31? is that a real age?

indeed, ladies and gentlemen, i have made it to 31. and 31 in Korea at that.

thank you to everyone who has sent so many wonderful goodies. they have all been a wonderful surprise. thank you thank you thank you!!!! (and a shout out to mr. michael bortnick in new zealand who, my mom tells me, reads this blog and laughs over breakfast. that makes me happy!)

i sit here on the last morning of waking up early for school for 10 whole days. we leave for our trip to seorak-san (national park with the tallest peaks in korea) and the beach tomorrow morning.

some of you have asked about the fun korea-type things i will be doing for my birthday. well, though i so wish my apartment would sing happy birthday to me, i was awoken this morning by the lovely tune of "xanadu" on my phone (i hear the musical is pretty rockin'). today i will definitely have as many parties as possible in all my classes and beyond. i've prepped my kids for "what day is it today?" "Today is Friday, July 27th, Catie Teacher's birthday" so perhaps, selfishly, i'll get some loot from the wee ones. the afternoon classes will definitely consist of games and perhaps some cake. though my kids were trying to persuade me to get chicken.

you see, chicken--fried chicken, that is, particularly Chicken Man, is a staple of any birthday here in Gwangju. Chicken Man rides on a red scooter emboldened with the Chicken Man logo--something that looks like a stoned cartoon chicken (no pictures yet, but i've been meaning to post one. but if you want to see a silly video with really bad quality of Chicken Man dancing with some guy go here:

Chicken Man dances for your pleasure

Chicken Man rides away from the store on his scooter and, I imagine, pushes a button on said scooter which makes a little sound like he's a superhero--you know, "dun da da dun! Chicken Man!" seriously. it cracks me up every time.

Then, Chicken Man shows up at your home, office or school (ours in particular) bearing gifts of fried chicken parts and wearing a giant (and terribly hot and sweaty, i'm sure) costume that makes the guy look like the stoned chicken himself. he runs around the school jumping up and landing with his feet apart and arm in the air. Superhero, after all, right? Then, as quick as he arrived, he's off. Perhaps to thrill and frighten more small children and adults. (Apparently, one of the teachers has a kid who i think is 3 or 4 whose mother threatens to call Chicken Man when he's bad. he must really scare the shit out of some kids!) I bet you wish Chicken Man could come to your house right now...

anyhoo, off to shower and get myself prepped for this lovely birthday. sending love all to all you good folks.

31 and feelin good

catie

some new t-shirt finds

as i count down to two days left as a 30 year old woman, i have been feeling the need to buy silly t-shirts. and so, here are a few to share with you lovely people. i hope you find them amusing.





and perhaps one of the best yet:


wait for it...the front really will blow your mind...


and some funny ones around town:

nara in the house

um, yungry yet?

that is all. must get to bed now. three more days of teaching until vacation!

xoxo

catie

a mud fest, a back injury and a night of clubbing

a random collection of events, indeed. But all since the last guapa in korea update, so I figured I’d just throw them all in together.

So, the mud fest. To be precise, the Boryeong Mud Festival which, if you peruse the wonderfully translated website, you will be thoroughly confused about what is *actually* going on at this event. Before we took off at the ungodly hour of 5 am last Saturday (went with some teachers from school – Jim stayed behind for the weekend), I had very little idea of what to expect at said mud festival. There were rumors of naked mud wrestling and orgies of sorts. Tales of drunken, muddy yahoo foreigners guzzling beer and ogling the ladies. Military boys on weekend leave. Would it be like burning man on the beach? Would it be like freshman year at Who’s on First, but with beer *and* mud?? Oh, the mystery…

I don’t think I even realized it was on the beach until we arrived. After a lovely early morning train ride and a cramped, slightly annoying bus ride, we arrived at Daecheon Beach at about 9:30 am. Already buzzing with people, the beach was a long stretch of lovely white sand. There was a long “boardwalk” of sorts that started out kind of old and rickety and progressed to a newer, shinier version of itself several kilometers down the beach.

We found our little hotel room not too far from the beach, slapped on the sunscreen and headed to check out the mud. It was a gorgeous day—the first cloudless, blue sky we’d seen in weeks as Gwangju has generally been overcast and humid as all get out for the past month. Spent a few hours chillin on the beach and in the warm water—the tide was out (still can’t quite figure this one out since I’m new to this side of the world), WAY out, so there was plenty of beach. But suddenly, at around 2 or so, the tide started coming in so fast that over 80% of the beach was gone within 20 minutes. People who had gotten up to go get another beer or go to the bathroom, came back to find their towels and books and whatever else swept out into the water. We got out with plenty of time.

Finally got ourselves over to the mud. Here was the set up: “tables”—small little plastic tables with umbrellas that had little tubs of mud on them that you could douse yourself in. even had some paintbrushes to get an even look to your muddy body; a mud slide (that was fully *not* working at all; a giant pool of mud that was also closed for some unknown reason; mud wrestling, which was open and was quite hilarious; mud jail – still very unclear what you do in “mud jail” but it was there, complete with rubber bars on the walls. All of it was quite peculiar, but definitely a much more controlled mud experience than we had been led to believe. There were no naked people. There were no orgies. Just tons and tons of people throwing buckets of mud on each others head and dancing around. Truly a wonderful feeling – getting all soaked in mud, letting it dry and then jumping in the sea to wash it all off. Fabulous. Great for the skin they say.

Managed to dance a jig or two with these old Korean ladies who were *way* in to the mud experience. Here’s a shot of me with the grannies. Hilarious I tell you. Truly hilarious.
Met a pile of great folks who live in Gwangju. Lots of Aussies. A few Brits. Learned a very silly schoolyard taunt from Will the Aussie, complete with hand gestures: Whatever, Your Mom Works Part Time at Maccas. Maccas (Ma-kahs) is, of course, McDonald’s in Australia. Without the hand gestures, you really can’t do this one justice. But the best part was that he had another version, which involved telling your foe that his or her mom works part time at Westy’s (or something like that). When I was like, hah hah, what’s Westy’s? Will said, “ oh, it’s this really bad bank in Australia.” Bank? You mom works at a really bad bank? That’s the insult? Those crazy Aussies.

Met some great folks who live in Seoul the next morning – they were doing some yoga on the beach, so I thought I’d chat them up for a while. Fantastic conversation, all about what it’s been like to move to this country and all the emotions and challenges that have come up for us, how we face them, how we find space to allow them to even exist, etc. It was great to share that stuff with a perfect stranger – to connect on a deep level about the fact that this move, this life, truly magnifies our emotional and psychological experience and presents us with a mirror of ourselves that cannot be ignored or evaded through our normal coping mechanisms. A wonderful chat on the beach topped off a lovely weekend.

One of the best things I saw out there was, totally by chance, running into a pack of 4 bikers resting their tricked out low rider harley's on the street as we were leaving town. The bikes were beautiful. Here's a pic of me on one of them. Do check out Flickr for more. The details were unreal.

Back to the school grind this past week. Day off for a holiday and another day for tests for the kids, so it was an easy week, or so it would have been had I not thrown out my back early on Wednesday morning. Right. So, I finally find a line on garbanzo beans. I’d been soaking them so I could actually make hummus which I was totally psyched about. So, I bend down to open the fridge and suddenly, something slips in my back. Woohoo! Thus ensued four days of intense back pain. I think it’s finally in its healing stage after a couple of trips to the acupuncturist Jim and I have been seeing. And just in time, too, for a night out to a Gwangju Club for the last weekend of a fellow teacher and the last weekend I will be 30. I turn 31 next Friday. Very hard to believe.

The club was pretty ridiculous. Tons of people. DJs spinning great hip hop for the most part. The largest disco ball ever floating in the middle of the room and free electric red devil horns being given out at the bar. I was agile enough to get my groove on for a while. Got lots of great photos, so check out the Flickr site this week when you get the chance.
Getting geared up for our vacation at the end of this week. The day after my birthday on the 28th, we’ll head to Seoul and then to Seorak-san to do some backpacking for a few days and then lay on the beach for a few more. I’m looking forward to the time off and away from the city.

Stayed tuned for an upcoming post of the ridiculous t-shirts that Jim and I purchased this week. I love them. They rock.

Much love

Guapa in korea

we build forts, i tell you

It’s maddening fun in our Korean abode. We do laundry! We collect garbage in our freezer! We make up silly stories about what news the kind and pleasant apartment announcer shares with us – last week Umi Apartments (our apartment complex) became a clothing-optional residential complex, this week, the gnomes went on strike, so I couldn’t use the gnome phone to call them down to do the dishes. Don’t ask, but it was a real bummer. And of course, in apartment 108, we build forts!

Laundry forts, fortified with clothespins clipped to the kitchen shelves, sheets as flying buttresses, socks as small ornaments to give the place some je-ne-se-quoi. And underwear mobiles for sheer entertainment.

You see, as the weather has gotten hotter, and swamp ass has become the official ailment of the summer, we can no longer rely on the sun porch as a place to dry clothes (as no one in korea actually owns a dryer). We have to dry them inside with a constant breeze on them so as not to have to do our laundry ten times to get the mildew smell out when they don’t dry fast enough (though jim claims that this smell is a figment of my imagination in some cases).

So, ladies and gentlemen, here you see jimmer, putting the final touches on our very own Fort Spray n’ Wash, bold and powerful in his ingenious construction but slightly confused by the panty mobile. Aren’t they all?

A fourth of july vest

There really is no other title quite as appropriate as that. That’s what it was. A fourth of july vest. Why? I have no idea. We live in Korea. Our kids are Korean. Yet, even still, on this fair Independence Day week, as millions of Americans broke out the bbq and made flag cakes and wore ugly flag print dresses and popped off some fireworks in celebration of the country’s “independence,” we were required to engage our kindergarteners in a time-honored Koran tradition (?) – making a Fourth of July Vest out of cardboard and construction paper. Oh, and sliver star stickers. I’m not kidding.

Now, it’s very unclear to all of us why we must teach our children the traditions and customs of the US. But certainly a bit of healthy imperialism never hurt anybody, right? Riiiiight. So, I threw myself into the project and worked hard to trace and cut and prepare the 12 little cardboard vests for their Americana adornment. And below is the breathtaking result, complete with yours truly donning her own “sample” vest. Ah, I love korea. And apparently, korea loves us.

why can’t have everything?

I tell you, sometimes when you drop just one or two words from an English sentence, the result is simply hilarious. At least when you’re walking down the street in seoul and you see a lovely young Korean girl gabbing on her cell phone wearing a shirt that says, very loudly, “why can’t have everything?” indeed. Why can’t have everything? Because then there would be nothing left, jim said.

We made the trip to seoul, finally. It was a trip, for sure, complete with lots of men in uniform, falafel and shawerma, a candy-colored wonderland, and a new piece of art! Read on for more!

Just as a teaser: the best (and only) graffiti art we’ve seen in korea: kim jong il and beauty queens, side by side…

We decided to head up north to visit with an old friend of jim’s who he played scrabble with while in Prague for new year’s 2003. he told him to look him up if he was ever in korea. Well here we are. And we found him in seoul. So, we took the three-hour train to the city of 10 million, and with only a few minor squabbles over directions, based almost entirely on low blood sugar and the fact that we were in f*ing seoul, we made it to the neighborhood where we were staying. Gwangwha, I believe. Very close to the primary palace in Seoul – Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon Dynasty.

We puttered around for a while –had an actual, real live sandwich from Au Bon Pain, which, though slightly bizarre, was simply divine. Walked down the street and found a variety of giant sculptures, as per usual, one of which was a bronzed horse reared up on its hind legs. From behind, it was amazing. Beautiful. From the front, it sho’ did look like the artist’s models were hit with the ugly stick pretty damn hard.



Found a giant temple and a huge, imposing statue of Admiral Yi who fought back the Japanese in the 1500’s. Found the US Embassy, which, as would be expected, is heavily fortified with what looked to be very young boys armed with large machine guns. Lots of barbed wire. Nothing inviting or appealing of the place whatsoever. We actually almost walked right by it, thinking it was a prison or something, saying things like, jeez, the map says the embassy is right here. Where is it? Way to roll out the welcome mat, America!

Found our hotel, got the room (₩ 40,000 ~ $45) and walked into this tiny little space with a variety of lovely accoutrements, including a GIANT flat screen tv on the wall. Seriously. Giant. Like it took up the whole wall. And, kind as the Koreans are, the room came complete with a hair dryer and a number of hair products. Though not in the western style, where every time a new hotel patron stays in the room they swap out the products for brand new ones. No, this looked like we had just walked into somebody’s bachelor-style apartment, complete with a tube of toothpaste, half-rolled up. Pretty awesome.

We headed out to the palace. One of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was the largest palace in Asia, outside of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The grounds of the palace stretch for miles. Several huge structures leading straight back to the king’s and queen’s quarters with ancillary buildings all over the place. A scientific building where they set up telescopes. A garden, a lake for boating, a pond for pondering. Incredible. The palace was destroyed in the 1592 Japanese invasion and was rebuilt in 1868. To this day, it continues to be restructured and rebuilt, having suffered damaged during the 1920s and again during the Korean War. It’s a bit like Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia – continuous construction for about a 100 years. There are a few pics here, but please do check out the complete set on my Flickr site. It was an incredible place.

And when we got there, there was a summer concert series gearing up for the evening. So we caught the rehearsal of some young guys doing traditional Korean drumming. Check out the video here…



After 4 hours of walking we were exhausted, so we headed out of the palace to find some coffee. As we wandered down the street, away from the palace, the police presence was intense. (Across the street from the palace is the presidential palace.) Tons of dudes in uniform for blocks and blocks. And young dudes, too. High school. And road blocks made out of flower planters. Fascinating.

We made our way down the street and found a lovely café called “fan” – "fan yourself with an artbook", to be exact. They served coffee for ₩4,500 (~$5) so I almost passed it up, but jim insisted we take a peek. He’s always thinkin’, that one. It was the tiniest of coffee shops. Lovely, eclectic, full of art books and magazines all over the shelves. Little metal chairs and Lucite tables. Custom funky seat covers. Not only did they serve coffee in old-style espresso pots, they had art gallery flyers all over the counter. Which, of course, made me a happy girl. Art! In Korea! Yay. One in particular caught my eye for its candy-colored spectacularness – a flyer for the opening of smile planet. How could we go wrong seeking out smile planet?? We also found this little gem hiding in the corner of the counter. I thought it was good inspiration for my new teacher’s uniform. What do you think?

so, satiated and caffeinated, we headed home to dash off to dinner with jim’s buddy. And so we decked out, and left for a night out in seoul. jim’s friend suggested we meet up in Itaewon. Now, if you know anything about seoul, you know that this is: a) the only place in korea you can get falafel; b) the neighborhood where you’re most like to see bar brawls; and c) the general epicenter of US G.I.s, hence the bar brawls. After a dizzying walk down the street where I definitely felt like I had been dropped into Cancun at the height of spring break, passing lots of big dudes, girls with dyed blond hair and bad-sexy fashion and a general smattering of abercrombie and fitch strolling down the street, we made it to the first middle eastern food place we saw. For a hefty price, we ate falafel and lamb shawerma, and we were happy. Yes indeed. Very happy.

We had some time to kill, so we hit a bar jim’s friend recommended for eats. I’m not sure if it was the bouncers in flack jackets at the doors or the bevy of football player-like physique carrying pitchers of beer back to their darts game that tipped me off – we weren’t in Kansas anymore, my dear. Not by a long shot. I surveyed the scene, took a deep (smokefilled) breath in and said, “honey, this was college.” Indeed, we could have been at mary ann’s or the kells on a Saturday night. Or maybe mary ann’s in a war zone, given the flack jackets and army boys. We got some beers, sidled up to a faux fireplace, and took in the ambience. Not five minutes pass before three fully suited Army CPP officers walk straight into the bar, each taking a different direction. One stood behind us and chatted with a soldier (I presume) about whether or not he was drunk. I guess they survey the bars on the weekends every 10 minutes or so, looking for army boys breaking curfew and the like. Fully uniformed, fully armed. Fascinating. We left a few minutes later, eager to catch a breath of air. Met up with jim’s friend and spent the rest of the night in far more chill environs – an English pub where most patrons were in the 30 and over, and way over category. Beatles, Elvis Costello and a little Sinatra played on the juke box. We played kododi and I got to drink stella. Very nice indeed.

And now for the end of the adventure. We headed out the next day to Insadong, a neighborhood pretty close to where we were staying. We wandered through a maze of back alley streets, tons of little restaurants and mysteries. We came to the end, found a little gallery and walked up some stairs to the unknown. The art was interesting. The curator spoke English and was kind enough to take us around the corner to smile planet. It was on the 6th floor of a building next door. We hit the ground floor which was a store mostly filled with traditional Korean art—fans, tea pots, masks, etc. but there was one little corner in the front run by an artists collective called “sang.”

“Sang is the place where art coexists with everyone’s daily life. It is the small art market administered by several young, fine artists. These artists select some fine works of art and reproduce them. It is the market place for art communicating with daily life through the products from the art work.”

It was here that I fell in love with a little piece down at the bottom of a bookshelf. An artist named Sung Myung Chun had just finished an installation nearby called "Swallowing the Shadows." though all in korean, what I got from the description was that the show was about a man who enters a forest and encounters many strange things and emotions. He regresses into his life as a young boy and spends his time in the forest trying to rid himself of his shadow. All the pieces in the show were made out of rough, white plaster. Some were eerie, some violent, but all very melancholy. Not unlike the film I finally watched last night – Pan’s Labyrinth – beauty and pain wrapped tightly together.

So the piece. A small boy stands on a tightrope. Himself slate gray, he wears a little cape against a field of minty green-blue. The inscription in Korean reads something like: my body is heavy, it is better than me. Not totally sure on it yet. Need to work with it a bit. The piece, though appearing to be a canvas, is actually all plaster, with a metal wire attached. The girl who sold it to me was so sweet. she said I couldn’t buy the one of the shelf; I needed to order one and the artist would have to make another, ready for pick up in 2 weeks. When I explained I live in Gwangju and had no idea when I would get back to Seoul, she went outside to make a phone call. She came back with the answer from the artist: I could take the piece that day. She even gave me the beautiful hand-crafted metal stand that held it up. Truly a lovely experience. And a lovely piece. It’s found it’s home next to our little gizmo and jims gorgeous antique Chinese compass he picked up on the very same street. A lovely afternoon. And…finally…we headed to smile planet.

We stepped off the elevator on the 6th floor and were greeted with a sight I could never have imagined. Chandeliers of candy-colored plastic and glass wrapped in vibrant colored yarn hung from the ceilings. It wasn’t just a gallery. It wasn’t just a store. It was a café, a bar, an art studio, a kitsch-covered, candy-coated wonderland. It was smile planet. The centerpiece was a white lacquer bar lined with cherry apple red bar stools, modern and sleek. The bar itself housed an impressive collection of, yes, Barbie dolls. Held under glass, as if in a state of momentary paralysis, they lay side by side, dozens of them, wrapped tightly in multicolored yarn, decked out in tube dresses and fabulous beehive hairdos. The lined the entire bar, corner to corner. And under glass, they looked as though they might just wake up any minute and come prancing out of their slumber to perform a spectacular rendition of "Johnny, Are You Queer?" with John Waters singing in the lead. Seriously. This place was insane.

Dresses made entirely from little plastic star and heart toys. What looked to be bike helmets with entire toy cities perched on top. (Safe, surely not. But fabulous. Oh yes, darling. Oh yes). And the workshop space. Oh my. Silver barbies galore. And barbies upon barbies in some kind of bizarre synchronized swimming formation, not unlike {MOVIE WITH synchronized swimming from 1950s). and the jewelry. The jewelry.



The best purchase of the weekend can be seen right here. Sexy lego men earrings.

And so, there you have it folks. Seoul. we will return. It was fun. I’m glad we live down in gwangju. I’d spend way too much money in seoul. and where else could I walk into a funny little facial salon called “Skin Palm: Queen’s Zone” and get an eyebrow wax and a complimentary cooling mask for ₩10,000 (which is definitely what happened to me just before I wrote this tome of a blog post, and let me tell you, the mask was decadent, cooling and truly fabulous. And it was free!). aside from being a bit sick this week and having to dress my children in the american flag, things are looking up.

And so, why can’t have everything? Ah, but I do, I do.

Korean barbies rule.

xoxo

catie