Seoul has class

My weeks have been progressively getting busier and busier. As of late I have been taking advantage of my open work schedule of 4-10pm and started to fill it with various activities and classes. I have been meeting with my language exchange friend Yunjin most every Tues and Thurs at around noon for 2 hours. This past Wed I also stated an official Korean class at a community center not far from me which meets on Mon and Wed evenings. Since I work late on Mon I will only be attending the Wed class and substituting the days I miss with Yunjin. I have gone once and it was nice. Only 10 people are in the class most of which are American and also teaching English here although there is one person from the Philippines getting his MBA and one Frenchman working here. Its a nice way to reinforce my limited Korean skills, practice them and also learn the language in a more formal setting.

Also as of late I have signed up for membership at a Muay Thai gym. Muay Thai is a hard martial art form which originates in Thailand and is also known as "The Art of Eight Limbs" since you use punches, kicks, knees and elbows. Its like kickboxing on speed and you can use elbows and knees when fighting. The trainer was sick this last week but I have gone a couple times with a friend of mine who has been frequenting the gym for a couple months. Everyday Mon-Fri there is a different class that is taught which is held once in the morning and once in the evening although the coach will do the class with you no matter what time you are at the gym. The facility is open from 11am-11pm and can be used whenever you desire as well to just exercise. i am excited to start training as I have not done much physical activity since being here and on top of that I will learn some Muay Thai skills which is something I have always wanted to do.

Fantastical Fun Filled Food Frenzy

This past weekend was, as you can tell by the title, fun and focused on food. It may seems like the only thing I do but I promise I do things in between eating. The weekend started off Friday night at a restaurant thinking we were going to eat chicken from the picture they had out front, but in Korea that is a bad way of ordering food if you are a picky eater as it very well possibly be something else. After taking a seat and ordering to different varieties of "chicken" I slowly started to realize that we probably didnt order chicken and when the food came out my thought was confirmed. We had gone to a restaurant that serves intestines. It was actually on my list of things to eat here so it wasnt a big deal. It was tasty and flavorful as it was cooked in a sauce with other vegetables stir fry style. The consistency was chewy, one of the dishes more than the other which gets old after a while and makes it something you can eat a lot of as you get sick and tired of having to chew so much.

During the day Saturday I wandered around Insadong, a part of Seoul known to be slightly touristy selling all kinds of trinkets but full of art galleries, tea rooms, and food. We spent a couple of hours strolling down the street looking at all the trinkets and stopping to eat at just about every street vendor to try what they were selling.



We had chicken on a stick, balls of dough filled with red bean paste (Chalboribbang), Some other ball of dough filled with cabbage and some sort of seafood paste, bread dumplings filled with bulgogi and ones filled with sweet potato and walnuts, and the most interesting: Kkul Tarae or dragon's beard candy. It is 16,384 very thin strands of honey coated in corn starch and wrapped over 7 kinds of nut: peanut, walnut, almonds, pine nuts and some others I didnt pick up on.

I filmed it vertically so you will have to tilt your head since I am not going to take the time to flip the video.



After eating and stumbling upon a frozen park we decided to hit up a tea room to warm up from the cold.



On Saturday night we ended up in an actual chicken restaurant which was supposed to have very spicy chicken. Everyone always talks about how spicy the food is here but I think my tolerance is way above average and so I have yet to have anything truly spicy. Well I had heard about fire chicken which was supposed to be spicy and they had it on the menu so we ordered a plate. Surprise again, it was chicken this time but it ended up being chicken feet, another thing I intended on trying but was not expecting. It also tasted good but was a bit chewy as well. It was more spicy than most things but yet again it fell short on the spice o'meter.

I spoke too soon

Today I found out that I am not actually eligible to get my visa for China with my Israeli passport since I entered Korea with my American and have my Korean visa in my American passport. Looks like I will just have to pay more, damn those Chinese!

The benefits of being a dual citizen

For the Lunar (Chinese and Korean) New Year I will be in Beijing! What does this have to do with being a dual citizen you ask? Well if you don't already know, to enter The Peoples Republic of China you must have a visa for entry no matter what your visit is for or where you hail from (yes I just said hail from). I have already booked my plan ticket to Beijing for Feb 13-16th and found accommodation for the three nights and so today I went to apply for my visa.

Applying for a Chinese tourist visa or L visa was extremely easy. I found out that I could no longer go directly to the Chinese Embassy or Consulate and that I had to acquire the visa through a designated travel agent because of some knew rule in place, so I found out of a place I could go where a friend of a friend got their visa. Acquiring the visa really is just a way the government can make some money as there are no real reasons behind it an they choose the price each country will pay for their visas, they discriminate. As I had knew prior, Americans must pay a premium for their visas although it is supposed to be the same price for any kind of visa for Americans: single entry, double entry, multiple, 6 month single and double, as well as 1 year single double or multi. Well this is only the case when you go through the embassy but since you cant do that anymore (at least in Korea) the travel agent charges different prices. I figured I would get a one year multi entry visa as I plan on going back to China later on but found out I was not eligible since my Korean residency card expires in 11 months from now and the embassy would see this and deny my year visa so the next best thing is a 6 month visa. After all the fees from the embassy and travel agent it would have cost me 140,000 won for a double entry visa with my American passport but luckily for me I also have an Israeli passport which allowed me the same thing for only 65,000 won.

All I needed to get the visa was to bring my passports to the travel agent with my residency card and a passport photo which I got before going in the subway station. (The subways have automatic photo booths that are used for all official photo taking: passport, id card, licenses etc. Very convenient, quick, cheap and easy.) The visa has a 4 day turn around and I will be picking it up on Monday. Needless to say I am extremely excited to go to Beijing and spend the Chinese New Year there, its supposed to be crazy!

Silly Monilly

This past weekend I had the pleasure of experiencing another new food dish. On Saturday I met up with some friends and went to Bucheon which is about 40-50 min outside of Seoul proper (although it is considered part of the metropolitan area of Seoul) to meet up with our local friend Joon who lives there. He is so much fun and always showing us new places and things.

Once everyone had arrived, we decided to go and get some food. Joon thought about where we could go for a minute and then asked everyone if we were ok with raw beef. The dish is called Yukoe in Korean (육회). Everybody was up for it but wasnt entirely sure what it was going to be like. (I will at the very least try any food put in front of me). While I have had beef tartar before I figured this dish would have its own Korean flair to it.

We sat down in a small restaurant and Joon ordered the food. While waiting for the dish they brought out soup to cook on the portable burners that wee on the table which everyone then will communally eat from (no individual bowls, they love the communal eating). It was a bone soup, which was pretty basic water based broth that had pieces of bone floating in it that had been soaking and cooking to the point that they were soft and edible. It was delicious as everything has been thus far here and a nice way to warm up from the cold weather and snow outside.

The dish came out on a wooden board with the pile of raw meat in the middle mixed with sesame seeds, pine nuts and chives, as well as julienned Korean pear, a saucer containing a raw egg yolk and a sesame leaf with 4 small triangles of cheese (im pretty sure it was Kraft singles slices) on the side. Also, everyone had there own sauce dish containing minced garlic, salt, a grey bean paste, chili paste, and wasabi.



The method of eating the meal was as follows:
Take a piece of cheese and put it in your sauce dish (mix well with chopsticks)
Create an indentation in the pile of meat to make what looks like a volcano.
Dump the raw egg yolk in the indentation (mix the meat and egg until evenly coated)
Take a clump of meat and place it in your sauce dish
Take a piece of pear and place it on top of your meat.
Pick up the sauced meat and pear with your chopsticks and enjoy.

The meal was really tasty and super refreshing as well. They also brought out sesame oil to dip the meat in which was also delicious. I didn't get silly monilly (salmonella) as the title may lead you to believe i just think its fun to say. Actually Joon claimed that the meal is supposed to actually be healthy and good for you.

Also the restaurant had really cool lighting, It was an onion bag filled with light bulbs hanging from the ceiling and on of them in the middle was connected and on which made for a really cool looking light source.

The new year and my korean age

For New Year's Eve I had the pleasure to experience seeing the Ying Yang Twins perform in Seoul. For those of you who are not familiar with them they are a "crunk rap" duo that have hilariously graphic sexual songs to the beats of hip hop club dance music. Needles to say it was a very interesting and yet oddly normal experience here in Korea. I went with some friends and celebrated the new year with a typical slice of strangeness found in Korea. While they were performing we were so close to the stage that we were practically on it. As a matter of fact towards the end of the performance I found myself on stage with them as well as some other people singing along and snapping pictures. The night was fun and we stayed out late which made work the next day quite dreadful but I only had a half day so it was manageable.








Had to get a picture of the coat check guy's facial hair

That same night I also, along with everyone else, became a year older in Korean society. In Korea they have a different system than the west when it comes to your age. In Korea everyone turns a year older together when the new year comes in. So everyone that would be in your school class would be the same age regardless of when you were actually born. When January 1st rolls around even if your birthday is in August you are a year older. Also when keeping track of your age they follow the "there is no year zero" approach and so when you are born you are considered a 1 year old. After coming to Korea at the age of 22 and spending 6 weeks here I am now a 24 year old. Happy new year and happy birthday...

Tuesday and Thursday's with Yunjin

This past Thursday I met with a language exchange friend. I was looking online to find some way of learning Korean from a human instead of on the computer and I found a posting on craigslist for a language exchange friend. They were looking to learn English and in return teach Korean, so I emailed them and had a couple emails back and forth of basic introductions and setting up were and when to meet. I found out that she actually lives in the same area as me which is convenient for meeting.

Well Thursday came around and I met up with her at the subway station and went into a starbucks to sit and talk. Her English was very good for never actually being taught the language, she said she learned by just watching American television shows. I am always surprised by this phenomenon, when I was in Sweden everyone I spoke with learned English the same way and it was perfect with no accent. Well Yunjin has an accent and her English isnt as good as the Swedes but was still good enough to hold a conversation. She was nervous in the beginning and would laugh and look away a bunch but as we continued to talk she loosened up. She told me that I was a good look man with a nice smile and that I could be on TV. She likes movies and TV shows a bunch so I told her that I like to produce films and she was impressed and said I was the only person she has every met that has done that. Another first I found out was that I am the first Jew she has ever met. She didnt know much about Judaism so she said she would look it up on the internet but what was funny is that she knows of Israel but didn't know that it was a country of Jews.

Well after discussion ourselves, family, travel and our interests we started to get into what it is we want to get out of the exchange. I told her that I would like to refine my ability to read Hangul and then to start building a vocabulary of words that are practical to my life. I will be bringing flash cards next time with words and phrases with English on one side and she will write the Korean on the other so I can study them. She will also be explaining me the more technical side of Korean as to the grammar and when/why you use certain words instead of others for the same thing. As for her, she wants to work on her speaking as she doesn't use English at all so I will be talking with her on various subjects and correcting her during the conversation. She just mostly needs someone to practice her English with so she said she would bring a topic of conversation every time and we will just sit and discuss the topic and our opinions on it, easy enough for me.

So for now every Tuesday and Thursday I will be meeting Yunjin for a language exchange at noon for a couple hours before work. It hopefully will be a nice way of learning the language and I also get to make another local friend which is always enjoyable.