Shanghai: Pudong Downtown

(This post is part of a series on my trip with the 9th grade to Shanghai in May 2009.)


In May, I helped chaperone the 9th grade school trip to Shanghai. We had a much lower turnout, proportionately, than last year's Japan trip, in part owing to the students' general lack of interest in visiting China. Without saying so directly, the students who elected not to go made their reasons pretty clear: China, they seemed to think, is the land of swine flu and melamine, a sprawling slum that dwarfs Mumbai, an impoverished Communist police state like North Korea, only larger and dirtier.

Even the students who came on the trip, it seemed, expected to get food poisoning from every morsel of food that passed their lips, and as such came equipped with entire suitcases full of ramen and Spam (both available, mind you, in any Chinese grocery--and both exported to Korea from China, of course).

So it was a stroke of good luck that our first sightseeing stop in Shanghai was the Pudong ("east of the river") section of downtown, seen above at night.

Pudong is home to two of the four tallest buildings in Asia (the others being Taipei 101 in Taiwan an the Petronas Towers in Malaysia), and by 2012 it will be home to three of the five.

The tallest building in Shanghai is the Shanghai World Financial Center, which features the highest public observation deck in the world.

Here's a view from the Financial Center observation deck, showing the second tallest building in Shanghai, the Jin Mao building (foreground), with the iconic Shanghai TV Tower in the background.
Oh, and those little white boxes in the Financial Center photo above? Window washers.
How would you like that job?

Here's a clearer shot of the TV Tower from street level at the Financial Center.
And here's a shot of the Jin Mao building and the Financial Center from the Puxi district, on the other side of the river.Needless to say, the students were quickly disabused of their misconceptions about Shanghai. Of course, the fact that we stopped for ice cream at a Cold Stone Creamery after lunch--and no one died of melamine poisoning--certainly helped.

More on the trip coming soon.

Shanghai: Opera School and Yuyuan Garden

Consider this a follow-up to Nana's last post on academic pressure in Korea: on the first full day of the 9th grade class trip to Shanghai, we visited two veritable shrines to academic success as the foundation of filial piety--namely, the Shanghai Opera School and the Yuyuan Garden.

Shangahi Opera School

In the morning, we took a tour of the Shanghai Opera School, a boarding school where students aged (roughly) 8-16, in addition to their academic studies, learn the range of skills necessary to perform classical Chinese opera.

In other words, they learn singing, gymnastics, stylized martial arts, stylized operatic diction, costume-making--even how to apply their elaborate makeup. If the demonstration performance they showed us is any indication, by the time the kids are 16, they're really exceptionally skilled.

The shots above and below are from a beloved farce scene in the classical opera literature. The figure in white is the bodyguard of a popular general. The figure in black is an innkeeper who mistakenly thinks the bodyguard is an assassin. The conceit is that they're fighting in pitch dark, so neither can see the other.

Even so many hundreds of years after it was written--still hilarious!



Yuyuan Garden


Our second stop that day was Yuyuan Garden, a few blocks off the river near the Bund. It is a classic Chinese city garden, rambling and shady, rocky and green.
The garden was meticulously built over the span of several decades by a Ming-dynasty official for his beloved father, also a high-ranking Ming official. Back then (and even today, to a degree), it's assumed the first-born son will assume responsibility for the care of his parents in their old age, and this fellow went above and beyond the call of duty.

He got the money to do so, of course, by acing his exams. No joke--the modern East Asian exam system dates back to the old Chinese imperial exams, which secured top performers lucrative and powerful positions in the government.

Apparently this is the #1 destination for school trips to Shanghai.

So let that be a lesson, kiddos. If you don't mind letting your parents starve in the gutter, sure, keep playing that video game. Otherwise, crack open those books!

Reflections: Top Ten Meals in Asia

(Note: Justin and I had this conversation over our Gmail messengers. I cleaned it up for coherence and added the hotlinks. Any errors are probably original, but I did improve the grammar/spelling that we rushed for time. And now, prepare to get much more inside our relationship than you ever probably wanted to be!)

Nana: We'll go your 5, my 5, your 4, my 4

Justin: sounds good. ready? 5. Onion naan and dipping sauces in Little India, Singapore

Nana: Ah. That's higher on mine. It was darn good.

Justin: More of a snack, I guess, but I'm counting it as a meal. I liked how light it was. The naan was spongy, the consistency of that Ethiopian bread. And the raw onions cut through the oil in the sauces.

Justin: The chana masala sauce was probably the best I've ever had

Nana: Yes. That's why it's higher on mine. My #5 is Japanese-style soy ramen with egg, Tokyo, Japan.

Justin: I thought about putting Tokyo-style ramen on my list. It was, like, 5a

Nana: I could drink that broth forever. I feel very strongly about salt.

Justin: Japanese ramen is so rich and subtle. There's a lot going on.

Nana: I still have cravings for it. And then I go get Korean ramen, and I am so depressed, because it's not even vaguely alike.

Nana: And the egg! Sort of semi-hard boiled. A perfect yolk.

Justin: Mine had egg-drop-style egg, and some fried tofu in it, and a big slice of mildly salted pork

Nana: I had mine at a Tokyo Disney hotel food court, so maybe my love is also connected to my DisneyJoy

Justin: actually, the ramen we had in hokkaido was as good, I think

Nana: I don't remember Ramen in Hokkaido

Justin: at the ski lodge

Nana: Oh, yes. Good, but not as good as my Tokyo ramen.

Justin: then again, everything tastes better after you've spent a morning in waist-deep powder!

Nana: Or spent the day at DisneySea!

Justin: okay, moving up the list: 4. Beef wanggalbi with Dr. Kim last weekend. A recent entry

Nana: Ah! My #4 is also Korean BBQ!

Justin: Which one? The one on the way to Vivaldi Park?

Nana: I couldn't pick - I'm bad. That was one of the three. Vivaldi Park BBQ, the orange Hagye restaurant, and the wood paneled restaurant here in Wolgye

Nana: The wood one is better for Samgipsal and the egg souffle

Justin: I never liked that one quite as much . . . though they DO have the best samgyeopsal

Nana: I love the gaedanjip/egg soufflé and the mushrooms. And that is the best samgipsal I've had in Korea.

Justin: I think I like galbi stuff better overall, so I lean towards the places with good galbi

Nana: Dr. Kim's had the best side dishes, I think.

Justin: Dr. Kim's place, though, wasn't just about the meat--those were the best Korean side-dishes

Nana: Ha! Read my mind!

Justin: I loved that spicy salad . . . the pickles . . . the pumpkin

Nana: What was the other one I liked so much... Oh, the horseradish (If that's what it was in English)

Justin: And that naengmyeon was incredible--I didn't even know there could be a difference with naengmyeon until then!

Nana: Yes, that was the best of that. But it wasn't as good as Japanese ramen!

Justin: I don't know--overall meal, I'd repeat Dr. Kim's KBBQ before I'd repeat the Tokyo ramen.

Nana: See, now that I think about it, I totally might switch ramen over barbecue

Justin: anyway- #3: Mongolian hotpot (in Beijing and in Shanghai)

Nana: DANG! That was on my list yesterday and I forgot it today! Good thing you're representing!

Justin: I love spicy food, and I'm a complete sucker for lamb--those lamb meatballs, mildly spiced--those things are delicious

Nana: I like the lotus root. It stays nice and crunchy

Justin: I liked the one I went to in Shanghai a bit better, I think, because you got to mix your own spicy sauce. I added a little sesame oil to mine, to round out the spice, and it was awesome. But the noodles at the beijing place were crazy, how they pulled them at the table.

Nana: I'm totally watching the video of that now (NOTE: At the above "Mongolian Hotpot" link)

Justin: The Shanghai place didn't serve noodles at the end--I missed that. So I kind of couldn't choose between the two. Oh, also--the broth was lighter in shanghai, not as oily. It meant you could eat more meat before getting full.

Nana: My #3 choice was the Chinese food meal we had that night in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Justin: oh, that was a good one. I forgot about that.

Nana: I really enjoyed the sweet and sour/hot shrimp, and I love teh tariq

Justin: Yeah, it was just very good, mild, simple Chinese food

Nana: and I loved playing with the stirrer with Gia and coming up with stupid things it might be, like a microphone or a miniature flagpole. They made very good fried rice, if I recall

Justin: oh, no--you're talking about a different night. Not the place in Chinatown?

Nana: No, not the little corner place. The big one with the lazy susan, where we all went as a groop.

Justin: The place in the mall by the Petronas Towers

Nana: Yes

Justin: he he, groop

Nana: Shut up. You spell "hee hee" wrong.

Justin: yeah, though that was more of a fusion place--they had Malay dishes, too

not just Chinese

Nana: That's why it was a good place. Lots of variety, and everything was good

Justin: I loved the beef rending, though it had coconut, so you couldn't eat it

Nana: That's not the dish's fault, though.

Justin: true

Nana: The strange thing is, I don't remember too many individual dishes from that night. (a hazard of dining out with Dr. Kim and his shotgun-spread approach to ordering). But I remember being thoroughly pleased with it.

Justin: man, I should have remembered that one. Though I don't know what it would have bumped from my list . . .

Nana: It's okay, we can poach from each other.

Justin: anyway-ready for #2?

Nana: Yes

Justin: #2: Sushi in Hokkaido

Nana: That's my number one. We'll have nothing to say about it when we get there. Thanks a lot.

Justin: The. best. sushi. I. have. ever. eaten.

Nana: Absolutely.

Justin: let's leave it at that for now.

Nana: Okay. My number two, though, we also talked about. It was the chana masala/poori combination in Little India, Singapore.

Justin: the onion naan?

Nana: No, I didn't like the onion naan as much.

Justin: yeah! We had poori, too. I forgot that

Nana: That chana masala was unbelievable. Chick peas are so frequently bitter, but they were butter-sweet.

Justin: yeah, the chana masala was the platonic ideal of chana masala. Sweet, a bit of sour, still that tangy-salty-mildly-spicy thing you get

Nana: If we lived in Singapore, I'd go there every week. I'd eat my way through the entire menu. And then go to that dessert place.

Justin: absolutely. I was torn between that place and the murtabak, but I liked the onion naan better

Nana: Okay. Your #1. I know it!

Nana: Your #1 is going to be Xinjiang food.

Justin: I know you know it! #1 XINJIANG FOOD

Nana: Ha!

Justin: it was like FOOD and GEOGRAPHY ALL IN ONE

Nana: Did you guess that mine would be the sushi?

Justin: Yeah, I knew yours would be sushi

Nana: I think I would love that restaurant more if we went back and ordered some less spicy dishes. And also if I didn't have a fever. I do remember that the bread was unbelievable.

Justin: There were just so many different flavors on the table. Chinese flavors, Indian flavors, middle eastern flavors, blended in so many unusual ways

Nana: It was a thick, spongy, almost focaccia-style bread, which I didn't expect

Justin: oh yeah, the bread. Like turkish bread

Nana: yes, that's it.

Justin: plus the little Chinese pocket bread, for the szechuan-style pork

Nana: I remember some terrific kabobs, right? Lamb.

Justin: Yeah, the lamb kebabs

Nana: You're such a sucker for lamb

Justin: wow. I am, aren't I?

Nana: Okay. My number one, Hokkaido sushi

Justin: yeah, it was a close second for me

Nana: I think this one wins overall champ, if you add up your placement and mine

Justin: It's actually difficult to describe why or how it was so darn good

Nana: I can! It was insanely fresh

Justin: But still tender--not chewy

Nana: The fish was sweeter than any fish I've had in sushi before or since

Justin: There were simply extra flavors in there somehow

Nana: Instead of a saltier fish in salty soy sauce, it was sweet fish in salty sauce with sweet rice and spicy mustard... it just combined so elegantly. I have to specifically shout out two sushi rolls: the mackerel first.

Nana: Which was not actually a roll, but whatever

Justin: yeah, I loved the mackerel

Justin: usually, you get mackerel and the fishy flavor is overpowering

Nana: yes, too fishy. But there it was perfectly savory

Justin: yeah, it was just right

Nana: And the other one was the Salmon roe

Justin: oh my yes

Nana: Never before and never since have I had salmon roe like that

Justin: yet again: often, it's overpoweringly fishy, but this stuff, the fishy stood to the side a bit, let the other flavors come out

Nana: Somehow it came out tasting sweet.

Justin: a bit of a champagne flavor in there, too. or sweet white wine. So good.

Nana: You bit down on the roe, and the texture was perfect - a perfect little pop - and out came this cold sweetness with just a hint of fishy. Fantastic.

Justin: Yeah, it's strange--those are two things I don't usually like at other sushi places, but they were absolutely my favorite things on the table

Nana: Okay. Now for the head smackers.

Justin: ?

Nana: The "D'oh, I forgot that!", or the "I'm surprised you didn't mention"s.

Nana: I'm surprised you didn't mention the Korean duck.

Justin: smack

Justin: I'd completely forgotten about that meal

Nana: You rhapsodized about that duck and the purple wild rice with beans that it was stuffed with.

Justin: That was really, really, really good. An unusually complicated flavor for Korean food--not bland, not sweet, not spicy

Nana: Sometimes, you call out its name in your sleep.

Justin: "DUCK!"

Justin: no, that's just my war flashback . . .

Nana: And I will never forget Naomi-sensei panicking because she thought we were going to a dog restaurant

Justin: oh, yeah. "duck" & "dog" = phoneticized the same way in hangeul

Nana: same as "tteok," too

Nana: The other thing, which doesn't really count for me probably because I had it the first time I came to Asia, was the Peking Duck in Beijing

Justin: Yeah, I toyed with the idea of including that, but it just didn't make the cut. It was a great meal, don't get me wrong--but I liked my five better

Nana: I really love Peking duck. The skin was so perfectly crispy, the pancakes were great and the scallions and hoisin sauce... yum yum

Justin: The hoisin sauce was really good.

Nana: whose dumb idea was it to have just five?

Nana: Oh, mine.

Justin: I don't know if I can think of any head-smackers for you

Nana: Chicken Tikka in KL?

Justin: maybe the Dongbei food in Beijing? The basement place with all the dumplings?

Nana: Barley rice?

Justin: we liked the barley rice, but I don't think it was top-5 material

Nana: The kaffir lime soup you had in Singapore?Again, good but not top five?

Justin: I was also tempted to include the mee siam (rice noodles in spicy-sweet kaffir lime broth)

Nana: HA

Justin: hey, I was just typing that

Nana: I can read minds.

Justin: yeah, it was really good, but I'm not sure it was quite top-5. It would be a staple of my diet if we lived in Singapore, that's for sure

Nana: OH. There was that OTHER Chinese food in Malaysia, too. The one we had the afternoon of the rainforest walk. That's the place with that pumpkin-battered chicken that I wanted to grow a second stomach so I could finish

Justin: oh, yeah. That was good. Wow! How'd we forget that?

Nana: I think it blurred for me with the other KL Chinese restaurant

Justin: that's going in at #6 for me

Nana: OH! And the Korean barbecue in Japan! Didn't you fall in love with the tripe?

Justin: oh, yeah, that was also really good.

Nana: So are you sticking to your choices or do you think you'd reorder anything after our conversation?

Justin: You know, I'm pretty satisfied with my list

Nana: Let's take a minute and use our conversation to expand to a top ten each, and we'll finish the post with that.

Justin: okay

Top Ten Meals in Asia: Justin

(Note from Justin: "My 1 and 2 are solid; 3-6 are a tier, followed by 7-10")

10. KBBQ in Japan--especially the tripe

9. Mee siam in Singapore

8. Breakfast curry and paratha in Singapore

7. Korean duck

6. The Chinese/Malay restaurant in KL we went to after the rainforest walk

5. Onion naan in Singapore

4. KBBQ with Dr. Kim

3. Mongolian hotpot

2. Sushi in Hokkaido

1. Xinjiang food in Beijing

And

Top Ten Meals in Asia: Nana

(Note from Nana: I'm pretty comfortable with 1 and 2, but 3-5, 6-8, and 9-10 could move around based on what I'm craving on a particular day.)

10. Korean duck with wild rice, Korean countryside, Korea
9. Korean barbecue - Hagye/Wolgye versions
8. Malaysian mix dinner, mall by Petronas Towers, KL, Malaysia
7. Ethnic Chinese food lunch post-Rainforest Walk, KL, Malaysia
6. Korean barbecue - en route to Vivaldi Park, Korea
5. Japanese-style soy ramen with egg, Tokyo, Japan
4. Peking Duck, Beijing, China
3. Chinese hotpot, Beijing, China
2. Chana masala and poori, Little India, Singapore
1. Japanese sushi, Hokkaido, Japan

So, the overall verdict for travelers to Asia? In Korea, try the BBQ. In Japan, get ramen or sushi. In China, check out the different regional foods - Mongolian, Dongbei/Northern, Xinjiang, etc. In Singapore, hit up Little India. In Malaysia, try for a Chinese restaurant with a mixed menu.

PHEW. So there you have it: we're a couple of amateur-foodie windbags (which may or may not be related to what's in the food...) But it was a really fun trip down memory lane for us, so I hope we weren't too self-indulgent.

Shanghai: Zhujiajiao Water Village

Shanghai isn't all urban glitz: many of the outlying towns are still very traditional. The old center of Zhujiajiao, for instance, has been painstakingly preserved as an example of a Chinese "water village," or canal town.

The town was built on a river delta about 1,700 years ago, then rebuilt several times over the centuries. The natural waterways of the delta have all been channeled to serve as the town's main "roads," a la Venice.

(For the record: this being China, the population of Zhujiajiao "village" is actually about 60,000.)

Zhujiajiao is also a great place to see examples of traditional Chinese bridge-building. Most bridges in China are engineered to have that high peak in the middle, with a series of arches of variable size supporting the footpath.
Below: Zhujiajiao taxi drivers.
The bridge shot above, and the shot of the bell tower below, were both taken from one of these taxis.
Zhujiajiao is also home to the famous Ma Family Garden, built by one of the local magistrates. Both the pond and the laughing Buddha below are popular photo spots.

Two all-beef patties, special sauce...

Things you can order at a Korean McDonald's:

Bulgogi Burger (Bulgogi is Korean shaved beef, kind of like roast)
Shanghai Spice Chicken Burger
Shrimp Burger
Crazy Hot Chicken Folder (from the picture, I think they mean "pita")
Thai Chili Sauce McNuggets

and of course, that ever-popular side dish, Corn Salad.

I wussed out and got the cheeseburger. "Cheeseburger" in Korea is pronounced "chee-su-bu-guh." It will get you though a lot.

PS. The advertising campaign for their new spicy menu is "HOT 4 YOU." I think I met that guy in a chat room once...

Getting Shanghaied

I've been Shanghaied into chaperoning the 9th grade trip to Shanghai (that horse dead yet?), so I'm going to be out of touch through Saturday night.

Nana will still be in Seoul if you need to get in touch.

One Day More!

<

One day more!
Another afternoon, a final night,
A never ending trans-Pacific flight
(And now I have to face again

those meals they serve us on the plane)

One day more!

I did not pack until today.
How can I fit this in my suitcase?
One day more.
Our worldly goods are worlds away…
Oh, shipping turns us into fruitcakes.

Nana:
One more day before we go.

Justin:
Will we come back here again?

Nana:
Should we pack the peanut butter?

Justin
I will miss our little dog…

Nana:
I don't remember buying this.

Justin:
And our kids, we'll miss them too

Nana:

Put the heavy stuff in his!

Justin:
I just know it's going to storm

Nana:
It's been raining here for days.

Justin:
We'll be schlepping in the thunder.

Nana:

What a great name for a band!

Justin:

But alas, it's the monsoon,

Nana:
I hear ducks out on the road.

Justin:
We may have to take a cab.

Nana:

I think I packed my contact lens!

Together:
One day more!
One more day until we're leaving,
On our way to MScs
Off to Scotland for some schooling
Hope my teacher's not like me!

One day more!

BBQ and tteok
Noraebangs and beer
My Korean sucks
in spite of living here

Tuck in all your shirts!
Obey the EOP!
Weren't always fair
but always tried to be.

Chaperoned the student field trips
(In the US, that's DC)
To Shanghai and to Japan
(Lucky weasel, yes I am!)
Went to S'pore and Malaysia
(And to Xi'an, and Beijing)
And Japan again to ski!

APIS, we will miss you!

One day more!

Justin:
How I loved to sample food
And Asian beers that I was drinking

Now I'm heading for the 'Burgh
But not the 'Burgh you may be thinking

Nana

Public transit rocks
Hardly any crime
If you cannot talk

you live in pantomime!

Tomorrow we'll be far away,
Tomorrow is the travel day
Oh, soon we'll leave Korea
For another zany foreign shore….
Goodbye, Seoul,
Bye, Wolgye,
One day more!

School of ROK's Top 5 "Insights" about Korea

Well, Nana and I have been back in the States for a little more than a week now, which means three things: 1) Jet lag is wearing off, 2) We've delivered our Korea schtick about 35 times now, and 3) We've found out more people were reading School of ROK than we ever imagined. All of this adds up to a sudden desire to post something coupled with an utter lack of excuses. Hence, this post, and my out-on-a-limb promise to have our Yeoju pictures posted within a few days.

So, without further ado, here are the top five most-popular numbers in our already-getting-old act (in no particular order):

What are Korean schools like? Everyone we've talked to has been fascinated (read: horrified) by the Korean education system, or even moreso by how little sleep our students get. You see, in Korea, the chances of your daytime school grades ever mattering are slightly less than the chances of a Korean student staying awake through an entire class. Which is to say, appallingly low. (Don't worry, though, we've gotten our kids to stay conscious through the entire day.) In the Korean system, all that matters is your score on the next standardized test, which you study for at your nightly cram schools, called "hagwon," six days a week. What's worse is that families have started using the hagwon as a means of conspicuous consumption: Whereas in the States you're apt to hear yuppie dads beaming about their Beamers, in Korea they're bragging about how many cram schools they send their kids to in a day. All of which results in the high and rising cost of raising a child. That's why so many children are still adopted from South Korea, even though it's a very safe, politically and economically stable country: in a situation where dual-income professionals have trouble affording children, young couples and single mothers don't stand a chance.

What does Seoul LOOK like? I've had a few requests to compare Seoul to various other East Asian cities. Does it look like Tokyo? Shanghai? Beijing? Of course, never having been to any of these other places, I'm in no position to compare (though Nana assures me Seoul does not look like Beijing). The pictures don't like: Seoul looks a lot like this, with bits of this and this sprinkled in. In our part of Seoul, everything's new, and most of it is made of concrete. High-rise apartments everywhere. The defining features of Seoul, though, are the Han River and the surrounding mountains: the first cuts a wide swath right through the middle of the city and the second slice deep into the city from its edges. It's a clean town, pretty safe, with many unexpected great views.

Can you speak Korean? Sadly, the answer is no--we start our official Korean lessons in a couple weeks--though we have learned some Hangeul to trot out as a party trick, plus a few key magic words that can get us food, beer, bathrooms, and transportation home.

What's Korean food like? Ahh, Korean food--a bit of a touchy subject. If you want my advice as to whether or not you should go to that Korean bbq across town this weekend, I'd tell you heck yes. But if you wanted to know whether you should eat nowhere but the Korean buffet for three months straight, you'd get a very different answer. There is some really delicious Korean food and some REALLY gross Korean food. In other words, we've had to supplement the local fare with a lot of our own cooking and with pretty frequent trips to the little foreign enclaves downtown. I will say that there are two things you don't realize about American food until you live outside the US: we have an amazing variety of ethnic food to choose from and almost all of it comes with cheese.

This leads us to our final question:

Do Koreans really all look alike? No, though since it's a fairly homogeneous country as far as ethnicity goes, there are fewer general categories of appearance (ie, you've only got "fat guy" instead of "fat white guy"), fewer hair colors, really only one eye color, and almost no facial hair. But Koreans ARE shorter (possibly because they sleep four hours a night when they're kids). I mean, I feel like a circus midget back here! Though all these growth-spurting cousins certainly don't help.

Anyway, time to go help with our very American Christmas Eve: pickup football followed by piles of food either shot through with sugar or smothered with cheese. Yum!

The Wolgye Warrens, or A Walk In The Dong

We live in Wolgye-dong (월계동) in Nowon-gu, on the north side of Seoul. Wolgye means, as best I can translate, "Moon Creek," while Nowon means "Field of Reeds." As a commuter hub, Nowon is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, chock full of 15-story apartment buildings.

But Wolgye also retains a holdover from older-style Korean life. I'm sure it has a name in Korean - the best analog I can think of is the "hutong," the traditional Chinese neighborhoods of Beijing. It is a maze of Korean flat-roofed courtyard homes which I suspect may, in the not-too-distant-future, become a thing of the past in Seoul.

(Sample Korean older-skool house, with sample Korean huge apartment towers in the background. Note flat roofs, which seriously confuse those of us who come from the land of the ice and snow. Note outdoor staircase, which probably confuses everybody. Seriously, I have no idea why it's designed like that. Maybe the second floor belongs to a different family?).

The Wolgye Warrens have a special place in my heart, because it's the only place in the world where I can navigate more effectively than Justin. He's got spectacular compass navigation but is completely unable to remember which turns dead-end and which ones go through, and in which parts you have to go backward in order to go forward (you'd think, as a Pittsburgher, he'd be good at this, but no!). So while Justin was in Shanghai, I took a camera with me and documented my walking path to school. Follow along!


This is the bakery where we wait for the bus. The Korean name is "Moong Ma Cake House." According to our Korean teacher Emily, this is the mangled Konglaise (Korean + Francaise) spelling of "Monmartre."


Parts of the Warrens are quite starkly gray, but you will start to see peeks of color in the spring. Flat-topped roofs, for instance, can support vegetable gardens...

... potted plants...


... or a cascade of flowers:



"Say," you may be thinking, as you look at these pictures. "How did those cars get there on that skinny little street? More importantly, how do they get back out again?" (You're a very observant reader!) Well, if you take a closer look in the front window of one of those cars, you might see something like this:


Each car has the cell phone number of the owner displayed on the dash. If the car is parking you in, whip out your phone and call them to move it! What happens if the person is asleep, or in the shower, or otherwise occupied? No idea. It's a 90% solution (scroll about 1/2 down), a specialty of Korea.

You emerge from the Warrens at Induk Institute of Technology. See what I mean about the giant apartment towers?


Here's the crosswalk, with its countdown arrows. Unlike in the U.S., the second the last arrow goes, the traffic light turns green, so you better get your little foreign butt out of the intersection posthasete.

The green pill-shaped bus in this picture is the 1160, the bus I usually take to school because I'm too lazy to walk. This is a rare shot of Seoul dominated by green. I also risked my life to take it, so you better be darn sure it's going on the blog.


Then it's a right turn up the hill, where earlier this spring, the city ripped up all the leafy sycamores and replaced them with scrubby cherry tree saplings. Yeah, it'll be nice for one week in the spring, but sycamores are better for shade and air quality. I don't really think it's worth it. This is not the first time I have disagreed with Korean environmental practices.

Bleeding hearts on the side of the building:



Then there's a sharp left turn, and you go up this wind-y path skirting the edge of a hillside.



This is probably the only Korean picture in the history of time when I can read every Korean word in it. It says, "School entrance. Slow." Woo-hoo!

To get to the school in question, you must pass the church (note mountains in the distance, v. confusing for Ohioan):

Then you will find the school, apparently painted in 1950s army surplus. Notice that their soccer field is, like ours, just a big pile of sand:


This is Wolgye Middle School. We see these kids on the bus all the time. You can pick them out because a) they're the ones with Burberry plaid as their uniform skirt and b) they won't give their seats up to the elderly. Not that anybody is good at that here.

And at the bottom of the hill, you'll come to our main gate, and the APIS main building! Hurray!


And now you know how to get from my house to the school. Wasn't that fun?

Tteok Tteok Goose

As posted previously, Justin and I attended the 7th Seoul International Rice Cake Festival a few weekends back. Here are some shots from the exhibition (as opposed to the other post, about people in weird costumes outside the exhibition).

Traditionally, rice cake is made by whacking the dough with a hammer, Mario-style. Justin would tell you (if he weren't in Shanghai, of course) that the blur comes from the fact that his camera flash is broken. I think it's because the camera couldn't handle my hammerin' skillz.


From the rice cake competition:

Namdaemun Gate, rice-cake style:


A rice-cake pond of turtles:



From one of the multiple non-competitive rice cake exhibits: A replica of the rice cakes served to former president G.W. Bush on his visit to Korea (I thin; the signage English was a little hazy. But I assume it's not the originals, as they'd be a) gross and b) eaten by now)

They had replicas of rice cake meals served to many world leaders, but for some reason the only other one I remember is Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines. I have no idea why.

Coworker Meghan and I try our hands at some rice cake-ing:



Here we roll out a different type of rice dough for the flower decorations you see in the final picture:

The almost-finished product, a green-tea flavored rice cake:


Actually, I think the rice cake we made is the best rice cake I've had here. No, seriously! Here's the thing: the more attractive rice cakes look, generally, the blander and more glutinous they are. Check out the Wikipedia entry: those pretty pink ones halfway down the page, labeled kkul tteok? You bite down on them, and they spring right back up. And they really don't have any flavor at all. Sure, they say on the page that they've got honey, or bean, or what have you, but basically, to me, it's like eating flour and water, unless they're rolled in something or filled with something. (We did try one here that tasted like, well, pesto. I think that means it had basil in it?) I think it's part of the general pattern of Korean food, which is 80% spicy, 15% bland, and 5% non-spicy but flavorful.

This cake we made goes in that 5%, with a grainy, banana-bread style texture, and a nice mild green tea flavor. I never saw one like it before today - or at least I didn't realize it was also a rice cake. I would definitely eat it again. (Our pretty decorations, by the way? Of the bland school. But on top of the cake instead of as their own dish, they just added some texture, so it went well).

The strangest thing about the rice cake festival was how little rice cake was actually available for eating. The exhibitors brought booths, but mostly it was for bulk order of $50 corporate gift rice cakes, or rice cake manufacturing equipment. Only about 2 booths gave out free samples, with a further 4 or so selling cheap (1000-2000KRW, about $1) small packets. It was much more for industry display and for education than for interactive eating.

I almost forgot to mention this, but at the end, we sat down by the stage show (of COURSE you have a stage show at a rice cake festival; don't you people know anything about Asia?) just to get off our feet. And the guy was shouting in Korean and everybody started raising their hands, so just to be goofy I put my hand up too. Apparently I was trying to win a little rice cake packet, and I did, because Rule #1 of Korean public events is Call On the Foreigner (see Justin's adventures in martial arts masterdom for further evidence). And then he decided that my name was Julia, and for the next few minutes while we sat there I'd hear him say Julia now and then, and everybody would laugh. So this last part goes out to my brother and sister: I go to the other side of the world, but everybody still laughs at me! What's a girl gotta do?

Typhoon Lagoon

First of all, let's get something straight. I'm from the Midwest. I have a check-down list for tornado shelters that's eighteen qualifications long, but my options for severe ocean-borne weather boils down to about two: stay in town, or leave town. I don't know about the details, and I never bothered. If any hurricane made it all the way to Columbus, I would be much more concerned with the Four Horsemen accompanying it than I would be about a storm surge.

Hence my complete inability to understand how I should react to the news that Typhoon Wipha is headed for Shanghai and may knock us around after it goes by. I mean, I don't even know what a typhoon IS. I know it's a lot of fun to say, and was the name of the wave pool at Wyandot Lake when I was a kid, where Angelique Zeune got a three inch splinter through her foot on a sixth-grade back-to-school trip. But that's probably not the fault of a typhoon.

After some research (i.e., the textbook I teach geography from), I learned that we refuse to call the exact same weather the same word if it happens in different parts of the world. A typhoon would be a hurricane in the Atlantic, and the one that might get near us would be labeled Category 4.

In any case, for those of you (i.e., moms) who are panicking right now, calm down. Yes, Typhoon Wipha is a bad one. But it's aimed very far south of us, and even if it does loop back around to dump on Seoul, it will have shed a lot of strength going over land. We will probably get soaked, and we'll probably get some heavy wind, but Seoul's not about to turn into Katrina-land. Which is a shame, because I've been looking forward to looting the stores downstairs. (Oh, I went there. Yes, I did.)
In any case, do send good vibes to the Shanghainese. But don't panic for us. Not about typhoons, anyway. As far as lesson planning goes, panic all you like. I certainly do!