The Chicken Massacre of 2004

Johnny told us the story yesterday, while we were looking at the chickens in the domestic foul exhibit at the zoo, about the chicken massacre of 2004. Apparently at the time he worked for a chicken farm outside of Seoul, he had been doing a good job so his boss gave him the new duty of keeping on top of the air circulation which had to be checked every two hours. One day Johnny and friends decided to slack off and watch a movie in the office. A few hours later they went to check on the chickens and found that all 40,000 of them were dead. Amazingly he wasn't fired, just put back in his old position. Maybe you had to e there to hear Johnny's delivery of the story, or to see how he looked at the live chickens in front of us, but it was hysterical! I've been giggling about it all day.

The zoo was cool even though there were mobs of people there. We spent left at 1 and didn't get bck to our apartments until 8:30, I was exhausted! The zoo is a huge park and people spend the whole day there hanging out and picnicing. It was nice and good mountain views on all sides. Today I'm just doing school stuff, preparing ahead of time for once instead of the day of. Maybe we'll go to the sauna during the week when it won't be crowded.

Our manager, Kathryn just announced she's leaving at the end of the week after six years. This makes me nervous. Kathryn's the one who hired me and has been the one guiding me through everything. I hope the new person is nice and knows what he or she is doing.

If you are thinking of visiting and have been looking for flights check out Japan Airways as they sometimes have good sales as well as good multicity flight passes. Gotoday.com is good too for packages that include hotel. When searching for flights on expedia or the like, check on multi-city fares too. For one thing, if this is going to be your one big trip to Asia you might as well see a few cities; Beijing and Tokyo are the best add-ons to Seoul although any of the big Asian cities are easy to add on. For instance, A ticket that goes from Raleigh, to Tokyo, to Seoul, to Beijing, and then to Raleigh (4 nights in each place) is actually cheaper than a roundtrip ticket to Seoul alone. Weird but true. Plus some airlines like Cathay Pacific, Japan Airways and others sell flight passes. Cathay's AllAsiaPass is a pretty amazing deal, search around on the internet and you can find similar ones. K, catch you guys later!

I'm OK!

A bunch of people have inquired about my health. Thanks! I'm no better, no worse. I already have a neurologist here and he's great. He's actually the head of the neurology department at the Seoul National University, speaks English, and is familiar with pseudotumor. All good! The hospital here was actually pretty neat, they assigned a translator to me who stayed with me through everything. The translator, "Joe", was a pretty funny guy, he pretty much told me his whole life story while we were in the waiting room. Not a bad experience at all. It's Saturday morning right now and this will be a slow weekend for me because I'm coming down with a cold! It's just as well though, I'll study Korean and prepare quizzes. :-) Heidi and I might make an excursion to a public bath. They're cheap, $5-10, and you soak in a variety of different baths and then do salt scrubs and stuff like that, and there's a sauna. It might be fun. K, until next time!

This is a picture of some tea I had thursday afternoon while I was writing postcards.

Hooray Internet!

Hey guys my internet is set up now, yay! Now we can talk for free if you download skype . My skype name is mackensie.cornelius. Do it!!!

P.S. I don't expect any of you to really send me food, the shipping costs are silly high. K, Bye!

I just finished my Monday classes. I already have to start preparing end of the month exams, have I been here that long? I'm getting more on top of things as far as having usefull supplements and activites prepared. Watch out if you ever have to play against me in Charades or Pictionary after this, I have to mime or draw everything for my lower classes! The ABC beginners are the funniest; they usually get it pretty fast but every once in a while they just look at me like I'm nuts. I don't know why "elf" was on their vocab list (They don't even know the whole alphabet yet) but that was a fun one to try to explain. Then on the other end I have kids asking what "intrinsic" and "social maxim" means. I had to explain what a quote was to some kids the other day and was having a hard time getting it across until I asked them to repeat a line from Star Wars... that's right, they busted out "Luke, I am your father" There you go guys, that's a quote. Proof that Star Wars is universal, these kids don't even know farm animals in English but they can quote Star Wars, haha.

The weekend was sort of lazy, I caught up on sleep and wandered around various markets just to get out of the house. I didn't take pics though, they wouldn't have captured the scale of these markets which is the cool part about them. Dongdaemun market is mostly clothing and jewelry and it has an estimated 30,000 stalls!!! I also went to the Hanghwak-dong flea market which was the shadiest place I've been to yet. It was the first place where I felt that men might be saying inappropriate things to my face knowing I didn't understand them. It wasn't dangerous just seedy. I actually saw way more South, Southeast, and Central Asians there than Koreans as well as some Russians. You could seriously get anything there and I saw some weird stuff. I also passed through a food market. This was the kind of thing I had always pictured about Korea.... rows of crazy unidentifiable edibles (arguably). Most notable were stingrays, bugs, and yes... dog.

The only other noteable thing about the weekend was on Saturday night I wandered around the Hongik University area wich is known for its nightlife. Instead of the seedy, party atmosphere of Itaewon, Hongik had an awesome laid back feel. I can't explain the hugeness of this area. Blocks and blocks of nightclubs, on top of restaurants, on top of pubs. Most had outdoor seating and everything seemed to spill out into the streets where there were vendors selling all sorts of stuff; of course socks being the most prevalent item (why?). It's funny, as soon as I got off the subway stop I asked this guy for directions to a particular pub and he looked at me like I was nuts, after wandering around for a while I got why, there were hundreds of pubs, you couldn't know them all. A lot of them have neat themes too and there's even a women only femminist bar in there somewhere. I'll take pics next time.

OK, that's the only exciting stuff, everything else is fine. If you love me you'll send me coffee, pickles, and olives (they're insanely expensive here). Or a postcard for my postcard collection!!! This has been a slow year for my postcard collection guys! I don't care if it's just a cheezy local one, seriously! Send pickles (dill) and postcards to my school address (since no one knows where my home mailbox is even though they're sure I have one):

MacKensie Cornelius
ILS
773-3, Glory Park 3F, Mok-4 Dong
Yangchun-Gu, Seoul
Korea

K, I'm going home now, bye! Miss you guys!

Just assume that everytime I update the blog I will also upload pics onto my flickr www.flickr.com/photos/triptych64/ account.

Great weekend! I'll try to give the whole rundown....

I learned the batchatta and merengue last night and danced at Itaewon until the clubs closed, fun but my feet are killing me! There were some amazing dancers there (at Club Caliente) and I hear they have lessons so I'll have to go back sometime. Weird thing, there was Buddhist monk in robes dancing the night away and he had some damn smooth moves... what was his deal?

Saturday was cold and rainy so I thought it would be a good day for the bus tour and a museum. The Seoul City Bus Tour is hop-on hop-off with English recordings describing 27 stops. It's two hours if you don't get off the bus. It was a good way to get an idea of the layout of the city and to prioritize what sites I want to visit first on my days off. I can't wait to go to Namsan tower on a clear day for a panoramic view of the city and the palaces all look cool. The weirdest thing on the tour was Pet Street; literally a street of pet stores, mostly specializing in small yippy dogs. There was a sea of puppies in the windows; papillon stores, poodle stores... weird. The other odd stop on the tour was the USO, why would you want to feature that on a tour of Seoul? Can random people even go in there? It just seemed strange. We got stuck in traffic jam for 45 minutes at which point I enjoyed a nap.

The National Museum was the only point I got off at. They have all new facilities that were just completed last year with a huge park setting. The interior galleries were beautiful and the collections I saw were really impressive. It was definitely a world class museum. I only checked out the archaeology hall (there are 5 others) and that took an hour even though I didn't read everything. Korea has a really interesting Bronze and Iron Age with a lot of cool stuff.

I saw a swat team! With riot gear! But they weren't doing anything, just hanging out around an armored car chatting. I wanted to take a picture but they were all looking at me, so I went away.

Today was sunny and clear so I went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace near Insadong. It was absolutley beautiful and I lucked out by getting there just in time for the changing of the guard. The music sounds strangley similar to Tibetan music. I've noticed the Buddhist artwork is similar as well... I don't know why but I'll look into it.

I walked over to Insadong (the artsy area) afterwards as I heard Sunday was the day to go. It's pedestrian only on Sunday and craftsmen give demonstrations and lots of little stalls were set up. It was cool wandering around. I checked out a peaceful little tea house (there are dozens in the area) and tried cold cinnamon punch... it was really cinnamonny. I just basically wandered around untill I was tired, it took about 20 minutes to get back to Mokdong on the subway and I went straight to this internet cafe. A good weekend I think!

A few other interesting things.....
- you can get socks and coffee everywhere!
- apparently I have a beautiful nose, three strangers have told me so already.
- if your brastrap shows everyone will fix it for you (this gets old real quick)
- people puke in the streets alot, I mean really alot, what's the deal with this?
- ginger wine is disgusting, do not drink this stuff under any circumstance (maybe there's a connection between this one and the previous one)
- speaking Chinese to Koreans won't get you very far (ooops)
- you can get cotton candy everywhere
- John Denver is universal
- If you are tired and want to be left alone do not speak a single word of Korean, if you do you are doomed
- "Luck be a lady tonight" has been stuck in my head since before I left... why! WHY!!!!

OK, I'm finally beginning to get on a regular sleep schedule, yay!

The new apartment is great, not much by Western standards but comfortable with more space than I expected. It beats the hole I lived in on Washington Ave. in Albany! About everything I could possibly need is in walking distance... convenience stores, all kinds of bars and little eateries, parks, internet cafes, department stores, bus stops, subway stops, etc. If I have any Western food cravings their not a problem as Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, MacDonalds and Dominos are all within a few blocks. It's a pretty lively area. Definitely safe, so don't worry.

People here are very friendly and helpful. I parked myself at an outdoor table at a pub near my house the other night and ended up with an entire Korean family sitting with me nodding and smiling. It turned out they were the ones that ran the place and they were pretty excited to have a foreigner there. They put on some John Denver (it's weird how often I hear John Denver in Asia), I guess it was to make me feel more comfortable. Finally they got their daughter to join us who spoke English and we had a good time. I've been meeting nice people like that all over the place. The old people who hang out at the park in the morning like to chat as well.

Classes are OK so far. Discipline is the biggest issue and there are only a couple of classes where that is a problem. I have some pretty advanced students which is cool as well. It only takes ma about an hour to prepare everyday and once I get the swing of things that will cut down.

Heidi, my coworker and her fiance John have been nice enough to show me around some parts of the city. Itaewon is the foreigner hot-spot. I don't think I will spend much time there other than to check out a club or two with friends. It had a seedy feel-- pretty much it was just a bunch of Western guys drinking and trying to pick up Korean chicks. Insadong was much cooler. It's sort of an artsy area with neat little tea houses and such. I think I will be going there again soon. John's a Peruvian and when he learned I spoke a little Spanish he introduced me to a bunch more Peruvians. We went out Saturday night and had a blast. It was a little weird though that I spent my first weekend in Korea speaking Spanish and eating Peruvian food. But hey, it was a good time! I'll try to get more pictures up on flickr now. I miss everyone!