Seoul

This weekend gave me: a lump on each knee complete with very large bruises, an aching left hip, calloused feet, a wet skirt, and a smile. Yes, you know what all that means, I went to Seoul.
A friend of mine was having a birthday and wanted to go to Seoul, so I went along. We took the KTX which is this super fast train that takes only about 30-40 minutes to get to Seoul and the time goes by really fast. It was so great being a city with a subway…I always love cities that have great public transport, they hold a special place in my heart. The next morning I remember a few stories that for some reason make me smile, so let me share.
First, the place we went dancing was called ‘funky funky’ which seems like a GREAT name for a club that attracts foreigners to dance on a Saturday night in Korea but it would never work out in the states. It sounds too ‘douchey douchey’, I think. The upside was there was live music and then a DJ until 6 am and free booze until 4 am all for 25000 won. Sounds like a lot, but it’s only about $25...or $37 with the exchange rate (yay global recession!). I got dance on a speaker which was great because…I got to dance on a speaker. I also met a Welsh guy named Christopher and decided I like the Welsh. They’ve always been so lovely. He wasn’t a creep and didn’t try to do anything, so it made me a fan of the Welsh. I also met a Korean who was trying to get me to drink beer by shoving it in my hands (I was actually at the bar to get liquor, I definitely did not want beer and he didn‘t work the bar, he just wanted me to drink more). I pretended to have no idea what he was saying and proceeded to pour it down his throat and make it seem like that’s what I thought he wanted all along, and then I walked away. There’s loads more stories, but those were a couple of my favorites. I actually stayed out dancing until 5 am and my feet hurt like you wouldn’t believe. I woke up with calloused feet right below my toes from wearing heels, I felt disabled. The only downer to the night came when we tried to get a taxi, no one would take us. Either they ignored everyone trying to get a taxi, told us our place was too close (very much not true), or only picked up Koreans. It was so strange being discriminated against like that. At first, I thought it was just everyone else being paranoid, but then I noticed that the taxi drivers really were only picking up Koreans if they picked up anyone. I guess I can chalk that one up to a new experience that will help me understand others who have been discriminated against.
I still feel as if I’m trying to find my groove here but I’m enjoying the process. I found a CELTA program in Seoul that I could go to, but I would rather find one in Cheonan to avoid all the transportation and time costs of Seoul. I’ve also been waking up at a decent time and not sleeping until I HAVE to get up to go to work. Even though there are a lot of bumps and learning opportunities that make me unhappy, I can say that I really like my life. Maybe not love, but I’ll get there.

This entry does NOT deserve a title.

I just got done watching The Pianist. Finally. I saw parts of it before I left the states when I was on the phone with someone and my dad was watching it in the living room because he couldn’t sleep. No one needed to know all those details. Anyways, watching it reminded me of my dad and I really missed him. Also, I miss him, not just missED him. I was making dinner tonight and realized I haven’t talked to my mom on the phone since I got here. It made me sad and I wanted to hug her…and I know she read this. So…mom and dad, I miss you. I honestly do.
Right now I’m listening to my latest addiction (‘I’m Yours’ by Jason Mraz) and I noticed that I am constantly paranoid that I’m bothering my neighbors. I can hear everything in their apartment, I’m sure they can hear me. I play music….whenever I am in my apartment and am always afraid it will be too loud at 2 am. Then I think that even if they complained, I would never know. I don’t answer my door due to constant knocking and ringing from over zealous religious folk or adverts and even if I DID answer and it was my neighbors to complain, I would have no idea what they were saying. I use commas too much. I always meant to look into when I was REALLY supposed to use commas but I never did. Now I teach English. Life is funny that way, always making you do things that have nothing to do with who you are. Then again, that could just be my life. I feel like this entry is kinda random and without a point.
I’m going to Seoul tomorrow. I really hope to do something very Ashley-like such as make friends with a stranger and learn something new from them that leads to a crazy realization that will then alter the course of the next few hours of decision making. I can only hope. I need a crazy realization to drive some decision making. I feel like I don’t have a clue what’s next. While that has an element of excitement…it also makes me feel like everyday just sort of exists without a purpose and that is not something I enjoy.
Things about Korea that make me happy: foreigners (I mean Westerners, Koreans are native not foreign here), beef, learning enough Korean to not be intimidated by a grocery store, children that give me food, Cass Red (but that could change).
Things about Korea that make me angry: my boss, kids that will not listen and force me to yell, not knowing enough Korean to talk to anyone I want, my dirty floors, the exchange rate.
Anyone know of any good books on the History of any country in existence? And….how to get paid to go to Grad school?

Idealism and Poetry

Oh, reflection! I don’t know that I’ve been doing enough of it lately, but I have recently been barraged (sp?) by a huge amount of references to some variation of carpe diem. Here’s what I mean. Lately, all I’ve been watching or hearing has in some way or another told me I need to experience all I can. Taste it, drink it, live it, soak it in, question it, laugh at it, be it. In fact, I was watching Anderson Cooper 360 and at the end he says, “You can’t just sit behind a desk all the time and think you know what’s going on in the world. You have to go out and see it for yourself. You gotta smell it, you gotta taste it, you gotta see it.”
I never want to just sit behind a desk all the time. I never want to forget what the world is like, how they hurt, how they laugh, how they live. I know that I am generally an idealistic person who thinks everything has a positive side and will talk herself into anything…but I want to learn how to stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves. How to educate people about how the world really works, what the world is really facing. I don’t want to hide behind my ignorance and comfort. I know that it will be hard for me to learn how to change the world I live in but I really want to learn. I want whatever career I end up in to be one that allows me the power to affect lives. I know that just by writing this I am an idealist, just by thinking I could one day have the power to change things is idealistic. But…if I think that I can do nothing, then what is the point of even knowing what is happening? What is the point of being educated? Maybe what I will end up doing will be small but, whatever it is, I hope it helps in some way.
Related to that in a small way, I am happy I am here in Korea. I am still not convinced Korea is an awesome country but I know that I can learn a lot here about myself, people, and everything else there is to know. I want to learn, I truly do. Now, I just have to figure out what it is I want next. Even though I still have a year here, if I don’t start thinking now about what is next I may get stuck.
While I’ve been here I have also stumbled upon Pablo Neruda. He is a poet whom I enjoy reading very, very much. I’ll end with a poem that I really love with a piece of my soul.
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenlyyou forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

Songtan

I feel like I'm finally settling in and this is how I am able to tell. I sleep on my bare mattress here because it's brand new and it's fuzzy like it already has a sheet on it. The annoying part is that where my feet go there are a bunch of labels so it feels different than the rest of the mattress. A few days ago I had the really obvious realization that if I flipped my mattress over, my label troubles would be gone. Noticing the little things shows me I'm starting to settle. And it made me feel kinda dumb.
Even though I am feeling as if I'm starting to settle, I am also starting to think "Ugh, I hate Korea." way too much. There are way too many moments. One just occurred about 2 minutes ago. I THOUGHT I was watching the Sound of Music as I flipped through the channels and I was so excited! But no, it was a clip from the Sound of Music that was actually an effing dream sequence in some awkward Korean comedy show. I wanted to punch my tv.
I'm beginning to learn the language but lack the sort of discipline it takes to sit down by myself and learn the alphabet. I lose interest after about...5 minutes. It's really pathetic. I just do so much better in a classroom. How am I gonna look at a square and repeat, "mm, mm, mm" by myself for longer than 20 seconds? Seriously.
I went to Songtan last night which is a town pretty much occupied by an Air Force base near here. I was surprised by how overwhelmed I got being surrounded by American military men. It was really insane though, a complete mix of emotions. It was like the downtown street we were on was America but we were still in Korea. We ate at a Mexican restaraunt and even the restaraunt seemed like America because all the workers spoke English VERY well. It made me feel so sad to be somewhere I knew was far away from home but looked just like it. The entire place was a giant tease that I cannot wait to go back to when I REALLY start to miss home.

Embarassing moments

Since I've been in Korea a lot of embarassing things have happened...but tonight I felt very, very foreign.
I was so hungry when I got done with work since all I ate the entire day was a small bowl of soup, more of a cup really. All I wanted to eat was these things called Mandu. I don't really know how to spell it, but they're like little dumpling filled with meat and vegetables and deep fried. Maybe not the healthiest thing ever but I have a soft spot for street food. My co worker had told me about this awesome pork cheese thing I should get, but I couldn't really find the place since I can't read Korean and wasn't really sure if I had found it or not. So instead I started wandering around my dong (that word always makes me giggle a bit but it just means area or neighborhood) and found a mandu place. I was so excited. I wanted seven. Yes, I knew that I wanted exactly seven. So I went up to the lady and put up fingers and she said something in Korean and I just nodded. I had no idea what she said. I wanted 7 and I had 7 fingers up....so can you mess that up? Yes, you can. In fact, apparently 7 fingers means, 'give me all the mandu that you have in that little basket there and then add like 5 more.' Yeah, 7 fingers says all that. I also had added stuff to the order and ended up with way more food than I could eat in one sitting. I Way more. And at the end when she was putting them in a bag I said, 'finished' after 7 and she said a lot of stuff in Korean, pretty much telling me I ordered way more. But...I don't know how it happened. Whatever. I have mandu for days now. I felt so bad though, I'm sure her and the other lady thought, 'this foreigner....why is she trying to order food when she doesn't know Korean?' The answer is, because I am hungry. That's why. When I was eating them I bit into this purpleish looking one and realized it was sundae. Sundae (or however you spell it) it pig intestines stuffed with noodles with sauce. It just grosses me out knowing it's pig intestines. I still ate almost the whole 4 inches of the deep fried poo pipe before I just couldn't anymore. And it was so salty I didn't really like the taste.
On the bright side, I just got done watching 'How I Met Your Mother' on Korean cable. It was a rerun, but it was great to watch American tv here.
My bad mandu experience has convinced me more than ever I need Korean lessons. I like experiencing the culture and the language is part of that. It really feels like it's hard to find lessons though, they are not just readily available everywhere which is really disappointing. I'm still not sure how I feel about Korea. I don't feel as if it is the most welcoming or open country but I also haven't gotten very much into learning more about Korea so far. So...we'll see what happens.

Dr. Fish

I had these cousins that my family and I would visit often when I was growing up. They had this pond sort of thing in their yard that they stocked with fish that they would also go swimming in. I remember really not liking this pond thing too much because there were huge fish all over the place and it kinda freaked me out that they could bite me. Even though I knew the fish bite wouldn’t hurt, just the idea of a fish biting me weirded me out. Yesterday I went downtown for the first time with two of my friends and right before coming back to our dong, we went to this coffee shop that they call Dr. Fish. You order coffee and for $2 more you can get your feet nibbled on by a tank of fish. I am not kidding you. They’re these tiny little fish, it looks like a tank of minnows, and they are supposed to eat all the dead skin off your feet. While I was kind of weirded out by it, I did it anyways. It was a seriously odd feeling and if you looked away it really did feel like tiny electrodes were going off on your feet. My feet felt smooth afterwards…but it was so odd getting chewed on by a fish for 15 minutes. I wonder what maggot therapy feels like.
I also cut my finger a bit on a toilet flusher chain last night. Yeah. Awesome me. You had to pull this chain super hard to get it to flush and my friend couldn’t get it so I pulled it and perhaps got a little too aggressive and there are two spots that drew a bit of blood…just like a drop, but who bleeds from flushing a toilet? It kind of grosses me out knowing how it happened. Actually, there are a few things about last night that make me shake my head and think, “Really?”
I miss people from home. And running in the suburbs.

Unisex bathrooms=awesome

I went to my first pool night last night! While I realize that sentence means little to most, I was excited because...I'm not really sure, but I was excited. I guess because you can meet so many foreigners in the area by going to pool night, why wouldn't I be excited to go? While I entirely enjoyed getting my ass kicked by some cruel Canadian (who felt it was his duty to remind me Brett was a Jet. You suck.), the best part of the night was when I had to pee. How awkward is that...the highlight of my night was peeing. But really, it gets better. The toilet was, first of all, a squatty. This means an awesome little white toilet contraption on the floor that you squat over and let loose. I remember when I studied in Russia there would be footprints on the toilet seat and I realized over time that they were from people squatting over the toilet to poo. I guess squatting helps...a Kenyan friend of mine told me the same thing. But I digress. So it's a squatty AND it's UNISEX! There are two stalls and also two urinals. I didn't really think to lock the main door, and just grabbed a stall and went for it. I must have had more to drink than I thought because I just wouldn't stop peeing. And you ALL need to know this. But it was like limbo central in that stall. I was trying to balance so I could keep my pants dry and still get everything in the squatty...is this too graphic? Whatever. It was an interesting experience and I kept laughing. By myself. In the squatty. Awesome. THEN I hear the door open and a guy stop, not go into a stall, but stop at a urinal. I was done and kind of tentatively opened my door and then said, "Um, I guess I'll just wait for you to be done" and his reply was, "Oh, ok, well there't not much to see anyways" And while this should have been awkward for me, I was thoroughly amused. Then I blew my nose and made the genius comment of, "Are you ever amazed at how much snot can fit in your nose?" Are you supposed to talk to people in the bathroom? I mean, are girls supposed to talk to guys? I don't know. He said he had never really thought about it. Yeah. It was a great experience. So my first encounter with this man was him peeing on the other side of my stall. Fantastical. Not too awkward, but I still thought it was kinda funny...but I guess everything makes me laugh.
I think I am starting to like it here. Mostly because I love the other foreigners here and because today when I was walking to work I had this thought, "I live in another country." And my heart soared, I was so happy. It's the obvious little things that usually get me, I am easy to please. Also, men on motorcycles sometimes make me swoon.
I think I will also soon be getting my life in order! I'm happy about this since that will mean I will find a church, start running, and organize my dump of an apartment (a dump because right now I have just dumped everything in it). I need to put up pictures round the ment as well. Can you shorten apartment to ment? I don't know, but I'm going to. I'm an english teacher, I can make up words if I want.

Korea wants my boobs.

Sooooooo for awhile my sophomore year of college I went through a Taking Back Sunday phase...and since the lyrics are so catchy, I occasionally get back into it. Tonight when I got back to my apartment around 2 am all I could think of was, "this is me with the words on the tip of my tongue and my eye through the scope down the barrel of a gun..." Such fun to sing, those lyrics. But what I was thinking of was how fast everything changed in life. I guess things in life often change so fast, but this time I really noticed it. I feel as if I have already met some of the best people on this planet, truly. Knowing this, I definitely never want them out of my life but feel like the decisions I make push them away...or we just grow apart. I hate it, but I can't just settle yet. I know that I will still meet amazing people and life will be wonderful and magical, I just don't like feeling as if I'm letting go of things I already knew were great.
I just got back from watching Anchorman with two Brits, a canadian and my American co-worker. Yes, I am referring to them by nationality. Why? Because I am still thoroughly amused by the fact that there's such a mix. You would think ORU would make me immune to amusement through nationality, but no. I wish I could detail all the amazing conversation circling around gynecologists, gender, hot black men, and everything else...but that would take too long and would only make me giggle. The exciting bit of news is that there is a town that they often visit here that has an Army base. With good looking American military men. Oh my. I have quickly found the worst place for me to visit, and I am probably going within two weeks and then again for Halloween. And during Halloween I will be dressed up as Madonna. Yes....stories will follow.
ANOTHER equally exciting story...as I was walking the short distance back to my apartment from my friends (11 floors down and half a building across) I saw a man sprawled on the bench outside my building. I assumed he was asleep and while I wanted to smell him to check if he was homeless or drunk...I thought if he woke up I could definitely not be in the best situation ever. Then I had the pleasure of stumbling upon an awesome pee puddle at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway to the second floor. That was beauty. Mmmm if only I could convey how often I think, "wow, Korea...yeah!"
I also got my chest measured today. For my health check. Bust measurement is an important indicator of health. In Korea. Wow...yeah!

Russia?

I officially live in South Korea. The thing I hate the most about living in another country is when my body is adjusting, I get sick. Bleh. Someone here called it the newbie flu. It would be even worse if I didn’t have people here to help me—thank God I do!
I moved into my apartment Friday and got to go out that night to meet some other people who spoke English. There was only one other girl from America besides me and Abby that I can remember…everyone else is from the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Canada…places like that. It was so nice to be able to talk with people! Also, apparently bars here like to put on flare shows…which is just the Korean bar tenders twirling around liquor and setting the tops of it on fire and sometimes spitting fire. The spitting fire part is awesome. It was pretty cool but when the flare show is going on, they service no drinks. The irritating part about the bars here is they don’t really believe in good customer service. Sometimes you have to wait a long time to get your drink. Not okay. AND in the city I live in, Cheonan, I can’t go to clubs. Why? Well, because 20 or so years ago some GI shot a Korean outside of a club and now no foreigners can go to them without a Korean friend with them who will say they’re okay.
Speaking of GI’s…the best way to get American anything is to have military friends on bases in Korea…so anyone have any military friends they want me to be friends with? They have Taco Bell!!! Mexican food is in short supply here.
Also, I got asked if I was Russian for the first time since I've been here! While I usually would take that as a compliment, I had learned the previous night that if someone asks you if you're Russian, they are asking if you are a prostitute, so I wasn't so excited when I passed by a security guy here and he said, "Russia? Russia?" What a douche.