The Subway: A love/hate relationship...

...it's a part of my daily existence. It takes me to work M-F. It gets me anywhere in Seoul for a dollar or two. It's pretty amazing to think about the massive undertaking that went into building it. Some of the coolest and strangest things I've seen in Korea have been on the subway.

The other day I got on and something was different. I couldn't quite place my finger on it at first. Same people sleeping, heads tilted back, nose hair on full display. Same grandma's texting while businessmen watched last night's baseball game on their phones. Then I realized it was the sweet sound of music caressing my eardrums that had completely changed the atmosphere. It was the classical gospel hymn, 'Amazing Grace'

I looked around. Where was it coming from? Then I saw him: a little old blind man carrying a speaker and basket of change, begging for alms. Genius. 'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but not am found, was blind but now I see.'Beautiful synchronisity. How could I resist giving him 1000 won not (about a dollar)? I couldn't.

So the amusement and convenience factor are what I love about the subway. The hate part? It's really not that fast. At least 45 minutes to an hour to get into Seoul, generally standing up the whole time. People pushing and shoving to get on and off. The fact that it stops running at 11:30pm, 11pm on the weekends. Wanna go party in Seoul Saturday night? Be prepared to stay up till 5:30am when it starts running again, or be lame and go home at 10:30. I'd like to be going into Seoul more on the weekends to explore, but the thought of standing on a crowded subway for an hour or more honestly deters me. Best get over it though, too much to do and see here to let that deter me.

Supposedly the buses are actually much quicker to get into Seoul, the problem is that there is no English website that has the routes and times, while the subway is easily navigated through the English signs in the terminals and an English language website.

On the whole however, amusement and cheap transportation wins out and I love the subway more than hate it.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit it was close however.

Medical Update

Went to the Dr. again today to have him look at my ear. While the infection isn't totally gone it feels much much better and the eardrops and medication are working well. He told me to come back again Monday if it's not all better.

Instead of it being 3500 won.......it was 2500, or about $2. Oh, and this time there was no wait and the receptionist even remembered my name.

This place just keeps getting better and better.

I hate getting sick, but Korea is the place to do it

I am embarrassed to be so ignorant when it comes to the national health care debate. Private vs. Public vs. ? It's all Greek to me. I don't know the difference and I don't have the solution. All I know is...

...Yesterday my ear started hurting and I knew it was an ear infection. I went to the doctor today to get it taken care of. Nice modern office, very clean. Only had to wait about 10 minutes. The doctor spoke good enough English that I felt comfortable as he told me why he was sticking tubes and instruments in my ears. He explained the medication he was prescribing and then the nurse gave me some sort of warm light treatment. Felt great.

Went to pay.

3500 won please ($3)

Um, don't you mean 35,000?

No, 3500. Cheap cheap.

I go to the pharmacy directly across the hall. 2 minute wait. Given ear drops and 3 days of medication and told when to take it. 3700 won. This time it was written down so I know it was right.

Wow. For just over $6, or the same price as a fast food value meal, I visited a first class medical facility, was seen promptly and given medication. I'm guessing that in the States, seeing as I don't have health insurance there, that would have cost me at least a couple hundred dollars plus fifty or so for medication. Even if I had health insurance in the US the co-pay would have been fifty bucks or so.

I don't know how the medical system works over here, all I know is we should send some of our people over here to find out. I'll let you know in a couple of days how the medication worked. But I have great confidence that the infection will soon be gone and I'll be right as rain once again.

Interesting things I've seen lately...

...a 70 year old Korean man reading "Bridget Jones' Diary" on the subway. A 10 year old boy wearing a "Same shit, different day" sweatshirt at school. A book vending machine. Dead frogs and what looked to be fermented squirrels for sale at a country market. Photographs were forbidden. The terrible smell was not.

A middle aged man asleep at the subway stop, jacket folded neatly under his head, shoes stashed sensibly at his feet. He wasn't dozing while waiting for the train, he was straight up sleeping on the subway platform. Public sleeping is common here. Please see this website http://blackoutkorea.blogspot.com/

Remember a few years back when the hip thing in the states was to wear clothes with Chinese and Japanese writing on them? All the wanna-be gangsters back home in Santa Fe still do it. As far as you know they say offensive things about their wearers such as, "this guy's an asshole, he has no idea what this says!" Well it's the same here only the t-shirts are in English so I know for sure they don't make any sense.

Here's the formula for a successful Korean t-shirt: take a noun, a verb, an adjective and a couple of prepositions, mix together in a hat, dump on the table, make a shirt! "Freedom? High country best is love." Why not?

Bottled beer is cheaper than canned. As an American all you have to do is walk up to a pretty girl and say, "you're beautiful" and she's all over you. Want to go farther than that? Better talk to mom.

Interesting country.

Something useful and delicious...

I'm hoping this blog will be something useful to the people who choose to read it, not just me spouting soliloquies and babble. So here's something useful!

Bananas go bad. Here in Korea, they go bad really, really quickly for some reason. It's a waste of money and resources, and it's really frustrating; the banana looks so yellow and perfect in the morning, you're going to come home from work and snack on it. You look forward to it all day. You get home, eager with anticipation for that delicious infusion of potassium. And there it is, all black and nasty looking. Ewwww...

Well don't despair and DON'T throw it away!

Peel the sucker, cut it into bite sized pieces and place in a single layer in a good quality Tupperware container. Place in the freezer and allow to freeze solidly, about 12 to 24 hours. When you taste the frozen banana morsel it will be sweet and delicious, almost like banana ice cream! I don't know why, but the freezing kills all the slimy, yucky taste of over-ripe bananas and turns it into something sweet and delicious instead. They're also great for using in smoothies. These treats will keep well in your freezer for about 2 months.

Enjoy!

Constantly amused....

....by this place, Korea. I love ajuma's, little old ladies in technicolor hiking outfits pushing everyone out of the way, their ubiquitous perms never bouncing when they should. I love the, yeah, the lights green but I'll just wait until it's red and then go, taxi drivers, and their close relative the I really shouldn't pass this person around a blind curve but what the hell I lived through the war so eff it I'm going and damn the torpedoes, old men driving.

I love the food. Sitting on a warm floor, my hips screaming in agony from repeated and sustained attempts at crossing my legs, as pork belly and kimchi sizzle on the grill, a hundred tiny dishes surrounding my huge bottle of beer, unintelligible tongues, soju and smiles enveloping me. I love the wait, you like kimchi and can use chopsticks very well? I think you are half Korean! stares and expressions of my new Korean friends (they're easily impressed). I love that there's no such thing as an empty cup in Korea, and it's bad luck to pour a drink for yourself, someone else has to do it.

I love the women. Beautiful, petite, dashing to and fro, pushing and elbowing me on the subway, wearing high heels everywhere, at work, in the home, shopping, hiking. Yes, high heeled hiking. Giggling easily at my raised eyebrow.

I love peeking over the shoulder of someone on the subway watching TV on their cellphone only to find they're watching 30 Rock or CSI. I love people sleeping on the subway, heads tilted back, peering up their nose, knowing they are going to work for 14 hours that day, then will drink soju till 2 am, then getting up at 6 and doing it all over again. I love old men glaring at me suspiciously, clearing their throat to hawk one only not to, and knowing it's an insult only they won't look me in the eye.

I love jimjilbang, the communal bathhouses. Walking around naked unashamed of the nothingness between their legs, tiny children to old men, rich and poor, all there together, just soaking out the stress of their bow really deep to this person, kind of deep to this person, never to this person unless no one else is watching, and always make the boss look good no matter what, study till 3 am, get up at 6, it's all about what university you attend and who you marry, days. Then we put on matching pajamas and go upstairs to doze off in front of the big screen or in the massaging chair while practicing the Korean art of doing nothing we've refined because if we're not doing nothing we're doing something so in effect by doing nothing we feel we're still accomplishing something.

I love the kids I teach, so out of control and excited, only to fall back into line at the slightest promise of a tiny sticker or candy. Stickers and candy? You've got yourself a friend for life. Or at least until the bell rings. I love teaching 40 kids how to say, where is the bathroom? in 40 minutes when some are fluent in English and are obscenely bored, some can't say hello and are utterly confused, and most just stare at me blankly, not willing to reveal where their skill lies. I love hearing, E.J. teacher! and Hello! while a tiny Korean child barely rising to my legs waves maniacally, a thousand times a day, literally, as I walk through the halls. It's kind of like being a rock star, only it's really not.

I love that, sight unseen, this amazing country paid for me to come here, puts me up in a nice apartment, pays me a reasonable salary of which I'm able to save a large amount, and even gives me health care and tons of time off to explore all parts of Asia, all so I can practice a career that I have zero experience in. God Bless Korea.

And now for something completely different....

I just realized that my first few posts haven't really told you much about where I live and what my life is like in Korea. Instead I've mused and told silly stories. Here goes...

I live in Anyang, South Korea. It is basically a sleepy little suburb of Seoul. A sleepy little suburb with about a million people and non-stop motion. In Anyang, I live in Byeomgye (pronounced bum-gay. It's ok, you can laugh. Hell, at least chuckle a little) which is great! Just around the corner from my apartment is a large plaza with tons of restaurants, bars, neon lights and lord knows what else. I think there are hookers and horse meat restaurants as well, but I haven't sought those out. I can find pretty much everything I need within a few hundred yards. Lots of people come from the surrounding area to Byeomgye to shop, eat, drink and party the night away, so I feel very blessed to live right here.

My apartment is nice. It's a decent sized studio, modern and well appointed to my taste. My favorite part is the high ceilings, about 13 feet by my calculations. Please see the pictures. I live in an office-tel, which is an apartment building with offices in it. For example, there's a pho (pronounced fu, like fudge. It's a Vietnamese soup) restaurant in my building, along with administrative offices for gyms and bookstores and such.

I work at Chyongge Elementary School in Gwachon, a town about 15 minutes by subway from Byeomgye. Apparently Gwachon is one of the two wealthiest areas of Korea, the other being Gangham in Seoul, and when I tell Koreans I work there they're very impressed. I'm kind of a big deal. A lot of the kids in my classes come from wealthy families and many have lived in America and other countries. I even have kids whose parents are ambassadors. As a result of this, my kids are a bit better behaved and have a higher level of English than kids in most other schools. Which makes me feel sorry for all the other teachers here; they're still terrors! But I still love them so.

I teach 3rd, 4th and 5th grade English. I teach 24, 40 minute classes plus two, two hour advanced classes each week. I like it. The kids are fun, the teaching usually pretty easy, and the school lunches delicious! The most difficult part is that in each class I have 35-40 kids with English proficiencies ranging from near fluent to can't say hello. I have to get the lower level students up to par while at the same time challenging and keeping the attention of the high level students. It's challenging and always amusing. Some classes go great, some not so much. All I know is that I give each class my all and let the chips fall where they may.

I work M-F 8:30 to 4:30. While most days I'm finished with class by noon or one, all public school teachers are required to stay till 4:30. It's fine by me though. I always have lesson plans and organizing to do. Typically I get home by five, have a snack and either stay home and read or go exploring and taking pics.

On the weekends I'll go for a hike, go out with friends, go grocery shopping and do some cooking for the week, and head into Seoul to go exploring. It's a pretty mellow and good life. I feel very blessed to be here, especially with what's going on with the economy, to have this country take me in, and sight unseen give me a place to live, pay me well, let me try a new career I have no experience in, and even give me great health care, it's just amazing. They pay for your flight over, give you an apartment rent-free, and pay you enough that you can eat, drink and explore to your heart's content and still be able to put $1000+ in the bank every month. Again, I just feel very blessed.

I am starting to take bunches of pictures, and soon I will be able to post them all here and on my Flickr site, but for the time being I'm just teasing ya and holding back the good stuff until I feel more comfortable with my photo editing software.

So that's my life here so far. Nothing to crazy so far, just a normal life, only it's crazy because I'm in Asia.

Pictures

Here are some pics I wanted to post earlier with the posts they concerned but my computer wasn't co-operating.








There's me in front of one of Jeju's many waterfalls.

Sitting down to dinner with more side dishes than people, it's how they roll and I love it! Just glad I don't have to cook it.

A magical beach on Jeju.

And me with Jang Sun-Woo, or the David Lynch of Korea as I like to call him.

Please check out www.flickr.com/photos/ejcallanan/ for more pictures. More are coming, I'm just having problems learning my photo editing software. Please check again at a later date.

Jeju and the David Lynch of Korea

A couple of weeks ago was Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving. I had 5 days off and headed to Jeju, a large island south of Korea known as 'the Hawaii of Korea'. My co-teacher and her husband are from there and I was invited to stay at her mothers house. She showed amazing hospitality and I had a great time. Jeju was beautiful, filled with volcanic rock, white sand beaches, palm trees and some very colorful characters.

One of the days I decided to take a walk from the beach I was at to a place with a stone Buddha high in a cave. It was a 5 or 6 mile walk but hey, I didn't have anything better to do and it was along the sea on a clear and gorgeous day. About 3/4 of the way there I started getting very tired and hungry and began thinking this wasn't such a hot idea.

Right then I spotted a sign for the 'Mokgoli Cafe'. Interesting. It was the absolute middle of nowhere, but there appeared to be a small village about 100 yards inland to my right and I started walking. I approach the cafe with no one in sight. "Anyang ha seyo? (Hello?)" I called out. A very friendly and smiling man came around the corner, apparently the cafe's proprietor. I asked him what he was serving for lunch to which he replied, "Spaghetti". I wanted Korean food and asked him if there was a place in town that served traditional food. He happily directed me in to town to another restaurant, which, this being the day before Chuseok, was closed. There was a bus however, which from what I could tell would take me to my Buddha in the cave destination, and so I sat down next to a weathered old woman and waited. And waited. And waited. When she got up and walked away, I decided I might need to just start walking again, but in the meantime I was still hungry and to heck with it, I was getting some spaghetti.

So I walked back to the cafe and entered. Wow. Really nice little place, very hiply styled in a modern Asian sort of way. I ordered the spaghetti and after the man placed the order with the chef, also his wife. We started talking. Now, we're in the middle of nowhere, I'm the only customer in this tiny cafe, and so I ask the man if he is also a farmer or what else he does besides run this little cafe. He chuckles. No, I'm not a farmer he says. Turns out he was a film director who had gotten tired of show business and moved to Jeju to run a cafe and study Buddhism. He pulls a book off the shelf, written in English, about his life and career. As I flip through it, I realize this guy must be some kind of a big deal in the independent film scene in Korea. I have a Korean friend who is a film student and he has confirmed to me that yes, this man, Jang Sun-woo, is kind of a big deal.

At this point my mind is blown. Here I am, middle of nowhere on a subtropical island in Korea, stupidly trying to walk way further than I should have, and I stumble into having lunch with the David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino of Korea. Then the pasta comes out. Now here in modern Korea they've grown to love pasta, pizza and all sorts of food from all over the world. It usually however, is Korean-ized, that is to say the pizza has sweet potatoes for a topping and some strange mustard sauce instead of tomato. So I'm not expecting much from my middle of nowhere spaghetti, probably some overcooked noodles covered in ketchup for God's sake.

Please keep in mind that I am a cook. I lived in Italy. I know good food and I know good pasta. And against all odds this was one of the top 3 pasta dishes I've had in my entire life. Perfectly al dente noodles in a delicious creamy tomato and garlic sauce. After one bite my jaw hit the floor. Again, here is the scene: middle of nowhere subtropical island Korea shouldn't even be taking this walk stumble upon this tiny cafe owned and operated by the Korean David Lynch who retired from stardom to move to an island to study Buddhism eating the best spaghetti of my life. Just crazy. Oh and it turns out he has a friend who lives in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a painter.

I milk my time with this incredible man by ordering another beer. Finally it's time to move on and they call me a cab which whisks me to my waiting Buddha in perfect time to pray, reflect, and then watch the sunset over the ocean.

It's amazing how taking the path unknown and less traveled can result in extraordinary things, and how our perceptions often distort the reality of a thing.

Being clever is difficult...

I'd like this blog to be clever. I'd like it to a place where, if anyone actually reads it, they are amused, entertained and against all odds, informed. Let's be realistic however. I'm no genius. I'm not as amusing and clever as I would like to think I am. So if you're reading this, gosh, I kind of feel bad for you. But thanks for coming out anyway!

Korea. Hmmmmm..........how do you describe this place? You don't. I'm enjoying myself, just know that. I like teaching. It's one of the funnest and easiest jobs I've ever had. It's kind of like Korea itself: difficult and easy at the same time. I have 40 minutes in each class to teach 40 prepubescent children how to say, "Is this your cap?" or some other such basic phrase. Not as easy as it sounds. Not when some of the kids speak English very well and some of them can't even say hello. Not when they are more preoccupied with hitting each other and screaming. It's all about the games you play with them as teaching tools, and each lesson planning session I undertake basically revolves around the question, "how do I trick them into learning English this time?" Regardless however, I am getting better as a teacher, and for this I am very grateful.

A dear friend of mine suggested that I blog at least once a week with the strangest thing I've seen. I am disappointed to say that I haven't seen that many strange things. Maybe it was the sea slugs that I ate. Or the old legless man who wheels himself around my neighborhood on a dolly with a radio playing and collecting alms. It could be when some kids were fighting this week at school and the vice-principal got some boxing gloves and make them duke it out in front of their homeroom class. It could be the English names kids in my classes give themselves: Optimus Prime, Bart Simpson, Mr. Hot Dog, and Hitler. Yes, Hitler. We had a little chat about that one. He's Brian now.

Here's a good school story: As I mention above, the kids give themselves English names because their Korean names are just ridiculous to try to pronounce. Quite courteous of them I say. Some of them just shorten their Korean names, for example, Kim Chung ham becomes Chung. Now, Korean pronunciation is very subtle. I have two kids whose English names were Jung and Chung. Seems simple right? Let's see how that unfolded;

"Jung, please sit down."
"Teacha, my name Jung, not Jung."
"Isn't that what I said?"
"No teacha, you say Jung! My name Jung!"
"OK, very sorry, Jung please sit down and be quiet."
"Teacha, name not Jung. Name is Jung!"
"Yeah, that's what I said. Jung sit down and be quiet."
"No! Name is Jung, not Jung!"

Oi. This is difficult. And of course he sits next to Chung, with whom I had the same name trouble. So I say to them;

"Alright fellas. I'm very sorry I can't get the pronunciation of your names right. I feel terrible. However we need to learn English, not argue about this, so you have until the end of class to come up with new English names or I'm going to give them to you myself."
"Teacha give name! Teacha give name!"

I give each a long, studious look, deciding...

"OK, Jung you're Tito and Chung you're Jermaine."

Yep.

They love the names. I told them the next day that they were the names of Michael Jackson's brothers and now they love them even more (Koreans love Michael Jackson). So now I have Tito and Jermaine in my class. The sit next to each other. I get to see them 5 times a week. I love this. Especially when exchanges like this happen;

I'm sitting there lesson planning, frustrated. Jermaine walks in,

"Teacha, Tito sick. Tito won't be in class today."
"Thanks Jermaine. I really appreciate you telling me. I would have worried about Tito."
"It's OK teacha. Teacha?"
"Yes?"
"I like being Jermaine!"

A large smile finds it way back to my face.
Ahhhh, teaching in Korea.

Well now that my first two posts are novels, ensuring most won't return for more, let's post a link to some pictures! These are just a small sample of my work here in Korea so far. Most of them are my best images, some of them are in there simply to give you a diverse cross section of what this country feels like. That is what I long to master: how to photograph not what a place looks like, but what it feels like.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ejcallanan/show/

Basically, I come from a family of photographers. My mom is an amazing wedding and portrait photographer. My dad runs one of the top photography schools in the world.

Please check out their websites:

www.cmcphoto.com
www.santafeworkshops.com

I grew up around photographers. As a child I spent time with the best and most renown photographers alive, their images subconsciously soaking into my brain. As a result I'm very blessed to have a decent eye for making a good picture. I probably should have just gone into the family business after high school instead of going to college. Oh well. Now, at the age of 30 I find myself very drawn to the medium and have begun pushing myself to make good pictures. I'm just a baby in the long process of mastering the craft and I hope you enjoy seeing me progress as a photographer.

Finally, Korea!

After 5 months of planning, waiting and anxious suspense, I have arrived in South Korea, also known as the Land of the Morning Calm.

First of all, thanks for visiting my blog. I will do my best to make it entertaining and informative, but please, give me a little leeway for a first time blogger. Please note that as of right now all romanized spellings of Korean words and names are extremely approximate. This first post may be a bit long, and feel free to skip ahead to the lowdown and dirty, but first a little background...

Why did I come to Korea? I had been working as a cook in San Diego California. I loved San Diego. I just didn't like cooking anymore. It has been a love of mine since I was a small child. One of my first memories is being about 4 years old, standing on a chair in front of the stove making scrambled eggs. After years of working on and off as a cook however, my love of cooking had waned, and I didn't want the life of an executive chef with the long hours away from friends and family, the stress and the being tied to a restaurant. With the career path of a cook being at least 5 years to become a decent executive chef, it made no sense to continue working in a stressful job that paid terribly, when I didn't want to become a chef anyway.

So instead of just complaining about it, which I did anyway, I began to look for something else, my next adventure. Every night for about 2 months, I would come home from work and scour the internet, trying to decide what to do with my life. No pressure though. And then one night, there it was: Come to Korea and teach English! Save lots of money, travel, experience a different culture. No certification or experience required, just a bachelors degree in any discipline.

Having explored teaching ESL (English as a second language) a few years back but not really being motivated enough to get a certification, and thinking that teaching might be a good career for me, and totally dissatisfied with my life as a cook, I applied immediately. With our economy in the tank, and few other options, Korea sounded just right. If I did it right I'd be able to save around $15,000 over the course of the year, find out if teaching was a viable career option for me, and still be able to live a good lifestyle and travel all over Korea and the rest of Asia while I was at it. Too good to be true? No, just another amazing blessing in this charmed life of mine.

To make a long story short, after countless hours of researching different recruiters, areas of Korea to live in, teaching in public school vs. a private language academy (hagwon), and learning about Korean culture and customs, I landed a position at a public elementary school in Gwacheon, a city just south of Seoul. I wouldn't start until September 1st so I packed my bags, said goodbye to my amazing group of friends in San Diego (I miss and love you all!) and headed home to Santa Fe New Mexico for the summer to spend time with my family. It was a great summer. Santa Fe is an incredible place and I fell in love with it all over again. That however, is another subject for another post.

The details: I live in Anyang, a satellite city of Seoul about 20 minutes south of the city, but a city in and of itself. I teach in Gwacheon, just 4 subway stops north. Most teachers here live within walking distance of their schools, but Gwacheon is pretty much just government buildings with little in the way of culture or things to do, so I'm quite pleased with the arrangement of living in Anyang and taking the subway to work each morning. And with Gwacheon being host to much of the government, most of my kids come from upper-middle class to upper class families and as a result are a bit better behaved with a higher level of English than students in most other schools.

As of tomorrow night I'll have been in Korea for 2 weeks and I've already seen and done so much. My first weekend I went to Busan, a city in the south of the country known as "the San Diego of South Korea." I mean, how could I resist? I really wanted to go surfing and Busan supposedly had some breaks.

I traveled there with David, the other American teacher at my school, his girlfriend Andrei and his friend Dan, who was visiting from Seattle for a couple weeks. We had an amazing time. We left Friday right after school let out and took the KTX (bullet train) down to Busan. We shacked up in a love motel in downtown Busan. While their purpose is basically for what it sounds like, love motels aren't dirty or seedy like you'd think, but are generally sparkling clean and quite nice for the price, around 30,000 or about $28 for the night. Ours even had a collection of free porn, Asian themed obviously and complementary condoms in the rooms. In the stairwell there was a sex toy vending machine. Nice. You stay classy Korea!

The next morning Dan and I found a bakery, grabbed some grub for the group, and off we went to Haeundae, the big famous beach in Busan, and we found a new motel a block from the beach. There was a surf competition going on, but absolutely zero swell and it was hilarious watching 40 guys just sitting out in the water, pretending something was going to happen. Haeundae was really packed and touristy though so we headed to a smaller, more local beach a bit north, Samjeong. We swam, napped on the beach and generally just had fun in the sun, before heading back to the hotel to get ready for our big night out.

Andrei wasn't feeling well and stayed in, so us boys went to the hip university area in Busan for some rowdy adventure. David soon went home early to be with Andrei, but Dan and I stayed. We somehow ended up meeting these two Korean guys who offered to take us out on the town with them, their treat. Korean hospitality is legendary, and this is very common.

After them taking us to a couple western bars and us explaining we didn't want to do that, after all why come half-way around the world to hang out with the same douchebags you can find anywhere in the States, they took us to a very high-class norea-bang. Norea-bang is the Korean version of karaoke, but instead of being in a large room in front of strangers you get a private room just for you and your friends.

So we're sitting there in the room, just looking at each other and communicating as best we can, which wasn't very good. I'm thinking, "so are we gonna do some singing or what?" An attendant comes in with a huge tray loaded with a bottle of scotch, beers, ice buckets and mixers. Uh oh. One of the Korean men, he wanted us to call him "Older Brother" puts two ice cubes in each glass, a shot or so of scotch and then pops a beer. He shakes it up and sprays the beer into the glasses. Interesting. Beer and scotch. Actually not that bad, though I don't think I'll be ordering it anytime soon.

Then we just sit there, drinking and looking at each other some more. I'm still thinking, "so now are we gonna do some singing or what?" Then Older Brother and his friend, Henry, start saying something about girls. Crap. Look fellas, I appreciate the hospitality, but I don't want a prostitute. Now, I'm not into that kind of thing, and Dan has a fiance back home, but we don't want to insult the guys so we say, "sure, girls" figuring we can just run out of there if it gets too lewd. A couple minutes later 4 Korean women come in and stand in a line. They're all pretty good looking, maybe 20-25 years old. Older Brother turns to me and says, "you pick." Don't remember the last time I was that nervous. I say, "but they're all so beautiful" so as to buy myself some time. The girls all giggle. Finally I point to the tallest and prettiest one of the bunch. Then Dan chooses his and Older Brother and Henry get the last two by default.

It turned out to be very innocent. The women were just there for companionship, pouring us drinks and standing next to us while we sang. For two hours many songs were sung by us all, many scotches and beers drunk, much laughter. It's all a bit hazy, but at one point there was a dance-off, Henry kept saying, "you touch your girl. You touch your girl!" the girls sang a lot, and Older Brother sang many impassioned songs. Koreans take their norea-bang very seriously. Dan and I also dueted Under the Sea from the Little Mermaid, rocking it out and getting 100% The Koreans were amazed!

Then, all of a sudden time was up and the girls said "bye-bye" and left. Henry and Older Brother paid the bill, which I'm sure was hundreds of dollars, norea-bang is cheap but this was a really classy place. By this time it was very late, I have no idea how, just that the streets were deserted and people stay out late partying in Korea, and we went our separate ways, but not before we promised to email Henry and Older Brother pictures from the night.

The next day, against all odds, I woke up feeling pretty good, aided by a swim in the ocean. We went for a hike, the taxi got lost on the way there, we couldn't find the temple in the woods we were looking for, we had to decline many invitations to picnic with hikers in the woods because of a time constraint, and hopped on the slow train back to Seoul, opted for because of the desire to see the countryside. All in all it was a great trip and amazing first weekend in Korea. I feel very blessed to have met Henry and Older Brother and experience some real Korean culture so soon.

Having been here two weeks I definitely have more to share, but this post is running long already so I'll just catch up over the next week and then hopefully up to date.