Mixed Signals

A few weeks ago, I received an interesting gift. One of my students painted and rolled up this picture:

So okay, it's a nice abstract semi-incomprehensible painting done by a four year old kid. Inside was this:

Ahhh, isn't that sweet? My student, Iris, wants me to go to her church.

But it was a few short weeks before that that another student gave me a gift:

This is actually a bible, but the pages were wetted so that they rolled up and formed this kind of huge crazy cylinder. It's pretty cool actually. If you look closely you can see that it has both English and Korean versions of the bible.

So are the odds that one student would give me an invitation to her Christian church, while another would spend some time desecrating a bible and then give it to me? Well, let's take a look at the religious makeup of Korea. According to Wikipedia, it is as follows:

Christian: 29%

Buddhists: 23%

Pretty much nuthin': 46%

Hmm, so that pretty much makes sense, although I'm slightly more likely to be given the blasphemous bible by one of my students if you go by straight percentages. One thing though, this bible ended up making a sweet paint brush holder.

Mmmm, sacrelicious.

I'm at It Again

I mentioned before about my love of finding great second hand furniture on street corners, in dumpsters, etc. This time I definitely outdid myself. Anyway, I found this really great china cabinet outside of an apartment building on my way to work and had to have it. Why would I need a china cabinet? I'm not really sure, but it's great.

I saw this cabinet thing on my way to work about 4 days in a row and thought it possible that someone was keeping it out there during a move or something. I mean it's in top condition and seems barely used if at all. So I waited these 4 days and then last night when it was snowing hard I decided that whoever owned this thing is not coming back for it. A night of snow would most likely ruin it.

So that was it, I decided this thing was mine. Then was the task of getting up to my apartment, about two blocks away and four stories up. Good god this thing was heavy, though. I lifted it over this foot and a half high fence which was no small feat. I managed to carry it back the two blocks to my building by tilting it and just bear hugging it to pick it up. My forearms got such a workout I think they expanded to Popeye proportions.

It was finally to my building, and then was just the small task of carrying it up three flights of stairs. I figured I could just just bear hug it upright and lift it up step by step, but it wouldn't fit into the initial door. It's really tall. Then, I called my friend Steven who agreed to come out and help me with it. Bam. Brand new china hutch.

We did end up getting a lot of snow in our town that night, I estimate about three inches. I think it's great because it reminds me of home and it was really packy for good snowball fights. It was definitely a nice pickup, even if my arms are sore as I'm typing this. Now I just need to find something to put inside the cabinet.

What's In a Name?

I have one-on-one English lessons with one of my students, and just happened to be browsing through the pages of the book I teach out of. My eye caught upon this little gem:

Mm hmm, there's a school in Korea called Yoo-Suck Elementary. Welcome to Yoo-Suck Elementary. We proudly display Yoo-Suck on our walls. Enroll your child at Yoo-Suck and let him or her wear the name Yoo-Suck on their shirt. Come to our soccer games and root on "Yoo-Suck Yoo-Suck Yoo-Suck."

The man at the school is credited with helping to write this English book, so he would obviously know that Yoo-Suck has a meaning other than just a man's name. That's right, they know and they just don't care.

The Kimchi Museum, Oh God The Kimchi Museum

Straight up warning to start this one out, this will be the most boring post of all time. It's hard to not make the most boring post of all time when it's about the most boring museum of all time.

Anyway, I made my way to Seoul with my friend Michael to visit the Kimchi Museum, buy some books, and go out drinking with some Irish people. A little more about the fun stuff later.

The Kimchi Museum is located in this giant mall called COEX. It's a really sweet mall because it has my favorite book store and Mexican food restaurant in Seoul. I was mildly stoked about the museum because I figured there would at least be a lot of free kimchi as well as interesting information about it's history.

As for the history of kimchi, it's been made for centuries. They never even had really good spicy kimchi until someone started importing Mexican chili peppers. That's pretty interesting I guess.

The storage of kimchi is mildly interesting. It has to be kept at a somewhat constant temperature, so they used to bury it underground in the winter under a teepee.

A teepee like this one. Woo hoo.

There's a lot of different types of kimchi, too. Look at them all. There's probably a lot more than this in fact.

There was a nice photo opp with an old Korean woman made out of wax. Kimchi is so popular here that instead of saying cheese to get the kids to smile for a photograph, they say kimchi. Kimchi!

It turns out when you eat kimchi, you eat this little guy with a green hat and he kicks the crap out of germs or whatever that is pictured here.

It also keeps cancer inside of a tiny cage.

Kimchi is pretty popular, despite the boringness of the museum. Koreans are so attached to their kimchi, in fact, that they will usually pack some with them while on vacation. They never want to go even a day without precious kimchi.

Here's the comment sheet about kimchi:

So after leaving the museum, we went to meet up with some of Michael's Irish friends in Hondae to eat some Vietnamese food and do some drinking. It was a pretty ridiculous time while we went to this bar called Ho Bar III. We were ordering rounds of beer ten at a time and each person would buy a round. When my turn came up I was like "goody, a round of ten." It turned out the beer was only 1900 won apiece, so each round came to 19,000 won, which is $16.50 in USD. Pretty awesome. We drank them out of at least three different types of beer. Good Night.

This is Not Right

It's an understatement to say that pencil cases are huge in Korea. every student has at least one, in some cases it can help one's social status, and they never stop playing with them. I've seen some pretty cool ones, the girl I have one on one classes with has one in the shape of a bus and you can pull a string on the back of it to make the bus roll on it's own. Another kid had a pencil case that was two which were tied together like nun chucks. Yeah, great idea.

Today I saw one that went too far. Way too far.

That's right, this pencil case is a dog. It has a zipper on it's back for storage, but more importantly there is a secondary storage area located in the dog's bum hole. You can put pencils in and out of this dog's bum hole. I spent a few seconds with my finger inside of this dog's bum hole. It's very disturbing.