Colored lights, bubbles, and a plastic cake: A Korean Wedding Story.

This weekend I finally got the opportunity to attend a modern Korean wedding. Although I was told many times this year by co-teachers and other Korean natives that this celebration pales in comparison to a traditional Korean wedding, I was still really curious to see what it would be like.

Thanks to my friend, Christy, who invited me to a wedding a teacher at her school was having, my curiousity was definitely satisfied, although this event has left me in a slight state of confusion and shock.

We arrived at the hotel where the wedding and reception were to take place. The first thing we were prompted to do was meet the bride. We turned the corner down a crowded hallway to see this tiny yet utterly lavished room designed specifically for the bride to sit and have photos taken with visiting guests. She looked like a Korean princess who just happened to have been placed in the middle of all the chaos: people running around, bringing in flowers, exchanging envelopes, getting meal tickets. We [awkwardly] snapped a couple of photos with her and waited for the wedding to start.

When I walked into the venue where the ceremony would take place, I was pretty amazed. Music bumping, people chatting, and the officiator was getting ready at the front, atop a huge platform-esque pulpit. Not to mention an adorable photo slideshow of the couple and the moving-and-color-changing rainbow lights, which added a certain Korea-ness that is wholly unique. Finally, the main feature-- the aisle-- which looked more like a model runway than anything I've ever seen at a wedding in the States. Lined by lights and raised about 6 inches off the ground, I suddenly became really excited for the wedding to begin. Fashion show! Fashion show!... I mean... wedding?

When the wedding party (no brides and groomsmen at this wedding) came out, there was one person designated to be the official 'toucher-upper' of hair, jackets, and the bride's dress, of course. This upped her 'princess' status quite a bit in my eyes.

For all the pomp, there didn't seem to be much reciprocation from the audience... I mean, er... the guests. Korean culture, even after living here for almost a year, still shocks me quite a bit. During the ceremony, there were full-fledged discussions being held by those in attendance. People answered their phones. And once the officiator began talking, many people (including our small group) left the ceremony room in favor of going somewhere else to sit down and wait until the next portion.

Um.... what?

Usually when I observe another culture, it's just that: an observation. As in, from far away, where I can feel removed from the scenario. Today tested my cultural competency in a way it's not usually tested because I was a true part of the schenenagains going on. And as much as Chsirty and I giggled to one another and wondered what the heck was going on, we also tried to keep a poker face about it and pretend that leaving a wedding ceremony in the middle because it got 'boring' is perfectly normal.

We were beckoned back to the service by the alluring sound of this man's voice as he sang to the newlyweds about getting married:

And later, after cutting the cake (which seemed to be only symbolic; not only did we not eat wedding cake at the wedding, but the bottom two layers of the 'cake' were actually plastic!), bowing to the parents and offering a 'thanks' to all the guests, the bride and groom proceeded back down the aisle as husband and wife. Their first challenge as a married couple: making it through the haze of bubbles, fake snow, and fire-crackers aimed at their faces... and coming out alive.

The final blow to rock all my paradigms about marriage ceremonies was that in Korea there is no dancing at the reception. None at all. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Congratulations to the lovely young couple! It was a beautiful wedding, and it definitely shook up my world a little. All in all, I do love Korea, but I'm glad that getting married here isn't in the cards for me. Some cultural ideas we just can't give up.

Winter Camp is a lot like the zoo: it's full of monkeys.

In Korea, work is abundant, no matter your age. Even during vacation, when public schools are closed, students are sent to winter camps to practice English. It goes without saying, then, that winter camp season is almost essential to native English teachers like me. For me, this is a month-long experience in January a chance to work in smaller groups of students and use more creativity in my lessons.

For the students, it's a chance to go wild, put stickers all over my hands, and ask me questions until we're both blue in the face. But at least they're using English a good percent of the time the chaos is happening, so it all comes out in the wash.

At the beginning of the week, all of my students looked something like this:

So it was a little difficult to communicate.

But we took some time to get to know each other, and now we can have conversations between classes. Questions from my students at camp usually revolve around these topics:

1. Where does Laura Teacher live? (I never give a direct answer since I live so close to my school)
2. Does Laura Teacher have a boyfriend? (every student wants to know this from their foreign teachers)
3. Is Laura Teacher French? (surprisingly this one gets asked a lot)
4. What is Laura Teacher's phone number (this one is, for obvious reasons, also a secret)
5. What is my name? (students love to ask teachers this... I'm beginning to realize how bad I am with placing names to faces!)

The most popular one today was, "Laura Teacher, how old are you?" Due to my young age, I decided to keep this one under wraps as well, and now tell students I'm anywhere between 65 and 103. Today I chose age 78, and it sparked an interesting discussion:

Again, at least they're using English. Even if I'm a grandmother.

By the end of the week, I found some harmony when I decided to teach my students a Beatles song. Multimedia is an excellent way to engage students, and the song choice turned out to be perfect, even for low-level students.

All the same, I'm planning on bringing bananas next week for those monkeys. I don't want them to turn on me.

The Little Mermaid and an International Fireworks Festival.

Ever since I began researching life in Korea (about a year ago), I knew I wanted to be a part of the annual International Fireworks Festival in Busan. How lucky was I that this year I got the chance to dive into the chaos of a human wall, eat chicken on the beach, and experience the best fireworks display I have ever seen at this festival.

Currently, I write this entry from the comfort of my bed, where I have been all day. I like to think of this weekend as one really long day, because I had to spend all of Sunday sleeping and eating pizza to recover.

The day started early with a bus ride out of Ulsan. The train into Busan is supposedly prettier (and less insane than the public bus) but keep in mind that there were about 2 million people filtering into Busan that day to watch the fireworks, so everything we did this weekend was kind of the long way. After our bus ride, the subway was the next stop. The fireworks show was at Gwangli Beach, but we decided to spend a portion of the afternoon in Haeundae first; this beach has a warm place in our hearts from last month when we visited there on vacation.

Hello, carnival games, Fuzzy Navel burritos, and the chilled October tide.


I'll be honest, from here on out things got a little harried. We started walking towards the beach with the assumption that we could catch a taxi at any point. Wrong. Because of all the chaos, virtually every taxi was in use. We searched for an alternate route to the festival for about 30 minutes before (luckily) catching a cab and heading towards Gwangli.

The festival itself was incredible. Here's what the Koreans have on us Westerners:

1. The organization was astounding and very well thought-out. The beach was mapped out so that an aisle of space was clear for people to enter and exit. And when the beach got too full (because it really really did), volunteers stamped our hands so we could enter and exit the beach.

By this point, the only thing keeping people from entering the beach was a human wall of police officers. I have never stood behind a human chain of government officials, let alone been allowed to pass through a wall of them! It felt pretty amazing.


2. Nobody left trash on the beach. And for 2-3 million people, that's miraculous. Could it have been the trash bags they gave us for free to use? I think so. But all things considered, this feat is pretty unheard of. Maybe the US government should start spending public funds on trash bags and less on the oil-using machines it takes to clean up loose garbage.

Oh wait. This is not a political blog. My bad.

3. Instead of selling french fries or cotton candy, vendors sold kim bap, rice cakes, and brightly-colored fuzzy blankets. Again, it's always healthier to be in Korea.

4. There are no open-container laws in Korea. Just sayin'.


5. Lastly, the fireworks themselves. There's not really too much to say; I don't know if any words I use could possibly describe the beauty of this show. Because this was an international display, the music timed with the show was from around the world. In the 50 minute display, there was a section of 3-4 songs from the US. By far, this one got us the most excited:



Singing 'Under the Sea' in a crowd of Koreans was almost too much fun... especially when I realized just how few of us there actually were who could sing along.

It's interesting to identify so wholly with something, like a song, and feel like nobody relates. The Little Mermaid is a defining part of my childhood (uh... Halloween costume circa 1992!), and I was in such a daze of ecstasy that I was shocked to see strangers staring curiously at me. I may be over-simplifying, but it's a prime example of how I see my life: your home is inside of you. It's unique to you. And you can be in a crowd of strangers and still be at home. But you may never understand what home is to someone else, and just how much it means to them. Even if they're 8 inches away, screaming in your ear.


I won't go into too much detail about the rest of our night, because it involved staying out until the sun rose, sleeping in a doorway, and getting soaked to the bone. I just try to remember that anything can happen here, and it usually does.

What great stories you can have when you take the opportunity to make them.

A hospital trip, sing-a-longs, aviator shades, and my big nose : what do all these have in common?

They were all a part of this past week in Ulsan.
Oh, what a week.

A hospital trip.

Before I continue, I want to clarify that 'hospital' is a pretty extreme word used in the States, but in Korea it is more of a comprehensive term used for a trip to the doctor's. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of this when my co-teacher told me that I needed to go to the hospital.

This past week, I've been feeling a bit low on energy and recently have begun to experience dizziness when I woke up. True to my US culture, I waited for a week before deciding to seek medical attention. My co-teacher and I visited the nurse's office first, and as it turns out I was running a low-grade fever. Once I realized something was really wrong, I cannot express how much I wanted to be sitting on the couch at my parent's house! What made this situation even more interesting was that this was my first encounter with Korean medical practices. The nurse gave me some barely-labeled pills (all in Hangul anyway) and sent me off. No better time to start really trusting another culture than when you have to get medical attention!

After school, one of Yaksa's PE teachers, Mr. Woo, took me to the hospital. Mr. Woo refers to himself as my 'Korean father' because he has a daughter my age studying abroad in Japan currently. He is a sweet man who has nothing but jokes and advice for his 'American daughter'. As any 'father' would, Mr. Woo wanted to give me health advice as well... and I'm really glad he did. The first question he asked me as he got into the car:

"Laura, do you sleep with
your air conditioner on?"

Now, being a girl from the Pacific Northwest, I am completely clueless about air conditioning. It's the kind of luxury we enjoy on those oh-so-hot-90-degree-Fahrenheit days when we go to the mall or sit in the movie theatres. having an AC in my own one-room apartment? Unheard of! And on days when the low is 90 degrees, it only makes logical sense to crank that thing full blast until hypothermia sets in.

Which is precisely why the air conditioner is considered dangerous in Korea. According to Mr. Woo, the doctor I saw, and every nurse who made that universal "ah haaaa" sound in the lobby, no one should use the air conditioner all night. It causes sickness. If I was at all skeptical yesterday, I'm a believer now. After just one night of not using my air conditioner, I feel a lot better. And maybe those other random pills from the hospital are helping; I'm not sure.

By the way, my doctor's bill went something like this:

Hospital visit: $5 USD
Medication: $2 USD
Time spent in the hospital: Under 30 minutes.

So all's well that ends well. And although this has completely ruined my appreciation for the air conditioner, I'm happy for the experience.

Sing-a-longs.

When I first came to Ulsan, I figured I'd be teaching the Korean children songs in my classes. When you teach 3rd graders, it's almost expected. But when it comes to teaching adults, I wasn't thinking they'd be interested in singing songs.

Well, I was wrong. Very very wrong. But I'm so happy.

These 7 or 8 adults I work with each week were stoked when I brought up "Fireflies" by Owl City and taught them to sing it. We spent a lot of time going over grammar, vocabulary and Western expressions (and they asked me to sing it for them first!), but by the end of the week we were all singing it! The highlight of this lesson was that Mr. Woo said I inspired him to begin singing again, and on Friday he performed for us all by himself. It took him about 30 times to practice, but it really paid off. Once he was on stage, he totally cut loose! It was so, so great.

Aviator shades.



My friends and I have been taking time this week to check out the downtown scene when possible (difficult with our schedules, but we make it happen!), and this weekend was pretty magnificent. There are 2 downtown districts in Ulsan: Old Downtown (Song Nam Dong) and New Downtown (Sam San Dong). If you want tons of people and a larger-than-life ferris wheel, check out San San Dong. If you want cheap aviators and nearly-abandoned bars with the nicest owners you'll ever meet, Old Downtown's your scene. Personally, I prefer Old Downtown for its charm and cheapness... and marvelous Indian cuisine.



But New Downtown has characters like this:




My big nose.

I've always known I have a big nose. My face, in general, has large features... and in Korean culture everything on my face only looks bigger. But I've been wondering what Koreans think of my nose. Normally, I wouldn't have given this much thought. In fact, I had a lady tell me that she "liked my face" the other day (which I found hilarious coming from a non-native English speaker), but the nose thing... well, it's caused some interesting situations:

1. My first day of teaching, there was a student who approached me after class, holding her face and saying, "Your nose, your nose!" and walked away before I could clarify.

2. A week later, I was in the girls' bathroom waiting to wash my hands. My students moved out of the way for me, and as I approached the sink, two girls standing next to me gasped and began to clap, again saying nothing but, "Your nose!" Now I was really confused.

3. This week, one of my students asked me if my nose was broken (it has a small bump in the middle of it) and I told him no. Then he looked at me and told me it was "an amazing nose".

I'm not sure if this means they think it's beautiful or if it's like some weird Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not nose. Either way, the reactions I get are sometimes outright hilarious.