No More Promises

I officially cannot promise to update "every week" or "every other week" anymore.

I'm truly sorry, but there is very little I can do. Life is crazy here, tests are frequent, trips are frequent too, and I always find myself having to nap when I should be updating.

Anyways, here comes another epic post from me, followed by a picture post.

First thing's first: my 독도홍보단 (Dokdo PR Group) trip to Ulleungdo!

We started off by having to arrive at Seoul Station at 10:00 PM on Saturday November 12th (since the train leaves at 5:00am but no subway is running at that time, we had to show up the night before). Instead of giving us night-lodging in order for us to sleep comfortably until it was time for the train, they rented a big room at the Korail station and had us - yes, you guessed it - practice our PR dance for 4 hours.

As a side note, I'm not sure what it is, but Korean events have a lot of line dancing and mass-games-style card flipping (you know, where everyone holds a card over their head and together they make a picture) in order to support their causes. I was not spared of this fate.

Anyways, apart from a short break with strawberry milk and sweet potato pastry snack, we basically danced until the sun rose. I took the liberty of a half hour nap inside of a cardboard box at around 4a.m. and awoke when they started to usher us toward the train. It was simply miserable.

The one thing that superficially perked me up was my new jacket. Upon arrival at Seoul Station they gave each of us a bright blue windbreaker/rain jacket made by Airwalk, so we all matched - a team of 100 blue people (half foreigners at that!) marching through the station with signs and name tags was quite a sight for all of the other people waiting at the station. I almost passed out when I saw the price tag - because this PR group is sponsored by the government as well as through private funds, they have a lot of money - the tag read 248,000원, roughly $240(USD). That jacket is now my pride and joy and I take care of it like it's my child.

Anyways, they finally loaded us onto the train. The train stopped in Gyeongsangbuk-do, where we took a bus to Pohang (a city on the sea) where we further took a 3.5-hour ferry to Ulleung-do (Ulleung Island) the island closest to Dokdo. It was a long and miserable journey, but I fared relatively well despite my tired and decrepit state. My bleary, bloodshot eyes' first sight of land was the rocky shores of the island, along with glaring sunlight reflecting off of the lanterns of the many, many squid fishing ships.

After docking and ascending the ferry, we gathered into groups (my group was #7!!) and after having someone give us freshly dried squid to eat (not so bad) we gathered in teams of 2 groups and went to eat a full hot meal. I will keep my description of the food short because I realized that no one really besides me cares about all this food I'm eating. We went to a little restaurant owned by these three old ladies and had basically fish and vegetable side dishes with rice and a little cup of coffee afterward. We had to take off our shoes and sit on the floor cross-legged, which trust me after dancing for 3 hours and being transported by train, bus, and ship for seven or 8 hours, is not easy an agreeable, especially for a person as normally inflexible as I am. The only other white person in our group, a guy from Amsterdam named Rob (inevitably everyone called him Lob [ㄹ=R/L confusion] and eventually Lobster) also had a lot of issues with the sitting on the floor thing and actually did NOT take off his shoes and just walked into the room (causing everone else to FREAK out). I had to translate pretty much everything for him because there were, out of the maybe 100 or more people on the trip, 3 native English speakers, making it very difficult for everyone to work around this barrier.

After our rushed lunch we went to see a giant rock, which is one of the many symbols of "Mysterious Island Ulleung-do" called 춧대압 (Chotdaeap -? No idea what it means, sorry) and took a lot of pictures on the pier. I got to take some nice pictures of the tidebreakers, which are shaped basically like jacks, and the nasty seagulls, and the technicolor squid ships covered in their bulbous glass lanterns. It was at Chotdaeap that we had our first (and what we later learned was our final) filming of our PR dance, filmed by at least 7 cameras, 2 of which were helicams! This should have been my first warning sign that I'd be on camera a lot, but later it got even worse. I began to realize that because there were so many cameras, I was not safe anywhere. Seriously every time I opened my mouth and Korean came out there would be a camera in my face. Not to say that I didn't enjoy the attention *toss hair* hahah seriously but on this day in particular I felt awful, looked awful, and just wasn't feeling the paparazzi.

After the performance and the giant rock viewing we went to a giant hall in what I believe is the Ulleung-do Education Ministry building to see a few important figures involved in the Dokdo dispute speak. There were also two North Korean refugees speaking, which was pretty awesome. The hall that we sat in was called Ulleung Harmony Assembly Hall. Korean-to-English translations are so poetic. I think I was the only person in the whole hall not sleeping by the end of the presentation, though, which made me feel really bad for those North Korean refugee kids. I stayed awake the whole time, proudly, and attempted to remain perky as best I could.

After the, however interesting, exceedingly long presentation, we carted ourselves and all our luggage to our final resting place for the evening - Dae-A Resort (or, according to the towels, Dae-A Hotel). Personally I think it only qualifies as a resort because of its extra features like convenience store, noraebang, ballroom, and swimming pool (out of season) because the state of the rooms was less than luxurious. I don't mind sleeping on mats on the floor because it's comfortable and I don't mind how short Korean showers generally are because I, too, am short, but seriously, dead mosquitos accompanied by human blood on the walls are simply beneath my hygiene standards. The room was perfect other than that and the mildew on the bathroom curtain. I think my mom would have had a heart attack, though. I think I heard my common sense screaming but I honestly don't know whether or not it's proper to complain to room cleaning in Korea or really even what to do, and since I don't normally touch walls anyways I just let it go. Kind of regretting it now, though - SERIOUSLY IT WAS HUMAN BLOOD!!!

Anyways we had dinner (briefly noted as squid jiggae with the usual side dishes) and then went up to our rooms to go to sleep. It was only 8:00 PM but I was dead tired so I just changed into PJs and headed for bed.

At 9:30 I was awoken because I had to walk all the way back down the mountain to the "resort" lobby to try on suits for our trip to 울릉도조등학교(Ulleung-do Elementary School) the following morning. At that point I was rather crabby from exhaustion, and they hadn't received my size information properly even though my excellent trip partner Benjamin had sent it in properly, so I had to go digging to find something that might fit me. I tried on two different suit jackets and FIVE different shirts until they found one that fit me properly on top. It was horrifying. I never want to hear "you bigger than Korean girl" EVER again. I KNOW. Seriously. They also gave me these boot-like black shoes for me to wear which were one size too big (shockingly they have shoes all larger than my GIANT AMERICAN FEET) and told me that although the style was different, I would have to make do. I finally trudged back up to my room, decided to take another shower because my frustration had made me feel gross again, and went back to bed again.

During the night I think the floor heater monitor EXPLODED because I woke up covered in sweat and freaking out because it was SO HOT EVERYWHERE! We found out how to turn it down eventually but oh my goodness was it uncomfortable.

I showered again, changed into my skirt-suit attire, and marched down to breakfast where I met up with the rest of the blue-coats, my partner, and everyone else coming with me to teach at the elementary school. Apparently out of the 100 people there they only selected a few to go there, and I was one of the lucky ones. Who didn't get to sleep in. And had to wear clunky shoes. Anyways, I'm actually really happy for the experience, all jokes aside, and I'll go into it in more detail in a second.

Down at the lobby after meeting up with everyone we had breakfast (yes, squid again, and fish, and vegetable side dishes) and took pictures out in the back yard of the resort, which looked out onto the sea. It was beautiful, I literally cannot describe it, nor could I capture it in pictures, but I tried. I'll post some later. I also found a puppy that someone had put blush and eyebrow pencil onto. I didn't even know what emotions I felt in response to that.

After eating and preparing (and a few interviews) we were loaded up into a bus and carted off to the middle school. I wasn't sure what the reaction would be from most of the students. Ulleung-do isn't a very popular tourist site compared to Jeju-do (a place of paramount and unsurpassed beauty and 인기) and so I figured they would be a little surprised (compared to Seoul kids) by non-Koreans sort of marching into their school (all of the ahjummas and ahjussis who had run into us on the island pretty much reacted with "Oh! [name of country written on name tag]?" to which we foreigners would respond with a simple "neh" and a smile). The kids were all either really friendly, wanting to shake my hand and touching my hair and asking if it was natural, or really shy, hiding behind the taller kids. When I taught the 4th grade class for half an hour, though, all of the initial shyness/friendliness seemed to seep away, and I felt like I was standing in front of an emotionless academic firing squad. My Korean capabilities held me up a little bit, and my partner translated for me what I didn't know what to say. The main thing the kids were curious about, actually, was Halloween. They had seen it in movies before and wanted me to explain the function of "trick or treat" and nearly stumped me when they asked what was a "trick" exactly. (I first told them that you would get slapped in the face, which freaked them out, and then I was like nah, back in the old days they'd give you veggies and stuff.) When I opened myself to questions, however, the real test began "what is the population and growth rate of the US?" "what is your economic standpoint on the FTA?" "what are the differences between the laws of the 50 states?" etc. etc. and I was like oh my gosh, time to bluff and pretend that I'm smart. The funniest question, however, was, "do you have a boyfriend?" Why do kids always want to know that?? Anyways, I told him he was too young for me and all the kids were like BAHAHAH and he was like AHHHHHHH I DIDNT MEAN THATTTTTT and it was great. Poor kid. If I ever become an English teacher in Korea I'm gonna have to fight back a lot of sadism.

After going to the elementary school we were supposed to go to Dokdo for the allotted 30 tourist minutes (it's a 1 hour boat ride there) and perform our PR dance one last time, but we were given news that, because of off-shore winds, the waves were too dangerous to leave the island. We were also given the ominous warning that the wind might be too strong for us to even leave Ulleung-do to go back home.

So, despite the wind, they decided they were going to give their PR announcement address right there on the shores of Ulleung-do since there was no chance to give it on Dokdo. And, as one of three native English speakers I was chosen, along with the token black group member (they were very explicit that they chose him because he was the only black person in the whole PR group) to read the PR motto and pledge for the cameras. Apparently it's going to be shown on Arirang TV and everything. I was also interviewed for one of the Czech Republic's main news programs (so random, right?) and had at that point grown accustomed the the ten thousand cameras pointed in my face. One interesting thing about the person they chose to read the address with me was that he wasn't fluent in English - since he came from a French-colonized part of Africa, his native language was French - I was able to explain to him way more effectively what they wanted him to do in French than in the English everyone else was using. I felt like such a badass hero type person. It was awesome. But the constant reminder that I am very very beginner in Korean has kept me humble, don't worry. Mostly. Anyways, apparently without my knowledge I had become the English-speaking representative of Korea's Dokdo PR group. I was also the person they gave their English scripts to for correction, which meant I had to stick by the leaders at all times and make all of the important announcements, too. Pretty exciting.

After making the address and fixing our wind-tossed hair, we took a trip up the mountain by bus toward the 독도전망식도시설 (roughly, Dokdo sight-seeing tourist cable car) because, since we couldn't go to Dokdo, we were going up to go look at it through binoculars. Eventually, however, the path grew too steep for the bus, so we all had to get out in our fancy suits and climb up the mountain ourselves. It was a pretty cool view, and the cable car was really fun to take up. Because of the high winds it was hard to get great pictures, and the distance was pretty murky but you could just barely see Dokdo through those binoculars (they had a sign telling us the direction to point them). It was super chilly but a fun ride. While in line waiting I performed my Peking Opera impression for my two Chinese friends and they thought it was hilarious, but then commented that it actually sounded pretty similar other than the fake Chinese. Teehee.

Anyways, we started back down the mountain, but the rain that had been threatening us all day decided to spill, so we stopped in a gift shop. The shop was full of wood carvings and these three really nice old people who were offering us discounts and everything. I didn't get anything because I didn't bring my money up the mountain with me, but Lobster got a couple nice little boxes (the woodwork was actually really nice) and I tested out these cool things that you rub around on your hands and they basically stab your hands with a bunch of tiny spikes to bring up bloodflow and somehow make you healthier and more vivacious. My poor soft student palms couldn't take it, so I put it back and checked out the spoons.

When the rain finally stopped we started walking the rest of the way down. We stopped at a Buddhist temple and took pictures of the architecture and the giant Buddha, and then for the rest of the hill my partner Benjamin and my friend Jun grabbed one of my arms on either side and ran down with me swooshing behind them. It was so fun. It was like I was a little kid with two dads, hahah. After other kids saw us doing that, girls all up the hill were grabbing two guy friends and having them fly them down - the funniest was when one of the guys pretended to drop the girl and she got so scared she ended up knocking all three of them off of the road. We eventually made it back to the bus to take us back to our classy Dae-A resort.

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing. If you ever consider taking a long bus ride on Ulleung-do, smack yourself in the face for ever considering a thing so horrible, deathly terrifying, and illness-inducing. Every road in Ulleung-do has about ten thousand hairpin turns, is never flat (at least a 40 degree incline at every point) and is about 3 centimeters wider than the bus. All of these things combined make for a terrifying and potentially deadly bus ride. I'll go more into detail later.

We came back to our lovely island home-away-from-home-away-from-home and prepared for our big evening PR meeting and surprise talent show. They put on some music and dragged people onto the stage and made them do funny couple-y things like dance together and mime confessing their love for one another. It was really funny, especially when someone was super awkward at dancing. I got to participate by playing some Blue Scholars when someone asked for an "American hip hop beat" and none of the Koreans actually had American hip hop on their iPods. Represent! Anyways after the dancing and fun they showed us a quick raw video of our first dance (awful and hilarious - there were a lot of people who clearly didn't know the dance at all) and then filmed us all sending in our PR declaration to some website. After that I shared with everyone my Dokdo information blog and twitter information (@Dokdodispute and dokdodispute.tumblr.com) so that everyone could follow me. Unfortunately since I said it in English I think a lot of people didn't get what I was saying at all. Oh well, guess I'll have to push it more and shamelessly promote to get more attention!

Anyways at the end of the meaning, our fearless leader stood and gave a very emotional speech, during which he started to tear up and caused some of the other senior members to cry, and then told us he felt really bad that we might be stranded here and that he had ordered 100 chickens along with 2-liter bottles of beer to apologize to us, and that he would be making sure they were delivered to our rooms. A huge shout rose from the crowd and we rushed back to our rooms to share the chicken and beer with our group-mates and bond together. We played Korean drinking games, snapped chopsticks on each others' foreheads, and ate tons of chicken. It was a lot of fun. We went back to bed sort of early because, in the case that we *did* get to go back to Seoul the next day, we would need to wake up and be ready to go by 9am.

In the morning, as luck would have it, we were actually stranded on Ulleung-do, the island of the noraebang that closes at midnight (seriously who closes a noraebang that early!?!?) with no agenda and no actual chance to visit Dokdo. Luckily that meant a lot more time to bond with friends. Unfortunately, they decided to take us on the ocean-view tour, a drive around the island in the previously mentioned bus of terror. I had never had 차멀미 (cha meolmi - car sickness) in my entire life until this bus ride. Ulleung-do, if you look up pictures, is mostly made of rocky hills/mountains. The roads are steep and unpleasant, and the buses have bad suspension. My friend 건우 (Geonwoo? Gunwoo? - no English name) was sitting next to me the entire time with a plastic bag over his face. We were both laying on each other moaning in misery the entire drive up. Halfway through the tour we stopped to eat (ugh) at an old-style restaurant where they served us a ton of 비빔밥 (bibimbap - basically mixed rice and veggies) and my friend 해림 (Haerim) and I walked around taking pictures. She gave me some motion sickness medicine before we got onto the bus again, and I am eternally in her debt for that.

We reached the seashore and they were going to make us perform the dance one more time but it had started to rain and so they didn't make us (thank goodness!). Instead, they took us to a lighthouse surrounded by lots of the breakers and we hopped around on them and took pictures with the lighthouse before getting back on the bus. We drove a little further and came to a Buddhist temple similar to the one from the day before but with a smaller building, and a bigger statue. This one also had a magical enchanted Buddha fountain, which I drank from despite my better judgement and precaution against oral bacteria. It was frighteningly cold, but we still took a ton of pictures (and a lot of pictures of ourselves, I'm a little embarrassed to say [although I shouldn't be, I am in Korea after all]). It was pretty fun. We all loaded back up on the bus and set off again.

After the Buddhist temple we drove some more and found ourselves at the Ulleungdo seawalk! It was made of metal and wood and went along about one kilometer on some steep rocks and over the sea at some parts. It was really high up and super windy so a little scary but it was alright after you got used to it. At one point Haerim and I were walking out on the rocks without using the path and we saw some (evil) goats hopping around like they owned the place, and I took some pictures of them, and took a video of the waves gushing everywhere. It was really pretty and the power of the waves illustrated pretty clearly the reason we couldn't go home just yet.

Upon our return they told us to go get changed and then we'd go and get dinner. We went into town in our huge group for 오삼 - ("Eo-sam"?) which is a combination of 오징어/삼겹살 - basically spicy fried pork belly and squid (yes, squid again! The pattern unfolds!) and then later they make a porridge out of the leftover stuff in the bottom and add veggies and laver. It was really delicious. I called for another rice container and called the woman working there the Korean word for Aunt and she got so excited, ran over, put some squid in my mouth, and hugged me for about thirty seconds when it was time to leave. Then she told me to be good and study hard. I felt like I'd just adopted a Korean mom.

One of the coolest things I've ever seen was the squid ships out on the sea when I was walking back up to the dorm rooms. I didn't have a camera so I couldn't take a pictures, but basically they were these long strips of light blazing in the distance and reflecting off of the waves. They light up all those lanterns because it attracts squid, who like to come up to the moon at night. I stood there and looked at them for about five minutes before I kept walking again. Man I wish I'd had my camera...

After dinner it was time for pizza. Yep. Still hungry. We girls all ate the pizza in our room and hung out for a while and then when some of them got tired, me and a French girl from a house up the hill headed downhill to a room where a bunch of the kids were partying. We all sat in a circle and played Korean drinking games for three hours (I had to be taught a lot of them because I don't know that many comparatively). It got really difficult when we had to switch to silent mode for all of the games. In any case, I eventually headed back home and went to sleep.

In the morning it was time to head back home, sadly. I really liked Ulleung-do despite the blood on the walls, the carsickness, and the endless diet of squid. I got a bunch of my friends' contact information and added everyone on Kakao Talk (to those who don't know - a chatting service) as quickly as I could so that we could stay in touch. My one friend, 서희(Seohui - Sue) invited about 50 of the 100 people there to go to a party hosted by her school the following Saturday so I was happy to be certain I'd be seeing a good number of them again.

We took the long boat ride, had lunch, took the bus, and then the train, and then finally made it back to Seoul Station. It was a long and tiring ride. After arriving at Seoul station my friend Ara and I went back the rest of the way together because she lives so close to me (yay). It was a good ending to an amazing and very tiring trip.

Anyways, I'll post about the subsequent days of my month in a post after this. Look out for pictures coming!!!

Miss you guys,

xoxoxoxo,

Janet