Urbanality

(don't worry, be clicky)

My third month rounds the midpoint corner, heading towards closing time. This weekend I took things easily, since I wasn't feeling quite 100%. Still decent - like 70% at the worst. There's this infamous bout of sickness that strikes forigners here. It's not a disease or infection, as such; more of a system shock where our bodies try to adjust to the thick hazy pollution-y air here in Seoul. I've still never been completely Seoul Flu-ed, but now and then I fight a little hint of unhealth.

Back at the Hagwon (I dunno if I've mentioned before, but that's the Korean word for the kind of school at which I teach) the kids actually are alright... generally. I actually get a huge kick out of that cute messy backwards letters horrible writing style that kids write in, so I took some photos of how my Kindergarteners labelled their own books.

Speaking of kid's names, I've actually gotten to name two girls in my classes. See, the 'english' names that the kids use are given to them at the school, basically so us poor saps don't have to learn to pronounce and remember so many unfamilliar Korean names. The kids typically continue to use the names for the rest of their lives whenever they deal with anyone in english, though (for the very same reason, I guess). Unfourtunately, the two girls I named refused to take any cool pop-culture reference names like Leia or Nico. I managed to get one take Lisa as a Simpsons reference, and another Alice as an obvious Carrol reference. I teach a boy named Gaby in Kindergarten. I don't know what the hell was wrong with the guy who named him.

I left work today and took a nice long walk around the area. Not the immediate area - I left with the intention of getting lost, basically. I caught some nice views and pretty alleys and the typical fascinated stares of Koreans young and old. There's also an abnormal abundance of large and pretty fountains, both in that area, and in Seoul as a whole. Oh and the tail-less cat? Yeah, there's a bunch of them, too. I think it's how you tell the difference between a wandering housecat and an alleycat: the alleycats have had their tail removed or mangled by some sort of unimaginable trauma.

Another thing that's curiously overabundant here: statues. These normally aren't statues to commemorate or memorialize anything. Often, they're decorations outside of some sort of business. Big artsy stone phalluses to celebrate commerce. I like it, the end effect is just that it makes the city prettier, with little extraneous decorations outside of even the most mundane of buildings with the most benign of purposes.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before either, but the food here is pretty goddamned tasty. Korean food's a little different than I expected, mostly in that it's pretty different from Chinese. I mean legit Chinese food, by the way, not chickenballs and an eggroll floating in cherry sauce (although I guess it's different from that too). Kimbap and sam gup sal are two of my favourite Korean dishs, even though the former is basically a renamed sushi roll and the latter literally translated means 'three layers of fat'. There's also a pretty full compliment of Western restaurants here for those feeling particularly xenophobic or homesick.

Speaking of xenophobia, there's a surprising lot of Japanese food here, considering that Koreans as a whole aren't big fans of that country. Some petty feud about Japan burning down like half the country a few hundred years ago or something. Quit living in the past, princess! Actually, it's interesting to see how a rivarly that's literally centuries old plays out between neighbouring nations. A lot of the kids call it (Japan) 'monkey land'.

Speaking of that Nipponic island of insanity, it looks like my plans for Chuseok have changed. The chances of me getting a flight to Thailand have gone from slim to none. Instead, I'm most likely going to take the ferry to Japan and just explore. It'll be a lot different wandering around Japan completely alone as opposed to sitting on a beach in Thailand with friends, but it'll still be fun. The tentative plan involves zipping around on trains between Fukowaka, Osaka and Kyoto for the week, but I'll play it by ear and see if I've got the time and resources to check out Tokyo too.

In closing, here's one of yet another of the many fountains from this sprawly urbanality (it's a word if I say it is) that is Seoul. As is the case with virtually any panorama on the site, you can click it for a much bigger version. The one at the top is another panograph, some complicated fusion of collage and panorama that I'm all about lately.