Godskitchen in Seoul and lots of food

For Easter, which seems so long ago now, we ate at a sailor's club down at Busan station.

This location is well-known among foreigners in Busan, as a good place to get authentic western food. By authentic I mean things like roast beef and turkey, which they do serve at other places but they always manage to Korean-ify it somehow. To Koreanify any dish, simply add red chilli paste or apple mayonnaise.

This is more traditional Korean style food. We eat like this at least once a week, usually more. Meat or seafood is cooked at an open grill with various side dishes on the table. Here we're eating seafood, after just finishing our pork. That's one thing you notice in Korea, what some people would classify as a main course turns out to be one-of-three main courses. See the blurry hands at work? That's the best thing about eating with Koreans, they just pick up the tools and happily cook away while you sit and talk to them.

And here we are at the Irish bar after a long day of teaching. Eun-sook is demonstrating how to drink an Irish Car Bomb, one of our new staple delicacies at such places. You drop a shot glass of Baileys and Jameson whiskey into a glass of Guinness and then drink it all at once. If you do it properly, it tastes like chocolate milk.

This is John's new motorcycle that he bought for $450 off a website. He's been teaching himself how to drive lately. Driving in Korea can be very daunting, because motoring etiquette here is a little different. I'm in the process of buying a scooter. Hehe.

Another teacher at a different CDI branch, Jane, found out that Godskitchen was coming to Seoul on the weekend. Godskitchen is a touring music festival with international artists.

So we got our stuff together at the last minute and caught the KTX train up to Seoul. The plan was to head up there on Saturday night, go to Godskitchen and then head back down in the morning to avoid paying for accommodation. It worked out pretty well.

Here's Jef and Amanda having a little picnic at the train station before the journey. A typical snack in Korea usually consists of a seaweed rice-triangle and some sort of juice that resembles cordial. Travelling in Korea is good fun and pretty cheap.

We got our seats without too much fuss and settled in for the journey. This was my second trip to Seoul since arriving in Busan, the first time being for a wedding. In this photo, John's innocent looking aloe-vera juice bottle actually has vodka and cranberry in it.

Then, for a $35 entry fee we went into Blue Spirit, the venue for Godskitchen. It was a nice setup, with a decent crowd and good music.

It was a great atmosphere and a refreshing difference to the well-worn mp3-playlists they have in the normal clubs. There were Russian dancers on stage, fire lanterns and free glowsticks.


Here's what it was like at the peak of the night. The lasers stopped for a moment and then a narrow bridge lowered from the roof with some dancers on it. That was pretty cool.

The venue was the Walker-Sheraton Hotel, a six star hotel in Seoul and the second highest rated hotel in Korea. It was well-designed and had a very airy and cosy feel to it. On the bottom floor they have their own casino, which Jef and I went to after Godskitchen. Casinos in Korea are for foreign passport holders only and all food and drinks are free. They're great places for a free lunch, but if you go too many times and don't play, they catch onto you. Before we came to Busan, we ate for three days in a row at the COEX casino before being politely informed that a 'free lunch' doesn't necessarily mean 'unlimited free lunches'. I guess we were affecting their bottom line.

And then, as always happens after an eventful weekend, it was Monday all of a sudden. This is the beginnings of one of my morning classes at the Seacloud Hotel at Haeundae beach. The students are good-natured and quite helpful. At the moment they're organising the chairs and tables for the class, which is always in a seminar room. I've been teaching here for nearly 6 months and will stop soon, mainly because the old boss (who was my friend from Adelaide) has moved overseas.

Here is what my normal classes look like at the language institute, Korean kids lined up and studying busily. Some are a little bratty, but all in all it's an easy job and good money. I give some of the kids their English names (I often name them after people I know in Australia), but others name themselves. Looking at the camera on the right is one of my favourite students, John X. Yeah, John X is the name that he goes by. Other funny student names I have are Madonna, Schofield, Windy and Johnny Depp. Laura has one student called Nike and his friend is Adidas.

Down at Jangsan, a new super-buffet restaurant called D'Maris opened. For $30 you get more than 100 metres of all you can eat buffet. It's a food lover's paradise.

The dishes aren't skimpy either. There are different sections, from Chinese style steamed dumplings to French, Italian and Japanese. So they have exotic things like escargots, sashimi, scampi, king crab and rambutan fruit.

Here's my first plate of the night. In the bowl is crab and seaweed soup, with some kingfish and tuna sashimi along with some other things. There are chefs standing behind the buffet tables who will slice you a fresh piece of fish or steam and fry whatever you feel like eating. It's a good way to put on weight.

Hungry yet? Well this picture is from an oyster restaurant down the road from my house. Oysters in Korea are fairly cheap because there's a big industry here. On this dish there were some raw oysters on a plate. What's in the middle of the dish? That's another pile of shelled oysters, so you get about 30 raw oysters for twelve dollars.

These are some little oyster pancakes that they also make at the restaurant. They were alright. In the end there were just too many oysters, because we also had oyster soup. This place has more than quelled my oyster addiction, I think it has extinguished it.

Last weekend, Ellie heard about a musical put on by a small theatre company in Nampodong. So we went down there to check it out. The crowd were mostly university students and it was a good venue.

It was a nice performance and had some good acting. But in the end, a musical is always just a musical to me. Call me narrow minded, but singing in the middle of a story tends to remind me of those Bollywood movies. Even more so if it's all in Korean and I can only understand about 5% of what they're saying.

Nampodong is a good area with a lot of night shopping. We don't head down this way very often because it's on the other side of town.

Well that's all for me again! Spring has come and the weather is warming up quickly. When I took this photo, I was on a break from work sitting at the beach in Haeundae. I'm enjoying work and life in general. The only problem is that time is just flying by. At CDI we're always saying 'I can't believe it's a new month already!' I guess that's a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

Seeya!

Korean Baseball and My Birthday

Sporting events in Korea are always fun to go to. One of Heather's new colleagues got us tickets to a Busan vs. Seoul game so we set out for the stadium on the weekend. This was also where they held some of the games for the 2002 World Cup.

I'm not particularly interested in baseball (although I used to play the old T-ball in elementary school), but I like going to games here. The atmosphere is always very lively and beer is cheap. Ajummas will walk through the crowds selling everything from ice-cream and dried squid to kim-bab and fried chicken.


The crowds are also interesting. At public performances, or at sporting events like these, Korean audiences will always get very involved and see themselves as more than just spectators. Here's a video of the game, showing some of the pom-poms that they make from ripped up newspaper. Heather taught me how to make one too.

Another common occurrence in Busan is that someone will start handing out a lot of orange shopping bags that will get passed through the crowd. People will then fill them with air and tie them onto their heads. Nobody really knows why.

Before long, the stadium is a sea of inflated shopping bags. Each popular baseball player for the home team also has a catchy song that the crowd will sing when they make an appearance. The Busan team ended up losing, but the crowd was defiant until the end.

It was also my birthday the other week, which kind of crept up on me. I've been keeping myself busy as usual and it was only until the week before that I realised I'd be turning 26 fairly soon. On Friday I invited some friends over and we celebrated until the morning.

Some jovial spirits enjoying the mood. These are CDI administration staff from the Gwangan branch.

When the merriment has gone a little too far, it's time to mop up drink spillages with some good old toilet paper. Most houses in Korea have vinyl floors rather than carpet, making cleaning a lot easier.

These are all people I work with. Of particular note is Cassie, in the blue jacket, who I've promised to mention on the blog. Sometimes she teaches me Korean, but most of the time we just talk about the intricate politics of our workplace. Hi Cassie!

On the left is my new flatmate, Maya, getting her hair braided by the ever-talented Jef. Maya is very clever and has been accepted to Harvard medical school, a feat that she modestly downplays whenever you mention it.

Jef and Maya are working together at my old branch, Busanjin, and she's filling in for my other flatmate, John Ngo, while he takes a long vacation to Thailand. He's got his own blog now too, which I've added to my links list on the right.

Logan had been hatching an idea in his head for the past few months. The idea was to get a whole bunch of people down to the cemented river area near Pusan National University and drink makkoli together during the day.

Makkoli is unfiltered rice wine that tastes rather sweet and costs about one dollar per litre. Sometimes it's wonderful and sometimes it isn't. We poured it into a big teapot that Alice named 'Big'. She's a beginner in English and it was the first thing she exclaimed when she saw it.

It kicked off at around 3pm but the gathering slowly increased in size as text messages were pinged around the city. There's Alice on the right, who we went to Jinhae with. Alice wants to live in Australia, which is apparently becoming the new favourite destination for a lot of international students.

Before long, the sound of catch-up chatter and the smell of abundant makkoli attracted some uninvited characters. They were welcomed anyway, and were soon supplied with their own cup of the devil's milk.

Then it was time for some Twister. We'd forgotten the official rules for the game but came up with our own.

We drank until nightfall and then went and ate Turkish food. It was an interesting day, but then again whenever daytime drinking is involved it always is.

Recently my age-old friend from Australia, Daniel Pak arrived to join our company. He had been in Canada for a while but decided to come over when his old job turned out to be less exciting than initially expected. Welcome to Busan, buddy!

We took him out to the Fuzzy Navel bar in Seomyeon. Bars in Korea will always serve interesting side dishes like curried popcorn or these deep-fried spaghetti sticks. They're surprisingly addictive.

Also on the menu were some of my old favourites, deep-fried cheesesticks. They're basically sticks of cheese that have been fried in breadcrumbs.

Bartenders in Korea often have a few tricks up their sleeves. They used to do this kind of thing at the New York Bar before it closed down.


Here's a video of the action. At the end what he's doing is lighting up a stack of glasses filled with spirits. Someone later drank them with a straw.

After that we went to another place. It was all a little too much for poor old Maya, who had a ten minute power nap and then felt like eating ice-cream.

It was also Buddha's birthday not so long ago. A lot of colored lanterns wishing for good fortune were hung up around the city.

We went for a hike on the weekend up near the Busanjin branch. This is the driveway to a temple that's located halfway up the mountain.

I also managed to spot this little fellow on the walk up. He was eating some sort of acorn and dropping a lot of scraps on us.

I've come to learn in Korea that whenever a president is elected, there will always be an anti-president brigade. These guys were holding a protest in downtown Busan, calling for Lee Myung Bak's resignation. I don't know a lot about Korean politics, but I do know that the new president's face looks a little bit like a mouse. That doesn't necessarily make him a bad president though. Or does it?

In equal force were the riot police. There were about two hundred of them surrounding the area. A lot of them are adolescent males who are doing their military service in the police force.

Last week it was the end of the school term and our old branch manager, Julie, said her farewells. In this photo, Claire is pouring her a farewell Coke fountain.

These days our work dinners are on a much larger scale. We now have 23 staff in total.

Here are some new faces and some old ones at our branch. On the bottom right is our new branch manager, Charlie.

After dinner we went for some karaoke over the road. Here's Michelle, Logan and John enjoying the comforts of a king-sized singing room paid for by the company.

The apparent orderly nature present in this photo quietly alludes to the intoxicated festivities that were to occur soon after. It was a good night out and we ended up going through 3 cases of beer. Three cheers for work dinners!

That's all from me this time. I'm in the process of negotiating my third contract year with the same company here in Busan. It's been good living here and I'm happier than I ever expected. Come and join us sometime.

Seeya!