Makgeolli wins award for "World-Brightening People"

Makgeolli (막걸리), usually a drink consumed (and abused) during celebrations, now has a reason to celebrate itself: It has been recognized with one of the Korea Green Foundation's "2009 Awards for World-Brightening People." That's right: To some Koreans makgeolli is actually considered a person - a better person, in fact, than you or me (I didn't notice your name on the list of KGF's other winners). If you previously harbored any doubts about the influence and importance of alcohol in Korean society before, this should dispel them quite nicely.

Makgeolli won the award for considering the environment when brewing itself; makgeolli emits very little CO2, is made with rice crop rejects (mmmmm...rice crop rejects), and....ummm....and? I guess that's about it. Oh yeah. It is also really fun at parties.

Sports Day - For Teachers!

Yesterday, after a special lunch of boiled pork, kwamegi, and a lot of alcohol, the teachers congregated in the gym for an afternoon of games and friendly - sometimes heated - competition. All of the food and alcohol from the cafeteria had been moved with us, and by the time the games were finished, the table had been decimated. Especially the alcohol.

The event kicked off with an easy warmup: some jumping jacks, ab twists, and massage trains.
The first game was one I will call "The Run & Tumble". It was a relay race of 10 people, in which each person had to spin around 5 times, run to the end of the gym, turn around and run back, tumbling over a mat halfway through the return leg. In the first race I competed against the school principal, which I only realized after the fact. I beat him handily, which was not unexpected considering he is 60+ years old, thin as a rail, and was probably quite drunk.


The third game was the shoe toss, similar to bocce, where teachers tried to flip their shoes or sandals about 15 yards into - or near - a bucket. The winners received prizes, and though I didn't win I was given one anyway - two tubes of toothpaste.


The final game, which attracted the most fervor and excitement, was yutnori, a traditional Korean game in which split sticks are tossed onto a mat. Points are awarded depending on the combination of sticks up or down, and markers are moved along a game board. Though I quickly caught on to the point value of stick combinations, the movement of the markers was quite confusing to me, and apparently to my co-teachers as well. It was a constant source of disagreement, which Mr. Lee said makes the game more fun. "When we have disagreements we come together afterward and feel good."


Before we left there was a raffle. While Mrs. Lee was trying to explain the tile movement of yutnori to me, there were screams in English. "You won!" I marched to the front to accept my prize: two pairs of socks!

Drinking at work

It's 1pm and I just got back to my office from the cafeteria on the first day of final exams. We were to have a special lunch for teachers (students were released early) which included an entire pig. When I arrived in the lunchroom there were two long tables spread with fruit, cabbage and sesame leaves for wrapping the pork and kwamegi (fermented dried fish - a Pohang winter specialty), and lots of alcohol.

Did I mention this was in the school cafeteria?

Alcohol is a big part of Korean culture - it helps people to open up to one another and makes everyone feel friendly. If you refuse a drink that someone offers you, they may think you don't like them, or that you don't want to spend time with them. They'll probably get offended and snub you in the hallway the next day.

My vice principal wandered throughout the cafeteria, offering alcohol to anyone and everyone who made eye contact. He loves to drink, and everyone knows it. As one of the senior school officials, he can't be refused. If you REALLY don't want to drink, you have to be quick about it, and give him a bottle of soda to pour you before he fills your cup with beer or soju or whatever happens to be his alcohol of choice. When he came to my table with a bottle of makgeolli (rice wine), he filled everyone's glass and we had a cheers. He drained his glass immediately and poured another.

I commented to Mr. Lee, one of my older and most respected coteachers, that this would never happen in America. He replied that, in Korea, teachers really like a vice principal who enjoys drinking. If he is "good at drinking", says Mr. Lee, "he will be good in the office" as well.

Perhaps needless to say, everyone loves our vice principal, who was red-faced and tottering quite visibly by the end of our 30-minute lunch. This afternoon at 2pm we have a teachers' sports day, which includes group jump-rope and an obstacle course. It definitely has potential for hilarity.

Overboard

Royal Caribbean recently introduced a new cruise ship to their arsenal; the largest in the world. The environmental impact of cruises is often reviled, sometimes unnecessarily (cruise-goers would produce waste if they stayed home as well); but there are other potentially damaging effects. I wrote about them for MatadorChange.

Overboard? The Environmental & Cultural Impact of Cruises

It's Kimchi-Making Season!

Koreans traditionally prepared a large batch of kimchi before the weather got too cold, to last them through the winter. Nowadays, because of kimchi refrigerators and the year-round availability of cabbage, it isn't necessary. But it's tradition, so many people still follow it.

We visited my co-teacher Mrs. Lee's house to help her prepare their family's yearly batch. She had taped a large plastic sheet to her living room floor and piled a mound of salted cabbage on it, with two large bowls of red pepper sauce (prepared with red pepper powder, fish sauce, shrimp sauce, shrimp, radishes, white onions, and anchovies) and some gloves. She demonstrated the technique, even correcting her husband ("I am the kimchi expert"), and we dug right in. Mrs. Lee scolded me once for not using enough sauce, and then later, several times, for using too much. She said too much sauce overpowers the taste, and that she may end up hating me when she gets to my batch.


Mr. Lee cleaned off the plastic mat to reuse next year.
Mrs. Lee packed a giant tupperware container for us to take home, and stored the rest in her kimchi refrigerator.
We enjoyed the fruit of our labor with some steamed pork and cabbage pancakes.

Photos from around I-dong

It's a strange fact of travel that when you live somewhere, even for a short time, you take it for granted. I always realize months later that I never took any pictures of the most familiar places or people - things I wish now I remembered better. I have a bunch of pictures of random, stupid places that I don't care much for now, but nothing of the things that really mattered to me at the time.

Lisa and I got a new camera recently (a DSLR) so I hope it motivates me to get more pictures of the things I spend most of my time looking at. I spent an afternoon last weekend walking around our 'hood and taking some shots.
These evergreens are popular in Korea, and always manicured like a poodle in a Dr. Seuss book.

The Elvis statue at Giant Step, a popular bar down the street with sometimes live music.

It's kimchi-making season; the heyday of cabbage sellers across the country.

The basketball court at the park next to our apartment, under soon-to-be stormy skies.



Our friendly neighborhood Dunkin' Donuts employee.

A baby with maybe the fattest face I've ever seen. In Dunkin' Donuts, no less.

Slippers and spice and everything nice

Adjusting to life abroad in a new culture can be a frustrating task. But after waking up in Korea every day for the last 9 months, there are some things that still make me smile:

The spice of life (and food)

Chalk it up to my liberal palate or my stomach of steel, but I love everything about Korean food. Everything from the bountiful red pepper paste, the runny egg on a giant bowl of bibimbap, the sizzle and pop of marinated Korean barbecue, a giant slice of hot pepper tuna kimbap. I have even developed a taste for dried octopus. The tastes and flavors are so varied here, sampled in the seemingly infinite number of side dishes, that it rarely gets old. And when it does, or when a bowl of crunchy nuts turns out to be silkworm larvae, there's never a Mr. Pizza or an Outback Steakhouse too far away.

Slippers

Every morning my school principal waters the cabbage that lines the main driveway. I bow to him as I pass and we share a smile. My smile is always more like a chuckle, though, because beneath his perfectly tailored three-piece suit his feet are shod in a pair of $2 slippers from E-mart. Slippers represent, to me, the antithesis of stress. No matter how dynamic Korea is being on any particular day, when I slide into my classroom in a pair of little rubber slippers, I feel instantly better. It's hard to take anything too seriously when you can see the toes of everyone's socks.

Festivals, festivals, and more festivals!

Koreans love festivals, so they have A LOT of them, for every age and interest. There is a firefly festival, a mask dance festival, a kimchi festival, and several sunrise festivals. If those don't rock your boat, there is a mud festival, a puppet festival, an ice fishing festival, and a whale festival. Into art? There are film festivals, music festivals, art festivals, and bodypainting festivals. Still not interested? Then try a fire festival, a trout festival, a ginseng festival, a silk festival, and one of the many cherry blossom festivals. Should I go on? How about a bullfighting festival, a wild tea cultural festival, a lotus lantern festival, or a fireworks festival?

I'll stop now, but not because I can't continue. I'll stop because if you haven't made plans to come to Korea already, you're probably dead.

A soak and a scrub

Koreans have amazing skin, and while I can't speak for any genetic predisposition, I can say that the weekly sauna and jjimjilbang visits can't hurt. There are few feelings in this world that are as refreshing as emerging from a sauna, freshly scrubbed with an Italy towel. After my first visit I was hooked. This is the first and probably last time I will ever write this statement: I love being naked in a steamy room full of other naked men. OK, maybe that's not totally accurate. I don't love that the room is full of other naked men. I don't actually care. I just love that I can be naked there, and no one else cares. Sure, there are some sideways glances - stares, even - but I chalk that up to foreign curiosity and move on. I go to the public bathhouses in Korea to soak and scrub off my dirt and stress, not to worry about what someone may or may not be looking at. I mean, let's be honest. EVERYONE LOOKS. It's a natural instinct when you spend 99% of your public life with multiple layers of clothing on. What's more surprising is how quickly that instinct wears off when you're neck-deep in water that's halfway to boiling.

Dynamic Korea!

Although Korea says that this slogan "succinctly illustrates the energetic image of Korea," to most Native English Teachers (NETs) it takes on a different shade of meaning. School schedules are known to change at the drop of the principal's hat, without much concern for the NET involved. Classes are canceled and new ones pop up with little warning, and we are always expected to roll with it. Some teachers find this infuriating. I find it refreshing. One of the main reasons I came to Korea was for a sense of adventure, to try something new. I didn't want just another average desk job to spend my time sleepwalking through 8 hours of work. I came for some excitement! That's why I embrace those "dynamic" moments when the computer doesn't work or I have 5 minutes to prepare for an unplanned class as an opportunity to test my creativity and have a little fun. "Dynamic Korea" adds a little extra spontaneity to my life. And who doesn't like spontaneity?

Korean Pizza

Pizza has made some byroads into the heart of the Korean culinary experience. There are a couple of purely Korean franchises like Mr. Pizza and Pizza Etang, and though Domino's and Pizza Hut do exist (both within a mile of our house), all of the pizzas on their menus have certainly two inalienable Korean characteristics.

1. Yellow corn
I'm not really sure how the corn-topping craze hit the Korean pizza market, since yellow corn is an imported and rarely eaten food, but hit it has. Regardless of the type of pizza you order - meat lover's, seafood, potato, or corn-less - it will come with sweet yellow kernels of corn tossed in.

2. Crust variations
You can get cheese-filled and sweet-potato-filled, shrimp-topped and, as seen below, chicken-drumstick-topped. There are other variations as well, but Lisa doesn't like anybody messing with her pizza crust so we don't experiment with the options very often.


We also don't eat it very often because it's expensive and because, well, Korean food is pretty damn good as it is. I don't crave pizza often but even when I do I'm not really willing to shell out 20-30,000 won for a pie. I gotta admit, though - I do love an inventive crust.