First off, I know that we’ve been slacking on the blog as of late. To be honest, we were pretty sure our parents were the only ones reading this thing, but after being scolded by my little sister and Schwabby for being lazy, we are committing to writing updates much more often. Maybe. We did 5 posts for our one week in Japan and this is going to be our one and only post for the 2 weeks we spent in Korea, but we hope all of our Korean readers don’t take this as disrespect. We appreciate your devotion to this blog and look forward to your continued loyalty. Anyway, we were so exhausted by the time we arrived at Czarna’s apartment from Japan that we really just wanted to spread out, sleep, eat fried chicken (or barley), and talk about the cultural things that we wanted to do without actually doing them. For those of you who don’t know who Czarna is, he is the tall white guy in most of our pictures. He is one of Wiley’s best friends from high school and teaches English at an international school in Gwangju. His apartment is located right next to the school, and within 12 hours of our arrival we had turned it into an absolute dump (in our defense it wasn't that clean when we got there)

Some images of the of the apartment after about 1 day

Gwangju is the is the fifth biggest city in Korea with a population of 1.5 million and is 4 hours south of Seoul, or at least that is what Czarna told me and I am too lazy to check any those facts. The great thing about spending a week in Gwangju is that there is no reason for any tourists to ever go there, so the sighting of a white person is an uncommon and noteworthy event for the citizens of that fair city. It was routine for children and adults alike to point at us and exclaim “Wey Gookin”, which means foreigner. This was usually accompanied by some extended stares and a fair amount of giggling. If we made any effort to say even the simplest things in Korean we were always met with surprised excitement. On one occasion, we went into a department store so Czarna could buy a belt. The Korean girls who sold him his belt were so excited that he was buying a belt from them and talking to them in broken Korean that they asked him to wait while they ran into the back. A few minutes later they came out with a pack of ramen noodles and included it for free along with his belt purchase. Another little story I forgot to tell is the time when we were walking down the street, and a Korean dressed up as a big bottle of hand lotion saw us from inside his/her store and came out and stopped us. The big bottle made us play it ro sham bo, and upon our victory, gave us a big a box of Q-tips. I'd like to explain more, but that's it. That's the end of the story. Just marinate on that for a second. Anyway, below I have listed the phrases that Czarna deemed necessary for us to learn in order to survive in Gwangju:

1. An yung haseyo-hello
2. kam sam ni da-thank you
3. Ogul cha gayo- you have a very small face
4. nu ni po yo yo- you have big eyes

Phrases 1 and 2 are pretty self explanatory. Phrases 3 and 4 are Czarna’s go to pick-up lines when it comes to the young Korean beauties. To make sense of this, it is first necessary to understand that Koreans are extremely concerned with physical appearance and equate white European features with beauty. The most popular surgery in Korea is double eye lid surgery, which makes Asian eyes look more European by making a fold in the eyelid, giving the eye a larger and rounder appearance. Apparently 50% of young women in Korea have gotten double eyelid surgery (again this is according to Czarna and again I’m too lazy to confirm it).

Eye tape to make a double eyelid if you can't afford the surgery

Another popular surgery is jaw shaving, in which the jaw is shaved down to give the face a slimmer look. Apparently, Koreans have big faces and think that skinny European faces are all the rage. Yes, this does paint a disturbing picture of the Korean image of beauty, and yes, we did try all these pick-up lines out with varying success (varying success = no success at all). Anyway, in an effort to shorten these lengthy posts and make this a more enjoyable reading experience, I will give you Just some of the highlights of our 2 weeks in Korea.

Our first cultural experience was accompanying Czarna to a free Korean pop concert in the center of the city. Korean pop music is basically American pop music from the late 90’s. Boy bands reign supreme, no one writes their own music, and every group has stupid choreographed dances to every song. It’s hilarious, gives me a headache, and the little Korean boys and girls love it. So does Czarna. At first we thought he was just blaring K-pop from his computer as a joke. Then we saw that his third most visited site was the official Korean pop site. Then we were woken up everyday by Czarna showering while listening to Korean boy bands. Then this concert happened. Its not a joke. The kid legitimately loves Korean pop music. First of all, to get into the concert the four of us had to get in a crazy mob of little kids and slowly make our way to the entrance. Not only were we the only Americans in the crowd, but we were the only people over the age of 14 and over 5’5’’ (yup, I’m tall there). The kids in the mob were packed shoulder to shoulder and the temperature inside the in the middle of the mayhem was scalding.

Crazy mob of Korean middle schoolers

At one point, a little fat kid, sweating and desperate, nestled up to Wiley and pointed into his open mouth. At first Wiley was confused, but he quickly realized the kid wanted Wiley to feed him some of the rice cakes that Wiley had in his hand. With a big smile on his face, Wiley broke off some of his rice cake and sprinkled it into the fat kid’s mouth, not unlike a mama bird feeding her baby. The kid greedily swallowed the rice cake down and pointed to his mouth for more. Wiley fed his little Korean baby until we got to the front of the line, where the old man in charge of security made everyone in the front 3 rows of the line sit down on the ground.

After the concert was over and we were waiting at the bus stop to get a ride home, Wiley's little fat friend walked by. We stopped him, made him wait while I got my camera, and took a picture of him and Wiley. He seemed a little weirded out and worried, which is no way to treat someone who fed you rice crackers to save your life. A few seconds after the kid left we realized that he was not Wiley's little fat friend at all, but actually some poor fat kid who we stopped in the middle of the street and forced to take pictures with us

Once every child (and young adult) had some how found a way to sit on the ground with thousands of kids pushing at their backs, another security would walk up and tap each person on the head, one by one. Only once your head was tapped were you allowed to run into the concert and try to find a seat. I can honestly say it was the stupidest system of crowd control I have ever seen.

This picture is of the security guards is taken from the seated position. They are yelling at the all the kids to sit down and shut up

Upon finding our seats, we sat and waited for the concert to start. The headliner for the concert, and the biggest band in Korea, was a girl band called So Nyo Shi Day, which consists of 9 girls. In his excitement, Czarna asked the little girls sitting next to us when So Nyo Shi Day was coming on, only to find out that they we were in for a 3 hour wait. Every other pop group in Korea had to come on and do one or 2 songs before the big mammas did their thing. Casey and I slept through most of the acts, but woke up in time for a few boy band gems. Finally, when So Nyo Shi Day came on, every little girl in the crowd lost their heads screaming. No one screamed louder than Czarna. He high fived every little girl within a 30 foot radius.

These little screaming girls filmed the entire concert and sang every line to every song. Czarna was a little more excited than them.

Below I have posted the most popular music video for Son Nyo Shi Day and the most popular video for Empire Boys, who were at the concert and are the most popular boy band in Korea:

If you don't believe me that Czarna is addicted to Korean pop, just know this: One night when Czarna was asleep and we were all chillin outside his room we heard him cry out in his sleep, and then mumble: uhh, mhhh, Friday, Saturday Sunday.

Our next enlightening experience in Korea came in the form of the Jin Jo Bong. A Jin Jo Bong is a basically a huge naked bath house full of Jacuzzis, saunas, steam rooms, napping rooms, massage chairs, food stands, weird hot rock rooms, a freezing room with a fake snowman, and lots and lots of naked Koreans. The men just cruise around naked for the entire time and scrub themselves clean with alarming ferocity. There are even special scrubbing gloves they put on so they can really get in the hard to reach places. If scrubbing yourself is too much work, worry not. There are old men who just wait around in the showers and will scrub your entire body, even the no no parts, for a dollar. But the weirdest to thing as far as I am concerned, is the fact that the Koreans love to just chill on benches in the locker room and eat hard boiled eggs, whilst naked. They just sit there, balls out, eating room temperature hard boiled eggs and watching TV. It’s one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. Another interesting little is fact is that on my way back to my locker to put my clothes back on after a session of Jin Jo Bonging, a little man followed along behind me and toweled some of the remaining water off my back and ass. I didn’t know what to do so just turned around and thanked him. He smiled and scurried off. Now as an American, you might think, this sounds a little homoerotic. It looks fairly homoerotic as well. But the amazing thing is, there are no gay people in Korea. Not one. There is no such thing as gay. At least Koreans don’t think so. They claim there are no gay people in the entire country and to insure that it stays that way, they make anyone who is planning to work in Korea take an AIDS test first. I know, it makes total sense. That having been said, I have never seen more men holding hands, massaging each other, or scrubbing each other’s naked bodies than in Korea. But definitely no gays. I would love to include some pictures, but we promised that we wouldn’t post anymore nudity on this here blog. And we didn’t take any pictures. I swear, we didn’t.

Our last 3 days in Korea were spent in Seoul. First, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Wendell and Celeste for putting us up in the beautiful and classy Marriott. The hotel was amazing and we felt completely under dressed and out of place, so you know it was good. They even provided socks, shorts, and T shirts to work out in. They didn’t, however, provide a stove top or large crock pot in our hotel room. This didn’t present any problems for Casey or me, but it put Wiley in a bit of pickle considering that he needed a way to cook the remaining 2 pounds of his raw barley. Thinking it was brown rice, Wiley had mistakenly bought a 5 Kg bag of barley from a super market in Gwangju. Not one to waste food, he had been dutifully cooking and eating as much of the plain barley as humanly possible every day in an effort to rid himself of the grainful burden. Not to be beaten by a lack of proper appliances, Wiley improvised and cooked the remainder of his barley in the coffee pot provided by the hotel. It was working pretty well until he got some of the barley stuck in the filter and almost caused and explosion.

Anyway, Seoul had a completely different vibe than Gwangju, as it is one of the biggest cities in the world. Our first night we went out with one of Casey’s friends from college, who is teaching English there. We drank a bunch of Soju, which is the foulest drink on earth, but is all the Koreans drink. It is basically an alcoholic drink made out of chemical waste. But, its costs a dollar for a bottle and we were trying to immerse ourselves in the culture. Casey ended his night throwing up. I ended my night in a ball at the bottom of my bed. Wiley watched.

Soju + Casey = above picture

The next day we planned to wake up early, go for a hike, and then meet up with Czarna at the hotel and go the imperial palace in the afternoon. We woke up to Czarna knocking on the door at 3:30pm. Casey was too hung over to move, but Wiley, Czarna and I went to the palace, which was awesome (it’s not actually called the imperial palace, but I can’t remember what it was called. Don’t judge me. Look it up). That night we awoke Casey from the dead, got fresh to death, and went out clubbing in Seoul. It was a weird night. We went to a huge club that had two levels. The top level had two dance floors; nothing weird there. The bottom level, however, made no sense. There were two sets of big amphitheater-like stairs that rose up from the floor on opposite sides of the club. The stairs faced each other and the clubbers would pack themselves shoulder to shoulder on these stairs so that they were facing all the people on the other set of stairs. They would then stay planted in their spot, and dance with their arms kind of like sea anemone. The DJ, who was stationed at the top of one of the sets of stairs, played all the famous US jams. Surprisingly, Koreans went the craziest for all the reggaetone hits. They also had a crazy choreographed dance to DJ Unk “Walk it Out”, with hand motions for when the North, South, East, and West sides were instructed to walk it out. And in case you’re wondering, Casey didn’t throw up that night.

Wow, that was not nearly as short as I had hoped. Like I said, we are going to try to post a little more frequently from here on out so the posts will be shorter. For now, good bye from Vietnam.