Perspective
I spent the night down in Onyang last night to help send off Mr. Atwood in style. He's back to Bushtopia on Wednesday. It's always great to get out of the city for a while and hike through the mountains, eat some Korean barbecue and black out at different bars. It's been great having a friend living outside of Seoul to go visit and I will miss having him around to chill with.
We had a discussion a few weeks ago about how weird it will be to try to relay certain stories to friends back home. We both agreed that as the culture shock has worn off, our perceptions of what is "normal" have totally changed.
At first, I found it very weird to see grown men in business suits at 7:00 p.m., hunched over, too drunk to stand, on a main road, holding a bottle of soju in one hand and their cock with the other, urinating. As crazy is it may sound, this is now somewhat commonplace to me.
One of the first things I noticed in Seoul was the overwhelming stench of fish. There are fish markets in every alley. The smell of frying fish wafts through the halls of my apartment building from morning until night. I found it incredibly repulsive when I first arrived, but now I am totally used to it.
There is a theory in psychology that states that the brain will receive sensation stimuli and notice them when they first appear, until a stimulus has been around for a while and then your brain will stop noticing it. Even though a certain smell, sound or sight is in your surrounding environment, you will stop taking notice of it. I guess this describes what has happened with the fish smell and I think it is a good metaphor to describe my overall outlook on Korea. Things that once made my eyes open wide have now become things that I don't even notice.
I was baffled at first by four-year-olds with cell phones, street vendors selling dairy products and rat poison out of the same cooler, throw up on the street, Korean kids using their fingers to give themselves "slanty" eyes and mock the Chinese and Japanese, girls dressed in cheerleader outfits dancing in front of furniture stores trying to bring people into the store, people eating silkworm larvae on the street like candy and many other countless things. As time has passed however, these oddities have just become a part of my day-to-day life and I have grown fully accustomed to them.
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In other news, this week I got my tickets to go the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan for this summer. So far the lineup includes: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Yo La Tengo, The Shins, The Cure, Iggy Pop, Feist, Gov't Mule and others. My li'l sis is going to be visiting around then and the two of us are going to check out the festival. The atmosphere is supposed to be incredible and I think it will be a great time. I am already pretty excited for it even though it's not until the end of July.
Other than that, life is good in Korea. I have been a little bit lazy with this blog lately, but I am hoping to add entries with a little more regularity from now on. I've been doing a lot of writing lately on a little side project of short stories I am doing. I'm hoping to have some of those ready to send out via e-mail to some of you all. I think you will be pleasantly entertained.
Much love from Seoul
We had a discussion a few weeks ago about how weird it will be to try to relay certain stories to friends back home. We both agreed that as the culture shock has worn off, our perceptions of what is "normal" have totally changed.
At first, I found it very weird to see grown men in business suits at 7:00 p.m., hunched over, too drunk to stand, on a main road, holding a bottle of soju in one hand and their cock with the other, urinating. As crazy is it may sound, this is now somewhat commonplace to me.
One of the first things I noticed in Seoul was the overwhelming stench of fish. There are fish markets in every alley. The smell of frying fish wafts through the halls of my apartment building from morning until night. I found it incredibly repulsive when I first arrived, but now I am totally used to it.
There is a theory in psychology that states that the brain will receive sensation stimuli and notice them when they first appear, until a stimulus has been around for a while and then your brain will stop noticing it. Even though a certain smell, sound or sight is in your surrounding environment, you will stop taking notice of it. I guess this describes what has happened with the fish smell and I think it is a good metaphor to describe my overall outlook on Korea. Things that once made my eyes open wide have now become things that I don't even notice.
I was baffled at first by four-year-olds with cell phones, street vendors selling dairy products and rat poison out of the same cooler, throw up on the street, Korean kids using their fingers to give themselves "slanty" eyes and mock the Chinese and Japanese, girls dressed in cheerleader outfits dancing in front of furniture stores trying to bring people into the store, people eating silkworm larvae on the street like candy and many other countless things. As time has passed however, these oddities have just become a part of my day-to-day life and I have grown fully accustomed to them.
*******************
In other news, this week I got my tickets to go the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan for this summer. So far the lineup includes: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Yo La Tengo, The Shins, The Cure, Iggy Pop, Feist, Gov't Mule and others. My li'l sis is going to be visiting around then and the two of us are going to check out the festival. The atmosphere is supposed to be incredible and I think it will be a great time. I am already pretty excited for it even though it's not until the end of July.
Other than that, life is good in Korea. I have been a little bit lazy with this blog lately, but I am hoping to add entries with a little more regularity from now on. I've been doing a lot of writing lately on a little side project of short stories I am doing. I'm hoping to have some of those ready to send out via e-mail to some of you all. I think you will be pleasantly entertained.
Much love from Seoul
posted by Kyle at 7:56 PM
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