Insa-Dong

I met up with Han around noon on the Sunday (the 25th of May) and

we took the bus to Insa-Dong. Insa-Dong is a market that sells traditional Korean art and has many little shops and cafes. We met Sara and Cindy (a graduate student from Han's lab) at a restaurant where we had a cold noodle soup with clams. Not my favourite meal so far.

After lunch we walked around Insa-Dong which is a pedestrian street, a little like Spark's Street. There were many little shops and street merchants, buskers and a parade. The parade was interesting as everyone was dressed up in traditional Korean clothes and beating Korean drums.

We stopped to watch a busker for a few minutes, I had trouble following the act though. The guy was dressed up as a woman and was talking in a high pitched voice and was handing out some type of toffee. So your guess is as good as mine.

The street was full of activity, many of the street vendors were quite interactive, giving demonstrations or little performances to sell their wares. One little shop sold Korean sweets which are made of an almond-paste core wrapped in what I can only describe as silk honey. They started off with a solid chunk of honey into which they worked a small hole and then stretched it into a loop. They then folded the loop in two, making two loops. They then stretched the two loops and folded them to make four loops, then eight, then sixteen... They must have repeated this about 15 times (2^15=32768) until he hand a hole armful of fine strands of honey. All the while, the 6 guys behind the counter had a whole routine worked out where they would count the number of loops and make jokes throughout. It was really entertaining. We bought a box of the almond sweets and they were quite good.

Another vendor was selling rice cakes. As with most things in Insa-Dong, the cakes were prepared in the traditional fashion. The traditional way being a man beating the (insert expression of choice here) out of the rice with a giant mallet. My friends wanted me to have a go, so they asked the guy to let me try. I went up and grabbed the mallet as the guy showed me where to hit. I lifted the giant thing over my head (if you think the thing looks heavy, its heavier) and I closed my eyes, prayed that I would hit the target and swung down with all of my might. CRACK! The sound of the mallet hitting the rice paste was deafening. I was quite proud of the sound. I took the mallet up again to try and improve on the effort and to show the Koreans what Canadian strength is all about. Unfortunately I must have gotten a little cocky as the mallet didn't come down perfectly square and it just bounced off of the paste with an emasculating 'thud'. And thus ended my rice pounding career.

Just wandering around Insa-Dong was quite pleasant, we got to see a lot of Korean art and food. I'll certainly be returning at the end of the summer to pick up a few souvenirs before I leave Korea. Cindy left us around 3pm as she had to prepare for an interview on Monday.

When Cindy left had reached the end of the market. Han, Sara and myself decided to visit Changdeokgung Palace which was a 10 minute walk from Insa-Dong.

Changdeokgung Palace (also known as the East Palace) in one of the 5 royal palaces built in Seoul. The palace was completed in 1412 and occupies over 500 000 square meters of land. It was not the main Palace of the Korean Emperors, except for a period in the 18-19 century during which time the main palace was rebuilt following a Japanese invasion. I'll spare you the rest of the history of the palace. Check out Wikipedia for more information.

You have to visit the palace with a tour guide, you can't just wander around at your leisure. Unfortunately, there were no more English tours when we arrived so we took a Korean tour instead. It wasn't terrible as Sara was able to translate the most important aspects, but I still feel like I missed out on a lot of interesting things.

The palace itself was nice but I wasn't all that impressed. The buildings were interesting but not terribly ornate or impressive. The court yards were large, but again not all that impressive. After having visited large European palaces like Versaille and Shönbrunn and castles like Neuschwanstein, I was certainly underwhelmed. We couldn't go inside the buildings, we were forced to cram around the windows to see into the King's bedroom or the throne room.

The throne room was quite interesting though. In the video above, the throne room is the large building that I am facing at the beginning of the video. The room had beautiful wood working and beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings. The throne was also identical to the one I saw at the National Museum of Korea. I had already snapped a few pictures of the throne room when Sara relayed to me that the painting behind the throne is the same image that is found on the 10 000 won bill. I took my camera out again to take a closer picture but it wouldn't turn on. I was terrified that I had already broken my new camera. Ends up the battery was just dead... 10 minutes into the 2 hour tour. Turns out plugging the camera into my computer doesn't charge the battery. "Lesson learned," thought the fool.

It really is unfortunate that my camera died because as unimpressive as the palace buildings may have been, the gardens were absolutely amazing. Changdeokgung is famous because it was not built like Versaille, in its symmetrical and artificial beauty, rather, it was built to be in harmony with its natural surroundings. I almost felt like I was at the cottage as we walked through the trees on the dirt path. The gardens are certainly a highlight of my trip so far. My favourite place in the gardens was a square pool with a circular island slightly off-centre. The pool represented the sky, and the island, the earth. The pool was set at the bottom of the hill and in front of the royal library. It just felt like the perfect place to relax and read a book in the shade on a summer afternoon.

After we finished visiting the palace we were pretty tired. We then had to choose what to do before dinner. We had two options, go to a traditional tea house in Insa-Dong or go see the new Indiana Jones movie in Daehangno (we had talked about it the night before). I wanted to see the movie, but I also thought it would be a good to experience more Korean culture. None of us could really decide what to do, so I flipped a coin. Heads: Indiana Jones. Tails: Tea House. I caught the coin...Heads.

The movie experience is the same as in Canada, except for the Korean subtitles and the assigned seating. Oh and the chairs were built for Koreans, which meant that I had to sit with my knees up by my ears. The movie was a lot of fun, but I left the theater feeling conflicted, if you've seen the movie you probably know what I'm talking about. It was fun, but the story left you feeling...

After the movie we went out for supper. We had Tak Kalbi, which is like a chicken stir fry at your table with rice noodles and vegetables. After you've cleaned up most of the chicken and noodles they bring out some rice and they stir that in with the leftovers. It is by far my favourite food in Korea. And they use CHEESE. I was so happy when I saw the little bowl of grated yellow goodness. Korean's don't use cheese quite enough.

After supper we made our way back to the dormitory and that was that.

You can see the rest of my pictures from Daehangno and Insa-Dong here.

Week 2

My second week in Korea and my first at work was uneventful after my Basketball experiment on the Tuesday night. The rest of the week consisted mainly of reading scientific journals and meeting and chatting with people from the department. I got to visit a bunch of labs and see some of the really cool stuff that is going on here like flexible polymeric memory devices, organic LEDs, quantum dots, nanotubes and other cool stuff.

Friday after work Doo-Man Han (I just call him Mr. Han), a friend from the lab and the one who talked me into the basketball game invited me out to meet his friend. We went to Daehangno, a very trendy strip with many restaurants and bars that is very popular with students. While we were waiting for Han's friend to arrive we wandered into a park from which this melodious sound was emanating.

Yes, it was a Korean rapper. This guy was tough, his sound guy was eating a doughnut on a stool beside the mixer, it was intense. There's some culture for you.

Daehangno has many foreign restaurants and we stopped in at the Krispy Kreame shop to wait for Sara, Han's friend. When Sara arrived we headed over to California, a restaurant/bar that is painfully decorated with amricana. By this I mean that most walls had a picture of Marilyn Monroe or Bruce Springsteen. I guess they thought I would feel at home. I had told Han on my birthday that next time we were out I would show him an Irish Car Bomb. The bar was decently stocked and had both Baileys and Guinness but no Jameson. I didn't want disappoint Han so I decided to swap the Irish Whiskey for, fittingly, Canadian Whiskey. I guess it wasn't a true Irish Car Bomb maybe a Fenian Car Bomb is better. Convincing the bartender to make the drink was enough trouble as I had to point out which glasses to use and how much of each alcohol to use.

Han had never done anything like this, even the dropping of the shot glass into the tumbler was foreign. Once I made sure that the instructions had been properly translated (mostly thanks to Saram who's English is much stronger then Han's) and on the count of three we downed the drink. Han was amazed, he had never had Irish Cream before and he loved it. He loved it enough to ask for another round anyways. We finished the night off with just Baileys on the rocks and I'm a little concerned that I may have introduced Han to the new and dangerous world of Canadian drinks. Before Han and I left to make it back by midnight we made plans to meet up again on Sunday to visit Insa-Dong, a traditional Korean market and a very popular tourist destination.

The Day After

Tuesday morning was pretty rough. I tried to find some magic juice but I could only find Gatorade in 250mL formats (stupid Korea). Fortunately most of my day consisted of reading articles so I never had to exert myself too much. The real problem started at 9pm, the time at which I had committed myself to a basketball game the previous day.

Basketball is huge here. "Do you like basketball?" is another question that I often get. I always respond that yes, I do like basketball. They then immediately assume that I'm a terrific player because I'm tall and from the West. At one point people talking about how I used to play for my high school team (not sure how that one started). I'm a decent basketball player but I haven't touched a ball since last summer and haven't played a real pick up game since high school, but these are Koreans, I have at least 6 inches on most people, how bad can it be?

Ends up they're pretty good and all I succeeded in doing was making a fool out of myself. I figured I'd just hang around the key and use my size, but these Koreans are bloody fast and they play dirty. At one point I had one guy standing behind me trying to take my knees out by pushing in on the back of mine with his. I did make a few baskets and my team lost both games by a single point, but for each basket I made either missed a shot or gave the ball away. It's been almost a month now, I haven't been asked to play again.

My Birthday

May 19th 2008 was quite a day. I turned both 21 and 22 years old. While I may be 21 in Canada, I'm 22 in Korea. Here they give you credit for the time spent in the womb. I wonder what the pro-choice groups have to say about that here.

The 19th was also my first day at work. I didn't know what time I was to start at so I showed up at 8am, but prof. Lee wasn't there. I wandered around a bit and came back at 8:15. Still not there. 8:30. Not there. 8:45 ... 9:00 ... 9:15 ... 9:30. Not there. I walked back to rez to check my e-mail in case there were instructions to be found there. Nope. I finally found him in his office at 10:30. Ends up most people start work at 10am.

First Prof. Lee showed me his lab. The place is pretty impressive. It's not very large, but has tons a really interesting equipment like sputtering and atomic layer deposition machines and a yellow room (a clean room). You have to get dressed up like spacemen to work in there. The second part of the lab has a couple of desks where prof. Lee's students work. There's Yong-Mu Kim, a graduate student (he picked me up at the airport) , Song..., an undergrad and myself. Neither one of them speak english very well so the first meeting was a little awkward, but they've improved a lot and we can at least function moderately effectively.

Next on the agenda was finding out what exactly I would be doing for the next 3 months. I was a little disappointed when prof. Lee told me that he didn't have anything planned for me and that I would be doing my own little research project. I was hoping to work with prof. Lee or at least be working on a project that would help with his research. He suggested I look into the synthesis of nanoparticles and come up with something to do with them for the summer.

I was also given a second task. English is very important in the Korean business community and proficiency in the language is a huge hurdle for many Koreans. Koreans start learning English in middle school and most continue taking classes well past their university years. However, most of their classes consist of listening to the teacher speak English and reading textbooks, very rarely do they get a chance to practice speaking the language. They have all of the knowledge, but no execution. Because of this, prof. Lee asked me to help his students with their English.

For this reason and because I'm the only foreigner in the department (everyone is Korean) I attracted so much attention that I felt like a local celebrity. For the first few weeks it was hard to get any work done because people were constantly dropping in to chat. I didn't mind this at all since I got to meet a lot of people very quickly and made me feel welcome in the department almost instantly.

It was fun listening to everyone because they seemed to ask the same questions:
-Do you like Korea?
-Do you like Korean food?
-What time did you go to bed at?
-How old are you?
-Do you have a girlfriend?

They seemed particularly interested in the time I went to bed and how old I was. Koreans work ridiculous hours (more on that later) which explains their interest in my sleep patterns and age is very important in Kroean culture. They need to know if you are older or younger then they are and there are conventions depending on who is older. For example, if you are at a restaurant it is tradition that the oldest person picks up the tab. Also, when addressing someone who is older then you, you add Hyung at the end of their name, or Nuna if it's a woman. Through all the questions about my age the word got around that it was my birthday.

I was starting to feel a little homesick because it was my birthday and I wasn't sure what I was going to do that evening. I had settled on getting a nice dinner and watching a movie in the dorm when Young-Mu brought me to the conference room downstairs. They had bought me a cake and they sang me happy birthday. Here were a bunch of strangers that I had only met once or twice that day and they all gathered around to wish me happy birthday (actually they say "congratulations" instead of "happy birthday" I haven't figured out why yet), it really speaks volumes about Koreans. They are the friendliest people on the planet. After eating the cake, with chopsticks, they took me out for a traditional Korean dinner.

We had Sangchussam which was described to me as a Korean barbecue. We all sat around a hot plate and cooked little strips of pork on a bunsen burner. We then took the pieces of meat and placed them on a leaf of lettuce with garlic and onions and other toppings. We then folded the lettuce over the food and ate it in one big bite. It was very good. The meal also featured lots of Soju. Now Soju is Korean liquor. It's only 19% alcohol, but that is all that it is. There's no flavour other then alcohol and it has no redeeming qualities other then the fact that it can make things begin to spin if consumed in large quantities. The did make me a bomb though, which is composed of soju placed on a shot of coke in a glass which is then filled with beer. It was ok but had nothing on an Irish Car Bomb which I tried in vain to describe to them.

After dinner we went out to a bar and then finished the night off at a little diner (which also served Soju). The night ended with me stumbling back home just before the midnight curfew and landing hard on my bed. I then had to get out of bed and stand, with everything slightly out of focus, for the room inspection before crashing back onto my bed.

Tuesday was going to be a rough day.

National Museum of Korea

The plan for my first Saturday in Seoul was to visit the War Memorial of Korea, but when I woke up Saturday morning it was raining. I knew that a large part of the Memorial was outside I quickly changed my plans and headed to the National Museum of Korea.

To get to the museum I had to take the metro. I got a map of the metro system from my roommate and directions on how to get to the closest metro station. Armed with only "Stay on the bus for about 20 minutes and get off at the first stop after the hairpin turn and the metro station is behind the buildings, through the alley," I got on a bus for the first time in Seoul. I took the 20 minute ride to Gireum station and exited at the first stop after what was a 270 degree turn. I felt moderately confident that I was at the right stop since most of the passengers were getting off. I then followed the throng of people through a street/parking lot and thankfully into the metro station.

The Seoul Metro system is massive and is used over 8 million times a day. The curious thing about the metro is that the fare depends on the distance traveled. Once I gave up trying to use the automated ticket machines in order to save what dignity I had left, I asked a teller for assistance. I finally got my ticket after he tried to send me Incheon (back to the airport) when I wanted to go to Ichon . Once I got on the metro there were no problems. All the station names are given in Hangul and English so navigating the system is just as easy as in Berlin, Vienna, Paris...

The national museum is a sprawling complex with a giant building surrounded by gardens. Since it was raining, I restricted my visit to the exhibition hall. The National Museum is similar to our Museum of Civilizations both and the building is fitting of such comparisons. The photo here shows the huge courtyard that divides the complex in two. To the right you have the grand hall (large circular room with the glass wall) and the permanent exhibitions and to the left you have the special exhibitions, the children's museum, gift shop, library and so on. The Museum of Civilizations is a great museum but it is dwarfed by the National Museum, through no fault of its own. The fact is that Canada only has around 400 years of recorded history. The Koreans have thousands. The exhibits seemed to flow without end, from period to period, kingdom to kingdom, age to age. I'll spare you the detailed visit but there were a few highlights.

The neolithic and paleolithic exhibits were very interesting and featured your standard tools, arrow heads and pottery. Once exhibit really caught my eye. I believe the title of the display was archeohumurous hoaxorius. What you see is a pile of flatish, roundish stones and the description marks them as having been used as net sinkers (click on the photo to enlarge). This is hard to swallow, the ones on the left maybe, but the pile on the right? Really? I wonder how they figured that one out...

"Damn it Frank! You lost the vase?"
"Take it easy George we'll figure this out."
"Take it easy? Are you trying to tell me that we camped out in the mountains for 3 months, nearly got shot by those Nazis, boiled to death by natives, not to mention this rash that hasn't gone away yet-"
"Put that away man, my daughter is on her way up."
"-and to think that the exhibit opens tomorrow. Tomorrow! You now that the board is just aching to punt us out of this museum as it is. If we don't fill that display case with something..."
"I said don't worry about it, I'll come up with something."
"You can't just sweet talk yourself out of this one Frank, this isn't Bangkok. This time-"
"Hi Daddy."
"Hi sweety. George cover that thing up. How was your day at school honey?"
"Good. I picked you a bouquet of rocks for your collection daddy."
"Oh thanks sweetheart. Wow, did you just pick the flattest and roundest rocks?"
"Mmhhm."
"Thank you so much. You know what sweety? I think I know a very special place for these rocks."
"Frank? I know that look. Frank? You wouldn't dare..."

Of course the world wouldn't be what it is today without its most important people. Materials Engineers. Fittingly, most of the museum* was dedicated to metallurgy and materials. The first of such exhibits was a collection of bronze casts from the early bronze age. Watch the instructional video for more information .

That's about it for me. If you want to see more of my pictures from the Museum you can see the whole album here.

*maybe a dozen items

First Few Days in Seoul

So here I am, in Seoul and the only person I've really met is my Russian roommate, Andre, and I have 4 days to get settled in. Fortunately, I didn't suffer from jet lag. I was up for over 24 hours but went to bed at 7pm, got a full night's sleep. I woke up the following day refreshed and didn't feel the effects of the time difference. I spent the first few days wandering around campus and the area surrounding the university.

Kookmin has a beautiful campus. It is on the edge of Seoul and backs onto the mountains and is covered in plants and trees giving it a very comfortable feel. The buildings are also very modern which gives the whole campus a very different feel then McGill with its old buildings and open fields.

Kookmin University is located in Seoungbuk-gu, a district in the northern part of Seoul. The area surrounding the university is primarily residential. The main streets are large with modern buildings but step off the main road and you find yourself in a very stereotypical asian atmosphere: little winding streets with small, old oriental buildings. I wandered into a little market one day and enjoyed walking around and seeing all of the fresh produce and fish. Well, not so much the fish, the smells were a little nauseating at times, but I was still fascinated at the varieties of fish that I had never seen before. The market also provided my first big culture shock as I tried to buy a little something to eat from an older lady and I realized that the language barrier here is much greater then elsewhere.

When in Germany or the Czech Republic, the languages were foreign but the sounds were similar which made communicating difficult but possible. Here that difficulty is accentuated by the large gap between Engilsh and Hangul (Korean language), the sounds are so different that I forget words and words that I learned a minute ago. Names are a big problem for me, I will forget someone's name shortly after they tell it to me despite my efforts to commit it to memory, but if they give me a western name I'll remember it when I see them days later.

Seoul is a very impressive city. The city proper is home to over 10 million people and over 23 million live in the metropolitan area. This is a major city. The first thing that struck me about Seoul, while driving in from the airport and while walking around, is the massive quantity of giant apartment complexes. Ottawa doesn't have anything that compares. In Montreal, imagine La Cité, but they're everywhere. My description of Seoul is to take La Cité and the McGill Ghetto and multiply it by a couple thousand, and then place the city in the Laurentians. The picture here doesn't really do the city justice, but it'll give you an idea.

Dormitory

I'd describe my year living in Upper Rez at McGill as a pleasant learning experience but not one that I would be eager to relive. I like having my own apartment, kitchen, living room, bathroom... thank you very much. I knew we had it good at McGill with our single rooms but I had no idea how good we had it. I'm in a four person room that is only twice as large as my old room at McGill. So if you can, imagine a single rez room. Now stick a second bed above the existing one, replace the shelves at the foot of the bed with a second desk, get rid of the dresser and divide the closet in two. Now mirror that image and you have my room. Fortunately we're only three in the room. It is still a lot for such a small place but it sure beats having four. They won't place foreigners with koreans (for a more extensive list of the dormitory's dos and don'ts keep reading) so I'm sharing the room with a Russian (Andre) and a Chinese. Andre is studying international relations and is here to learn Korean. He speaks English quite well so we talk quite a bit. The Chinese doesn't speak English and very little Korean so we don't talk with him much. He seems like a good guy and doesn't cause any problems except for sleeping in the nude on the top bunk (eye level) on the other side of the room.

It isn't all bad though, we do have our own shower, sinks (2) and toilet. Just to make sure that you don't fully enjoy these amenities they stuck them directly in the front entrance. I'm not talking about "Oh Andrew it's terrible, my bathroom is right off of my front entrance." I'm talking about the front entrance BEING THE BATHROOM. When the front door is open, the only thing preventing someone in the hallway from seeing you in your full glory while in the shower is a pane of frosted glass. To get a good idea, the picture shown here is taken while holding the front door open and standing in the hallway.

The kicker in all of this are the dormitory rules. Again, coming from McGill, one of the more liberal schools in the country if not the world, this is what put me over the top. I should apologize for earlier, this is an exclusive list of don'ts.
-No smoking (no problem there)
-No alcohol (is this not a univerisity? but fine)
-No cooking in the dorm rooms (pretty standard. So where are the kitchenettes? There aren't any? Oh, there's one microwave in the basement for the whole building? Cool) Oh and to boot the cafeteria hours are as bad as at BMH, but I don't use it.
-No guests (fine)
-No guys in the girl's dorm (ok...)
-No girls in the guy's dorm (hmm... complete segregation then. What about common space then? A hallway with padded benches and a big screen tv? Lovely)
-There are room inspections every Monday at midnight (Seriously?)
-The doors are locked between 12am and 5am (WHAT?)

So for the first time in I don't know how long I have a curfew. It is not a mandatory curfew (with the exception on Monday nights) you just can't get in or out of the building between midnight and 5am. If I'm out and don't want to be home by midnight (which normally implies leaving wherever I am by about 11:15) I have to either stay out until 5am or I can go see the porter and ask him to let me in. But if I ask the porter I am given two demerit points. 10 of those and I'm kicked out. I could care less about receiving a few demerits for being out late, I'm only here for 90 days. I just have to make sure not to use them all up. Could you imagine living here for the whole year? Other offenses are worth more points, I think having guests is 5, but I shouldn't have any problems with those.

The first thing that crossed my mind when this was explained to me was "What is the age of majority here?" Both the age of majority and the drinking age are around 18 or 19, so it turns out it's just the university being overly aggressive in trying to avoid any problems. Of Course, all of this doesn't prevent beer and soju bottles from appearing in the recycling bins in the morning.

The last fun part of rez life at Kookmin is the laundromat. They have a lady in the basement who takes care of the laundry. That's awesome! Except that she is only open for business from 10am-6:30pm during which I'm at work. So I have to either be late for work or take a break to do my laundry. The place is also closed on the weekend. As soon as I finish writing this I'm heading to Myeong-Dong to do some shopping because I found out too late that today ( Friday the 6th) is a Korean holiday and all of my clothes that I handed in to be washed on Thursday are now locked away until Monday. Leading to my present clothing crisis. Other then the hours, their system is quite good. We all have a basket for our dirty clothes. We bring the lady our basket, she washes and folds the clothes and we just pick the up later in the day. It's $2.50 for a load. A load consists of one basket full. If the clothes go above the lip of the basket she will charge more. This leads to having to fold your dirty laundry in order fit as much as possible into one load. Imagine if you will having to fold your dirty laundry but not your clean laundry. I truly am on the other side of the world.

You can click here to see pictures from my first few days in Seoul as well as pictures of the university and the dormitory.