jazz

Friday we went to a Jazz club, one of the more famous ones in Seoul. You wouldn't think it, but Korean jazz is excellent. Seriously. I've heard it three times now, and none have been disappointing. Good jazz players don't have to come New Orleans or Chicago. They can come from this little underdog continually being forgotten between China and Japan.

I also saw two things I've never seen before. One, a Korean with facial hair. A full beard in fact. Two, a Korean rapping. I'm not sure if it was in Korean or English. It sounded sort of like English, but I couldn't make out any of the words. But it sounded cool.

muido: island near seoul

Its actually not nearly as pristine as my pictures make it look. Cigarette butts, korean billboards, soju bottles, that garlicly fish smell that wafts from wherever koreans eat. Canadians staying up the entire night drunkenly singing old pop songs. 8x8 "hut" filled with blankets and pillows with an unknown last wash. But husband was there, looking so much like yuppy south american backpacker, so it was a good weekend.

Hookas and Chuseok

Friday we had a roof barbecue. One of the soldier's Korean girlfriends brought be some more toilet paper. Husband was upset because he burnt the burgers, so we did it again last night with one of our neighbors and Jinny, Korean real estate agent--turned Korean friend. He definitely succeeded time 2.

After dinner last night, we went to one of Husband's favorite bars. It has a classy European look, with glasses hanging from the ceiling, bottles back lit with colored lights on the walls, and sleek chairs. They play house techno/trance music and there are couches from smoking hookas.

Husband gets monday off for Chuseok, a Korean thanksgivingish holiday. We're going to try to join a friend on an island where you stay in beach huts.

Colony: America

Military bases are a really bizarre thing. Their purpose is to hold an army, and all the things that army needs in case North Korea attacks. Only, North Korea hasn't attacked for a very long time. With no attacks going on, the soldiers need something to keep them occupied, and make them okay with staying a while. So the army brings over some of the soldier's wives and children. Now wives and children aren't as easy to take care of as soldiers. They need schools. They need good old American restaurants. They need a gym with ellipticals and yoga classes. They need the array of foods they're accustomed to, shipped across the world and lined up in grocery aisles where they belong. They need cars and pets and movies for rent. And most of all they need a giant store where they can get all the familiar American products they might ever want.

So the army builds a mini-America, all mixed up with all of that war stuff, walled up in a few square miles inside a Korean metropolis. An armed, uniformed soldier directs traffic at the crosswalk as the elementary school lets out. Walking to the grocery store, I pass a fenced parking lots full of HMMWVs and other tactical vehicles. I squeeze between lines of fully geared troops marching the other way on the sidewalk.

I wonder what the Koreans think of us, this self-contained American colony inside their capital city. Those of us who ever come out of our walled little world, that is.

Some days I go a little crazy. For no obvious reason, I get frustrated at things that I shouldn't. I feel like things are going all wrong when really everything's fine. I eat my bibimbop too fast and then complain that my stomach hurts. I try to shop for the entire month at the commissary, then am mad that I can't carry all the groceries home on my back. And I don't know what to do next and I can't sit still.

To balance this post...we bought a microwave over the weekend and its pretty sweet. I burnt up the sponge yesterday though, trying to sterilize it. We have a water tank thing, with the big upside down jug on top, with hot and cold spigots. As soon as you put a new jug on, the water comes out almost boiling. There are some crazy Korean hot water nymphs living in there that do it.

We're having a barbecue on our roof tomorrow night.

Korea: Week Four

So far, living with Husband is so much fun. It's definitely been worth all the waiting.

I like Korea, too, and all its quirks. I stopped at a bathroom in the metro today and the toilet paper dispenser was on the wall next to the hand dryer. You grab a handful as you walk in, and take it in the stall with you. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I was using the hand dryer.

The other day we had some of our neighbors (all Americans) over for dinner, and our Korean real estate agent, Jinny. Jinny brought me a case of toilet paper. She mumbled something about it being traditional... and I hate buying toilet paper so I didn't question it.

If you're standing up on a bus and carrying a large bag, sometimes old people sitting down will take the bag from you and hold it in their laps. They'll really tug at it until you give it to them. And then when you get off the bus they'll give it back.

The first pictures are ones I took at the university, which is on of the most beautiful places I've been in Seoul. The last one is two old men I saw in a park, sitting in a stream with a couple bottles of soju and some melons chilling around them.

snu id

Everything seems to take forever here, so I can never get enough done and am always busy. Today it took most of the afternoon to figure out how to create a user id for school. Of course, the website is entirely in Korean. There is an English "manual," that is very little help. The page had 3 blanks. The manual said the first one is your name (phonetically in Korean), the second your ssn, the third you student number. That did not work. I called the OIA (the office that deals with exchange students). Yesterday when I called for the same reason, they couldn't find anyone who spoke English. But today a very nice woman said she would look up what I should type in. But for the next few hours... didn't. I called back later, and got a man who said the only way to do it was to come into the office. Since I live 45+ minutes from the university, this is a problem. I asked to speak to the other woman, but the man she was on the phone. I asked him to have her call me when she finished, but the man said that the woman is always busy and will not have a chance. I told him to give her the freakin message. Finally, the woman called me and said she had sent me the email, and the simple explanation was that, actually, by "ssn" the computer wanted my date of birth, followed by the number 2 million. Why didn't I think of that?! All in all, I finally got my id, went to the website where my class information is posted, and it said (in English!) that after creating an id I should be able to log in within the next 6 hours...