Man Eating Fish

A Pedicure Pic

In a recent comment, I was asked if the Seoul trip involved naked women doing pagan rites by the light of the full moon. I know it will disappoint many of you, but, alas, there was no pagan moon dancing. This does not mean that we had a boring trip though. We still managed to have a great time by substituting man-eating-fish for the pagan rites. 

For two thousand won and the price of a cup of coffee, people can visit Dr. Fishy. Dr. Fishy is the generic term for man-eating-carp. One might wonder how something as unusual as man eating carp might have a generic name, but in Korea, the unusual is the familiar. The carp are baby carp with no teeth. The tiny fish are trained to nibble the dead skin off people's feet. Fortunately, living skin is too tough for the fish to penetrate. 

As a lover of pedicures, I could not pass up the chance to have a one on one meeting with the Dr. Fish.  Apparently others thought it was a great idea too. We dragged a French man and an Australian woman from the hostel along with us to the Restree Cafe. It was a great experience, although it should probably come with a warning for the ticklish. 

With our feet only slightly gnawed, we decided to walk to the Seoul Tower. We took the cable car up the mountain, and enjoyed the beautiful view of the full moon. There were swarms of people on the mountain, enjoying Chuseok as families and lovers. While my family and many friends are far away, on the Korean Thanksgiving day, I was thankful to have made two good friends right here in Korea. 

The Harvest Moon

Jen, Elizabeth, Linsey, Me

I've always been fascinated by lunar cycles and ancient lunar religions, so you can imagine my happiness when I discovered that Korea has not one, but two holidays devoted to the moon. While the Lunar New Year has more world wide renowned, Chuseok, the harvest moon celebration, is by far the largest national holiday in Korea. The harvest moon falls on the eighth full moon of the calendar year (usually in October), and is celebrated both the day before the moon and the day after. 

The Friday before Chuseok, we had a celebration at our school. We wore the traditional style Korean clothing called Hanboks, and we played traditional games like Jigachagi (the Korean version of hackysack). The best part of the day was seeing the kids in their hanboks. Each one of them looked absolutely gorgeous (sadly, my camera was MIA for the day, and I'm still waiting for my coworkers to send me the pictures). I felt like a proud mother showing off her own kids when we went to the park to play the games.

The rest of the holiday I spent in Seoul (the capital city of Korea) with my new friends Jen and Elizabeth. We had a great time, and they proved wonderful travel partners (who happen to be exceptionally slow at sending pictures).

To Be Continued.....

(awaiting photographs)

Stranger than Sci Fi

Alex's son and a worm- before he tore it in two.

Sangnamdong a few hours before neon.

When I learned that I would be an alien from the future (thank you Dad for the title), I had no idea that I would really step into a science fiction novel. In Sangnamdong, the neighborhood where I live, there are buildings called officetells. The businesses are randomly  interspersed throughout many stories, and on the other floors there are apartments. You have to constantly look up to see the signs for restaurants and shops. Underground, the basements are a web of bars, and convenience stores. At night, the place looks like the epitome of overcrowded-neon-glowing-sci-fi-land. The only thing missing is the hover crafts that get you directly to the tenth floor norabong (karaoke). 

In Korea, it is impolite to use the given name of someone older than you. So women call older women une (older sister) and older men opa (older brother). It's as if the society grew knowing that no sci-fi world would be complete without a big brother. There are cameras everywhere. The classrooms have cameras, the convenience stores, elevators, and hallways. Korea has special traffic cameras that monitor you when you go through red lights, and through bridges. They watch people on the street, and you can tell someone is watching, because if you're parked illegally too long the rotating cameras start to fix on you and stare. Big brother really is always watching.

When we went fishing today, I thought it would be a brief reprieve from the sci-fi scare, but things only got scarier. I was confused as to why Alex (the woman who took us fishing) was afraid of the worms. Some women are squeamish, so I did the natural thing and chased her around with a worm. All was going well, until her husband told me I was putting the worm on the hook incorrectly. Unbeknownst to my backward thinking Western ways, it seems worms have mouths here. Not only do they have mouths, but they also have teeth- and bite. Ignorance really is bliss, because afterwards I was not nearly as confident handling the spineless creatures as I shoved hooks down their mouths.  I'm still waiting for the mutated ones (I know they're out there. I am entrenched in science fiction land, after all) to come and eat me in my sleep.