Cultural Oddity Moment #1

Doctors always say that you should drink approximently 8 cups of water a day. Well, apparently the Korean doctors never jumped on that boat.

This summer especially I'd been drinking somewhere between 12 and 16 and cups of water per day, so when I got to Korea I was already used to lot's of hydrating. In this sauna-like environ, more than ever I just want to guzzle large glass after large, American, super-sized glass of fresh cold water.

Now you hold your horses, Steven. There'll be no plentiful drinking today or any day for the next year!

One fine day I was headed to the sink to get a glass of water. The only cups they have are as shown:


So I take what I can get, and start the tap to get my saucer full of water, when a hear the quick shuffle of feet then feel my arm get grabbed from behind. "No! Don't drink that water!" So after lengthy discussion and much dictionary usage, I realize that there is dangerous bacteria in the water. "What water can I drink?" "We make this water for drinking."

You may notice that this water that they "made" is in fact brown. That is because when they boil the water to remove bacteria they also infuse it with barley. That's right. Barley. This poses two problems.
1)Water tastes not like water, but like puffed wheat
2)Water has to be made, so I feel bad drinking too awfully much. Therefore I'm pretty dehydrated all day. And it's hot here. And they like to conserve AC.

This has been your cultural oddity moment of the day.

Family Photo

My Family!

From the left: YongHee, Umma, Appa, Me

Menu Update

For breakfast this morning I had pan-broiled squid in a spicy sauce, coupled with yellow hashbrown-esque stuff and sides of fermented cabbage leaves and pickled garlic. Just though I'd let ya'll know.

Setting Foot on my New Campus

Here we have new pics from my trip to Yonsei University. No one was at Yonsei since today was Korean Independence day, but I still got to use the subway and walk around the ShinChon college town area. We stopped at a crazy bookstore and at a record store. This place is wild, what with all these hundreds of shops stacked on top of one another! Afterward we picked up lunch at McDonald's. 'Don't ever eat at an Asian McDonald's' is my new rule. The burgers aren't big enough, the fries aren't greasy enough, and they won't give you free water. I'd much rather just have some Korean lunch anyways, but it wasn't my idea and who am I to pass up a wicked cultural fusion experience anyways?


One of the more scenic buildings on Yonsei campus






More bustling downtown Seoul. It rained today~~what a relief from the heat!






Korean subway map: be afraid...be very afraid.

Stepping Out into this Terrifying New World

Well, I finally did it. I braved leaving this apartment and venturing out into the Bright Lights, Big City of Seoul.
My host brother YongHee and I went down the street to Olympic Park, built for the 1988 Olympic games in Seoul. While there are several gymnasiums, for the most part it really is one massive park, filled with modern sculpture, wide paths, and benches. It’s like the purpose of Centennial Park in Atlanta combined with the magnitude of Central Park. I had a great time walking through, asking YongHee about all the unfamiliar flora and fauna I ran across.

Afterwards, we journeyed back into the actual city. Seoul is broken up into several divisions that they translate “towns,” even though it’s pretty much solid city as far as the eye can see. We walked through one of these towns on the way back home, past tons of restaurants and businesses. One thing that strikes me about Seoul is the fact that I recognize about 10% of the vehicles on the road. There are Hyundai and Kia makes, but more various and sundry models than they've ever bothered exporting to the US. I’m talking SUV’s and pickup trucks and vans (not minivans, but Ford Astro vans), and cars that look like sedans but are smaller or longer or more modern in shape than anything else. There is not a single American car on the road. I have seen one BMW. There are two whole manufacturers that I didn’t even know about. First is Daewoo, who stopped producing cars in the US. I thought they went out of business, but apparently GM actually just bought them. They’re still going strong in Korea. The other is called Ssangyong, I think. Completely different stuff.

I also love walking past the Italian restaurants (Vino Vino), the French clothes stores (Chevaine) and the odd building that looks like a Burger King but the sign says 버거킹. Overall, the city feels dirty and slummy and unsafe to my preppy, suburban mind, but I am assured that crime is low and that you can sleep on a bench and no one will disturb you. Unlike downtown ATL, I’m still afraid to walk outside alone (but mostly because I'll get myself lost).

The view from my window is the building directly across from us. It's more housing none too different than the one I’m in. At about six in the morning, the windows fill up with women doing the laundry. Off to the left you can see a factory type building. It makes a lot of noise starting at the crack of dawn.

Here is the view from YongHee’s room, across the hall from me. This is the front
of an apartment building. Looks like the front of any other Korean apartment building, right? (for those of you wondering, yes it does.) If you look closer, however, you can see that there is indeed a tennis ball stuck in on of those letters, and it appears that it is the exact same color. This leads me to believe that they decided to paint over it rather than remove it. Interesting…..

Finally, I already have an funny story to equal the famous “Your Mom Says Hi.” YongHee came out of his bedroom yesterday morning in a t-shirt that read
Spring Break
California ‘79
It looked like a regular vintage t-shirt and I thought nothing of it, until I looked closer and realized that in fact it read “Spring Broke.” Who broke it?!? Don’t tell me nobody. Somebody had to break it. Now own up!

Needless to say, I already knew when I asked him if he bought the t-shirt in America that the answer was no.

Arrival and the Baggage that Comes with it

Well, after much struggle I’m finally here. There are some very great things about this place. My family is wonderful and they’re trying to communicate with me. We all walk around the house with dictionaries: every attempt to speak is a flurry of page turning. THE FOOD! I can’t get over the fact that I get homemade Korean food all the time! I suppose the day will come when it’ll get old and I’ll long for the land of pot pie and mac n’ cheese, but that day is far from today.
Unfortunately, at the moment there are some very, very uncomfortable things. Things that are so foreign, they’ll make you say “wow, that’s pretty foreign.”

The shower is a good enough place to start. The bathroom is tiled from the door straight back to the shower stall. It’s not in a bathtub or even a little separate drain area. It’s like a shower at the gym: there is no clearly defined line between shower and the rest of it. And what about the open window in the shower? What’s up with that?
My family asks if I need anything and I tell them that all I need is shampoo and a towel. They show me the shampoo, then they show me the body shampoo, to which I think ‘whatever I’ve got a bar of soap.’ That security was quickly shattered when they showed me the towels. Think every threadbare dishcloth you’ve ever shuddered to touch, and those were the towels. All loincloth sized, unlike the 4ft long, hearty Bed-Bath-and-Beyonders to which I am accustomed.

So, I go to operate this showermabobber, and there are two knobs. I start turning one knob and nothing happens. I turn the other knob and nothing happens. So there I stand feeling like an idiot and wondering how I’m going to get myself clean. Then I lean on the knob and water comes out the handheld shower hose….cold as narwhal. So now I’m bathing myself in the coldest water imaginable and wondering how I’m going to survive like this for a whole year, so I start turning knobs again to try to get hot water to come out. In case you were wondering, there was no convenient 'H' and 'C' for me to rely on. As I turn one knob the water shifts from the handheld shower wand to the wall mounted shower head. Quickly I turn the other knob to achieve warm water. Now I want the water to be coming back out of the handheld shower thing, so I turn the first knob once more. Instead of water from the handheld, this time water sprays me from about 7 or 8 hidden wall jets at varying heights. It was like the automatic car wash, but it was me instead of minivan and I still hadn’t gotten to the washing part.

I got out of that shower feeling a lot like Fred Flinstone would have if he tried to feed himself at the Jetson’s house. I was on the verge of tears. ‘I can’t stay here! I can’t live like this!’ were my thoughts at the time, but now it seems a little foolish. That was it? That was the one thing that would prevent me from being able to stay in Korea? Deal breaker = new system of showering?

Then of course there’s the sleeping arrangements. Whereas the water was colder than Ted Kennedy’s heart, my family turns the air conditioner completely off at night, leaving me to wake up with a body covered in hot, sticky sweat. A yummy way to start your day.

It doesn’t make it any more comfortable, of course, that I’m virtually sleeping on the floor. They have given me a baby quilt worth of padding to put between myself and my wooden box, which elevates me 12 inches off the ground itself but provides no increase in softness whatsoever. I know there must be some point to it, but I have yet to discover it (Edit: nor did I ever discover it).

The thing about Korean homes in the U.S. is that they have absolutely zero decorations. Maybe some family portraits, maybe a wall clock, but that’s about all. I guess it saves tons of wasted money on pointless decorating, but I always thought that part of it was that they were immigrants and hadn’t brought all their earthly possessions, learning instead to live without excess. Not true, however. This Korean home doesn’t have a rug, a painting, a stylish lamp, a side table, or a single knick-knack. The only decorative thing they’ve done with the space is to covert they’re nice screened-in porch area into a shrine-like garden. All in all, the home feels vapid and barren.

Lot’s of adjusting to do.

VOILA!!!!

Oh, by the way, IT'S THE NEW AND ASIANIFIED ME! Enjoy the festivities of hairlessness from 7,000 miles away.

So You Think You Know Hell? A commemoration of 24 hours in transit

Let’s begin with the universal traveling truth. No flight which kicks off a day of non-stop connections around the world will ever be on time. It doesn’t matter if you get up at 4:45 in the morning and make it to the airport by 7:00 am for your 11:30 am flight. You’re plane will screw you. In fact if you’re plane is scheduled to leave at 11:30 and head for St. Paul Minnesota, in all likelihood the following will occur:

Step 1) You’re plane will be delayed until 1:00 pm, making it impossible to take a two hour journey to the Great Lakes and make a connecting flight to Japan at 2:30 pm
Step 2) An amiable black lady employed by NWA will transfer you to the 12:22 to Detroit
Step 3) You will sit on the runway for 45 minutes waiting for weather to clear and then nine other planes to taxi and take off before you actually depart.
Step 4) You will arrive at the time of your departure to Japan and spend five hectic and hungry minutes dashing through the Detroit airport like a maniac from concourse 17 to 40.
Step 5) You will board the 14 hour flight to Tokyo. You will be sitting in the dead center of the airplane, with two old Japanese men, an aisle, and three other people after that between you and the nearest window.
Step 6) The old Japanese men on either side of you will give you political advice on all manner of subjects ranging from North Korean missile crises to rebuilding Africa as though you were advisor to Bush himself
Step 7) You will eat food that makes you yearn for those hot fresh meals you used to savor at summer camp in Rock Eagle.
Step 8) You’ll fall asleep, and then awaken, ready to get off the plane, disappointed to find that you’re not even over Montana yet. Then you’ll proceed to watch four in flight movies (three of which are an embarrassment to American cinema) and when that’s over, you’ll still have 5 hours until you touch down in Narita.
Step 9) At any point during the flight you are subject to being drooled on by your Japanese neighbors, being kicked in the back by the Chinese 6 year old behind you, and being subject to utter humiliation as you stand in front of an airplane full of an evidently superior race, given that any of which could certainly figure out how the bathroom door operates.
Step 10) You will eat what the Tokyo airport international concourse McDonald’s has decided to pass off as 'chicken' while you wait two more hours for your connection to Korea.
Step 11) You will land in Korea and realize that you’re actually a whole hour bus ride away from your new home.


But all jocular lists aside, I made my first friend on the flight to Korea. Bryan has a mother in Seattle and a father here in Korea. He is studying at a university not far from mine and has offered to show me around the university area once I get settled in a bit. We’ll probably be hearing from this character in the near future, since his English was so comfortably perfect.

The Once and Future Steven (but not until he comes back from Asia)

So, here is the Steven you all knew and loved:

Note the:
extreme hairiness
unruly mop
unkempt facial growths
overall American appearance.

Stay tuned for the unveiling of the new and improved Korean Steven, a rebirth which constitutes some of many changes that the former Steven will undergo in order to better assimilate to South Korean culture.

For more photos of my hairy visage, click here if you have facebook, if not just ask me for them

Testing, testing....

Hey guys. If you've found me, then the test is successful. Come to this site any time you want to know what's going on with my adventure in Korea. I'll periodically add pictures and comments, but if I'm not posting it's not because North Koreans have killed me. It's because a)life got too boring and everyday to be of interest, or b)life is way too interesting and non-stop for me to drop everything and catalogue it. Don't be jealous: I'm still thinking of everyone. I'm just also having the time of my life in the process. See you all in a year. Korea, here I come!