Take a gander at my brand spankin’ new professional account.
Here’s a link to a chronologically ordered set of most every picture I took while in Korea. I might get around to organizing them a little better some day, but I doubt it.
(If you aren’t familiar with Flickr, it’s a photo sharing site. I recommend using the “Slide Show” feature in the top right corner of the page.)
In a few days, I’ll post one last entry. It will either say something substantive, or it won’t.
I drove a car for the first time in two months this morning.
That’s probably the longest I’ve gone without driving since I was 14 or something. I was pleased to learn that it’s like riding a bicycle.
Some of you may have noticed the comment my mom or dad left on the last entry. Last week, a close, long time friend killed himself. He didn’t leave a note, and if he told anyone he was thinking about doing it, it wasn’t me. I talked to him online a few hours before, and he was in a weird mood, but there was nothing to indicate what he had planned. When I found out, I tried to get home for the funeral, but it was impossible. All the flights were full.
After saying that, it seems strange to write much else about my trip. I want to wrap everything up with some final or overarching observations on Korean culture or how I’ve been changed, but I don’t really have anything like that to say. I haven’t had long enough to reflect. It’s still just a whirling, exciting jumble of novel experiences.
Being back home was surreal for a few hours. When I first went to Korea, their currency seemed like play money. Now ours does. On the drive from the airport, I was stunned by how flat and open everything is. It’s also taken me about a day to fully realize that life here continued unabated in my absence. Food I left in the fridge spoiled and my car registration expired.
There might be one more entry after this. I did lots of stuff and took lots of pictures in Seoul. Be looking at least for a link to a flickr account, where I’ll post all the pictures worth looking at. I took around 600, and I figure you guys have only seen about 50.
We made it to Seoul at 9 pm.
It’s currently about 10:30, and I’m typing this in a PC bang, which are as thick as weeds in Korea.
When we arrived, we wandered around the bus terminal for 10 minutes or so, looking like lost puppies. Someone approached us and offered help. He could barely speak English. A kind-looking old security guard hovered for a few moments, then intervened when he saw that our would be rescuer wasn’t having a lot of success.  The guard’s English wasn’t great either, but it was enough to get us a cab to a motel.
The first place we went had a room, but the attendant told us that we’d have to check out at 6 am. The taxi driver, who was helping us because I gave him a tip (By the way, in Korea, tips are not routine the way they are in the US), gave no indication of speaking English, and the attendant didn’t speak much either, so we were not in a position to be picky.
We took the room, rested a few minutes, then hit the street to find a place to stay tomorrow night. We paid in advance for a room and didn’t get receipt or anything, so hopefully we didn’t just get screwed.
Trials and tribulations. I tell ya, it’s like we’re in a whole ‘nother country.
Hello.
This guy is a doctor fish. I’m sure they have a more scientifical name, but I have no idea what it is. Doctor fish live in shallow tanks in Korea, and they eat the dead skin off of people’s feet.
Like so:
The sensation is pretty unique. The closest thing I’ve thought of so far is that pins and needles feeling you get when your foot goes to sleep. Only, it’s not as sharp or painful.
These doctor fish were in a coffee shop. They also had this sign, which I thought was sort of funny.
After I left, I walked around Pohang for an hour or so. I’m a little sad because I figure there’s not much of a chance that I’ll ever come back.
Here’s a special one for Selegha.
That’s a pretty grandiose name, but I believe the event lives up to it.
That is, with the one slight qualification that it is only barely international. A Russian team had a display. I’m not sure where the others were from. It’s a little like the Lubbock International Airport, with occasional flights to Mexico.
We took a cab part of the way to the Festival, then we walked for what must have been two or three miles. I’m not sure why. I think we were avoiding traffic, mostly of the pedestrian variety. The two friends I was with, Jang and Kyounghan, estimated that perhaps as many as 500,000 people would gather on Bukbu Beach to watch the show. Before we made our way there, we stopped for supper at the Lotte Department Store.
Bukbu beach is nice, and I regret not taking the oppurtunity to visit one weekend, but it’s probably too late now. The vendors selling food, arts and crafts, and the same kind of made-in-China trinkets you’d find at a similar event in the US stretched along the street above the beach for a good mile.
One of the things they were selling was Roman candles. Yeah. I made a few observations during my first week that turned out not to be true, but this one has been borne out over and over. Koreans are much less uptight about these sorts of things than we are. According to Kyounghan, civil suits are much rarer in Korea. I guess people just take responsibility for themselves. Here are a couple of snaps of folks holding them in their hands, shooting them off into the sea.
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After the show, we went to an open-air cafe to eat and drink. We ate clams and oysters on the half shell, cooked at the table in a type of butter sauce with sliced peppers and scallions. They were delicious. That sounds really fancy, but this was not a fancy place; you can see that the table is covered in a thin disposable plastic sheet.
The striped guys you see to the right are tiny snails. We ate them by sucking them out of their shells.
The last four photos were taken by Jang, who has a much nicer camera than me.
P.S. At that cafe, I saw one of the most surprising things yet – The bathroom door had a sign with both a little male figure and a female figure. I assumed that meant that the door opened into a short hallway with two bathrooms, or perhaps that it was a one-holer with a locking door. But, no. When I opened the door, it was the bathroom, and a man and a woman were standing in front of the sink talking to one another. I almost left, then hesitated, then went in. In this bathroom there was a urinal and two stalls. One stall was for men, and the other was for women.
I’ll head home on the 13th.
I’m probably leaving Pohang on the 8th, though, so I only have about a week left here. But I’ll save reminiscing for a later entry.
First, a few random food pictures. Maybe they’re boring by now, but I like them.
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That weekend, I went downtown and ordered food all by myself.
I know the names of about 5 or 6 different common dishes. I went into this place and stood at the entrance until a waitress pointed me in the direction of a table, then I said the name of what I wanted to the next person that paid attention to me. It cost ₩3,500.
That price is significant because later that day I went to a coffee shop in roughly the same area.
Real coffee geeks will recognize Illy as a reputable Italian coffee outfit. They sell roasted espresso by the pound, but they are maybe more famous for their fancy cups and saucers. I didn’t know Illy owned coffee shops, but it looks like they do. It was a pretty nice place, too. Not the typical eclectic hippy looking places that predominate in the US. When I went up to the bar, the barista directed me to sit down, and he brought me a menu. 
I ordered a double macchiato. It’s the only coffee shop I’ve ever been to in either Korea or the US where the coffee was served to me at the table instead of standing at the bar. It came with toast and two tiny bowls of sugar and honey. The whole mess cost me ₩4,000. That’s right. ₩500 more than my lunch. As I’ve remarked to several of you already, when a guy in my group at home told me that gourmet coffee in Korea costs more than a meal, I was incredulous, but it’s true. Food is a good bit cheaper than in the US, and coffee is a good bit more.
Later that day I also did some souvenir shopping and bought prescription sunglasses. Glasses are much cheaper in Korea than in the US for some reason. My glasses weren’t as good of a deal as I hoped, but they weren’t too bad, either.
That night, I went with two guys to the Pohang International Fireworks Festival, but that deserves its own entry.
.. for your prayers and well wishes.
I’m not clear on the details, but my grandmother’s health has begun to improve. They moved her yesterday afternoon from the CCU to an ordinary room. In another day or so, she’ll move into a nursing home.
Sorry I haven’t updated in a few days. It seemed inappropriate. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll post a few pictures.
My grandmother has been hospitalized.
She’s been having health problems for several months, including a stroke that left her mostly blind. She is now experiencing congestive heart failure, and according to her doctor, it will be a “miracle” if she survives longer than a few more days.
Please pray for her and for my family.
I’ve tried many of the things she mentions.
The flavor [of the kimchi jjigae, or kimchi soup] was so pure and intense, the crimson broth so creamy, it reminded me of tomato soup (albeit one whose depths hid rich, gelatinous nuggets of pig’s feet). For a moment, I wanted to ask the kitchen for a grilled cheese sandwich.
:) Kimchi soup is one of my favorite Korean dishes so far.
I realized the other day that I haven’t put up any pictures of plain ol’ Pohang.
On Sunday, electricity to the entire campus was turned off from 7 or 8 am until 8 pm for some kind of maintenance. I am not privy to the details because, you know, I don’t speak the language that all the notices were in. I was lucky to know about it at all.
The other EAPSI guy and I tried to make big plans, but were foiled by.. can you guess it? Yes, not being able to speak or read Korean. Instead, we just goofed around in Pohang. We walked around a department store, went to a movie (Hancock, in English with Korean subtitles), ate at Duncan Donuts, KFC, Baskin Robbins, and some Korean bakery chain. We tried to go into a PC bang, but the clerk couldn’t speak English and we couldn’t figure out the pricing scheme, so we left. The bang in PC bang is one Korean word for “room” (I think), and it’s pronounced like bong. It’s pretty much a cyber cafe or one of those places where nerds go to play computer games head-to-head. They are everywhere in Korea and (I think) pretty cheap to use.
Since these photos are a little busier than some I’ve taken, I’m uploading them without resizing. This means that if you click on them, the full size version will be much larger than normal and will take much longer to download. If you have a fast connection, it’s probably no big deal.
The first picture is in the Jukdo Market area. Don’t get the wrong idea – the market itself looks very much like what you’d imagine an Asian market to look like. (Maybe before I leave I’ll go take some actual pictures of it.) This is just a nearby street.
These are just random buildings on the street that the bus from campus travels down.
This sidewalk is actually along that street, and the buildings in the previous picture are over my right shoulder. I didn’t realize it when I took the picture, but one of the signs says something about Yukgeori, which means something like “6-Way Intersection” in Korean. I know the word because the Yukgeori (and the Ogari, a 5-way intersection) are the primary landmarks I use when finding my way around Pohang.
Everything so far was pre-supper. After we ate at the KFC (technically the first time I’ve given in and eaten “American” food) we went to the downtown area. It’s on the opposite side of one of the major streets from the Market, and the clientèle is on the opposite end of the age (and perhaps wealth) spectrum.
You can see the Baskin Robbins we ate at on the left. Another funny thing you might notice is a Fubu store. Fubu is a brand of clothing from the US that only black people wear. Seriously, Fubu is an acronym and one of the things it means is, “For Us, By Us.” Koreans seem to like it quite a bit. One girl in my group told me that it was a Korean brand. She’s not right, but her confusion is understandable. Samsung is the distributor, according to Wikipedia.
I snapped these last two just for fun. You probably can’t tell from the picture, but the first one is for a store that clearly sells clothing and gear for hiking and camping. The color scheme and even the logo might look familiar..
That’s completely intentional. I literally just turned 180 degrees to take this last one:
Ok, one more. This is my roommate’s pet:
Do you recognize this animal? In Korean, she’s called a goseumdochi. Her name is just Dochi.