If all goes according to plan, tomorrow I start orientation and find out where I will be teaching and living.
The last few days have been great, except for my first night in Seoul, which was a godawful catastrophe.
It's a long story, but I had a difficult time finding my couchsurfers place and ended up walking around with my absurdly heaving duffel bag, taking breaks every 100 yards(see last post), very confused in a city were most people don't speak English. And I didn't really know where I was going.
But all ended well.
The couchsurfer is cool. She stays is with her girlfriend but still has a efficiency apartment, where I stayed. It's the shit, with a fridge in the wall, stove above the dryer/washing machine and several hi-tech thingies. Like a authentic version of the Spaloo, which I haven't indulged in yet.Very efficient. Very Asian style high tech.
Unfortunately I haven't seen any of the Korean scatological obsession that brad j. is understandably obsessed with.
But I'm looking, hard.
This blog will be better when I find a PC bang where I can upload pics from my old school 2mega pixel camera. PC bangs are awesome. Korea's have a serious problem with online gaming. The kids you knew in high school who would play warcraft for 2 days straight drinking mountain dew. All Korean males under 20 are like that, apparently.
Here's wikipedias description
"PC bang(Korean: PC방; "bang (방)" approximately means "room" in Korean) is a variation of LAN gaming center, where one can play multiplayer computer games with others. PC bangs are extremely popular among young South Koreans. It became extremely popular when Starcraft came out in 1997. Although computers and broadband penetration per capita were very high, many young people went to PC bangs to play LAN-based multiplayer games, with others."
These places are filled with chainsmoking kids and chainsmoking old men escaping life by playing RPGs and online cards. Most people don't use headphones, so there is this casino-like cacophony of bleep and buzzes.
Speaking of chain smoking, every male here smokes. Every single one. I've only seen a few women smoking though.
In some ways Seoul is like the US in the 1950s.
Every man smokes. Alcoholism is a serious problem that people seem to accept. Most men work long-ass hours 50-70 a week. and most men never where shorts, even when it's hot.
In someways it's very different. There are high rise buildings and construction everywhere, buildings being rapidly demolished, and plots being bulldozed for absurdly expensive hotels.
The subways are filled with people with ipods, tiny cellphones, tiny handheld TVs and gameboys (I know, their not called gameboys anymore)
This city is fucking huge. It calls for more profanity. Fucking crazyshitballs huge.
I don't understand the "4th most expensive city" thing. You can buy nice ties here for a few dollars. I shouldn't have packed all those ties. Many of these cheap, but nice ties have a very clever zipper mechanism. While this makes a hell of a lot more sense, I enjoy having the choose between a traditional half-windsor and a full on ballin' full windsor knot. With the zipper tie it's just a one-size-fits-all knot.
Why do I care so much about ties now? Maybe this is proof that I've official become old and boring. What happened to my punkrock ethos?
The internets still tells me that it's expensive here. The 5th most expensive city for expats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_cities_for_expatriate_employees
I went to the North Seoul Tower. (click on the pic)
This is when it really set in that Seoul is a huge city.
I've been to several of Seoul's markets. They're like a combination of the Soulard market and the St. Charles Rockroad flea market but 30 times as big. Lots of disgusting sights that make me appreciate not eating meat. Caged dogs are especially sad.
There were several things that I was excited about escaping by leaving the US. One of the biggest was that I thought I would go a year without seeing stupidass t-shirts that have quotes them that are suppose to express the wittiness of the person wearing the shit, that they bought at a mall, just like the million other "clever" people who bought the same shirt.
Shirts that say things like
"What boyfriend?"
"Where's your sister?"
etc, etc, etc.
O, and also the countless goth shirts that say things about how everyone else is stupid.
Point being, this is one of my silly pet peeves and I thought I would be able to go a year without seeing these damn things.
However, I was wrong. There all over Seoul, and all in English. I could not figure it out until I went to the mall. A cesspool of consumerism, just like any US mall, with overpriced, jackass shirts included, tons of them.
Speaking of mindless consumerism,
So far I've bought:
1. A obnoxiously loud bell alarm clock, like the one I had before I turned it into a doorbell for the hoosier mansion.
2. A digital watch from the 80s that looks like its straight out of wargames.
3. A replacement hobo-knife
4. Socks with Che Guevara on them. I was thinking about the irony, and then noticed that they were only a dollar. Shit, I'll buy some Che socks for a dollar.
Everything here is LG, Samsung, Hyundai, and Kia, with a little Daewoo.
This blog has become incredibly long, dorky and has a lot to do with toilets and feces. I'm gonna stop.
Cheers.
