Archive for September, 2008

there are no front-runners here

September 29, 2008 · Filed under Korea · Tagged , , , ,

dad, gina, megs… i think there is something you should know. i have a new team, the sk wyverns!

so yeah, michelle and i went into seoul on sunday to mokdong stadium, home of the woori heroes(boooo), to see our home team, the most excellent sk wyverns(yaayyyyy!!!). it was a pretty intense and affordable experience. the tickets were only ₩6,ooo, like $5.50 each.

the cool part about korean baseball is that not many people watch it, which means that everyone at the games is a diehard fan. that fella in the video with the whistle was going at it all 9 innings, every time the wyverns were up. they had fight songs, every batter had their own theme song, and when a player hit a homerun…it got really crazy. did i mention the drums? there was a drum guy also, all the songs were to his beat, and as soon as there was a lull in the cheering he would start banging on his bass and the crowd would get crazy again… and this is all from the visitors side! the home team had a far more impressive set up, with a full on troupe of cheerleaders, even more drums, and some sort of steam explosion thingy they would set off every time someone got a base hit. unfortunately for them it wasn’t enough!!

the actual baseball was nothing to write home about, pretty much minor league play. there were even some white and black guys, each team is allowed 2 foreign players on their rosters. it is super funny seeing some random white guy with “collins” on his back in a crowd of uniforms that all say “원 전.”

i was super excited to go to the game for two reason: first, aside from starcraft tournaments, it is all i really watch on tv. you don’t really need to know any korean to watch baseball games, assuming of course you realize they don’t know how to keep a pitch count! second, i miss hot dogs, a lot. so much in fact that it was the first thing i thought about when the idea of going to the game was brought up. but a neat bonus at korean baseball games is that they also sell korean food! so in addition to my “new york” hot dog i got Hight! beer, some spicy ramen noodles, some spicy giant noodle stuff, and some weird wantons. the hot dog tasted like it was from 7-eleven, but man, it was still good. too bad there was no mustard. all in all, the trip ended up costing us about  $30. not too bad for what we got out of it.

we ended up meeting a very nice korean fellow named richard. richard grew up in america and went to school at cal state LA, i have no idea why he came back here, all of his family lives in america. anyways, he helped us learn the songs and by the end of the game we had cheered our team on to an 8-4 victory. that’s right. this is a picture of some of his buddies, they are in a fan club for the team and meet up a few times a week to attend games. they were all super nice and even gave us some chicken on a stick, sliced apples, and even a little hot coffee that came in an aluminum soda can.. so weird. he said a season pass was about $100, that’s for a 126 game season, not too bad. he also has a yankees hat on which makes him even cooler. yeah richard!

the rest of my days have been spent hiking the local trails. this is a shot from the hills above the apartment, looking west to the sun setting over incheon bay. i wish i had known there was stuff like this within walking distance a little sooner. i guess that is the problem with visiting, right when you get comfortable it is time to leave.

so this will probably be my last post from south korea, i hop on a plane for new zealand on thursday. believe it or not i will actually be going further into the future!! korea has been a lot of fun, it is a super easy place to get around in and the food is excellent. the language is a difficult thing to deal with, but learn a few phrases and you can really go places. weeeeeeee off to a country where, to quote a wonderful movie, “Blagged? Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the fucking language, and so far nobody seems to speak it. ” haha, ann-yeong-hi kah-sayeo!

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i am going to hell

September 23, 2008 · Filed under Korea · Tagged , , ,

lim sang-joo, i am sorry. i am sorry that i feigned interest in becoming a jehova’s witness just so you would show me around the korean war memorial park. there were a lot of trees and i didn’t want to get lost!! but i do appreciate the help, there was a pretty unexpected monument hiding in the china town of incheon, south korea.

  it is really, really, really strange how nice koreans are. seriously. you can be walking down any random street, and someone will just ask you if you need help. i mostly attribute this to people that want to practice their english, as you inevitably start some sort of conversation with them, but a small part of it has to be kindness. in the one week i have been here i have: hitchhiked once without asking, gotten free food 3 or 4 times without asking, and had random people volunteer information to me at least 10 or 15 times. i mean really, every one of those categories must exceed the totals for my entire life spend in the US. thanks korea, apparently you understand the value of compassion.

other than that, things have been pretty boring when michelle is at work. most days i just pick a new street to walk down and keep walking until it ends. if i turn, i write the street down in my notebook so that i can find my way home. of course this doesn’t work in most cases because the majority of the streets don’t have street signs so i end up needing to write down the name of the corner stores. i would not feel safe if i needed to call 119, that is like 911 here. seriously. i really really want to try new foods so i am always on the lookout for new restaurants but i can never read their menus : (

yesterday i set out on a mission to go to the incheon fish market to check out the goods and hopefully eat some actual live octopus.

the journey took me to china town first where a guide book told me there were some excellent dumplings. ever since no reservations: china, i have been wanting to check out some good dumplings, so i decided to make my way to wonbo dumplings. this tuned out to be a mistake. apparently, all of the restaurants in china town are labeled “chinese food” or “good food” on their signs. so after 3 hours of hungry searching i finally came across a restaurant that had “dumpling” in english on it’s sign.

this place was pretty awesome, not only had i eaten in about 6 hours, but they also spoke pretty good english! i have learned some basic vocabulary while here, but this isn’t spanish. their pronunciation of everythig is completely different, so even if you know what the romanized version of the word you are trying to say is, chances are they will have no idea what you are saying until the 4th or 5th repetition. oh well, it is kind of neat. there is a train stop here called ‘juan.’ no, you don’t say, “won,” it is “joo-won.” aaaAAHHHHHH!!! well my 1 or 2 hour side trip to china town turned into a 4 hour search for food. needless to say the trip to the fish market has been delayed a little bit.

michelle and i also took the bus to the local beach this weekend. this was the first beach i have been to in korea that has actually been a beach, everything else has been a tidal mud pit. random fact/; south korea has the second largest tidal zone of anywhere in the world next to some place in canadia, sweet! that means when the tide goes down there is mud and gunk for about 150 feet past the proper beach sand, lets get nasty!!

the restaurants in the area were pretty sweet, basically korean bbq except with shellfish, fish, and crabs. everything was reasonably priced considering the size of the meal and the atmosphere. about half of the clams were at least the size of my fist and we got a free bottle of soju as well as a handful of extra muscles and clams for what i can only guess was for being super awesome americans. the guy helping us out spoke a little english and told me about the local baseball team, the SK Wyverns, hopefully we will be catching a game this weekend! why do all bathrooms have to be smelly? oh yeah, because they don’t flush their toilets, oh well.

the firework show while we were eating our dinner was pretty impressive. i am pretty sure people come to this beach just to blow stuff up, there was a constant barrage of fireworks the entire 3 or  so hours we were there. yay!

oh yeah, and before i forget to add it to another post(picture torwards the bottom of the post). there are bugs here, not bugs like in california, but BUGS. i mean mosquitos that have malaria and dengue fever, crazy parasites in the fish and clams, and SPIDERS…

yeah i know it doesn’t look that big, but this this was about the size of a tennis ball tl a softball. i mean this thing was a big ass spider! normally not a problem right? spiders hide in corners and are above your head. do you now what happens when you are the tallest person in a country??? you run into a lot of spider webs, i am so over spiders right now. thank god i haven’t found one of these beasties yet.

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what did he say?!?!

September 20, 2008 · Filed under Korea · Tagged , , ,

the language barrier is an interesting beast. i am really looking forward to going to a place where they speak english, but this has been a wake up call to world communication, kinda. it is really hard living in a place with a non-romanized written language. sure, most of the subway stops are, and a few of the streets, that is the few streets that actually have signs ahhhh; but most of the stuff is in strange lines with dashes and weird circles connected to pyramids. i do not know what these mean, even worse i can’t begin to pronounce them. so i wrote down the korean alphabet in my new little o that i carry around. sometimes it works, most of the time it makes no sense. some idiot said that english was the hardest language to learn, i think he probably said that with the understanding that written korean is more an art than a language.

yeah, i’ll have the one that cost 3,000 won please! (i learned really fast how to say, ‘please give me something cheap that you like’) the nice thing is that tv is really interesting. i never really liked watching tv in the US but let me tell you, when you have to guess what the plot of a movie is based on the actor’s actions even B movies get interesting! yesterday i watched an action movie with french dialogue and korean subtitles.., there is even tyra here. seriously nicole.

today was the wedding!!! it gets three exclamation marks because the korean wedding is the most insane, apparently drug-fueled spectacle i  have ever witnessed. please sit back and watch the story…

so we sat down in these super cool wooden chairs painted with gold, and i mean gold, the entire room was bling-bling marble and fake gold awesome. the aisle was shag carpet and there was a full on stage lighting system on the ceiling complete with spotlights and all of that nonsense. so after many rounds of spotlights in the eyes the ceremony started, there was a PA at a podium off to the side in addition to the minister at the altar. the PA guy says something and all of a sudden the groom screams back!! then everyone starts clapping, close one, i thought it was going to get crazy. then the groom walked up to the altar followed by the bride and her dad. right about now is when my brain started to shoot out of my ears.

i know it is hard to see because of the excellence shining off of the swords, but yes, those are flight attendants? holding pirate swords in the middle of the matrimonial aisle, blanketed in fog.

this is the beggining!! here i am thinking that they just blew the rest of the ceremony on some cheap gimmick of an entrance. oh no, this madness was obviously planned out to the Q(i am pretty sure this is the standard for all korean weddings, i could be wrong!). the entire time everyone is chatting away like it is a cafeteria or something. aside from praying, you would think it was recess at the local elementary school or something with the chatter going on. apparently this wasn’t normal, there were just a lot of little kids because the bride was a teacher.

so after much bowing and a ton of stuff i didn’t understand, they brought a table out right in front of the altar.

yeah who knows at this point. the groom arm wrestled his father-in-law for the right to the bride, from what i could tell. at this point i kind of just took it in stride, good thing too, it seemed to be the norm for the rest of the ceremony.

so a quick explanation of stuff i kinda picked up on: you get to see the bride before the ceremony, guests take pictures with her in her wedding gown beforehand; you don’t bring gifts, apparently you are supposed to bring money; there are wedding attendants who help with the bride’s train and also help old people move around; the attendants also happen to be dressed like flight attendants and are armed with pirate swords and trumpets; there is no formal reception afterward, just dinner, so cake and music are all in the wedding; no dancing!!

sorry, but those are important story related facts!

well the whole family got together with their ceremonial pirate sword and cut the cake in a certain swashbuckling fashion, this of course was done right in front of the altar. that was about it. the bride and groom went back up the aisle and the flight attendants shot them in the back with freakin’ trumpet-confetti-bazookas!!

the food. well duh, the food was the best part. it was a banquet with an open bar of soju and beer(duh, what else?). but this wasn’t your normal banquet, this was THE banquet. i would say there was at least 50 different plates of food to choose from. oh the food. dumplings, sushi, rice, noodles, meats, kimchi, desserts, raw food, cooked food, even some stuff i didn’t want to eat! quite the party and a beautiful wedding.

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then, there, now

September 14, 2008 · Filed under Korea · Tagged , , , ,

yeah, korea called, they want their 2 robots back. that’s right, i am in tomorrow, and what i have seen will blow your mind, kinda.

i haven’t put any words on this thing in a while so i guess i will catch everyone up a little bit. my last week in riverside was pretty hectic. for some reason i thought leaving the country with one backpack wouldn’t take much in the way of planning but yeyeyayahah! are you serious? i was packing/organizing my life’s playlist for a little tiny 4gb iPod nano the last 20 hours or so i was home. have you ever tried reducing your 6,000 illegally downloaded songs to 600? DON’T, it makes your toes hurt.

so the rest of the week was spending time with good friends, thanks to everyone who made it out, especially adam and andrea all the way from san diego as well as troll and anz from the LA. plus anyone who couldn’t come to the party and made a point of hanging out with me before i flew away, it really meant a lot to see you guys before i left thanks<3 anyone i didn’t see, i will see you kinda soon?

the plane flight was nothing special, dad, gina, my sister, grandparents, and uncle jeff drove me out to the butthole of hell that is LAX to see me off. stop crying i will send lewd pictures for you to remember me by!!! it was like 14 hours of flying or some nonsense, but they had 7 movies to choose from and some pretty good lasagna so it went pretty fast in between naps, that was like a movie title reference right there!! the only thing worth mentioning was that narita airport in tokyo was totally rad, they had sushi and bidets!! but the sushi looked a little gringo and unfortunately i couldn’t poo for 2 days due to travel anxiety and plug up your butt airplane food. oh yeah, thanks for the bannanna pancakes and most excellent turkey sausage dad, it was delicious.

JOHNNY DRAMA IS IN THE REMAKE OF THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, woah!

so now we are in korea. but if you are korean you pronounce it, ‘career.’ yeah i don’t get it either. all i know is, i am glad i watched team america 3,000 times to prepare me for this. ok so a few things about this place, and i will apologize in advance for so much picture usage. but seeing is believing!!

korean stuff is weird.

you don’t flush toilet paper here, you put it in the trash can. bathrooms smell even stranger than normal! you can drink beer and shoot fireworks wherever you please. the booze! i will have to dedicate a post to korean booze. you can buy 500mL bottle of 40 proof soju here for 1,000won, that is less than a dollar. to put things into perspective, that is like buying a handle of what appears to be smirnoff grade vodka for about $6.00.

it is no wonder that korea is considered one of the great drinking cultures of the world. i just bought 1500mL of soju, a bottle of beer, and a 1600mL(yeah, that is just a hair under 5 12-ounce cans of beer) bottle of the national lager for under $8, shit just got real. the food is different. unfortunately i haven’t i made my way to a big city yet to check out the street vendors, next week we are going to seoul where i will make a day trip to the fish market.

but man, there is just some weird stuff. i like food, a lot. there is some stuff here that i do not like.

their mt dew taste like piss, seriously. it is like mt dew flavored carbonated water. just no sauce to it! kimchi, some of it taste ok, some of it is good, some of it taste exactly what you would think it would taste like…rotting vegetables. it doesn’t help that you smell it before you even get close enough to taste it. we also tried live octopus yesterday, this is something i really wanted to try. unfortunately mine wasn’t kicking, but it did taste pretty damn good, michelle’s was alive, and she freaked out and spit it out when it started sucking on her cheeks hahahaa. everything else is pretty standard fare, noodles, rice, veggies, cooked meats..we did have some pretty interesting chili cured crab leg like stuff this morning for breakfast, kinda had to bite into the joint of the crab legs and suck whatever was in there out. pretty good though. oh yeah, melon flavored popsicles, woooooooooweeeeeeeeee yeah!

there is really only one other thing that has blown my mind since getting here.

yeah do you see that pitch count? that’s how they do it here, crazy!!!

well i guess that is about it for right now, i have a tone more to say and type and smell but i don’t want this to be all crazy. boozery update coming soon!!!!

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