서울이 좋아요! (Seoul is awesome!)

My plan for this past weekend:

Saturday: Get visas for China trip next month

Dinner at the lovely Miss Mel's

World Cup (Korea vs. Uruguay)

Sunday: Trip to Ocean World

Things that failed this past weekend:

Saturday: Wrong pictures meant no China visas this time

Sunday: Weather was crap so no Ocean World

Things I never planned to do this weekend but happened anyway:

* 2000 won burgers in Gyeongbokgung

* visit to beautiful Gyeongbokgung Palace - the best palace in Seoul in my opinion!

* visit to an awesome exhibit, "The Story of King Sejong" in Gwanghwamun - seriously, check it out. Boyfriend and I got to write our names in hangul with Korean calligraphy brushes!

* 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean war photo exhibition in Gwanghwamun

* walking up and down Namsan and a visit to Seoul Tower

* Indian feast in Dongdaemun

I didn't have to make reservations or plan ahead to do any of this. I found all these activities just from wandering around. It cost me 3000 won to enter Gyeongbokgung Palace. The Sejong exhibit, Seoul Tower, and the photo exhibition were all free!

SEOUL IS AWESOME!

불암산 수락산 (Buram Mountain Surak Mountain)

I know. I know. I'm a bad person. I'm sorry! Every time I say I'm going to keep up with blogging, but somehow I always get distracted with something else. Anyway, I'm back again with two months worth of updates and another empty promise that I'll keep updating!

First up, mountains! Spring has come and gone here in SK, not surprising since it was only about two weeks long. Spring and fall are my favourite seasons in Korea. The weather is warm, but not stiflingly humid as the summer. In spring you can witness the transient beauty of the sakura trees. In fall, the colours give a close competition to the Cabot Trail. It's also the best time to go hiking. Boyfriend and I did Buram Mountain in late April and then Surak Mountain in late May when my dad came to visit. These are two peaks of the same mountain range north of Seoul by Nowon.

It must be obvious by the amount I talk about studying and movies, that I'm not the most athletic gal on the planet. Actually I'm not even an athletic girl on the planet, but I do enjoy a good hike Korean style. Deck yourself out in over the top hiking gear, fill your giant backpack with snacks, soju, and makgeolli, find a pal and you're ready to go.

I'll leave the rest of the explaining to the photos. The Buram hike is more challenging, but if I can do it, you definitely can. We didn't actually make it to the peak of Surak because of a shoe malfunction, but the path did seem a little more friendly.

To get to Buram, take line 4 to Danggogae and then walk for 15 minutes to the park. For Surak, simply get off at Suraksan Station and then follow the signs to get to the park.

제 생일/화이트데이 (My Birthday/White Day)

My birthday was actually over a week ago, but the new job is still sucking endless amounts of my weekday time, so the recap is just coming now.

On March 13th, to most of the modern world, I turned 24. However, every time a Korean person asks my age, my response is qualified by their follow-up question: Korean age or Western age? Korea has a totally different age system than Western countries. Actually I don't know of any other country that calculates age in this peculiar way. I've had numerous Korean friends try to explain it to me several times, and I'm still not sure if I'm 25 or 26 Korean age. It works a little something like this...

So your mother carried you for about 9 months. All that time you were a living creature, so let's just round that up to one year. (Personally I think 9 months to a year is a bit of a stretch, but this seems like the most reasonable part of the equation so I'll let it slide).

Ok, so that means take whatever your Western age is now and add one to it for the year your mother carried you. Alright, makes sense. Here's where things get weird.

Every Korean person turns one year older on Lunar New Year. I don't know why, and I can't seem to figure out if you just get the year from your upcoming birthday early, or if you actually get a whole other year. The former would put me at 25, the latter 26 years old for someone born in 1986. I don't get it, but anyway, it was a great 24th/25th/26th birthday. I had a shindig at my new place, which was nice because it forced me to go out and buy some things to make it more homey.

March 14th is a kind of money-grab holiday in Korea called White Day. You thought Valentine's Day was bad enough at home; Korea has 3 Valentine related holidays! The first is February 14th, still named Valentine's Day, when girls give presents and candy to their boyfriends/husbands. The second is March 14th, White Day, when boys give presents and candy to their girlfriends/wives. The third is April 14th, Black Day, when single people go eat 자짱면 (Chinese black bean noodles) and mourn their singleness... Ouch!

Boyfriend and I had discussed that these holidays are stupid, but he still got me a gorgeous pair of earrings for White Day anyway. He's just that kind of super-lovin' guy!

As of last week yellow dust has plagued Seoul, causing folks to whip out their super-fashionable hospital masks. I actually didn't believe yellow dust was really a dangerous thing until yesterday when the sky was actually a sick, pukey yellow, apocalyptic colour... guess I better head to Family Mart and get myself a mask.

Ashu

대한민국 만 세! (Long Live Korea!)

Today was Independence Day in Korea, which meant there was no work for me and no school for Boyfriend. Originally we planned to have a picnic in one of Seoul's many parks, assuming there might be some cool events going on as well because of the holiday.

Woke up this morning and of course it was cold, windy, and rainy!

Nothing can stop Boyfriend's unyielding patriotism though, so we packed our picnic and headed out to Seodaemun Independence Park anyway. Seodaemun Independence Park is home to the Seodaemun Prison and Independence Gate. Seodaemun Prison was used by the Japanese occupants to house and torture rebel Korean freedom fighters. Now it's a museum with lots of interactive displays and and a lot of neat stuff. There was face-painting and tons of Korean flags everywhere. There were also a crapload of little mini Koreas and one foreigner (me!). One little girl who was walking behind Boyfriend and I shouted to her mother: "외국인입니다!" (It's a foreigner!). One of the many times I'm glad I understand Korean. Hilarious.

Doing his patriotic duty.

When we finished walking around the complex we came out into a courtyard where they were handing out Korean flags and everyone was shouting "대한민국 만 세!" which Boyfriend explained means "Republic of Korea live for 10 000 years!" Everyone was shouting and waving flags together and we all made a parade down to Independence Gate. At the gate, some little kids in traditional costumes held a gigantic Korean flag and we took a big group picture for the newspapers. When Boyfriend and I were walking away from the crowd, a lady came up and asked Boyfriend if she could take my picture since I was the only foreigner there. Who knows? Maybe you'll see me in the papers tomorrow.

Who brought that waegookin?

By this point there was no way I wanted to eat the picnic outside; it was so wet and cold. So we found a convenience store, bought hot chocolate, and ate our picnic inside along with a family chowing down on some Independence Day ramyeon. Then we went to see "Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief" (you know, just the usual Korean independence celebrations), and now I'm trying to muster the energy to leave my house to get some Chinese fried pork from the place down the street.

Oh yea! Funny language barrier story relating to Independence Day... Yesterday Boyfriend and I were walking and he pointed out a man on a bus-stop ad.

BF: "Do you know who that is, Ash?"

Ashu: "No, I don't. Who is it?"

BF: "Ah, he's a really famous Korean hero because he was a terrorist."

Ashu: "Sorry? He's a terrorist but a hero?"

BF: "Yea, he threw a bomb at the Japanese king during occupation."

Ashu: "Oh, you mean he was a rebel?"

BF: "No, terrorist."

Ashu: "In English we usually say someone who is good is a rebel and a bad person is a terrorist, even if they do the same thing. To Koreans that man is a rebel, to Japanese he's a terrorist."

And if you want to go to Independence Park, take subway line 3 to Dongnimmun Station and you'll come right out into it.

Ashu

Why Ash is a Big Nerdo

I learned a hard lesson after returning from my Southeast Asia trip last fall: if you don't use a second language, you lose it. Devastated by my loss of competence from just three weeks off of studying, I vowed I would keep at my Korean after I returned to Canada.

I bought a new Korean book just before leaving Korea, and my goal was to finish the nine chapters in the 3 months I'd be home. Sadly, I won't realize that goal, but I should be able to finish seven of the nine before I go back to SK in two weeks.

Anyway, this is a story of my greatest strength and weakness as a language student.

I love grammar.

Yea, I said it. When I'm studying, it's absolutely important to me to understand what every word is doing in a sentence. Parsing and deconstructing sentences is the only way I find I can actually understand and use what I've learned.

Good Side: My Korean writing is very good. I can make good sentences, and most of the time I feel confident in what I know.

Bad Side: If I don't understand a particular grammar point, I don't have a real teacher to explain it to me. I can ask Boyfriend, but sometimes he just has to tell me what I've told many students before: "It just is." If I don't have a lot of confidence in my understanding, I'm less likely to try to speak, which is kind of the whole point of learning a language. Though personally I wouldn't mine conducting all of my Korean exchanges through note passing. One can dream.

This issue became especially apparent last week when my Korean book attempted to teach me three verbs: 되다, 돼다, and 데다. These three verbs all sound exactly the same, but have slightly different uses and meanings. Anyway, one sentence in my book changed a 돼다 to a 되다 when using future tense. Even though the pronunciation is exactly the same and I understood the meaning of the sentence fine, I just couldn't allow the grammatical change to go unexplained. So I called Boyfriend. Turns out 되다 is some kind of abbreviated form of 돼다, but in the end he told me to just accept that that's what you do in the future tense, since it doesn't make any difference to speaking at all.

A troubling conclusion, but I guess I'm going to have to let it go. I feel more acutely now the frustrations of my students when I can't explain something to them.

Conclusion: Ash is a NERD-BOMBER!

Ashu

실미도 (Silmido)

So I still haven't finished watching "친구." I talked to Boyfriend about it. Since he's Korean and all, I thought he might be able to justify my feelings of dissatisfaction with the film. Our conversation went a little something like this:

Ash: So I watched this movie, "친구," the other day.

BF: Oh yea? What did you think?

Ash: Well, actually I thought it was pretty boring. I didn't finish watching it.

BF: Yea, I guess that might be boring to you cause you're not Korean, but it made Busan guys look really cool.

There you have it. If you're from Busan, check out the film. Otherwise... meh? Of course, Boyfriend is from Busan.

I still feel like I should finish watching it, but alas, I've already moved on. A friend noticed my interest in Korean movies and kindly recommended "실미도." He prefaced this recommendation with "It's not awesome, but it's watchable." More proof that I have have terrible taste because I really enjoyed it.

실미도 is the name of an island that belongs to Korea. The film, which is apparently based on a true story, tells the story of a group of convicts and death-row inmates who are sent to this island to become an elite Kim Il Sung assassination squad. Their identities are erased, but they have a chance to redeem themselves by becoming the greatest heroes to their divided country. In a twist of fate, their assassination mission is terminated, and the government decides to terminate the team as well. The men must fight against their own government and the officers who trained them to preserve their place in history.

Terrible reasons why I like this movie:

I like any story when bad guys are rehabilitated and become awesome ass-kicking heroes. These days we're seeing a lot of films that explore possible "uses" for convicts and law-breakers, but they always seem to be in some kind of death game for the average person's viewing pleasure. I like this movie because it treats the bad guys like real characters who grow and change.

The exploration of identity issues is really cool. All of the men essentially lose their past identities when they are "executed." They must all painfully redefine themselves. One character is the son of a traitorous communist. He must find a way to escape his father's legacy. The best scene in the movie for me is when the men finally realize they are doomed to die. Their biggest fear is that their nation will believe the lies that they are communist soldiers instead of heroes. They end up all screaming their names and writing them in blood on the inside of a bus before committing mass suicide. Very John Proctor. "You have taken my soul. Leave me my name!" Totally badass.

I find the idea fascinating that there are things in our history which have been kept secret and are slowly leaked over time. The ending of the movie is really cool.

I guess that's all. On a side note, this movie is pretty long, so if you plan on watching it, make sure you have a good couple of hours.

Ashu

친구 (Friend)

I'm not a particularly subtle lady, so when I want to know about something I usually just come out and ask it... or in most cases (let's be real) I just google the shit out of everything. No surprises then that most of the Korean movies I've seen I heard about by google searching "top Korean movies." This method has not failed me yet. It may be the fact that I have terrible taste (or just no taste at all), but it takes a lot for me to not enjoy a movie. I consider it a blessing that I can be entertained so easily. Well, I had enjoyed every Korean movie that I had seen until yesterday when I attempted to watch "친구," known as "Friend" in English. I found this film listed on some rando's top 10 Korean films. In the company of "Sassy Girl," "Old Boy," and "빈집," I thought it might be good for a try.

I did not enjoy it.

Not that the movie is utterly terrible, cause even then I might have enjoyed it for it's utter terribleness. I just didn't care. Not a single character or situation was able to elicit any feeling at all from me, a sad experience for someone as easily delighted or enraged as I am.

The film is the story of 4 childhood friends as they grow up, lose their innocence, etc. I'm all for a good coming of age story of friendship, so I really have trouble pinpointing exactly what did not do it for me in this movie. Maybe it's simply the fact that I'm a woman and so I felt alienated by isolation in the male friendship world of the film. Maybe that's why I didn't care. I certainly hate to think that's why. I like to think I could appreciate an honest look into male friendship, but maybe that's not true. Honestly I'm still processing.

I didn't actually finish the film. Frankly if a movie doesn't make me feel something in the first 45 minutes, I don't feel guilty about abandoning it mid-watch. I'm going to try to give it another go this week, for fairness alone. I'll let you know how that goes. Perhaps there's some fantastically redeeming ending that will make me eat my words.

I hope so.

Ashu