This past week, Monica and I have been a little under the weather. Originally, we thought we had caught a cold or something from the people on the flight over or the kids. We later learned that our symptoms were from something more sinister and harder to cure than just taking some Nyquil and Advil. Korea has just gotten on the “Go Green” bandwagon. As far as we can tell, all green means is sorting your garbage into a white or green bag depending on its organic qualities. That being said, there is a pre-existing pollution issue in and around the Seoul area similar to the smog in NYC. The worst of it comes from our happy neighbors to the North East, China. Due to massive deforestation and regulation free factories they have caused an air pollution crisis that effects the entire world, you may recall the issues of the 2008 summer Beijing olympics related to the air quality of China. During the windy season of Korea, which is right now, China’s pollution gets blown our way. The foreigners call it “Yellow Dust” which is pretty much what it is. The yellow dust is a sand storm created by deforestation mixed with air pollution. Monica was complaining about a constant runny nose, sore throat, and cough to her coworkers and they informed her that those are the symptoms from the pollution. This did answer one of our questions about Asian people, “why are they always wearing face masks?” Well, it’s not to imitate Michael Jackson. They sell a variety of different masks to safeguard against inhaling to much of the bad air. I was also hit with this pollution disease and I was left without a voice for 3 days. Most of my kids don’t understand me when I talk normally, and I’m pretty sure I made my 2 year old class cry with my raspy rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider. We are recovering now and getting used to the air, but until we do, we bought some sporty face masks to get us through the worst of it which has yet to come, we’ll show you pictures of the yellow sky when we get them.
We recently made some new friends and went into Seoul with them for a little R&R. We took a 20 minute taxi into the city, which beats a 45 minute subway ride, and arrived in Hyundai. This is a small area with a great nightlife and lots of restaurants, clubs, and bars. We found a pub and got some drinks and food. I never thought I would eat cheese fries with chopsticks. They also ordered a “Soju Cocktail” which is probably the most dangerous drink in the world. It was absolutely delicious, but combined with Soju’s ability to sneak up on you it could be disastrous in large quantities, we only got 1 pitcher for 8 people so we were safe. We got our groove on and found some good bars. Eventually we made it back to Ilsan and spent the rest of the night at BarBoom, which is where one of our friends works and got us VIP access. Our first night of Korean partying was a great success and we are looking forward to more in the future.
Since Catholicism was brought over by the missionaries it has slowly become the largest religion in Korea, followed by Buddhism. We all know the Jajova’s Witness and Mormon door to door peddling their religion. During our first weekend we were woken up by our doorbell at 8am. We have a security camera attached to our doorbell and I saw an old tiny Korean woman smiling at me. Thinking it might be the owner of the building or someone from the school I opened the door. They gibbered something in Korean, but I distinctly heard them say Jesus. Within the first week I had gotten the confused foreigner look down and I said “I don’t speak Korean, sorry,” and I went to close the door, but they were tricky. A younger woman who was there as well quickly responded with some broken English and told me about their church and that Jesus’ birthday was coming, and handed me a pamphlet, which was entirely in Korean. A few days later, Monica and I were walking through the subway when we walked through a crowd of well dressed business men with brief cases. They quickly surrounded us and we gave our best “I don’t understand look.” Once again they were tricky and one of them spoke some English. He said we looked very busy, but if we could wait a minute he would like to tell us all about an important man who came back to life and his name was Jesus. He handed us a pamphlet, which happened to be the same one I was given by the old lady, and the circle of business men parted and we hastily walked to the exit.
That's all our adventures this week. Thanks for reading and if you know how, please follow us on blogger.com so we know who is reading.
Miss you! Love, K and M
Oy vey!! love mom
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