Surprise, Surprise!

It's been hard readjusting to life at DIMA after our taste of life in Seoul. The noise and commotion was like a ballet of footsteps and machinery that I enjoyed with great fascination. Getting around is easy now that we have the subway system down; it's really not complicated. This makes the city our playground and our possibilities to stay entertained were endless. The food choices were endless and I was in heaven, anything I wanted was at my fingertips: Thai, Japanese, Indian, Italian, American, Traditional Korean food, street food (especially the kabobs and gyros). I felt like I had my own traveling show on the Food Network; hopping from restaurant to restaurant for something new or trying a new place everyday. I was also able to see a few movies in their really nice cinemas. They are the kind I've only seen in Hollywood with my friend Gavin where you actually select and reserve your seats before the movie starts. I saw Fast Five, Hana, and Thor. All of which I enjoyed but I think Hana was my favorite because The Chemical Brothers did the sounds track and it was all out, kick ass, non-stop intensity the full 111 minutes.
      The week we got back was simple, unpack re-organize and chat a little with my roommate. Not much had changed, his clothes were still hanging out to dry, his bed was still in tatters and he was posted up behind his walled desk with headphones on gaming away at his favorite korean MMORPG; as he poked his head out from behind the desk as he always does when somebody come opens the door. haha he cracks me up.
      I don't have required classes until Wednesday so I did a little reading to prepare and then it was the typical watching Entourage online and checking Facebook to relax. Koreans have a special holiday set aside for Children; simply titled, "Children's Day." Different, I know but hey no school Thursday or Friday plus no class on Monday or Tuesday so I'm not complaining. Talk about  nice holiday weekend.
     Thursday I went out with one of my professors, Jaymee and our Korean friend Julie. We all had a really good time. I think it was the second stop we made to meet up with some other English teachers from Anseong to have some soju, my professor ordered a seafood soup which was supposed to be really really good just like the seafood soups we have had before. By the way all the soups in Korea are excellent except one and it just so happened to be the one we ordered this night. So we had some soju and were hanging out with the teachers when the soup arrived at our table. My professor served me some soup; as is in Korean custom that you almost never serve yourself anything, and I was enjoying the flavors and the bits of muscle and squid legs within the soup. I then found something rather unique looking in my bowl that I had never seen before. It was about the size of a grape but the outer texture looked like an almond, very strange I know. I should have asked somebody at the table if they knew what it was but daringly I picked it up with my chopsticks and popped it in my mouth. >>>WARNING<<< skip the rest of this paragraph if you you would rather now know the vile thing that I am about to describe. So not to my knowledge in this particular seafood soup there was a little something special that they cook in with the rest of the meat and delicious portions of the soup. After I popped it into my mouth I started slowly testing how hard it was and to my surprise it was actually quite tough and i could seem to break the skin to reveal what was inside. Finally, I daringly chomped down on this piece of something... a massive explosion of fluid came jetting out of this THING with enough force to projectile out of my mouth onto the table and my left arm. The residual flavor was so bad I had to spit it out. Nothing I have put in my mouth has ever tasted so rancid and rotten it would be impossible for me to make a comparison to help you imagine such a flavor. I instantly took a shot of soju and sipped some spicy soup broth to wash the vile flavor out of my mouth. About 30 min later I asked everyone what these things were in the soup and I wish I had never asked. It was the Embryonic sac of a fish and the fluid well I hope I don't need to spell it out for you. I'll say this again, that was the strangest and most disgusting thing I have ever eaten.
     Friday was full of sleeping, traveling to Hongdae and making preparations for the night, dinner plans, finding a motel in Seoul, etc. We met up with all of our friend's for dinner at this really cool Indian place. Hopefully I can track down some pictures to show. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was like I stepped into a teleporter that took me into the heart of Mumbai. After dinner we went to a place called Vinyl to meet a coupe of Jaymee's friends; a teacher and her younger sister who was out visiting. They were very nice and we all got clicked well. Vinyl was a really neat whole-in-the-wall cocktail joint but these weren't your typical cocktails. At most they were 5,000 won little less than $5 US for a cocktail to go, it comes int a tall self-standing zip-lock baggy that holds 2.5 times the amount you would get in a typical bar cocktail so that's a pretty good deal. The vibe was good and the music was just right with a blend of foreign lounge music and an urban outfitters feel for decoration. After Vinyl we up and made our way to Zen Bar, decent vibe, average to good dj's but the drinks are cheap! 3,000 won bottles of Budweiser and average 6,000 won cocktails. After a couple hours dancing and getting chatting with each other we got a couple bottles of soju and chasers at 7-Eleven for the walk. I don't know if I mentioned this but Korea allows open containers everywhere!!! from here he made our way to Gorilla which is an underground club near Cocoon. Its smaller but there is no cover charge, the drinks are about the same as Zen Bar and the whole place is a giant dance floor with a few tables and a elevated dance area with three stripper poles. We all had an incredible time here and we will definitely be back here again because its such a good alternative to Cocoon but with the same club atmosphere and music!
    Now that the craziness has passed for now, its time to finish up a group PR Campaign by tonight and then Tomorrow I'm seeing Deadmau5 at the W Hotel with my good friend, we are so stoked! Thank you for following my blog and I'll try to get more of these rolling out per week but for now, enjoy and I wish you all were here to experience this adventure with me.

Reflections

Man its been a hard week. All our midterms last week , finally finished editing another scene in my movie and its coming along beautifully. Media ethics turned out to be a lot easier that I thought so that worked out well. PR writting was simply turning in a bulk assignment so that was alright. Photography was the most time consuming, creating a theme and a story line through my pictures. I love shooting in black and white especially at night in Anseong. Talk about creepy, it's pitch black in a lot of areas and I decided to get a little too adventurous and take the one road into the mtn's. that didn't have any lights. walkgin up through winding roads by moonlight and the sound of creatures wrestling among the dead leaves in the thick of the dark ominous trees. It became a little to much to handle so I pussed out and walked back to the farm village down the back road to DIMA ,which turned out to be just as inviting.  Big ass dogs watching me as I walked by their masters home. One Shiba-Inu stopped me dead in my tracks and just glared at me. I tried to catch some pictures of him and just as i was about to he jumped up and tried to test the strength of the rope that was keeping him from gnawing my face off haha. I wandered down a few more dark alleys beside houses for some good shots only to disturb every other dog in the surrounding half mile so that was fun. To make things a little more interesting, I assumed sombody called the poilice because as I continued my walk to the main highway I was past by a squad car with his lights on and began circling the area I was just in. I guess I was just as spooked as everybody else that night.

Friday night, to my lack of enthusiasm to do karaoke it turned into a really fun night. I sang a few songs and what really go my night going was singing Muse so i guess I was meant to be there haha. from there it was all fun and games. I really enjoyed myself and glad I got to do that with everyone. I would have missed out if I hadn't gone. We even had a guys song haha priceless moments.

Saturday we went to the absolutely stunning Cherry Blossom festival in Yeouido. I've never seen so many people out to see tree's but the moment you look up and see the beautiful flowers everywhere, its clear what brings the crowd. Definitely another worthwhile trip.

Now as I sit here in my new room at "Seoul Hostel" in Insadong with Max, my new roommate for th next 2 weeks, it's nice to finally reflect on my busy week and give you all a chance to hear about some of my recent endeavors. Check out the pictures of the cherry blossom festival on my Facebook. Enjoy!

To All My Chingu Dil

It's been a few days since my last entry. It's been pretty crazy getting everything ready for classes and still going on new adventures from day to day. My last visit to Seoul we partied it up at a few new places in Hongdae, I guess it could be considered a town in the massive city of Seoul.

Seoul is such an incredible city full of all types of people and shops that seems to have endless new possibilities. We met up with David's cousin Matt, the english teacher here in Seoul, taking another subway excursion to our newly discovered city of Hongdae. This is a hot spot for its nightlife and migration of foreigners who love to take in all the city has to offer. First on our list of things to do was get familiar with the area and get some dinner; damn were we starving after our 3 hour trip from DIMA to Hongdae, so we stopped at a whole in the wall mexican joint named Chois Tacos. Not a name I would associate with bomb mexican but hey, I'll give it a shot. I am so glad I did! It was the best steak fajita burrito I've ever had and with all the fillers. After dinner, stage two of our night in Seoul was to get a room at our first love motel. These are very popular places to stay overnight in Korea because they're around $25 US for a decent sized room and a padded/heated floor to sleep on;  $45-80 US you can get a twin bed, flat screen tv, computer with internet, full bathroom with jacuzzi tub and shower. We found our location but check in wasn't until 10pm so we decided to reserve some rooms and grab some beers nearby to kill a couple hours. Had a beer and some a couple shots of this cherry flavored Soju that was ordered to our surprise it tasted more like cherry medicine than anything but oh well... needless to say we won't be getting that again. Getting back to our rooms and getting ready to go out to Garten Beir a unique bar experience and then a very popular club in Seoul. T-SHIRT TIME!

The Beer Garden was so much fun. The tables have refrigerated cup holders that keep your beer at a crisp 4C or 39.2F. We also tried kiwi Soju... it tickled my taste buds in ways I cannot describe.

Finally arriving at our destination at 12:15am the silver and florescent blue/red signs read "Club Cocoon." You could hear the pounding bass and mixes of Hip-Hop and Progressive House music pounding deep in the belly of our future encasement, ready to rage for the next 4 hrs. It is ranked as the best club in all of Seoul; it gets that achievement for obvious reasons.

This Touched My Heart

This is an excerpt from the Relationships chapter of a book I have been reading daily for the past few months called "The 21 Indispensable Qualities Of Being A Leader" by John C. Maxwell. It hit home on the incredible power of building and strengthening relationships with others; especially relationships that have been lost. I hope this touches your hearts as it has touched mine.

Daily Take-Away


In a short story titled "The Capitol of the World," nobel prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway tells about a father and a teenage son, Paco, whose relationship breaks down. After the son runs away from home, the father begins a long journey in search of him. Finally as a last resort, the man puts an ad in the local news paper in Madrid. It reads, "Dear Paco, meet me in front of the newspaper office tomorrow at noon...all is forgiven...I love you." the next morning in front of the newspaper office were eight hundred men named Paco, desiring to restore a broken relationship. Never underestimate the power of relationships in people's lives.

First Day Couldn't Be Any Better

After a long 12 hr flight from SFO with the guys (Max and David) we finally arrived at our long awaited destination only to wait another 4 hours for our ride to pick us up, during that time we met up with our other CSUF amiga, Jane and her Dad who are way cool. Then another hour and 30 min bus ride to DIMA. Finally getting to my dorm around midnight our time.

The first day was fun, having breakfast in the dorm cafeteria, not your typical breakfast including rice, korean beef, a calamari and cucumber entree, and spicy kimchi (cabbage). So many different flavors blending together and it felt incredibly light compared to a typical breakfast back home. We also of met up with the cool chicas from our program, Jaymee and Kailey from Illinois State University; as well as, our Korean escort, Min.

Orientation was like walking into an awards show, cameras everywhere, concert sized speakers, jumbo screens on either side of the electrifying center stage. We had special guests including, a comedian, Drum performers and members of a the hit pop-groups 2AM and 2PM. The opening ceremonies were awesome and unlike anything I had ever been apart of.

That afternoon we all took a trip to a buffet that served very unique foods. My mentality is try everything at-least once. Everything was pretty tasty and there were only a few things I didn't care for. I did try and like however, the escargot haha weird right. I never thought I'd try it but you only live once. After lunch we went to Downtown Anseong for a little exploring. We found a 7-Eleven but THEY DONT HAVE SLURPEEES!!!! and we were all very disappointed. Found a couple shady dive bars and enjoyed exploring the outdoor markets, eateries and shops.

Min is awesome and took us to our first chinese food experience where you are required to take off your shoes before stepping onto the seating area. This was a more traditional chinese restaurant with low lying tables with pillows for us sit cross-legged on the padded and comfortably heated floor. He ordered an amazing meal and we all got our shot at trying Soju :] goes down like candy and Min knew how to keep them coming!

Fyi, I'm a day behind but I'll be all caught up by tonight.