Subway, Eat Fresh?

Pierre and I recently decided to visit the one and only Subway restaurant in our city. Pierre has already been and was rather disappointed, and we have heard less then raving reviews from friends, but we were hungry, in a rush, and in the area. So, away we went!
When we got there, it had just opened, so we were thinking “Alright! Fresh toppings!” Well, were we mistaken! First of all, the topping containers were almost empty. Then, as we began to list off the toppings we wanted on our sandwiches, we noticed that the lettuce was wilted, edged with brown, and rather sad looking. As we notice this less than thrilling fact, the server begins to proudly boast “We have the freshest lettuce in Changwon!”
As we’re trying not to laugh, Pierre notices the fresh cookie display. As I’m a lover of cookies, Pierre excitedly says “Look Honey, you can get fresh-baked cookies!” The proud server once again pipes up, “Yes! Fresh-baked! We made them yesterday!” This guy is not a marketing guru.
Now we’re laughing, finishing up our sandwich order. The server is diligently placing 4 tiny pickle slices, a couple of green peppers, and to Pierre’s horror, only 3 thin tomato slices on his 12 inch sub. So, Pierre asks for more tomatoes. At this point, I should clarify that my 6 inch sub is tomato-less and the server is holding up two slices. As the slices are hovering over my sandwich, the server points out that he only has a few tomatoes left, so he must use them sparingly, in case he gets another customer. Pierre is in disbelief, and asks in a pleading voice “So, I can’t get any more tomato?!” The server, feeling the pressure, says, “Sure. You can have one more.” Well, guess where this extra tomato comes from? My sub! His hovering hands move from my sub over to Pierre’s, where my tomato finds its final resting place! Now, I have a 6 inch sub, with less than fresh lettuce, one tomato, and about 4 shaved bits of turkey meat.
Less than satisfied, but hungry nonetheless, we move to a table to eat our lunch. Well, the server watches us the entire time, waiting for our reactions of joy and glee. When he gets nothing, he finally asks us if it’s delicious. Of course, we politely thank him for the delicious sandwich. Satisfied with another job well-done, he states “Yes, I am good food maker. I have proud in your sandwich!” Still wanting a little more glory, he continues to ask us if Subway restaurants in Canada are the same as this one. We couldn’t bare to tell this proud fellow the truth about our abundantly fresh and overloaded sandwiches prepared with as much, or as little, fresh toppings as we please, so we just politely nod and say, “It’s pretty close!” All this for the whopping price of 14,000 won. Rather steep for a lunch in Korea.
Subway, eat... not fresh!

Speech Contest

This Halloween, we had a speech contest which, no matter how low key the event is, it seems to be very important to kids and their parents. I had the honour of being one of the judges and it was quite fun. Most of the kids recited a poem or a short story, some recycled a small speech they had written for another contest, and very few wrote a new speech.

The winner was one of the students that I had previously mentioned in another post. He wrote a speech specifically for this contest and I corrected it. At first, I thought it was a joke since the title was "My Sexy Panty". The origial version was even funnier since there was some pretty good Konglish in it, but this is the corrected speech that he did in front of the class. The best part was his sidekick who was wearing a gold cape and he held out the briefs as Raphael proceeded to point out the characteristics of his briefs, with his retractable pointer! This picture was taken a week later.


My Briefs
Hi, I'm Raphael! I will tell you about my sexy briefs. Yesterday, I observed my fantastic briefs. Why did I observe my briefs? Because they are shiny and beautiful and attracted my line of vision. First, I observed the colors. My briefs are brown and dark brown with stripes and they have a cute mouse on them. Second, I observed my lovely briefs shape and noticed they are quadrilateral. (his word, not mine) Third, I observed my beautiful briefs height which is 30 cm. I observed my briefs and realized that briefs have a great task, they hide our things. I think everyone should join me to love and honor our briefs. Thank you.

Halloween Pumpkins

They don't celebrate Halloween the same as us in South Korea. Some kids will wear a custome but it was mostly just at our school. They don't go trick or treating and they don't carve pumpkins. Angele and I and four other teachers got together and carved pumpkins for the schools. It took us 3.5 hours and a big mess later and we had 6 beautiful pumpkins. During this process we found out that they don't trick or treat in Australia, England or South Africa either. The idea of knocking on someone's door and asking for candy seemed crazy to our non-Canadian friends. It was the first time carving a pumpkin for Vanessa (SA), Sonia (Aus.) and Anna (Korean). Ben was a seasoned pro and is unfortunately behind the camera on these pictures so you can't see him. The pumpkins turned out quite nice and were a great hit at school. The kids were amazed to say the least and I found out that most of the Korean teachers had never seen a carved pumpkin in person before. A lot of firsts were had in South Korea this Halloween. I made the one I'm holding and Angele made the big one one the ground. She also made a small one the next day with the School's logo on it.

Wildlife

A long time ago, Greg posted a question: "What kind of wildlife (if any) is in South Korea?" I have since been looking for wildlife and I haven't found much. They have a lot of birds and cats, does that count? By the way, I think the sand in the small park outside our building is one big litter box because we frequently see several cats hanging around there.

We have recently taken a trip to Gyeong Ju which is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) and famous cities in South Korea. They had ruins that date back to BC times. They have made several tourist attractions in this city and one of them is a nature walk where some of the old ruins remain, which was really cool. We saw some of the most beautiful flowers, trees and what is really rare here, nice grass.

We took some really cool shots of butterflies and my favorite is the spider. The white lines must be the mark to where his home base is on his net. Angèle caught a spider in action and the story is quite long but if we are sharing a drink at some point and looking for something to talk about, bring it up...

We also saw a few squirrels and chipmunks and this little guy was running from tree to tree while I was trying to take a picture of him. As I was about to snap the shot he stopped, stood up for 1.2 seconds, just long enough for me to take my picture, and ran off. It almost felt like he posed for me.

If we see any more wildlife action, we will try and capture it for you.

Stone Walk

Throughout Changwon, and I'm sure other cities as well, there are parks and school with stone walks. I don't know their real name so stone walk it is.

There is usually a short path of about 20 feet and then a circular path at the end where you could walk around for hours massaging your feet. You are supposed to take your shoes off at the start of the path, then walk to the circle on the stones then walk around the circle until you or your feet have had enough. We usually see children playing on them. However, I have seen one older man walking around and he did it for at least 30 mins and he was still going when we left the park. He looked like it he was doing it as a prayer more than to massage his feet.

It looks painful but we haven't taking time to take off our shoes and try it to be able to comment on how it feels.

Golfing Disaster

Here is a little story about Ben and Pierre's golf adventure. We went to a "driving range" style place and I think they call it screen golf because of the screen tent to keep the balls in. We were wondering about the cost and if they had simulation golf and we were going to play if we could afford it.

It was almost 10pm and the place was packed so we couldn't play simulation golf, but we were allowed to shoot a bucket of balls called a box, which is a little bigger than the large basket of balls back home, but the wait was 20 minutes. Then, we asked about clubs and she looked on the computer and said there is a 7 iron we can use. That's it, one 7 iron.

Then, the club Pro showed up and asked a few questions and told us to come with him. He brought us to his bag and his bucket of balls and said we can use his stuff and we get a special discount - FREE! We got really excited and I got ready. The Pro wanted to give me an iron and I asked for the driver instead. I streched a little and then lined up for my shot.

I should probably mention that Ben and I walked for about 20 minutes to get there and it was a warm night so I was a little sweaty and the club's grip wasn't very good, it was quite slick.

So, I lined up for my shot and everyone stood around to see the foreigner play golf. I'm sure they were asking themselves if he was good... Then began the worst swing of my life! I missed the ball and the club slipped right out of my hands, hit the metal rooftop and bounced near the person playing behind me and flew to the next person behind him! I was so surprised as I'm sure everyone else was that I didn't even get a chance to feel embarassed right away. I turned around and saw a bunch of faces all saying the same thing, "Holy Shit!" Once the shock settled and the Pro got his club and inspected it he said very firmly in a small yelling tone to "RELAX!" I think he was mad. I asked for a glove and tried again and it went much better.

I managed to only make a small dent in the Pro's golf club and I think I ruined it for all foreiners who might stroll into that place in the future. I don't think he will let anyone use his clubs anymore!

Mask Museum

We went to a museum in Changwon called the Seongsan Art Hall and it was showing a mask exhibit with masks and other artifacts from all over the world. We saw some really interesting pieces from Tutankhamun to Native American totem poles. If you were wondering what they had for the Canada section, it was a few Chief head dresses and totem poles.


We saw some really nice wood carved masks that were really old, some were interesting, some were not. A few of the masks were half the size of a grown man with detailed carvings on every inch which was really quite amazing.

We found this really cool wood carved chair called the Dogo Chair and it belonged to the Dogon tribe leader in Mali. They carved it out of a big log and again every inch had detail. The back had a very intricate statuete carved in it. Very awsome!

The event was easy to get to and at $3.50 cnd a person (if memory serves me right) it was quite cheap. Angele, Ben and Vanessa went back the next day and made a mask of their own using the arts and crafts they provide for kids. Angele's mask didn't turn out as fancy as Ben's and Vanessa's but I still like hers the most.

Cherry Blossom Festival

We had no idea what the Cherry Blossom Festival was until one day out of no where we were, just like every other day of the week, walking to school and imagine our surprise when we saw what used to be bare trees look like this overnight. As soon as we got to work we asked about the beautiful flowers growing on the trees and that's when we found out what the Cherry Blossom Festival was.
We were told that the best place to be for the festival was in Jinhae which should have been 30 mins away but because of all the traffic it took us a little over 1 hour to get there and we were still not at the centre of the attraction. We walked for about 1 mile through a beautiful town glowing with cherry blossoms. The sad part is that these flowers only last about 2 weeks and sometimes less due to weather. They had bloomed about 1 week before we were there and already they were falling from the trees. With a little wind the pedals from the flowers fly away, my kids call it snowing cherry blossoms. We tried to catch it in action here but it's hard to see.

They also have a hiking trail in Jinhae that is lined with these trees and you can see where the trail goes in the mountain as you see a white cherry blossom line along the mountain. Read more about cherry blossoms here.

The Festival's Food Options

Where there is a festival, there has got to be food. We managed to find some of the best foods for festivals that we would like to see back in Canada and here are the top 5.
1. Chicken on a stick, taco-gui go-gi in Korean is definitely our favorite. We find it everywhere and there are several stands that are loyal to their daily spots and would know us by name if we spoke Korean. We have blogged about this before but look at the size of these ones. Wow! 52 cm of chicken goodness. Yummy! $1-$2 cnd.
2. Tornado Potato. We don't see this as often but everytime we find someone making these puppies we buy one. They have a spiny tool that cuts the potato in one big spiral then they impale it onto a stick and deep fry it until crispy then they shake off the excess oil and you get to dip it into salty flavoured seasonings like BBQ and cheddar. We have got to make these back home. $1 cnd.
3. Coconut juice stands. Angèle loves these and they are full of coconut juice and lasts quite a while for Angèle. Then we bring the coconut home and she eats the coconut after I break it up. $3 cnd.
4. Crab booths. We have seen several of these guys at big events and we haven't tried any since Angèle doesn't like seafood and I don't think I would like crab without the garlic butter. From what I've seen they don't get much tools to eat this with either.
5. Last but not least, pig roast. They only roast the sides of the pig and we didn't try any yet because we saw them cut the portions for people to buy and they have 50/50 meat and fat. It smells great when we walk by and if they only gave you the good meat we would totally buy some, but they don't...
6. Beer. You can buy beer at just about any booth that sells food or small convenience stores around the festival and you can get a good price if you look around. We were paying $1.50 cnd a can and you can walk around anywhere you want while drinking. The liquor laws are very relaxed here.

Festivities - Cherry Blossom Festival Cont'd

Here are a few more pictures and stories about the Cherry Blossom festival. They shut down several roads around the city's roundabout, which is where the stage was located. Along several streets there were a lot of tents and vendors selling everything from souvenirs to food.
They had more than 1 stage with random singing and little shows throughout the day. However, we were not really impressed with most of these preformances as it seemed more like karaoke.
They had a few advertising stands which would promote a few products or a company and sometimes they would offer samples. For advertising a new store opening or a big sale they often place 2 girls on a 8 foot stage dressed in similar attire (as you see here) and they talk and dance a little to some music playing on big speakers. We also had the pleasure of seeing this same kind of advertising at a small bakery/coffee shop by our house that sells 4 products: a roti bun, coffee, tea and 1 more item. We could hear them from our apartment for several agonizing hours. These girls are present at every new store opening.
This is a game we frequently see at festivities. You place your planks on the numbers you want, then you pick a card out of a tin can and if you covered the number that you picked, you get the prize as described on the plank, which is a kind of sugar candy of various shapes and sizes. We haven't played. Maybe one day...

Jinhae Cherry Blossom Concert

This post has been brewing in my mind for a long time now and I'm finally writing it. In early April, we went to a Cherry Blossom festival in Jinhae, South Korea. The concert part of the festival started at 8pm and finished at 10pm, which seemed very early considering the amount of work they put into the set up, as you can see in the pictures.

We saw all kinds of different groups and most of them were military performances, which really got the crowd going since they are extremely proud of their military. Every male has a mandatory time to serve in the military and when I asked my kids about it they were all really excited and looking forward to doing it, which explains the hype of these performances. They did some marching and gun twirling, which was quite impressive. However, they weren't as synchronised as I thought they would be.

We saw a few traditional performances, such as these 4 guys drumming away. Some of them also twirled big flat wheels (like plates) on sticks and did some tricks, which I'm assuming is a traditional Korean thing.

Nothing beat this Backstreet Boys knockoff group of young, skinny, Korean Sailors. Oh yeah baby! The crowd went wild! They missed a few notes on the singing, although they did pretty good since it was in English. They did however lack the choreographed dance moves. They all just did their own thing up on stage.

Maybe I should have started with this, but the stage set-up was magnificient. It had all the light effects you can think of, topped off with a disco ball. The stage was a great show in itself! We really enjoyed the evening, and everything was free-of-charge, which was also impressive.

The Ballerina Who Loves a B-boy

We went to see a play called The Ballerina Who Loves a B-boy a few weekends ago and I've been putting off blogging about it because I had too many pictures. I wanted to try and do something cool with them first and I just finished.

The theatre wasn't the best venue I've been to. It reminded me of a cheap school theatre that didn't take comfort into consideration when it was being built. The seats were hard plastic and the back of the chair only went 3/4's of the way up my back (made for smaller people I guess) which wasn’t the recliner feeling I was hoping for.

The crowd was very involved and everyone cheered throughout the play. It made the crowds at NHL hockey games back home sound like nothing. Let’s just say that if they did the wave, everyone, and I mean everyone, except for a few foreigners, would have gotten up.

The play was really cool. There was no dialogue but lots of music and dancing. “B-boy” stands for break-dancer and that’s exactly what we saw, a lot of really amazing moves that told the story. Since you probably won’t see the play, in the end the Ballerina becomes a break-dancer to be with her man, any they live happily ever after.

The tickets were $40 Cnd each and were very easy to get (click here to see what I mean) since a friend of ours figured it all out for us. Thanks Ben!

Drinking in South Korea

Every now and then we find ourselves going out on the town and drinking some of South Korea's finest alcoholic choices.

The most famous has to be "Soju" which is South Korea's version of Vodka, in my opinion. Koreans usually drink this straight by the shot, and at an average of $1.00 Cnd per bottle at 20% alcohol, you could easily do some major damage with this stuff. We find it is best mixed with other fluids like juice or pop and although it isn't the best alcohol we've had, it is definitely the most cost efficient.

Beer or "Mek-ju" is probably the most popular drink here for foreigners and Angèle is even finding herself with no other choice but to drink beer. Hite, also known as "Shite" by foreigners, is our favorite, although it isn't that good of a beer, it will do the job while we are here. (that rhymed, unintentionally.) The most cost efficent for drinking at home is the 1600ml bottle which is $4.30 Cnd.

Drinking is very popular in South Korea, as it is in most countries, and it is very common for a group of men to go drinking after work while the wife takes care of the kids. We often see groups of men wandering around downtown drunk out of their minds by 9pm. If you are asked to go out for drinks after work, it is considered insulting to decline, so no one does. It would be hard to be a recovering alcoholic here.

Drinking at the table with friends in Korea is quite fun. You don't usually order anything for yourself, but everything is ordered as a group and you share. You never pour your own drink, even if you get a bottle or pitcher and start pouring for everyone else. Once you're done, someone will quickly take the pitcher from your hands, grab your glass and pour one for you. Koreans are very good at noticing when your glass is low and they quickly fill it up. It's sometimes hard to keep an empty glass! Restaurants or bars never split the bill. I'm sure they would if we asked but we just figure it out for ourselves.

Corner Store

This is a little blog on the corner stores here in South Korea, they are pretty much all alike. Out front they have a few stands with some product for sale, the one we shop at the most has a lot of produce outside. The corner stores don't have a back room so they stock all their product in the store on the floor or on the outside as you see in the pictures. The floor on the inside in some stores is so packed that we have to walk down the aisle sideways to get to what we want. The prices are usually pretty good and somewhat compare to all the other shops and stores around except for when it comes to pop, I pay an extra $0.90 Cnd for a Coke Zero at the corner store compared to the grocery store.

Recycling

We realized that we were wrong with some of the recycling procedures and we knew that there was a small window for when recycling was done but we could never figure it out. The only time we saw it being done was on a Friday night when we got back from school one week. We have been reading this sign in our elevator and we were almost sure it explained the recycling details and so I took a picture of it and asked one of the Korean teachers at school.

It turns out that every Friday between 6:30am to 9am is recycling time and our building which is 102 needs to take their recycling to the front of building 104 along with building 101 and 104.

This explains a lot since every Friday morning there is a guy giving 1 minute announcements every 20 minutes on the very loud speakers in our apartments. It's hard to sleep in on Friday. I don't understand why they need to keep announcing it. It's every Friday from 6:30am to 9am, WE GET IT ALREADY! Too bad I can't turn off the speaker.

Police Action

This is the first time we've seen any police action since we've been here. Usually we just see the police driving around or sleeping on park benches but yesterday on my way to work I saw these 2 cops trying to deal with a drunk woman on the side of the road. That green bottle is Soju which is a very popular 20% drink of hard alcohol. The police officers stayed with her for over 1 hour and did nothing more than you see in the picture. At one point the officer helped her light a cigarette as she was yelling at the top of her lungs. We were in our school on the 4th floor with the windows closed and I could still hear her.


In Canada she would have been off the street in 2 minutes and would have received a 24 hour luxury stay at "hotel" jail. She might even have been charged with 'drunk and disorderly' or whatever that charge is. I don't know how this ended because I got bored and I had to go teach. I think they waited until she was sober and then went on their way.

Norebong Superstars!

Gloria Estefan was right...the rhythm will get you! And get us it did! On Saturday, we experienced our first Norebong (pronounced No-ray-bong). A Norebong is a Korean karaoke room that you rent for the hour with just your friends. You get your own private room (bathroom included - although it only had a urinal...), beer, food, and all necessary karoake equipment. Some rooms come quite elaborately equipped with a glass-floor stage, lights and a disco ball. Others come with props such as hats and accessories, and then some are less extravagant and only have a couple of tambourines, like ours did.

Regardless of the level of accessories, a good time is surely to be had by all! We sang our hearts out for over two hours for the low price of $40 CDN (roughly $20 an hour). We belted out some of the world's greatest hits, like Ricki Martin's 'Livin' La Vida Loca', Eagles' 'Hotel California', Roxette's 'She's Got The Look', Blur's 'Song 2', Neil Diamond's 'I'm A Believer', and A-Ha's 'Take On Me', just to name a few.

When you book the room, it comes with a huge three-ring binder of all the available songs, and you simply punch them into a wireless keyboard, pick up the mic, grab a beer, and let 'er rip! Before going into the room, we were a little hesitant about singing in front of others and doing karaoke. However, it wasn't intimidating at all. As a matter of fact, it's much more fun because everyone sings together. It was never just one poor chap standing at the front of the room, akwardly singing out of tune, and swaying to a song for which he barely knows the words. Instead, we were all horribly massacring the songs together. Angèle actually sang until she could barely speak!

Koreans love Norebongs! Even the super shy Koreans that speak just above a whisper have been known to hit some high notes in the privacy of a Norebong room. Our students also write about them quite frequently in their weekly diary assignements - and now we know why! We had an awesome time and we'll definitely be doing it again.