Seoul Impressions

So I've spent the last two weekends in Seoul and I realized I've barely said anything about it.  I suppose since I will very likely be there at least every other weekend, if not every weekend, I should record my thoughts on the place.

First of all, I don't know why I thought that Seoul would be compact like NYC or SF, but it is definitely not.  Imagine if LA were filled with high-rise apartment buildings instead of one- or two-story family homes and you have Seoul.  Hugely expansive, spread out, crazy traffic.  Except Seoul actually has a useful, functional, wonderful subway system which just goes to prove (I'm looking at you, LA) that even gigantic cities can be easy to get around.  The actual city has 10 million (!!) people while the metropolitan area, including suburbs, is 25 million, which is literally half the population of the entire country.  Many parts of the city are really ugly, but other neighborhoods are really really cool and fun to wander and get lost in.  One thing that I can't stop noticing is how ridiculously long the traffic lights are here.  I will never complain about a "long" red light in the US again.  I've waited at crosswalks for up to 5 minutes.  It's annoying.




After the horrendous jimjilbang 'sleeping' experience, I stayed at a hostel this weekend instead.  Only 4,000 won more in exchange for a real room with a bed and pillow, plus other travelers if I feel like being social.  There are some awesome hostels that are very centrally located.  I'm also hoping that in the future, I will just be able to stay for free at friends' apartments (yes, I've made a few already who have offered their couches to me) or through couchsurfing.com.  Couch surfing is really popular among foreigners here and it'd be cool to see different styles of Korean apartments.

On Saturday, I went on a few tours with a group of people from Meetup.com (check out the website if you have never heard of Meetup before, it's pretty awesome).  We met up at 9 AM and first went to the Jongmyo Shrine, which is a Confucian shrine dedicated to the memorial services for the deceased kings and queens of the Korean Joseon Dynasty.  I unfortunately forgot my camera at home (need to get used to owning one again) so I had to take photos with my iPhone, which has a sucky sucky camera but at least it was something.  I will add them to this post once I get the photos off my phone.  It was really beautiful but the actual memorial shrines and tablets are locked away inside the giant buildings on the grounds, so it was more like visiting a giant park with some cool architecture.  Afterward, we had a huge lunch (for only 5,000 won, dang I love how cheap Korean food is) and then went to Changdukgong Palace, which definitely isn't the same type of palace as they have in Europe.  Finally, we ended up at Seodemun Prison, which was built by the Japanese after they invaded Korea in the early 1900's and where they tortured and executed Korean activists.  It was a pretty depressing place, as these types of preserved monuments typically are, but also very interesting, again, as usual.  It reminded me of a lot of the things I learned in Japanese Society class at Pepperdine, about just how brutal the Japanese imperialists were back in the day.

Inside the wall coffin that the Japanese occupiers used to torture Korean prisoners. It's incredibly claustrophobic
and just short enough that you must constantly have your neck and knees slightly bent.  Truly horrifying.

I met a lot of nice people on the Meetup tour, but I particularly bonded with this girl, Jen, from Florida, and joined her and her sister, Carley, for dinner that night.  They actually managed to find a real Italian restaurant in Hongdae in this random alley and we were able to eat margherita pizza al dente while drinking sauvignon blanc from Spain.  It was soooo exactly what I needed this weekend.  Jen and Carley are both teachers in Seoul and I am fairly positive we will be hanging out again soon.  We were joking that I was their long-lost brother because we had so much in common, it was nice.  Afterward, Jen and I hooked up with a new friend, Anne, that I met at my public school teachers' orientation last week and went to a party in Sinchon that is intended for Koreans who want to practice their English to meet and chat with Westerners.  It wasn't my most enjoyable evening in Korea, for reasons I'll get into later.

Sunday was weird.  It took me forever to get home from Seoul and do laundry and then I had to get back on the bus for 75 minutes to meet my co-worker, Kristen, in Songjeong.  She had invited me to dinner with her and her friend, Christine.  I shouldn't have been surprised that it turned out to be a sneak Christian-conversion attack.  I haven't experienced one in so long I'd almost forgotten how to notice the signs.  I'm fairly certain now that it's Kristen's mission this year to "save" me, which just thrills me to no end.  (Oh yeah, that was sarcasm.)  It didn't help that Christine seemed to enjoy offending and/or insulting me when she wasn't inviting me to her "amazing" and "wonderful" church every 5 minutes.  Blegh.  Never doing anything with Kristen ever again.  Part of me wishes that I had just told Kristen "yes" when she asked me if I was a Christian on my very first day of work, but if I had, she would have just invited me to every single worship service she attends.  It really does put one in a no-win situation.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  Literally, I guess.  (Also, did you notice the similarity between their English names, Christine and Kristen, and the name of a certain religion?  This is absolutely no coincidence.)

Anyway, that was kind of a side tangent, since it wasn't really about Seoul, but it was part of my weekend, so whatever.  Today I am back at work and sooooo happy that it's midterms week because it means I will have 4 days (T-F) without classes to teach and I can focus solely on lesson planning (which I now feel somewhat more prepared for after my orientation).  And then next week is a public holiday, so we will have W-F off school (5-day weekend, woohoo!), which means that in the first 4 weeks of teaching here, I will have taught my W-F classes only once, in Week 1.  That is some funky scheduling.  Sorry, kids!  See you in the second half of the term!  Can't wait for the weekend to get here so I can continue to build a social life until I feel confident that I have some real friends in this country.  Missing SF so much more than I ever could have expected... but getting more OK with being here all the same...