2 Intense Times!

The food worshipping writer was totally just published on www.SeoulEats.com and has no other reason to post this other than to show off. Word. Also, welcome to visitors from the aforementioned blog. The author would like to thank Mr. Dan Gray for posting the article the writer wrote on delicious pork intestines one can consume in Seoul.

For the article please visit: http://www.seouleats.com/2010/04/gopchang-house-by-danny-byrnes.html

40 Minutes of Hell at a Time

Once this teacher learned that he preferred prowling, probing, and pestering the populous and palatable peopled portions of this previous part of Pangaea the reader’s writer found that he might not need to update as much as you or his blog’s God character might desire—even if he does write awesomely long, awesome sentences. The thing about blogging he’s unearthed is that one must have time to write in order for words to appear on a page and thus allowing you to live out all of your teaching in South Korea dreams vicariously through this modest piece of internet writing.

Well with the New Year we both ended a school year and began another. Too much has really happened in the past month to really remember or do it justice. To summarize I hosted the kinder graduation. Which was fun and I’m sure not even half the parents in attendance were able to really understand most of anything I was even saying. Either way, I looked good in a suit, so you can look at the photos and at least see my prettiness.

With the promotion of some of the less than angelic kinder kids, ridding them from my life for good (as well as losing some of my favorites) came an ominous sound of hooves-- the kind of hooves that only demons make when thundering through the halls of my humble hagwon. I am the main phonics teacher now for two of the new “6” year old kinder classes (meaning some of them might be 4 years old). Thank goodness I still have my best class which is now 7 years old and have one more year at ECC. Some of the kids are way too young and makes me disagree with Korea’s practice of counting everyone’s age together, allowing younger kids to enter into school before they are really ready.

Some of my older kids singing along to Peaches by the Presidents of the USA of Seattle, WA:

From Korea III

 (You may have to scroll down to the bottom of the album??)

Other than the hellions which have been unleashed upon me for 40 minutes at a time I have dropped out of Korean classes but have been continuing to study (but not as much as I should) and my life has gotten a lot easier—though I still can’t find a lot of time to blog, can I?

I’m in love with Korean baseball games now. Its loud all the time, the beers are about $2, and there are cheerleaders. It’s a lot more entertaining game than its American cousin.  I’ll be going to a lot more games. Tickets are no more expensive than $30 for the best seats in the house too. Photos and videos are up.

Anywhom, check out the photos, lots of good ones. Some videos too. You know you love it. Get on it.

My 2nd New Year of the Year

This humble denizen of the Far East was walking about the high-heeled metropolis the other day when he ran into God. He asked God a question: What am I doing here in Seoul? God replied, I don’t know, you haven’t updated your stale, crusty old blog in a month so I wouldn’t know, would I? Thinking that his version of God was correct, though kind of fresh, he decided that it was high time to write more seeing as how Jehovah was keeping tabs on how often he was updating.

The awesome, octopus wrangling writer has been giving his blog a chance to recuperate while he has gone out into the land of the “morning calm” and planted, picked, and gleaned new stories for you, his discriminating audience, to sink their teeth into.  He does understand the insulin like need for you to read more of his deft descriptions of spicy, fibrous kimchi and trips to naked-time jimjilbangs (since most of my hits are for this reason).  There are so many things which he could casually enlighten you—such as no drinks at meal times, usually just a soup (unless you ordered the soup), or how sometimes he feels so welcomed to this wonderful (yet awkwardly racist) peninsula when old men tell him and his friend Sean (on their way back from Korean class) to be quiet on the bus when talking about Korean grammar in their best “inside voices.” So in short, sit back, pour yourself a beverage and prepare to be assaulted by stories so controversial and awesome that 3 of them have already been disqualified by the Olympics (written at the time of the Olympics).

Speaking of the Olympics, Kim Yu-na (Yu-na Kim) is all Korea can (could) talk about—well that and their hate of Ohno. Who is hated almost as much as the nation of Japan (and their figure skaters). We were returning from a kinder end-of-the-year party (with all of the kids in their prom best) when Kim Yu-Na came on the bus’ TV and all of the Korean teachers immediately gave her full attention and silence—which made all of us foreign teachers shut up and watch too. She skated beautifully and the Korean teachers did the Korean equivalent of high fives all around. Then it was the Japanese skater’s turn. Even though she did a stellar job (but not getting as many points) all the Korean teachers could do was berate her and say how she wasn’t as good as Kim Yu-Na. I’ll give them that Kim Yu-Na is a fantastic figure skater but damn are they… let’s say: prideful. On that note, it sucks that the US didn’t win hockey gold!

We had another new year. It seems like Korea can’t get enough of them, so they say we may have 5-6 more in the coming months. Actually, we celebrated Seollal (a pronunciation I really can’t, CAN’T get the hang of). This is virtually the same thing as what we know of as “Chinese New Year” or lunar New Year. This is traditionally a very family oriented holiday and as such my coworkers and I were left on our own to find activities to fill the void that was the long weekend.

Alex, Andrew and I went looking for traditional games and music that we had read about on the internet—cuz you know that’s the best way to find out anything. So we hopped on the subway and like Bugs Bunny, popped our heads out when we thought maybe we were in the right place, only to find, like an aforementioned rabbit, that we were not in our intended destination or rather our event was not in the right place. Eventually we found it, filled with traditional games, which we watched and took pictures of them since some of them seemed downright dangerous-- jumping on sea-saws (in heels) for example.

We took photos wearing some traditional hanbok (Korean clothing). I guess I was dressed as the guard, Alex as the king, and Andrew as the prince. I liked my hat. During this episode we met a Jordanian and an Egyptian and went with them downtown for some ice skating and New Year’s parades and festivities. Long and short of it: I can still ice skate and I got a strike bowling on ice (granny style).

I went to another Korean wedding, this time my Korean teacher's. My friend Gabi sang.

Some other weekend (it’s been so long since I even took down notes to write this thing) I went to a pension with mostly Korean coworkers and had a good time. It was lent to us by one of the student’s parents. We barbecued, drank beer, and had a good time. I think I ultimately like Korean and Chilean barbecues more than American ones—at least the ones I’ve been a part of. They do it more often and they taste better. No offense, cheeseburger.

Random animal parts of I’ve eaten:  Pork intestines, both long and short. Delicious. I’d have to say that I prefer the long intestine to the small but that’s just me.

Other news, my beloved Chile suffered a pretty gruesome quake, not far from where I studied and Taiwan got one too. I was kind of hoping to maybe go there for Buddha’s birthday in May. Any thoughts? As far as Chile goes, I’ve heard from most of my friends and host family down there and they seem to be okay but a lot of their stuff ended up on the floor. We also had a smaller quake and North Korea/China had a larger one. Good luck, US west coast.

I’ll end with a random commonly held Korean belief: ducks can not fly (at least very high). Wassup with that?!?

안녕!

1 Excuse

The author knows he should update the hell out of this blog but he's a lazy son of a gun and you probably already knew that.

8 Legs Dancing on my Tongue

The author has chosen to grace the blogosphere with his humble and subtle presence once more. He is alive and kicking in a way not dissimilar to his seafood supper several nights ago. We can crawl to that subject in a moment or two. Why has the righteous and respected writer taken so long to tap a few nouns, verbs and adjectives your way? Well, he has had the pleasure of working two 6 day weeks in row; and has instead handily directed his energies not at his beautiful blog but rather at not devouring the souls of the children who call themselves his students.

Enough about my eager little tattle-tales who spare no moment to mention that so-and-so has spoken Korean and I try in a professional manner to tell them that teacher couldn’t care any less than he already does about that. A video is under my more recent photos with some of the cuter ones talking about what dreams are. Take that, Mr. Bill Cosby—Korean kids say the darndest things. Actually it was funnier until I got the camera out. Those are some of my favorite kids in the whole school and I think I’ve had to punish only one maybe once in five months of teaching them.

Another video which you should check out is from another trip to the alien world that is the Noryangin fish market—though you don’t need to don an avatar body or 3D glasses to experience it. Just to remind the friends, family and random Google hits out there; Noryangin is an old, utilitarian yet colorful and animated market. If it’s edible and has been discovered in the ocean it can be purchased and eaten here. Fish tanks after fish tanks of mostly live fish of all sizes, octopus escaping out of their tanks or bowls, and vendors aggressively hawking their sea creatures who themselves can be scarier than anything you will see while walking through the rows and rows of swimming, crawling, shelled, spongy, little and large sea monsters for sale.

 I went with one goal in mind: to choose and eat live baby octopus legs. Oh yes and it was done. I went with a friend and picked out several fish (who were clubbed to death readily dispatched) for a stew and raw Korean style sashimi and one very unfortunate (baby) octopus. I’m not entirely sure if it was a baby or just small but either way: it was still very much alive.

So we were led up to what I think was the same restaurant that I ate at previously and anxiously awaited the still-live, squirming plate of octopus legs that would be my appetizer. And sooner than maybe I had hoped, there it was. Moving, pulsating it was very much still “alive,” though just the legs. They cut the legs off (scissors?) and then douse the poor guy in tasty sesame oil. The video should take care of any more need for descriptions but in it I wasn’t all that frightened by it, just feeling how the suction cups were grabbing onto my teeth, lips, and tongue. It was an interesting sensation for sure—I’ve never had a food grab me back. I felt the most Klingon I ever have while gobbling this dish up.  Warning: Chew everything; this dish can kill you by getting stuck in your esophagus. I was not killed.

Afterwards when the plate of raw halibut came it was hard not half-expecting it to start wiggling in my chopsticks which made it slightly less enjoyable than the first time—which was crazy delicious. We finished off the octo-baby-legs by throwing them into the stew and putting them out of their misery. They managed to retain life for about 30-40 minutes after they were put on a plate and introduced to their new home: my mouth.

Anyway, then I spent the next couple of weeks NOT updating this blog and working a lot and some other stuff that involves Iran and Nicaragua that’s totally legal but I just can’t tell you about it right now. Also Korean is still hard but it’s starting to click in some areas. Korean makes me feel so embarrassed about any and all errors I ever made/make in Spanish.

All for now,

대니 (Danny)

I'm 27 Years Old Now

Understandably unsure how our underappreciated and utterly unclear author can attempt to accelerate the accomplishment of another agonizingly overproduced introduction is beyond explanation. Forgive him for maybe this time he has something that will tickle your fancy, though of course not as interesting as anything found on Wikipedia or IMDB. Snow has blanketed this small Korean village known as Seoul and cold, dry temperatures squeeze all of the moisture from the writer’s kimchi-filled body. He has learned to appreciate certain things in life: namely lotion and humidity. Oh humidity, how this poor, wretched soul wishes for your soggy embrace and for you to wash across his hands and face and bring life once more to his destroyed and desiccated pores. The author has also lost many of his fantasies about deserts and tundra as he now assumes that those must be worse—he might even miss the mold. This cold and dirty city air has also not been good to his lungs, causing him to cough and hack as if he were just beaten up by a wookie.

Wookies luckily I didn’t have to face on my New Year’s vacation—though my friend Alex and I forwent shaving and looked an awful lot like those friendly sasquatch-like aliens that my brother, Sean, can do such a good impression of, by the end of it. So after inviting the entire office with an offer of ice fishing festival, I received only two bites, my friend Alex and my Korean coworker Elly who also managed to net her friend Hye Won into the trip. Oh boy do I like puns. So we loaded up on gear, booked a pension next to the festival, and reserved space on the ice to dip our fishing poles into fishing holes.

Elly volunteered to drive her SUV (which made it to the east coast of South Korea from Seoul in one tank of gas—buy Hyundai!) and we squeezed everything and everyone into our Millennium Falcon and once the iPod was hooked up, hit the hyper drive and sent it into light speed.

Pyeongchang was a beautiful place which is located in one of the snowiest areas in South Korea. It’s located on a river and is a major contender for winter Olympics—though from what I know was just passed up on for possibly a city in Russia? The air was clean, the snow was white, and the festival was vibrant and fun. You should go!

While we didn’t catch any trout we did try and try and try. Elderly Korean men who worked the festival would come over and grunt at me until I could grunt back enough for them to be convinced that I understood their initial grunts. Still didn’t help any. Grunting aside, we also did some ice sledding, snow sledding, and ATVs on ice and snow right on the river! That was my favorite part even though in Korea eight year olds were given their own ATVs in some cases and let loose out on the river with them—I know my mom the elementary special ed. teacher had just read this and freaked the hell out. Now even though we were racing 2^nd graders it didn’t deter Alex and I from having fun out on the ice and snow.

We mostly cooked for ourselves in Pyeongchang, check the photos, delicious barbecue and frying pan mixes that were scrumptious. We did however get really close to over dosing on kimchi.

We also made detour to the east coast and a city called Sokcho. We visited a beautiful temple which was just short of Shangri-la beauty but located on a coastal cliff and not in the Himalayas of course. A giant statue of Buddha, amazing architecture, and many places to say your prayers were swirled into this mix of man and nature so expertly done. My photos won’t do it justice.

 In Sokcho we visited the fish market and loaded up raw fish (hwea) and went to a hotel to eat them. We had raw halibut, squid, sea cucumber(?) and several other fish who didn’t happen to give me their names. The next day we packed up and got back to Seoul at about 1 o’clock and I dined on delicious mandoo (dumpling) soup with the women while Alex washed up for a date.

In other news: A few days ago all the women and girls started wearing pants! Apparently Korean women can only handle a few days of freezing weather in nothing but skirts and tights for so long before they need to “man-up” and put on some pants. It got down to -17C which is about -1F for all the haters.

Also according to Korean rules I am now 27 years old (I think) and everyone in Korea just celebrated another year with the new year. So I’ve been 26 since I got here and I was 25 for a total of a month and a half. I’ve grown so much in these few months…

Also I did other stuff but this is what you wanted to know and needed to know.

The end for now.