Jjimjilbang

A quick shout out to my parents who now have access to reading my blog through my brother. In all honesty, I’m slightly regretting the decision to give my brother the go ahead since I’ve been a lot more apprehensive about what I write in here, so expect a cleaner mouthed version of the Andy most of you know (see previous posts) since I can’t disappoint my mom with my bad language.

We went to a jjimjilbang this Sunday, kinda like a super spa. It was pretty awesome and really relaxing. The one we went to was 2 floors. The first floor contained the shower area and a whole bunch of baths. Everyone is naked, segregated by sex of course, and there are different pools that are at different temperatures, ranging from 22 degrees Celsius (71F) to 41 degrees C (106F). Each had lay down areas or massage jets. There was also a sauna that was 71 degrees C (160F). That was really brutal, so much so that it hurt to move after sitting for about 2 minutes. Like when you waved your hand in the sauna, it felt like a burning sensation. Walking out of the room was pretty painful as well. The other floor was much more interesting. There are a series of rooms situated around the out perimeter of an area, each at a different temperature, ranging from 8 degress C (46F) all the way to 100 degrees C (212F). The 100 degree C one was out of control! It looked like entering the mouth of hell due to all the heaters. It was ridiculously hot in there and everything bad from my body got sweated out. On top of that, the men in the group Rock-Paper-Scissored and the loser had to do ten pushups in the hottest room. Another room which was about 37 degrees C (99F) had a bunch of little rocks on the ground that you lay down on then pile some on your chest for some extra heat exposure. The rocks were hot enough where putting your feet down too long was a little painful. After each foray into a hot room, we’d cool off in the coldest room. In the middle of this area, there are a bunch of little beds, massage machines, and some food places on the outside. The jjimjilbangs are open 24 hours a day, so it’s a popular place to go and just stay all night in one of the sleeping areas of sleeping room. It was a really relaxing day full of some good cultural experience.

KIEEME Conference and Muju

I went to the KIEEME (Korean Institute of Electrical, Electronic, and Materials Engineers) Conference and Muju, South Korea. The conference took place at a ski resort and I know you are all dying to know how Korean conferences are like compared to American conferences. I am happy to report that they are just as boring and long, with the added non-excitement of not being able to read any posters or understand any presentations since most everything was in Korean. The only minor difference was that at the beginning of the conference, they had every person who was presenting a poster give a short presentation about what their poster was about, 1 minute long and usually less than that. While that may seems short, if you ever attended a conference there are a lot of posters during each day. It was interesting I guess and it gives a little more incentive/responsibility to poster people rather than just standing by their poster and hoping that someone cares. The only part I enjoyed was reading some posters with English on them:

Past that, we chilled and played some poker while watching Spain lose to the Swedes. Then we went to a national park and rode some bikes around. Their bikes are really small, kinda like trying to ride a kid’s bike with dual shocks. Not only is the crank arm damn small so you feel like you’re riding a trike, the dual shocks absorb some energy you put into peddling. Needless to say, the hills did not treat me well. We also wading in a crik for a little and splashed each other, though I wasn’t expecting the splashing part so I didn’t take off my shirt.

It was tittly nipply, then ridiculously humid for the rest of the day. Good times, good times.

The Weekend in Boring Summary Fashion

A lot has happened and I’ve been unmotivated to write, so I’ll try to break up the next few into smaller snack size posts.

Last weekend, I went up to Seoul to see everyone from lab so that we could watch the Korea-Greece game together. The original plan was to watch at city hall outside, but it was monsooning during the day so we didn’t want to stay out in the rain and freeze our asses off. Instead, we went to a horse track to watch the game since they have big screens and covered seating. We even got to see a few horse races, though I didn’t bet anything since I wasn’t feeling that lucky.

We brought in with us a large bottle of Jack, vodka, and some wine along with bottles of Coke, cranberry juice, and the Sprite equivalent in Korea. It was a lot of alcohol, and we ended up killing it all between about 7 of us. Still sober in this pic while were our "Red Devils" T-shirts:

Pre-game pump up began with a concert by a famous Korean diva, with a bunch of Korean pride and cheering songs, all of which included a series of clapping and dancing and whatnot (Koreans suck at doing the wave in a stadium by the way). Then the game began and ended with Korean’s and us foreigners going nuts when Korea scored against Greece, especially Jisun Park scored. Here's the horse track before the game:

The picture doesn't do the area justice. It was pretty fantastic view, even in the rain. We then left the horse track and went to a bar to have some beer (which is still filthy) and semi-watched the Argentina-Nigeria game while socializing. The night ended for most around 1 or 2AM, but I stayed up and watched the USA-England game which kicked off at 3:30 in the morning, and watched the sun rise.

Drinking Culture

So in the last week, I went out to drink twice; once with the lab people, professor included, and once more when everyone from Pittsburgh came down to visit me. Drinking is a large part of Korean culture. Every time I walk past this bar-like place on my way home, it’s usually full of people who are hitting it hard, regardless of the night it is. I think the reason for this is that we start at dinner time, around 6 ish, and by the time it’s midnight, we’re all pretty much drunk enough to call it a night, allowing for a full night sleep in preparation for lab, school or work the next day.

The drink of choice is soju, which apparently is the most consumed liquor in the world, if that gives you an idea about how many/often Koreans drink. It tastes like a little sweeten vodka and is consumed as shots, not mixed with anything else. It’s aight, at best.

Unlike USA drinking, drinking in Korea is more ritualized/proper. Younger’s pour for the elders first, always using two hands on the bottle or one hand on the bottle and one hand under your elbow, mimicking getting your clothes out of the way back in the day of lengthy clothing. To receive a drink, you must have 2 hands on the glass or your right hand on the glass and the other hand on your stomach. Once everyone has been poured, you clink glasses and say “Gombe!” or “One shot-ah!” Drinks are always served with food.

The other drink I had, this time with the people from Pittsburgh, was makgeolli (pronounced like broccoli but with an “m” instead of a “br”). It’s kinda like sake, though not as good (bias much?) and is much more drinkable than soju. It is sweeter and has a slightly fizziness to it, more like wine. The place we went served the makgeolli in a metal tea kettle sort of thing, and each cup was a small metal bowl:

Same pouring rules apply, though less stringent since we were all ignorant Americans. To get more, you bang a separate empty kettle to get the waiters attention and they bring another one for you. Sound rude? Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt when I did it.

So far, the beer here is awful, like Naty Ice or IC Lite awful. Any imports have 100% import tax on them, so there are like $15 bucks for a bottle. Only cool thing so far about the beer is that one of the places I went to had cup holders which were sunk into the table and kept at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so it kept your beer cold for longer. The pitchers themselves had a metal rod through the center of the pitcher and extended into the cup holders so the beer in the pitcher would be kept colder. I think that was a special thing to that place though since I have yet to see it anywhere else.

I’m pretty home sick or suffering from severe Xbox withdrawal (or both). Just wish I knew my MCAT score....

Officially the Minority

Hey everyone who cares to read this, I have made it to Jeonju, South Korea in one piece. It was a little sketchy since I basically got off a plane and then was put on a bus 3 and half hours south with a phone number and hopes that there was someone there to meet me. Luckily there was, and everyone in my lab so far has been incredibly nice to me. Lots of different and cultural things have been happening to me in just to days, so I'm just going to ramble for awhile until I get tired and go to bed (I'm 13 hours in the future). I have to say though, I am definitely not used to be completely dependent on others, even for the basics like food and whatnot. I guess I just have to get used to it or start learning a whole lot of Korean really really quickly. It's like being in a continual state of confusion since everywhere I look, there's more things that I don't know about.

Here's a quick tour of my apartment, which I share with two other people, though I have my own room. The entrance and kitchen:

Yeah, that's a refrigerator crammed into the corner there, with a clothes drying rack in front of it since there's no dryer. Now, for the part which I am struggling with the most; the bathroom/toilet/everything combo:

Notice the lack of separation between anything. So whenever I have taken a shower, everything gets wet and I'm not really sure if that is normal or not yet. Sometimes I just want to go to the bathroom, and I have to put on slippers to protect against the wet floor. And now a close up on the sink part:

You may notice that the shower head is directly attached to the sink. There's a little button there to switch between the sink and the shower head, which I tend to forget about when I just want to wash my hands... And I'm fully clothed. Guess I just have to start remembering to check for that.

Another thing I have to get used to is that during meals, it seems that drinking liquid is just not the status quo. They give you a shot glass size thing of water, and everyone seems to save it for the end of the meal. I've experienced this before in Japan, but it's different here since the food is pretty damn spicy and I need some water to wash it down and cool my tongue. Not sure how to handle this yet. I guess I'll just hope my body gets used to the lack of liquid during meal times. Also, Korean use steel chopsticks that are thinner than normal chopsticks, so it's kinda like eating with 2 coffee stirrers that are metal.

Also something that I thought was really interesting is that in the lab where all the computers are and everyone is just typing, the "dry lab" if I may, there's a sink there with bowls and a whole lot of tooth brushes. After every meal we eat, most people, if not everyone, brushes their teeth in the lab. I just thought that was interesting and pretty different from the labs in America. Definitely more of a "family" feel to lab rather than a place of work, though we do still work late.

My professor isn't in until Monday, so I still have no idea what I am actually doing for these 9 weeks until then. I think my plan this weekend is to walk all around the campus and try to get better bearings as to where I am instead of wandering around and hoping that something looks familiar.