Only in Korea...

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."

-Pablo Picasso

     Korea is such a weird place.  It is full of such things as cat cafes and adults dressed in animated character apparel.  The even weirder thing is that instead of asking why, you start instead asking why not.  Why not have a fun cafe with a weird theme?  They are fun! Or why not allow adults to continue living like children?  I am still a child at heart and continue doing child-like things by teaching and babysitting children.  Other people continue that child-like heart by wearing Hello Kitty dresses.  Either way this is a country of why not.  

 Last week a group of my friends and I went to a cafe called Princess Diary.  First you were required to buy a super fancy, not that tasty drink.

 

 And then you got to choose a wedding dress to wear for an hour and take pictures. (Side note: I would never choose this dress for my own wedding it just seemed like the best option they had)

They even had a girl who would stick a tiara on you.

 All around the cafe they had little vignettes set up with lights for you take pictures in.  If I wasn't smiling I would definitely fit in to those old black and white wedding photos.

This is as close as I got to having a groom.

 Of the five girls that went to the cafe, three of us decided to dress up.  This is Stephanie.  She is an English teacher in Seoul from Texas.

I'm still not quite sure why there was a bow and arrow, but as this is a post of why not, why not have weapons in your wedding pictures?

The dresses were actually kind of gross and most were not at all what we would want for our weddings.  Nihara the other girl in this picture decided to go for trashy Vegas wedding.  She called her mom on Skype from the cafe.  At home in Florida it was the middle of the night.  Needless to say her mom was freaked by the wedding attire.

 The cafe had heels for everyone to wear but they took one look at my giant feet and said no.

 There were very strict rules that we had to read before putting the dresses on.  No eating in the dress, no doing make-up, and no sitting on the floor.  I guess I broke that last rule.

Again why not have pipes at your wedding?  Actually we figured out later that pipes are a part of a traditional Korean wedding.

 The rest of these pictures are just random pictures from the past two weeks. 

Just no.  Come on there has to be someone out there can these companies can just quickly e-mail their ideas to before they print them.

 Fall is finally in full swing here.  In the past two weeks the leaves have all changed to brilliant hues.  Its hard to see in this picture but this street is a super cute street of cafes.  Its a pedestrian street so most of the cafes have tables outside and all the trees have fairy lights on them.  When I first got to Korea I thought that cute and quaint were adjectives I would never use.  The longer I am here the more little pockets of quaintness I find.  Also as an update, this is the street I walk down on the way home from Crossfit.  I just finished my second week of going three times a week.  It kills me every time but when you are done you still feel like you need to come back.

Last week Thursday the students at my school had mid-term tests so they only needed three teachers to proctor exams.  So I got a nice weekday holiday.  It was a gorgeous fall day and it was so nice to go to Seoul during the week when the hoards of people were at work.  While walking through Seoul I came across these leaves.  Yes they are bigger than my feet, which is saying something.

 I did some research and apparently they are from a type of Sycamore tree.  Dad, you have a new mission, find one of these trees to plant in our yard.  I want a tree star tree! (Land Before Time anyone?)

I also got to see the Korean police motorcycle gang in action.  They come, they blow their whistles, and they ride off into the sunset.  It is all very poetic actually.

 On my day off I attempted to look for Christmas presents so I walked around the tourist shopping area of Insa-Dong.  When you enter a shop the shopkeeper follows you around.  Not because they think you are going to steal, that thought actually never crosses their minds, but because they think they are being helpful.  Their constant hovering and talking to me just makes me stressed out and I leave without buying anything.  I just want to browse!  Anyway some people might just not get any presents this year, sorry.  After shopping I went to Itaewon, which is the foreigner section of Seoul.  There I found a foreigner grocery store where I bought cream of mushroom soup and garlic powder.  You don't know how happy these two things have made me.  This picture is really hard to see because its so dark but if you can make it out, look at all the power lines.  How can that possibly be safe?

One day last week the Korean teacher handed me this tiny bag of two eggs and told me they were from one of my student's moms.  Nothing says thank you teacher like two eggs.

Last weekend I got a travel warning from the US embassy warning to stay away from certain parts of Seoul because there would be protests.  I promptly ignored it because come on its Seoul.  I did not know however that I would accidentally end up by one of the protests.  It is a very interesting time to be in Korea right now.  The protest in this picture is just starting.  These people are protesting something with jobs.  At the same time there were also huge protests in the city center calling for the presidents resignation.



The president is trying to heal tensions between Korea and Japan.  For those of you who don't know Japan occupied Korea from 1910-1945.  This occupation was a horrible time for the Koreans.  They were forced to give up their language, their culture, and even their names.  Women were even captured and forced to become "comfort women" or sexual slaves for the Japanese military.  In President Parks efforts she has decided that all schools will teach one government issued history textbook.  Citizens fear that this textbook will have a scrubbed down version of the Japanese occupation and the following military coup d'etat, following which the current president's father became the countries dictator.  One of the best quotes I found while reading different articles on the subject was by Moon Jae-in, the main opposition leader.  He said, "A good president makes history, a bad president makes history books."   The protests in the city center ended up becoming violent with the police using water cannons on the protesters.  If you want to read more about the protest you can read this article:  Seoul Protests. This is a very complicated issue and as I am a foreigner I am not able to grasp all of the nuances of this problem.  As such take a foreigner's take plus the explanation of the problems I got from one of my 12 year old students with a grain of salt.

While walking down a shopping street we were accosted(yes Korean sales people are not subtle) by people promoting a new app.  We are still have no clue what the app does but if we downloaded it they gave us a bunch of free cosmetics, most of which I still have no idea what to do with.

Since Halloween and Thanksgiving are not holidays here Christmas is in full swing already.  From my research Christmas seems more like a Valentine's Day type holiday here.  Its more a holiday for couples than for families.  That being said the major department stores love bringing out the lights.  I also found this cute tiny tree and decided my apartment could do with some Christmas cheer.  

One thing that surprised me when I came to Korea was the large amount of Christians.  According to the most recent census 29% of Koreans consider themselves Christian.  Which is huge considering that in the year 1900 only 1% of the population considered themselves Christian.  Some of that growth probably has to do with the little old ladies who shove packets at you and tell you to come to church with them.  I am not a fan of this approach since it definitely says in the bible to show more than tell.  Every time they hand me these packets the only reason I take them is because of the item on the right.  The foreign teachers lovingly refer to these as Jesus tissues, as they are tissues and have pictures of Jesus  on them.  Its slightly sacrilegious but carrying these packets of tissues around are perfect for when the public bathroom does not have toilet paper.   

This weekend was supposed to be a relaxed weekend, with only laundry and cleaning my apartment on the agenda.  On Saturday I decided to go and see the new Hunger Games movie with my friend Nihara.  We don't actually live that far apart but with how public transport runs the closest big city we can meet in is 1.5 hours by train and bus for me and 45 minutes by bus for her.  But when you have nothing else to do on a Saturday, why not?  So we were going to meet in Pyeongtaek which is on the left middle of the map.  So I take a bus from Suji to Suwon, which is on the top middle part of the map.  From there I take and express train South to Pyeongtaek.  The problem this time was as I was watching my location on my phone we passed right by Pyeongtaek and I watched as we went farther and farther South.  See that blue dot by Cheonan? yeah that is where the train finally stopped.  Thank goodness it only went 30 minutes beyond where I wanted to be.  In my mind I thought we would end up in some port city on the Southern coast.

After my epic fail at using the train I decided to soothe myself with doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts.  I bought this one because it said cheese and looked good.  It was not.  It had cheddar cheese, mixed with cream cheese, in a glazed doughnut.  Needless to say it did not help soothe me.

As I promised a couple of posts back, I booked my Christmas trip to Malaysia and even added 3 days in Brunei.  And as it turns out Jodi, my co-worker, is not going with me so I will be on my own.  I am a little bit scared of this.  I'm not scared of walking around by myself or of taking public transportation, as I have proved I can figure out where I went wrong with this.  I am more scared of things like taking taxis by myself or of hiring a tour by myself and haggling.  I absolutely hate being out of my depth and feeling like I am being taken advantage of.  Now that I have added Brunei onto the agenda there is the added stress of going to a very devout Muslim nation.  This means that I need to figure out outfits to bring that will cover my knees and elbows while still being appropriate for rain forest hikes.  If anyone has any ideas please share, I'm kind of at a a loss.