My First VLog

Hey!

Hope everyone is doing well.  I tried my first video update this week and I think it turned out alright. 

Enjoy.

Ahh, I miss that smell.

Not of Busan.

And I do miss the smell of MN, but not as poignantly as I probably will come fall.  

I miss the smell of books.  There is something about a book, that smell of the pages when you open it up, it always seems to be the same, no matter what.  I forgot about the smell.  My kindle does not have that 'book' smell.  It's awesome that I can carry nearly all my books with me in a convenient package.  But it doesn't quite provide the satisfaction that the smell and feeling of a book provide.  

I found this book while we were in Seoul.  My friend probably thought that I was absolutely bonkers, I practically hit the ceiling with my excitement.  It's not often that I forget the title AND the author of a book, but somehow with this book only the storyline sticks with me.  I have been trying to track it down for several months, wracking my brain for either the title or the author to no avail.  In the bookstore, the distinctive cover art jumped out at me, causing me to literally knock a stack of books off the shelf.  Now I have my very own copy, and won't have to worry about forgetting it again.  :)

Less money, more time on the train!

 Hi!  
Since my last post my vacation has started, which has been relaxing and fun so far.   I haven't been cooking as much, as I've been meeting with friends often; but I did make some 'hotdish' about a week ago.   I hadn't purchased hamburger yet since coming to SK, but found it in the Woori Mart that I shop at and was excited to try something new (new for my life in Korea).  
I cooked the macaroni in water while the hamburger was browning.  Then I mixed together the cooked noodles, hamburger, some pasta sauce and some shredded cheddar cheese.  Since not having an oven puts a bit of a dent in the cooking process, I put it in the microwave for about 5 mintues until the cheese was melted.  
It was delicious!

Last weekend I went out with some friends on Saturday night.  We had some fried chicken for dinner and then went out for drinks.  It was a lovely evening!

I think Kimmy makes a great pirate!

Mmmm.  Beam.

 I made it to the 13th Annual Busan Rock Festival last Sunday.  There was a good mix of people there, many of which you would expect to see at a rock festival.  It sounds weird to say something like that, but conforming is much more likely here than dressing for individuality.  There were also people of all ages, from older couples to teens to young children.  The music that we encountered was pretty good, one from a geeky looking band and then a more traditional looking Korean rock band.  The last one was a British band, who though seemingly loved by the Koreans was not appreciated as much by us waygooks.  

Regarding the pic above right, yes, there was a woman taking video on her ipad in the very front row.  A terrible video might I add, the band was definitely not video-worthy.

I was invited last week to help celebrate a friend's birthday on the beach.  We had a great night chatting on the beach complete with 3 dozen doughnuts and fried chicken.  

 

On Wednesday we left to go to Seoul.  We took the long train there, which took nearly 6 hours, but was most cost effective.  It was a long trip, but beautiful while the sun was still out. We had a great time talking and laughing the whole way there.  

On our way to our hostel.  

 Thursday was our first day in Seoul, and we had a great day despite the heat.  We had heard that there was Taco Bell in Seoul and were delighted when we found it.  I myself had been craving Taco Bell.  Strange when I barely even eat it at home.  It was nearly as good as I remember.  After not having tacos for so long, I completely forgot how I order them, without lettuce.  So it was packed full of lettuce, of course.  But the nachos bellgrande were good.  :)

After leaving Itaewon (where we shopped and ate Taco Bell) we took a bus to Namsan Tower.  

 

At Namsan Tower there are locks, as declarations of love.  There is an old belief that if you declare your love on Mount Namsan that it will last forever.  So many people have linked locks together and thrown away the key so that their love will last forever.  In Busan, there is a place where many people do this as well.  Some of the locks are old and rusty, but some are brand new.  We also saw some people possibly trying to find the locks that they had linked together in the past.  I'm not sure if they were successful in their search though. 

Georgina adding our lock and message (on a cheap phone case) to the lot.  

Our Busan group, the Toffee Otters!

On Friday we took a DMZ tour.  In the past, I had felt completely ambivalent about doing a tour of the DMZ, I decided that if the people I was traveling with wanted to do one, then I would as well.  If not, oh well.  When my friends said that they definitely wanted to do one, I stuck with my plan and was in 100%.  It turned out to be a good tour, they picked us up from our hostel, and then we took a bus with other waygooks.  First we went to the Odusan Unification Observatory.  From there we could see North Korea on the other side of the river. Because it was a bit foggy, they showed a video, which seemed full of propaganda.  They are very quick to denounce the propaganda that the North Korean government share with North Koreans, but didn't even present the most up-to-date, accurate information (i.e. that Kim Jong-il passed away nearly a year ago and his third son Kim Jong-un has inherited the communist regime).   Now I'm not saying that North Korea is right because the video was propaganda, but I am saying that I think that there are other ways to get the message across, possibly using more refugees' stories rather than just bits and pieces of stories. ** 

The shoreline opposite is North Korea.

Shown below are images near the Freedom Bridge, where only 13,000 refugees were released from North Korea from South Korea after the war.  The train on the right was sitting in the DMZ, and is now on display in all of its' rusted glory.   

 

After seeing the Freedom Bridge we drove a bit farther until we reached the outskirts of the DMZ.  The DMZ stands for De Militarized Zone.  This is somewhat ironic due to the fact that the border between SK and NK is the most heavily fortified border in the world.  Anyways, the DMZ is 4km wide and runs all along the border between SK and NK.  2km of the DMZ is considered SK, and the other 2km is considered NK.  The border directly in the middle is called the MDL the Military Demarcation Line. There is one location that falls in both territories, the JSA.  The JSA houses the one place where the leaders of SK and NK can come together to negotiate, though it is not often done.  

In the JSA it is important to follow the orders of the military personnel who are there strictly for our safety.  We were assigned two US Military officers, one for each bus of our tour.  They stayed with us the entire time and helped to guide appropriate behavior.  There are many limits in the JSA, as to what/when you can take pictures and no pointing/making rude gestures of any kind.  Pointing is considered rude in Korean culture.  

My guest pass at the JSA.

The concrete slab between the two buildings represents the border between North Korea (left of the slab) and South Korea (right). 

This is the table where the leaders of SK and the UN (left) and NK (right) come together for negotiations.  The microphones and flag in the middle of the table represent the SK/NK border.  

Posing with the Korean soldier.   

Soldiers faced the North Korean border at all times, for our protection.  

On Friday night, after a day of touring the DMZ, we were all knackered and a nap was in order.  We wanted to try some Korean food after eating both Taco Bell and Subway the day before.  We decided to try Shabu Shabu, which none of us had had before.  

According to a recommendation by (possibly) the owner or at least the nice gentleman who helped us, we ordered half/half.  This just means two different kids of soup.  It is pictured below on the right.  You can see the different kinds of soup, the one on the left was sort of smoky in flavor, while the one on the right was spicy.  Both of them were delicious.  It started as just broth, and we got to add our own assortment of bean sprouts, mushrooms, dumplings rice noodles filled with cheese and beef.  There were also some noodles that came with it, which we added after our first round of veggies, and had some rice as well.  Delicious!

Beef for our Shabu Shabu.  

 

After dinner we found a nice hookah bar to settle in to.  Here I am with some Baileys.  

On Saturday I met up with some friends from Busan who were in Seoul as well.  We went to Gyeongbokgung Palace.  

Chinese Zodiac, I'm a rat!

It was a great weekend, though exhausting.  I was very glad to get home to my apartment and sleep much of Sunday away.  :)  I'm just about rested and ready for more adventures.  :)

**The thoughts and knowledge contained herein are mine alone. The information is as correct as I understood it to be from my tour, however if it is incorrect then it is due to my ignorance not the lack of the tour and I sincerely apologize.  

Summer camp....

Hi!
This week is summer camp, which means only a few students.  I can't tell if they are bored or just hate me, or really don't want to have anything to do with school.  My guess is that it is a combination of all three.  I have tried to make a really fun summer camp, Lord of the Flies/Survival themed, but they seem to not care, which I completely understand.  And since I've had about 4 students each day, all coming in somewhere between 9:15 and 10am (we're supposed to start at 9) it's been pretty quiet.

I don't have a whole lot (or any) as far as pictures go for this week, but I've definitely been out having fun.  I had dinner with some friends on Monday, delicious as always.  Tuesday I did some shopping, it was high time that I get at least some new t-shirts.  I don't want to wear out all of my clothing before too long.  We started early, so by 6 it seemed quite late and we headed home.  I stopped at the kimbap place near my house for a quick take away meal.

On Wednesday I went to the beach with some friends.  I haven't been spending nearly enough time on the beach, which frustrates me a bit.  But it is different too, because I'm not used to taking a bus and having to carry all my beach stuff with me.  First world problems, I know.  But something that does come up.
An anecdote from Wednesday.  Living in Minnesota, there are not many (or any that I know of) saltwater anything.  In fact it would take an airplane or many hours by car, bus or train to get to an ocean or Great Salt Lake in Utah.  Every time I swim in the sea it is a surprise that it is salty.  Now to clarify: I am well aware that the sea is salty.  But in the final moments when I'm walking into the cold water I lose all sense of ocean and don't think about the saltiness that will momentarily occur.
When I said something to the effect that I am always surprised at how salty the water is in the sea, my friend from the UK laughed and told me that one of my fellow minneapolitans always says the same thing.  And she thinks it's strange because in England they have only the sea so it would be weird if it wasn't salty when swimming!

On that note, I'll leave you until next week when I'll hopefully have some fun stories and pics from the weekend!

Rainy Season?

I think that one of the questions that I get asked the most by friends and family is what the weather is like here in Busan.  As shown above, it is not all that different from Minnesota.  It is slightly more temperate than MN though, with milder winters.  I have missed home, though I am glad to not experience the record breaking highs that MN has had this summer. 

On Wednesday it was a special day to celebrate the hot summer.  On that day in Korea they eat Chicken Soup, because it is healthy and hopefully will help to ensure that the old, young and sick will make it through the hot weather in the coming month of August.  I think I was extremely lucky on this day because I got to have it at school (a blessing after having terrible soup for the last few weeks with less than mediocre lunches in general lately), and my friend Hee Jung invited me to her house.  Her mom's Chicken Soup is her favorite, so I was very excited to try it!  She made my favorites, dried cuddlefish with honey-pepper sauce and bulgogi (not pictured below).  The Chicken Soup shown below is the one that Hee Jung's mom made, it was much better than the one we had at school!

Dried cuddlefish with a honey-pepper sauce.  Mashisoyo!  Delicious!

A delicious Chicken Soup to celebrate the warmth of summer.  

This past week was the last week in the semester.  There were many classes that were cancelled due to ceremonies and whatnot.  On the last day of the term there were no classes at all, just a ceremony to celebrate.  After the ceremony the students left and most of us teachers got on a bus for our teacher's outing.  

We drove about an hour and a half out of Busan to a valley that was quiet and very green.   We ate bibimbap for lunch and had makkeoli, which is a type of rice wine.   After lunch we had some coffee, waded in the stream and played some games.  We had dinner here as well, pork and duck BBQ and then soju and beer.  It was so much fun!

On Saturday, I went to see The Dark Night Rises with some friends, which was fantastic!  Afterwards we went out for drinks to celebrate the engagement of Caroline and Andy.  So happy for them!  I was glad to join them, because I'd been feeling terrible about the fact that Caroline's now-fiancé has been here since mid-May and I hadn't met him yet.  This is mostly due to my pneumonia, but it is no excuse for the end of June and some 20 days of July that has passed since then.  :)  

Laura and I, she wanted to see what she looks like with a mustache!

Friends Georgina, Andy & Caroline.  

  

Now it's the rainy season...

Hey!
This week has been a busy one.  I have been catching up on many of the household chores that were somehow ignored since I was sick.  Like the crazy amount of frost buildup in the fridge.  Ugh, it was starting to infringe on the minimal amount of space in my small fridge.

It's all gone now, phew!

I was invited to go to a Terror in a Toga party about a month ago.  It was a roman murder mystery theme, which was awesome!  A toga was required, among any other items that you chose to add to your costume.  My character was a detective.  I was just glad that I wasn't the murderer!

I made these out of yarn and cardboard!  They were really hard to walk in though.  

A full view of my costume!

These 'curbside blocks' were recemented after getting knocked over.

This is really random, but just something that has caught my eye as strange.  On the street up to my school, someone slapped some blacktop over the street without doing any sort of preparation to the road beneath.  Being that it is on a fairly steep hill, you can see that the whole slab of blacktop is literally sliding down the hill.  It just seems like a waste of money to me if it's not going to be done properly.

I had my friend Georgina over for dinner so that I could share my latest food craze with her.  On the left is a scalloped potato and carrot, if I can call it that when there's no cheese involved, only soy milk and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.  

 On the right is a beef that is thinly sliced when I buy it, that I make on the stovetop (hob as my UK friends call it) and then slice up.  It is somewhat similar to eating out at a Korean BBQ where you grill the food yourself, except the price tag is a bit more my style.  Pictured with the beef is a hite beer and more importantly a sesame oil with a bit of a sea salt in the corner.  It has a lovely flavor that is great to dip the beef in.  

I had been craving Mexican food for quite some time, since before I was in the hospital.  But since the closest one is about an hour away I hadn't had a chance to get there.  We made an afternoon of it, having Mexican and then going to play Trivial Pursuit.  I decided on the nachos at the restaurant to go with my Dr. Pepper that I ordered.  Dr. Pepper is few and far between here, so I got one for the road as well.  It's currently nestled in my cupboard waiting for a rainy day.  The nachos were good, but I admit that I was hoping for a bit more cheese and a little bit less lettuce.  It was almost as if more work went into making it look delicious versus how it actually tastes.  I did fully enjoy it though, with a little extra cheese and great friends as company.  

I was invited to go to a Lotte Giants baseball game on Wednesday the 4th of July with some coworkers.  We had been trying to get to a game for the past couple months, so it was great to get out with them!   I had been hoping to find a hot dog, but I didn't see any.  We did however bring many snacks, in fact so many that we had a huge box of them!  I thought that we were lucky to have the guys with because they managed the heavy lifting.  :)  There was pizza, chicken, dried fish, nuts, beer, soju and coke.  Quite the mix.  

Pouring the beer. 

Wine is something that I don't often have, as I have to go out of my way to get it and I have to carry it home.  Perhaps it is better that it's not at my local grocery store because then I would have it all the time.  As I do like to use it for cooking, this poses a bit of problem.  So I did something to make it a little easier to have around the apt for cooking... i.e. not for drinking.  

This is a cold soup that I got to try today for the first time.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but the broth of this soup is actually sort of slushy it's so cold.  There is a pile of noodles in the middle topped with some chili paste, thinly sliced radish, julienned cucumbers, a hard boiled egg and sesame seeds.  

I was really nervous about trying it, as the idea of a cold soup sort of freaks me out and a slushy soup?  Well that's something that I haven't encountered before.  But my friend and coworkers helped me, showed me how to cut the noodles with the scissors provided and stir it all together.  Some grilled pork was served alongside the soup, and is meant to be eaten with the noodles/soup.  So I gave it a try and it was delicious!  I will definitely look for it again before the summer is over.  :)

One last thing.  If you've stuck with me this far, thanks and hopefully this last tidbit will be worth your while.  

There are so many couples that are dressed alike in Korea, it's so strange to see.  I guess that I just thought that they would happen to both like the same shirt or shoes and get the same ones.  But I saw a friend browsing a website the other day that caters to couples who want to dress alike.  I had no idea that such a thing existed!

Here's the website:  http://www.stylecouple.com/