My New Girlfriend

So, I would like to take a brief moment and introduce the rest of the world to my new girlfriend. Her name is Jung Mi and, yes, she is Korean. In fact, she is a native to Sangju. Unfortunately the only pictures I have of her were taken with my phone. I sent them to my email so I could post a photo of her with this post. However, the quality of the picture is slightly diminished. I will try my best and get a picture of her with better resolution. Here she is:

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve been doing pretty much the same things that you would expect to do in America. We’ve seen movies (Shutter Island and Clash of the Titans), gone out to dinner (T.G.I.F and Outback) and played video games (she’s pretty good at Cruisin’ World). Really, this is nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve even figured out how to put Korean subtitles on the movies I download.

I guess that reminds me to mention that she doesn’t speak English fluently (keyword: fluently). She speaks well, but it definitely helps that I’ve been learning Korean for the past 5 months. To be completely honest, I haven’t found a topic that we cannot yet discuss. That even includes astronomy (thank you Google Earth) and even politics/news. I expect eventually something may be too difficult to discuss, but I haven’t encountered it yet. I’ll let you all know what it is when it happens.

It also should be mentioned that she has a car. Meaning, I am now semi-mobile. Awesome.

The picture actually does have pretty poor resolution on it. Sorry.

Yellow Wind

So to be completely honest, I didn't even know that this existed a month ago. I had heard people talking about something called Yellow Wind and didn't have any idea what they were talking about. Apparently, sand from the Gobi Desert in China is picked up by the wind and carried over all of Eastern Asia.

Until recently, this wasn't considered an issue. However, because of the ever growing pollutants being released by major Chinese cities, the sand carries pollutants into the breathing air of Korea, Japan, Russia and in some cases The US. Thanks China.

A few days ago I started to feel a little sick. Nothing too serious, just a sore throat and a minor cough. As a person who rarely gets sick from anything, I was very curious as to what I was exposed to. Low and behold, the most common side effects from inhalation of the Yellow Wind are: sore throat and a minor cough. Again, thank you China.

The only positive thing that comes from this Yellow Wind, is the warning sign it issues before an outbreak. The sky turns a very odd color of yellow, like someone is holding a color filter in front of your face. It gives you enough time to either throw on a face mask or get indoors. I've heard that, under normal circumstances, the Yellow Wind only lasts through the spring in Korea and then the air current shifts giving a three season reprieve.

You have anything like this Johnny??

Update

Here is a quick update to let you all know that a real update will be coming soon. Sorry for the delay. If you can imagine it, I've been quite busy lately. Sangju just recently recycled their EPIK (public school) teachers, so a new rush of foreigners has been coming through the city. I've met a ton of new Westerners and, although, I haven't been on any new crazy and wild adventures, I'll bore you with the mundane experiences of my everyday life. I might even mention that there is a new lady that I am currently seeing. Maybe.

Zach Does Korea

Hanging out with Zach in Korea for the New Years was a really great time. We did so many things that it’s going to be difficult to not only recount the events in writing, but actually remember them myself. Luckily, I snapped over 160 pictures to help jog my memory. I would expect nothing less from Mrs. Woods, even on vacation.

I arrived at about midnight on Friday to a very impatient Zach. We quickly decided it was time to have a celebratory beer out at any random bar. Unfortunately, I was very unfamiliar with the area of Seoul that our hotel was located. It didn’t matter, as any bar would do. After a few rounds and a quick catch up conversation, we headed back to the hotel to sleep. Little did I know, if I had I stayed out any longer I would have died from exhaustion to following day.

Our wake-up calls over the weekend from Mrs. Woods occurred around 8:15am and we had 10 minutes to get ready. Awesome. Awesome to the max. We had found out about a city tour bus that would leave us at the hotspots for us to do a ‘self tour’. A new bus was scheduled to arrive in 25 minute intervals. Rarely did we spend more than 50 minutes at any location. I think maybe once out of the twelve hotspots we stayed for more than two bus intervals and even that was probably an accident. We spent both Saturday and Sunday experiencing nearly everything the tour had to offer. I think the only thing that we didn’t do was visit the agricultural museum. Sorry kimchi, nobody cares about cabbage.

The most impressive hotspot was easily owned by Seoul Tower. Not only is Seoul Tower close to 800 ft high, it is located on top of a mountain. I would guess that if you added the total elevation from bottom of the mountain to the top of the spire Seoul tower would be much larger than the Empire State Building or even Taipei 101. The pictures were absolutely amazing. Here are a few:

The distant mountains on the right are in North Korea

That is actually how far away we were from New York and D.C.

For dinner on Saturday, I took everyone out to a traditional Korean style meal. Although it was a little mundane for me, as I do this literally every day, I enjoyed teaching a different culture to everybody. Although Zach definitely had a leg up from the ‘off the plane’ Americans, he still had a few Chinese hitches in his step. Honestly though, he understood and was able to adapt almost instantly.

After dinner it was time to paint the town. Because Zach and I only had a few days to see each other we certainly weren’t going to spend it in the hotel. While living in Korea I’ve become an expert at burning the candle at both ends. So that’s just what we did. I took him to Hongdae, where most bars were closed for the holiday, but this didn’t stop us. We both shared our feelings toward the Asian way of life and what it has to offer; how long we planned on staying abroad and where else we wanted to travel; things the United States should adopt from Asia. One thing that we agreed upon easily was the rapid assimilation of the major Asian cities to the Western world. It seemed that soon (as in 15-20 years) a visit to Seoul would be too similar to visiting NYC.

Overall, it was a really awesome weekend. It was a real eye opener which reflected just exactly how much I have been affected by Korean culture. Which is a lot, by the way. I am really looking forward to taking a trip to go see Zach sometime over the summer. I think after nearly 4 months I am finally ready to start taking a tour of other Asian nations. To get a closer view as to what Zach and I toured over the weekend, take a look at the photo album. Like I said, I took over 170 pictures. I won’t put captions on all of them, but I’ll try and separate them into categories for easy viewing.

The Bird

Today, I saw a bird. This may seem like a totally ridiculous statement, which may even provoke you to ask the question, “Adam, what is a bird?” My response would include a description of a normal, average, run-of-the-mill, feathery, flying and standard bird. So why would I waste my time and write about such a perfectly normal sighting? Because it’s not a perfectly normal sighting. Because I’ve been in Korea for 3 months now and I’ve never seen or even heard a bird.

The effect the lack of birds has on the surrounding ecosystem is massive. I’ve heard stories, tales and near legends of the largest insects you could imagine (well, maybe a bit smaller) appearing during the summer months to take advantage of the predator-less area. Rick has told me that the mosquitoes are all the size of your index finger and, additionally, show no mercy for places to feed. He told me a story, which to sum up, sounded as if a small helicopter landed on his forehead during the middle of the night and implanted a golf ball sized lump underneath his skin. Foreheads don’t even have any meat on them.

To quote Bill Watterson (if you don’t know who he is, I don’t know you): “Good ol’ itchy island! Home of the nuclear mosquitoes!” Although this wasn’t in reference to Korea, I think the obvious message still rings true. Hopefully I see more birds outside as the weather continues to warm up. As for now, the 1 bird will probably die from obesity.

O's

Just spotted a rare shipment of Oreo O's at my local super market. I am going to buy them all, because I can't let a rarity like this escape me again. The first escape was a shipment of jumbo sized Hershey bars. I then quickly learned that, unlike America, not all things are available all the time. Let the feasting begin...

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10,000 Won Challenge

Yesterday, I was thinking to myself that, sometimes, 10,000 won (about $8.50) can get you a ridiculous amount of food; so, I decided to put it to the test. I left in the morning with only a single 10,000 won bill in my wallet, determined to get the most out of it. My purchases were as follows:

1.5 liter Gatorade ~ 1,500 won

1 large ramen noodle ~ 800 won

1 large pepperoni pizza ~ 6,000 won

1.5 liter Coca-Cola ~ 1,200 won

1 Duk-bok-e ~ 500 won

Duk-bok-e is a type of spicy rice dish, except it looks nothing like rice. Let me explain. The rice is mashed up and rolled into a cylinder then boiled in water. It is seamlessly held together so it looks as if it was grown as an extremely large rice kernel. Here is an example of what one piece looks like:

Honestly, I was hungry for pizza yesterday, which means that if I wanted to really stretch the 10,000 I could have opted for something cheaper, larger and still more filling. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how some restaurants make their money.