Leftovers

Today I have eaten two fatty turkey sandwiches. Half of the reason I even wanted to cook a turkey was to have leftovers to munch on this week. This afternoon I was quite thankful that I had some delicious smoky, Jack-Stacky turkey between two pieces of good wheat bakery bread.

I thought it would be a fun activity for me to go through the archives of photos that I have taken and post a few. I take a lot of pics and only post a small percentage of what I take. Here is a smattering of leftover pictures from the past 15 months...


In front of the Leeum modern art museum. I am giving the cliched Korean pose for a picture. I'm not mocking them - imitation is the highest form of praise. Okay, I'm mocking them.



I've taken a bunch of pictures of different street art, graffiti and vandalism - this is my favorite. It is in Hongdae, definitely the best spot to see shit painted on walls.


And here's another.



Two from Christmas last year. This is what happens when you have no family to be around on Chrismas. The top is a shot of me possessed on the dancefloor. The bottom is a co-worker and I. She leaves this week, making me the next teacher to depart.



Dinner with work. One of the bus drivers was walking around and wrapping slices of kimchi in pork and force-feeding us. Koreans are weird.



This robot never called me. It gave me one of the best nights of my life though.

In the spring, I told myself that as soon as Thanksgiving rolled around I would be entering into my final stage of my Korean journey. Thanksgiving has come and gone and it's time to start thinking about heading home.

Hope the long weekend treated everyone right. See you real soon...

Much love from Seoul

Christmas in July...

(do you see the boiling beer escaping through the neck?)

...seems more likely than a quality Thanksgiving in Korea, but today the stars and stripes prevailed. Weeks of planning and scheming all came to a head today as a few of us Americans tried to put on a Thanksgiving feast - and we could not have been much more successful.

Last year the dinner was cooked in a birdcage. This year we took a major step forward and cooked it in a Weber grill - using the bird cage wrapped in foil as a lid. With the help of hickory wood chips and Jack Stack all-purpose rub, a bird was beer-canned and smoked to a degree that most Koreans cannot even fathom. The smells that filled the hallways of my building were enough to give me a semi.

Our dinner consisted of the beer-can turkey, Stove Top stuffing, cranberry jelly, some incredible garlic mashed potatoes, salad, pumpkin pie coated in Cool Whip and a wide array of red wines. Each bite was better than the next, and it was all made very Asian as I consumed each bite with chopsticks...



If you thought it was hard to pick up cranberry jelly with a fork, just try chopsticks. I've been living in Asia for well over a year and feel pretty confident with my chopstick skills, but the cranberries gave me a run for my money.

It is hard for me to explain the feeling of contentment that I felt once the meal was finished. Combining the flavors of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and cranberries in my mouth all at once made my head swim with pleasure. But as soon as all was said and done, I had this feeling of being totally comfortable with my lot in life - a feeling I have not had for awhile in Korea. All is right in Kyle's world and if the Hawks can find a way to beat the slave owners tomorrow, life will be perfect.

I am about to fall into bed in a meat coma so I can wake up early to listen to the game at Arrowhead, but I want to leave you with one last picture of a carnivore in action...



Much love from Seoul

Gobble Gobble

Happy Turkey Day to all. It has now moved into the wee hours of Friday here, so although most of you have not sat down to your Thanksgiving dinners yet, in Korea we have already ventured into the biggest shopping day of the year.

For the second year in a row I celebrated Thanksgiving at an Outback in Seoul, Korea. Kind of weird that that has become routine for me. This year, unlike last year, I did not fly solo. An American friend of mine accompanied me after work and we had some nice big steaks and talked about how thankful we were that the workday was over. Not quite the same as enjoying a turkey dinner with the family and heading to the Plaza in the evening to brave the cold and the crowds to get that tingling sensation that a gazillion lights turning on can bring - but I was grateful to have someone to dine with.

The real excitement of today came this morning. I woke up early to listen the Jayhawks thrash Northern Arizona (44-10 at the half - are you kidding me?) and then I headed across town to the Western market in Hannam-Dong to pick up a turkey. I purchased a 20-pound turkey that I will attempt to smoke on my grill on Saturday. I made it work last year inside a bird cage, so I am pretty sure we can make it happen with a Weber this year. (There should be some good pics posted by Sunday)

The majority of my friends in Korea should all be collected around a table on Saturday evening as we enjoy wine, tryptophan and each others company. I am definitely looking forward to enjoying a little slice of Americana (and maybe pumpkin pie!) in Seoul this weekend.

I hope everyone has a beautiful day. Since we have entered Friday officially in Korea, I am now officially three months from leaving Korea - now there's something to be thankful for...

Much love from Seoul

I Got Worms

Sam Hopkins visited Seoul this weekend. It was really great to have somebody from back home to hang out with. It's not often that I can walk the streets with someone I have so much in common with - we are both Lancers, we are both Jayhawks and we are both jews.

He arrived on Saturday. I met him at the nearest subway stop to my place to find him with a wide grin and couple bottles of duty-free Maker's Mark. We came back to my apartment and caught up. He told me tales of freedom from the States and I shared anecdotes from my adventures in Asia. It didn't take long for us to break into the Makers and let the night begin.

After a few glasses of whiskey we headed down the alley to my local Korean barbecue joint where everybody was very happy to see us. We consumed some galbi (marinated pig,) some maekchu (beer,) and some soju (boozy booze.) We had planned all along to head to Hongdae to check the scene in that part of town, but alas we were a little too fucked up. I called my friends who we were supposed to meet and they came to my hood. We ended up at a place we call the German Hof which is a little beer and sausage restaurant. The night moved into oblivion as we all fell further into drunkeness.

Sam and I separated from the rest of the crew and headed to the new convenience store in my alley to get beer. We bought some tins of lager and got halfway home before we realized we needed food. We went back to the store. Sam chose some chips as I rambled on and on about how we had to get some Korean snacks while he was in Korea. I picked us out some bon-dae-gee and we headed back to my place.

Bon-dae-gee is the Korean term for silkworm pupae. They are a very popular snack over here. They are sold everywhere and the smell of roasting worms fills the air in many neighborhoods. I have always found the smell to be atrocious, but I felt like the time had come to give them a chance. My logic: they can't be worse than live octopus. Regardless of my initial impressions and opinions on the snack it is still a fact that they are fucking bugs.

We got back to my place and cracked open the can. My room instantly reeked of insect juice. I thought that I had become immune to bad smells living in Korea, but it turns out I am not. We took the two little plastic spoons the clerk provided us with and we decided to dive in. I turned on the camera and let it roll...

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I am assuming that it is evident, but I want to make a little disclaimer that we were pretty drunk at this point. there is a lot of incoherent babbling and half sentences going on, but without our level of intoxication I don't think either of us ever would have been willing to eat bugs.

We did a few takes of the video and after eating two or three, it all became a little too much for Sam. He ran to the bathroom to put the bugs that he had put in his mouth where they belong - in the toilet. In this next video, you can hear him throwing the bugs up as I do what any good host would and take care of the problem that is troubling my guest. It should also be noted that I live on the fourth floor of my building...

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All day Sunday we were both tormented by burps that tasted like these little fuckers. There are a couple opportunities to get a glimpse of them in the videos. They are swimming in a toxic stew of their own juices and shit. I am cringing as I write all this, but I will not say I regret it. I don't think I will have too many similar opportunities once it is time for me to hit the road, so I gotta keep hitting up all that Seoul offers until that time comes around. Hopefully, the next opportunity that arises has more sex with Korean girls and less bug eating...

Much love from Seoul

Assholes

I've had a visitor for the last few days so I haven't had much time to maintain the old web log. The weekend and the beginning of the new week were full of excitement. I have a couple pictures, videos and stories to share, so check back the next few days because I plan on sharing some if it with you all.

I'll get to the weekend adventures tomorrow, but tonight I want to tell you about a little cultural thing that I just learned about a little bit ago. It is such an integral part of my daily life that it baffles me that I have been ununderstanding (learned that word from one of my students) it ever since I arrived.

When I first arrived, I learned how to greet people and how to say goodbye. I learned some of the accepted and expected body language cues to look for and offer up. For example, I always bow to parents when I meet them and then they bow back. Even though I may not be able to fully articulate a level of proper respect for elders upon first meeting them, this conveys everything I need to say in a simple gesture.

So even though I felt like I had mastered the art of greeting Koreans, I was still lacking in a major department: when I greeted children. Since I work in a school and the majority of the human beings I know on this continent are children, I find myself greeting children on a pretty regular basis. Some children occassionally bow to me, some wave, some say, "Hi," some say "Annyong" in a mocking tone, some stick their tongues out at me or make another funny face, some ask me to buy them food, some call me "Kyle Teacher," and some just ignore me when I say hello. I may not have perfected the children greeting, but kids are fickle bitches and I figured I had gotten as good at the task as I ever would.

But there was one thing that started to get to me a little bit.

The bell rings and I allow a line of kids to head to the bus and I head to the teachers' lounge. As I saunter through the hall, weaving through leaving students and students making their way to class, I make eye contact with a sweet and smiley 10-year-old girl. Her English is fluent due to her year spent living in Canada and after teaching her for awhile I feel like we have a pretty strong bond, both as teacher-student and just simply as friends. I know her well and am excited to see her smiling face. I see that she is studying and, at the risk of disturbing her, I say hello and nudge her arm. She looks at me with a deadpan stare and shakes her head back and forth. It reminds me of a look I used to get as a young boy when my mother would catch me with a taut rubber band in my hand about to snap my sister in the face in the middle of a silent church. The countenance is not pleasent and the head shaking makes it worse. The first time my jovial salutation was met with this morose response I was shocked. Then the shock turned to emmbarrassment and then guilt - not the normal range of emotion one usually feels when greeting their students.

The first time it happened, I thought it was a one-time occurrence and I had done something else to piss this girl off. But then it happened again and again with some regularity. It even happened a couple times in public when I saw kids with their parents on the street.

It is hard to explain what it is like to get a look of disdain and disappointment from a kindergartener. Especially with the emphasis on respecting elders in Asia, I was blown away each time this happened.

To my surprise (and to be honest, somewhat delight) I found out through a drunken conversation that I was not the only foriegner to get the stink-eye from the Korean children. My co-workers were equally as baffled as I at the way the kids felt comfortable mocking our greetings with a head shake and a stare. The same conversation reappeared at the office and one of our Korean co-teachers overheard and giggled a little bit. She explained to us that it is an equivalent of the hand wave. Just as the hand goes back and forth in a familiar western greeting, the Korean head going back and forth can sometimes signal a hello. It seems to only be kids, and usually kids who are too lazy to lift their hand or open their mouth to say hello (or smile!) but I now see that it is pretty accepted gesture. It is not meant as any disrespect, but for well over a year I had been taking it as a slap in the face.

So there you have it, I feel like I've been living in Seoul forever and I am pretty acclimated to what is going on around me, but I didn't learn how to wave until a few weeks ago.

I'm gonna upload some stuff to youtube and see if I can figure out how to link it to this page and I'll do a nice posting about eating bugs tomorrow. Here's a little teaser from the weekend. WE checked out an art gallery on Sunday in Insadong that had some weird art. All of the titles were the names of popular music and Pearl Jam was blaring over the stereo, but the constant theme running through all of the pieces was genitals. This was a big picture of a bunch of differnet asshole paintings. Thought this was a good metaphor for my life in Korea: surrounded by assholes...



Much love from Seoul

Music Love from Seoul

A friend over here asked me to do a music write up for a little 'zine he hands out in Hongdae. I put together a little review of my favorite albums of this past year. If you don't own any of these albums, get them now.

Ever since I moved to Seoul I have been downloading with impunity. This has given me an opportunity to listen to albums I may not have had the opportunity to hear if I was living back home. Some of these albums get deleted the day after they arrive, but others have found their way into a special place in my heart. They contain the songs that fill my head as a roam the streets of this city and they have the songs that I sing in the shower. In my humble opinion, here are the top five albums of 2007:

5. “The Reminder” – Feist
Leslie Feist created one of the most genuine albums of the year. When I listen to her sing, I feel as if I am listening to her diary entries set in front of beautiful, layered melodies. I think she is experiencing some over-exposure in other parts of the world, but here in Korea where we are not inundated with her iPod commercials ad nauseum she remains a delightful treat. If you haven’t seen the video for “one two three four,” head to youtube and check it. It is like looking into cinematic kaleidoscope for three minutes. There is a vast variety of styles put forth in Feist’s sophomore effort and yet the whole album flows exceptionally well.

4. “Version” – Mark Ronson
At first I felt like this album was a guilty pleasure, but as it began to grow on me, I became aware of its brilliance. With the help of the funkiest horn section and backing band on the planet (the Dap-Tones,) Mark Ronson has produced a wide variety of interesting covers and homages to contemporary music. Covering the likes of bands spanning from The Zutons all the way to Britney Spears (that’s right,) he finds ways to re-imagine the tracks and make them sound hip. If you doubt this album, you will be convinced by the instrumental intro “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face” – he even makes Coldplay sound cool.

3.”We All Belong” – Dr. Dog
Although this album was released this year, I have a theory that it may have been recorded around 1974 - there aren’t very many bands on the scene in 2007 that sound like Dr. Dog. I hear hints of The Band, The Guess Who and The Beatles throughout, but it still manages to be original. With a church basement piano and some delicious vocal harmonies, they produce a brand of folky psychedelia that makes me yearn for the drugs of the old country. The band sounds like they are enjoying themselves during every track.
Even with a song titled “Die, Die, Die” on the album, it is oozing with optimism, spreading the message that this could be a great world if we could begin to understand that we all belong.

2. “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga” – Spoon
I was convinced that this Austin band had hit a peak with “Gimme Fiction” but they proved me wrong with their newest release. It is short, but what it lacks in length it makes up for with substance. Their production has improved and with that comes a more mature sound. I also feel that their songwriting has improved and they, as a band, understand to a higher degree who Spoon is. Considering how long they have been around as a band, I am impressed with their ability to continue to make cutting-edge, quality rock music. To me, this is what an indie rock band should sound like.

1. “Sound of Silver” – LCD Soundsystem
A friend visited from Onyang and brought this with him when it first came out and I instantly fell in love with it. Amazingly, it has gotten better with each and every listen. Lyrically, it is full of witty nuggets of introspection and observation, but the album is driven by a killer band and some sweet cowbell solos. This is one of those rare albums that I find impossible to stop once I have started it – it plays as one long track in my head. I dare you to spin this album and not dance. After Daft Punk played at their house, LCD Soundsystem found a way to keep the party going – and I’m glad they did.

One thing I will definitely miss about Seoul is my ability to download anything I want - quite often before it is even available to the American public. Being an internet pirate is fun and I will miss it. Maybe to help myself adjust to the real world I will wear an eye patch for a couple weeks after I return.

Special thanks goes out to my International Editor, Andrew Foertsch Esq. for his assistance with this.

Much Love from Seoul

Theologians Don't Know Nothin' About My Seoul

Jesus is bigger than Jesus over here. I see him all over town and I have started collecting pictures of him.

One thing that has surprised me is the fact that Jesus is always Anglo-Saxonish. I am under the impression that the actual Jesus did not look like he was from Ohio, yet the majority of Jesuses over here look like they work for an insurance company in Cleveland. In the middle-East Jesus has darker Arabic skin, in Africa Jesus has black skin but in Asia there is no yellow skinned Jesus. Despite this fact, the country I reside in is overwhelmingly Christian.

Koreans, if you allow me to stereotype for a minute, love rules, hate thinking outside the box and can be quite superficial. It seems to me that this makes them likely candidates to belong to one of the hundreds of glitzy mega-churches that fill this city. They find the church that looks the biggest and most holy with the biggest neon cross glowing atop the steeple and walk right in.

At night, the skyline lights up with hundreds of neon crosses like beacons of hope calling souls to the Lord (or to an all-you-can-eat buffet.) I will admit that at first I was a little shocked at all of the neon crosses, but I now realize that it is very Korean to mix the ideology of your religion with the advertising tactics if Vegas. On my first night in this town, I was picked up by my boss. I had been awake for over 24 hours and I had just entered the strange surroundings of Korea and the first thing that caught my eye was a neon cross. Then another, and another and another. I couldn't figure out what they were. At first I thought the cross was a symbol for a casino. Then I began to think that maybe it was a hospital symbol - that seemed more logical to me. When I asked my boss what they were, she laughed and said, "Don't churches in America have crosses too?" It may sound crazy, and to be honest I was in a crazy kind of mindset, but it never occurred to me that they could be churches. I am used to it by now, but it still seems incredibly gaudy (not "God"-dy) and a little bit sacrilegious. And speaking of sacrilegious, there are ATM's in the lobbies of some mega-churches over here. I am sure it happens at some of the mega-churches in the States too, but I find that a little bit repulsive.

Anyway, allow me to share a few Jesuses with you from around my neighborhood. I have others, but today I want to share three of my favorite.

The first, at the top of this entry is a Jesus statue that happens to be on a ladder. This steeple overlooks the tennis courts I play on with some regularity. I always check to see if Jesus has moved but he is usualy in the same place. It is still up for debate whether he is climbing up or down, but either way, when you can find a savior that is willing to do janitorial work around the church, I say you've picked a winning religion.



This Jesus is on a building at the university that is across the street from me. With some regularity, I see people too drunk to walk, literally kneeling at Jesus's feet. This piece of divine art is made up of hundreds of small, different colored stones. Koreans, unoriginal in thinking and style, must be able to relate to the sheep in this picture.



I walk by this virtually every day. I think it is cool-looking, but you must admit that it bears an uncanny resemblance to similar homages to Bob Marley and Che Guevera. Don't be too surprised if this image ends up on a t-shirt being sold at the Gap.

Even though the oddities of this country become more and more normal each day I live here, there are some things that still boggle my mind daily. I definitely thought I would be living in a country dominated by Eastern religious thought, but that could not be less true. There are some Buddhist temples around, but Jesus seems to be everybody's homeboy over here. It's weird that I moved away from the Bible Belt (where evolution is something the kooky non-believers made up) to a place where Jesus is more prevelant. Go figure.

I'm not sure how God will feel about this entry, so just to be on the safe side, pray extra hard for me when you are at church this morning.

Much Love from Seoul

Jayhawk Fever

It is just after midnight in Korea and I'm about to head to bed. I probably won't be able to sleep very easily though, because I've got a big morning ahead of me.

I should be waking up around 8:30, heading over to Starbuck's and then sitting in front of my computer celebrating the beginning of the college basketball season in a KU shirt and my boxers. In Korea, I don't have access to much but radio feeds, but last year during the preseason they showed a live video feed from Allen Fieldhouse - I am hoping the same will be true tomorrow.

A package arrived in the mail today with Thanksgiving spices, "I am America (and So Can You,)" and the Sporting News college basketball preview. Even though I live as far away from Allen Field House as I ever have in my life (my move across the hall during the off-season places me about 10 feet further than I was last year,) I am pretty engulfed in Jayhawk basketball fever. I've been reading articles all night and can't wait to hear Bob Davis coming over my internet radio waves in the morning.

This also signals another milestone in my journey. I know I'm heading back Stateside in the middle of the Big XII season. I am excited to be a subscriber to the Jayhawk radio network via the internet, but I am equally excited (if not more so) to cancel that subscription and head to a place where the games are shown on televisions for free.

I know I'm not the only fan in the world thinking this is his team's year, and I know that this isn't the first time I have felt this level of optimism at the beginning of a KU basketball season, but that doesn't stop me from feeling this sense of elation. Season starts in a few hours - bring it on bitches...

Rock Chalk Jayhawk go KU!

Much love from Seoul