Anyong-ha-say-yo,
This marks the first of a string of (hopefully) consistent updates to all of you about my year here
in South Korea. I'm hoping these emails can give you a little picture of what my life is like here
and also show you some things about South Korea as many people will not get the chance to
experience this country.
I've been here almost a month now and finally found some time to catalog everything I have been
doing.
Before I begin I want to congratulate Chris McCarthy on a superb performance on his medical
"boards" this past month and for those of you that know him send him some congratulations, he
really worked hard for it.
A little background to those of you who may not know quite what I'm doing here. I'm here as a
Fulbright grantee which is a program administered by the U.S. Department of State. I arrived on
July 5th and for the first six weeks I will be living in a city called Chuncheon (more to come on
that) at Kangwon University. After that, I will be placed in an area of South Korea yet to be
named and will teach English in a high school or middle school until July 2010. In addition to
teaching I will be living with a host family, studying Korean, etc. Right now my days consist of
Korean class in the morning then teaching/cultural/administrative workshops in the afternoons
followed by various meetings and activities. More to come on those. So with that said...
I. Swine Flu
South Korea has a bit of a "problem" these days. Instead of being worried about Kim Jong Il and
his missiles, the government is extremely concerned about the possibility of swine flu entering
South Korea and infecting everyone here. Therefore, Americans entering the country are under
heavy scrutiny both at the airport (there is a health checkpoint where they take your temperature)
and then the whole time we are here. So naturally there is a lot of worry surrounding the entry of
70 Americans together as a group. A little equation I calculated to show you the paranoia...
Fulbright people=Americans=Teeming with swine flue=South Korean officials paranoid.
Anyway, after being here two days one of the Fulbrighters ate something bad and spent a night
getting sick to his stomach. Long story short, one of the officials from the university where we
are staying found out about it and decided it was necessary to immediately quarantine all of us.
The guy who was sick, John AKA Patient Zero, was put in solitary quarantine for 48 hours while
the rest of us were confined to our dormitory and one small room in the cafeteria for 36 hours.
Any people at the university who came into contact with us wore breathing masks and would
only stay near us for as little time as they could to do whatever they were doing. Believe it or
not, John didn't have swine flu...nor did anyone else. But I guess there was no better way to
make friends then to be cooped up with strangers for 36 hours.
II. Chuncheon
As I mentioned before the city I am living in is named Chuncheon. It's about an hour east of
Seoul and is more or less a medium sized university town. There are several artificial lakes as
well as mountains all around the city and its a beautiful place to be this time of year. It is
monsoon season in South Korea right now and the first week we were here Chuncheon was
getting record amounts of rainfall. However, the past 14 days have been absolutely gorgeous and
it looks like the weather is going to stay nice for the next couple of weeks. A few pictures from
my dorm balcony below:
I also included one of my dorm room to show you what it is like to be 24 and living in a tiny
room again with someone. Overall its...about as bad as you can imagine. Also I'm on the top
bunk of a bunk bed that has about as much stability as my bunk freshman year in the Evans
House for those of you that can relate to that. Back to Chuncheon...so the city is great and it is
famous for two foods, both of which are delicious (ma-shi-soy-yo in Korean). The first is Dak-
galbi, pictured below. The second picture is of my friend Ben and I wearing our dak-galbi bibs.
Dak-galbi is an amazing mixture of chicken, cabbage, cylindrical rice cakes, sauce, and other
things that they stir fry at your table. It is spicy and amazing.
The second food Chuncheon is famous for is pat-bing-su. Pat-bing-su is so simple yet absolutely
addicting. It basically involves filling a bowl with ice then putting a bunch of chopped up fruit,
red bean paste (ubiquitous in Korea), mochi (Japanese rice cubes) and topping it off with a bunch
of soft serve ice cream. We go to a place called "Ice Cool" probably twice a week to indulge.
Two pictures below of the food and one of my friend Cassidy and I enjoying some.
III. Key Club and Mi Jeong
One of the most important things that I have become involved outside of my official Fulbright
program is the "Key Club" here at Kangwon National University. It is an acronym for Kangwon
English Yard (similar to Scotland yard other than the whole crime solving thing) and is basically
a club for students at the university conducted entirely in English. They meet Monday through
Friday and have 1 hour of discussion on a specific topic then after that one of the members gives
a speech in English about a topic of their choice. The speeches have ranged from palm reading
to the nuero-pyschological differences in how Western people and Eastern people think. They
range from just absolutely hilarious to extremely impressive. Some of the people have given
speeches in English that I think most American college students would struggle to write. Either
way it is extremely interesting to hear their thoughts on certain things and see how their opinions
differ from my own. The picture below is of my friends Aaron and Dara and then the president
of Key Club, Sang Mi.
Through Key Club I also have a language partner, Mi Jeong. She is a sophomore and we meet
several times a week for dinner/movie/just hanging out. It really works out b/c her English is a
little better than my Korean so we have conversations in both and she helps me a lot with my
pronunciation.
IV. Western Breakfast
Every Tuesday the dormitory cafeteria has "western breakfast" day. This is usually everyone's
favorite day of the week being that in Korea breakfast is the same food as lunch and dinner and
no matter how long you spend in Korea its just hard to eat kimchi before noon. The photo below
is Korea's take on a western breakfast. You'll find what I believe are "Lil' Smokies", two rolls
covered in apricot jam, a fried chicken salad with honey mustard dressing, and to finish it all off
a nice bowl of cream of broccoli soup. Talk about the breakfast of champions. If this picture
doesn’t say western breakfast I don’t know what does.
Well that is long enough. Please forward this to anyone who I missed and write me back if you
get the chance, I would love to hear from you.
Seth
