The jimjilbang

I went out last weekend with some friends. We had a normal Saturday night near Hungik University, which is my favorite drinking spot. After drinking, we decided to stay in a jimjilbang.

I've been avoiding going to jimjilbangs. They are probably one of the biggest differences between Western and Korean cultures. Every Westerner goes to one eventually, but the first experience is always very awkward.

It's a bathhouse, and people usually go there after a night of drinking and spend the night there. There's a men's only floor, a women's only floor, and communal areas. The communal areas will have everything: Saunas, restaurants, and a huge heated floor where people go and sleep on during the night. Usually people will go to a jimjilbang after drinking and get up in the morning and head home.

The men and women's only section is a bathhouse, a shower and a steam room. Everyone's walking around butt naked. So imagine if you will, walking into a room at 6 am with a friend barefoot and seeing naked men in a changeroom sleeping naked. You're handed some clothes to wear and a locker key. To get to your locker, you have to walk over naked men. There's also one man who might be masturbating and another one who puts his thumb in his foreskin.

My friend fell asleep somewhere, and I couldn't find him, so I fell asleep somewhere else and we met up the next morning. We hit up a Sauna, and then hit up Seoul. I don't think we'll ever talk about the place again, although we'll probably both go to a jimjilbang again separately.

The next morning we went around Seoul and saw a palace. Right now isn't the best time to go, but it will be nice soon enough I'm sure. While walking about Seoul we got to see some people dancing in green. The Korean girl that was with us told us about the election that's taking place next week.

So we were lucky to see people campaigning for the Korean equivalent of the House of Commons (or Congress for those Americans out there). Rather than say what they wanted to do, they were trying to gardener votes with happy pictures and people giving thumbs up and dancing. I just had to laugh and wondered if we do anything quite as entertaining to a foreigner during elections.

I just thought that learning about a candidate's policies with singing and dancing was like learning about the Bible from this game. (I'm a big fan of Noah and Jesus)

I'm heading out to Japan in a few days for a short visit. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone in Japan and having real sushi. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Happy Easter

Hey, it's Easter right now, so I want to wish you all a Happy Easter.

This is a warning post to anyone who wants to live abroad

This is a post not so much about culture shock, but more about being away from friends and family. I was fine for Thanksgiving, we had a party in a park in Japan. My birthday and Christmas were good too. I hung out with friends and Christmas day I ate some food at another friend's house. (On a side note, usually my birthday is overshadowed by Christmas, so hanging out with friends on my birthday was awesome) However this easter, nothing was planned. It also occurred that I haven't been home in 6 months and hadn't heard any familiar voices from back home in quite a while.

I won't go into much more details, but it involved me freaking out, having to run to an PC bang (a room where you have time on a computer), looking up phone numbers of friends and family online, putting their phone numbers in my phone and then going back to the bar and trying to call as many people in Canada as I could. I only managed to speak to one person, because I had problems with my phone, but speaking to someone from Canada made all the difference.

When you're surrounded by people, 90% of whom you can't speak to, and another 9.5% of them have foreign accents, it kind of strikes a cord that you're really far away from home.

It would have happened in Japan, Korean, Finland or any other country. I was drinking at the time, but the alcohol wasn't the biggest factor. In fact, I don't think it was a factor at all. I think a freak out of this kind happens to most people, probably everyone and for some reason I thought I was immune to it.

Now I'm going to lighten up the mood. This is a video from an American comedy troupe. They look Korean, so they're probably Korean American. What makes the video especially funny is the accent. I thought they were exaggerated when I watched it, then I went out for dinner with a Korean and I couldn't help but laugh because he actually spoke like this. It is a fairly accurate depiction of the Korean accent. It's alright to laugh. They're swearing in Korean. The accent is very Korean.

Have fun on easter!

EDIT: Watching the video again, I've come to decide that the one with a hat on looks Korean, the other one doesn't so much...

More updates from Korea

Korea is alright. Spring is arriving, there's no snow anymore, but now I've been introduced to something quite exciting about Korea. It's called yellow dust here, but wikipedia is nice enough to call it Asian dust. It's basically sand from northern China and Kazakhstan that's picked up and blown around in Asia. It also has pollution, viruses and bacteria! So it's been breathed in by people in Asia, hooray!

I haven't seen it yet, but yesterday was suppose to have some in the air. It occurs every 5 days or so, for the next two months. I'm contemplating buying a ps3 to pass the time... they're cheaper in Korea and the games are in English and Japanese.

On other good news: I can finally speak a bit of Korean. Enough to do simple tasks, make full sentences and I can only get better at the language. I'm also reading Korean fairly quickly.

And for all of you, more K-pop! This is Jewelry (a remake, but with lyrics in Korean and English mixed!), this is Girl's generation and another video by them. And for kicks, a romance song.

I'm a big nerd, so I loved the second Girl's Generation video for one reason, and one reason alone: Princess Leia buns.

I'm heading back to Japan for a visit soon. I'm looking forward to see some cherry blossoms and some friends.

Kissing you all my love,

Paul

Panmunjeom Madness!

A weeks ago, I was lucky enough to meet up with friends who were visited from Japan. I meet up with them on Sunday night. We went drinking in Seoul, went for Galbi (the greatest food ever!) and drank some more. We went to a wonderful bar where the guy's washroom had a door, 3 walls, and a shower curtain as a fourth wall. Beyond the shower curtain was the streets. So if you were to push back the shower curtain, you would see the road. You could also hear people talking while peeing.

There was also a moment where I drank too much and started dancing in the middle of the bar. "Paul being drunk and dancing isn't anything new" you might say, until you realize I'm talking about this dance.

I also met up with them two days later to go to Panmunjeom. It's basically the place where North and South Korean officials meet. You know, that famous stretch where there are North Koreans with binoculars looking into the South getting ready to shot at any moment and South Koreans in Taekwondo stance at all times in case any North Koreans rush the border. I actually crossed the border into North Korea while in the building where the two sides meet.

There were 6 English speakers, myself, three friends and a Dutch couple, and the rest of the bus and the entire other bus were Japanese tourists. This was my first contact with Japanese people since I left Japan. I just have to say that they completely rock. I miss Japanese people a lot, but I will continue making the best of the situation and take advantage of being in Korea.

After seeing the room where the two sides meet, we were brought to a tour to see into North Korea. We were talking about a tour on the other side of us, and I did the error of pointing. Evidentially, pointing is one of those things that can get you shot at Panmunjeom. From the front, it looks like I could be holding a pistol. The tour guide started yelling at me, because she was afraid of getting shot at or something. I also scarred some Japanese girls, who got scarred when the tour guide started yelling. I turned to them, said "sumimasen", to which they looked absolutely suprised, turned to each other and kept on saying "sumimasen" to each other and giggled.

We saw some other places along the DMZ, and we even saw propaganda village. For those of you who don't know, it's a fully built village where the North Koreans blast propaganda very loudly. No one actually lived there. But unfortunately, they stopped doing that in 1992, and people actually live there now.

We then did a second tour, the one where we explore the tunnels that were dug under south Korea in the 70's, 20 years after the ceasefire between the countries. Evidentially the North Koreans were looking for coal, and happened to be going towards Seoul. Oh, there's also the technicality that where they were blasting, there was no coal, it was all granite... There was granite painted black too to make it look like coal.

We also got to see into North Korea. It wasn't the best day, we didn't see the massive Kim Il Sung statue. We also saw the train station in the DMZ. It has the same sign as other subway stations, with a sign indicating that it will continue to Pyongyang.

So that's my fun I had in Panmunjeom. I went out that night with my friends from Japan. We went from bar to bar and I crashed at the hostel. I said goodbye to my friends as they left for Japan, and I went to work.

I drank so much the night before that I wasn't speaking loud in class. My students were actually quiet that day. They knew I was in pain. And the next day was what makes teaching in Asia hilarious: My ten year old students made fun of me for getting too drunk the night before.