I'm about to go to sleep after my third day here in Korea... I decided to write another blog today about all the strange things I have seen or heard so far. I figured I should probably write about them now that they are fresh in my mind, because in a year I bet none of it will seem strange at all!
I have found that the Korean society is very much based on image. Everyone is dressed to kill; business suits, designer wear, stilettos, and all the latest fashion. I guess a popular graduation present for high-schoolers is plastic surgery, with common procedures being nose, breast enlargements, and eyelid surgery. Adam even saw a headline on a website today that read, "Tax deductions for nose jobs." I find that very strange because even though Koreans are very image based, they also are very proud of their culture. Korea happens to be the most homogeneous place on the planet, so one would think that Koreans would want to stay "Korean looking," so to speak. I have not seen an ugly Korean yet. Everyone here is very very beautiful!
I was told yesterday that I might get asked what my blood type is quite a bit (and I honestly don't even know what mine is!) I guess that like astrology, there are many different characteristics associated with one's blood type as well. Koreans take this very seriously, and when trying to set people up on dates, or maybe other activities as well, your blood type and those characteristics are taken into serious consideration! I guess there is even a movie called, My Boyfriend is B Negative! Imagine it being socially frowned upon to date someone not compatible to your blood type!!
Korean age is also something that is different from the States. In Korea, as soon as you are born you are automatically one year old. Then, on Jan 1 (I think, I'm not sure the exact date) everyone in the entire country has their birthday. So a baby could be born on Dec. 26th and be one and then 5 days later would be considered two years old! So here, instead of being 24 I am 26 years old!
Hmmm.... There are cars everywhere here! They don't just drive in the road either. Not all the streets have sidewalks, only the really big main streets do, but that doesn't seem to matter at all. It seems like if a car wants to get around traffic it just drives on the sidewalk! Motorcycles do it all the time too! There are tons of motorcycles and motorcycle shops here! I noticed that really really nice cars park on the sidewalk too! As soon as I get pics up you will see, but one of the main roads has 7 lanes going each way, and this is in the city!! I have seen cars whip a U-turn and cut off cars going the opposite direction. Also, when you are walking down the street without sidewalks it always seems like you are going to be hit by a car! The side streets are very narrow and there are a million cars going both directions, plus motorcycles that just zoom in between all the cars, plus people everywhere too! I can't even tell you how many times I have been looking into a window and almost been hit by a car! It is something that definitely has to be experienced to be believed! One other cool thing I noticed is that the gas stations here in the city don't really have pumps you drive up to. You drive into the area like you would any gas station, but instead of pulling up to a stationary pump, you pull a string and pull the pump down from the ceiling! It actually looks really neat!
There is sooo much more to write, but I will save it for another day. I think I am really starting to have the jet lag kick in. The first few days weren't as bad because everything was so exciting, but now I have been getting really tired early in the day and also waking up about 3 or 4 am and having a really hard time going back to sleep! I am trying to eat at regular times and also do a lot of walking to get my body adjusted. I am hoping to train myself to get up at 6:30 am because I am already getting up so early that it won't even feel early if I train myself to be up at 6:30. I am just hoping I can sleep past 4am today!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
the longest plane ride!
Sorry it has been so long since I have written. The last few weeks before I left Korea, B.K. 2007 if you wish =o), have been soo crazy. I will sum up the last few weeks before I left and then move on... Basically, Jason and I went to Aspen and had a great weekend! The mountains are beautiful, we saw a lot of great sights, and the Martin Sexton concert was good (despite the altitude sickness I had that left me in the bathroom thinking I was going to puke for the main part of the show!) The next weekend was my mother's wedding. She got remarried and my sister and I were in the wedding, plus all our family from Chicago came up. That same night I also had my going away party at the Retro Club. It was a good time, so many friends came out that night so I couldn't think of a better farewell! With the party and wedding behind me only left me with one week before I left. Jason and I went up to Eagle River to say goodbye to his parents, had farewell dinners with all of my family, and basically just tried to be together as much as possible.
Friday was departure day! Jason was amazing at packing all my belongings into 2 suitcases and one carryon. However, Adam and I both encountered overweight fees... the way the airlines set this up is bogus! At first, Adam was going to have to pay $790 to take 2 overweight bags and check a 3rd bag as and extra!! Luckily, I had an extra suitcase along so he could rearrange things. For him to take 4 bags only cost about $250. I only had my 2 bags, one being 15 pounds overweight. It ended up costing me $390 to send only 2 bags!! I'm actually pretty ticked about it, even though there is nothing else I can do about it now. But how the heck does 4 bags end up cheaper than 2??? It was just frustrating knowing if i had brought yet another suitcase I could have paid the extra bag fee and it only would have been $150. The man at the counter wasn't very nice about it either. If he would have been thinking I could have combined my extra 15 pounds into the bag I gave Adam and we could have split the cost of the one extra bag. But no, I end up with the shaft! =o(
Anyway, we had 3 flights. Mosinee to Chicago, Chicago to New York, New York to Seoul. After 8hours on the flight to Seoul I was ready to go crazy!! Lucky for me I only had 7 hours left! Eventually, after 3 movies, a 3 hour nap, and a few games of Tetris, our plane landed! We were expecting Marie, our principal, to pick us up. As soon as we walked off the plane we almost got scammed! A man came up to us telling us he was here to pick us up. I was confused and thought maybe Marie had sent him. He even grabbed all my luggage and was trying to take it to his taxi. It just turns out that he was trying to get a fare! We kept trying to tell him we were getting picked up and he kept insisting that he was there to pick us up. He didn't know our names our where we were going though. Eventually I had to get a lady from information to tell him in Korean that we had a ride coming. Our ride was almost an hour and a half late. It turns out that Marie and her husband Dave got in a little accident on the way to the airport! It was nothing horrible and everyone was ok. We loaded all our stuff into the school van and off we went.
The apartment we are staying in isn't available til Wed, so we are staying in another teacher's apartment until then. However, we had 5 hours to kill before it was ready. Marie and Dave took us out for breakfast and then we went up to the Seoul Tower, which is similar to the Space Needle or the Tokyo Tower. Seoul is huge and amazing!!! There are a ton of high rise apartment building everywhere. The sights were overwhelming to take in. Everything looks different, the writing is different, the people look, speak, and dress differently, the cars look different, and it even smells different! After such a long journey it was hard to focus! Eventually we got into our temporary apartment and Adam and I ventured out into Seoul to grab dinner on our own! We walked around for a long time, hoping to find some restaurant with a little English on the menu. It was Sunday, so not many things were even open. We ended up walking into this little restaurant and ordering 2 things: Buckwheat noodles with spicy sauce and some type of beef soup. Before that was brought out we got 6 dishes of food that I cannot name! I am sure one was kimchi, pickled spicy cabbage, another had nuts in it, and another almost looked like some kind of seaweed. I have no idea what the others were! I tried them all though and they weren't bad. Korean food is generally very spicy and takes some getting used to. I think the waitress had a good laugh though. She brought us forks (which we didn't use) and then cut our noodles with a scissors because we couldn't get them with the chopsticks. It was awkward but definitely and experience!
I have so much more to write but I will save that for another blog later today. I can't even describe some of the things I have seen because I am in sensory overload. I will try and post pictures as soon as I can. My camera is broke so I will have to get them from Adam's camera.
Friday was departure day! Jason was amazing at packing all my belongings into 2 suitcases and one carryon. However, Adam and I both encountered overweight fees... the way the airlines set this up is bogus! At first, Adam was going to have to pay $790 to take 2 overweight bags and check a 3rd bag as and extra!! Luckily, I had an extra suitcase along so he could rearrange things. For him to take 4 bags only cost about $250. I only had my 2 bags, one being 15 pounds overweight. It ended up costing me $390 to send only 2 bags!! I'm actually pretty ticked about it, even though there is nothing else I can do about it now. But how the heck does 4 bags end up cheaper than 2??? It was just frustrating knowing if i had brought yet another suitcase I could have paid the extra bag fee and it only would have been $150. The man at the counter wasn't very nice about it either. If he would have been thinking I could have combined my extra 15 pounds into the bag I gave Adam and we could have split the cost of the one extra bag. But no, I end up with the shaft! =o(
Anyway, we had 3 flights. Mosinee to Chicago, Chicago to New York, New York to Seoul. After 8hours on the flight to Seoul I was ready to go crazy!! Lucky for me I only had 7 hours left! Eventually, after 3 movies, a 3 hour nap, and a few games of Tetris, our plane landed! We were expecting Marie, our principal, to pick us up. As soon as we walked off the plane we almost got scammed! A man came up to us telling us he was here to pick us up. I was confused and thought maybe Marie had sent him. He even grabbed all my luggage and was trying to take it to his taxi. It just turns out that he was trying to get a fare! We kept trying to tell him we were getting picked up and he kept insisting that he was there to pick us up. He didn't know our names our where we were going though. Eventually I had to get a lady from information to tell him in Korean that we had a ride coming. Our ride was almost an hour and a half late. It turns out that Marie and her husband Dave got in a little accident on the way to the airport! It was nothing horrible and everyone was ok. We loaded all our stuff into the school van and off we went.
The apartment we are staying in isn't available til Wed, so we are staying in another teacher's apartment until then. However, we had 5 hours to kill before it was ready. Marie and Dave took us out for breakfast and then we went up to the Seoul Tower, which is similar to the Space Needle or the Tokyo Tower. Seoul is huge and amazing!!! There are a ton of high rise apartment building everywhere. The sights were overwhelming to take in. Everything looks different, the writing is different, the people look, speak, and dress differently, the cars look different, and it even smells different! After such a long journey it was hard to focus! Eventually we got into our temporary apartment and Adam and I ventured out into Seoul to grab dinner on our own! We walked around for a long time, hoping to find some restaurant with a little English on the menu. It was Sunday, so not many things were even open. We ended up walking into this little restaurant and ordering 2 things: Buckwheat noodles with spicy sauce and some type of beef soup. Before that was brought out we got 6 dishes of food that I cannot name! I am sure one was kimchi, pickled spicy cabbage, another had nuts in it, and another almost looked like some kind of seaweed. I have no idea what the others were! I tried them all though and they weren't bad. Korean food is generally very spicy and takes some getting used to. I think the waitress had a good laugh though. She brought us forks (which we didn't use) and then cut our noodles with a scissors because we couldn't get them with the chopsticks. It was awkward but definitely and experience!
I have so much more to write but I will save that for another blog later today. I can't even describe some of the things I have seen because I am in sensory overload. I will try and post pictures as soon as I can. My camera is broke so I will have to get them from Adam's camera.
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