Everland, Part Two: The Zoo

A few weeks ago, Nana and I chaperoned a school trip to Everland, a local imitation-Disney amusement park. (Previous post.) Well, as it turns out, Everland is not only an amusement park, but also a zoo (and I'm not talking about the children). How we missed this last time is beyond me.

Here are some shots from the zoo.

Nana sez: "Looks like the bears have killed the most tourists today."
Justin sez: "Can't get complacent, though--the lions and tigers are right behind."
Common sense sez: "There's no way there were 21 bears in that park."
Nana catches a nap on the safari ride. As do the lions. (Yes, there was glass.)
Below is the liger, over whom youths here have obsessed ever since Napoleon Dynamite came out in Korean translation.
(In case you were wondering--yes, the lions and tigers here are kept in the same enclosure. Giggity giggity gigitty.)

And finally, the bears. Who basically seem to sit around all day until the safari bus pulls up, at which point they perform silly tricks for crackers.Also--up close, they're HUGE.


Cuteness award goes to these little foxes.
Awesomeness award goes to this orangutan, who, in true orangutan fashion, spent most of her time mooning, spitting on, and/or making faces at visitors. Also, she's separated from the outside world by a 20-foot pit. Orangutans are known for being wily tricksters, and zoos often have to go to great lengths to keep them in their enclosures.
Perhaps the coolest part of the zoo, though, was the chimp enclosure, which featured little bubbles you could pop your head up in and get face-to-face with the chimps.
At first, I was impressed by how much interest the chimps took in us--I mean, they were shaking their heads, "smiling," making faces, sticking out their tongues--but then I realized that most people send them treats via a little tube in the pillbox. The chimp below is reaching down for a cookie.Even among apes, we're cheapskates.

Second place in coolness, though, goes to these crazy monkeys. Look at them go!

Mr. Rogers!

Remember Won't You Wear A Sweater day, sponsored through Pittsburgh last year and celebrated by Justin, me, and Annie in Korea?

Now we're famous. (You can go about halfway down the page, or you can do "find in page" and type Seoul. Or Nana.)

As far as I can tell, we hold the distance record. Kiss my 13-hour flight, Sweden and Germany! Yeah!

The Overseas Vote

With regard to the US presidential election: I can't speak for the Korean man-on-the street, but our kids are overwhelmingly pro-Obama. I had the electoral map running on my SmartBoard each period when they came into class, and after the obligatory minute to figure out what on Earth the electoral college map says about anything, they cheered when they found out Obama was up.

This could be generational - young people around the world seem to be strongly pro-Obama, so maybe it's age as the determining factor instead of here. And I didn't really notice a difference between our Korean and non-Korean students' reactions - except perhaps some extra excitement from an African student.

But in any case, it's interesting because, as Justin posted earlier, Korean attitudes on Korean mixed-race individuals can be pretty closed-minded (until 2006, mixed-race Koreans were barred from serving in the military; even now, I think, they are exempt from the draft). 2006 was, not coincidentally, right after the Super Bowl when Hines Ward took MVP. So if his success in sports helped bring down barriers here, could Obama's victory presage anything for Korea? My guess is not with adults. Obama, unlike Ward, is not part-Korean, so I doubt his story will be seen as relevant. But seeing the kids respond like this (we had clapping and dancing) suggests that change may be coming generationally. It's encouraging, and I hope our students will remember this when they become the generation in political power, but I realize that for some people, it's a long time to wait.

Hines Ward and Bi-Racial South Koreans

My hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, ran an article today on Hines Ward's continuing social efforts on behalf of bi-racial kids in South Korea. Hines Ward is himself bi-racial--half black, half Korean--and was basically run out of the country with his mother before being heartily claimed by Koreans as "their" Super-Bowl MVP (Let's Go Steelers!). The mere fact of seeing officials call Hines Ward "Korean" was a big deal, and Hines Ward's visit to Korea in the wake of Super Bowl XL attracted much attention in the media in both the US and Korea.

The fight's not over by a long shot, though--there's still a lot of racism here, some of which (without going into too much detail) Nana and I have encountered in our daily lives.

Check out the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today.

GRE in Korea: Case Closed

The last phase of our joint GRE travails was brought to a successful close yesterday (successful in that I was able to take the test--no way to know how I did): the GRE Subject Test in Literature will haunt my dreams no more.

We celebrated the occasion by finally visiting the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Seoul we'd yet to see: Changdeokgung (aka, Changdeok Palace). Expect a post soon.

OMGHOLYCRAP Part V: I have cheekbones?

Welcome back to the OMGHOLYCRAP series, in which we trace the adventures of my name, given to the heroine of Carla Kelly's upcoming Harlequin romance novel Marrying the Captain. I anticipate at least one more installment of this series (when I read the book, of course!). But half the fun of a romance often occurs before you even open the book. I am referring, of course, to that bastion of awesome and ridiculous, the romance novel cover.

Yes. It's out. The cover of Carla Kelly's book!

My personal reaction? Not bad.Nobody looks like they're in pain, her hair is obeying all known laws of physics, and everybody has the right number of hands. (You clicked on that one. I know you did. Can you believe that?). Returning to the point, though: she's pretty. I'm not ashamed that the person on that cover shares my name. I see no reason for her dress to be falling off like that (after all, his hand isn't even on her sleeve - it's on her waist) but the composition is strong and the captain's a cutie. You go, Nana!

CURSE YOU HURRICANE!

For whatever reason, I can NEVER spell that word correctly. HurriCANE.

(hangs English-teacher head in shame)

Happy Birthday, Nana!

That is all. Carry on!

Everland, Take Two

For the second year in a row, APIS dodged the whole Halloween question by packing the students off to Everland--you can read our general impressions of the place here.

And you can see our general impression of the food in the images below.


Mmmm, buttered chewy corn on a stick.
Tastes like home!

Anyway--Everland. The overall feeling one gets from a visit to Everland is something like, "I'm trying to be Disneyland and failing miserably, but in the process coming up with something quirky and fun."

Take, for instance, the Hurricaine, a combination rotor-pirate-ship that's the first ride you see upon entering the park (after a good kilometer of gift shops, that is--they got that part of the Disney experience right!).
Yes, that's the Epcot Center in the middle. The Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building are on the left, naturally, with the Statue of Liberty nearby.
What's more, in the middle of a hurricaine so powerful that it blew the Epcot globe all the way to Manhattan, while cloning the Empite State Building through sheer force of awesome (yes, that's the Empire State Building behind Lady Liberty), we happy-go-lucky Americans are all dressed up like 80s Eurotrash and/or colorful turn-of-the-last-century circus clowns, dancing in the streets.

I'm especially fond of the androgynous fellow in the yellow sailor-suit-raincoat, who is apparently holding onto his hat and his leg, just in case either should start to blow away.Also, this guy. I think I knew him in college. And wish I hadn't. I'm also impressed by the fact that you can see he hasn't shaved for days. This is the worst storm in history, people. He may have time to don his best turqouise suit and flail around on the docks like a fish, but shave? Please.

Just around the corner from the Hurricaine is a charming little 1950s-nostalgia street. (American 1950s, that is--the 1950s in Korea didn't offer a lot to get nostalgic about . . .) The street is lined with old magazine covers and ads, most of them benign, like this one:
Others, I suspect, would not quite make the Disney cut.Finally, in another Disneyesque move, Everland as a whole tries to project a vaguely European feel. This is evident from the moment you set foot in the parking lot, at the edge of which the park has erected a giant wooden block clumsily painted with what, I think, is supposed to be an Italian hill town.

The theme continues in Alpine Village, ironically located at the lowest elevation in the park.


Yes, Herr Kessler, I can read the sign below. My German hasn't vanished yet!
Of course, they don't seem to care where it is in Europe, as long as it's European, and in this case, vaguely Alpine.
Here, for example, it seems the same monster storm that blew Epcot to Manhattan deposited the Jungfrau at Chamonix. Impressive.


The Alpine Village also included a halfhearted Korean attempt at German food, which was slightly troubling.
Though if I hadn't been on the clock, I might have been tempted to try the beer.

Stay tuned for a glimpse of Everland's wacky little zoo . . .

Bob Harris (via BoingBoing) on the DMZ

BoingBoing, one of my favorite websites, just posted a photo-essay by Bob Harris on his recent trip to the DMZ, the empty strip of land separating North Korea from South Korea. Nana and I have been wanting to take said trip for some time now, but work keeps getting in the way.

Check it out: Link.

Taking the GRE in Korea: Continued

Well, despite all omens to the contrary, Nana and I successfully took the GRE yesterday. And by "successfully," I mean that we (read: Nana) found the place, they let us in, and neither of us got violently ill during the exam (though it was touch and go for a while there).

This is nothing less than a minor triumph for us, representing a year's worth of accumulated wisdom about living in the ROK. Here are just a few of the lessons we would not have known this time last year:

1. Always find the place a few days before you actually have to be there. It takes much better Korean than either of us have to find a location on the fly.

2. The right hand never knows what the left hand is doing--if any one part of an organization tells you something, confirm it with every part you'll come in contact with, ASAP. This is why we didn't rest with ETS's admissions ticket solution (previous post)--we had to call the test center itself and confirm with the actual proctors that they would let me in with an e-mail from ETS--and even then, they almost didn't let me in.

3. Never depend on the Korean post office. My admission ticket was supposed to arrive last Tuesday. I'll be surprised if it gets here at all.

4. Don't eat Korean food before a test. EVER.

As for the test itself, I'm pretty sure we didn't do as well as we might have--we were both nursing pretty hefty colds--but hopefully we did well enough.

Now it's time to track down my admission ticket for the Nov. 8 literature subject test. The end is in sight (as are more frequent blog posts, I promise)!

Foundation Day Excursion: Herb Island

A few Fridays ago was Foundation Day here in Korea--a national holiday celebrating the mythical foundation of Korea by the god-king Tan'gun in 2333 BC. This mythical foundation story is also part of the central creation story of Taejong-gyo, a particular breed of Korean shamanism, and the Foundation Day holiday is celebrated as a religious feast by those who still practice this ancient religion today.

But for most folks these days, Foundation Day is an excuse to get out of the city for a little while during one of the most pleasant seasons of the year. Our Foundation Day excursion brought us to Herb Island, about 40km northeast of town.

Herb Island
Herb Island defies description. In theory, it's a botanical garden devoted (you guessed it) to herbs, and that reason alone makes it one of the nicest-smelling spots within an hour's drive of Seoul. In reality--well, Nana described it best as a sprawling Cracker Barrel, in Engrish.

At first, the afternoon started out just about as normally as an afternoon can in Korea, in a little hilltop cafe, with an "herb pizza" (actually quite good) and a "beauty tea."
You'll have to tell me if it made me more beautiful.
After lunch, we perused one of the greenhouses and a few of the herb-themed shops. The Herb Bakery was a bit of a disappointment (for some reason, people here can't seem to make bread without sugar on top), and while the herb candy (below--the sign says "eucalyptus") was good, it was also ridiculously marked up.
From there, though, the afternoon took a nosedive into the weird. First, we stumbled upon this unexplained--nay, inexplicable--life-sized witch.
Then, we lost thirty minutes wandering through a labyrinth of country kitsch . . .
. . . which, for whatever reason, included an impressive collection of antique or antique-looking phones, scattered throughout the grounds.



Needless to say, most of these were for sale.

The weirdness escalated when we found, tucked away on a big deck at the back of the complex, a row of little pavilions with top-down, 3D dioramas built into the walls.
Bathtime, anyone?
Hands-down, though, the weirdest sight of the afternoon was this hanging blue Santa twisting, lifeless, in the wind. In front of a 15-foot man-made waterfall, of course.
Which even the statuary found a little perplexing.
"Oh, please."

We capped the day off, naturally enough, with Herb Island's mascot--a giant, anthropomorphic persimmon.
I never thought I'd see the day when a five-foot fruit was more shocked to see me than I it. Yes, that persimmon is covering its mouth in surprise.

Limited time only - Columbus????

I love me some Columbus, Ohio, but let's be honest: it's not exactly the sort of city people write songs about. This is why I was blown away last Friday at work to see that the BrainPop video on Christopher Columbus features the most over-the-top ironic salute to the hometown of yours truly, complete with a "hallelujah" sound-effect skyline and a trip to the Shoe.

Check it out at BrainPop.com!

BrainPop's a fee site but this one is free for now as a Columbus Day promotion.

And if anybody can explain "The Arch City" thing - I mean, you know about German Village but forgot that the arch is in St. Louis? Unclear.

GRE/ETS = STUPID

Prepare yourselves for the dumbest thing you've ever heard:

As I mentioned in a previous post, Nana and I are taking the GRE here in Korea. Now, if you've been following our blog, you know that just about everything we try to do in this country goes horribly, comically wrong. The GRE so far has been no exception: between our first round of admissions ticket snafus and our disastrous dry run (it took us 90 minutes to find the testing center after we got off the subway), it'll be a minor miracle if we even get to take the test at all.

To be fair, though, many of our continuing problems with the GRE have nothing to do with Korea--and everything to do with the combination of byzantine registration procedures and abysmal customer service at ETS, the company that administers the GRE. First of all, the GRE registration forms don't make it clear that your admissions ticket (the original copy of which is required for admission to the exam) will be sent to whatever you list as your permanent address. In other words, if you're an expat with legal residence back home, you're stuck--your admissions ticket is going to be mailed to the other side of the world, no matter where you're hoping to take the test.

ETS does, however, offer a version of the admissions ticket that can be printed online--but this ticket apparently doesn't work for the split-administration test. At least, I haven't been able to get it to work.

A few weeks ago, then, I decided to contact customer service at ETS to see if there was any way to have the tickets mailed to our current address in Korea. The result? After no fewer than six e-mail exchanges (I turned to e-mail after being put on hold for thirty minutes when I tried to call), four of which elicited the exact same ineffectual reply from ETS, the problem still isn't solved: our parents have had to mail us the admissions tickets, and we're left hoping desperately that they get here in time.

Honestly, the ETS responses to my questions read like some kind of Kafkaesque farce. One exchange even included the exact lines below:

Me: As suggested in a previous e-mail from ETS, I have tried accessing the online admissions ticket, but I can't get access to the site (http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket).

ETS: You can view and print your ticket at http://www.ets.org/gre/viewprintticket.

Then, these EXACT SAME SENTENCES were repeated in the following exchange. (No joke!)

Finally, then, in the sixth exchange, the ETS folks seem to have given up, telling me that I could print the e-mail they sent me and use it as my admissions ticket--even though when Paul (our hero) talked to the test center they categorically refused to honor anything but the original admissions ticket.

Long story short: our entire hopes for applying to US graduate schools for 2009 depend, not on our test scores, not on our GPAs, not on our recommendations, and not on our personal statements, but on the ability of the notoriously whimsical Korean postal service to get us our admissions tickets by October 25th.

Ugh.

Cross-Bloggular Pollination

On the right sidebar of the blog (you know, over there -->) you can see a link to our friend Rosa's candy review page. This summer, with the formidable help of my mother, I sent Rosa a package of Korean candy. (My mother's post-office skillz border on the legendary, something I'm counting on as I polish off this destined-to-fail-but-what-the-heck Fulbright scholarship application just shy of the deadline from 7,000 miles away).

But returning to the point: Rosa's blog is hilarious. From your regular convenience store candy to your gourmet treats, from gummi sushi to bacon chocolate, Rosa blogs it all with good humor and great pictures.

And now she blogs us, with the classically-Engrish titled "Crunch Ball Crispy Candy," a staple of Korean Kwik-E-Marts. Don't as me what they're like, because I haven't had them. I use Rosa for that. Stop by and see what she thinks!

Now if only I could send her that sketchy cafeteria lunch fish and see if that one's worth eating...

(Non-Korea Post) Congratulations!

We break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this not-so-breaking news:

1. My cousin Emily (her blog's in the sidebar at right) is expecting her first. Woohoo!
2. My cousin Chris is getting hitched today. Way to go, Chris & Candy!

(mush) To all of you reading, I wish we could be there to celebrate together in person. In the meantime, all our love. (/mush)

Xian - Last but not Least

I am completely exhausted and ravingly incoherent right now, which is too bad because the topic of this post deserves better. Still, it survived over 2,000 years underground; it ought to survive being in a mediocre blog post.

I am referring, of course, to the Terracotta Army of Shi Huangdi.


The Qin Emperor, Shi Huangdi, ordered these guys to be made for him around 210 BC. He had spent most of his life kicking butt across China and saw no reason to stop simply because he was dead.

It is very difficult to describe this site, especially at this hour. But here's a stab:

- Every soldier was handmade.
- Every soldier has a unique face.
- Every soldier is life-size.
- Every soldier was originally in full color.
- There are close to 8,000 soldiers.

You begin to see the magnitude of this army.

Don't believe me about the life-size bit? Check out this picture of me behind the most famous of the Terracotta Soldiers, the kneeling archer:


And this is the part that just kills me about China: this army was buried and then lost for about for two thousand years. An army - including enlisted men, officers, and cavalry, for goodness sake - of 8,000 figures, built by at minimum several hundred, simply poofed into the mists of time outside of one of the oldest cities in one of the most historically populous nations on the planet. And we're impressed that Walter Raleigh lost a colony on a continent?

I'm not sure what my point about China is here except that it's dang big and dang old. And dang responsible - it was rediscovered in 1974 by a group of peasants digging a well, and they promptly reported it up the chain of command. No pilfering, no looting, allowing this site to be explored and reconstructed by qualified archaeologists. These men are totally on my hero list. One of them was on the site the day we went there and would autograph a copy of a book on the warriors if you bought one. (Did I buy one, you ask? Do you know me at all?)

Nowhere near everything is excavated yet, and many parts that are excavated have not been reassembled. But just a glimpse at what is there is boggling.

Under the greenhouse-style roofs, in the main pits, for example. To put this in perspective, remember that each soldier is life-size. I suppose I'd estimate the main pits at two football fields long:


In close-up, you can see the individual poses and faces. Oh, and the individual hairstyles. Yeah. There's detail for you. (Also note that in the Chinese army, hairstyle denoted rank).



Here's a group of officers meeting in the command center. I will avoid all cheap shots about the lack of heads and simply say that they are either elsewhere being reassembled or did not survive.


Xi'an is out of the way, dusty, and hot as blazes, but when you're standing there looking down at these figures, you don't give a dang about anything else. These things are 2,200 years old. They were molded and shaped while Caesar was still a glint in his great-grandmother's eye. The craftsmanship goes down to individual armor scales and hair ribbons. You walk under those tents and see those faces and you half expect them to salute. And you're itching for the archaeologists - a team of around fifty, I believe, who work entirely at night while the site is closed - to get cracking on the rest of those buried figures so you can see them all, row after row of them, a dead emperor's army that still looks ready to take on the world.

Someday, I hope to get to Egypt to see the Pyramids, but until then - honestly, I'm satisfied with this.

Xian: The City

(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)

Finally--a chance to get back to our China backlog. We've still got one or two posts left after this one, so stay tuned!

Xian

Xian ("Western Peace") is one of the oldest cities in China. People have been living in the area since about 5000 BC (Wikipedia), and Xian, under the name Changan ("Perpetual Peace") served as the capital of the Zhou, Qin, Han, the Sui, and Tang dynasties. In the Middle Ages, Xian was best known as the eastern end of the Silk Road, which brought Middle Eastern cultural influences still prevalent in the city today.

Though modern-day Xian is frankly a bit of a dump, the long history and the rich culture earn its well-deserved billing as one of the top tourist stops in China. For history buffs, the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum is an asbolute must, if only for its incredible Silk Road collection, which features everything from Persian Zororastrian drinking horns to Byzantine jewelry to (yes) Scottish Tartan cloth.

The City Wall

Any tour of Xian begins with a tour of the City Wall, which was rebuilt by the Ming dynasty in the 14th century using the foundations of the old Tang dynasty palace, which dated from the first millenium A.D.


The wall has been completely restored in the last few years, and once again completely encircles the old city. The effect is oddly European: the low, choked, and touristy downtown flanked clusters of skyscrapers, where the real business of the city is done.

The City Wall itself, while certainly less a marvel than the Great Wall, is still worth a look--though you can probably opt for the tram tour.

Nana and I rented a tandem bicycle (for the ambiance) and nearly killed ourselves biking the whole 12km circumference of the old city in 98-degree heat. That's probably why she's tried to shoot me in the gut with a 15th-century cannon.
Kapow.

The Great Mosque

The Great Mosque of Xian dates from the Tang Dynasty and is one of China's biggest and most famous mosques. (Seriously--there was a scale model of it at the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur.)
It's not easy to find: you have to start at the Drum Tower (above)--which, along with the Bell Tower, represents the only useful reference point in downtown Xian--and wander back through the Muslim Quarter. Which, I might add, smells delicious.


Signs for the mosque are few and tiny, and at one point you have to walk down a dim alley no more than five feet wide.

But it's worth it: the Great Mosque encloses a stunning silent garden, with a unique architecture found almost nowhere else in the world. The style is Hui Chinese, which describes the culture of otherwise-Han-Chinese-like Chinese Muslims, and blends Middle Eastern planning and detail with Chinese architecture--for example, by substituting a pagoda for a minaret.


You can also find decorative Arabic throughout the grounds--and, of course, no representative art beyond the traditional floral arabesques.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Little Wild Goose Pagoda

Central Xian's two other big sites are the Wild Goose Pagodas, each located a few blocks south of the City Wall. Originally built to house Buddhist scriptures, today they're mostly used as pretty backdrops for wedding photos and viewing platforms for tourists vising town. (Locals have long since learned that you don't really want a good look at downtown Xian.)

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is the larger, newer, and better-preserved of the two. The pagoda and its surrounding temple sit in the center of a huge, tacky tourist village, which was deserted in the blistering afternoon heat.

Thankfully, the pagoda was closed to climbers. I don't trust myself to have learned the lesson of that 12-km City Wall bike ride: when it's this hot, try your best not to move an inch.Even without having climbed the pagoda, I felt like these candles. Ick.

We stopped by the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in the evening, when the weather was much better for a quick climb.
I'd show you the photos from the top, but they consisted mostly of smog and office blocks. I guess the whole pagoda thing was cooler when they were still the biggest show in town.