First Trip to Seoul

I'm reposting this from Facebook for those of you who aren't down with social networking.


Today I took the KTX high-speed train to Seoul for my first real trip there. Not pictured: the Taco Bell in Hongdae where we ate lunch or the madcap cartoonishness that is Itaewon, which is something like a combination of foreign/western restaurants, bars and stores as they would be appreciated by actual foreigners and a caricature of that same thing for Korean people to experience. It's a pretty incredible city that I'm sure I'll be visiting many times.

Part of the skyline and the Han River, viewed from the KTX. That gold-clad building is the 63 Building, which was the tallest building outside of North America when it was built.

Hongdae, which seems to be sort of the Williamsburg of Seoul. Very hip area that supposedly has an awesome nightlife.

Gyeongbokgung Palace.

In the distance you can see Seoul Tower perched up on a hill.

Some of the many residences on the palace grounds.

Inside of the building above:

The changing of the guard:

A huge flea market filling the street leading away from the palace. Way off in the distance below that mountain you can see a dark green/blue roof, which is the Blue House, the president's residence.

King Sejong the Great, probably the most famous Korean monarch, who oversaw the creation of Hangul (the Korean alphabet) in the 15th century.

Cheonan-Asan: The Future of Korea

Korea experienced a huge period of growth in roughly the last third of the 20th century, especially in the 1990's, and Cheonan is essentially a big symbol of that growth. The whole sprawl of the majority of the city looks like it was built in the 80's or 90's and I suspect that the long-standing central business district areas sort of near Cheonan Station (the regular train station serving the city) and the huge Shinsegae department store complex (with the big intercity bus terminal below) that I visited last weekend probably date from the 1990's. While those areas are clearly still very hip and busy, I definitely got the impression that a lot of development in the city is focused on the western edge of town, so I took a hike out there today to see what there is to see.

Most obvious is this, the tallest building in Cheonan, probably twice as tall as any other building in the city. The building is a massive, monolithic thing that doesn't exactly dominate the skyline simply because it's essentially at the very edge of the city, with undeveloped land and farms separating it from the neighboring city of Asan. I'm not sure if it's mainly apartments or offices but it's pretty impressive.

The bottom five floors (plus two below ground) contain an E-Mart (which is basically Korean Wal-Mart), a huge outlet mall, a food court, restaurants and a movie theater. You can enjoy the fine dining experience of a fancy Korean Dunkin' Donuts:

If you're more interested in local Korean coffee places, they've got the most metal coffee shop in the history of the world, as well:

Or if you're hungrier than that, they've got a Popeye's (?!?!?!!!!) right across from it (there was also an Outback Steakhouse that I didn't get a picture of because the hostess was staring at me like I was some kinda weirdo, hah):

There were a good number of people shopping but it's clear that this whole area is brand-spanking new; there was very little road traffic, the crosswalk signals weren't even turned on yet, etc. It's all clearly gearing up in anticipation of huge growth in the region, though. Right across the tracks from this building is The Galleria, which offers nine levels of high-end shopping.

The interior of this building is awesome, as the whole center of it is this big open cavernous space surrounded by shopping of all sorts. From the bottom, up:

From the top, down:

On the very top of The Galleria, above the art galleries in the Cultural Center that makes up the top floor, is a rooftop garden. From here I got an excellent view of the Cheonan-Asan KTX station. This high-speed rail station offers a $12.50 trip to Seoul that runs you 35 minutes at 200 mph. All of this infrastructure and development seems to be the result of expectations that new Samsung factories and offices in Asan (which is much smaller than Cheonan) will inject jobs and money into the local economy, likely bridging the gap between the two cities as developers take advantage of the relatively cheap land and excellent location. I could see tons of construction equipment flattening the land between this end of town and Asan to the west in preparation for this growth around the KTX station.

I wandered over to the station to scope it out. Sorry, Korail: I ignored your "We trust you! Only paid ticket holders beyond this point" signage to get a closer look at these awesome trains. I can't wait to start using these things to zip around the country once paychecks start coming in.

Despite how much I like the laid-back, simple living that characterizes Cheonan, I've gotta say all of this development is pretty exciting stuff. 

Gakwonsa Buddhist Temple

I already posted these photos on Facebook but I figure I'd post here as well for those of you who aren't on Facebook. Yesterday I spent Liberation Day at Gakwonsa Buddhist Temple, which is a large temple complex to the northeast of the city. It was super easy to get there - I just told the cab driver where I wanted to go and $10 and about 30 minutes later we were at the temple.

There was a bus full of tourists all sporting these purple shirts but otherwise it was surprisingly not very crowded despite the holiday and nice weather.

I'm a sucker for Asian architecture and this place certainly delivered. Really ornate carvings adorned every single building and were lavishly painted with rich colors.

At the front of the complex is this huge two-tier pavilion with giant columns. On the second floor is a massive bronze bell. This whole structure was completely gorgeous.

Here you can see the main temple building at the top of the complex with its back to the forests of Mt. Taejosan to the east of Cheonan. I'm not sure why it is that the most beautiful parts of Korea that I've seen have these big tacky banners all over the place, but it still was very beautiful.

Here's a view of the main building from the side, along with that smaller building just to the left above. The amount of detail in the architecture is just astonishing.

Here is the giant Buddha statue just next to the temple complex. I think it's stone but coated in bronze. It's completely gigantic - about 50 feet tall. Supposedly it's the second largest Buddha statue in Korea.

There were loads of these paper lanterns in racks with prayers tied to them.

The path up the mountain behind the temple was lined with these piles of rocks that I guess worshipers had left as shrines.

We found this shrine further up the path.

All of the temple buildings are covered in a huge variety of colorful carvings.

The inside of the main temple building. I wanted to take a few more pictures of these huge golden statues and the interior architecture but there were a lot of people (mainly older women) praying so I didn't want to bother them or ruin the atmosphere by taking too many photos.

Testing the macro mode on my phone camera on a lotus flower just outside of the main temple building.

Relaxing on the steps up to the main building after walking the mountain paths for a while.

There was a sign on the stairway that led up to the top level of that bell pavilion that probably said "KEEP OUT!" or something like that, but the "I'm just a dumb foreigner!" card could easily been played had we needed it. No one said anything though so I guess it was ok. Anyway, behold the giant bell.

More ornate painted carvings, including these dragons overlooking the bell.

View of the complex from the top floor of the bell pavilion.

View from another courtyard.

One last look at the temple nestled in the mountains before we headed back into the city.

I will definitely be returning to this temple, especially once the fall colors start coming in on the trees. It will probably also be very beautiful with some snow on the ground in winter.

Food, Glorious Food

Eating in Korea has been a fun but somewhat challenging adventure. Korean food itself is great but navigating photo- and English-free menus can be pretty tough, as can grocery shopping when your knowledge of Korean cuisine is somewhat limited and all of the ingredients are in an unfamiliar language at the store.

I have, admittedly, been eating some western food for a variety of reasons. From what I gather, Koreans eat breakfast of course but breakfast cuisine is roughly the same as any other time of day, traditionally. I would be alright eating ramen and such for breakfast but since I eat a lot of Korean food at other times of day I think it would get a bit monotonous, so cereal it is. There's a store here called Homeplus which I think is affiliated with the UK chain Tesco, as it carries some Tesco brand stuff, such as my new love, muesli. Cereal is easy to find but somewhat limited in variety and sort of expensive, so muesli has been a delicious and inexpensive alternative for breakfast.

I've also been rocking the PB&J even though all three ingredients are about twice the price here. It's still pretty inexpensive and extremely quick to make and eat, which makes it a great option for my meals during my work shift since I only have maybe 30-40 minutes to run home, whip something up and eat before getting back to school.

As for Korean food at home, I've been eating a lot of ramen (there's a staggering amount of variety here, much of it very tasty looking indeed), steamed buns full of pork and kimchi, stir-fry and pork cutlets with noodles or rice. I've also spent a few days now trying to perfect my taco recipe using sadly limited ingredients:

-Tortillas (I found these at E-mart for about $3/10, but Lotte Mart might have them, too)
-Salsa (they had La Costena for $3/jar at E-mart!)
-Monterrey Jack cheese (better to buy block cheese and grate/slice it than buy the only bagged shredded cheese they have here - "pizza cheese")
-Ground pork (about $5/lb most places, so I got it from the butcher on the corner)
-Garlic & Herb seasoning
-Black pepper
-Korean hot pepper paste
-Tomato
-Onion

The hot pepper paste actually goes a long way in making up for the utter lack of cumin in this country, as it's hot and chili-like but also has a bit of sweetness and, importantly, smokiness that gives the pork a really good flavor. I'll definitely be making these somewhat regularly if I can get tortillas at Lotte Mart since E-mart is such a trek. I'd kill for some cilantro, though!

Soon I'm going to start doing some research into other simple Korean dishes I can make at home since buying stuff to make vaguely western-styled foods is about the same cost per meal as if I just went out and ate at a noodle shop or something. Which reminds me, I've still yet to try the supposedly amazing fried chicken they have here. Soon, though!

Reflections on my first week of teaching

I'm doing a bit of relaxing and listening to music in my apartment after making the rather lengthy trek to E-mart (which is basically a huge Wal-Mart type store) in order to secure important taco-making ingredients, so I figured I'd put up another blog post now that I've spent a week actually teaching students at work.

My schedule is set up so that my heaviest class loads are Monday and Friday, with one fewer class (i.e. a longer dinner break) Tuesday and Thursday, and Wednesday I actually have more break time than class time so I figure I'll get a lot of reading in on Wednesdays.

There are essentially two levels of students: younger kids typically work with the Herald School official ESL books and learn simple vocabulary, grammar and eventually sentence structure. There are four books in different colors for each class: two homework books and two in-class books. Some of these kids have quite limited English skills so it can be kind of tough to try to explain what new words mean. As an example I had a group of kids who were learning about ages and grades in school and they simply weren't grasping the concept of grades until I pulled out my phone and Google translated it for them. Apparently I'm not supposed to take my phone to class so that tool won't be of any use to me in the future, unfortunately. These younger kids range from giving you dead-eyed stares of confusion to being completely unable to sit still for more than three or four seconds at a time - I've got one class where there are two little Bart Simpsons who constantly mock fight one another and run around and pull all of the little Milhouses into their antics. Gonna have to lay down the law on those kids, I think.

Older kids have longer textbooks that sometimes have fairly long stories, essays and articles that they read, then pages that guide them through sentence writing and eventually full-blown page-long essays. All of those hyperactive younger kids are the earlier classes in the day, so it's actually really nice and relaxing to end the day with the more advanced students who are learning more interesting material and who have English skills strong enough to carry on some pretty complex conversations. They also generally seem really interested in learning about America and American culture, and equally interested in what I know about Korea and its culture and how I like certain things here. They were all extremely impressed that I ate that spicy ramen, for example, and whenever I say one of the few Korean phrases I know they all seem astonished, which is really funny.

Though I've only been here a week, I have gotten a little taste of just how rewarding it can be actually teaching something useful to kids. Watching kids shift from total ignorance of a subject to fully grasping its intricacies is really pretty great and rewarding, and I expect that over the course of a year it's going to continue to be that way, perhaps even moreso as I get into the swing of the pace of teaching the material and can take advantage of extra class time to slip in some lessons that I feel are useful but aren't tied to the strict coursework I've been assigned to teach and which, oftentimes, feels sort of shitty in terms of actual educational value. Honestly I can say that this is the most rewarding and constructive job I've ever had and after doing this for a few years I think I'd have a hell of a time going back to some pointless cubicle jockey job staring at spreadsheets.

I've also gotten to know some of my coworkers a little better. The Korean teachers are all nice but seem a bit insular or otherwise not too interested in socializing with the foreign teachers for a variety of reasons (one's a married woman with a baby on the way, another simply has a long commute in to work so wants to head straight home after, etc.). Two of my foreign co-teachers took me to the bar down the street the other day for "a couple of drinks" which of course turned into many pints, a huge platter of sausage, loads of free nachos and some sort of little Korean bar munchies and several rounds of Jim Beam on the house. I went back last night with the other male foreign teacher and we didn't get nearly as much free stuff so I put that on the English girl being the source of freebies from the bartender. It's a nice little hangout though with lots of friendly drunk middle-aged Korean guys trying to chat with us. Neat to find something in the neighborhood that's social/entertaining.

Between the pleasantness of the job itself and the general coolness of the people I work with, I think I'm going to have a really good year here. One of the teachers I've hung out with is actually due to end her contract and head back to England around the end of the month, so here's hoping that whoever the school hires to replace her is someone I can get along with at least.