Surprise Concert!

Okay guys. For the first time ever, I was taking pictures when my camera memory card filled up. All 8 gigs. That's about 3,000 pictures. The last thing I uploaded was from NYC... you guys can guess the extent of my flickr backup. I'm working on it, I promise!!

Anyway. Last week... what happened? I got to hang out with photo club some more. Met up with some friends here and there, getting dinner, coffee and such. Friday I finally went to immigration to get my second Alien Registration card (the first one got taken when I left the country... kinda pointless if you ask me). It took 2 hours of waiting. And there were still 150 people queued for the afternoon when I left. The lady treated me like an elementary student with a note pinned to my shirt. I had my document. My fee. My pictures. My passport(s). I had them stored in my classroom notes file folder that I take with me everywhere. The lady asks me for my folder... to check all my documents... I was like... "What?" She proceeds to thumb through all my personal notes and documents. The experience was a little humiliating, I do say so myself. I didn't even do anything wrong. She had all she needed in her hands to start with. Anyway I have to go back in a week to pick it up. Fun.

I then proceeded to Sinchon to hang out with my last standing foreigner friends: the Australians. They're still here because their school year works on the same Korean schedule: start in spring and end in winter. We went to get some Indian food. Decided then that we should noraebang for a few hours. And then we moved on to Adventure bar. I loved Adventure bar. It was big enough so that you don't stare at every group in the establishment, it's rather very private no matter where you are. Also, they have good anju (the food that you have to order with drinks). AND you can write on the walls. Sadly, the graffiti my fall 2009 friends so gracefully bestowed upon our favorite booths was swept away over the summer when they put up new wallpaper. [Sadface]. No worries. We started the process again. Always bring a sharpie around Seoul.

Saturday was lazy. Until it was time to go to a concert that my friends invited me to go to. They had an extra ticket and offered me to join. I got to see a slew of current pop artists including Jaebum and DJ Doc. It was great. Just like the last concerts, rather dangerous because of the crazed fans. They always present a safety hazard. But I left with all of my things in tact and about 400 pictures richer. I would have had more hadn't my memory card filled up. But honestly, I'm glad. I spent less time looking at my camera and more time looking at the stage. Good deal.

Today, I was supposed to meet with a friend. Because he needed some recovery time from a night out with his sonbaes (class seniors), it was rescheduled to Tuesday. Instead, I'm staying in my apartment catching up on some homework and eating some yang-nyeom chicken (almost like general tsao meets pad thai...) and watching tv movies and game shows. Today starts my search for an affordably good chicken place around my neighborhood. This review: $5 for a chicken, but there's too much sauce. Luckily there are about 4 shops along the main road, so hopefully one will be a hit.

Tomorrow? Class, I guess. A lot of classes are 'cancelled' due to ChuSeok (Korean Thanksgiving) which is on Wednesday, but Tuesday and Thursday are also considered part of the holiday. Two of my classes on Monday are rather optional, but I shall go ahead and go since I'll be on campus to drop off my homework. And because I love to go to class of course! Heh...

[Promise of pictures!] Actually, some are on Facebook, if you're aware of my facebook page. Go go go!

PS- Check this video out by EatYourKimchi. It shows what the supermarket looks like these days leading up to ChuSeok. Look at the large packages, and try and guess what's in them. They'relarge gift showcases of anything from shampoo to spam.

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KoYon Jun and Such.

This past weekend held the annual varsity competition between Korea University and Yonsei University. I covered the basics of it from last year. Notably, last year I was on the blue side of the stadium with Yonsei. This year, I got to see the world through a red lens of Korea University. It'd be a cute story to say that I had a newfound pride in my new university, that this time it was just like home, blah blah blah, but honestly I was a little nostalgic for Yonsei from start to finish. I know most of the cheers by heart and I knew so many faces. Korea, however, was a little foreign to me. Last year, it looked like an intimidating crowd, and this year it was the same... but closer. Haha.

I still had fun. I got to cheer with my friends at Yonsei, and I got to bond with my new ones at Korea University. It might be seen as a double allegiance, betrayal even, but it's all in good spirit. Oh, and Yonsei won.

Other than that, I guess I can summarize the major accomplishments this week. Classes are going well. We've been assigned to groups in most of the classes that have group projects. I wandered over to the student union building to find their photo club, HoYong Hui*. Between classes and these guys, I actually have a few recognizable faces on campus.

*HoYong Hui is YonYong Hui's (Yonsei Photo Club) arch rival. If you're interested in the name breakdown, here's how they go:

1. Yon (YONsei)
2. Yong (for the Chinese character, shadow, 影, pinyin: ying)
3. Hui (means group, meeting, 會, pinyin: hui)
4. HoYong Hui follows the same kind of pattern, but the exception is the first character isn't a shortened school name, but rather a reference to the mascot, a tiger (in Korean, horang-i), hence HOYong Hui.

Okay, Korean class dismissed. I guess pictures to be uploaded later. You guys have to nag me.

Korea Part II

Alas, I have found myself back in Korea. Study abroad went so well that I decided to come back as a regular student at Korea University, from where I should graduate in 2012. I wish I had been blogging through that decision and process, cause it was a crazy one. Basically up until now (the first week of school) everything has been last minute and by chance, despite my best attempts at organization. It's the nature of the Korean-foreigner relationship (jumping through hoops).

I promised a lot of people that I would keep up a blog this time around. I did a horrible job at doing one during study abroad. Things have been busy. I wanted to post as soon as I got to Korea, but amidst the craziness of trying to find an apartment (we took midnight rides with my friend's cousin's realtor friend to find some), the financial loops of phones, cards, and rent, and the madness of last minute registration for classes has exhausted my time for making coherent stories in writing.

But these days I'm feeling really good. I got everything worked out and I feel like for the first time in months, I can at least predict the upcoming week (which will include the YonKo Jun festival. excitement doesn't describe my anticipation enough. glee?). This weekend is pretty relaxed. The last bits of household needs are coming in: the stuff I left with my friend from my old apartment, a table for my oneroom, and a few odds and ends like a ricecooker and pots and pans so I can cook my own meals now. I can't wait. haha.

I was talking to a friend of mine from the first semester of study abroad. We came to the conclusion that this time around in Korea, things are completely different for me. I think that the objective is so much clearer to me. Independence might be the right word. This isn't school housing, this isn't a program, and for once I really have to live on my own. As scary as that sounds, it's a very motivating idea. I have the space I need, certainly all the opportunities I could ask for, and all the time in the world to make things happen.

Cheers to a new school year!

나무가 아픕니다

I've just settled in to the lobby of the Theology hall on campus. In about 40 minutes, I'll be in the first installment of the Doing Theology in Asia class. Yay! No, really. I'm excited about my classes this semester. They seem challenging (except one... but maybe I should keep it as a break). It's only the second day, so we'll see how this round goes.

Anyway on the way here, I was snooping around the club fair on the main road, trying to find the photography club I've been waiting to join since last semester (they only let new admits in when school starts... in spring). I only ended up joining film club and sitting in on a gospel concert, where I met a potentially promising youth group located in Guei (yeah, sounds like gooey).

Oh, Yonsei in the spring. It's pretty, and if I took pictures, it wouldn't do justice. And I'm not saying that its aesthetic doesn't convey in picture form, I'm saying you don't get to hear the loud overlapping music of the club advertisers nor can you smell the cow manure they use to get a jump start on a green campus. My favorite thing to see in Korean landscaping is the occasional "sick tree" signs (as quoted in the title of this post) accompanied with tree trunks stuck with IV needles. It's true. I saw more of them on the way to Theology Hall.

All in all, I still love it.

I got wind from the school that they're gonna let me transfer without having to cut off a limb. So I'm gonna have a bit of work cut out for me doing research on the application timelines as well as keeping up with classes.

And I know everyone's wondering what I could possibly have been doing all winter. And that's studying. I studied a whole semester's worth of Korean independently and took the placement test yesterday. The results will be posted in an hour and thirty minutes. Right after theology class. No time to waste. So yeah, though the winter's come and gone, I guess it might have been worth it. I came here to learn the language, after all. It saves money not going out all the time, and staying inside kept me from being sick all winter. It's alright. But I have to make up for the sightseeing and exploring this spring. Jeju-do, here I come!

"We're good students aren't we? We study during break. And party during the semester." -Alvin Cha

Don't judge. It's how things roll here.

DMZ Eco Tour!

I remember on the night of the meteor shower in November, my classmates and I had a hard time finding a place to go star gazing. In a city like Seoul, it's a rare sight to see, the stars. There's so much pollution in the air, sometimes it feels like there's a constantly grey-brown tint effect on the scenery. I took this picture from building 63 (right).

You can see a clear line in the atmosphere where the smog hovers above the city. Though the rainbow of colors you see is beautiful, it's depressing to know that it's from the pollution in the air. It's no wonder locals always look at their hometowns and the countryside with such fondness: chances are, it's cleaner and healthier. There are less people and fewer cars. More land and cleaner air. It's hard to imagine that only about an hour north of Seoul, there's the cleanest patch of land in the region: the DMZ. Because it has been marked as a no-man's land since the Korean War, no one has inhabited or disturbed the natural habitat that stretches 2 kilometers across the peninsula.

I recently took a eco-tour of the border where we were allowed to take photos of the landscape and the wildlife. Coming from the Lowcountry of South Carolina, I was curious to see how the wetlands of far east Asia would compare to home. I was looking forward to seeing wild animals again. And mostly, a landscape without three city blocks of apartments.

This eagle was the first thing to greet us at the observatory. There were quite a few when we got there, quite a treat. I had forgotten how long it had been since I saw a bird bigger than a crow. It brought me back to when we'd watch the eagles out in the back yard in the States. Later we found some herons. They were too far away to get a decent picture from the distance of the road.

At every location, we always found different animals. We spotted some geese feeding. Some ducks in the river. Some deer in the grass. And even some vultures in the fields. Strange as it seems, they feed them meat to scavenge off of.

I thought it was especially interesting to note that many of the animals we found at the DMZ are not native to this specific region, but have recently in the past five decades found refuge in the area because of its lack of human disturbance. Here's a shot of one of the more common birds of Korea. Did I mention deer? They're so cute.

Our tour guides worked together to explain a wide range of questions. They explained the migration patterns of geese, how the brackish water tides are what made some rivers' ice choppy and cracked while some were still frozen, the politics of the border, all the while identifying and searching for birds as they spoke. They even survived my quiz on the different kinds of tracking methods used on migrating birds (not my usual banter, but the curiosity that this trip brought out of me was surprising). It was as much of a treat for them to be outdoors looking for their winged friends as it was for us to see the place for the first time. On multiple occasions we were so fascinated by a formation of geese or trying to find a tag in a group of over thirty vultures that time nearly got away from us to continue on our trip.

The tour surpassed my expectations. Not only were the tour guides knowledgeable and passionate about the DMZ and its habitat, but the they brought us to areas that were previously impossible for the public to see. I hope that this tour will continue to run because this habitat deserves more respect and appreciation as a wildlife reserve. The DMZ never fails to bring a wide range of emotions. It's a source of historical value, political tension, and national hurt. Its juxtapositions are endless. The security always makes me feel vulnerable, yet safe. The museums are interesting, yet sad. The groups are always excited, but heavy-hearted. And in the middle of a war-torn country, the DMZ 2km is peaceful.

This last group of images is from our final stop at the top of a mountain. It overlooks most of the places we visited during our tour. All of the images can be found on my flickr site, and the tour was sponsored by Kyunggi Tourism Organization and hosted by Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation.