City Lights

This photo was taken in Bucheon right next to the subway station with the same name. One thing that doesn't take long to recognize about Korea is that it loves its signage. Bright lights line the streets at night and large, colorful signs visible during the day cover the sides of buildings.

Temp Work: Deajon

I did some temp work in Deajon a couple weeks ago. There is a new city being built and a new language school was in need of a teacher to help out until the contracted teachers arrived in Korea the next week. I will use another post to show some pictures of what a "new" city looks like. It's a head trip.

This first photo is of Sook and Heather in the teacher's office. Sook is the head Korean teacher and Heather is a staff teacher.

After our first day of work together, the director paid for our dinner. The food is called Sam Gyup Sal (3 Layer Meet). They cook it on the grill in front of you and you eat it as it becomes ready. You can see they give you a lot of side dishes to sample. The way you eat this meal is you hold a lettuce leaf and put some meat and other toppings on, then you eat it in one mouthful. There is a bottle of Soju on the table. That is very common to see in Korea. It is a kind of strong alcohol. You can also see the "trainer" chopsticks they brought out to me. I didn't ask for them and even laughed when I saw them. Koreans are always worried that foreigners don't like spicey food and can't use chopsticks. On this night and every night, I surprise them all.

Tony, the teacher's trainer who hired me for the job, came with me to do some training. After dinner, we went to a bar for some more soju. It snowed in Daejon that night.

In the morning, I got to taste my first Korean toast sandwich. This one was an egg, cheese, and ham style toast. They mix some small veggies into the egg before cooking. Also, they use a really sweet sauce on the toast. Tony said a lot of the street vendors who sell these use brown sugar mixed with ketchup for the sweet sauce. I am addicted after eating just one.

This dinner is called takgalbi. It's a bunch of cabbage, rice noodles, and spicey chicken cooked in front of you. This is eaten the same way sam gyup sal is with a lettuce leaf. This has been my favorite meal so far in Korea.

Ready to eat.

In Korea, you haven't eaten your "dinner" until you have eaten rice.

I'm going crazy trying to find a place near where I live that makes this meal.

"This is a joke."

I was in the Hongdae area of Seoul on a Friday night a few weeks ago after searching the area for English language schools to work at. I happend to be sitting on a park bench doing some 3 ball juggling for passerbys. It was already dark out, but enough street lights to make me visible.

Another foreigner was watching me for a minute, so I said hello. His name was Falko, and he was here from Germany presenting at a conference for computer programmers. He was hungry, so I showed him where some street vendors were selling food. After that, we agreed to grab a beer somewhere.

We walked around for a little while, looking for the right bar to drink at. Then, Falko pointed to a window and said "that looks like a bar I would drink at in Germany!" From the street, it didn't look like a bar to me, but I thought "what the hell?" So we walked around the other side of the building and discovered that it was indeed a bar.

This was the bar space in front of me. You can see that it is very dim in this bar. There are just a couple of ambient lights and several candles lit everywhere. The glass bowl in front of me has whole, dried fish in it mixed with nuts. The small bowl inside the bigger bowl has a spicey sauce used for dipping. I was hesitant to eat the fish at first, but I liked them by the end of the night. In retrospect, this change in attitude toward eating the dried fish had something to do with the amount of alcohol I was drinking.

This photo shows, although very blury, that the owner had about half liquor and half music discs on his wall. The entire time I was there, he played wonderful jazz music.

To my right was a Japanese man named Abey Chan. He was here on vacation. He spoke broken English, but we were able to have some decent exchanges of dialogue.

To my left was the German man, Falko. At one point in the evening, Abey Chan leaned over and said to me, "This is a joke." Sure enough, a Japanese man, a German man, and an American man were sitting in a Korean bar... add your own punch line.

I hardly leave home without my juggling equipment. This evening was no exception. The owner even got me to do a small performance for the bar. Considering the amount of alcohol in my bloodstream, I did really well. Afterwards, my two new friends posed with my stage balls.

This evening went really, really late. I wound up hanging out with the owner's brother and buddies in a hidden room on the side of the bar. Falko was with me for a little while, but he stumbled home a couple hours before I did. That meant I was the only English speaker in a room full of Koreans for a couple of hours. This evening was certainly worthy of the title, an Edventure.

Serendipitous Halloween Party

After leaving 3 Alley Pub, and thinking under the influence of alcohol, I decided it would be a good idea to drink some more at a different bar. After turning one corner I discovered a Canadian operated bar I had seen on the internet. So I entered it without delay.

To my pleasant surprise I found a Halloween party for foreigners. Even though I've not dressed up for Halloween since I was a kid, I still love it. I think next year, I will make sure I am dressed. So I was in the minority, without a costume at this party.

Spiderman

Kim Jung Il

Chicken Guy. Do you think I like this costume? I look like a kid meeting Santa Claus.

Korean women are beautiful.

The Dalai Lama meets Bin Laden.

Ask A Ninja

Good times.

3 Alley Pub

I grew tired of drinking Korean macro beers (read Budweiser-ish) and developed the motivation to look on BeerAdvocate.com for any listed microbrew pubs in Seoul. I learned of one called 3 Alley Pub. It is run by a large German man named Gunther. I was in luck because it was a western style bar, and not just a Korean bar claiming to be western style.

The view to my right while sitting at the bar... you can see some darts and pool tables at that end of the place. There were a lot of foreigners there. I'm not interested in sheltering myself from the Korean culture, but good beer and a nice conversation can support my edventures for periods of time.

The view to my left while sitting at the bar... you can see some old guys talking about their Korean girlfriends, retirement, and other things of interest for men in their shoes.

It was no accident that I sat down in front of the Guinness tap. I'm not a huge Guinness fan, there are lots of great stouts out there. In Korea, however, I'm a huge Guinness fan because there are few other stouts available.

Speaking of good conversation, I met this man named Ted. He has been all around the world, so I got to hear some great stories. He reminded me of two of my other friends: Boomer, who can talk about anything at length; and Clif Cordy, who is in South Africa windsurfing for the winter and when he is working is in the wilderness studying and tracking birds for research.

Every once and a while I meet someone who has "taken the road less travelled" and I am inspired by them. It was only a couple of years ago, through my own self-examination of my values that I identified this need I have for adventures. So, it's always nice to meet someone else who shares this need.

The night didn't end at 3 Alley Pub... more to come.

Korean Folk Music Festival

James and I went on a random trip to Olympic Park for some juggling and found the Korean Folk Music Festival was going on. In this photo, James is doing a 4 club trick called a triple-single. We did several short shows at this location.

This photo was taken in the main festival grounds where James and I did some entertaining amidst the other activities going on around us.

This very short video shows the Korean Folk Drummers who were warming up the crowd. The video is too short and only shows the most tame portion of their music. I really wish I had been able to video tape all of it. (For best viewing of these videos: click play so the screen says "buffering" and then click pause until the entire video is loaded - you can tell by watching the gray bar move from left to right.)

This video is also way too short to do the singer justice. This is a Female Korean Folk singer. I thought this was a lot of fun to listen to, even though I have no clue what she was saying. There is an old man playing a drum while sitting on the stage beside her. I really wish I could have had this whole thing on video. I'll have to make plans for that next year.

Lotte World

This is a photo from the air balloon ride at Lotte World. This amusement park is half indoor and half outdoor. It is located on top of a subway station, making it very easy to access. We only spent a little while indoors since it was so nice outside and we really came here to juggle for the large crowds.

This sequence of photos shows me trying to juggle while under arrest. No luck for me!

Here is James doing some 3 ball stuff. It's pretty common for Koreans to have video cameras on their cell phones like the woman in this photo.

I am doing 3 ball back crosses in this photo. You gotta love the expressions on the Koreans' faces.

Before leaving Lotte World, we had the rare opportunity to hear some Koreans yodelling during their Oktoberfest celebration.