The Great Phallus Adventure!

   Okay, so first off, Korea confuses yet entices me more each day. In a country where sex talk, including the usage of contraception, is an eyebrow raiser and a "dude, not cool" shake of the head, why is there an entire park dedicated to massive erect penis statues?! They even have an entrance fee to get into the park! The PENIS park, that is. After visiting this phallic place, I wouldn't be surprised if Colombia had a park with statues of Pablo Escobar and friends with rolled notes up their noses! Well, maybe not, but still. It's a curious world, this Korea land!

But I must admit, it was definitely worth the trek! I spent an entire day (six hours each way) on buses and trains to enter this park filled with giggling ajumas scuttling about in groups, families walking around snapping pictures, and of course a cluster of penises. Just as it's okay to enjoy your Sunday afternoon eating buffalo wings and watching a football game amongst large bouncing boobs with your wife and kids at your local Hooters back in the States, it's okay to hike around the Penis Park with your family on a Sunday afternoon. It's also a breathtaking view of the mountains surrounding Samcheok and the blue blue sea. My eyes were constantly moving from beauty to penis to beauty to penis back and forth until I had an eyegasm!  

The story behind the park (with my own personal story-shifting view) begins as a tragedy, when two young lovers go to an island off the east coast to find some seafood. The waves knock the virgin girl into the ocean. For years after this tragic incident the little fishing village is in a mourning state. Even the fish are sad - they refuse to eat. Until one day, a sexy man from the village, most likely hammered off of soju, unzips his pants and urinates into the water. On a side note, I'll bet he was one of THOSE people who pee in the swimming pool. This is when the story takes a turn to a happy ending, if you know what I mean! The ghost of the dead virgin takes a single look at that man (sexy or not, he is a man and she is a dead virgin ghost), and with an instant arousal, the ocean snaps out of their dramatic depression. The fish eat, the villagers are happy, and the virgin ghost can now see massive amounts of penises everyday at the small price of  a 3,000 won entrance fee!

Jumping On The Laser Bandwagon

Koreans love their lasers. Laser up the skin, laser away the hair, laser off the marks and scars and spider veins, laser shows, laser night club lights...surprisingly the kids don't walk around with laser pens. 

A laser usage favorite is the double-eyelid surgery. Heaps of Koreans (especially the women) get this particular laser operation to make their eyelids wider. "Big eyes!" They are very much into those beautifying surgeries that go even beyond lasers. It's definitely the "in" thing to do. Liposuction, face lifts, rhinoplasty, fat injection, face reshaping...it's cheap and easy and everybody does it!

I did a little surgery myself here in Korea. But rather than changing the way others view me, I changed the way I view others via LASEK surgery; the more painful and expensive version of LASIK, but apparently the safer way to go. I went to Yonsei Eye Clinic (연세안과) in Uijeongbu. I spent 1,300,000 KRW ($1,500). They had me dress in a hospital gown, your typical Korean house slippers, and put a paper shower cap over my head. I laid down on the table, propped my head up, opened my eyes wide and let them laser me up. 

With a wire speculum keeping my eyes open, the nurse keeping my eyes moist with drops, the doctor hovering over my face while cutting a layer off my cornea, and the laser pounding its light deep into my soul, all I needed was Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 blaring in my eardrums and Alex's voice from Clockwork Orange...

"Where I was taken to, brothers, was like no sinny I ever viddied before. I was bound up in a straitjacket and my gulliver was strapped to a headrest with like wires running away from it. Then they clamped like lidlocks on my eyes so that I could not shut them no matter how hard I tried. It seemed a bit crazy to me, but I let them get on with what they wanted to get on with....I began to feel really sick. But I could not shut my glazzies. And even if I tried to move my glazz-balls about, I still could not get out of the line of fire of this picture."

That describes how I felt!

The next 24 hours were hellacious. I couldn't open my eyes without light and pain shooting into them. It felt like razors were slicing my eyeballs with every movement. 24 hours of pure painful hell, and the medicine acted as nothing more than sugar pills. I called my doctor bawling on the phone. He picked me up, gave me numbing drops, took me to the office and drove me back home. Only in Korea would a doctor do that!

As horrific as those hours were, the pain eventually cleared up and I opened my eyes to find a perfect world around me. Placing glasses on your nose for the first time is like upgrading from a disposable camera to a digital. Laser surgery is like upgrading from digital to professional. And experiencing this in Korea was an adventure in itself!

English Teacher From New Zealand Really Wants You to Come To Hanam (하남)

Hey! What are you up to? Oh, you're in Seoul? Sweet! Come to Hanam! I'll meet you at the Buy the Way and we can get some beer. Hanam is pretty sweet, aye! Me and my mates usually hang out here cause there's so much to do. If you come and it gets too late to take a train back home, you can crash at my place. No worries, broo.
Oh, you want to hang out in Seoul? Lame. So lame. Okay, I'll meet you there because Hanam is so close, aye. It's just a 12 minute bus ride to the Gangdong station and a few stops from there. But after Seoul, let's head back to Hanam. My mates might get some beer and go to the noraebang. Noraebangs in Hanam are so much fun. The city you live in is so lame. Come to Hanam!
This girl Renee sometimes comes to Hanam, but she always wants to stay all the way up north with her "Bu" friends. Lame. She refuses to come to Hanam. She's sooo mean. But she's also a good-cunt.
So where do you want to meet in Seoul? We should go to Itaewon. I know this baaar that's showing the rugby game. A couple of my mates will be there. It's the Scrooge Pub near the station. But after that, I'm gonna catch the train back home. You should come, too. Don't be lame. Come to Hanam!
CHUR!

(Braden, you know you love it! ^.^)

Makgeolli 막걸리

Visit soon for the delicious details! ^^

Embracing the Stanky Legg

      When I signed my contract with GEPIK to teach English in South Korea, my intention was to come back home a year later with a vast knowledge of Korean...not Hip Hop and American military ranks. I didn't take M*A*S*H TV show being located in Uijeongbu and Spam soup (budae jjigae) being the city's specialty dish as fair warnings that my Korean experience would be infused with American military. I must admit, I was initially not happy with this little detail of my stay here...but embrace I ultimately did.
      Before my flight to the ROK, I joined Uijeongbu Crew, a Facebook group, to meet people in my area. This is how I came to know the amazing people in my Uijeongbu life. Some gave me a little tour of their main after-school activities in the "Bu" (Uijeongbu) including eating at the delicious Durga Indian restaurant, shopping at the fantastic and cheap underground mall, sipping on great and well-priced coffee at Black Bean café, and fulfilling their weekend nights with bars and clubs which consisted mostly of Toms Vill (without the e), Vito, Ice Bar, and Bar Mia. Each bar is a minute walk from the other, and for the most part has similar music in each and military patrons galore. These bars stay open till the wee hours of the morning, so we just pop around each one in a massive group throughout the night. Sure, it's fun. But truthfully? Would you like to know my true feelings about these bars that I have spent good hours and good money and good laughter on? Well! Dr. Seuss would probably describe it, as he did with the Grinch, as an "appalling dump-heap, overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled-up knots!" Or as I would describe it: ghetto, distasteful, mind draining, soul weakening, an aftertaste of pure dissatisfaction similar to that of never ever reaching an orgasm, and an embarrassing example of America worse than Palin, Snookie, and Paris Hilton combined. So, what? What? WHAT has kept me going there week after week, month after month, learning and memorizing every step, stomp, and turn of the Stanky Legg and Cupid Shuffle and Cha Cha Slide? What has kept me staying that extra hour, buying that extra beer when the entire dance floor is a drunken fight club, and the women want to beat me up with a single wrong look while waiting to pee in a puke-filled overflowing toilet? Why, when I have a thousand bar choices in the Bu alone, do I go to these bars?! Three simple answers:

Free tequilla shots

Popcorn

Amazing friends

      And that is truthfully all. I sat at the bar at Toms Vill one night during my first month in, and stared off while sipping on a beer, pondering my life here in Uijeongbu. I like to drink, I like to dance, and I like to have fun with friends. I thought...I can either hate this weekend night scene and never come back, or I can hate this weekend night scene and embrace it simultaneously. I can smile and make it my own personal, positive memory. I can dance the Cupid Shuffle while weaving in my own personal steps. I can turn away from the fight and say hello to the cute soldier boy behind me. All while having tequilla, popcorn, and friends galore. I can embrace and enjoy. And that is exactly what I have done for 8 months! Embrace it all!
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R*E*N*E*E*I*N*S*K