Eating Dogs

One of the benefits of working in the public school system is the sense of camaraderie among the staff. We hadn't worked two full weeks when we were first invited out to dinner with my fellow fifth grade teachers.

Immediately after accepting the invitation my then co-teacher blindsided me with: "Do you like dog?"

I was aware that dog meat is consumed in this country. I have since learned that dog soup is commonly eaten by older men in the springtime to increase virility. I was told that kids do not like to eat dog meat, but after conducting an informal poll myself, I am conflicted.

I guess I just wasn't prepared to be asked "Do you like puppy meat?" this early in the game.

Caught unawares, my reply was a truthful, "I don't know. I have never tried it."

"I like dog," my increasingly creepy co-teacher informed me.

By the time we sat down in the traditional Korean BBQ restaurant with my co-teachers, I had worked myself into deciding that "When in Rome, do as the Romans" and eat slaughtered puppy brain. I wondered- Would it be a yellow lab puppy? Maybe something cuter?

We were served a plethora of raw meats which were fire grilled in front of us. There was a fatty bacon-like unsalted pork (the famous samgyupsal), beef ribs, shrimp (which they eat whole, heads, tails and all), sausages, and of course, the dreaded canine flesh.

The dog meat was sliced thin and looked pinkish with a brown piece of crispy fat. I ate it wrapped in lettuce with some rice and bean paste. It reminded me a little of smoked ham, but leaner and firmer in texture. I tried it with a sauce that I think was oyster sauce and brown sugar. It was delicious.

I enticed Sami to try some without letting her know what it was. After she swallowed I decide to really lay it on.

"Do you know what you just ate?" I asked with a sly smirk.

"You just ate Lassie."

"How does that make you feel?"

As her face turned white, I feel the urge to throw in one last insult.

"Woof! Woof!" I mock.

"No," my co-teacher interjected. "Not woof woof, quack quack!"

It seems that I had misinterpreted my co-teacher all along. In her Korean accent "dog" was actually "duck."

Twi-lizzle

This post is not really about Twilight. Sami made me promise not to comment on the series (which I refer to as the longest "Goosebumps" ever) and her obsession with it. But, I can't help myself. Here goes...

I can honestly say that I never really believed that we were coming to Korea until our plane landed. This mostly had to do with the fact that I was barely involved in the application process other than signing my name where I was told and answering a few questions over the phone from a thickly accented Korean man (something like: "Do you like kimchi?" and "When would you like to start?"). Throw in the fact that I was heading an understaffed, non-stop fundraising effort at MDA and preparing for our July wedding, and perhaps you can see why it didn't feel 100 percent real.

Reality hit when we were met by the thickly accented Korean man holding up a sign that mistakenly read: "Joe Hayden" (I guess when your wife does all the gruntwork, the least you can do is take her name right?).

After a 2 hour car ride through neoned Seoul we arrived at our towering 20 story high rise apartment and were welcomed by representatives from our schools. We found our apartment empty and spacious, and the air inside mimicked the air outside- dense and warm with a faint smell of sweet garbage.

Many words were passed back and forth in rapid Korean between thickly-accented man and school reps. To the uninitiated, Korean conversation does not carry a friendly or inviting tone. Our internal monologues pondered the alien situation playing out in front of us: Hopefully nothing is wrong and, Oh my God I am tired.

We stood by and smiled, looking happy to be there.

Eventually everything is resolved. Delivery men would bring furniture in a few days and someone will install a new key-pad lock on our door the next. The big piece of news is that we would not be teaching for an entire week. We need to be quarantined- this being the time of the swine-flu scare.

So here we are with no furniture, no friends, no tv, no internet, no phone, no ability to speak the language and no way for the two of us to explore outside- at least until the locksmith does his thing.

What we do have is books.

At the time, I am finishing up Roth's "American Pastoral" (one of my favorites for sure) and will be moving on to a book on the BTK Strangler in Wichita and one my dad got me that inspired the movie: 21: Bringing Down the House.

Sami has Twilight. All four of them. Which I think she has already read once or twice back in the U.S.

In the week that we were quarantined, I am pretty sure that she read through each of them another two times and has since plowed through seven or eight readings.

When the new movie came out, Twilight was everywhere. I read about a group of 40+ year old women who start some sort of Twilight cult and Conan O'Brien hilariously mocked the fad on the Tonight Show (anyone remember Cody the vampire/assistant?). This was too much, I had to find out firsthand what all the hullabaloo was about (that's right. I said hullabaloo).

I started to read the first book and when I put it down in (what felt like) an hour later I was on page 380. It read amazingly fast, which may explain why the kids like it so much and why my wife can bust through New Moon and Eclipse in a day. Yes, I thought it was cheesy and I did roll my eyes a few times (especially when what's her name gushes about Edward every other paragraph), but I kept reading. I was a little disappointed by the ending of the first book- kind of random and hard to follow, but that didn't stop me from starting the second.

I found the second better than the first especially now that Edward was gone (I was digging the whole Jacob story line and at the time declared myself "Team Jacob" which infuriated Sami who is staunchly "Team Edward." Hilariously, I came up with the idea for a "Team Mike Newton" t-shirt. Sami was not impressed). However, I could only get through 100 or so pages of the third book and have no plans to finish it or the fourth. I guess I just lost interest and I suppose Twilight wasn't intended for 27 year old dudes- only high-schoolers, 40 year-old cougars, and my wife.

Personal Space- At the Gym

The locker room of the fitness center we joined is tiny. There are 40 lockers crammed in an area that is 5 feet wide and 15 feet long. It is becoming increasingly difficult to turn around while changing and avoid brushing against someone's peen.

Protocol for entering the fitness center is to grab one of the communal uniforms from the shelf on the left (green/blue polyester shirt, XXL shorts which almost reach mid-thigh), and turn to the right to hand your ID card to the employee.

In exchange of your card, the employee will hand you 2 small towels that are about the size of a tissue (the idea is that one is for drying yourself out of the shower and the other to be used during your workout, but this isn't nearly enough towel for the way I sweat so I double up on shower tissue towel and use improvised sweat mopping techniques during the workout) as well as a key that corresponds with one of the 40 lockers.

I never fail to receive a key to the locker that is either a)sandwiched between 2 old naked dudes or b)right next to the curtain that separates the locker room from the main workout area.

The problem is that if you receive the key to the locker that is located next to the curtain, it is inevitable that the next person will come ripping into the pint-sized locker room at the exact moment your pants and underwear are at your ankles, leaving your peen exposed to old women riding the stationary bike a mere medicine ball heave away.

What a Country!

I read the article in the link above earlier today and it really got me thinking about all of the crazy things that have occured in the U.S. since we have been gone. The Letterman scandal happened during our first couple of days here and at the time, I couldn't get enough of it. It just seems like a fascination with scandals/gossip/weird news and what-have-you's is what bonds me with my friends- that and sports I guess.

A quick rundown of news I have followed from afar the last 6 months:

Mark Sanford hiking the Appalachian Trail
John Edwards' love child
Balloon Boy
Letterman's affair/attempted extortion
Kanye West and Taylor Swift (seems silly now, but at the time it wouldn't die)
Steve Phillips and his frumpy mistress
Tiger Woods' Thanksgiving Night
Tiger Woods' infidelity
Late Night Wars
Brittany Murphy dies and her husband and mom seem really creepy about it
Gilbert Arenas
Tiger Woods' weird apology press conference
The slew of UO football trouble

I guess the point is that no matter how far away from the U.S. you are, you always take it with you. I can't really imagine these happenings being real "stories" anywhere other than in the U.S.

There are only 2 instances when I can recall my Korean co-workers commenting on celebrity happenings in their country and that was when one of their movie stars' sons died of swine flu and, of course, Kim Yu-Na in the Olympics.

They do keep up on the U.S. news though. Can you imagine how difficult it was for me to attempt to explain Balloon Boy to them?

Today's Lunch- Nakji Bokkeum (spicy stir-fried baby octopus)

This is by far one of the more spicier foods I have tried here. So hot in fact, that it makes my nose drip continuosly. This creates a bit of an awkward situation because blowing your nose at the table is considered rude in this culture- at least more so than you and I are accustomed to. So I have learned to dab. No big deal.

Anyway Nakji Bokkeum is served family-style and cooked in a shallow cast iron wok over a gas burner at your table. The way to eat it is by creating a double lettuce wrap (one leaf and one piece of kim, or dired seaweed paper) filled with a bit-sized piece of the octopus, rice, onion, bean sprouts and kimchi. Eat it all in one bite. After all of the octupus is eaten they add thin noodles to the leftover sauce and cook those up. Delish.

Delicious spicy, chewy, squishy baby octopus that makes your eyes water and snot run down the front of your mouth.

Survivor

This is an attempt to document our time in South Korea (I say our because I am including my wife Sami in this, she being the one who came up with the crazy idea to teach here), with the idea being that I won't be able to remember much of this experience without writing it all down on (digital) paper.

This is something I wanted to do six months ago when we first arrived. But, not unlike the pile of laundry perpetually piled on my desk, I never got around to it.

So instead of starting by spouting off some of our more memorable experiences and travels thusfar, I am going to talk about Survivor.

Actually, when we first moved here we didn't have internet or tv for a week or so and it was a huge strain. It was bad enough feeling powerless outside, but to suddenly be without any distraction (and I say that in a good way meaning HD, Comcast with HBO, DVR, Tiger Woods PGA Tour on PS3- at that time he was still immortal-, cellphone etc.) inside was a nightmare. We had to go to a PC Bang (room) to e-mail our families and we were scared shitless not knowing how much anything would cost.

A few weeks in, out of desperation, I opened the sliding glass window to our apartment (we are on the second floor of a 20 story high-rise) and found a coaxial cable zip-tied to the side of our builing. I grabbed a tiny pair of scissors, cut the zip-ties and plugged the cable into the wall next to the tv. Miraculously the tv turned on to ESPN news. Yes, it was a simple act, and one I probably should have figured out much sooner, but I immediately felt like Tom Hanks in "Castaway" where he jumps around beating his chest shouting "Look at what I have created! FIRE!"

Later, we would discover that we only had one channel in English- Armed Forces Network, and they show a mish-mash of American shows. It is fantastic. And.....they just happen to show Survivor.

I don't really remember how Sami and I started watching Survivor, but it is one of the few shows that she actually watches. I on the other hand, am an addict and Mad Men, The Wire, Curb, Conan (that will be another post for sure), The Office (lately Parks and Recreation has been on AFN which is awesome) are my drugs of choice.

Now that I think about it, I am pretty sure that we watched Big Brother first and got into it and then Sami moved to Survivor and I swore I wouldn't watch it because I have some weird thing where if she suggests something is good then I think it must be lame, but eventually I got roped. It was way better with my sweet 42" plasma, but still...

So. Enough backstory. I love Russel. At least I did last season, but now it makes me a little angry that he seems to be smitten with Parvarti. I hope it is an act. Still Rusell is my fave. Second is Coach, a fact which causes Sami all sorts of grief. I just think he is good tv. I also like Jerri for some strange reason, I think it is because she just seems like a real person, and Boston Rob. I think I just like Boston Rob's voice.

"I miss Am-buh."

No one on the Heroes tribe interests me. I do think Tom is a good guy, but since he won everything in Palau, I kind of want to see him struggle real bad.