Just a random update like 3 years later!

Living and working in Japan since 2011. Got engaged and we are going back home on December of this year! Here is my fashion/style blog that I created recently. Enjoy!! http://thecoralchameleon.tumblr.com/

Seoul Searching

Anyang Haseo!

Welcome back to our blog where you get a tiny peek into our Korean adventure. I apologize to readers for the delay. Mindtrip#??..Have we really been here for over a month? Has Halloween come and gone?

Not to mention that it took us awhile to get settled into our new apartment, our new jobs and our new lives. (Plus we as always have lots to see, places to go and unlike before people to see.) But the good news is that we are now officially connected to the world wide web in our apartment.

Nonetheless, I can confidently say we are 75% settled. Yes, we have our permanent officetel in the happy town of Gwangmyeong, which though technically isn’t Seoul, is only one subway stop away from the “Soul of South Korea” (Seoul, but I’m sure you got that )

Before I continue blogging about the present climate of things I am going to take it back a few notches. Back where we left off a distant five weeks ago when we were still on quarantine….. (insert flashback wiggles and harp music.)

Thousands of Korean Won. All that money has lasted us until now, first paycheck coming this weekend..FINALLY!

Day 3: Communicative Missions, Squatters, and Foreigner Territory

We started our day as we do most days in Korea; hungry. We wandered

around Guro for a bit and decided to eat at a small hole in the wall restaurant for convenience and explorative purposes. The restaurant was very homey; it literally looked like we were in someone’s living room (which wouldn’t surprise me if we were.) Well our convenient restaurant turned out to be the opposite since there were no menus, no English script, and no English speakers. But it was unquestionably an experience. When we realized we were at a loss at ordering we attempted to locate some common ground as we shuffled through our guidebook for something…Oh dear lord..aaaaaaanything..to make these people understand that we just wan

t something to eat. And then eureka! I noticed that there were pictures on the wind

ow that we passed on our way in. I jumped up and pointed to the picture and put two fingers up in a peace sign. After they shook their heads and told us something in Kore

an, I’m pretty sure we did it, we ordered! Who would imagine that would be such a mission.

While we waited one of the regulars who had come over in attempts to help the communication issue (which really didn’t help since we was also speaking Korean) sat down with us to have a conversation with us. This was nothing less than hilarious, but also actually quite helpful to us fresh of the plane foreigners in his country. We had the chance to test out phrases from our books and he helped us with the pronunciation. We managed to communicate to him where we’re from, our names, and what we’re doing in Korea. He managed to communicate to us that he thought w

e were very good looking people with large eyes and large noses which is are pleasing and attractive qualities in Korea. How did he tell us all this? By making both of his hands together while making an “O” with his fingers, putting his hand binoculars up to his eyes and making them bigger, eventually breaking open his O’s and widening his eyes. This was preceded with him mimicking an exaggeratedly large nose on his own face and giving us a big thumbs up and saying, “very handsome, very beautiful.” Flattering and hilarious. We’d read that Korean people were very blunt and would often compliment foreigners on their big noses and eyes outright. Still it was unexpected but it is something we’ve gotten a few times now. Or maybe it’s just because we are really really ridiculously good looking (Zoolander reference, I’m not vain.)

After testing our negligible Korean on the nice ahjussi’s (old Korean men) and learning Korean words for everything we could point at in our sight, our food came out half an hour later. It turns out we had ordered a rice porridge with a whole chicken boiled into it. It was then that we realized that they were shaking their heads to let us know that it was going to take a long time. That, or they were trying to tell us that it was a little weird and that we might want to try something else. But the soup ended up being delicious. The only weird thing was fishing out all of the bones and discarding of all those other chicken parts that we usually don’t eat…

Me with a mouthful of food.

Chonggyecheon Special Tourist Zone and Stream

We continued our day as we had done the day before by randomly choosing a new area to explore. Wednesdays pick was the beautiful Chongyecheon Plaza and stream, also known as the Chonggyecheon Special Tourist Zone. The stream is nearly 6 km long (over 3.5 miles) and flows through the heart of downtown Seoul. There are amazing little waterfalls, misty stone walking paths, and another ‘unique’ facet of Korean culture. What is this you ask?

It’s the squatters.

A peculiar bit of Korean culture that we've seen on a daily basis are the squatters. People squat on the sideway while eating a bowl of ramen, in the middle of a department store while talking on their cell phone, in the subway station while waiting for the next train, and even at the Chonggyecheon stream to enjoy a recreational afternoon at the park. Now, I remember learni

ng in yoga back home that squatting was supposed to be really good for digestion or something or the other, and that westerners were unable to do a flatfooted squat without spreading the legs a bit and pointing the feet diagonally. (If you don’t believe me you should try it!) Asian people on the other hand, are masters at the flatfooted squat and they do it everywhere (at least that is in Korea.) Maybe it has something to do with the squatter toilets they have here in some of the public restrooms, a piece of Korean culture that I am actively avoiding for as long as possible. (Cross your fingers for me.)

Other highlights of the day included finally getting an upgraded phrasebook appropriately titled, “Survival Korean.” Which we promptly used at our next stop, a massive Korean style coffee shop with three stories with the third story open to fresh air and beautiful views, to order a green tea mocha chino or something the other. After taking a quick recharge nap in the coffee shop we were off to follow our stomachs again. We went into a cute little Japanese res

taurant where we did the menu pointing trick to order. I ended up with Japanese ramen, which is nothing like the 10cent packets of ramen in the states, this ramen is actually good. Nikola ended up with a cold broth noodle soup which was a little out of the ordinary for my palate to enjoy, but Nikola loved it. Then we were off to find a converter…who would think it would be so difficult.

Another pensive squatter outside.

Lotte Department Store

The search took us to the most gigantic department store I have been in Lotte World. Lotte is a conglomerate company that has ownership of a department store, an amusement park, supermarkets, hotels, and even fast food restaurants. This company’s slogan is: LOTTE More than life. More than life? Yes it was so huge and crammed it was scary. It was like the day before Christmas in the states with bustling crowds and serious shoppers. But this was just a normal Wednesday night in Seoul. One thing Lotte world did not have: English speakers. On behalf of those readers that I’ve had the opportunity to speak with via Skype, remember when you asked me about the language barrier and how we got along. Well my response was that we can get by pretty decently with our handful of mastered phrases, pointing to pictures or in our books, basic sign language and gestures, and we even have people around now to translate properly for us. But, as I explained, there have been those few times that once all available resources had been exhausted; we just do not accomplish our communicative task. This was one of those times. Needless to say we left Lotte empty handed. But did we give up? Of course not! This was all too much fun. The exploring, the novelty of it all, the constant mind trips, and even the hilariously failed communicative missions; I’ll have to admit I love it. It’s what I live for.

Itaewon

After getting lost on the subway for a good hour we finally ventured off to the “international” area of Seoul to find our blasted converter. We had heard Itaewon was the place to go if ever in search of foreign goods, food, and larger clothing sizes. (There’s a shoe store there called “Big Size”) It is also known as the ‘seedier’ part of town partially because of the presence of American military boys and their exploits. My watch read 8:30 at night and for Seoul standards it was super early, so we had no reason to think that anything in Itaewon or anywhere in Seoul would be closed. But that’s the thing I’ve noticed in my 6 weeks of being here. Things just aren’t what would be expected. First of all, Itaewon was full of foreigners! I hadn’t seen so many foreigners in one area since leaving the O’Hare in Chicago. Americans, Europeans, and Middle Easterners, it was the most diversity we’d seen in days and even all the signs are in English. Our trip to Itaewon proved to be another mindtrip, but it wasn’t just the multiculturalism there that amazed us. Itaewon was so quiet in comparison to the rest of Seoul. Half of the shops were already closed at it was only almost 9. While walking along the street we saw some appealing Thai, Greek, and yes even Mexican restaurants that we are going to make a point of trying. Then we came across a random alleyway electronics stand and found a converter! Finally. We ended our night by checking out this cute little tea house where we tried lotus root tea that came with dried lotus root on the side as a snack. It was interesting and the atmosphere was like none other.

We made our way back to Guro, satisfied that we had successfully found our elusive converter. It blew up after 30 seconds of use later that night. (Sigh…….)

Day 4: Seoul Grand Park, “Korean Chilis”, and Late Night Shopping

It was a sunny and cool Seoul morning. The first meal of the day: fastfood! Fastfood? McDonalds already you may be thinking? No, but very close. We went to the next best thing, Lotteria, which is Korea’s knock off version of McDonalds owned by the ever powerful Lotte. Their colors are red and yellow, the fries are the same, and there’s even a value menu. The menu includes Lotteria exclusives such as the avocado shrimp burger, European Frico cheese burger, bulgogi burger and a crazy looking veggie rice bulgogi burger.

The awesome thing about being in a country like Korea is that there are so many similarities to back home, but within those similarities are specific differences entrenched in the culture that make the whole experience so unique. As Nikola mentioned in his last post some of this may seem like trivial details but to us every little detail has been a fun new experience in some way shape or form. Lotteria in our books gets our star of approval for being just like McDonalds, with just the right amount of Korea added into the mix to make it interesting.

Seoul Grand Park

So we were off to our next adventure which took us to Seoul Grand Park with its botanicals, creepy zoo, and rose garden goodness. As we walked up to the park we saw an army of Korean adjusshis with blowtorches and picks scrapping gum from the sidewalk. Korea is ridiculously clean! Even the subway is spotless and graffiti free.

Continuing, most of the park is set against the most awesome mountainous background which made for great views. We skipped through the rose garden first mistaking it for the botanical garden. It was relaxing, cute, and strangely outdated with funny little figurines. But we met some nice Japanese people there and exchanged cameras and photo ops.

Also! What would a Grand Park be without a cable car sky lift! So we rode the sky lift up and over the zoo which dropped us off right smack in the middle of the zoo where we found the real botanical garden we thought we were in earlier. Well the zoo, the creepy zoo that

is, it just had this uncanny vibe to it. It was just eerie, I can’t really describe it. The plants all seemed overgrown, the monkeys seemed underfed (refer to photo), and the lions were overly aggressive roaring and fighting each other. What’s more is that it wasn’t crowded and there was creepy classical music playing from the retro speakers. It seemed like the perfect location for a Stephan King movie or something like that. The sun started going down and we got out of there as fast as possible.

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Hungry monkey asking, "Canna have some?"

“Korean Chilis”

We had an unpleasant surprise for dinner that night. The restaurant we ate at wasn’t really a Chilis, but it sure felt like one with the smiley glad hand greeters, bad service, and bad prices for the quality of the food. This place had corporate chain restaurant written all over it. It took us forever to get a server over to us to take our order, but the real issue was our foreigner ignorance. We hadn’t discovered the little button on the table that acts as a little doorbell signal to let servers know when you’re ready or if you need something. It even goes: “Ding Dong!” when you press it, just about every restaurant in Korea has these table doorbell things, but it just hadn’t registered with us yet. Then, we accidently ordered a weird fatty meat dish that (as Andrew Zimmern would say) was just wrong. It was like they pan fried the scraps of meat they had intended to throw away. It was awful, and it has been the only dish that we have whole heartedly disliked, and what is worse that it was expensive! Ah well, nothing a little late night shopping couldn’t cure….

Dongdaemun Market

The famous Dongdaemun is another Korean market that is so huge it makes my brain hurt to think about how much stuff is actually there. Basically that you could ever want is at Dongdaemun with buildings and buildings malls and malls, all vertical and never-ending mazes of purses, shoes, clothes, you name it. And the most bizarre thing is that it all closes at 5 am if it even closes at all. I was in heaven. We stayed out until 3 am on a shopping binge and the cool thing is that bargaining is welcome here and the stuff is cheap! There are also areas with high end designer stuff right next to bargain alleys next to makeshift outdoor restaurants next to food stands next to more shopping on top of more shopping next to malls next to people selling socks next to fake Louis Vutton wallets next to matching his and her underwear next to grapes. We left without spending much, but made out with a sweater bought directly from the designer, Nikola got some nifty new kicks, and after giving up on the elusive converter I got a Korean blow dryer.

Day 5: FRIDAY! A Night Out with the Texans

Ah yes, the weekend! We invited our fellow Texan MJ out for a night out on the town. He’s an Aggie but still a nice person nonetheless. We met him up in Gwangmyeong which is where we were first dropped off after leaving the airport. He had been staying in a ‘love motel’ for the duration of the quarantine week while we were in Guro Digital Complex. He’d been a solo traveler during quarantine so he was just happy to have people to speak English to which he hadn’t been able to do for a week. We ate at a stir-fry joint in the entertainment district of Gwangmyeong which is all flashy and lighty. We all shared a delicious beef and veggie dish along with a couple rounds of soju to start off the night. Then it was off to Hongdae which is one of the main going out areas of Seoul all around Hongik University. It is sort of like Austin’s 6^th street on steroids with bars, clubs, boutiques, restaurants, venues, all vertically stacked upon each other along like countless blocks and alleyways. There were a substantial amount of expats out and about, a couple of which directed us to Club Zen with cheap drinks, foreigners, and loud music. Nothing like a club full of intoxicated foreigners dancing with intoxicated Koreans to Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga, it was hilarious. The drinks were SUPER cheap too. And guess what.. bars and clubs don’t close. So the Korean way is to stay out all night until the subway reopens at about 6 am, or else you’re stuck with taking a more expensive cab ride home. Which really isn’t all that expensive, especially split between 3 people, it ends up being like 4-5 bucks each. Anyway, after Club Zen, we experienced “Korean Only” prices at Ska Club, which played no Ska whatsoever and charged foreigners more for drinks. Puuuh shaaa.. Luckily right next door was club FF. Now unlike some I love club FF. The meaning of FF has been debated. Foreigner Fun is my favorite. The DJ was spinning dancey indie rock and electronic, along with my personally requested Blind by Hercules and Love Affair. Since our first visit there we’ve been back 2 or 3 more times to dance the night away.

Saturday: Fishy Market and DVD Bang

Our Saturday adventure was inspired by the South Korean editions of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, shows dedicated to two of my personal favorites in life: traveling and eating. Our taste buds and adventurous spirits took us to a seafood lover’s haven: Noryangjin fish market. A Seoul sized covered fish market with rows and rows of raw seafood of all varieties. When we first approached the market we just kind of stopped and stared in amazement with our jaws dropped and mouths watering. We wandered around looking for the perfect type of fish to eat raw sashimi style. Luckily, we found an English speaker who recommended the Korean Halibut to us because of its taste and cost, however he had us sold at, “Hi, how may I help you?” So we pointed to the one we wanted, they sliced it up, took us to a little restaurant area where they brought out the full banchan spread and we ate that whole fish happily. It was delicious!

Later that night we hit up another university entertainment district, hopped into a DVD bang (DVD room) and watched a native Korean movie called “Breathless” with English subtitles. The DVD rooms are basically the perfect date spots in Korea. You chose a DVD to watch and then watch it in a cozy little private room with comfy couches, pillows, surround sound, and a huge screen.

So that was basically our first week in Korea. I realize this blog is getting kind of long and turning into the Memoirs of Natalie in Seoul, but since we had no obligations our first week we were able to experience a lot in a short amount of time. Needless to say it was amazing.

Training

From then on we started work which consisted of observing classes and attending orientation. Orientation, though informative, wasn’t exactly interesting but we met a lot cool people from the states and Canada that we had the chance to hang out with and of course drink with. On that note, it was actually the guy running the training who gave us the brilliant idea of convenience store drinking. So one night after a painful 8 hour day of watching PowerPoint slides in training, our crew decided to take part in the ever so efficient ‘convenience store crawl.’ A form of entertainment only possible in countries where it is legal to walk around with open alcoholic drinks, and a very cost efficient way to take in the sites of a neighborhood while enjoying a drink and the company of new friends. So we walked around drinks in hand searching for somewhere to eat that was appropriate for the two vegetarians in the group. Whoa whoa whoa. Vegetarians? In Korea? A food culture whose main dishes revolve around meat and Koreans tend to find vegetarianism as strange and unhealthy. However, there are veggie options, one of the vegetarians was pretty strict so we ended up walking around for a really long time. Well she finally gave up and ended up going home, which left the rest of the group free to pig out.

But with the nuances of group dynamic we were rather indecisive, so what did we do? We listened to the Aggie. This was MJ after stepping into a crowded chicken restaurant and delivering the status, “We can eat here, it’s packed but we can eat in the back.” Turns out that “the back” he was referring to was the alley. WHAT?? By this time we’ve had plenty to drink so there we sat in the back alley of a restaurant eating fried chicken wings and drinking soju, all 8 of us. As you can imagine it was side-splitting site to see the only foreigners of the restaurant eating, drinking, and being loud in the alley.

We ended our night out at a club called REHap, which ironically was intended to be called REHab but the construction workers (uninformed in the English alphabet) flipped the b the wrong way, so yah, now its REHap. Who told us this amusing story? It was the Korean girl who recruited us to go to the club. However, she approached us with such perfect English free of any accent, we were convinced she had to be Korean American who was attuned to listening for English speakers and getting them into REHap. But since they gave us all a free drink, we were there in Rehap along with every other foreigner in the area. The coolest thing about the club was the dizzying mirrored bathrooms and awesome laser lights.

On the last day of training the company treated us to lunch at a fancy little Korean restaurant where we got to dine with the big wigs of our company.

Weekends= Mini Vacations

So now that we work long hours five days a week, the weekends have now become our weekly nirvana. The kids are great and all, and work isn’t so bad considering everyone there is easy to get along, all which I will blog about later. But the weekends, man do I love those weekends. During our first weekend after starting to work, Nikola and I participated in a Mass Freeze. It is basically like a flash mob where a group of people get to together, plan to do some predetermined thing in unison in a crowded area for a specific amount of time, and basically freak out all the innocent bystanders. Our mass freeze took place in the crowded COEX mall for 5 minutes. Well you’ll see in this video. It was priceless, as Nikola and I were frozen, I would peek up and glance at people’s reactions. It was hilarious! I could not help but crack a smile and I was trying really hard not to burst out laughing. We also met some cool people out there that we ate lunch with and probably will be visiting one of them soon in another city.

Watch a YouTube video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYKgpEw55_w

Some other interesting weekend escapades we’ve done:

-Kimchi Museum (mmmmm…hundreds of different kimchi combinations, Korea loves it kimchi. Also did you know that kimchi is considered one of the healthiest foods in the world?)

-Seoul National Theater (awesome Korean musical performance and fall festival, FREE)

-Changdeok palace (massive with its very own secret garden, beautiful!)

We did the Korean couple matching outfits thing.

-Handfull of Nori bang (song room in Korean which is fancy karaoke, always enjoyable with a lively group of foreign and Korean teachers)

-PC bang (fancy internet cafes that stay open 24 hours)

-Chicken N Beer, Beer O’ Clock (in that order, and those are actual restaurant and bar names)

-Seoul Design Olympiad (Korean hipsters show of their designs in the realms of fashion, art, interior design, and overall random products)

-War Memorial Museum (the N. Korea/ S. Korea dynamicis remarkable, the DMZ is the most heavily guarded border in the world)

-Flip cup championship at a birthday apartment party (our team was undefeated!!)

-Nights out in Hongdae and Halloween in Itaewon.

-Pure South Korean bliss.

Company dinner with Gwangmyeoung ECC and it's lively Korean and foreign teachers. Drink I mention they love to drink.

Well that about concludes this novel. Tomorrow is back to work for me and since my school was closed for two days last week, (school closed because of a swine flu scare, I was a little worried, but the doctor diagnosed me with only common cold.)

Goodnight and until next time!

K Bye,

Natalie