Stay Cool My Babies

Greetings from Seoul Korea! I got in Wednesday night at 5pm Seoul time after a 15hr flight from Atlanta, GA. The trip to get here was an adventure itself and I really thank God that I made it without getting robbed and dropped in a ditch somewhere.
I hate traveling alone, especially by plane. Just being by myself in the middle of a sea of people all busily trying to get somewhere really makes me depressed. So I wasn’t particularly excited about traveling all the way to Seoul without any companionship. But just getting to Seoul ended up being an adventure. The night before I ended up packing, talking to Vanessa on the phone, and bbm-ing Amanda until 2 hours before I was supposed to wake up. I am a chronic over packer so when I got to the airport I was like 20 pounds over the weight limit and ended up having to carry a ton of stuff in my backpack which resulted in an epic backache.

Everything was fairly uneventful until I got to Atlanta. While I was walking to my terminal in Atlanta, I walked passed this woman who was screaming “Gabriel!” over and over again. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she had lost her son. Little known fact, I really really really love children and pretty much anything remotely sad involving children will make me cry. So as she’s telling me this, I started bawling just thinking about Gabriel alone and how scared he must be. I seriously have never felt like such a tool before. I hate crying in front of people so I was super embarrassed. She was kind of like ‘umm wtf?’ and then we actually prayed together that God would protect Gabriel and help her to find him. I had to leave to get on my plane but I really feel like she found her son. I have no way of ever knowing if she found him or not but I really feel like she did. I do hope I never see her again because I still can’t believe I started to cry.
So I’m totally that person who talks to their seatmates on a plane which is kind of ironic considering I consider myself an introvert. On the way to Seoul (which was a 14hr flight btw!) I ended up sitting next to a guy who, no joke, is a promoter for female boxing. The fact that he was a female boxing promoter was hilarious because the guy on the other side of him was a Korean pastor coming back from the Lakeland revival. For those of you who don’t know, the Lakeland revival is this thing (I honestly don’t know what noun to use here) based out of Lakeland, Florida. My mom watches it every day. It’s all centered on miraculous healings etc. In general, stuff like Lakeland is very difficult for me to engage with. As much as I’d like to say otherwise my default response is always disbelief and Lakeland isn’t really an exception. I don’t doubt that God can heal people but I also don’t doubt that ‘Christians’ can be some of the crappiest, self-serving people on the face of the planet and seeing something on TV is not going to cut it for me. All that aside, the pastor was so sweet, he was actually Assembly of God which is cool because that’s the same denomination as my home church. He was so adorable and went on and on about how the American Pastors in Lakeland helped take care of him and were so helpful and then he gave me his contact information which was really really great because prior to that I had no contingency plan in case I got lost on the way to the University. All of this christianese started to make the fight promoter uncomfortable so he decided to repeatedly inform us of how many female boxers he gets (the ones that aren’t lesbians) and how he loves Asian women which was really awkward because what is the Pastor going to say “oh yea? I sleep with a lot of female boxers too!” Also, the veracity of the claim that he gets a lot of women seemed a little dubious. Eventually I just pretended to be sleeping because there was just so much bull crap inherent in everything he was saying it was ridiculous. Then I watched half of “There Will Be Blood” which was boring and “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

Korea has been a lot more ‘foreign’ than I expected. I don’t really consider myself to have a strong attachment to any one geographical place mainly as a result of moving around so much but being here has made me question that a lot. Everything here is just so counterintuitive for me whether it is the way that the soap is set up in the bathroom (a bar on a stick instead of liquid) or the way that Koreans interact with each other. But overall coming here has been exactly what I needed in terms of letting me see in a tangible way that there is a world full of people who don’t follow the Penn path and the East Coast believe it or not is not the center of the universe, which is news to me!

The biggest issue I’ve been having here so far is the culture surrounding food. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a horrible food waster. At home it’s usually ok because my brother will usually finish my food. But here it’s a really big deal because when you don’t finish everything it’s an insult. At lunch today, I didn’t eat all of my rice, which was really yummy, and the woman who made the food, no joke, came out of the kitchen and started interrogating me about why I didn’t like the food. I’ve been having a lot of fun being adventurous in terms of what I eat. I just want to try as many different things while I’m here as possible. This has for the most part been a pretty good policy with the exception of the super nasty chicken feet I ate yesterday. The texture of chicken feet is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life. I wish there were some other word than Chewy because it was the most awful chewiness ever.

Another cultural thing that has been weird to deal with has been the fact that drinking is a big part of life here. When you go to a restaurant the waitress will literally ask you what ‘alcoholic beverage’ you want as opposed to say what drink in general. Most Koreans drink beer or Soulja (not sure of the spelling but it’s pronounced ‘So-Jew’) with their meals. I am not against drinking but it’s never been something that has been a big part of my life. Prior to coming here, I hadn’t had anything alcoholic in at least a couple of months. Also, I am not a beer fan and soulja basically tastes like vodka which I don’t’ consider a casual mealtime beverage.

I’ve seen a lot of really interesting places here. On Saturday, we went to Itaweon which is where all of the foreigners congregate. The area has a very interesting history because during the Korean War and for a couple decades afterwards it was kind of a seedy area where the American GIs would hang out and partake of the then booming sex trade industry. The Korean government eventually stepped in cleared out all of the brothels, etc. and gentrification set in so nowadays the neighborhood is an interesting mix of foreigners (I saw a lot of europeans, caribbeans, and south asians) and Korean yuppies. The closest equivalent I can think of in the states would be Soho or a slightly more upscale version of the village. Then on Sunday we went to Insadong which had some really cute stores and to see the royal palace at Changdeokgunk. I’m planning on putting pics up as soon as I find someone to loan me a cord. In conclusion, I’m totally in love with everything and everyone.

Two good songs:
"No Names (Black Debbi)" Dangerdoom
"We Get On" Kate Nash<-- Makes me laugh

*I finally got the cord so above are a couple of pictures of the palace.