the other day Jun-Seok brought me a snack. A boiled potato that he retrieved for me, cold, out of a plastic bag! Yummm! He definately took bringing a teacher a snack to an entirely different level with that one.

My Canadian compadres might think this is weird. This is nothing compared to last week's snack that was given to the kindergarteners: whole boiled potatoes served with a huge mound of white sugar on the side for sprinkling. Apparently this must be a common snack but I'm still trying to get my head around it. Where is the sour cream and bacon, people!

Some clarifications for the new teacher in Korea

There are a few things you will quickly notice once you step into a classroom of Korean students. I thought I'd point out a few of these observations for you to see yourself.

No, that is not the flesh-eating virus!



When i first arrived in Korea, every little girl I saw had these orange colored nails that honestly freaked me right out. Especially because in the beginning, their whole finger is dyed as if they overdosed on a bag of cheetos. Correct me if I'm wrong, on any of this! It's called BongSeon Hwa and you can read more and see pictures of the process by clicking here. Alot of my students visit their grandparents' houses on the weekend and their grandma will do this with them in the summer months using a dye made from plants. The story with these nails is that the dye basically doesn't fade at all-- you just wait for your nails to grow out and it is thought that if there is still some orange showing once the snow falls, the girl will meet their true love. Once I heard that I thought it was pretty cool but that orange color seems like quite a commitment to me!

Yes, that 7 year old really does have their own cell phone.

It was a really strange experience to come to Korea and have a 7 year old "step outside" the classroom to "take a call" from their cellphone. This becomes incredibly annoying when your class is paused for them to do so. The kindergardeners don't usually have phones, but once they go to elementary school (around 7 years old) they get their own cell phones. I've been told its basically for the parents to be able to keep tabs on them as they go to so many after school programs. Anyways, they are often seen strapped fashionably around their necks.

No, that is not a North Korean defector marking on their upper arm.



In the warmer months, it was really weird to see all the kids in capped-sleeves, displaying these strange marks on their arms. I was almost wondering if I was teaching a classroom of defectors or something as it's the exact mark on every kid's arm in the exact same place, like some type of numbering/identification system. It's actually the scar from the immunizations they get when they're little wee grasshoppers. The kids explained it to me, and I was horrified thinking about what medical instrument could subject these kids to that many punctures at the same time.

Yes, that really is a pencil case.

I was in elementary school at the time of the "Yikes" wave of school supplies. I think the trend then changed to Five Star. Bottom line, everyone had the same pencil cases and pencils and pencil sharpeners and no matter how cool the company tried to make them--- school supplies were always school supplies. In Korea, I don't think I've seen the same pencil case twice and alot of them look like something out of the future. The kids are also always fidgeting with whatever school supplies they have with them and it drives me absolutely BANANAS. I really ought to do a post dedicated to Korean school supplies in the future.



These are two of my students modelling their bad-ass cases. One folds into a basketball game, and the other operates as a ping pong game. Any time I refer to these items as "toys," I get a very quick correction of "teeeeeeeacher! It's not a toy, it's pencil case teeeeacher!"

Yes, they really can fold anything into something cool.

My knowledge of Asian culture was quite limited before arriving in Korea. Most of my knowledge could be summed up by reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes as a young girl (think: origami). However I had totally forgotten about this origami business until I realized how often the kids are folding paper into cool stuff. I had a student fold a piece of paper into an army tank complete with gun barrel, and my kindergarteners are always making me little boats, hats and flowers.