Entry #5

Happy 추석 Chu-seok Party People,

Chu-seok, for those of you who don't know, is the Korean Thanksgiving, celebrated this year on the 21st-23rd of September, and is a national holiday. Like our Thanksgiving, it was based of the historic moment when the Native Americans saved the Koreans from starvation with Stove Top stuffing and cranberry sauce and then passed out watching football. Or something like that.

Actually, they call it their Thanksgiving, but it's really more of a harvest celebration, where families gather and pay homage to their relatives who have passed on. It truly is a beautiful time for the Korean people. For the rest of us, it's a three day break in the middle of the week (that's right, I had to work Monday and Friday) and a time to travel. I chose to go to Seoul, the capital and the 2nd biggest city in the world. That's right, it beats out New York City's pathetic 19 million citizens with a whopping 24.5 million inhabitants.

My time their was spent staying at a hostel known as The Bong House, which, despite its name, featured no drugs. It was run by Mr. Bong, a feisty Chinese guy who also runs a bar next door known as, you guessed it, Bong Bar. It was a great meeting place for foreigners. I found myself spending a fair amount of time with an audacious Austrian girl and a Brit whose final thesis in college was to design a way to hack into a bank and steal all its money. I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever heard.

The term megacity gets tossed around all too frequently these days, but Seoul truly fits the bill. To experience the utter mass of this city, we ventured to the top of Seoul Tower. It essentially looks like one of those circular revolving restaurants, except it's placed on top of a mountain. To access this mountain, you take a cable car. Upon leaving this cable car, you are met with the biggest tourist trap I've seen in Korea. It's like a county fair. There are corn dogs everywhere, little kids running aimlessly around with weird toys that break after the first time you use them, and, no lie, the official Teddy Bear Museum.

But the real attraction is the tower, which is about four hundred yards tall and on top of a mountain, so you get a stunning 360 degree view of Seoul. The city stretches on FOREVER. It's not big like New York, in the sense of tall, it's big in the sense of wide. You can see for miles and miles around you in all directions, and all you can see is city. However, the best part was not the view.

On the glass windows of Seoul Tower, their is white writing. Here are the names of cities and how far away they are if you were to start traveling in that direction. So it's like Sydney 4,120 km and Berlin 5,300 km. Now here comes the cheesy part. When I saw New York 11,063 km, like a child, I squinted my eyes and looked as hard as I could, hoping against hope I could see all the way home, to catch a glimpse of all you wonderful people who read my blog. Then it occurred to me, because our planet is round, I'd have a much better chance of looking in the general direction of Massachusetts if I just looked straight down.

But that still was not the coolest thing. The coolest thing was the bathroom of Seoul Tower. Urinals were parked up against the glass wall, so when you peed, it felt like you were peeing down all over fair Seoul City. I can't imagine anyone not enjoying that.

As for teaching, I am digging it, and I promise you, it's for all the wrong reasons. My favorite class is comprised of four twelve-year-old boys who are wicked cool. In a nerdy way. For instance, we start every class with a presentation. It can be on anything they want. School policy. And as there are no smelly girls in the class to spoil our fun, the presentations usually revolve around either video games or weapons and often times both. Which is swell. Besides, they're not slacking off. They do serious research and put up lots of pictures - they work hard and earn their grade. Besides, who's to say Starcraft and AK-47's shouldn't be discussed every day in school?

I've taken time each day to teach them American slang. Already, they are all too familiar with words and phrases such as "wicked cool," "sick," and "I can get down with that." I believe I'll teach them "pimped out" on Monday. I also have a class of nine-year-olds that can't stop saying "booya!" It's nice to know I'm making a difference.

It seems I can't do a blog entry without mentioning food, so here's today's Korean food factoid. Red meat is scarce out here, as opposed to octopus which is plentiful and actually pretty tasty, but when you find some cow meat, oh baby, it's the bee's knees. The Korean BBQ joints are where it's at. The set up is like so: there's a hole in the middle of the table where they stick a flaming circle of charcoal. Then they cover it up with a grill and give you the beef, thinly sliced and marinated, to grill yourself. Then you dip it in this tangy soy sauce, wrap it in lettuce, and enjoy. Damn good and it's probably the only restaurant you'll ever go to that doesn't have a chef.

But that's enough for now. I'm tired from all the Karaoke. As always, I miss you, I miss America, and as much as I love this place, I can't get used to guys calling me "handsome." I mean, it's clearly true, but still, I'd almost feel better if they were hitting on me. Peace and love,

Handsome Dan