Foreign Ugliness Nearly Scares Toddler to DEATH

On Sunday I was walking through a store and I saw a little two- or three-year-old girl. She was at a coffee shop in the store, and hanging on to a low-backed bench, looking out the back. As I often do with little kids, I made a funny face. All I did was widen my eyes. This startled her enough, somehow, to lose her balance, fall backwards onto the seat of the bench, then start to slide head-first, on her back, toward the floor. Luckily, her father was close enough and alert enough (although he'd had his back turned on her before, naughty, naughty) to grab her and flip her back to upright. I guess I should check the balance and stability of toddlers before I look at them around here anymore.

Amethyst Caves

After the wedding last weekend, Heather took Leon and I to the Amethyst Caves, which weren't too far from the wedding hall.

This is the outside of the caves, with waterfall. They turned the whole place into a small amusement park, which you can kind of tell from the picture:


Here are the mountains nearby the caves:



The carousel and the base of the mountains. It was pretty cloudy and foggy back there:

This is inside the caves:

This appears to be a tree growing within the rocks, but I'm not sure if it's real or artificial:

The caves had all sorts of lame science shit, like this evolution of man exhibit:

Apparently man evolves into a cell phone-toting advanced primate:


Here's another exhibit showing Korean miners. It's freaky:

A group of people on the boat tour, which we also took later:


Amethyst, I assume:

Amethyst scattered within the walls:

There was an Egyptian exhibit for some reason. It was so lame I didn't even bother taking pictures of it, except for this mummy:

There was a circus inside the caves for some reason. Here are some shots and videos of the teenaged gymnasts from China:

Here's a video of our boat tour (yes, the boat was spinning around in a circle a couple times):

The whole thing was kind of boring, but it was still nice to see. It's funny, when Heather pulled over and asked some old guy for directions, he kept saying to her, what do you want to go there for? There's nothing to see. He was sort of right, but the boat ride was cool.

Oh, yeah, and because we were going there right after the wedding, I had a chance to feel very Korean. I had worn high heels to the wedding, of course, and then went trekking around caves and rode an inflatable boat, which I thought I was going to pop. Wearing heels totally inappropriately is the sign of a real Korean woman.

A Korean Wedding

Last weekend I went to a Korean wedding. Kristen, one of the teachers at my school, was getting married. Now she has to move to Seoul where her husband's job has been transfered and become a housewife. She's not too keen on that.


The wedding was largely like a Western wedding, with a few obvious differences. The first thing I noticed was that people didn't bring gifts. I brought a gift, which was a surprise to Kristen, but everyone else was dropping off envelopes with money at the sign-in desk. Just like in the Godfather, but with no pillow cases. There was also no guest book to sign, and seemingly no souvenirs at all for the bride and groom, save the clothes and the rings.

My favorite difference was that Kristen entered the wedding hall to the Star Wars Theme. I got really excited for a second, but they only played about 30 seconds of it, so I couldn't get my video camera out in time to prove it was really happening.



There were also these sword chicks involved with the ceremony. They were dressed in little red uniforms and the bride and groom walked under their swords. Heather says that's not traditional--it's just the way this wedding hall operates. Usually the swords are part of military weddings.


The whole atmosphere was much less solemn and serious than at Western weddings. It was actually treated more like a show than a ceremony. There was actually an emcee at the front of the room, announcing over the speakers what was going on through every step of the wedding (I assume that's what he was saying, anyway). The guests were pretty casual, too. Although everyone was dressed to the nines, not all of them chose to sit down, but instead stood up at the back of the room and talked the whole time. I felt the steady din was quite rude, but I guess that's what they do here.


After they were married, there was a quiz, which I thought was pretty cool. Wasn't there some newlywed gameshow that tested couples' knowledge of each other? Maybe that's where they got the idea. They had big cards with answers gotten prior to the wedding, and they had to answer the questions. Actually, I think it may have been only Kristen who had to answer the questions. I don't recall ever hearing her husband speak. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention...

Here is the wedding hall with the groom at the front, talking to one of the sword chicks:

These flower towers are an obligatory fixture at Korean weddings and other events. I see them all the time:

Here is Leon and I with Kristen before the ceremony. I read about a Korean superstition that if a bride smiles at the wedding, the first child is supposed to be a girl. I was curious to see if she put any stock in it, but I guess not.

Here are Kristen, some kid, and her primper:

This is the beginning of the ceremony, when the sword chicks escort the mothers to the altar to light candles:

The bride's procession with her father:

This is when the bride and groom first meet and bow to each other:





These are from the ring ceremony:

I took this from the back row, so my focus is off from the zooming, but here are Kristen and her husband after they were pronounced married:

Here is the cake cutting ceremony. I don't know what happens to the cake, because we sure as hell didn't get to eat it. Heather said only the top part of the cake is real. I did notice that some people were tipping the table at a 45 degree angle with the cake still on it before the ceremony began.

Here they are walking back up the aisle after everything was over, and that was the last we saw of them.

Korean weddings don't have a reception like ours do. They generally include a buffet for the guests, but the bride and groom leave for their honeymoon, or for home, immediately after the wedding. The wedding hall had a restaurant a floor above, where the buffet was served. Some people ate, some people went home. The only traditionally required food at a wedding, I've read, is noodle soup. There is a saying which goes, "When are we going to eat noodles?" It's a way of asking when someone is going to get married.

I think it's ironic that there's no reception after, and the whole ceremony seemed kind of isolated, with people just talking amongst themselves and not necessarily paying attention to the wedding. It seems antithetical to the whole community/family-oriented culture.

Ppaeppaero Day

November 11th is an unofficial holiday for children and couples, as I found out yesterday. It's kind of like Valentine's Day. Apparently, 11/11 reminds them of a bunch of sticks, so not too many years ago, it became popular to give chocolate-covered wafer or pretzel sticks, called Ppaeppaero to friends, relatives, and teachers. (My romanization is based on the standard that I always use, but I've been seeing it online as Pepero.)

The inception of this pseudoholiday is somewhat apocryphal, but the general consensus seems to be that a company called Lotte, which is a major Korean producer of everything imaginable, including chocolate sticks, made up the holiday for capital gain. I did read one story that suggested that some schoolgirls in Busan started the tradition in 1994 because they wanted to grow as tall and slender as the Ppaeppaero, but it seems unlikely that the practice would spread so effectively from that beginning.

So today, my students gave me three boxes of original Lotte Ppaeppaero, one box of chocolate-coffee-latte (or something, I forget 'cause I ate 'em all) Ppaeppaero, and five or six large chocolate pretzel sticks. I don't like the big ones so much, because a chocolate-covered pretzel isn't very good unless it has salt on it. Damn them for not realizing that.


Here are a couple pictures of the Engrish on the pretzel wrappers:

This is a box of the original Ppaeppaero. You can see the name in Hangeul here:

On the Lotte box, it says "Since 1983," so I asked the kids and one of the Korean teachers if that referred to Lotte or to the holiday, and she said it was Lotte, so the holiday is definitely less than 25 years old.

Some of the boxes even have little cards built into the back so you can write messages. Here's a message from Kate:

Here's another message written directly on the bag (which is inside the box):

It's funny, I think I got the bags without the boxes because some of the boxes have the same kind of contests our candies have. Lotte owns cinemas, and if you find a ticket in your box, you can use it for a free movie at Lotte Cinema. So I think they checked before giving me the candy, haha. Wesley told me about that. Such a nice boy.

I was thinking about why this got so popular on the way home tonight, and I decided that Koreans have all these extra fun candy and present days (White Day, Children's Day, etc.), because life sucks so much here, what with 12-15 hours of homework or work six days a week for most people. Kids and young people have these holidays, and adults have binge drinking every night. It seems to work well for them.