Sunday, bloody Sunday

I must preface this post with a bit of a disclaimer. I generally like living in Korea and being overseas, but sometimes some things happen that make you wish you could just teleport home for the evening. Normally on these days it's pretty easy to just lock the door and put on some movies or music and pretend that our apartment is somewhere else, but Sunday was a special case for a few reasons. A lot of what I'm going to write you should take with a grain of added snark for amusement. I really have no major issue with living here, but sometimes the cultural dissonance between Korean culture and my own really pushes me to the point of wanting to drop a couple of choice words and gestures, and Sunday was one of those days.

It started out ever so pleasant, Sunday did. We woke up at around 8:00 or so to the sound of construction up the street. This isn't one of the extra-irritating things I mentioned previously, but it certainly is enough to make us laugh a bit in the morning. Mainly though we find that we wake up early no matter what. What do you expect, we're getting old. Anyhow the morning started out great. We freshened up, packed up our laptops and headed over to one of the four coffee shops on our block (DaVinci Coffee this time) to do a little bit of travel planning. We shopped and searched and finally booked our accommodations for our not-too-distant-future trip to Japan and started making a list of things we want to see and such. That's always a super exciting thing, in my opinion. My aunt always says that if you're not on a trip you should be planning one, and I generally agree. Anyhow, we enjoyed the morning about as much as you can with slightly too much caffeine and excitement in the air and finally had to head on to our afternoon plans. We dropped off the computers at home and headed out to grab a quick lunch on our way to the animal shelter to walk some dogs.

We had a quick bite of food (Carolyn had ramen and I had donkatsu) and hopped the subway down to the shelter. Now, the dog walks are usually pretty well organized, but this time they needed a few people to walk two dogs instead of one because there weren't a boatload of volunteers. I had a super cute terrier (my heart breaks just thinking about the little gal) and a pekinese that was super excited for a walk. It's spring time, so of course all of the dogs wanted to hump each other. Keeping them separated while staying with the group was challenging enough on its own. I always feel a huge amount of what I'm calling cultural dissonance on these dog walks because Korea has evolved so fast that a lot of people don't appreciate domesticated animals. It's not uncommon on the walks to hear a drunk old man yell "mashita" which means "delicious" in Korean or see them kick at the dogs. I try to remember that this isn't my culture, avoid where possible, and move on. Yesterday was a different story.

As we headed toward the park where we usually walk the dogs I heard the sounds of Samulnori drums. Samulnori is one of those cool things you just sometimes run into in Korea. I was hoping there'd be a small performance or something. No way. It was a huge festival, and the girl leading the dog walk decided to walk right through it rather than turn around or avoid through the empty parking lot behind the street. I was happy I wasn't leading the walk, but the dogs were obviously not welcome in the area. My two pups were quite frightened by all the noise as well. Anyhow, here's where the cultural dissonance turns into irritation. Old men too drunk to lift themselves from the ground were yelling things at our group. Old ladies came out and yelled things at individuals with the group. In my mind I wondered, what makes it not okay to walk a dog in a park, but perfectly acceptable to get so drunk you can't even sit up? It's an ugly thought, and I hate that I even think such a thing. It's not my culture, I came here, I don't make the rules. I get it. But the fact of the matter is there is no rule about walking dogs in said park, and there's something wrong with old men yelling things at a girl they think is Filipino (I'm pretty sure she was American) no matter where you're at. I think this country is changing so fast that it must be quite difficult for those who still remember not having enough food to grasp the changes. Anyhow, that rant is over. The dog walk concluded without any big trouble and we headed out to do some grocery shopping on the way home.

In front of the store I tripped over a curb. It was enough to really set me off. The straw that broke the camel's back. Carolyn managed to talk me down from my unreasonable anger at the curb (it was just sitting there minding its own business after all) and we went inside. I remembered that there's a Baskin Robbins concession at the store and forgot about my troubles. While we were waiting though some teenage girls walked up, busted in front of us, and one of them elbowed Carolyn while being quite unaware of her surroundings. Carolyn snapped and said "watch out!" and the girl at hearing English and seeing a foreigner did what she's practiced while running up and saying "hello" to her English teacher at school, ran off shrieking (albeit a quiet shriek). We're used to getting jarred and bumped here, and it's usually no big deal, but when you're in the middle of ordering ice cream and kids just go nuts and you end up getting a bruise it's a bit much.

We were pretty fried at this point. We did our grocery shopping and things were getting better. We needed to go up to the 2nd floor of the building though, so we got our shopping cart on the escalator and noticed the wonderful parenting happening in front of us that would within about a minute blow the lid off of both of our brains for the day. The mother was texting or watching TV or something on her phone, while her daughter tried to walk along the glass stanchions of the escalator handrail, and her son stood in the basket. We were both wondering when the mother was going to lay down the law when the cart hit the threshold at the end of the escalator and the kid in the cart flopped right over and landed on his face. They're probably lucky there was no spinal injury, but I'd say the kid must have at least gotten a concussion from the fall. His head had a small egg on it from the impact when we first saw him, but a couple other close passes in the store showed us more than half of his forehead covered with a huge bruise. It was a brutal thing to see to finish off our waning ability to be outside of the apartment for the day. This might have been the single most mentally taxing day out of the past year and a half we've lived here.

After we got home and relaxed a bit, Carolyn made a strawberry cake and I made some brats and potatos for dinner. Life was good again.

So what's the takeaway lesson from this story? I think there's a few.
1) Living overseas you will have days that are particularly challenging and if you can manage to remind yourself that it's all okay and the culture is just different you're doing just fine.
2) Cake and TV SitComs can fix anything.
3) Leaving cute terriers at an animal shelter is a terrible thing that no one should ever have to do.

So now it's Monday afternoon and I'm once again happy to be in Korea, with awesome travel opportunities and none of the crap from yesterday really bothers me, but I thought I should write it down to remember that not every day here is sunshine and cherry blossoms.

Changes

It's been a little over one year since Carolyn and I left the comfort of home for an exciting (and sometimes not so exciting) new job and life in Korea. In the 365 days that make up a year, we've seen a bit of East Asia and Southeast Asia and we're starting another year long contract here, and that means changes. Press play on the video clip below and keep reading to the soothing sounds of Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.

One of the biggest, and definitely the saddest change, is that even though we've decided to stay for another year, our good friend BritBrit has decided that it's time to go back to school and become a teacher in Canada. Brittany will be a great teacher and we definitely wish her all the best. We're also quite jealous because she's going to be traveling through Southeast Asia for the next few months...and India...and the middle east. She's been Carolyn's closest friend here in Korea and had a big part in the engagement ring buying process and will hopefully be one of our close friends for a long, long time.

Carolyn's had to move to a new school, and so far it seems like a really positive move. Of course I get all of my information about her work from her, so I guess that's first hand. It's too early to tell, but so far it seems like there's a lot more upside than downside.

For me it seems to be mostly the same. We'll have a new principal, so that could mean some pretty big changes to my desk warming schedule and dress code, but my fingers are crossed that it won't be unmanageable.

In culinary news, we had yeongnyeom galbi, jjimdak, and kal-guk-su this weekend. Yummo.

Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat...

Ahh, the holidays are here! My favorite time of year. This year is a little different though, because we're halfway around the world from home and family and the grand mad dash holiday shopping experience. Now, everyone always talks about how horrible the whole holiday-mall-shopping-center-elbows-and-assholes experience is horrible, but you know what, I LOVE IT. The good news is that any shopping experience here in Korea turns into that very same rushed dash push and shove kind of experience, so there's nothing missing there. There's even a few department stores that have put out Christmas decorations. Holiday Shopping experience: Check.

The next thing is Christmas music. It's playing in the stores, and it's easy to log onto GrooveShark and listen to the sounds of the season when we're at home.

We found a 24" or so Christmas tree and decorated the heck out of it. It's all lit up with battery sucking Krypton bulbs and provides just enough of a miniature Christmas tree flair that we're happy and merry at home. We also got a couple strands of red and green lights and Carolyn found stockings downtown somewhere. The apartment here is looking more festive than our apartment in Florida did, for sure!

Our little $50 oven from Gmarket has been put to good use and Carolyn's been pumping out holiday baked goods all day today. This is one investment that paid big dividends. With a little resourcefulness we can make pretty much anything from home that we want now...perfect for the holidays.

Now, gifts. It's easy to buy gifts for family back home as we can find cool Korean things and whatnot, but neither of us really want that kind of stuff, so it's a little more difficult. Thanks be to the interwebs for making that an easy fix.

This may not be the most interesting post ever, but it feels a lot like Christmas around here and I thought it was worth a mention. Off to deal with a pot of chili Carolyn has simmering on the stove..