And this is a relatively quiet side street.
Dinner at Mad Chef
Coffe at Cafe The Bridge
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And this is a relatively quiet side street.
Dinner at Mad Chef
Coffe at Cafe The Bridge
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Saturday Hongdae Free Flea Market
A Hongdae side street with numerous restaurants, cel phone shops and women's clothing stores.
The rooftop view.
Hongdae as seen from its namesake, Hongik University.
Looking out from my buddy Dohoon's Japanese curry restaurant, Kareo, in Hongdae.
He asked me what I wanted to eat, "make me whatever you want," I replied. He took out a package from under the counter and began to create the most dressed up instant ramen I'll ever eat. Using homemade stock and mixing some of the packaged ingredients along with his own fresh market supplied produce.
The final result. Outstanding.
The sun is shining in the nieghborhood.
A seafood and agricultural market near Seoul World Cup Stadium (South Korea co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup with Japan).
Chef and owner of "Mad Chef," Chan-woo, looking at some produce.
There was an endless supply of kimchi'd foods. Here we have kimchi crabs.
Kimchi garlic stems, which are out of this world, crazy delicious.
I am doing a project where I am taking a one second self-portrait every day that I am 25 years old. I started the morning of my birthday and will continue until I turn 26. This is what I have so far.
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Spring in Korea is very much marked by the cherry blossoms. The flowers are only in bloom for a short time, less than a week, so the best places to view them get crowded extremely quickly. One of the most popular destinations in Seoul to take in the cherry blossoms is Yeouido Island (pronounced Yo-E-Doe). Situated on the Han River, which bisects the city into north and south halves, the island is a financial and business center of Korea, with the Korea Exchange and many conglomerate headquarters. There are hundreds upon hundreds of cherry blossoms trees on the island, as well as the Han River Park overlooking the river.
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Unlike its closest neighbors, China and Japan, Korea does not primarily use a form of Chinese characters for reading and writing. Instead, Korean is read using a unique alphabet that was created specifically for the language. This alphabet, called "Hangul," is extremely simple and it's possible to learn how to read it in only a few hours. Part of this is because the letters Hangul were designed both to be easy to read and to have their shapes match the sound they would represent.
There are 24 letters in Hangul, compared to the 46 used in the Latin alphabet (23 upper-case and 23 lower-case). Korean differs from many alphabets in that its letters are not written in a single horizontal string. The letters are always combined into blocks of syllables containing at least 2 letters but no more than 5. A perfect illustrated example of this comes from the Wikipedia article on Hangul: "although 한 may look like a single character, it is composed of three distinct letters: ㅎ h, ㅏ a, and ㄴ n." This can be further illustrated in this chart.
Prior to the invention of Hangul, the only way to read and write Korean was through the use of Chinese characters, the proliferation of which came from the introduction of Buddhist texts into Korea. Because of the complexity and large number of characters, for generations literacy was typically only a skill acquired by the wealthy with time and money for education. Hangul was developed in 1443 by Sejong the Great, king of the Korean peninsula, in order to bring literacy to the masses. It actually wasn't embraced immediately, it was banned for a number of years in the 1500s by kings that either felt the Chinese writing system to be superior or in order to subvert the uneducated. It wasn't until the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930s that Hangul became more standardized by the oppressed trying to maintain their national identity and eventually becoming fully adopted after the end of World War II.
It is important to note that Chinese characters are however still in use in modern Korea. They are taught in middle and high schools, used to differentiate between homonyms, used for names of both people and places and frequently used in newspapers.
Just for fun, here's McDonald's in Hangul.
Information sourced from Wikipedia, charts by Byeoung Cho and McDonald's photo by Adventures in Tomorrorland
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A guard outside Gwanghwamun.
Outside Gyeongbok Palace
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The Seoul I see on a day to day basis is modern. Elementary school students have smartphones, touchscreen maps are in subway stations and bright lights are on everything. Here and there I do see older houses with more traditional Korean architecture, called Hanok, but they are often delapidated and likely to be torn down soon.
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I'm finally getting into a rhythm at work and with that each week has been going by faster and faster. My apartment is slowly becoming my own with each addition, it's small but slightly bigger than my apartments in Mammoth and Japan. Expect a video tour within the next few days.
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It has been just over two weeks since arriving here in Seoul and I'm very much still getting settled in. Since my classroom observations ended and I started teaching my own classes this past week, my falling into a routine has definitely sped up the familiarity process.
My route to work
There is one thing that needs to be said. Seoul is cold, very cold. It has been hovering around freezing every since I arrived. It has warmed up slightly in the past few days, but much in the same way that Colorado is warmer than Alaska. It's no help that the sun is constantly hidden by a thin and extremely grey layer of clouds at most all times. On my way home from work today I thought the sun was setting much later than usual since it was much brighter out, but no, the clouds had receded a simply a little sunny outside.
A view of the Mapo district
Seoul is with out a doubt an interesting place. It very much strives to be extremely modern, with cel phone coverage in the subway system, monitors at bus stops with real-time arrival information and the fastest Internet in the world. But at the very same time it seems as though it goes too fast for its own good, not stopping to realize what that its doing is not actually acheiving the desired output. Take the high-rises below as an example. A common sight throughout Seoul, these complexes were made to meet increasing demand for housing in the city; they probably intended to be beautiful and the epitome of cospomolitan city living. They somehow miss the mark though, instead of looking like the perfect place to live they look boring, bleak, imposing and depressing.
I think this is probably why Seoul and Korea as a whole have a lot of potential, there's is a lot of great to be had but also a lot that is being improved upon. And with World Expo taking place later this year and the Winter Olympics are coming in 2018, Korea is increasingly becomming a more prominent participant in global culture.
A look from Seoul Station
Old Seoul Station
Seoul Station
My local grocery store
My neighborhood, Hongdae
This is pizza, right?
Sinchon Market
Pedestrian crossing in Sinchon
Work is going great. I'm stilling getting my bearings and finding out what works and what doesn't with my classes. Honestly, all of my nine homeroom students are great in their own ways, some are more troublesome than others, but it's hard for me to complain when comparing them to some of the true terrors some of the other teachers have. I mean, just look at these guys.
I have arrived and I am safe and sound as can be! I've been in Seoul for about two weeks now and ever since arriving I've been extremely busy. Training, class observations, setting up my class room, moving into my new apartment, familiarizing myself with a new country and a new city. It's been extremely hectic.
Surprisingly, I'm not being struck too hard with culture shock or even a sense of novelty with my new surroundings. Maybe part of that is because of how much I've been moving around in the past year and also maybe because this isn't my first bout with Asia. Japan and Korea are extremely different in so many ways but very similar in so many others. It might be a similar comparison to the east and west coasts of the US or even the US compared to the UK.
Seoul is a huge city, one of the biggest in the world. I've hardly had a chance to see much of it and no matter how long I stay here it's unlikely I'll ever see it all. It's extremely dense, the people are very friendly, there are coffee shops everywhere and each neighborhood seems like a city unto itself (and by some definitions they are). I really like Seoul, it has most of the things I love big cities for. Great public transportation, lots of eating and entertainment options within walking distance, a huge amount of things to do and all sorts of people.
A typical street in Hongdae
I live in a neighborhood called Hongdae. Named after a university in the area, Hongik University, the nation's best art school, there are actually a number of universities in the area and it's widely known as being a huge nightlife destination. Literally around the corner from my apartment is "Picasso Street," which contains hundreds of cafes, bars, nightclubs, and restaurants along with constant live street music and art installations, it's an extremely lively place and somewhere most people my age in Seoul would love to live.
Friday, March 2nd was the first day of school. I primarily teach kindergarten, I have my own class with 9 great students. After kindergarten I teach two classes of elementary school students.The level of Engilsh that my 5 year olds have is extremely impressive, comparable to that of my middle school students in Japan, probably even better. It certainly helps that Korean isn't allowed to be spoken in the school.
So from here on out it's time for me to explore and experience Korea, this is going to be fun.
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