Daegoween

Halloween in Korea is much like the Fourth of July in Korea. Outside of the transplanted expats, very few people find any reason to celebrate October 31st. Our plans were therefore somewhat subdued, deciding to go out to the foreigner bar, the Blue Agave, for a Halloween party being thrown by the bar staff. Our plans made, we set out to scoure the tiny bins of Halloween merchandise at EMart (Walmart's Korean equivalent) to try and find some manner of a costume. It was quite late in the game when Alicia and I were informed about a massive EPIK first-years party being thrown in Daegu. So late in fact that every flight out of the city was booked, not only to Daegu, but also to Ulsan and Busan, the two nearest major cities. Aside from flying to Seoul and taking a 4-hour bus trip (the express trains were also booked), there was no way we could make it. We therefore once again resigned ourselves to staying in town, and commenced planning our weekend out.

That is, until Thursday, the day before we would have to leave, when we once again decided against all advise to go to the airport and try to get a standby seat. Hastily packing our bags, and, at least in my case, half-expecting to be coming home the next night, we agreed to leave work early and arrive at the airport at 3:30pm, an hour and a half early.

Alicia met me at my school at 3, just as the kids were getting out of school. Chaos ensued. While she was waiting on me outside, a girl asked her if she knew me. She said, "yes, I'm his girlfriend", and soon had a group of sixth grade girls swarming around her. By the time I arrived, a throng of students were shouting Girlfriend! Girlfriend! Pretty! Pretty! and mobbing us as we walked down the street. A little girl gave Alicia a stuffed animal as a gift. It was very cute pandemonium.

Arriving at the airport, we learned that we had dramaticaly overestimated our chances of getting on the 5:05 to Daegu. Korean Air was so overbooked that even standby was closed. The thought occurred that we hadn't tried Asiana Airlines, so with little hope in our hearts we approached the counter, and succeeded in securing a set of standby tickets. We were numbers 12 and 13, and were informed that there would probably be 5 people let on, though we could wait if we wanted. Wanting to say that we had at least tried our best to take this trip, we waited the hour and a half until we were to return to the counter.

When we came back up, a small crowd had formed, and a man was reading information off a sheet, in Korean of course. Just as we were panicking, we saw that the Jeju Education Director (our bosses' boss' boss) was standing in front of us, a man who could speak English much more successfully than we could speak Korean. We tapped him on the shoulder, and he, though taken off guard, agreed to act as an interpreter for us. Soon thereafter, we were told that they would begin announcing standyby ticket numbers for the Daegu flight.

Two people were allowed to board. Only two. Dejected, we walked over to the counter to get a refund for our unfulfilled dream. We had just turned in our ticket when the Education Director ran up and said something to the cashier. She nodded, typed on her keyboard for a rather long period of time... and printed us boarding passes. Apparently the flight had been delayed for 15 minutes, therefore, for a reason I don't believe I'll ever understand, that magically freed up at least another eleven seats. Grabbing our passes, we sprinted for the gate. We had made it- We were going to Daegu.

A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
After an hour-long flight, we arrived in the city. It was only then that we realized we had no idea where we were going. Calling our friends from Jeju, who were only just then leaving the island, we were told to take a taxi to Camp Walker, a US Army base in Daegu, being told we would find a cheap hotel near the entrance. after a 20 minute cab ride, we were dropped off near the guarded gate, in what was by far the seediest area I've been to in Korea. No sooner were we dropped off on the side of the street than a carfull of GIs cursed at us for standing in the road. In the dimly lit street we could see shady-looking Koreans stalking the shadows and groups of prostitutes escorting wayward servicemen off the streets into dark houses. We later learned from a local EPIK teacher (who had finally called us back) that we had come to the back gate of the base, a markedly different kind of area from the front entrance, but by then, we were already back in downtown waiting to meet up with the other Jeju teachers.

While waiting, we saw a rather interesting idea to get around paying high downtown rent: a big pink bus was parked along the main shopping district, which had been converted into a clothing store. It seems to park on the main roads after dark on weekend nights, selling various Korean-couture items, departing late that night (it was gone the next day). Alicia (finally) finished shopping, and we set out, cell phones edging tenuously on the brink of death, to find our Jeju friends, who had just arrived. After numerous instance of 'just missing each other', we were finally able to set off in search of a hotel, at 10pm.

The Love Motel
We wandered into a bustling and crowded network of streets, similar only in the most basic layout to the City Hall district of Jeju Si, full of restaurants, shops, and bars, labelled with the requisite copyright-infringing names found all over Korea: the Sex and the City boutique, The Beatles bar, the Sleepless in Seattle coffee shop (I think that last one's actually pretty clever). Lost if left to our own devices, we asked the first foreigners we saw (one of many on the street, actually) if the could help us. They agreed, leading us through street after street of the large downtown district until we came to a small sign pointing to a hotel called Mellow Yellow. Walking down the small back street, we saw the there were actually two hotels, the Yellow and the Mellow. Joking that the Yellow must be for locals and the Mellow for foreigners, we checked to see if the had space, but there was nothing in either. We were told to walk around the corner to another hotel, and soon we found the signs for ZOO004 (I guess it's zoo-thousand-and-four, approximating the word 2004, but that doesn't really work in Korean, when it's something like zoo gong gong sa...). Rooms were available, with names like the Diamond Room, Ruby Room, and ours, the Sapphire Room. We grabbed the key, eager to unload our baggage, and entering the room learned something interesting about ZOO004, which I suppose should have been obvious from the downstairs movie rental shelves- it was a Love Motel.

Now, even if the love motel isn't a uniquely Korean invention, they have certainly done much to proliferate the concept. Rented out for two different periods, the day block and the night block, or both, love motels serve as the equivalent of the pay-by-the-hour motels back home, but are far less seedy. Honestly, it was a fairly nice hotel room, complete with an internet-equipped PC, two TVs, and in the case of the nicer rooms, everything from Japanese wood Hanoki tubs, to saunas, to projection screen TV's and LED constellations on the ceiling above the bed. Our room was unique in having a loft bed (called a 'second story for the business man' in the room descriptions)... complete with mirrors on the ceiling. The TVs had basic cable, but when they were turned on were tuned to the more 'adult' choices the hotel provided... weird, Asian 'adult' choices. Now, as far as I've heard, this was a relatively tame version of the love motel, with others having many more unusual adult conveniences, ranging from unusual adult vending machines to massage services. Quite regardless of its purpose, the hotel was a bargain for 45,000 Won a night, and honestly had the softest bed I've slept on in Korea so far. Here's hoping it was a clean, soft bed.

Mellow Yellow


The mirrored ceiling


The Love Motel Room


ZOO004!


Having settled in, we made our way out to the bar scene. Both of the bars we stopped at were choked with foreigners, and even had a few tending bar. Having been in Korea for a long while now, I suppose, I think we all experienced a bit of culture shock coming back into such an environment. It was like being dropped back home, and I don't think I liked it.

This was merely the first night in our adventures, the next day being far more exciting, with ancient Korean medicines and one weird Halloween night. To be continued...

Best of the Rest of the Fests

Horsing Around
The number of festivals in this country is simply astounding; even as a foreigner who cannot speak the language, I have attended more festivals in the short time I have spent here than I did in the last year in Houston (my heart is breaking that I will be missing Art Crawl this year, however). We seem to stumble into them often, and also have the added benefit the veteran foreigners' combined years of experience to guide us. They are quite frequently travelling all about the island, bringing along anyone else that they can.

It was therefore surprising that the Jeju Horse Festival had hardly been mentioned, though I knew from a tourism pamphlet that it was taking place in early October. However, such pamphlets and postings are often incredibly wrong- I had, for instance, read in the very same source that the festival was in late September and was called the Pony Festival (it was not). So I set out one rainy day, taking a $12 cab ride (about 20 minutes) to the Jeju Horse Stadium, where I was relieved to find a festival actually taking place.

I had two very specific goals at this event, but it seemed that my late afternoon arrival had foiled them both. I had heard, weeks earlier while eating some raw fish, that a similar meal could be found in Jeju, known as malgogi hoe (by the way, I found out I was saying 횟 wrong, thanks to Wikipedia- there's a short 't-stop' at the end... no wonder my students had no idea what I was saying). Malgogi is the name for horse meat in Korea, thus malgogi hoe is raw horse meat. It is a very expensive meal but it's also undeniably uniquely Korean; how could I pass up my opportunity to try something like this while here? The steep price was no longer an issue when I learned, from the group of Koreans that came with us to Loveland, that the Horse Festival would have free malgogi hoe. Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I decided I should give it a shot.

My second goal had far longer dwelt in my heart, since I first viewed a short promotional video of Jeju Island, and saw a spilt-second clip of what appeared to be two horses charging at each other. After some research, I learned that Jeju is one of the the last four cities in the world that has sanctioned horse fights. By which I mean, horse on horse combat. Everyone I asked about this, be they expats or natives, had no idea what I was talking about, and no doubt thought it was a strange question to ask. I was almost convinced that what I had read on the matter was incorrect, yet thought that if hope indeed remained to see such an event, it would be at the Horse Fest. It's not that I'm a fan of animal violence- of course I'm not- but I find this to be such an unusual practice that I feel like I would be missing out on something if I didn't experience it. Just like eating the raw horse or live octopus, right?

Walking through a food court full of the usual fried snacks, and what appeared to be a roast pig on a spit, I made my way to the small horse arena in the back of the grounds. I saw a large, crazed-looking stallion running after two mares, who were trying to politely refuse his advances by kicking him in the face. Not knowing what was happening, I stayed around and watched. These horse were soon thereafter brought back into the stables, and Mongolian trick riders came out and put on a riding show. They were pretty impressive, doing flips over the horse and jumping from one side to the other, though the rain which had just started caused them to make a few big mistakes. The downpour soon became torrential, and the furious neighing of the horses in the exposed trailers up the hill signalled that the day's outdoor festivities were over.

The special and genetically unique Mongolian-descended Jeju horse


Mongolian acrobat remounting his horse


What shame he has brought on his Mongolian brothers!


I left, clutching my backpack to my chest in the raging storm, and headed for the large building at the head of the park. On the way, however, I rain into a sign which confirmed what I had so long believed to be true. Despite what everyone else had said, I now had indisputable proof:

Horse-fighting was real!


I found out later that day from another foreigner that I had missed a session of horse combat by mere minutes, having arrived at the arena just after it ended. I also learned that the roasted 'pig' on the spit I passed in the food court was in fact a young horse, indistiguishable due to having it's legs removed, and now long-since packed up because of the rain. I was told that if there was malgogi hoe, it had long since been given out. I was 0 for 3.

The only consolation I had at the moment was gambling. I arrived at the large track building, where I met with a group of foreign teachers and tried to decipher the Korean language stat sheets. I picked a quinella and chose two horses whose names we had translated using a pocket dictionary, "Mountain Success Oyster" and "King-cloth Lord Zero". Neither of them did very well. Thus I went home empty-handed, having lost both 1,000 won (that sounds so much more dramatic than $1) and my shot at eating horse. I was disappointed to be sure, but there is no sense in beating a dead horse, so I'll move on.

Nucifer Rising
Last weekend, we had the unique opportunity to be shuttled around by a friend with a car. Such an experience really drives home the need of personal transportation on Jeju Island, with its many secrets lying well off the main roads. We had been invited to attend a nutmeg festival on Saturday, or rather, we thought we had, having misunderstood our friend at the bar a few nights earlier. We were in fact going to a nutmeg forest called Bijarim, full of very aged nutmeg trees. I for one had no idea nutmeg grew on trees, but it does- in this case, the Japanese torreya nucifera. The oldest of these was the millenium nutmeg, a 837-year old tree with a trunk quadruple the size of the others. It was so ancient and enormous that it had a number of small trees of a different species growing out of its massive trunk. A placard next to the tree claimed that it was the physical manifestation of the perserverance of the ancient Jeju people, and that it would guide them and protect them. A major cold front had come through that morning, and the meager coats we had brought provided little protection from the elements. I traded my warm sweatshirt for Alicia's paper-thin windbreaker, which was tight enough to make me look like I was wearing a wetsuit.



Millenium Nutmeg


Following the nutmeg forest, we attended (crashed, actually) the Korean TESOL dinner at a galbi (grilled pork) restaurant. I found it a bit strange that it was owned by a Buddhist couple, as I was under the impression that most Buddhists were vegetarian. The first thing we noticed was the massive magpie hopping about the floor. It was apparently a fixture at the restaurant, having it's own little perch under the 'daily specials' menu. The galbi here was different than anywhere else I've been to; they took the slabs of pork and smoked them in an oven over a wood fire, the result being not far from the barbeque back home in Texas. The method of delivery was by far the most amusing, as they would literally shovel the meat out of the oven, and bring said 'meat shovel' to the grill on the table. The handle was detachable, and the meat finished grilling on the shovel face at the table.

Magpie (I think his name was Chongi)


Meat Shovel!


An A-maze-ing Pumpkin Festival
I swear that will be the last forced pun in this entry.

That Sunday, we attended yet another of Jeju's myriad of festivals, the Pumpkin Festival. We had heard that there would free beer, and were therefore suprised to see a rather modest turnout from the foreigner population (many were undoubtedly still sleeping that afternoon, having stayed up until 6am to watch the New Zealand/England rugby championship game). The festival was held at the Kimnyeong Maze Park, which featured a large hedge maze. Seeing a number of children ringing the bell on the platform at the maze's end, I assumed that it would be simple. Instead, I wandered lost through the hedgy folds for nearly 45 minutes, occassionally crossing under a group of victorious youngsters celebrating their conquest of the labyrinth. I can only guess that I was over-thinking all of it, but I eventually made my way out. Returning, I saw that the pumpkin carving contest was nearing its end. I think the one below was my favorite. Alicia and a friend carved a traditional Jeju 'stone grandfather' statue, hoping that the judges' nationalism would win the contest for them, but soon found out that they were not the only ones to have that idea. They didn't win the contest, but the "Too Much Soju" pumpkin did take third place.

From one of the bridges in the course of the maze.


Lost.


"Too Much Soju"


It was, all in all, an easy, laid-back weekend. We finished it off with the excellent Indian food restaurant Bagdad, which is easily the best Indian food I've had anywhere. Next weekend should be much more exciting, as we attempt to make it to Daegu for a Halloween party. I'm still at a loss for what to do for a costume. I've got a Boy Scouts shirt here, so I may just keep it simple and go with that... but I'm open to suggestions. We've considered the Dog/Grill couple costume, but maybe that's a bit tacky.

Because anyone who has seen our costumes for the last two years will know, Alicia and I are all about classy Halloween costumes.

Festivals

Sports Day
I haven't counted, but sometimes get the distinct impression that I have in fact had more days of 'vacation' than of actual teaching. The first week or two were, until last week, the only full weeks of work in the classroom I'd had, and those consisted more of introducing myself to the students than actual teaching. The week following Chuseok (itself only a 2-day work week) was the shortest yet: I taught only on Tuesday, and even then only some of my classes. Class on Monday was canceled, though I was not made aware of this until I showed up to work that morning, so I sat in my office for 8 hours with no clue as to whether I should be preparing for class the next day or simply surfing the internet (in the end, I wrote a blog entry).

The reason for all of the cancellations (the weeks before were riddled with them as well) was to practice for the mysterious Sports Day, an event I had been told was equivalent to Field Day back in the United States, though it always seemed strange to me that one would need to 'practice' for a day of capture-the-flag and relay races. It turns out that the real essence of Sports Day lies somewhere between Field Day, a recital, a school play, and an open house.

The Wednesday that it was held on was a holiday, but my attendance was compulsory. I was told that I would have Thursday off, though I was already obligated to attend an EPIK conference that day. I do not resent attending Sports Day, as it turned out to be a very unique opportunity to see Korean culture, as well as get in the good graces of everyone from the students to the faculty to the PTO. Many parents attended on the day of the event, and the opening ceremonies involved much fanfare, including the detonation of a pair of gunpowder tubes that were apparently taped up right above my head...

The requisite races were run, along with the standard tug of war (though I did find the competition on the rope between the old married women quite amusing). However, there were also musical performances and dance routines done by the kids and teachers, and two martial arts performances, one of which was a kung fu or wushu routine with real swords and spears (I can't even imagine 3rd graders jumping around with weapons in America), and the other was a taekwondo demonstration. Well, kind of. Watch the video below. My camera picked up a lot of the crowd screaming so in case you can't tell, the background music is Billie Jean.



The entire event lasted from 9 am until 4 pm, meaning that I was quite sunburned at the end of it all. One of the final events was a race in which 5 students would run around the track, and a posterboard was held up which had (in Korean of course) a physical description of a person on it, such as "old woman" or "male teacher". The kids would have to grab someone from the crowd encircling the track and finish the race running hand in hand with that person. I ran around 5 times, answering (or being told to answer) to the call-ups of 'handsome guy', 'big head', 'smart person', and 'S-line figure'- meaning well-shaped woman... The students and parents seemed to really like that I participated, apparently something that no foreign teacher had done in the past there, and I guess that as long as everyone likes me, I've got a bit more job security, a fact which is somewhat of a comfort every time I teach (or rather, fail at teaching) my solo class... those kids are brutal.

Some pictures of Namgwang Sports Day:


Longest tug-of-war that I've ever seen: 150 vs. 150


The kids raced down the back of their classmates.


What would a festival be without festival food. Here is a double-fried corndog, so thick that the first time I had one the middle was cold even after being deep-fried for half a minute



Hittin' the Bang

That night, I was taken out to eat with the entire faculty group as well as the heads of the PTO, and yet again, it was samgyeupsal and other fatty pork. Following dinner (and more than a fair share of soju), I went with the teachers out to a Korean karaoke, called a noraebang (pronounced nohr-ay-bong). Koreans have a tradition where they will offer you soju from their own cup, which it is apparently rude to refuse (there are few who are harder drinkers than the Koreans). So, after far to many 'shared shots', I arrived at the noraebang, my face burning red and my head spinning. I came in just a bit after the others had arrived, and thus walked into a party already in progress; I was greeted with the sight of my principal- a short, old, and seemingly dour man- clutching a microphone, jumping on a couch, and beating on a tabletop with his removed shoe.

After getting such positive feedback for participating in Sports Day, I felt incredible pressure to relent and give into the teachers' demand that I sing a song. I certainly needed to sober up just a bit before I did, as my heart was racing and I didn't think that continuing to drink would help me. Eventually, I settled on the Beatles, thinking they were both easy enough to sing and popular enough for this crowd. There has been little up to this point as surreal for me as singing Hey Jude to a room full of middle-aged Asians. They even sang the na-na-na-na chorus.

G'Day Mate?
The 1st Annual Jeju International English Festival was held that Friday and Saturday, and attendance was, that's right, mandatory. We were asked to volunteer for a spot in the festival, to work at the booth set up to represent our nations, or to serve as a judge in one of many competitions. I asked to be a judge in the "King Of Debate" contest, and was instead told that I would be working in the Australia booth, explaining, to the many hundreds of kids that would come, all that I knew about Australia... a country I've never been to. I guess the logic was that because I was white, I should have a working knowledge about all white countries? I found this reverse stereotype kind of amusing, and I know that a lot of Americans (or Australians, for that matter) may make the same assumption about Asians, so I decided to go along with it and try to make the best of it.

So, it turns out that there were a few inaccuracies in the booths, with this costume hanging in the back of the Australia tent...


The other main attraction in the tent was a hula hoop, which, according to Wikipedia, was suggested to the American company Wham-o by an Australian, but that's kind of stretching it... I mean, they couldn't find anything else? A boomerang, a digeridoo, a can of Fosters, nothing?

The America tent was fun, though it had quite a few inaccuracies of it's own. We put on an assortment of American music, mostly Iggy Pop or Lou Reed, though I really enjoyed the Slayer CD we found lying around, which made good background music for the kids trying on hats.

One of the more blatant lies:


The strange Anti-Nixon poster which appeared 4 times around the booth:



All in all, the festival was a good chance to see a lot of the southside Jeju people who rarely make it up from Seogwipo. We had a good couple of nights of going out with the whole group, including visiting a well-over-capacity hole in the wall bar to watch England beat Australia in the Rugby Cup semifinals, and a really, really late-night (4:30 am) trip to McDonalds. And I learned a rather important lesson from all of this:

Never call your friends back home after a long night out. You may be struggling to form full sentences, but they are eating breakfast and in no way similarly impaired.

Back to Thanksgiving (or, Two-seok)

Now, it's been quite a while, a few weeks in fact, since we celebrated the Korean holiday of Chuseok, but due to a number of obstacles and obligations (see the post below) the second half of the Thanksgiving roundup had to wait until I had enough free time to write it. It was also just recently that I finally figured out how to download videos and images from my phone, which I think will make this post a bit more interesting, particularly the seafood bit.

Now, following the Teddy Bear Museum, we did do a bit more touring of Seogwipo, the resort town to the south of the island. I was rather shocked to see that directly across the street from the museum was a Hooters, a restaurant chain whose uninteresting food and only marginally "attractive" waitstaff seems to have an international appeal exceeding my understanding. I cannot say, however, that we will not make a journey out to this restaurant during our stay here, nor will we be alone when we do; all those we have told about our discovery are understandably curious about how such a restaurant can live up to its name yet draw employees from the local Asian population.

Seogwipo has a number of other sights, such as the hexagonal pillars of volcanic rock called jusangjeollidae, formed when smoldering lava collided with the ocean. The sight is rather surreal, and in the summer there is a sky-blue mist that hangs all about the place, but upon our visit it was still quite overcast. We were here for around 5 minutes, as Alicia's co-teacher, Tae I, had become rather worn out and was thus waiting for us in the car. It is one of the many places we will need to visit in the prettier months next year.




Our final destination in Seogwipo was the Hyatt hotel, overlooking the island's most famous beach, Jungmun. The beach is much more impressive in fair weather, as we had a chance to learn the very next day when we came back down with some friends. Jungmun beach is considered one of the best beaches in Asia, with clear water and white sand surrounded by tropical vegetation. As I said, we returned the next day, and I spent several hours laying out on the beach, working on my sunburn. I did swim a bit, until my beach phobia was reignited upon seeing a jellyfish the size of a hubcap. For those of you not so well acquainted with my history, I was stung by a Portuguese manowar when I was around six years old, and still bear scars all over my body, with my left hand being completely covered with them (the long one on my left wrist that looks like Japan is how I learned to tell 'right' from 'left' when I was younger, and I still use it for reference in the matter). Thus quite despite myself I still jump at shadows under the waves and panic when seaweed brushes by me, and will certainly not get back in the damn water when I can see for certain that there is danger. I don't even think a jelly fish sting is as painful as I think it would be, and it's pretty significantly different than the creature which I encountered, but this kind of logic does very little to actually change my emotional reaction. I was told that the jelly fish are at their worst this time of year, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, or let it scare me off from going out again when the weather warms up. I don't suppose that it will, yet now that I know there are jelly fish in Asia (and really I should have known, they are on the menu at Mai's) it'll always be in the back of my mind.

After leaving the beach on our second trip to Seogwipo, we snuck up a set of cliff-side stair into the pool area of the Hyatt resort. We used their showers and restrooms while attentive Korean staff enthusiastically waited on us, assuming that our race somehow confirmed that we were in fact guests of the resort. We went for a swim in a pool area complete with waterfalls, palm trees, and a swim-up bar (closed for the off-season), then ventured off to try to celebrate Chuseok at a decent hotel buffet in the area.

What we in fact found was that hotel buffets in this tourist town are $60 a person, and that all other restaurants are closed on Chuseok, including, to our dismay, Hooters, which the men in the group had been holding on to as a last-resort option. We ended up eating dinner on Korean Thanksgiving in front of a convenience store, eating seaweed rice rolls and pre-made sandwiches. By the time we had settled on this course of action, we had been walking around for more than 45 minutes, so we all sat quietly, a bit dejected, drinking our cheap beer and wondering if a 60 dollar buffet was so unreasonable after all.

Jungmun Beach





Our misappropriated swimming pool at the Hyatt.


The Seafood Odyssey
Long ago, I ended an entry with the statement that I was looking forward to eating sannakji, a term which I did not elaborate on. I was able to try sannakji over the course of the Chuseok break, as it seems that expressing one's interest in the stranger foods of Korea to the Korean people is a great way to get taken out to try them. All I had to do was mention sannakji, and within a few hours we were eating it. But our first adventure began on the night of our first trip to Seogwipo with Alicia's co-teacher Tae-I.

We had been told earlier in the day that we would be going out for raw fish at the end of the trip, but as I was at the time in between waves of bar-sausage nausea, I hardly relished the thought. It was only right as the day was ending that I began to get excited over the prospect of real Korean hue, a dish distinctly different, and cheaper, than the Japanese sushi we had eaten here earlier in our stay. It is in essence a multi-course sashimi dinner. The restaurant we came to was quite modest, but it had the many varieties of fish we would be consuming swimming in tanks out front. We were brought course after course of raw fish, from small bits of salmon to full snappers, sliced and laid out on a platter. The importance of soju and garlic in these kind of meals is stressed repeatedly by the Koreans, as they believe both to kill bacteria potentially living in the fish. I thus needed to drink a few shots of grain alcohol despite my weak stomach.

Tae I had heard that I wanted to try sannakji, and asked if it was available. We found out that they instead had hanchi, which in a sense is very similar. So, what are these mystery dishes? Well, sannakji is a small live octopus, cut up and covered in sesame oil, and served while it is still moving. Hanchi is cuttlefish served in the same way, though without sesame oil. The tentacles are still very active, and will grab onto your tongue while you try to chew them. It can be quite dangerous to fail to chew them adequately, as they have been known to stick to the inside of a person's throat if they get a chance. I found them to both be quite tasty, though hanchi is both me and Alicia's favorite, and hanchi was much more of a fighter than sannakji. Unfortunately, the only video I have up right now is the sannakji, which is below:


When I get the hanchi video, which is truly my first time I tried live seafood, I will post it too. Over the break, we had a chance to attend a few other seafood restaurants, once more with Tae I and her family, and then again with a group of young Koreans that we met in the Led Zeppelin bar (we also went to Loveland with them). Below are a few images from the trips, the first being sora, a small conch which is twisted out of its shell with a toothpick, and has a dark green tail with a crumbly texture.


The sannakji is the purple platter, and the hanchi, of which there was much more provided, is the white one to the right.


If that was shocking, we were still in no way prepared for the sea life dance party that was haemultang. We encountered this dish after going to Loveland, which, for those who have not yet guessed it or looked it up, is a sex amusement park meant to break the ice for the island's many honeymooning couples. The Koreans we went with took us to a restaurant afterwards for "seafood soup", a boring name which belies the complexity of the dish. A number of live shellfish are dumped into a broth, including mussels and scallops, and on top of these a live, full grown octopus is flipped on his head, presumably so he can't escape, and living, wriggling abalone is placed on top. I have to say that watching the abalone squirm around after a night at Loveland brought about a few giggles around the table. Anyway, so the animals are essentially boiled to death, then chopped up and eaten. I must say, it's cruel but delicious.

Those are the abalone on top. No comment.



This is hardly the end of my food adventures, as for every new food I had the chance to try, I learned of at least two more. Pheasant shabu-shabu, malgogi hue, boshingtang, and many many more. There's even a smaller sannakji that is eaten whole, not chopped up. I'm looking forward to learning enough Korean to find these places on my own, or just start dropping the hint around the Koreans. That always seems to work.

Gimme Shelter

Before getting back to the adventures of Chuseok (something I am not now undertaking as I have yet to figure out how to download the videos and photos from my phone), I guess I should catch up to the present. The last few days have been eventful, though in less of a "fun Chuseok" kind of way.

Once again we experienced the drawbacks of the language barrier which are more or less ever-present in all aspects of daily life here. I was made aware of a rather troublesome situation last Thursday, as the month of September ended and the process of finalizing a housing contract began. We had been living for the last month on a tentative "trial lease", where we could determine if we wanted to stay in our apartment or find another place. Whether it was in fact satisfaction with our digs or had just been too lazy or helpless in this Korean world to go out and find new lodging, we were now getting ready to commit to living in our place. Thus the night before I went in to pay the rent, we began unpacking our suitcases, which we had not yet done, being unsure up to that point if we would stay.

It came therefore as a bit of a shock when, upon discussing the term of the lease, it was mentioned quite casually that we would have thre months more to live, and then leave the apartment just in case the owner's friend came back to town around that time, needing a place to stay. I was shocked and indignant, wondering who the hell this mystery fellow was who was so important that the mere possibility of his return put us out on the street.

Well, it seems like this was always the plan, and that suspiciously curtious "trial lease" was given to us with the assumption that we had knowledge of the shorter lease term. We of course did not, and though the parties involved claim to have mentioned it to us, I do not doubt that it was simply not translated for us but rather incorrectly taken to be understood by all. Regardless, we were now in a bad situation, and rather than trying to find a 9 or 10 month lease later down the road, we felt it would be best to look for a place to move to by the end of the month... which was within 3 days.

Now, it's needless to say that finding housing in Korea is difficult, and I realized this, but I had no idea just how difficult it would be to actually both find and see a place. After finding a potential apartment for us, Alicia's co-teacher Soo took us out a neighborhood about 10 minutes from our current location. There we waited on a street corner until the man who owned the property showed up, an hour late. The space was larger, with actual multiple rooms, but it was unfurnished, and there was a bit of a mold problem- the wallpaper had fallen off from around one of the windows.

We spent the night debating, fretting, and generally in anguish about making this eleventh hour decision. We never really settled on one side, as each clearly had its advantages and drawbacks. It soon became irrelevant, however; calling Soo the next day to ask some questions about the property, we were informed that the place had in fact already rented out, an hour after we had seen it the day before. The family which had been living in the apartment before it had become available had moved out the day before we saw it. It was on the market for around 18 hours, and it wasn't even a great place. This supremely discouraged us in our house hunting endeavor.

We learned around this time that we may have put ourselves through an unnecessary ordeal, as the building owner changed his mind and allowed us a 12 month lease. So, here we will remain, it seems. We finally got rid of the nice, but not very functional, coffee table, as well as an oriental lamp, a dirty rug, and a large plant which has survived incredibly well despite being ignored for a month or two. So, less crap means more space, which hopefully means less stress. Alicia and I haven't killed each other yet, and it looks like we've made it through the roughest, most cluttered part of our time here.