Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Our 100th Post: "Clip Show"

You guys are in for a real treat, because this is our (drumroll, please...) 100th post! Whoopie!! I'm really glad that we've kept posting to this blog, because my brain is like mush and it'll be great to look back on someday. We've been in Korea for nearly 6 months now- hard to believe- and we've posted about anything and everything. But today, to honor the occassion of the 100th post we've decided to post all the photos you never got to see! It's kind of like watching a rerun, but with brand new footage. Enjoy :)



Having never lived in a city before, I spent the first week or so just taking photos of the skyscrapers. I like the perspective on this one, taken in Suyu just after we arrived- on our first outing alone.


A fruit vendor asleep on the job in Myeongdong. Koreans often put in 12 hours+ at work everyday, so you can't really blame the guy for snoozing- though it's probably not helping business.


A legless man begging for change in the middle of the market. The box he's pushing around plays music and makes it less likely that he'll be stepped on. There's a lot of these guys, and the first time I saw one it was pretty shocking.

Octopus on sale at Homever in Suyu- only 2580/each. You can have octopus cooked in many ways in korea, but the most interesting I've seen is the skewered octopus- 4 or 5 whole baby octopuses on a skewer. For refined tastes.

The shopping area called Dongdaemun market was built around this historic gate. It makes shopping for $10 shoes into a cultural experience.


The 63 building is the tallest in Korea, and isn't very hard to find even for lost tourists like us. It's mainly full of offices, but there was a Sea World, IMAX and skydeck inside. Nice view of the city!


Mel and I were made to pose with these bright dogs at the pet expo we visited. Came for the cats, stayed for the dogs.


Mel poses with some traditional Korean clothing at the National Museum.


When Mel and I visited Suwon in October, we didn't know where our school would be built. We took a lot of pictures, including this building, the old KBS TV building. It's now the English Village after getting a bad green paint job the following month.


Happy to have survived the hike up Buckhansan Mountain.


Suyu station was surrounded by yummy food vendors, and Mel and I often stopped for some spicy chicken on a stick. It was a good snack for only a dollar. This picture was taken on our last night in Suyu, when we ceremoniously devoured our beloved chicken for the last time.


Our apartment building in Suwon. There's a lovely clothing store, "Ruby", and a convenience store on the ground floor. We are conveniently located beside two parking lots and a fish restaraunt.


We were in Suwon for a month before our school had it's first students because construction was delayed. I snapped this footage of our diligant construction workers asleep in the grass a few weeks before we opened. You can see the bad green paint job in the background.


Friendly faces at Emma's going away party in Hongdae.


Interesting brick formations on a building inside Hwaseong Fortress.

On Mondays the new students at our school are given passports and they go through mock 'immigration' desks. That's Mel asking such difficult questions as "what is your favorite color" and "where are you from".


Random funny pig costume in Myeongdong.



Korean gas stations have long hoses. Just an observation, not that either of us would ever dare to drive around here.


If you're on the subway long enough, chances are someone will stop by your car to try and sell you something. It's great. A guy will wheel in a basket of flashlights and command the attention of the passengers, talking at great length. I can only imagine what he's saying, but it works- lots of people fork out their money. I think this is technically illegal, but there is no security on the subway and the vendors are super common. The guy in the above picture would like to sell you some CDs.


Melodie in action in Airplane class. The best part about the class is that the airplane crashes at the end.


Cool straw covered tree at a park near our apartment.


A statue at the same park. There must have been a sale on statues, because there's awesome statues on every street corner in Korea. I'm going to make a post about their overabundance one of these days, so look out for that.


Some of the washrooms in Korea are unisex, this is common especially in bars. Look- Mel, Dayna and I went to the bathroom at the same time.


Rock stars at the norebang in Hongdae.

See- wasn't this post awesome? You absolutely needed to see pictures like this. It's a booby pillow! aha aha ha aha aha ha a
ha ah booby
ah ha
ah ...ahem
sorry. We'll return to your regularly scheduled progamming shortly.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Osan and Seoul Grand Park Zoo


Since we had a 3 day weekend last week we only have Sunday off this week, so we tried to squeeze two days worth of fun into 24 hours. Saturday night after work, and after cleaning our filthy apartment, we went to Osan with Chris, Aaron and Sarah. Osan is closer than I realized-only 6 stops south by subway- and it's where US air force base is located. Because of this, there were scores of Americans with crew cuts wandering the slightly-seedy streets. We went to 2 different bars, played some darts, ate some wings, and watched a competetive game of beer pong, complete with ball-flashing. It was a fun night. Maybe I've been away too long but it's really weird to go into a bar and hear people speaking english everywhere. It makes for much better evesdropping than at the korean bars!

Fuzzy pic of the entrance gate to the Air Force base. The streets all around are lined with bars, even though drinking is so unpopular with the military.

There was even a Century 21 across from the bar we were at, just in case you need to buy some land in Korea after a night of soju and beers. I have a feeling these guys aren't associated with the Century 21 company at home, but may be in cahoots with the guy who runs the fake Tim Hortons in Suwon.



This afternoon we decided to go to Seoul Grand Park Zoo. The zoo is also pretty close- 11 stops north on the subway, and conveniently located on a mountain. Though the entrance fee to the zoo was only 1,500 won ($1.50) the chair lift up the mountain was 9,000 and it took 45 minutes!! The ride on the chair lift was scenic, with Seoul Land (an amusement park) to the left, and an arial view of the whole zoo to the right. This area will look even nicer in the summer when the grass is green, the trees look alive and their huge rose garden in bloom. It was still a nice 10 degree day, definately warmer than any February day I'd experienced at home!


This guy reminded us of our dear Rufus, being lazy in New Brunswick. Mehh!

I like this guy; he looks like he's got something up his sleeve.

You get the idea.

Korean deer, for mom and dad. Play nice!

This friendly elephant walked right up to us as soon as we got to him.


There was a really nice botanical garden on site as well. All of the cactuses got me a little sentimental about my precious cactus, Pokey though. Sidenote: the botanical garden was especially nice because it smelled a lot better than most of the zoo!

By the time we'd gotten to the giraffes they'd been brought inside for the night. I don't know how I feel about keeping half a dozen giraffes in a room the size of my apartment, but it was cool to see them so close up, even if it was through glass.


My favorite fowl, the ostrich was also represented! Now, I thought I knew everything there was to know about ostriches, but today I saw one take a crap... and it was very weird. If you really want to know why, you can e-mail me, I'll save everyone else from the details.




The view on the chair lift ride back down the mountain.

It was a fun day! We both really enjoyed walking around the zoo. The zoo itself was huge, so we definitely got a good workout today. There were lots of animals to see besides the ones we posted about like apes, zebras, tigers, otters, birds, a polar bear and some rhinos too. And if you were hungry, you were never far from a kind lady selling dried fish or silkworm pupa, though we stuck with churros for the day.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Funny Tea


The dynamic Lotte company makes a decent iced tea called "Ceylon Tea". I've tried it a couple of times but I usually opt for Lipton Iced Tea since I'm a sucker for brand names in this country full of unrecognizable brands. Tonight though, I picked up a can of Ceylon at the convenience store on the first floor of our apartment building (we never even have to leave the building... or even really get dressed to buy some beers or a cola, it's swell). I'd never really noticed the writing on the can, but it amused me enough to share it with you.

Mmmmm trippy tea.

Monday, February 19, 2007

A Taste of Egypt


That's me, standing in the middle of a normally busy 4-lane street in Suwon. This holiday weekend so many people leave town to spend time with their ancestors that Suwon and Seoul were actually kind of quiet. Korea is the only Asian country that observes Chinese New Year quietly. Other countries have parties and parades, but Koreans bore it up with something called 'family time'. The reduced number of people and cars was weird, but the best part was that we didn't have to stand on the subway! Yahoo!



Like I mentioned yesterday, most shops and restaraunts were closed for the weekend, so once again we found ourselves back in Itaewon to be fed. On the way to the restaurant I took these shots of 'Ostrich House', a cruel store the sells handbags made from the hide of my favorite bird.



Dayna, Mary and Vanessa from the Suyu English Villagey joined us at Ali Baba's, an egyptian restaraunt with hookah deserts. The place had a nice atmosphere but the portions were ridiculously small for the price. Still, it was nice to have some non-korean, non-italian food for a change. Mel had the lamb and I had some chicken with egyptian rice, pita bread and hummus. Yum!


Afterwards, we went back to Suyu and had drinks at Dragon Bar. The bar was nice and offered free popcorn, which was appreciated after such small suppers! The best thing was that the bar had an electronic Darts game, which was basically just a dartboard that calculated your score for you.

This is where most of my darts wound up: on the floor...


Random Boop graffiti.


Since we had Monday off because of the holiday, we were able to spend the night at Dayna's place. The pic is everyone feelin' good (thanks to some end-of-the-night McD's/Jager) on the bus ride back to campus. We played some Skip-Bo, and in typical fashion the name of the game was 'screw Shawn'! Well, that was pretty much it for our exciting 3-day weekend. I'm not really excited to go back to work tomorrow as I know there's only a one-day weekend waiting for me next week, but on the bright side...


...only 17 more days until we're chillin' on the sunny beaches of Phuket, Thailand!!! Wheee hee!!!! Can't wait.