"Desk warming" and a snapshot of the things I failed to report in 2010, Part Un

Ello ello.

There's so many cositas that I failed, forgot, and promised to blog about in the past 5 months that I was sadly considering leaving them out for good. I mean seriously, how am I gonna blog about Halloween nearly two weeks after New Year's? Well...doing it this way, that's how. And since I'm leaving for Southeast Asia in 3 days (!!!!!!!!!), I am in serious need of cranking these out now or never.

And there's no better time for reflection than while "desk warming" the week away. If you are unfamiliar with the term, allow me to explain.

Quick back story: In Korea, kids receive the equivalent of the American "summer vacation" during their winter break. The school year usually terminates some time between Christmas and New Year's, lasts about 2 months, and starts back up again in early March. Typically, native English teachers like myself have to teach a winter camp anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. If your camp is only 1 week, as it was in my case, you have to sit at your desk for the remaining time. There's really nothing to accomplish other than to "keep it warm," hence the term, "desk warming." And if it weren't for Youtube, TV shows, books, the occasional game of ping pong, and planning for Malaysia-Thailand-Vietnam, it would look a little something like this...

Fortunately for me, I actually kind of enjoy desk warming. I get to catch up on "talking" to people (albeit via facebook and gchat), blog, and most of the aforementioned activities.

Since the school doesn't provide lunch during winter break, it means going out or ordering in every day. And since Korea is all about social hierarchy, the group's eldest / most esteemed usually pays for the group's meal. Now I have offered to pay for my share just about every time but it is usually politely declined. Not bad. If I'm not staying in to dine on some good ol' Korean takeout, I'm hitting the town with muh boys Jun Young (who finishes up his 2 year stint at Young Sung this Friday) and Roger.

But okay! I recently got back from Dunkin Donuts with my Korean counterparts, so I'm Hot Americano'd up and ready to lay a serious blog post down. Booyakasha. First up, Halloweeeeeen...

Adjummania 2010

One of the best weekends in Korea so far has to go to Halloween weekend. About a month prior to Halloween the perfect idea hit me in the face like a drunk soldier at a club in Itaewon; an adjumma! Reveling in the sure-fire success of my idea, I started doing a little costume research. At that point I realized I was nowhere near being the first to think of going as an old Korean woman. Ah well. I was justifiably taken down a few floors from my skyscraper-high  costume pedestal. 

Makes sense though. In my opinion, it's the best possible costume you can unveil in Korea. Well, "the best" if you've submitted yourself in a contest called "Costume to make Koreans go absolutely nuts." Because that's exactly what our costumes did. They lost it like Mel Gibson's lost his career (yes I've seen the trailer for The Beaver blah blah blah). More on that later.

If I couldn't be the first one to don an outfit suitable for Stevie Wonder if he were an old Korean woman desperately trying to hold onto to her sporty roots, I at least wanted to do something relatively creative. How about getting a bunch of adjummas together? Boom. Adjummania! But before I get ahead of myself, let me back up a little bit...

The week before Halloween a bunch of us decided to get together in Seoul for some adjumm-attire shopping. After grabbing beers and cheap wings in Itaewon (foreigner hotspot), we headed to the nighttime shopping market in the Dongdaemun district. Large, seemingly endless warehouses jam-packed with any-and-everything known to fabric. 

Shopping in the Dong is kind of like if thousands of grandmas got together and made a coalition to sell off the clothes they thought were out of fashion. So you know there were some gems to be found. Ok not all of the stuff is that bad, and Korean men and women alike actually go nuts for the clothes there. Purple leopard-print blouses? Check. Matching lycra pants? Definitely. Flower print fanny packs? No doubt. The stuff here was cheap so luckily we didn't exactly break the bank getting outfitted (we actually saw the exact blouse I got for 8 times more expensive near my apartment), well some of us didn't at least (more to come on that...). In my unmarked black shopping bag (the Dong's style) I had a purple fleece ladyvest, purple fingerless ladygloves, a purple spandex leopard-print lady turtle neck, a flowery ladyscarf, and baggy zebra-print ladypants. Did I hit the jackpot you ask? You be the judge.

We all ended up making very nice hauls and it was getting late, so we decided to call it a night. Extremely proud of our purchases, Julie and I got on the subway and tried mentally preparing ourselves for the hour plus journey ahead of us. Still punch-drunk exuberant from the last 2 hours of my life, I followed Julie out of the subway car. And then it hit me like a Clay Matthews blitz in Philly. 

"Julie you have my bag right?" She didn't. Talk about dropping the proverbially ball on that one. All of my prized acquisitions from the night were chillin on a warm subway seat while I, dumbfounded, was not. I had never been so angry with myself. How could I have prematurely parted ways with such precious items? It all happened so fast and is one of those moments you wish could have back. Julie, thinking fast, recommended we go to the information booth and immediately report the missing pieces. A friendly man translated everything and we got a missing report filed right away with the subway officials. Unfortunately nothing turned up. All that hard work to waste. Some adjumma must have looked into that unmarked bag and hit the jackpot. The absolute jackpot. Imagine Larry King finding a suitcase full of suspenders or this kid opening an N64 on Christmas morning. At least I made someone's day I guess.

I ended up having to make the long journey back into Seoul a few days later to buy most of the same purple crap I bought 48 hours prior (are you sensing the bitterness?). I actually ended up making some upgrades in the vest and pant department and it turned out being a very worthy Halloween investment...

We decided to take our leopard-print-clad crew to the streets of Hongdae, where we heard the best Halloween celebration was. After a quick pregame in our go-to hostel, Backpacker's Space (or B-Space on the streets), we hit the ground running. First up? Hongdae main drag.

Julie was a roll of kimbap (Korean sushi). Genius if I do say so myself.

The public's response turned out be welcoming to say the least. A part of me thought we would offend more than a handful of people, which, believe it or not, wasn't the intention. Instead, the Hongdae youth was very supportive of our ensemble. After setting up shop outside a noraebang entrance, we let the dance moves fly (video coming.....hopefully). As a result, Koreans couldn't get enough of us. They kept coming and coming and coming to take pictures with us.

At the same time, I'm imaging how State Street would react if a bunch of Koreans hit the street on a virtually non-celebrated holiday in Madison dancing in pilgrim costumes or something. There'd be a few pictures taken I'm sure. 

After putting on a show for an hour or so, we took our inflated egos to the nearest costume contest, stat. We didn't think there was a chance in hell we couldn't not win with the sort of Korean reaction (Koreaction) we got. Long story short, the ONE GUY in charge of the contest gave the awards to some Austin Powers fembots (damn you scantily clad women; woulda been funny 10 years ago...), some Care Bears (yaaaaawn), and something else I can't remember because it was a boring costume and 8+ weeks ago. Bottom line, adjummas got more love than expected out of the Korean population and not an ounce of foreigner-appreciation. One word can sum up our contest snub: jealousy.

All in all, Halloween in Korea was more of a blast than any of us saw coming. And I think a lot of that stems from the quality of the people I hang out with here in Korea. Certainly something I didn't see coming while imagining what my time here would be like. These friends have become very good friends in a short 4 months. It didn't matter that Koreans don't really celebrate the 31st of October, you could have put our crew anywhere in the world that night and we would have had a blast.

(Oh and courtesy to Chris Bailey for all the photos! I only brought my Flip out that night)


Dad + Santacon Seoul = ROKin' Weekend

If this blog post were the Oscars, the music would be playing quite loud by this point. With that being said, the first installment of this trilogy will be cut short very, very soon. Bear (bare? bear? mmm bear sounds better, right?) with me.

About a month ago I was lucky enough to have my father come visit. He notified me a few months back that he would be coming over to my Asian neck of the woods and that he would try and stop by. Try and stop by. Well after twisting some arms, I got him to agree to spend an entire weekend in Seoul before heading over to Hong Kong for bizniss. Score!

After weeks and weeks of dialogue with my parents about what my Dad should bring, what to wear, what to do, etc. the anticipated weekend finally came. Lucky for us, Santacon was going on that weekend as well. Being an event I couldn't pass up (duh?), I picked up an outfit for Jules, my Dad, and myself.

After doing some fantastic touristy stuff in the city all day Saturday, we headed to Hongdae for Santacon and dinner with friends. Getting to spend a weekend with my father was very solacing. Korea really does feel like a bubble at times and it's refreshing to spend time with those closest to you.

And being that my parents are amazing, my Dad brought over 7 jars of Trader Joe's peanut butter (aka crack cocaine) and some Christmas gifts that I opened with them on Christmas via Skype. I guess Santa really does find you no matter where in the world you are (or how old you are.......).

For more photos from my pops being in town click here.

Yowza that post seemed longer than the 1934 version of Les Misérables.


Keeping the French theme going (my sister leaves for Paris in less than a month!!!!!) here's a tasty lick for ya courtesy of the one and only Geoff Johnson. Belle trouvaille mon frère.

Part deux coming très dès...