Wednesday, September 23, 2009

K-Pop Revolution

Hello everyone! I'm really sorry about the lack of blog updating lately, and I promise I will try to be better about it. I've just been so busy raging til the sun comes up and planning trips to the DMZ :) So much has happened since my last update, but I'll try to fill in just the highlights.

I'm now an official part of Korea, having my Alien Registration Card (ARC), and a cell phone, and the internet. I've even had to pay bills already. Not any more exciting here than it is anywhere else. Got my first big girl paycheck, which was exciting, but is being quickly spent. My camera died awhile back, and so my first big investment here was a beautiful shiny pink touch screen camera that I am totally in love with. It was kind of expensive, but definitely worth it. It came with a matching pink case, and a decent size memory card. 

School is the same old stuff, but the kids literally say something that makes me say "who taught you English?" every single day. Some examples would include...me asking the students to name some states in the U.S. and one girl replying "Sunflower....?". Another one was me showing a picture of Obama, and the kids remembering my crush on David Beckham. One smartass kid couldn't forget my Beckham obsession, and said "Sexy man. David Beckham, Obama. Same same". In Korea, "same same" means...well, exactly that. Its what Jin calls Konglish which I think explains itself as well.  The kids as well as my fellow teachers have been keeping me in the Korean pop culture loop by making sure I always have the latest K-Pop (that's Korean Pop) songs on my iPod at all times. The babe of the moment goes by G-Dragon, who is from the group Big Bang. Yeah, I don't know. Click here to check out his latest hit, "Heartbreaker". No lie...the only lyrics that are in English are "heartbreaker" and "no way". But the song is catchy, and the girls go nuts for him. And when his songs come on in the clubs in Seoul? Its just over. Everyone freaks out and hits the dance floor. Not going to lie, I'm starting to think he's pretty cute myself. Must be all that makeup he wears. I'll post some more K-Pop songs soon, just so you can all be in the loop.

This past weekend I went with Anna and several other people from UW to 도봉산 (that's Dobongsan for those of you who still haven't learned how to read Korean). San=mountain. Its in Bukhansan national park. Buk=northern area. Han=han river(the big one that runs through Seoul). Therefore, Bukhansan translates to mountains north of the Han river. Cool huh? Sooo this mountain is a 2,426 ft monster that my friends and I decided to take on. Most of them came from south of Seoul, and took over an hour to get there. Luckily for me, this mountain is 4 short subway stops away from my apartment, and it took me about 15 minutes. Suckers. After mapping out our route...
...we were on our way up the mountain. And boy was it a trip. About 15 minutes in, we met a very friendly semi-English speaking Korean woman. She took all 10 of us on as her personal mission to lead us to the top.  She turned out to be some crazy expert hiker, and when I simply asked her to take a picture of the group, she grabbed my shiny new pink camera, and took off in what I can only assume was the direction of North Korea. She literally just sprinted up the mountain ahead of us pausing every few meters to snap pictures of us laughing like crazy/struggling to get up this brutal mountain.

Eventually though, we were able to catch up to her, and the shiny new pink camera was recovered. Lesson learned: don't give your camera to strangers on a mountain. Shortly after my camera rescue, we came across a temple on the mountain. There are several apparently, but this was the only one we saw. Before the temple were tons of Buddha statues in different positions. I'm told each positions symbolizes something, but no one has been able to communicate clearly enough to me what exactly they symbolize.

Here's a few pics of the temple. Really, it was one of the coolest things I've seen here thus far. 

Even though there was so many people, it was sort of peaceful to see and hear the prayers at this Buddhist temple. Eventually we made our way to a decent resting point and were able to enjoy the view. 


I'm sure that anyone who was with me on this hike will agree, however, that these picture simply cannot do justice to the amazing views we had all day. The view of all of Seoul from the top of a mountain was so incredible, and I definitely plan on taking anyone who comes to visit me on this hike. So...if you plan on visiting me, please start working out now. Rock climb, run, do whatever you have to do to get in shape. Because come Sunday, I was hardly able to walk. We stopped on some rocks to have the lunches we packed for ourselves. 

And then...it was straight to the top! The climb after lunch was by far the most difficult. We just had to pull ourselves over rocks, and we were being passed by retired folks who do this pretty much every weekend. We were rock climber roadkill. As we were clutching onto rocks for dear life, these senior citizens were skipping up and down the mountain like they were children. Not embarrassing at all. Towards the very end, the climb is so steep and there's such little sturdy footing that you have to hang onto a rope to pull yourself up, and the only thing keeping  you from flying off the edge of the mountain are two little metal bars that are set in place to act as guardrails, but really didn't make me feel any safer. After struggling to make it, we reached the peak, and ohhhhh my goooddddddd was the view worth the past 2 1/2 hours of sweating and struggling and climbing.  It was indescribable, and I got pictures, but really, you can't even image how cool it was. 


After the hike down, which in some ways was more difficult than the hike up...we stopped at the bottom of the mountain for dinner and drinks. Restaurants are plentiful at the bottom of the mountain, as is the Cass, Hite, and Soju...which was perfect for us. After dinner, we went our separate ways to get ready for the night. Then we met up in Seoul, and raged until the wee hours of the morning. This time, however, we were smart, and booked a "love motel" in advance However, there were 8 of us, and only 2 rooms so it was pretty crowded, but after such a long day/night no one really seemed to mind.

This weekend...the trip I've been waiting for, and most of you have been terrified of me taking. I'm doing it. I'm going to the DMZ!!! I really could not be more excited. I'm going with the USO, which is supposed to be one of the best tours. I'm pretty sure there's a part in the tour where I can jump over the line and snap a picture in North Korea before they blow us all up...or something. If anything goes wrong, or you don't hear from me for awhile, please send in Bill. 

And finally, some shameless advertising on behalf of my other world-traveling friends. My friend Adam here in South Korea has a blog, although he has asked me to ask all of you who choose to read it to take it with a grain of salt. But you can find a link for his blog here .  Another girl from UW has a blog here as well...you can read Catie's blog by clicking on her name.  Maya has moved to Sydney officially, and she has a blog as well. Visit Maya's blog please! Also, her roommate Kelsey has a blog, and you can read that by clicking here.  They're all worth your time, and each has an interesting perspective on their own situation. You know you don't actually do anything at work anyway, so please just take the time to visit their pages and see what they've been up to! 

Hope all is well back home everyone!

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." --Martin Buber

3 comments:

  1. Amy
    Do you know Bryanna Bedesem? She's from Portage and I believes she's in South Korea as well. She chaperoned my son Michael's mission trip to Detroit in June. It's fun reading you blog. What an adventure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like you're having a blast! I want a pink camera!!!! I love pink. I miss you and love you!

    love,

    Amy

    ReplyDelete
  3. baby girl! hahah i love pink, too. but i love you even more! everything sounds fabulous! i have been checking your blog every week... thanks so much for keeping us all in tune. madison still is not the same without you. skype soon. love you so much! p.s. if you even care anymore, the badgers are 4-0! wooo! miss you boo.

    love,
    meghan blabs

    ReplyDelete