Hey, wanna come over?

Here it is! Sorry for the long delay. Our brand new home in all it's square footage. It may be small, but it's got spunk, and class.

This is an apartment for one person, but Brian gets paid a housing stipend (about 300 USD) to live in it instead of his own apartment. The place is free for us, we just have to pay utilities and a 30 USD maintenance fee for 2 in a 1 person. It's well worth it for the setup we have. Our landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Lee, live in the floor above us and they're such honey pies. Our washing machine broke down when we first got here, so we were walking around with our laundry when Mr. Lee saw us and showed us the laundry machine in the garage of our building. He explained how to use it and we told him we'd try it another day because we were spending the night at David and Duck's. But he wouldn't hear of it. He told us to go ahead and do the laundry (he speaks a little English, but we sherade a lot with each other) and that he'd hang it up on the lines on the roof for us. What landlord have you ever known to do something like that for a tennant? They take great pride in the cleanliness of their building too, which is very nice for us because the buildings nearby are sick. There's recycling and food waste all over the entrance ways.

We're also in an ideal location. It's about a 20 minute bus ride for Brian and I to get to our schools - a necessary buffer judging from what we've heard about kids following teachers home (not in a creepy way, just because they LOVE their English teachers, which depending on your disposition, could still be creepy). The area near our apartment is a lot of fun. We're about a 5 minute walk from 2 universities (where there's a subway stop), so there's a ton of cheap, delicious restaurants and bars and kareoke rooms nearby. There's always a party if you want it, but we're just far enough away from the relentless nightlife that it's quiet. 5 minutes walking in the other direction there's the UN Peace Park, a large green area where we can run and people watch. The UN cemetary is also there. There's also the Busan Cultural Center (ballets, symphonies, etc.) and Busan Metropolitan Museum (30 cents fee, haven't been in yet but we hear it's good). Near the universities there's a street market where we buy all our produce, including the best dubu (tofu) I've ever tasted. I feel that I could say more, but I think I've tantalized you all enough into coming to visit. You can get an idea of the lay out from these google earth images. If you want the interactive version, email me (jessbartels@gmail.com) and I'll send it to you. I couldn't figure out how to embed it here.


Here's the grand view.

Zoomed in on our apartment, Kyungsung area, and our schools.


A close up of the house and park.

Same view scooted up to the Kyungsung area.

A close up of our schools.

And one of David and Duck's place.

Jess

A Korean Thanksgiving and other tales

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving in Korea. I was worried I'd be feeling homesick. I've spent a Thanksgiving abroad before, but Baby Bartels and Mom came to Spain so I still had family at hand. This year though, we adopted some surrogates. We invited Yun Jae, Sa Jin, and Mi Yeun to experience a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment.

Brian and I started cooking Tuesday to manage all the food in our tiny kitchen, and the results were delicious. We had rosemary garlic bread, stuffed acorn squash, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, some wasabi rice (a meal's not a meal in Korea without rice), fruit salad, apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and some of Dad's snickerdoodles that came just in time. Yun Jae brought his 5 year old son, Yae Dam, and David came bearing red wine so that we had a cozy little house full. Poor Duck was home sick and missed the festivities. Like any good Thanksgiving, the eating never ended until everyone went home, but unlike other Thanksgivings, this one involved a who's-the-wimpiest-girl-arm-wrestling-extravaganza! I have a new perspective on my strength now that Sa Jin (not quite 5 ft tall, not quite 100 lbs) beat me with ease - she was laughing in fact, and Mi Yeun (looks frail as cotton candy) and I tied. Yae Dam was too busy playing the wii to condescend to our competition, but I think I could have taken him.


Brian, Mi Yeun, Sa Jin, Yae Dam, me, and our Thanksgiving dinner.


The Koreans loved Thanksgiving dinner, but they liked the rosemary garlic bread and apple pie the best. They'd never eaten rosemary before and Yae Dam said it tasted like flowers. Well said my boy.

Friday night we continued the feasting by going to the Brewery. This is a brew house in Seomyeon that has an all you can eat and drink (in beer) special for only 16,000 won per person (that's less than 14 USD right now!). From 6 to 9 you can eat your heart out and you can continue to get drinks til 9:30. The beer was delicious for Korean beer, but only passable for a brew house by American standards. The food included sushi, spaghetti, a salad bar, wings, a yogurt and coffee bar, and a meat smorgasbord that you cook at your table. This will probably become a Friday night tradition.

Saturday we went ice skating! It was easy to find the rink because ice skating in Korea is ice skating. It's only 6k won for skates and you can stay on the ice as long as you want. We skated for over 3 hours and I definitely won most improved. The skates here don't have the grooves on the toe of the blade, which is what I've always used to grip the ice to go. So at first I couldn't move at all while the others were skating laps around me. But I gradually picked it up and by the end I was skating backwards and doing spins and the hockey stop. Shannon's school took all of the kids skating there that Saturday too, and all the 3rd graders learned "can you ____?" the week before. One of the examples was "can you skate?" so all the kids were coming up to us and asking if we could skate and they were so excited to be able to talk to us. Oh, another thing about Korean skating rinks - you have to wear a helmet. They had skates that almost fit Brian and David, but the helmets didn't come close. See for yourself.

Sunday Brian and I decorated the apartment for Christmas. It only took 5 minutes, but we still did it justice with Christmas music, red wine, and then The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's the dinkiest little Christmas job I've ever seen, but it's ours and I love it. Don't judge our tree to harshly, it was only 2,000 won at the dollar store.

Our lovely poinsettia

tiny stockings



tree and poinsettia

Jess

Can you English? Me too!

This weekend we took it easy. Friday David and Duck came over and we cooked in - a new trick we've been using more often now that it's colder. It was so cold out and we were all feeling so cozy in our tiny apartment that we decided it was finally time to pull out one of our treasures from home. We brought very few treats because most things spoil and/or are very heavy. But amongst the chosen few there was whiskey. Sweet sweet vanilla oak belly warming Kentucky bourbon, complements of one David Flood. That's right David, we saved that little beauty and brought it along. And thank goodness because it was a unanimous opinion that whiskey has never tasted so good. There's just enough left for Christmas Eve.

Unfortunately, we decided we should check on the Kyungsung area, see what was going on. So we headed out to our favorite pajeon and makulli bar where an extremely drunk ole Korean fella started offering us drinks and eventually came and sat with us. Poor fool ruined the night. He didn't speak any English, but was convinced that he did, but because he couldn't understand us he assumed that we were Russian and weren't speaking English at all. He kept asking "Can you English?" and when we said yes he'd say most emphatically "Me too!", but this was an incorrect statement. He kept getting angry at us for not speaking English or Korean and while I generally agree that one should at least try one's best at the native language if one chooses to live abroad, he did come sit with an obvious group of foreigners. In another context a situation like this would tug my guilt cord for not being more studious and fluent in Korean, but in this case I was angry right back at him. It would be another story if we'd crashed his party, but come on old man! Don't ruin our night with your Debbie Downer attitude! We hung around far too long, but called it a night early to escape his wandering bad vibe tentacles. We split with David and Duck and headed home.

You sir most certainly cannot English.

Saturday was fun day though. We woke up lazily and relaxed before venturing out to see the UN Peace Park Cemetery. This is right beside our apartment, but it closes at 5 PM so we hadn't been inside yet.

It's beautiful, but pretty tragic. Not exactly full of warm memories and happy thoughts.

After the cemetery we went to Haeundae. There we met David, Duck, Shannon, and Ryan. On our way to the wharf we stopped by the Haeundae market to see what strange things we could see. This time around they were selling bees complete with combs. However, these were not honey bees. They looked like yellow jackets, and I don't know why anyone would want to buy them. Then we had to make a lightning quick convenient store stop for grown up drinks in order to catch the next boat out. We took a 2 hour tourist ferry around the Oryukdo Islets, one of the more common images associated with Busan. We were the only foreigners on board, and therefore, the only people not feeding our snacks to the seagulls. All the Koreans were loving the seagully attention. People were holding snacks out for the birds to take out of their hands and screaming with delight or terror, I couldn't tell which. In this manner we acquired an entourage of flying friends that blocked most pictures of the shoreline. It was a windy, icy, feather filled good time, and the islets were beautiful.

After the cruise it was dinner in Haeundae and then back to Kyungsung were we first had drinks at the 7-11, then one bar and finally we checked out my new favorite bar. Bob Dylan Bar is filled with old vinyl and you can select the record you want to hear while you sip the cheapest glass of red wine in town. It's got a great rundown in a cozy sort of way atmosphere and the strangest assortment of music I've ever seen. Right next to Nico live in Tokyo there's Puddle of Mud, and I found Blond on Blond sandwiched between a Korean record and some obscure country album. It's going to take some delving, but I think there might be some more gems in there.

Then it was back to the pajeon and makulli joint. The night before had been a bust there, but Saturday night there was a group of older (40-50) Koreans there who were celebrating a birthday. They kept inviting a couple of us up to their table to drink and talk and they were great fun. They all knew each other through yoga. One woman was a yoga master, 2 were teachers, the rest were students. Of the students, one man taught Korean and Chinese tea ceremonies and has invited us to his tea house this Friday when another of the friends- the saxophone player - will be playing live jazz. There were also a professor and physical therapist amongst them. They were so jolly and kept sharing their makulli and spilling it all over my lap. They were aggressively friendly with me. The yoga master woman kept grabbing me around the neck to take pictures with me, but she had me in a choke hold most of the time. When we finally went home Ryan, Shannon, David and Duck all crashed in a sweet, sweet slumber party of friends.

Before we met our new friends

Saxophone dragged me off to meet his friends

Ryan, Shannon, Professor, Physical Therapist, Yoga Teacher, Saxophone, Me, and Tea Man with a sliver of Yoga Master on the side

That Yoga Master was aggresive.

Saxophone loved the boys. Well, he loved everyone.

David, Yoga Master, Careef, and Saxophone.

Shannon sandwhich

This is right before he kissed Ryan's lips

This is as he's kissing David's lips.

Friend swap again

Makulli faces

That's the waiter in the background. He hates us I think.

Incidentally, I cut my own bangs this morning before school, and it turned out better than expected.
Jess

Sushi School

Thursday night my second school (Yong Dang) had a dinner for all the teachers. This is very common in Korea - in fact, it's the second dinner I've been to with Yong Dang. But this time was different. This time was sushi, and I had some of the most delicious raw fish of my life. But along with the raw fish, this 12 course meal came with whale. I don't know what kind of whale, but there was sliced whale on the table, and people ate the flesh and left the skin. I took a cell phone picture, I didn't have my camera. Among the other rare dishes were triton and other shell fish, served raw. This makes for tough eating. Imagine eating conch, but unbeaten, uncooked conch. It's a jaw workout, and it's not that tasty. There was also triton eggs, which were delicious, like butter kind of. There were 3 rounds of soup, 5 rounds of raw animals, rice of course, a round of fried fish, fried veggies, salad, and many many rounds of a drink they call thousand year promise. The dinner lasted over 2 hours and people got rowdy drunk. Afterwards we went to a norebang - the singing room, and while the principal was grinding some woman teacher I sang brown eyed girl just because they could sha la la along with that one. What is this magical place we've come to? But one song wasn't enough for me. Oh no, they wanted more. So this man teacher, who took it upon himself to ensure that I always had a friend arm in arm, usually him, picked out a song for me. He chose Don't Cry for Me Argentina, the Madonna version. Of course I don't know this song. I barely know the chorus. But there I was, with his arm around my shoulder and three other Korean teachers by my side, mumbling the words and belting the chorus. Surprisingly, no one asked me to sing again. But I'd won their hearts with my attempts. So much so that a woman brought me a shot of house whiskey followed by an american cheese chaser. This may sound awful, but it's actually worse than it sounds. But it was lots of fun regardless of putridness.

As I was leaving, I said "see you tomorrow", and no less than three teachers said no, they'd see me next week because tomorrow was a holiday (this was Thursday night). They said there were no classes tomorrow and that I didn't have to come to school. I thought this was strange because Kyung Mi, my coteacher, didn't mention it. But I also thought, they know better than I. So Friday morning as Brian was getting ready for school, I layed in bed. I got up late and slowly made breakfast and coffee as I worked on an essay (there's a contest with cash prizes for EPIK teachers, we're all trying it out for a travelling fund bonus). At 8:25 I got a text from Kyug Mi. All it said was today is not a holiday. So with a heroic show of speed and determination, I made it to school only 5 minutes late. Welcome to life in Korea. So much for my relaxing day, but I did get to see my 1st graders and be buddy buddy with my fellow crooners from the night before. Surreal.

Jess