mykorea's Xanga

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Tue, 19 May 2009 01:48:00 GMT

Still subscribed to me?

Just a reminder

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:17:24 GMT

Just a reminder for anyone left on xanga that I'm actively blogging on blogspot at http://mykorea88.blogspot.com/
Hope to see you there!

Blogspot

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:10:06 GMT

I think I'm gonna start blogging from blogspot now. It's a lot cleaner cut and more convenient to use. Xanga seems rather outdated nowadays. We'll see how it goes anyway. I hope all you guys will come over and comment every now and then.

http://mykorea88.blogspot.com/

Brief random video due to being cameraless...

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:28:56 GMT

Three months since I last blogged...

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:35:54 GMT

Wonder if I'll get any comments at all. lol

My students are funny sometimes. Coming back to Korea, I figured no one would notice my skinniness. After all, all the guys here are my size! Yet, I still have a student calling me a chopstick...and another student calling me pepero(빼빼로). For those of you who don't know what that is: http://raonsky.com/tt/attach/1/1021778161.jpg
Notice the "STICK biscuit" part?

Some things I've learned in Korea:

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:35:07 GMT

1. How to eat with chopsticks and a spoon in the same hand for more efficient ingestion of various kinds of foods(it makes it easy to switch between solid foods and soups, etc.)

2. How to spread jam on bread with a spoon and how to eat that bread without any butter.

3. How not to panic every time you nearly hit someone on the road every time you're driving in a car or bus.

4. How to avoid being hit by a car while walking on the street.

5. How to talk to total strangers in Korean and smile dumbly when you don't understand.

6. How desperately they need good English teachers here because every elementary schooler I meet exhausts all three sentences they know on me.

7. How to change the mindset that squid and clams are just another meat, not a totally foreign and creepy food.

I'm sure there'll be more.

Too much to blog about...

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:44:55 GMT

There are actually things to blog about in Korea and I love that. I love having stuff to do and places to go and being able to have fun without it requiring much money. Needless to say, I love finally being here.

I've been given a lot of opportunities to practice my Korean, especially today, and that's always a lot of fun. One day last week, Sarah and I rode the bus into Osan to see Kungfu Panda. I did a few karaoke songs and then we met a few church members for dinner and they drove us home. I also met with Suzanna/Youngsun a lot last week. She's typically here every night since she lives in the neighborhood and since she teaches in Osan at 1 pm most days, I will often ride into Osan with her, have lunch, and then wander around by myself for a while afterwards.

I had a very nice day last Wednesday or Thursday(not sure exactly when it was). I took my Bible and rode to Osan City Hall where there is a park across the street and was able to spend some concentrated time in devotions. That's something that sometimes comes difficult here with classes in the morning and so many things going on. It was nice to be able to do that.

I went to E-mart for the first time on Saturday, which was fun. On Sunday, Sarah, Youngsun, Young-ah(Amy) and I went to Osan for the afternoon/evening. We had Gamja Tang, which is potato soup with meat in it for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening walking around, eating ice cream and walking along Osan River after dark. Around 10:30, their parents came to pick us up and we decided to go play pool. We did that until around 11:30. Their dad is a lot of fun so it's always great to have him along on something.

Today, I was getting bored being here(as I usually do when I don't have anything to do), so I took the 2:40 bus into Osan after lunch was finished(I'm getting quite good at using the bus). I went to both Lotte Mart and E-Mart looking for a map of Osan but couldn't find one. I was also looking for the soundtrack to Enchanted. I noticed the soundtrack section of Lotte Mart and couldn't believe that I could buy an American soundtrack for less than $4 when I would pay at least four times that much in America. Since then, I've been keeping my eye on the soundtracks since they change periodically.

I walked around a bit in other sections of Osan where I wasn't familiar with and wrote down any English Hagwons that I noticed for future reference. I did stop in to do a few karaoke songs, as well.

At the end of the day, I grabbed some Deok-bog-ki from a street-side vender who told me that my Korean was very good and made me feel all nice inside until I ate the deok-bog-gi and realized that I badly needed water afterwards because my stomach was on fire. I also bought a bag of Korean melons for the church members(and myself) and briefly talked to a lady on the bus. I'm very pleased by the amount of Korean practice I got in today.

Another day in Osan

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:58:23 GMT

Sorry I haven't updated you on a whole lot over the past few days but you'll get much of it by looking at my pictures on Facebook. Today ended up being a lot of fun. I don't teach Monday mornings and Youngsun(Nuna) doesn't teach or have school on Mondays so we use them to do something fun together. We left around lunch time to go to Osan and Sarah joined us a few hours later. We activated my phone after lunch so I'm now official and all of the church members are calling their phones with mine so that we can exchange numbers.

We went to a really cool little yogurt place after lunch, as well. In Korea, they have a lot of yogurt cafe-things and what they call "fruit houses"(translated). They're both awesome and offer yogurt drinks and frozen yogurt with tons of toppings and various other things. I love being able to go in and choose from a bunch of different things and have something that's delicious and relatively healthy for the same price as a latte. I had a blueberry coolatta, which is blueberry juice on the bottom, then a layer of crushed ice, a layer of frozen yogurt, and various kinds of fruit and snack things on the top. You mix it all up and it's incredible.

Another definite highlight of the day was going to a Nore Bbang. Literally translated, song room. It's basically karaoke. They have them everywhere and this particular one was in an arcade place so they were little boxes that four people can go in, choose a song, pay 50 cents and croon away on two mics. So Sarah, Youngsun, Sudong and I went in and sang about 5 songs. Well, Youngsun and I sang, the other two watched. It was such a blast. We sang two Korean pop songs, a Korean CCM song, Think of Me(Phantom of the Opera) and Amazing Grace. It was so cool.

We grabbed something to eat at Lotteria(like McDonalds) and took a taxi home. I ate some more when I got back, though. After my class in two minutes, I'm going over to Youngsun's house and we're gonna play a few games. Should be a good evening.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:00:04 GMT

I've been here a week already now. I can hardly believe it. I've done so much in the little bit of time that I've been here, though today was rather slow. Because of that, I'll just post about some of the things that I've noticed here that are especially different to what I'm used to in Korea.

-There are very few trash cans on the street. I don't know why there aren't any but I do know I had to carry a popsicle stick several blocks to a store to find a trash can.

-Everybody, and I mean everybody, has a gps system in their car. And I don't mean a gps system like we're used to, I mean everybody has gps systems that make ours look so ten years ago. They double as wide screen tv's and people watch what I'm assuming is satellite tv as they drive down the road or use it to listen to music. They're amazing devices and everyone has them.

-I knew this before but it has become even more apparent that their cell phones are so much more technologically advanced than in America. All of their cell phones look like our high-end models, even the cheap ones. One of my friends has a fairly popular phone, though it's been out for a while, that turns sideways when you flip it open and you can watch live satellite television on it for $5 a month. Every cell phone is also a show phone, meaning that you can do video calls with the phone facing you or away from you because it has two cameras in it, or a camera that flips. They're amazing and every person, including little kids, have phones.

-They eat lots of fish here. lol I was never a big seafood eater but I'm learning to eat/like it. I had clams the other day that weren't bad. The fish jerky and dried squid is going to take some getting used to, though.

I'll post some more as I think of them.

I went on a walk through the forest near here and I'll put some pictures of that on Facebook. I also took a video of part of the church and I'll finish later. I might put that up on youtube later so you guys can see where I live.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I'm going with the churchmembers on a "Jundo," or evangelism trip. We meet at 11 downstairs to pray and such, eat lunch and then we'll head to Osan Station. There are a ton of people there, as there are everywhere in Korea, and from what I understand, we're going to hand out free coffee and green tea to passersby in the hopes that someone will ask why we're giving away free drinks and we can tell them because we have the joy of the Lord. At least, that's how it was told to me. Should be a lot of fun, though, and I'm looking forward to it.

Fun, fun, fun.

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:02:44 GMT

I feel like I'm always busy here and I love it. After finishing up school, I sat around the house for most of the two weeks between then and when I left for Korea. Now, I'm only here in the mornings and evenings. As we move into the middle of the week, I expect things to slow down a bit, though.

Yesterday was my first church service in Korea! It was a lot of fun and I even attended the children's Sunday School program, which was much easier to understand than the sermon. lol Though, the main service was fun, too. Mostly when they were singing a song that I was familiar with, which wasn't really often. hehe

After church, as they've always done, the churchmembers all stay for a meal here. When that finishes, they have a evangelism meeting afterwards which takes the place of what might be an evening service in America. All-in-all, we were finished up well before 3 p.m. Afterwards, Su-dong, a 30 year-old guy that goes to church here wanted to take us to get ice cream in Osan. So Youngsun, Christine, Sudong, Sarah and I all packed into the Jeon family car, which is a Tico. To get an idea of how much room the three of us might've had in the back seat, I have provided a picture:

We did make it to Osan safely and we went back to Baskin Robbins. Sudong used my Happy Points card which made me happy because it added quite a few onto it.

There was a youth meeting afterwards for a new member or something but it wouldn't have been very interesting and I wanted to explore Osan some more. Sarah didn't feel like staying so they left me on the sidewalk with Sarah's cell phone.

I took the time to make quite a round of Osan, despite the at times heavy rain, finding out how to get to the subway and bus terminal, various other points of interest, cool shops, a bakery where I got a melon popsicle and Bang Bang, a Korean clothing brand store where I bought some very Korean long shorts. I ended my time at Lotte where I tried to call Christine and Youngsun with Sarah's phone. It wasn't connecting due to a low battery, however, and then shut off completely. I did manage to find a payphone in Lotte, though, and was able to call Christine from there and went outside to wait to be picked up. The rest of the evening was rather uneventful.

Today, Christine and I left early to go to Osan. Her dad drove us to the subway station and dropped us off there. We took the subway from there to Suwon where she went to Starbucks to study and I took up my role as an explorer again. I walked through the open-air market, found new cafes(they have a lot of cool ones here), and played a couple games in an arcade. Around noon, Christine and I talked for a while in Starbucks and then left for lunch. We had bul-go-gi, which is a marinated and very tender beef with vegetables and mushrooms and they stick it all in a grill thing in the center of the table and you cook it yourself, not that there's very much to it since it's already mixed up. It was really fantastic, though, and I stuffed myself.

We walked from there back to the subway station to go to a bookstore. Now, I know what you're thinking but they're subway stations are not like subway stations in America. Not in the slightest. Subway stations in Korea are a whole other town unto themselves. If it's a major stop, it could be several stories high and packed with food places, marts, tons and tons of cell phone booths, and other miscellaneous stores. We were there for quite a while before grabbing a drink at a GS mart and getting back on the subway to head home. It's nice having my EB card so I can just walk onto the subway without buying a pass. Although, it would be super easy to walk through, regardless. There's nothing stopping people from getting onto the subway without a ticket. Their walk-throughs are about as wide as ours here but there aren't any barriers between them that go back or release when you scan your card or put in your ticket.

We got back to Osan around 4:30 and headed to Hana Bank to find out about opening an account. Unfortunately, they changed their policy recently and I need a foreign id card to open an account, which is what I'll get with a work or student visa. We checked out the post office, as well, which doubles as a bank here in Korea. I'm gonna try Citi Bank since it's American and I read on the site that there are no eligibility requirements. Hopefully that is so cause I need it to get my work money deposited and to get a cell phone. This is the one that I'll be getting once I either open an account or use a friend's account:

I also finally got gong-gi today, which is a Korean game that I have been challenged to at the orchestra concert this week by one of my students. I'm gonna polish up my skills that I developed playing with Dehan and Young-ah when they were at our house.

Christine's father picked us up in Osan, which saved us the 1000 won, or one dollar, bus fare back home. Either that or a $6 taxi ride.

We had dinner back here with a few of the church members and I was able to talk to them a little bit.

**an hour and a half later*

Youngsun came up to my room while I was typing here so after chatting for a few minutes we went down to play some gong-gi. I beat her twice out of three games.

Not sure what's in store tomorrow. I'll probably be hanging out here most of the day so I might check out a path that goes up the mountain not far from here. I'll be sure to shoot some pictures for Facebook. Until next time! :)