Episode 41: In Which DFM Get's Dong-shimed, And Sees A Man Climbing A Building

On Thursday I thought I'd try to get a few last pictures in with the children before I have to say good-bye. While technically my last day is this upcoming Tuesday, I wasn't sure if there'd be time to take any pictures after today, since there is apparently a singing "festival" planned (everything's a festival at this school). So, without further ado, let's see how some of the Korean Cop regulars are doing, and also some new faces.

(MandDFM once told me that he's never seen kids look more happy to be at school than the kids at this one. I'm inclined to agree.)

(Poor Denny has his "V" the wrong way. I hope he hasn't unwittingly given me a rude gesture.)

(Daisy: always in good spirits.)

(Here's Yu-jeong and Ji-hee, from Monday. Thanks to the new reflective strips on the PE uniforms, if there's ever a car driving around inside the school these two will be okay.)

(A new student, Yu-jin - pronounced Eugene. Sweet girl, but she may want to change that name if she comes to Canada.)

(Min-seo, on the left, and Ji-hee again.)

(I used to wonder why the teachers were constantly tucking all the kids' shirts in... now I know. Thomas, how are you ever going to be able to work 12 hours a day for a top Korean company looking like that? Solid "V" though. You should go teach Denny how it's done.)

(So-yoon: A wolf in sheep's clothing if I ever saw one. She looks sweet enough, but if you turn your back for a second she'll try to "dong-shim" you with her head! She also once pulled my ear so hard she tore it open.)

(As dangerous to my personal safety as she may be, So-yoon sure is a great drawer, and she's super smart. Take a closer look at this picture - by clicking on it - and consider that she's only five years old. The princess is even winking!)

(Speaking of smart five year olds, here's Se-eun showing off her colouring. While it may not seem like much, she managed to write "kick" all by herself. I've known five year olds in Canada who can't write their own names.)

(Balance Boy is looking a little blurry, but happy as ever - I turned the flash off, so the image stabilizer on my camera had to work overtime under the dim fluorescent lights.)

(Seo-hyeun and Deborah working on a birthday card for Sticker Girl. Deborah isn't a made up "English name." Her parents were following a recent trend of legally giving their Korean child an English name to give her an "advantage." Supposedly top Korean companies will be more likely to hire her when she's older now, because they will think she can speak English more fluently than another applicant with a Korean name.)

(You thought I'd forgotten about Louis, hadn't you? Nope, he's still just as fond of getting his picture taken as ever, whether I'm trying to take a picture of him or not. Here he popped his head in front of my camera just as I was about to take a picture of the other children singing.)

(Time to say good bye. While I'm still anxiously awaiting my destiny to reveal itself, at least I don't have to wait for my mom any more like Se-eun.)

* * * * *

After school, Elise and I went to Myeong-dong. Myeung-dong is billed as a tourist point of interest, but I never had much interest to visit there before now. I wish I had. On this day Elise had to buy some shoes there, but I decided to tag along because I wanted to find a special t-shirt.

When I first planned to come to Seoul, I expected a modern city full of bright lights and shiny looking apartment buildings (something like what I imagine Tokyo to be). However, as I've mentioned periodically in the past, Seoul is just a collection of grey buildings built in the '60s (the decade where architecture goes to die). Myeong-dong is the small pocket of "modern Seoul" I thought I'd be surrounded by before I came here.

Myeong-dong is essentially a large shopping district. It has some of the most expensive rent prices in the world, and so essentially the only stores you see here are popular brand name stores.

One of advantage of only having expensive name brand stores here is interesting architecture. The most impressive store I found (although I'm sure others existed) was the Adidas Store. At night, this black store, with windows that look white from the interior lighting, stands out rather impressively. On the front of the store is a giant video screen about 10 metres tall that runs Adidas ads.

While I didn't get a picture of the Adidas Store, I ran across quite a site that I did manage to capture. Below, you can see The North Face store.

(Seems harmless enough until you see that, woah, there's a giant man climbing on the side of the building!)

(Take an even closer look and you'll that he's actually part of a fairly clever advertisement.)

As I mentioned earlier though, I didn't just come here to look at buildings. I really came to find a BANC store. I wrote in another post that I found one of these elusive stores in Hongdae, but when I went there last week to meet Scarlett it had closed. The search is over now though, as Elise finally helped me find a location still open.

(Look at the tiny sign, dwarfed by the sign for the store above it. Even when you find the store they want to try and hide it from you, which is probably why the stores are going out of business.)

BANC is a Korean clothing brand that caught my notice some time ago when I saw Seong-mok's friend Woojin wearing a t-shirt with an interesting looking Lego man type character on the front (Seong-mok, as I've recently been informed, is the actual name of the man I've been calling Seong-bok all this time). This is BANC's trademark, and they refer to him as a "block man." Typically the character will be a funny, original design, like a hipster character or a basketball player, but my favourite shirts are those that feature more famous block-men designs.

(Plagarism in Korea is rampant, so I wouldn't be surprised if BANC had not purchased the rights to the images of these characters.)

In case your wondering, yes I did buy two, usually overpriced shirts, but there was a large sale on and I ended up essentially getting both of them for less than the price of one normal shirt. DFM scores again.

Episode 18: In Which DFM Tap Dances On Korean Television, And Almost Gets Hit By A Car While Walking On The Sidewalk (Again!)

Last week I mentioned I was planning on meeting Hyeun A this weekend, but she was too busy, so I changed plans and asked out Kyu-rhang - a friend I met at Summit Climbing Centre during my last visit.

We decided to meet at Hongik University. In the past I've always heard this area referred to as Hongdae, but never knew why. It has only been recently that I've made the obvious connection that Hongik University's Korean name is "Hong-dae-ip-gu."

When I went to the designated meeting spot I found that every Korean in the area seemed to have chosen this point for meeting a friend as well. Since I couldn't actually remember exactly what Kyu-rhang looked like, I decided to walk around and try to look as "foreign" as possible. My planned worked, as it did not take but a few seconds before Kyu-rhang tapped my shoulder.

Kyu-rhang asked me where I wanted to eat. I had been thinking about this on my way over, and I figured that Hongik University (an area noted for its many foreigners, dance clubs and University students) would not likely have a plethora of traditional Korean restaurants. I noticed a Quizno's down one side street and thought it would be neat to compare how a Koreanized toasted submarine sandwich with the Canadian version.

To keep my experiment as scientific as possible I ordered the same size of Mesquite Chicken toasted sub I usually order in Canada. I'm happy to say that the ingredients looked more or less the same, and despite my worst fears there was no coleslaw in the sandwich (unlike my burrito with Hyeun-A). That said, the chicken was not as thick or seasoned as the chicken used in Canada, and the bun was made with a different kind of bread and was a little dry.

After lunch, Kyu-rhang and I went for a walk. During my last stay I noticed that my friend Woojin would sometimes wear a shirt that featured a Lego man on the front. I figured it was something he had picked up when he studied English in England. However, since then I have seen many other Koreans wearing similar shirts. When I researched the brand BANC, I found out it was actually a Korean clothing brand. On this walk I told Kyu-rhang about how I really wanted to save up my money and buy a bunch of the shirts with different designs, but that I could never find a BANC clothing store. She had just finished telling me that she had never heard of this brand (ironically most of my Korean friends have never heard about this brand), when we walked right past a BANC clothing store. I couldn't see any of the prices on the clothes through the window, but the staff person looked snobbish and disinterested, so I can only imagine that the shirts are overpriced. I'm not concerned about that though, as I've already started a secret stash of money consisting of any budget surplus I can produce each week, and before I go back to Canada I'm going to buy out the store.

We continued to walk around Hongdae some more, until we came across an old man and two women tap dancing. I mentioned to Kyu-rhang that I liked tap dancing and that one day I wanted to try it. At that moment, a man with a video camera who seemed directly involved with the show asked me if I wanted to come up on stage and try to tap dance with the man. Being a good sport, I said I'd give it a try.

The instructor showed me a few basic steps, and after a couple of minutes of dancing while I was video taped, the instructor said I was a good dancer and the cameraman/director interviewed me. He told me that the instructor was 70 years old, and wanted to know what I felt about a 70 year old man tap dancing. I told him what I had told Kyu-rhang: that in Canada people who are 70 do not do many active things, and that seeing this man dancing gave me hope that when I am 70 I can enjoy my life like him too. The director seemed pleased with my response, but I think he was just more happy to have captured "foreigner dancing with Korean grandpa" on tape than anything. Kyu-rhang later told me that the dancing was part of a special television show for Chuseok (a Korean national holiday in which families get together to honour deceased relatives).

After my dancing, we went for some more walking. However, it wasn't long before some crazy driver in a van tried to drive up and park on the sidewalk, almost trapping us between a building and the side of the van in the process. This is the second time I've seen a car driving on the sidewalk, and I figured that it was a sign that it was time to leave.