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While I was in Korea, Holly made the drive from Texas to Pennsylvania. I joined her out East for Christmas and we made the long drive back together. In between, we had the pleasure of visiting and staying with old friends in Clarkville, TN. Thank you Eric, Theresa and Elias for your hospitality!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/lewisnelson/VisitingClarksvilleNovDec07

Here are the pictures to accompany the previous blogs about my 5 weeks in Korea!
http://picasaweb.google.com/lewisnelson/KoreaNovDec2007

My mom left on Monday this week and that means I’ve lost my Korean help while visiting family. But that’s ok, I’m not going to shy away. Monday after class, I made my way to downtown Seoul’s Myongdong area to see my mom off. We met at the Lotte Hotel where I thought we were going to catch dinner along with my mom’s uncle and aunt from Masan that took us to Jeju Island. They drove up to spend a few days in Seoul. Instead, as soon as I showed up, my mom told me that she was just going to go straight to Incheon. So it was me and my great uncle and aunt from Masan alone for dinner. It also meant, nothing but Korean!!! I love them to death though so I had no problem hanging out with them alone for the night. We wandered the alleys of Seoul a little looking for a place to eat. This may sound strange to Americans (wandering alleys for food), but in Seoul, the alleys are just as lively as the streets. In many parts of the city (and most cities in Korea it seems), random alleys will be full of restaurants and is often the best food in the area. They are called Mokja Gilmok or literally “Let’s Eat Alleyways.” We decided to eat beef ribs. When ordering meat in Korea, it’s not simply a meal from a menu that comes on a plate. Most of the time there is a pit in the middle of the table that is either gas powered or a hole that they will place hot coals into. I personally like the coals better and that is what we got. Then you order the meat by portions, literally “2 people’s worth.” Well, between the three of us, we ate 5 people’s worth and about four bottles of Soju. I have mentioned Soju in the past, but it’s worth mentioning again. Koreans love to drink Soju. It’s so different than in the states, but it’s a common tradition here to serve each other shot glass sized portions and to drink it throughout the meal. Soju is also infamous to US soldiers as the quickest way to get drunk. What tends to happen is that while eating, the Soju just flows freely and before one knows it, they are nice and drunk. For some reason, Soju doesn’t work as quickly on me and maybe it’s because I outweigh the typical Korean male by about 75 pounds. So two to three bottles of Soju during a meal is barely a buzz but has much more effect on my hosts. After dinner, we made our way to the Lotte Hotel for tea. The best part of this long night with my family is that I had to rely on Korean the entire time. It was probably one of the best nights of practice that I had ever had and when I got back to my room that night, I really thought that I turned a corner in my language skills.

Tuesday night, in the absence of my mom, I decided to hang out with my two co-workers. We made our way to the Sinchon train station area where Chris and Jesse had found a great little restaurant. For about an hour and a half, we ate Samgyoksal (the three layer flesh pork) and Daenamoo Sul (Bamboo alcohol). The three of ate about 7 person’s worth of meat and about 5 to 6 bottles of the alcohol which was a little weaker than Soju but so much tastier! We were quite toasted after dinner and so we decided to try our luck at a Korean club. I made it through the entry without a problem but as soon as my friends tried, they were met by a bouncer who kindly told them, “Sorry, Koreans only.” No problem, we made our way across the street to a bar. We ordered a ‘set’ that included 5 beers and some side-dishes and then encountered another Korean social aspect that I had not yet experienced. We were joined by a girl wearing lingerie who just sat with us and talked to us. At first I was a little leery and was afraid that we had just met an infamous “juicy girl.” These are girls that prey on foreigners at bars near the military bases. They work for the bar and convince people to buy them drinks at much higher prices that they slowly sip while the GIs try to get more out of them that just good company. But this girl was not like that. She didn’t ask us to buy anything and instead served a different purpose… just get us to stay at the bar longer! Well, she was fun to talk to for all three of us and we chalked it up as speaking practice. My weeks with the family paid off and I quickly realized that I have never spoken Korean as well as I do now. The girl sat on the other side of the bar from us so I was not too worried about the lingerie thing and there was no real ‘flirting’ going on, just conversation that quickly became a US vs. Korea type conversation comparing customs and pop culture. It was actually quite enjoyable! But before long, it was very late (2:30am) and we still had class in the morning. So the three of us made our way to a taxi and had about 5 hours of sleep.

Wednesday after class, despite feeling the previous night’s alcohol, I made my way to Apdujong to meet my cousin Sang-gyeong and my grandfather. Sang-gyeong spent some time in the states studying at Georgetown and Boston University and had previously met Holly and the kids. We also saw each other down south the first weekend I was here. My grandfather is her great uncle and so she was happy to join me while she was in Seoul for a job interview. We went to his office and had tea and caught up a little. Then we had dinner nearby. I still get a little nervous when talking to older Koreans because there is such a cultural aspect of respecting one’s elders. The language changes and customs change when compared to younger people. I let Sang-gyeong do most of the talking (she also speaks English very well). After dinner, Sang-gyeong and I walked around Namdaemoon Market and Myongdong in downtown Seoul. We didn’t really buy anything but I did learn another Korean word or two from her.

On Saturday, Chris, Jesse and I made our way down to the Camp Humphreys area by train (about an hour south of Seoul). Camp Humphreys is home to most of the people in my job field, but I only knew two people there; both former co-workers at the 101st Airborne and now married to each other (Brandon Cook and Tracy Hansen). We met Brandon at his apartment (which was actually much nicer than I had expected) and walked the streets of the “Vill” (the common name to the Korean shopping areas just outside of the military bases outside of Seoul). We did a little shopping (I think I bought some DVDs and that’s it) and then made our way to a bar that used to be famous amongst the Korean linguists called “The Wall.” I guess it was past its glory days. We met up with Tracy there and then had some outstanding Chinese food. We spent the rest of the night at a bar called Shooters just hanging out playing pool and darts. It was amazing to me how we could be in Korea but pretty much live just like in America. I didn’t have to speak Korean once and I didn’t eat Korean food once. It was a good experience because if I did happen to stay in the military, it’s very likely I’ll end up here sometime.

We made our way to the train station and had about 30 minutes to spare. Jesse thought we would enjoy seeing a darker side of Korean society so we walked what Jesse liked to call the “Barbie Doll” street. Literally across the street from the train station was a large area of about 2 x 5 blocks of bright pink lights and large window-front buildings. In the window fronts were young Korean girls ready to service any takers. I knew why Jesse referred to them as Barbie dolls because they looked like dolls sitting in a clear plastic box on the shopping mart shelf. But we were not there to sample the goods. I was actually kind of sad to know that these types of places exist in Korea, so open and inviting and in the middle of the city. But I guess that’s just a part of life.

We got back to Seoul around 11pm and for the rest of the weekend, I was entranced by yet another Korean phenomenon, the TV drama. While I was in Jeju, I went to a beautiful site that had a church overlooking the shore. The church was built as part of the set for a drama called “All-in.” I didn’t know anything about the drama and had anticipated that it referred to some sort of church boarding house or something. While in Seoul, my relative happened to have the entire drama on DVD and gave it to me as a gift. I watched the entire 24 hour drama in two days. It was not about a church boarding house though, it was actually a very correct American usage of the term “All-in.” It was a drama mainly about gambling. It combined a love story, Korean gangs, corporate corruption and greed, Korean gambling houses, Las Vegas casinos and finally Jeju Island casinos. It was outstanding. They even featured the hotel that I stayed in while at Jeju and shows many of the exact places I had been while I visited. Needless to say, I was happy to finish the drama on Monday night and resume normal life.

It’s finally down to my last week and a half in Seoul. I’ve had such a great time here but I really do miss the family. One day I’ll come back with the whole family and show them everything I’ve been able to see. I spent most of the week relaxing, studying, and staying around the Yonsei University/ Sinchon area. On Thursday night, Chris and I did venture out to the Yongsan Electronics Market. My mom asked me to buy here $100 worth of Korean movies and I had also heard that Nintendo DS games were cheap (my niece wanted some for Christmas). I had no clue just how large this market would be, but I should not have been surprised. The Yongsan electronics market is a about four large buildings, all about the size of a Smithsonian museum full of electronics vendors. There are also more vendors working out of carts on the streets and all of the alleys and cross streets sell electronics as well. We are talking about computers, computer components, software, DVD’s, video games, cameras, mp3 players, etc etc etc.

Our first stop was the game market. Most of the markets here tend to be separated by item. The game market was an indoor aisle about 75 meters long. I had heard that they had a special card for the Nintendo DS that they could load tons of games onto. My first stop I asked about DS games and he pulled out the magical card. For $200, I could buy the two game cards of 2GB each holding over 75 games. It was such a good deal that I bought both and decided to buy myself a DS too. The games are interchangeable using a computer so I’ll load 2GB worth of games suitable for my niece as her Christmas present (I’m sure she will not be reading this blog before Christmas).

We them made our way to the movies. I went right to work negotiating a fair price of five movies for 11 dollars (10,000 won actually) and bought 40. I thought I was done, but another guy offered me a great deal and I ended up buying $110 worth of movies and Korean dramas from him. In all, I ended up with about 100 DVDs for 121 dollars.

Friday night I hopped on a train and headed south to Changwon, near Busan on the southeastern coast of Korea. There I met Sang-gyeong and her brother and we had a late meal of steamed chicken before heading to their house. I talked with their mom (my great aunt) for about an hour and a half. She spends a lot of time doing Chinese character calligraphy and I thought she would be the perfect person to help me with something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time. Since I started learning Korean, I wanted to have a good Korean name. My mom’s family name is Song, but some time ago, my great grandfather had actually given my father a Korean name. Korean names are almost always based on a Chinese character (Hanja). My grandfather named my dad Bang Gu-Mi. Korean names are almost always three syllables with the first syllable being the family name or surname and the second and third being their ‘first’ name. So I decided I would definitely keep the family name my great-grandfather made “Bang.” My mom gave me the middle name Lee with in Korean is actually pronounced as a hard E sound ‘ee’ so I wanted that to be the first syllable of my ‘first’ name. So I asked my great aunt to help me with the final syllable. Both she and Sang-gyoeng thought about it for a bit and after some thought decided that Jong would be best as Bangijong is a good sounding Korean name. In English, I will write it as Lee-jong Bong or Bong Lee-jong. It means “One who does good onto others.”

Saturday morning, Sang-gyeong, her father and I drove up to Gyeongju (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongju), the ancient capital of the Shila Dynasty from 57 – 935 AD. Gyeongju is just north of Busan on the Sea of Japan (which Koreans call the “East Sea”) and is often referred to as the “Museum Without Walls.” It contains relics of the Shila Dynasty including the royal tombs, palaces and Buddhist shrines. We visited five of the city’s main attractions. We started downtown and visited the Royal Tombs where Shila kings were laid to rest under large mounds. In other parts of Korea, royalty were buried under tombs made of wood or dirt. Grave robbers would occasionally enter these tombs to steal the jewelry that was often buried along with the corpse. In Gyeongju, the tombs were covered with a concrete covering making grave-robbing nearly impossible. One of these tombs was excavated by the Korean government in the 1960s or 70s and has been turned into a small museum of Shila artifacts and the royal tomb is displayed behind protective glass. Afterwards, we moved east and visited Anapji Pond, a manmade pond created in the 600’s for a small resort-like palace. We spent a little bit of time at the National Museum of Gyeongju and then took a break for lunch. We sampled a famous dessert of Gyeongju called Chal-Bori Bang which is simply bread with sweet bean paste between them. Then we drove further east to one of the most famous sites in Gyeongju, the Seokguram Grotto. This is a large Buddha statue built into the mountain side facing east. It is very well preserved as can be seen by the pictures on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seokguram . The Seokguram grotto is part of the large Shila temple called Bulguksa (or literally, “Buddhist Land Temple”) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulguksa. We finished our day at Bulguksa which is too magnificent to describe. Please view the previous links and see the photo album section of the pictures I took.

I decided to call it a day and traveled via S. Korea’s high speed train (KTX) back to Seoul. Sunday I spent with my friends starting with a great Samgyoksal lunch and shopping in Itaewon (the large area near Yongsan Garrison that is full of foreigners) topped off with a great Italian dinner.

My last few days in Korea I spent with my family in Amsa and doing some last minute shopping. It’s amazing how much I have accumulated in such a short time. I had to buy another large suitcase just to fit it all! It’s currently 5am in Korea and my flight leaves in 4 hours. I’m staying at the Dragon Hill Lodge at Yongsan Garrison and decided to stay up most of the night in an attempt to combat jet-lag when I get home (it is 2pm in Texas right now!). After I hit the plane, I’m sure I will be out until we land in Dallas. It’s been such a fun and exciting 5 weeks and to top it all off, I think I actually learned a lot of Korean!!! However, I think the most important part of this trip was that I was able to forget the past few years of Army life concentrating so hard on the middle east and Iraq. It’s time to let that go and concentrate on my actual job… Korea.

Sorry I haven’t written my weekly updates; I guess my first two weekends were so full of excitement that it was easy to write about. The last three weeks have been a little low key, most likely because my mom went back to states two weeks ago! Week one I knew very little Korean (at least I remembered very little Korean) and got to travel down south with my mother to meet both sides of the family. Week two, the Korean improved a bit and I spent that weekend at Jeju Island. Week three was a little more relaxing.

My mom spent her three weeks in Korea staying with her uncle and aunt in Seoul. They are on my grandmother’s side (the Bae family) and are about the same age as my mom. They have two daughters and a son that are about my age (we actually stayed with them the one other time I came to Korea back in 1983 when I was in kindergarten). During the week, we did a few small things such as shopping at Dongdaemun Market (Seoul was once a walled city with four large ‘gates,’ one in each direction. Dongdaemun is literally “East Big Gate.” At Dongdaemun and Lamdaemun (“South Big Gate”) there are large markets selling all kinds of goods. At Dongdaemun, they are famous for clothing and fashion. There we did a little bit of shopping coming away with new winter coats (mine was only $30). Afterwards, I had my first taste of a great Korean meal called Sam-Gae-Tang. This is basically starts as a large bowl of broth and they then place a chicken in it. I don’t mean pieces of chicken, I mean a whole chicken with they then use sharp scissors to slide it into chunks, bone and all. There’s a process to eating this meal. First, you eat the chicken, carefully removing the now cooked meat, dipping it into a salt and pepper mix, then eating it with a bit of red bean paste and sliced onions. It is delicious. After the chicken is gone, you fill the broth with noodles which also cook at your table and finish off the soup. I loved it; especially since it was a bit chilly outside! That was Tuesday.

Wednesday I met my mom and her aunt at the King Sejong Cultural Center downtown. The cultural center is a fine arts center specializing in traditional Korean performances, but we didn’t attend any. Instead, we met at the coffee shop and met up with the son of one of my mom’s friends in Virginia. Actually, my mom’s friend in Virginia is a high school classmate that spent many years in Canada before coming down to Virginia (at my mom’s urging). Their son is a month or two younger than I am and came to Korea about a year and a half ago to work in the banking industry. My mom is very interested in hooking him up with her cousin (who is my age). We had a great dinner of Samgyubsal (Literally “three layer flesh” but it is just large pieces of pork that is grilled at your table).

I met up with my mom and her aunt again for Thanksgiving. We met at my grandfather’s office in Apdujong, an upscale section of Seoul located south of the Han River well known for its plastic surgery offices. My grandfather game me a large book that contained the history of the Song family, but most of it is written in a very high level writing called Han-moon that mixes Korean writing (Hangul) with Chinese characters (Han-ja). Maybe one day I’ll be able to read it! We went to lunch near his office and had what the menu called “Traditional Korean Meal.” It was a lot of food to say the least but very tasty. Afterwards, we left my grandfather and went to Lotte World, a large mall, museum, and amusement park (indoor and outdoor) in Seoul. We spent a few hours at the Korean Folk Museum. This place was amazing and displayed not only the art and utensils used during Korea’s vast history, but also had large life-like scale models of Korean folk-life. This was by far the most amazing museum I have seen with over an acre of scenes from Korean folk life. See the photo albums section and look for “Korean Folk Museum.” After the museum, we made our way to Yongsan Garrison, the home of the 8th US Army and headquarters for all US military troops stationed in Korea. My mom’s uncle met us at the subway station and together I brought them onto base to the Dragon Hill Lodge (the large resort like hotel that serves US government and military personnel and their families) for a American style Thanksgiving Dinner. For my great uncle and aunt, it was their first turkey dinner (I meat that is very rare in Korea). They seemed to enjoy it.

I spent the weekend in the Amsa district of Seoul, south of the Han River in the eastern part of the city. This is where my great uncle and aunt live. Friday night was a large meal and a lot of relaxing. Saturday though was different. We hopped in the car and drove into the center of Seoul to see Gyeongbokgung. This is the largest of the five main palaces built by during the Joseon Dynasty which lasted from 1392 until the Japanese colonial era of 1910. Here it was clear to see the beauty of Korean architecture and contrast of the modern city (Gyeongbokgung is located just north of central Seoul and just south of Chongwadae (the Blue House and home of the Korean President). However, one of the most beautiful aspects of the palace is that looking north and northwest, it has great views of Bukak Mountain, one of the 8 mountains of Seoul. Afterwards, we drove to the top of Bukak mountain to see the view and then back down to a traditional Chinese medicine market. We had more samgyoksal (the pork) for lunch and then my mom bought a bunch of “bo-yak” or health medicine literally. I have about 10 pounds of it sitting in my suitcase right now to bring to her because her luggage was overweight going home.

Saturday night, my mom and I met up with two of her cousins from the Song side of the family. Although I was not even close to hungry, I was forced to eat even more meat while they caught up on life. The meal was fantastic though and I had met one of the two cousins previously and really enjoyed their company. We joined that cousin at a coffee shop where her mother also joined us. My mom was very close with her and was so happy to see her again. We had a cup of tea, a piece of tiramisu and then my mom and I made our way back into the heart of Seoul to Dongdaemun Market.

It was now 11:30 pm. South Korea used to have a thriving, obvious black market. It was not hidden. I never really witnessed this. In the past few years, Seoul has cleaned up quite a bit. My friends were actually surprised that they could not find the same level of counterfeit goods and ‘knock off’ items. Well, my mom was quick to find out how to get them and the answer was simple… go back after midnight when the cops no longer come snooping around. Dongdaemun Market is busy during they day; at night, one can hardly move amongst the crowd of street shoppers. There are two immense buildings at Dongdaemun (by immense I mean half a mile long and four stories high) filled with indoor shops selling mostly clothes. Then there is the area between the stadiums (baseball and soccer stadiums built for the 1988 Seoul Olympics) that sells purses, more clothes, watches, etc. We had one goal for the night… my sister wanted a ‘knock off’ purse. After an hour of fighting the crowd and negotiating prices, we were successful (and even bought a few ‘extras’)

After a long night, I was more than happy to spend most of Sunday relaxing at my family’s house eating great Korean food. I did venture out with my ‘aunt’ that is the same age as me and bought a new camera. Maybe you’ll be able to tell the difference in the pictures after this week!