Playing catch up...

Well, this blog is in shambles.
Scott and I hit the the three month mark and were kind of in shambles ourselves. His previous post described the phases of culture shock (I don't think "shock" is the right word, but I'm not really sure what is). As he mentioned, there are generally four phases when living abroad (this is worth a read if you have the time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_shock)... so our "honeymoon" phase ended (with Korea, not each other) and the "negotiation" phase began. Practically speaking, this meant Scott was angry and I was depressed. This also meant that the last thing I wanted to do was blog about Korea. I just wanted to sleep... and eat almond Snickers bars. So, for about a month I slept and ate almond Snickers bars.

Then we got heartbreaking news from the States... a man we greatly respected and loved dearly suddenly passed away. It was devastating. He was truly one of the best men I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Then my director started to wield her power a bit (my visa is directly tied to my job, so my director has a lot of power over me, it is kind of like I am Frodo and my director is the ring, except for not at all). A direct quote, "You can't just draw the line and say you won't work Saturdays." Well, actually, yes I can. I could go on, but I won't. I'm trying to forget most of what she said to avoid becoming bitter. So far, it is working out alright. I've also decided to put up some boundaries with her - make it less buddy/buddy and more employee/employer. She's still a decent person, but we just can't be friends... just gets too messy.

So, needless to say, life was overwhelming, stressful, and frustrating for a while. I don't blame Korea. Life gets that way sometimes, no matter where you are. We've been here now for about 5 and a half months and things are generally good. We are actively working on finding the positive and enjoying our time here. Most days it isn't too hard. We love each other very much and have really learned to depend on and communicate with each other. We enjoy exploring the country (we now have a car and bikes!). Spending time with Scott's family and family friends gives us a dose of love and entertainment. Our apartment feels like home (not a cockroach in sight, take that punks!). There is always something to find the funny in 'round these parts... never a dull moment. And most importantly, there is a never ending supply of Frosted Flakes. Everything is gonna be alright.

End life lesson. Begin fun photos. Hold on to yer butts.

Don't really need a caption for this one. They looked like tiny condoms... and we are in Korea after all.

I'm in my totally mismatched pajamas, wearing Scott's giant shoes, singing. Enough said.

Motorized wheelchair driving down the street (where there is a sidewalk available). I stopped asking, "Why?" months ago.

Scott sleeping on the train ride (and me entertaining myself) on the way to Hadong, a beautiful, green tea-growing, little village.

Us with a tea-themed flora and fauna in Hadong.

Myself and the woman who served us food. I liked her. At first she thought I was asking if she would take our picture, but then realized I was asking to take a picture with her. She was still confused, but politely obliged me.

The woman finishing up the painting that we bought from her. It now hangs in our kitchen.

Statue punch! (Ssanggyesa temple, near Hadong)

Statue slap! (Ssanggyesa temple)

B-O-N-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G. Or so I imagine.

Scott and the temple. The temple and Scott.

This is the minbak we stayed in in Hadong. A minbak is a rented room for the night. You sleep on the floor and it isn't as bad as it sounds. It costs about $30 bucks a night.

Hadong green tea mime. Need I say more?

Our best effort at a couples outfit.

Kind of dirty and completely random Winnie the Pooh character at Lotte Mart (our local grocery/everything store).

Everyone must take off their shoes - even for a house party.

At the top of a small mountain, in our small town, Jangyu.

Same mountain, same town.

A while back we went with my director and her family to an island called Namhae. It was gorgeous. This is a super old lady tending to her garlic crop. I've only ever seen super old people farming in Korea. Elderly Koreans are bad to the bone.

Rice paddies, the ocean, and some tough old Koreans in Namhae.

Brother, I love your boots!

Minki, Maria, and their friends playing in the ocean. Take note of the naked little boy's butt and Maria floating on a big piece of styrofoam that Minki found nearby.

Those houses up yonder are called the "American Village." They look like American houses... in Korea. Very weird.

This is the one we stayed at.

There is a strange little museum on Namhae and this is the parking lot. Notice the Mickey Mouse statue and couples outfit. Both precious.

This was a miniature in the museum, but I took the photo so they look life size, how clever!

Scott and I's first road trip in our new car was to Geoje Island. You might be wondering how we keep driving to islands... they've built bridges connecting them to the mainland (ingenious!). This is a photo of Black Pebble Beach. "Pebble" is a bit of a mistranslation, but that doesn't detract from the beauty of it.

Our minbak in Geoje, the doorway to the bathroom was not built for people of Scott's height.

The view from the Hill of Wind, a knobbly little hill on Geoje Island. Supposedly they film a lot of epic movie and drama scenes here.

What Hill of Wind doesn't have a windmill? Doesn't matter that it is powered from a motor within - the Hill of Wind must have a windmill! And goats!

Besides all those Koreans in the background - it doesn't really look much like Korea.

Devil eyes!

More Black Pebble Beach, with the fog rolling in.

It was one foggy dog that night.

Geoje fishing boats.

Geoje old lady selling "snacks."

The look you get after you make your husband get on a Korean ferry tour of Haegeumgang island (off the coast of Geoje).

Hey, somebody cracked open Haegeumgang! You should have seen all the secrets that came spilling out. Sidenote: Haegeumgang is a rocky island off of Geoje island that you take a ferry tour around because Koreans like it. They like it because it looks similar to a mountain (Geumgang mountain) in North Korea that they obviously aren't allowed to go look at.

After the tour of the island mountain that looks like another mountain, the boat goes to another island, Oedo Island Paradise (the official name). So, a long time ago this couple bought this island and turned it into a botanical garden. It was pretty sweet.

Wow!

Haha.

Scott loves nature.

Oh, how Victorian (?) and peaceful.

Ant in a flower thing.

Dr. Seuss style.

Ooooooh, plants.

These woman were laughing hysterically because they were trying to get all nestled into those flowers for a picture. This picture doesn't do justice to how funny it was.

View from the top of Oedo Island.

These weren't very useful on such a foggy day, but they did make for a nice picture.

Like I said, I stopped asking, "Why?" a long time ago.

Inspiration.

View of some of the gardens... tons of man power goes into maintaining this place.

Photo of a photo. Notice how the Korean poses.

Let me show you how we do it in 'Merica!!!

Scott really didn't want to do this, but he did it because he knew how much it would please me. Marriage is about sacrifice sometimes.

Trees in a row.

Freaky alien flowers.

Vine on tree action.

Probably not as soft and fluffy as they looked, but a girl can dream, right?

Headed back to the ferry... you had to swim back out to the boat! Psych!

The happy couple on the happy island.

Back home - Scott likes to take photos of my hair when I wake up in the morning.

I don't know why I allow it.

And last, but certainly not least... here we have EeSue - the mutant grandmother dog. She belongs to AS, Scott's mom's friend, who we see fairly regularly. EeSue is 14 years old, only has two teeth (which means her tongue hangs out at sorts of strange angles), he eyes are cloudy with cataracts, she has no voice/barking box (because she went too hysterical while AS was out), she is a little fat, and her skin can be rolled and manipulated in comical ways.

What a wild ride through time that was! Whoosh! Zoom!

If the ding dang internet and this bing bang computer start working in unison - you'll see a few short videos in the next post. Ding dang! Bing bang!

Slice of Heaven

A Renouncement of Charm (and thus a not so subtle attempt at being charming), and a Korean commercial for a ridiculous product

Nicole has set the standard for amusing story telling dauntingly high and I've learned a lesson or two from Icarus. For this reason, my posts will scarcely venture passed the 50 word mark and will sequester only in the dim, cold shadow of my wife's affable prose. You will find my posts only "mildly amusing" at best and "contrived" at worst, this one relegated to the forgotten place somewhere in between. Anyways, here's a Korean commercial about being fat.

Kids, Cherry Blossom Festival, and such.

Disclaimer: I started this post two weeks ago and am just now finishing it.

And now I'll try to catch up a bit with our recent happenings.

A few weeks ago it was Maria's birthday. Maria is Jackie and Minki's daughter and she's the one with pink glasses. Yuni is the other little girl and the little boy is Johnny. I try to name as many students after people I know... so far I have a Johnny, Alice, Cindy, and Jessica. Korean students only like a set of about 30 names, so they don't usually agree to my suggestions. Anyway, I think Maria turned eight (in Korean years). Koreans count age differently, but it usually means they are a year or two ahead. I think she is actually seven. Who knows really. So on her birthday we ate Hello Kitty cake, black pepper steak chips, Korean Bugles, and drank milk. And we didn't have to do any class work! They don't actually do much class work anyway, but on birthday party day I didn't even have to try to make them do the little bit of work that I normally do.



Wow, wasn't that fun? Okay, now let's look at pictures from from our little trip to a town called Jinhae. We went to Jinhae with Jackie and Minki for the Cherry Blossom festival. Things to know: Cherry Blossoms only bloom for about a month. The Cherry Blossoms in Korea were all planted by the Japanese during the occupation. Cherry Blossoms are nice to look at, but give me terrible allergies. Now here are some pictures:

This monk wouldn't give Scott the paper he was handing to everyone else.

Minki is a great dad. We walked up a ton of stairs and he carried Maria up.

Here's some of the view from the top... look at all those Cherry Blossom trees!

Ohh, look at that fine piece of meat! No, no, not Minki, the chicken, I meant the chicken.

I like to take pictures of other people taking pictures. I like to imagine it starting some chain reaction that we can't really detect now, but will eventually end in the creation of a black hole somewhere. I call it the black hole effect. I've already started a screen play that I'm hoping Ashton Kutcher will someday star in.

Here we have two people wearing the same shirt (and possibly jeans). Couples outfits are pretty popular in Korea (mostly for the young lovers). I'm trying to catch as many as I can on camera. Oftentimes, this involves making Scott stand near them so it doesn't look like I'm just taking their picture.

And yes, I have already explained to Scott that we will start doing this at some point. In the States you have to wait until you're a grandparent, but in Korea we can start right now!


So, this guy basically caramelizes some sugar, makes a flat pancake shape, and stamps it in the middle with a really simple shape (star, butterfly, etc.). Then people come over and sit down, use a thumb tack to try to break out the simple shape and if you succeed in removing the shape (without damaging it), you don't have to pay for your caramelized sugar wafer. Both Scott and I failed. Caramelized sugar is so brittle!

This is deok galbi, it is seasoned beef that is cooked over a flame. We ate it for lunch.

Later we all got some snacks and Minki went for the corn dog covered in french fry pieces. Haha.

We ended up driving to another part of Jinhae and these are some more of the Cherry Blossoms along the way.

The place we went was right on the ocean. I think it was a Korean military base, but I'm not really sure. I haven't been sure about anything for a little over two months now. Anyway, here is Scott looking at the ocean, thinking about how he really wants to buy a puppy but I won't let him.

I love this photo of Minki and Maria.

I'm pretty sure something different happens when you take a photo of someone you know taking a photo. Maybe a wormhole? I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Up close and personal with some Cherry Blossoms.

This photo was actually taken in our town, but it is going with the Cherry Blossom photos for obvious reasons.

Well, that is the end of this post. Now I've got to start another one because we've done and seen many exciting things since this one.

New Apartment Video

Click on this clink if you want to see our new apartment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-du487JJIQ

Pictures and words.

You really deserve better from us. We haven't posted in weeks. I won't give you the "we're so busy and tired" song and dance because it doesn't matter. What's done is done. Now we should move on.

I'm going to try to catch you up on this wild ride. This will include a copious amount of photos and sentence fragments posing as sentences. I might break it up into multiple posts. Who knows, right? Anything is possible!

You should know that there is a mondoo (steamed pot sticker dealy) across the street from my school. It is about $3 for about 10 mondoos. The guy steams them when you order them and they are delicious. I'm starting to salivate a little thinking about it. Or maybe this is how much I normally salivate... I'm not actually sure. Anyway, having such easy access to mondoo is awesome and a little dangerous. Sometimes I bring some home for Scott. Doesn't he look so young and handsome eating those mondoos? I couldn't agree more.


One night we made pajong (I making up the romanization as I go, so just roll with it). Pajong is a savory Korean pancake, they usually eat it as an appetizer, but we made it for dinner. Turned out pretty well. Took forever to cook though. Doesn't really look very impressive, but we were proud of ourselves. This is it:


So, the weekend after the family fun weekend we went back to Busan. This time Scott's mom's friend from the good ole days picked us up and brought us to there (it is where she lives). She fed us, told us to sleep in, fed us some more, took us to walk along the beach, answered our random questions, took us grocery shopping, and brought us back home. Her name is AS Han and she is the shiz. Scott is going to get mad because he doesn't like this picture, but I do, so here are Scott and AS:

So what if he looks like an awkward robot. Betcha didn't even know robots could look awkward. And here is one of AS and I. There is another one with her and I that I look better in (not quite so tired and confused anyway), but her eyes are closed, so I am magnanimously posting the one with her eyes open (that I look worse in). I'm so selfless. Or am I? You'll never know. Or will you? I could go on, but I won't. Or will I?

Isn't she pretty? Korean woman age really well. And you'll score major points if you tell them this. Here is the room we ate in:


AS made sure we had a room that you could sit on the floor, but the floor under the table was sunken, so you didn't have to sit American Indian style. And the floor was so warm. What a delight. A bunch of other people joined us... so Scott's mom has three best friends from the old days: AS, JA, and JB. I don't know why they all have initials for names and I'm not complaining. So, they were all there with a variety of family members. The restaurant was an upscale galbi house (Korean barbecue on the table). It was delicious and we both were sick due to overeating. Multiple times I wanted to stop eating. Multiple times I did stop eating. And then AS would order more meat, cook it, and give it to me. Koreans are really hard to turn down. Here are the hot coals that cook the food:

Here is AS multitasking:

And here is AS preparing our meeeeeeat:

They use scissors here like we would use a knife. And they don't use knives (outside of the kitchen, only for preparing food). A knife on the table is sort of barbaric. I tried explaining that we actually are barbarians so using a knife is okay. I actually didn't do that. And they don't eat off of individual plates. Also, I like that last photo. This is a photo of the night time view from AS' apartment parking lot, Scott was impressed:


The next day AS took us to the Paradise Hotel for lunch. And wow-e-wow-wow, it was nice. The food was pretty good (there was even some Western food!), the atmosphere was real mod, and the clientele were obviously rich. It was somewhere we would never be able to go on our own. AS has a membership or something, which gets her a discount, but still. It is right on Haeundae beach (Maybe Korea's most famous beach? I'm shooting from the hip here.). Scott had his first decent cup of coffee here (it was from one of those machines that you set your cup on and press a button). He sprinkled some cinnamon on it and I took a photo:

And that is the inside of the buffet. I was trying not to look like a weirdo taking a photo of other people eating, so please excuse the angle.

I don't have a photo of it, but I ate an obscene amount of food from the dessert bar. There was this chocolate icecream, ahhh, it was a dream. And next to the ice cream bar there were little ice cream spoons. And I took one. And for those of you who don't know, I steal small spoons when the opportunity arises. They have to be spoons and they have to be small. And there can't be a chance that the staff will somehow notice. So far, in Korea, I have taken three small spoons. One from a coffee shop, one from the Paradise Hotel, and one from a different coffee shop. Aside from becoming the new owner of a small spoon, the best part about stealing small spoons is when I tell Scott about it. He always has this mixed reaction - part dismay (that his wife would do such a thing) and part pride (that his wife would do such a thing).

After we ate tons of food we took a walk along the beach. It was sunny and pleasant.

AS always asks, "Sleeping?" after you take a photo of her. She is asking if her eyes are closed. This is funny so I've incorporated into my vocabulary.

This is AS pointing to somewhere on that hill... to the nice place where Scott's parents spent their honeymoon a long, long time ago.

You should know that I've saved the best for last. This is a little treat for the people who actually read to the end of this post. First, there was a Korean man with bleached blonde hair driving a Rascal. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it should give you an idea:

I wasn't satisfied with that picture, so as we walked by I tried to get a better one:

As you can see, I took it too soon. I was trying not to get caught (by AS or the guy). Second, here is the gorgeous beach and view:


And third, drum roll please, the pièce de résistance:


Don't ask me why because I don't know. Just let it wash over you. Koreans are generally really modest folk (by Western standards).