Hongdae Birthday

Well its official. I'm finished applying for law schools. (except for a few odds and ends I have to tie up. Law schools seem to be pretty anal.)

I have applied to:

Univ. Michigan

Univ. of Florida

Univ. of TN

Univ. of Iowa

Univ. of California at Berkeley

Vanderbilt

Lewis and Clark

I did the whole damn laborious thing while sitting at my computer after classes at school. Its kind of interesting to think that if I get into law school or graduate school, I will have begun the whole process while sitting at an elementary school in Korea.

Anyway, my birthday came and gone and I must say it was wonderful. We began our celebration at a bar downtown called J's Story. After an embarassing incident in which I spilled a plate full of chicken onto the floor, we settled in and had a great time with our giant party of fifteen or so. Surprisingly, the westerners left kind of early (with only me, lisbeth, andrew, duncan and amy to represent). Daeun brought many new Korean friends (and some old ones I had met on a previous trip to K0rea). They closed down the house with us that night. WE ate tons of food and drank lots of beer, courtesy of Korean Drinking games such as Baskin Robin's 31, Stupid Game, Image Game, and Sense game. We left J's Story to dance a bit further down the block at "Jane's Groove" which was amazing. It was like the Korean sister of Sassy Anne's. We jammed to MIA and other familiar tunes as well as some K pop and a random 90s hit here and there. (think jock jams)

We closed out the night with a noreibang session at "luxury" noreibang. This is a karaoke house that is designed like a luxury hotel, so you check in and have someone lead you up to your room where you're served drinks and whatever else you need on cushy couches or cute kitsch rooms.

Note: Forgive me if my writing seems a bit airy, I've been reading "confessions of a shopaholic" and it seems to be rubbing off on me.

Description of Korean drinking games:

Baskin Robbins 31: Each person in the group can count in intervals of 1,2,or 3. The person who lands on 31 has to drink. This game is fun if you have a large group of people that is hard to coordinate or if you're really drunk because its an easy game. The fun lies in screwing over the person who lands on 31 (because you might let them off easy by just saying "28, 29" and letting them say "30" to screw over the next person with "31."

Sense Game: This is a game in which the total number of people in the group must count one number to add up to the total number. FOr example, if you have six people playing, each person must count a nunber until it adds up to six. The catch is, you can't be the LAST person (in this instance, the person to count six) and you cant say a number at the same time that someone else does, or you have to drink.

Stupid Game: Drinkers sit in a circle. One person turns to the next person and says a number that is different from the number of fingers they are holding up. The next person in line has to turn to the person beside them and say the number that was previously designated by the number of fingers held up by the original person, but also hold up a different number of fingers. This continues until someone messes up. for example, if lisbeth turns to me and says "three" but holds up two fingers, I have to turn to Andrew on my other side and say "Two" but hold up, say, five fingers, or some other number.

Image Game: THis is the "you can only play this in a place like Korea" game. Players hold a chopstick up in the air and point it to the person they think most fits a certain image. For example, one person will say "The person who is most likely to get plastic surgery" and all players have to point to the person they think, based purely on image, will get plastic surgery. The koreans love it even if the americans are slightly uncomfortable. They hardly ever get offended and lots of peple drink. We don't think twice about playing now.

Adapting and Changing

Well its been a month since I arrived here and I am just beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin...or should I say, my new high healed shoes and baggy clothes.

I suppose I haven't really adapted that much, I'm sitting in my teacher planning listening to John Prine and Iris DeMent on Youtube...but I've come pretty far. I like being in my little room, i've decorated it nice and colorful, all reds, yellows and pinks, just like i always do.

(My desk. Notice the bottle of Jack on the top back corner. a bottle of Jack in Korea costs about the same as it does in Tennessee. Jack Daniels, why dont you cut your native people a break?)

(My kitchen is tiny. My bathroom is my worst-bathroom-nightmare with the shower over on the lft hand side. actually, the water running in the picture is part of my shower. I turn a nob on the sink and it goes to a showerhead over the sink that just shoots down righ tin the middle of my bathroom. arghghghgh, whatever. I've gotten used to it now.)

My weekends have been very eventful. I've grown close to my cousin, Da-eun, and she takes andrew, lisbeth and I all over. We went to a small village south east of seoul in Wonju province. There was a traditional festival going on when we got there. We danced to drums (which sounded a bit like a baby smashing pots and pans together), we drank homemade markloli (kind of like nigori--the unfiltered white sake), we watched a korean play about a traditional korean village, andrew was made to go up on the stage and bang a drum (stiffly of course...we had an all around rowdy good time. Being outside the city was like jumping in a cold mountain stream on a hot day: a shock at first, but you settle right in after a while.

The first weekend in October is called Chuseok in Korea. It's Korea's major holiday, but its kind of lame if you ask me for being THE holiday. The celebrating goes a bit like our Thanksgiving. We got five days off in a row (counting the weekend) to eat all the Korean food we could handle, and realx in Gangwha-do (Kangwha island). Gangwha is wehre my family is from, after they fled from North korea. My uncle's art studio is there, and two of my aunts and one uncle lives there. During Chuseok, you go to your ancestors' graves and show respect. We went to church the morning of Chuseok, then went to the graveyard. I bowed all the way down to the ground twice and half bowed once to my great grandmother and great grandfather. My great great grandmother was also there, they spread her ashes around my great grandmother's grave.

For CHuseok, Andrew Lisbeth and I took a bus one hour north of Seoul to Kangwha where Daeun and her family met us. We went to a Buddhist temple on the island, drank tea, went to the market, bought beer and snacks, and stayed up all ngith playing scrabble, jenga and drinking. It was amazing. Right before bed we sat on the roof and looked at the stars that are impossible to see in Seoul.

This weekend we are celebrating mine and Lisbeth's birthdays in HOngdae. Hongdae is the area around Hongik university where everybody goes out to party on the weekends. Hopefully it will be fun, but not as fun as it would be if i were home. I miss my friends so much. YOu guys make me feel so special and complete. I can't wait to see you again in a year and I invite as many of you to come visit as possible.

Note: During the writing of this entry, I had to sit through a "civil defense drill" in which a siren went off for like five minutes and some official sounding announcements were made in Korean. My co-teacher just told me that in case something bad happened with North Korea the South Koreans had a drill to practice evacuation of schools and other places. Also, she said that traffic stops on the road for ten minutes. I think that's insane because traffic in Seoul is ridiculous and everyone is in a hurry. I can't even imagine what it was like on the roads outside.

(My view from my window on the tenth story. If you look toward the bottom right, you can see the garden on the roof.)

Some funny things:

1. The only male teacher in the subject room isn't actually a teacher, he's just a retired guy who stays on at the school. Every so often, his cell phone will ring really loud, blasting this random girls' pop song in which the words are in english....so far all i've been able to make out is "that's the way the story goes..." hahahah

2. The other day I was walking to my bus stop only to find that there was a giant hole where the stop should be. Random construction I guess. So waiting around the hole were these two businessmen dressed in suits who were at least over fifty. As I approached, I realized they were yelling at each other. IN like no time they started throwing punches and grappling at each other. The construction workers around the site tried to intervene in the fight, temporarily separating them. However, as soon as their back was turned, the old men threw each other into the hole and wrestled and punched each other. It was really weird. They got their suits all dirty and the construction men were struggling to pull them out of htis dirt hole in the middle of the sidewalk. The whole time my kids were walking by saying hello, having to strain a little bit to talk over the two old men shouting. ahh well, TIK (That stands for This is Korea. Its our new saying)

Good things that have happened to me:"

1. Andrew and I have gotten much closer. We don't fight very much. its nice.

2. I submitted 5 law school applications. I feel like a super woman.

3. I decided that I might want to do something else besides law school. This may seem lik a negative, but I suppose its a positive if I realized it before I dropped thousands of dollars on something I wouldn't want to do.

4. I met a gay guy from south africa that lives on my floor who wants to be friends like from sex and the city. Excited!