My eating habits are terrible. People laugh when I tell them that I feel like I'm getting fat, but honestly, it's not like I will thicken to the average person's size before getting fat. No, it's more like, I'll maintain my sickly physique, but develop a spare tire around my waist or a waddle under my chin. Or just become very unhealthy and out of shape. Or both. Either way, I feel unhealthy.
I may be grasping for excuses here, but when you're alone in a foreign land and everything else around you is so alien, it's hard to resist eating fatty comfort food. Not to mention the fact that after a long day of acclimatizing my brain to the non-stop stimuli of a completely different culture, the last thing I feel inclined to do is take the first step towards learning how to cook healthy meals for myself at home. And it sure doesn't help that I can't even read any of the labels in the grocery store.
Anyone have any suggestions? If this goes on for any longer, this may be what greets you coming off the plane back in Ottawa:
On a brighter note, I just remembered how much I missed Photoshop.
So last weekend I went hiking around Bukhansan National Park with Gord and Charlotte and I feel great about it because a: I got tons of exercise and b: I surprised myself with how much I was physically able to accomplish.
Here's what we're talking about.
As you can see, Bukhansan is not just a national park, but also a large collection of mountains, some reaching as high as 836m above sea level. While we did not reach the highest summit in the park, we did climb a good 700m up and walked a few kilometers along the ridge connecting two lofty peaks.
The ridge was razor-thin and dropped steeply on both sides.
What made this climb so exceptional for me, was the fact that rather than having a nice cleared trail for you to leisurely walk up, Bukhansan elected to force it's climbers to scale some pretty rugged, very steep and sometimes outright dangerous terrain. I was occasionally gripped with fear when I tried to make a few ledges, or when my feet slid across loose gravel. My life was never at risk, but it was not a task to be taken lightly.
One such treacherous climb.
Another not-so-treacherous climb.
But still, there were guys and girls, some probably in their 70s, doing this trek, and they definitely had many years of experience and the gear to show for it. At times, we would stop to have a quick bite and relax, and they would offer us food and drinks (including beer?) in exchange for friendly camaraderie. Drinking beer during this hike would have been the worst idea. Some guys were even drinking soju!
This group insisted on taking a picture with us.
Every once and a while, we would come to a peak that provided an amazing vista over Seoul and the surrounding mountains. It's absolutely impossible to capture the splendor of being on top of a mountain and seeing for miles around in a picture, but these will have to do:
Gord and I during our climactic final battle.
From a distance Seoul looked like a giant circuit board, with it's ugly apartment complexes arranged in a utilitarian manner. But even that was breathtaking at the height we were at.
Occasionally we came across actual temples in the mountains, and some were surprisingly ornate and beautiful. We even came across a natural spring with clean drinking water!
Temple
Spring water
Great day to say the least. Worth waking up at 9am on a sunday! And it's funny because the park is so massively huge that we maybe explored about 5% of it! And if you are wondering why we all have bandannas around our necks in the pictures, it's because they also doubled as maps!
I officially like kimchi! It was only a matter of time really. It comes with every meal you order here. Like, every, single, meal. I made it a point to eat a bit every time it was put in front of me and BAM, now I like it. I'm not at the point where I'm looking into buying a kimchi fridge or anything, but still, I enjoy it with a meal the way I enjoy a delicious pickle or coleslaw.
I'm feeling ghastly. This day was near impossible to make it through. My final class saw me working at around 2% capacity. My head throbs, my ear aches and my nostrils are temples of doom, each filled with its own distinct set of horrors. My laptop bag is a portable drug store. I never used to get sick ever. Then, starting this last winter, I've just been enduring one long, sustained illness that never seems to disappear. When will it end??
On a more lighthearted note, there's a song on the charts here that sounds EXACTLY like Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". I'm convinced that it's part of a huge elaborate Rickroll on South Korea, but honestly, it sounds so similar! Long shot here, but if anyone somehow finds it, please let me know what it is called!
UGH!
On Sunday Gordlotte and I climbed the Bukhansan mountain range. I'll get details and pictures up for you next time. Here's a teaser:
For those who didn't know, you can click on any of the pictures I post to see full-sized versions.
Gord, Dio and I hung out all Friday night and it was great! It was a record night because we hit up 4 separate establishments and ate and drank at each one.
This is Dio, as in Ronnie James Dio. He's an aspiring musician, a romantic and a medical student. He's also very idiosyncratic, and does strange things like pull out his gory medical notes while we're eating Korean barbecue.
The location was around Cheongnyangni and Wangsimni, Gord, Charlotte and Dio's home turf. Our first stop was this very quaint and cozy galbi place that Gord, Charlotte and I always like to eat at. I love galbi so much. First time I had it, it was good in that exotic, first time trying kind of way. Now, I get cravings for it on a regular basis and it's become my new comfort food. I am really really going to miss it when I go back to Canada.
After that we went to a really dimly lit lounge joint and had pizza and beer. It was good. They had electronic darts and I have no idea why we never got around to playing them. There's no pictures because it was way too dimly lit.
Next stop was this place, a supposedly Peter Pan themed establishment that had cheap bottle service. Dio ordered us the most random assortment of food and drink. That up there on the left is a decanter full of milk. We mused about how creepy it would be, ordering milk at a bar, sitting in the corner and sipping it alone, quietly.
They had a little mascot dog there as well. He was so bored so we played with him for a bit.
Last stop was Dok, a small hole-in-the-wall barbeque restaurant with a really characteristic vibe to it. Dio always goes here and 2 of the 3 times I've walked by it on separate occasions, he was inside eating.
The owners are Mung and Johnny Kim, two guys that Dio is super tight with, which meant we got to mess around with the music being played in the restaurant a whole bunch. We chatted music and ate grilled meat and kimchi. I think the owner was getting a bit annoyed because we put on some ridiculous stuff. Dio put on Smells Like Teen Spirit and Gord and I pretended that we had never heard of it, or the band Nirvana, which he believed. I put on Giorgio Moroder.
The night ended really late and I felt bad for staying as long as we did. I had a doctor's appointment at 10am the next morning too. Thankfully Gord's place was only a short walk away.
Oh, I should also mention that Dio would have paid for everything had Gord and I not forced money upon him at one point. He still paid for a lot, but I found out today that he has rich parents and no job so I don't feel so bad anymore.
These weekend entrys are always so much fun. I'll make at least one more before Monday.
I love finding photos you don't remember even taking. Like this one. I don't love how creepy I look, but it's fun.
I hate doing monthly student reports because it takes so long and is so hard because I definitely have not gotten to know and ascertain any of the specific abilities of over 50 students. They want to know how Andy's intonation is when I'm trying to remember who the hell Andy is. I just finished 5 minutes ago, and I'm hoping to coast into the weekend.
I've officially fallen into routine and I'm beyond well-adapted to the Seoul lifestyle. After Japan, it really didn't take that long to re-adapt to big Asian city living. Arriving here, I felt like everyone was locked in this synchronized dance and I was the bumbling goof of the class, always a step behind watching everyone else for cues. Now I've got my crowd maneuvering skills, my commuting skills and my everyday general public interaction skills down for the most part. It's been officially over a month since I moved here and it's hard to believe that time has flown this much. My apartment is looking more like a home. Here are some of the things I've bought (or found) since coming here:
A neat alarm clock that was sold out so I bought the display model.
A squishy golden piggy filled with water that anyone who's Skype videoed with me has seen.
A Rubik's Cube except with flags of countries replacing the colours.
Hi! I'm a pretty typical E-2 visa holder in Korea. I've been here on and off since 2009, so I've got a reasonably good lay of the land. I live in Seoul and am constantly in awe of the things happening around me. As such, I've deemed it necessary to convey my silly observations with silly comics. I hope you like them.
If paper is more your thing, you can find these comics in Groove Magazine, available for free at most foreigner hangouts.
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