Back to Busan

After an interim of nearly three months, Katie and I finally made it back to Busan for some much needed relaxation on Saturday. The weather was perfect and, as the high season was nearly over, Haeundae Beach wasn't too crowded. We documented our excursion in photos.

Our journey started at Starbucks, where we ate pastries and drank "real" coffee. Korean coffee is really awful. You know the coffee that comes out of a machine and is dispensed into little cups with poker cards on them? If you've ever been so unfortunate as to have tasted that, you have a pretty good idea of what coffee tastes like here in Korea. Though I don't care much for Starbucks coffee at home, here it tastes really wonderful.


While we were having our coffee, we noticed this new-hire orientation taking place. Koreans are serious about service, so I'm sure these guys were taking close notes.


After coffee we took a cab to Nam San Bus Terminal. Unlike most things in Korea, cabs are actually pretty cheap. It only cost us about $2.50 to be taken the five or so miles to Nam San.


A one-way ticket from Nam San Terminal to Sasang Station in Busan is a little over $3.00. We've never waited more that twenty minutes for the bus to arrive; I think they're supposed to arrive every fifteen minutes or so.


There was already a line for the bus to Busan when we arrived, and when the bus pulled up it already had passengers on it. Knowing that the bus would be too crowded, Katie and I opted to let this one go and wait for the next one. We've made the mistake of boarding a crowded bus before, only to find that we were unable to sit next to eachother. Also, no one ensures that the number of passengers boarding the bus doesn't exceed the maximum capacity, and Koreans will think nothing of standing in the aisle for the entire bus ride. I once had a woman stand in the aisle next to me for the duration of the much longer trip from Changwon to Daegu.



The trip from Changwon to Busan is about an hour or so, depending on traffic. As Changwon is situated in a valley, the bus climbs until it reaches a tunnel, and then descends toward Busan on the other side. The approach to the tunnel is beautiful, and facilitates a closer look at some of the dramatic looking mountains that surround Changwon.


Upon arriving in Busan, we were dropped off at the Inter-city Bus Terminal. When you get off the bus and walk into the terminal, you are greeted by dozens of stores and restaurants. This is a shot of the outside of the terminal after we had walked out. Immediately outside there is access to the subway (Sasang Station).


Inside the station, while waiting in line to buy our subway tickets, we spotted a couple of Korean sailors. It is not uncommon to see them, particularly in Busan.


After buying our tickets, we made our way to the platform to wait for the train. The subway in Busan is very easy to use, and all the stops are posted in English as well as Korean (though Katie and I would do just as well without the English, as we've become pretty good at reading Korean).


The subway is generally not too crowded, and if you can't find a seat right away, you usually can within a few stops. The ride from Sasang Station to Haeundae Beach is about 45 minutes.


We finally arrived at the beach, noting that the crowds must have thinned considerably within the past week. Haeundae Beach is popularly known as "the most beautiful beach in Korea", and the entire country converges upon it in August, Korean summer vacation. The umbrellas and life guards are only present during this time, and I suspect that the next time we go they will have vanished.



Katie and I staked out a claim beneath one of the umbrellas for a fee of about $5.00. We then kicked back and spent some time relaxing and declining the dozens of solicitations we received for fried chicken and maikju (beer). Vendors passed us at intervals of approximately three to five minutes.


After lunch we headed to Haeundae Market, which is located on a narrow street not far from the beach. The market is full of quaint, old-fashioned shops selling everything from produce to shoes. Fish are also abundant, like these toothy eels.







Katie snapped this one of a man she spotted sleeping on the floor. Koreans traditionally slept on the floor, and many still do not own western-style beds.


I thought the market provided a good opportunity to show and explain some of the Korean foods we have eaten since coming here. This is a particular variety of Asian cabbage that seems to be primarily used for making kimchi. You can find it in every grocery store, and Korean mothers buy it by the bushel. The traditional way of making kimchi was to add all the ingredients together and allow the mixture to ferment in huge earthen pots that were buried in the ground. Today Korean women use "kimchi refrigerators" -huge refrigerated vats exclusively for making kimchi.


Though kimchi can take many forms, this seems to be the most typical variety. As you can see, the individual cabbage leafs are still clearly discernible, but they are wilty and covered in a spicy, garlicky, red substance. I have to say, I was not a fan of kimchi at first, but if it is warmed up (or cooked), I now find it quite delicious...


Seaweed is a common ingredient in Korean dishes. It's another commodity that's sold in bulk quantities.


These two kinds of leaves seem to turn up as a side dish at many restaurants. You can use them to make little "wraps" by filling them with grilled meats and vegetables. I am very partial to the ones that look like lettuce, but the others -which are sesame leaves- look, feel, and probably taste like elm leaves.


Katie really hates this. We are relatively certain that these are cooked pigs' feet, but for whatever reason they pack a powerful and distinct odor when they're cooked. They seem to be quite popular and they even sell them at E-Mart. I find the smell pretty awful, but poor Katie begins dry-heaving at 300 yards.


These skinny, long eggplants are commonly seen in grocery stores and markets. I've only eaten them once, and they taste pretty much like regular eggplant. I keep meaning to buy a couple and try frying them.


After spending some time at the market, Katie and I headed back down to the beach again. It was around 5:30 by this time, but a lot of people were still enjoying the water and sitting under umbrellas.


At about the middle point of the beach there is a wide, paved area that is designed to accommodate a stage. On this particular day there was an event called "Street Lounge" taking place. The event consisted of various talent groups doing routines. Katie and I watched this group for some time. They did a lot of poorly choreographed dancing sprinkled with some almost-impressive break dancing. Their music was being played so loudly over giant speakers that I think I saw a couple of birds knocked out of the sky. We've noticed that everything in Korea is several notches louder than western ears are comfortable with -concerts, the movie theater, grand-openings, etc.


As we began making our way back toward the subway station, I saw this little boy standing at a toast shop window. "Toast" is very popular in Korea. The word is thrown around the way that we use the word pizza: "Hey, wanna get some toast?" What they are actually referring to is a toasted sandwich filled with almost any ingredient you can think of and slathered with ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard. Toast shops like this one are nearly everywhere.


This last shot is of the street that we use to walk to and from the beach. It's a little run-down, and seems an unlikely area to host a subway station. It seems an even stranger place to be so near Haeundae Beach. Busan has a much different feel to it than Changwon. Changwon is a new city, only developed over the past 20 years or so, whereas Busan is nearly 2,000 years old.

One more worth mentioning

It's called "Couple Panty". You and your significant other can buy matching unmentionables. These are pajamas, but trust me, they have it all.

Strange but true

Just sharing some very random Korean craziness with you all.

Here are a few wacky flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins native only to Korea I'm sure.

They seem to have green tea flavored everything. Even gum.

There it is. Looks tasty, right?

Perhaps this flavor is in honor of the Olympics.
No thank you to the next three.

Okay, so these cakes aren't really weird, but they do look a bit done up. I don't know of any kid who would actually care THIS much about what his ice cream cake looks like


We found this gem on the way to Haeundae Beach a few months ago. Aaron says he wasn't dead, but I don't know, he was out like a light!

Most Koreans hate cats.

Park Ah Ron Teacher

With "intensives" finally over, Katie and I are looking forward to a more relaxed schedule this term. Last week I said good-bye to most of my students. This term it is possible that I could be teaching a few of the same kids, but the majority of them will be new.

Here are a couple more videos I shot of my class that does skits. In this skit, a CEO and the chairman of the board are arguing over whether to hire a woman or a man as vice president. The woman is more qualified, but the director thinks people will be angry if they hire a female. The first video features Daniel and May (seated) and Jenny and Nick as the candidates.



The next video is of Hea Saun and Patrick. As you may gather, Patrick is a bit of a spaz, but hilarious.



Here are a few pictures of an elementary class that I had. In the first picture, Roy is in the middle, flanked by Danny (left) and Andy (right). Danny is quite a little patriot. According to him, everything good originated in Korea. I even had quite an argument with him one day regarding the word "sofa" (Koreans say "sopa"). It was useless to try to explain to him that "sopa" is a Korean corruption of an English word. "Sopa", he was proud to inform me, was, and always has been, a Korean word. Roy is a smart kid and usually a bit quiet, and Andy is the class-clown, always trying to get a laugh.


The next photo is Kevin. Kevin had had some real behavior issues in the previous term, and I was originally a little bummed to see that I had him again. But miraculously he really came around and I ended up having a lot of fun with him.


This is Jenny. She is one of a number of students who call me "Park Ah Ron", after Korean swimmer and gold-medal champion Park Tae Won. She is convinced that I can speak Korean by virtue of my ability to read Korean words and say things like "nay" (yes), "aniyo" (no", and "babo" (crazy). More than once she has asked me, in all sincerity, why it is that I can speak Korean but the other teachers cannot.


Little Jessica was absent from my class for the first few weeks of the term due to her being in the U.S.A.. Chicago, I think. One day she brought a bag of goldfish crackers as a snack and told me they were from America. They must have been, because you can't buy them here.


Near the end of this term, all the teacher were required to hand out evaluations for the students to fill out. I was happy to find that, with very few exceptions, all my kids liked me and wanted to have me again. Here are a few examples:


I knew that my "now" was a little weak, and I will definitely be working harder on it this term. I suspect the student meant that I'm already really good "now"... This next one was pretty honest about what I could do better in the future.


This student clearly liked me, but was not as impressed with my Korean skills as Jenny...


I just thought this one was sweet.


Finally, I thought I'd post one of the few negative ones.


During the last couple of weeks of intensives I made a habit of going downstairs to the 7-11 and picking up a Coke during my brief interval between classes. I think someone was a little jealous.

Five months and then some

It's been awhile since we've given a "life" update on here. We've been in Korea for a little more than five months and sometimes that feels like just a few weeks, and other times it feels like we've been here an eternity. Anyway, I thought I would mention a few new things that have been going on with us. Many of you know that Aaron has for the past 3 weeks been teaching a summer "intensive" class at his school. This is on top of his regular 6 days a week work schedule, so you can imagine how tiring it is for him! Luckily, he gets a new schedule with Saturdays free starting next week. I have also been teaching an extra class for the past few weeks so we haven't really had any time for "blog-worthy" material to post. I guess I should catch everybody up on the fact that I am even teaching at all. The opportunity came up around mid July for me to teach part time at a friend of ours school. I took on that job, and was called a few weeks later and asked to tutor about 28 kids divided up into 7 classes for an hour a week. I'm still volunteering, but with August being THE vacation month of Korea, many of the kids I spend time with are away at camp and visiting family so it's been put on hold until September. So we are just living and working, and anxious for Aaron's new schedule and a chance to leave the city. Oh, and cooler weather, too!

We are hoping for a trip to Seoul to see the DMZ, and do some other sightseeing. We thought we better give Seoul another chance since we didn't really get a good impression of it when we first arrived.

We still attend our little church and love spending time with our friends here.
Just last Sunday we met a new guy at church who is from Colorado Springs! It was the strangest thing to hear him speak because he really sounds like someone from home! Being a native, I have never felt like "we" have and accent, but listening to Andy talk was so familiar compared to the group we usually hang around. I mean we spend so much time around Koreans speaking "Konglish", and we have friends from just about every continent and they all have such different accents.
Anyway, in getting to know Andy he mentioned missing Q'doba and it instantly caused the most frustrating feeling in my stomach :( (Min, I'm still expecting you to have a burrito in hand for me when I step off the plane).

Nancy and Henry are making final preparations for their wedding in September. I'm really looking forward to attending. It's going to be a traditional Korean ceremony! The English foreigners will have to listen to a translator through a headset so we know what's going on. Should be fun!

We really miss everyone back home and really appreciate all the love and prayers.
Oh, and we are keeping up on the Olympics online, and sometimes we catch it on the t.v, but since we're in Korea it's mostly just replays of Park Tae-Hwan winning his gold.
It's OK though, the Koreans are really proud of their athletes, and it's been fun to root for two countries!

Here's a pic of me with Jacqui and Nancy at Nancy's surprise bachelorette party. She really loved the tiara (wink wink).

I'm a Doramong

Obviously, we haven't had time to update the blog for awhile. During the month of August Korean school children are out for summer vacation. However, for most of them this means more time for academies (hagwons). As the result I am teaching extra classes several days each week. Though the craziness won't end for another week and-a-half or so, I did want to share a few small examples of what I spend my time doing these days.

In one of my elementary aged classes I had the kids do a creative writing exercise. They were supposed to fill in the blanks and then rewrite the entire paragraph. Here are a couple of examples:


Doraemon is a Japanese cartoon starring a robotic cat that travels through time. The above example was written by Sarah, who is about eight years old. The example below, by Danny, is a little more coherent:



In one of my other classes, I primarily teach the kids how to take good notes while listening to a lecture given in English. During one part of the class, the kids get to write a skit and then act it out for me and the rest of the class. I videoed a couple of examples from last night's skit. Here's the scenario: A man and a woman are eating at a restaurant. The man likes meat, but the woman is a vegetarian. The woman tells the man he shouldn't eat meat because of the conditions the animals are raised in. The man tells the woman that she will die if she doesn't eat protein.

The kids are pretty much free to do what they want, as long as they stick close to the basic premise. The first video features Hea Seon, Kellie and Sophia.


In the next video, notice that the girls have written "FGI Sunday" on the white board (a parody of "TGI Friday"), and have gone through the trouble of making paper props for the skit (hamburger and salad). Meagan, Jenny and Cara are in this one.

Mae-mees

Summer in Korea is characterized by high heat and humidity, and the deafening drone of millions of singing mae-mees (the Korean word for "cicada"). I, for one, was excited when I heard the first cicadas a couple of weeks ago. My fondness for these bugs goes back to my childhood in Texas, when I spent countless summer hours climbing trees and catching them. Cicadas are not harmful to plants, and cannot bite or sting.


Cicadas are really fascinating insects. They exist on all the continents except Antarctica, and there are so many species that many remain unclassified. Depending on the species, they spend three to seventeen years underground as nymphs, and then crawl to the surface. After climbing a tree, they perform their final molt, turning into a large, winged bug. In one short summer they sing and mate, lay their eggs and die.


They leave their empty skins, like these, all over trees and bushes.




As in Texas, you can see cicada skins on nearly ever tree you look at. Here Katie holds a leaf with one on it to provide a sense of scale.


Generally, Cicada nymphs emerge from the ground to molt at night. This is because while they are shedding their skin they are especially vulnerable. The few nymphs that, for whatever reason, emerge after daylight are often eaten by birds or, as with this one we found, by ants.


The most common cicada here is this small, well-camouflaged kind. These really blend in with trees, making them more difficult to spot than the ones I grew up with in Texas. The most common Texas species was tibicen superba, which was bright green; click here to see a photo of one. We have also seen some very large blackish ones, but I haven't been able to get close enough to one to take a picture.


Cicada songs vary by species. These have a shrill "whine" that sounds like a small motor running at a very rate of RPMs. Cicadas love the heat, so the hotter the day, the louder the cicadas. Sometimes they will taper off if the sun goes behind a cloud. But the moment the sun comes out again they all resume in unison. I asked some of my students if they liked mae-mees, and most said "yes". A few said they didn't, and when I asked them why they said, "Teacher, loud!". They also informed me, with no small display of disgust, that in China people eat mae-mees.



While Katie and I were cicada hunting, we also ran across this spider. We think it was wrapping up a bug, but couldn't be sure. We've seen more spiders in Korea than Katie is comfortable with.




To our surprise, a number of trees have suddenly blossomed here. We had assumed that the flowers left with the spring, but these blossoming trees are everywhere.

Korean Commercials

Just to give everyone an idea of some of the commercials we see on television here... This first one is for "Rush n Cash", which I assume is like a payday loan place. Their commercials play constantly, and this particular one was one of the first we saw in our hotel room in Seoul.


You might be surprised to learn that Wentworth Miller (star of the show "Prison Break") has done several Korean coffee commercials in which he sings. Miller is very popular in Korea, and I'm sure they compensated him well to do this commercial. It plays often. Those of you who have watched the movie "Lost in Translation" will especially appreciate this commercial... Right side, and, uh, with intensity.


This commercial is about ramen, which Koreans call "ram-ee-on", and is clearly directed toward kids. Korean kids absolutely love it, and will even eat it uncooked as a snack. The commercial shows it being cooked in a copper pot, and various vegetables being added to it, along with boiled eggs. At one point someone dumps a bowl of rice into it as well. We have eaten ramen this way several times.


Okay, not sure this is a commercial, and I can't say that I saw it prior to watching it on YouTube, but it's pretty funny. It's a cartoon encouraging kids to eat their rice ("bap" in Korean). I'm surprised that Korean kids need encouragement.