5 Things You REALLY Should Do In Korea

The Korean Tourism Board is extremely lame. If you were to follow a prescribed list of things to do by them, your stay in Korea would probably look like this:

1. Visit a folk village. Watch a traditional wedding. Realize how odd it is for people to be dressed up in traditional garb and faking a wedding.
2. Visit Insadong. Buy Korean postcards. Eat a traditional meal and then have your tour guide tell you how kim chi is rated the healthiest food in the world. You don't care.
3. Visit Seoul Tower. Take pictures. Look at all the dumb couples that have put love locks on the love fence.
4. Go shopping in Myeong Dong. Buy the same shit you could back home.
5. Visit a palace. Read about Korea's boring history (compared to neighboring China's, especially).

This is what you SHOULD do:

1. Visit a jim jil bbang (sauna). Most are 24 hours, so you could spend all day there. Sleep, eat, watch TV, shower, bathe, go to the steam room, get a haircut... all while either in PJs or naked. And don't forget to get a body exfoliating scrub from the random worker at the bathing room... who's probably naked too. Twice the fun if you're foreign-looking.



2) Visit Itaewon, the foreigner-dominant part of Seoul, AT NIGHT. The place is incredibly cosmopolitan -- you'll see Americans, Middle Eastern people, Asians, Africans roaming about. I'm sure Koreans get a kick out of being a minority coming here. Don't mess with GIs. Eat a variety of food. Visit a club. Take a walk up Hooker Hill.




Next, go to a spot where there's a night life and...

3) Scope the eye candy. Maybe it's their fashion sense. Maybe it's the plastic surgery. Maybe it's the diet pills. Maybe it's because fat girls get looked down on. Korean women are held to a high aesthetic standard. Forget the social commentary, just enjoy the view.



4) Walk around the area and look for Koreans blacked out on the street. Public intoxication (and sleeping) is not a crime. This can lead to some surprising sights.



5) Try to get into a booking club. Waiters drag girls to your table -- it's like a nightclub and speed-dating put together. The whole thing is very "Korean," so don't expect to understand it at all, just enjoy.


That's how your visit to Korea should look.

Raaaandom text messages

My old co-worker keeps sending me odd text messages:

"lying on the grass with chatting the clear sky n the droning of the cicade! ru enjoying your break? ^^"

This girl needs to put the SAT vocabulary-prep book down.

The Stares

It's something I still haven't gotten over here in homogenous Korea. 

If you're a white person, you will get stared down. If you're a black person, you will get stared down. If you're a Middle Eastern person, you will get stared down and then they will ask you "how much for a kebab?"

I'm of Southern-Chinese descent. People think I am Korean here. Hell, people get confused when I tell them that I'm not, as if me being Mongolian, Japanese, or Vietnamese is impossible. So, I blend in.

As a Korean-looking person, when I start speaking English, the whole around me stops and stares -- their wide-open eyes (as wide as Korean eyes can get) and jaw-dropping expression say to me: "you are Korean... but you speak English??" This country has seen many white people, so it's not too surprising for many Korean. However, I'm a different group of foreigner. I get the stares more than white people.

It's difficult

It's hard to keep up with this blog. Everything that was once novel is now simply part of regular life.

There isn't much of a community for this type of blogging either. The few expats in Korea blogs I do follow kind of suck too or no longer blog.

With that said, there's not much more I feel like writing about in this blog.

Peace out.

Music Critique

Today, I had a class on music critiquing. I taught the students some commonly-used phrases to critique music ("It's got a good beat", "It's catchy", "It's nothing special"). We then proceeded to watch 10 music videos of varying genres.

The songs I played were as follows:

1. Justin Bieber - Baby
2. Bach - Cello Suite #1 Prelude
3. Foo Fighters - Everlong
4. Miles David - Summertime
5. Benji Benassi - Satisfaction
6. Bob Marley - Stir It Up
7. My Chemical Romance - Helena
8. Kenny Chesney - She's Got It All
9. BB King - The Thrill is Gone
10. Usher - Yeah!

I instructed them to critique the music using the phrases we learned, but some opted to write their own individuals responses, to my delight:

Bach
-"sorry to Bach"
-"this music is trash"

Foo Fighters
-"he shake his leg too much"

Bob Marley
-"Musician's hairstyle were cool"
-"I like the beat and lyrics very funny"
'stir it up, little darling, stir it up'... I suppose it is a bit funny


My Chemical Romance
-"Bass guy makes me angry"
-"Don't you have any respect for the dead?!"
he noticed they were dancing at a funeral. nice comment

Usher
-"the girl is so sexy"
-"scary"
overall, the students liked this genre/song the best. hopefully this'll mean they are more familiar with hip hop and i won't have to see godawful Korean dancing at the clubs

Kenny Chesney
-"fuck"
there were surprisingly positive ratings for country music. americans-not-from-the-south probably don't have as high an opinion on country.

Justin Bieber
-"gross"

Bach
-"NOT AWESOME!!!!"

the one song that got the most shit dropped on it was BB King. the music wasn't well-liked and many students commented how he was making awkward faces (feelin the music ... just a tad too much).

BB King
-"he look stupid, sorry BB King"
-"singer appearance very dirty"
-"singer's voice is very embarassing"
-"let's fight"