WTF?! Wednesday ~ The Pet Trashcan At 7-11

September 18, 2013September 18, 20132 Comments

Hello everyone! I have yet another Wednesday off (and Thursday AND Friday!) It’s Chuseok, which is essentially Korea’s Thanksgiving, and my happy excuse to not go to school / take care of “me” stuff. Last year at this time I was saying “konichiwa bitches” to the typhoon in Osaka and Kyoto, and this year I’m laying low and opting for that money sucking trip to Tokyo in 2 weeks over our NEXT long weekend! I love fall in Korea because it feels like every week we have another long weekend or random day off in the middle of the week. It’s quite loverly! Tomorrow I’m going to head on over to Chuncheon and Nami Island about 1.5 hours away by subway to do some exploring and perhaps some bike riding, my fave thing to do in foreign countries.

On with it now! Wednesday means one thing, and that is to grace your eyeballs with something weird and odd and bizarre and totally Korean. So, this week I bring you this trash can of a gem sign. I ran into 7-11 on my walk to the subway en route to school the other morning, and noticed this sign on the trash can that never seemed to grab my attention before.

I know Korea is quick to dispose of their pets once they outgrow that “cute” phase (whenever that happens), but ummmmm. I would advise against throwing your pet away in the 7-11 trashcan (or anywhere since we’re on the topic).

I’m still trying to figure out a logical acronym that “pets” could stand for, but I’m stumped. That, and the Korean “페트” literally reads “pet”. Maybe they meant pet poop?

Has anyone in Korea seen this and willing to enlighten a sista? Until that time comes, you are welcome to throw away your pet like an empty ramen cup 😦

Rocky Horror Madness Impulse

September 13, 2013Leave a comment

With my 3rd year off to a lovely start, I have recently felt the urge to do more random things that I’ve always loved but never really had the figurative balls to do. Well, a while ago I had signed up for Meetup notifications from Seoul Players, the group that puts on plays and those types of things around the city. Much like the dance Meetups, I never saw anything that quite tickled my fancy….until late last week.

There was a notification about auditions for a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast that looked oddly enticing, and not to mention, a freaky little cherry to put on top of my favorite holiday that’s just around the river bend. So, I emailed the producers to sign up for the 2:30pm audition time slot on Sunday afternoon, and then cursed myself for the unnecessary nerves that I had bestowed upon myself as I took my ass to the audition. I was asked to come back at 3:30pm because the other 2 auditioners failed to make their time and it would just be awkward to carry on by myself. More nerves. I wanted to just get it over with!

So I left and returned. And I was nervous. Nervous until the introductions by me, the director and producer and 2 other hopefuls were out of the way. Then we did some warm up exercises. Building an imaginary machine with motions and sounds, and running across the floor pretending different scenarios were happening. Exercises that made me deathly self-conscious while in high school theater, that remarkably weren’t so bad 11 years down the line. I’ve grown up! And with age comes more “I don’t give a fuck-ness!”

Even so, I had still checked off to be cast as a not so large part because A) I don’t want to be prancing around in just briefs and a corset. I haven’t shaken that ounce of self-consciousness, and B) I haven’t acted in a while, and didn’t want something so boisterous on my first go at it.

After a 40 minute audition, I left with a huge smile on my face, from all the unanticipated fun I had just had, and desperately hoped I got cast.

Well, I am happy to announce that as of Wednesday night, I have accepted the role of Magenta in the Seoul Players shadow cast production of Rocky Horror Picture Show! I am so freakin excited for the fishnets, big frizzy hair and french maid attire that lies in my future! And because I had no clue what a shadow cast was, and I’m assuming you don’t either, it’s when we perform in front of the movie that’s playing behind us. SO, I will not be displaying my tone-deaf singing voice or having to memorize elaborate amounts of lines.

Rehearsals begin this Saturday, and we will be performing the weekend of October 25th and 26th in Itaewon. Words can’t express my excitement to perform and have a massive fan club attend yet another one of my ballsy wacko impulses.

I must say, it feels really scary in a good way to get outside my comfort zone and do something different! Cheers to growing old and growing as a human 🙂

WTF?! Wednesday ~ WHAT’S The New Black?!

September 11, 20134 Comments

As you know, one of my favorite things about Korea is the #justclickprint t-shirts that are everywhere. Well, today I found a new fave!

Tonight I was at one of the big shopping complexes in Dongdaemun helping my friend Dustin pick out some dapper new duds. While he was trying his shirt on, I spotted this gem just barely peeking out from behind a tasteful button down shirt.

I’d say I’m just as big a fan of this t-shirt as I am of that show by a similar name.

Weekly Travel Theme: The Moment

September 9, 20133 Comments

I can’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t traveling. Ever since I was little Dani Tami, my parents constantly took us out of Agoura and onto either the open rode in a 15 seater van, or piled us into a plane to some country at the other corner of the globe. It is something I’ve always known. Spring and winter break never meant staying in town, and while looking back, these are trips that I am so grateful to my parents for. From a young age, they made me have to wander, whether I knew it then or not. So really, they shouldn’t be shocked at my current locale now should they? The answer is no. So Mama and Papa Schaeff, it’s all your fault!

This week’s travel theme is about “the moment”. The moment that you know your life is changed by travel either by a place, thing, time, person, whatever. I actually quite frequently get this feeling of absolute content whenever I’m traveling that’s much different from the feeling of the normal day-to-day. It’s one of those feelings that sparks so often, even in doing normal everyday things like taking a shower, that “real life” feels so far away in that second. Actually, since living in Korea, I’ve had so many of those moments. So many “I’m so happy I’m in Korea” moments, which helped me realize that moving here was the best decision I’ve ever made.

That being said, It’s kind of hard to pick just one moment that changed my life, so I’m going to pick two. The one that started it all, and a more recent one. Full circle that shit.

I can pinpoint that moment when I knew I needed to live abroad. I was in 4th grade, on a spring break trip with my family to Paris. I remember standing in a little street shop wanting to buy one of those collectors silver spoons that people used to collect like shot glasses. Maybe they still do, but I don’t. Either way, my dad gave me a few Francs to buy it, and then we made a mad dash out to the main street and into a random burst of hail. Across the street were the larger-than-life green and gold statues gleaming down at me in my yellow puffy jacket and red beret. The cars were driving haphazardly, yet somehow weaving in and out of each other in some fashion of chaotic order which I still to this day can’t place, even with my most likely ADD. We were trying to catch a Mercedes Benz taxi. A Mercedes Benz taxi! Wow, “Paris is rich!” I thought! That smell of the ice smashing on the pavement is one that I still catch random whiffs of in moments that are fleeting, and I am instantly transported back to Paris as the little girl in the jacket that could stop traffic. After that trip, while wearing our matching Sorbonne University sweatshirts, my sister and I both told our mom that we were going to go to college at Sorbonne and live in Paris.

That didn’t happen for either of us, but I still look at that certainty as the pivotal moment of when I just knew I wasn’t going to spend my whole life living in the States.

Flash forward to adult woman “mature” life and my first solo trip to the stunning, magnificent, lush Bali! I had found a guy named Gusti who offered to take me on a half day excursion on the back of his motorbike to see some temples and a Luwak coffee plantation. The plantation was actually something that I thought was going to be a scam and I’d be just nodding my head in a polite effort to get it over with. However, after about a minute of meeting Oher, and listening to him tell me about harvesting the different kinds of coffee beans, I was totally interested. I knew I wasn’t just asking random questions to appease him. Instead, I started to find him remarkably charming in a sweet old man kind of way. After teaching about all the different kinds of beans, showing me how to crack them open, introducing me to the pooping Luwak, and letting me smell all the various herbs, we sat down to taste some coffee and indulge in conversation.

Over 10 little cups of coffee and tea, Oher asked about the places I’ve traveled, explained how he’s studied English for 4 years just by talking with customers, told me about his 10 year old daughter, Wayan, who loves Hello Kitty, and how he has been raising her on his own since his wife of 25 years passed away 2 years ago, a subject that actually brought him to tears. As he teared up, it reminded me of why I am so in love with experiencing all the world has. I love meeting people on these journeys and getting a little glimpse into their world that’s so different from my own, but fundamentally so similar when you get down to the bare bones of being a human. Here I was sitting at a hand carved wooden table with a 45ish year old man who looked well into his 60s, who spoke remarkable English for being self-taught, some snakeskin fruit and 10 empty cups of coffee, enjoying one of the best moments I’ve had while on the move.

I actually happened to be wearing a Hello Kitty ring that I bought in Korea for 2,000won. I gave it to Oher as a gift for his daughter from an American girl. He was so shocked that I was just giving it to him. I said I could buy another, it was no problem. He said thank you about a million times and was so eternally grateful for that small plastic piece of jewelry that it just made me smile.

These are moments that remind me of why I’m so happy I’m staying in Korea another year. Another year of exploring this whack but stunning continent, and after that, who knows what the next moment will be 🙂

I decided to start writing some weekly travel theme pieces that other travel blogs will be changing up each week. So look out for some random variety 🙂

WTF?! Wednesday ~ Mrs. Lee, What Planet You From?

September 4, 20132 Comments

Hi everyone! It’s been a little while since posting my last WTF?! Wednesday jam because I was on a wondrous trip to Bali followed by a big move out of North Korea. But, I’m back today! And happier than ever because A) I just found some new bedding so my apartment will slowly stop looking like a college dorm, and B) because CORI is coming to visit me at the end of the month!!! She’s coming to Seoul and then we are planning to pop on over to Tokyo since I have a long weekend in the beginning of October. WEEEEE!!

Now onto this week in WTFness! I actually took these photos 2 weeks ago when I was forced to co-teach (if you could even call it that), with the laziest, sloppiest, most absurd ajumma (old Korean woman) I’ve ever come in contact with. I feel she, her wardrobe and just general demeanor are well deserving of their own post.

I am actually unsure if her name is really Mrs. Lee because she never even responded when I called her by “name”, but that’s what she told me it was… that one time she actually spoke to me. That brief moment in time was very brisk and almost non-existent. It was like she couldn’t be bothered to be around a dirty foreigner. She didn’t ask my name, didn’t say hello, but just tossed me this handwritten questionnaire and ran away. If you are confused, on the left side it says “Question 1-5”, and on the right it says “Answer”. So, I did as was asked of me and wrote her 5 questions that I was burning to know about her, expecting to receive some awe-inspiring answers in return. Never got those.

Then came the time to meet and do something called TEACH the students. You’d think that one would dress presentable for a day on the job, and also be a little more involved. But no no. Not “Mrs. Lee”. She showed up to work like so and carried on in the back of class reading the newspaper and catching up on some zzzzz’s. She also walked into each class carrying a box of glue sticks and a mug filled with pens that she never used.

The only bit of teaching that “Mrs. Lee” did was when she began class. She started by yelling at the students, followed by hitting a few so hard on the head, and finally, wrote a grammatically correct phrase on the board for the students to repeat 10 times. Only they weren’t grammatical at all, and the students knew it. Her phrase choices were stupid, to put things bluntly.

In the first 6th grade class the phrase was “How you?”, the second was “Where from?” and the last (which she finally got right!) was “Be quiet”, also quite suiting for that particular class, but that’s neither here nor there. I began class by asking the students how to correct their “teacher’s” English.

One of the biggest things that qualifies this as a WTF?! moment is the fact that she had ZERO idea of how to use a computer. She didn’t know what a mouse was or what to call the monitor. I know that she is older, but I found it bizarre that Jin had to spend a good portion of her time teaching “Mrs. Lee” the basic vocabulary that accompanies this technology that’s so abundant in our lives. Actually, the Vice Principal wanted me to teach “Mrs. Lee” how to teach, but I refused. My job is to teach the students, not to teach the teacher how to be a teacher. Especially when she had applied for this position under the pretenses that she was a teacher. Oh, and because she couldn’t be bothered to even ask me my name.

On top of no basic computer knowledge, she also refused to eat in the cafeteria with everyone else, but instead conned a student into bringing her lunch in her classroom, which the Vice Principal was outraged about. She also STOLE one of the 3rd grade point frogs and one of the 6th grade point monkeys off our progress board. A token of her time as a teacher, perhaps?

If I can find it within myself to find one thing that I am pleased with in regards to “Mrs. Lee”, it’s that I strongly believe she brought me closer to my 6th graders. They are usually too cool for school, but having her there really made them appreciate me and hands were actually shooting up to volunteer, which NEVER happens. So thank you for that wacko lady!

Alas, those two WTF weeks came and went, and now I have a brand new co-teacher named Shin hye and she’s young and sweet and pretty and I’m excited to have permanency once again!

Farewell To The Dontgogay

August 31, 2013August 31, 2013Leave a comment

As many of you know, I’ve become more Asian than any of my legit Asian friends back home, as I have signed on for a third year of life on the peninsula. I know, I know I’m crazy, but I really enjoy this whack continent that has become my second home! Who’d have thought!

One of my conditions for staying was that I had to move out of the no-man’s-land Danggogae, and into a lively, poppin place with more excitement and people walking around than just the barreling ajummas and drunk ajussis. In June I had to sign away my studio in North Korea and begin my hunt for an apartment elsewhere. I was a little nervous at first because I knew I’d be broke as a joke and that I wasn’t going to find an apartment as nice as the one I had been living in.

In Korea, when you rent an apartment you will typically go through a realtor and then have to pay them a realtor fee if they find you something, AND put down something called key money, which is essentially like a deposit, and when you move out you get that money back. Most apartments require anywhere between 5-10 million won in key money (roughly $5,000-$10,000). Some people’s schools will pay this amount, or some people just have a crazy amount of money in savings, neither of which I had! So, I was working with a measly 2 million won, plus the 500,000won/month that I will get each month for housing allowance. It didn’t help that the area I wanted to live in is super expensive.

Luckily I had Jee to help me apartment bargain hunt, and we found a a great little 1 bedroom apartment in the Sungshin Women’s University neighborhood just two subway stops north of Hyehwa, where I originally wanted to live. I’m just between two great subway lines, which now brings my commute to anywhere down to a huge fraction of the time it used to be.

Not to mention, I’m way more centrally located, my friend Matt is a 5 minute walk away, there are TONS of amazing shops and cafes, AND there are YOUNG HUMAN BEINGS walking around everywhere!!!! HELLZ NAE. When I walk to the subway in the morning, it’s about a 10 minute stroll along the river, which is a nice little cherry on top that I’m convinced has made me more wide eyed and bushy tailed at work. Ka-ching!

With that said, last weekend with Jee’s help, I packed up the bed of a Bongo truck with furniture, boxes and about 20 backpacks, threw the last of my unorganized trash in a pile for my crazy maintenance man to sift through, and kissed apartment 603 at Bernard Vil a hearty SEE YA NEVER AGAIN!

I’ll post pictures of my new abode as soon as it doesn’t look like a college dorm. In the mean time, I have a lot of Pinteresting and organizing and interior decorating to do, so you’ll get to see once it’s pretty.

For now, know I’m happy and moved and settled, and am now off to go explore some more of my new hood! YAYAYUYUH!

Seoul Dance Project: Dream.Flashmob.Success!!

August 17, 20136 Comments

When I first got to Korea I signed up to receive Meetups about dance classes and such around Seoul, but until about 2.5 months ago nothing ever quite tickled my fancy, aside from a Tango class that Joshua and I were supposed to go to until monsoon season interfered with his umbrella and our general morale, and we called that a no-go.

I had been feeling in a little bit of a funk and needed a way out of it, and then I got the Meetup event for Jazz classes with the possibility of participating in a flashmob. HELLO SWEET BABY MOSES count me in! The class ran for 6 weeks, every Saturday for 3 hours at a dance studio near Hansung University. Twas perfect and super close to me! Nothing is EVER close to me!

The class was taught by a really sweet lady named Cheryl Obal, who has lived in many different countries, including Italy and India, and everywhere she goes she spreads her love of dance through dance classes. Turns out she teaches charity classes every Saturday in Gangnam as well, with all proceeds going to the volunteer group Justice for North Korea to rescue North Korean refugees. She put those on hold for these weeks, as this particular class was for Seoul Dance Project, which is an effort by the city of Seoul to spread happiness to the people of the city through dance. Several classes are held around the city, and this was the only one specific to foreigners or Koreans who like to speak English. The class had people from America, Malaysia, Korea, and Uzbekistan to name a few, and was open to all levels, as long as you wanted to dance dance dance!

During the 6 weeks we learned two dances: 1 “Theme Dance” which is specific to the Seoul Dance Project, as it is the number to be performed with alllllll the other groups around Seoul in several giant flashmobs, and “Raise Your Glass” choreographed by Cheryl to be performed whenever and wherever there is an event to perform it.

Since Cheryl volunteers with Justice for North Korea, we performed at one of their awareness street campaigns on July 27th in an effort to draw attention to their cause. Fun facts: July 27th also happened to be the 60th Anniversary of the Armistice Agreement signed by North and South Korea after the Korean War, AND National Dance Day in America! To top it off, Cheryl also donated the money she raised from her classes, totaling around $1,200.00, which is enough to rescue 1 North Korean refugee. Amazing I say!

We performed “Raise Your Glass” twice in Insadong, and I must say, it felt damn good to perform again! I also had the biggest cheer squad in my corner which pumped me up even more! Jee, Josh, Katie, Matt, Tim, Veny, Andria and Steven all came to watch me NOT FALL, therefore Jee owes me 500won, and Joshy and Jee got pulled up to boogey down with me at the end. Teehee suckas!

You can see in this video that I messed up a couple times, which pissed me off considering I nailed it in class, BUT, nonetheless it was soooo much fun and felt so awesome to get out and dance again (without falling…..). I even accomplished my cherry-on-top wish of scaring Koreans with public dancing by ripping a girl’s hand right out of her boyfriend’s and forcing her to dance with me. She frightfully came, nervous laughed and then ran away. Ch-ch-check it OUT!

I will definitely be frequenting Cheryl’s donation classes going forward! Dancing and raising money for a wonderful cause is the perfect combo of feel good 🙂

WTF?! Wednesday ~ A Poo-tiful Afternoon At Mr. Toilet House Museum

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013Leave a comment

We’re gonna get shitty with today’s WTF?! Wednesday. And when I say shitty, I mean it in the most entertaining of ways possible.

Korea has this really odd fascination with poop, and well, poop is hilarious to me so it works out swimmingly. A past boyfriend and I always used to have long weird conversations about poop and all the whathaveyous of it, but that was in the privacy of our own banter (and apparently now the rest of cyber space). Little did I think that many years down the line I’d move to a country that for some strange reason has a very impassioned love affair with the matter. But I did, and I’ve documented the mosaic’d and artistically crafted shit throughout this weird country I live in.

Well, unbeknownst to me, the shitty (“city” said with a Korean accent) of Suwon is where the great Toilet Culture Movement started, and since it’s inception in the late 1990s by Mr. Sim Jae-duck (respectfully nicknamed Mr. Toilet), it has really swept the nation and beyond in an effort to improve the “toilet culture” for all mankind. His dedication to the cause birthed the Mr. Toilet House Museum, and I of course had to make a trip down there. So me, Andria and the beautiful Steven made an excursion down south to get educated in the culture of excrement.

Nestled deep in Suwon is Haewoojae, otherwise known as Mr. Toilet House. This museum and poop park used to be the home of Mr. Toilet, who after having been born in his grandmother’s toilet and nicknamed Gaetong-i (doggy poop), felt an intense connection to the porcelain God for the remainder of his life. His love of the toilet ranged from ensuring that toilets were hygienic and efficient, to remodeling his house in the shape of a toilet bowl. Talk about a passionate man!

When you first arrive at Mr. Toilet House, you are greeted by Toile, the mascot of the museum. He is a, and I quote, “cute little poop character” there to guide you on your journey through the world of toilet culture.

The museum is really bizarre, as you can imagine. It basically consists of old photos chronicling the growth of the Toilet Association, the evolution of the toilet since the 1950s, really graphic pooping statues, and different toilet symbols from around the globe. Shockingly, I have never seen any of these so I’m calling bullshit on them. But still, funny nonetheless.

My personal favorite big breasted woman enjoying some alone time.

In the middle of the bottom floor in Mr. Toilet House is the bathroom, which we only thought was for show. However, this bathroom is actually functional and pretty special because A) when the lights are turned on from the inside, you can watch everyone outside while you do your business, but the glass is opaque from the outside, and B) because Mr. Toilet hovers over you as you relieve yourself. He may even get a special treat as well (if he’s lucky!)

When you decide to exit the actual house, there is a poop park outside. This park shows the evolution of the toilet since the before Christ days.

Baby’s first toilet ~ Mom’s hand.

Years of perfecting that squat, and it still suffers from stage fright in Southeast Asia.

Cute pooping friends.

Some would say they do their best thinking on the toilet.

Stepping in shit has never looked or felt so awesome!

In all seriousness though, I guess we really can thank Suwon and Mr. Toilet for the cleanliness of the public restrooms in Korea. I was telling Jin this morning about our gallivanting at the Toilet museum, and she told me that prior to the 2002 World Cup in Korea, the public restroom situation was actually really disgusting. In order to make the facilities more appealing to the foreign community visiting Korea, the Toilet Association of Suwon stepped in to tidy things up. Since then, the “toilet culture” of Korea has been held to very high standards.

There is also a video at the end of the tour showing the devastation that comes from the lack of proper toilets in nearly 40% of the world. As a result, 2 million people die each year from waterborne contagious diseases. Ridiculous museum with a meaningful message, I suppose. I wonder if they actually donate the money from the Toilet Angels to fund toilet installation in less fortunate countries.

Happy pooping peeps, and remember: “The first thing a human being is required to do for sustainable life is to defecate. That is why feces can be such a ‘poo-tiful’ (beautiful) thing.”

Freaky Friday: The Day I Broke Into The Abandoned Gonjiam Insane Asylum

July 28, 20139 Comments

Since school is out for summer, as English teachers last week and this week consist of teaching a 3 hour a day English camp. That means we get off work at 12:40pm everyday! Not too shabby!

At around noon on Friday, Jee texted me, Josh and Tim asking if we had any plans for the rest of the day. Our plans basically consisted of errands and laundry. That is until Joshy remembered reading about an abandoned insane asylum and threw out the crazy idea of breaking into it. Of course we were on board….except for Tim, who gets a bad case of the willies when anything scary is involved. Scaredy cat.

From what I’ve read briefly on the World Wide Web, the history of this particular asylum is hazy. It officially shut its doors in 1996 after a slew of mysterious patient deaths, and the head doctor fled to the states. From the looks of it, they ran in a hurry because the place is in complete disarray with overturned chairs, jackets dangling from closets, patient files scattered all over desks, and towels still hanging in the public shower area. The abandoned building gets about 1,000 bold and daring adventure seekers per year, and made it onto CNN’s list of the freakiest places on the planet!

Our Friday was about to get a whole different kind of CRAY!

Jee had Mama Kwon’s car for the weekend, so she fetched Josh and I from Hyehwa, and then we sat in traffic for about an hour before even getting out of the center of Seoul. What was supposed to be about a 30 minute drive to Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do, took about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Am I back in LA??

The only real directions we had as to the location of the Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital were a pair of coordinates that Joshua kept telling us to plug into Google Maps: (37.362433, 127.33474). Well, those didn’t help us much, but thanks to our resourceful Korean, after arriving in Gonjiam, we crossed a bridge and continued up a narrow street which felt creepier and eerier as we got closer. Then, low and behold, there was the barbed wire enshrined gate and a massive DO NOT TRESPASS because CCTV has its eyes on you, sign. And voila! We had arrived!

After jumping out of the car, not forgetting Josh’s mom backpack fully equipped with the necessities: whisky, candle, bloody props and tarot cards, we came face to face with our first creepy sight of the afternoon. Looks like somebody was sent running for their life and poor Havaianas got left behind.

And after rounding the corner of the building just past the barbed wire fence, we stumbled upon a shed filled with mannequin heads and busts.

Just a wee bit spooked by now, we found the trail that would lead us into the unknown. Note to future trespassers: Wear runners because your feet will get MUDDY. Don’t dress in the name of fashion with studded sandals like I did.

After trekking through spider webs and muddy forest, we reached the road that leads up to the building.

When we finally got to the building, we were greeted by broken glass everywhere, cigarette butts, broken windows, swampy moldy stairs and the ever present predicament of how on earth we were going to break in!

To the right of the main staircase, there’s a wide green ladder perched to one of the top windows. This ladder is secured in place by nothing but what appeared to be a heavy duty airplane seat belt, or belt used to buckle crazy people to their beds. When Josh took the lead to try and climb in, he got a little freaked and thought it was going to fall or break, or that we’d contract some disease from the rust and dripping something coming down from the window.

This ended up being the way we broke in, but for now we decided to put a hold on that way of entry and scope out the rest of the building for an easier way in. We found a window on the lower left side that we climbed through. We scoured past moldy chairs and glass to go up a flight of stairs, only to find that it was shut tight.

Not ready to give up, we walked to the far end of the building and found some rusty bars and old bed springs blocking what we thought was maybe the entrance to a dining hall. We shimmied on in there, tiptoed over a path of junk on the muddy floor, and found tons of graffitied walls, an old table and overturned chairs and trash. Unfortunately this was as far as we could go from this entryway since everything was boarded up tight. LET US IN!!!!!

Two fails behind us, we went back to old faithful Mr. Wobbly Ladder. Josh went first to forge a path for his ladies. After getting caught in the seat belt fastening, making lots of strange man-grunts and moans, he had successfully moved the tetanus filled desks, chairs and cabinets that were barricading the door shut. I had a moment of panic while climbing through the window. With my history of falling in Korea, I saw my life crashing down 30 feet below me. But alas, I set a new record and successfully made it through, only to have a chair fall in front of the door forcing me to flex my muscles and move it myself in order to get into the asylum halls.

AND WE WERE IN!!!! Once inside, saying it was creepy is an understatement. The halls were so swampy and wet and reeked of the stench of mold, cigarette and hospital having a baby together. The Dr’s office was cluttered with piles of old patient records, overturned cabinets and jackets on the floor, and the bathrooms still had towels and buckets and blankets scattered everywhere. We even found a letter on the floor of one of the bathroom stalls, though it looked freshly written, so was probably placed by one of the other 1,000 sneaky daredevils.

We ended up squishing through all three floors before heading up to the roof with a view. Too bad we didn’t have any makkoli to cheers our daring feat and ward off any ghosts.

After coming down, we went back into the “KILL ROOM” for a seance of sorts. Remember those Spanish Tarot cards and candle Joshua brought with him in his mom bag? Well, our fortune teller took those out, handed out props and had us pick our fates in card form. With a swig of whiskey, a light of the candle and a knife through Jee’s head, fortunes were told. Looks like Jee will be getting a visit from the Devil and/or a douche bag disguised as a gentleman. Or so the spirits told him.

Of course we left behind our candle. The marker of our presence there, and a token in hopes of no spirits following us back to Seoul.

We ended up getting out a much easier way than we got in. We went out this door that was thrust open from the bottom up, saw where a massive tree had fallen and brought the whole structure down with it, and then shimmied ourselves out between some rusty bars. Cue second mini panic attack as I thought the bench we had to step on was going to fall forward as I stepped.

With the spirits, tetanus and mold behind us, we forged our way out through the spiderwebs and muddy pathway back to the car, where water bottle and hand sanitizer showers were in order. You can’t really tell here, but my feet and sandals were covered in mud, and not to mention, dirt and mosquito bites all over my arms and legs. It was well worth the adventure though!

This was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve done in Korea, and really ever! I love reading stories and watching shows about haunted places, so to actually have the chance to creep through one was awesome! Thanks Joshua for the random Friday jaunt suggestion!

For those looking to do something spooky in Korea, you have to head to Gwangju in Gyeonggi-do (NOT the one in the South). We didn’t take a bus there, but I know you can get one from somewhere in Gangnam. You have to get to Gonjiam, and from the center of town cross a little bridge and turn right and keep going up the narrow road. It’s a ways up, but the path starts just after you pass a 2 story brick house (pretty vague, I know). If you want, you can try and plug the coordinates into Google Maps: 37.362433, 127.33474. We weren’t too Google Map savvy, so we didn’t figure out how to do that, but it’s worth a shot if you know what you’re doing!

Happy Haunting wild thing!!

WTF?! Wednesday ~ Would You Like Some Pig Midriff?

July 23, 2013July 24, 2013Leave a comment

I’ve been super busy the past couple weeks, so apologies for my neglect on the WTF?! Wednesday front. I’m going to be moving when I return from Bali at the end of August, so Jeewon and I have been lugging our sweaty asses threw dingy shoebox apartment one after another until I finally found a cute little one bedroom to call my own! Praise all that is glorious and holy in this universe! My Vice Principal can finally lay off the overbearing mother role.

Now onto the weird.

This week and next week I have English camp, so that means I get off work at 12:40 everyday. This leaves lots of time to run errands and mosey around town in the sweltering dumpling cooker weather. On Monday I had to visit the US Embassy to add 48 more pages to my passport (!!!!), so I went on a long stroll after I was done with that.

The Embassy is located in my favorite part of Seoul, the Gwanghwamun/Jongno area. As I was just wandering down one of the tiny side streets in search of a naengmyeon restaurant to cool myself down, my eyes caught this awesome menu item.

Yes, would anyone care for some PIG MIDRIFF for dinner? I don’t know about you, but when I think of pig midriff I think of a pig dancing around in a belly shirt circa the Britney Spears hey day era. It also comes by the “slaughter expert’s recommendation”.

So yea, instead of some pork belly, you get a PHAT slab of midriff. I hope it tastes sexy.