The Good.

Alright, so after much deliberation and taking out the things that were just downright inappropriate, here it is...

KOREA:

The Good.

The Bad!

THE UGLY!

I'm going to do this in parts. So first!

The Good.

1. Yoogane Chicken Galbi:

Now you've got to understand that gourmet cuisine is not one of South Korea's highlights. They tend to scoop up anything they find and throw it in a pan with an overdose of hot pepper paste.

*Anything = Roasted butterfly larvae to this underwater slug thing that looks like an uncircumcised penis to eels that they skin in front of you.

But the one thing they did get right is chicken galbi. It, like everything else is covered in a sauce so hot that you have an immediate understanding of what a blowtorch would feel like. However, after the first couple bites your taste buds are singed right off so you don't notice as much. From then on it's just spicy-sweet chicken, rice and noodle goodness!

2. Nampo-dong and its Endless Amusements:

Way at the southern end of Busan, in an area known for its Russian prostitutes and strange fish markets lies the sprawling, writhing mass of Nampo-dong. You can find anything here, designer clothes, wool, books, liquor, more strange Korean food. Anything at all... if you can find yourself first. It's a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon, if you're not claustrophobic. The only way to move through the hoards is to elbow the old people out of the way.

My favourite moment here was when Mike and I stood in awe watching this couple haggle over the price of live octopus for their dinner. The woman selling it was having a hell of a time; she was trying to stuff the octopus (still alive) into a plastic bag while it was trying desperately to crawl back up her arm.

3. Power-tripping on students:

Ok, so you probably read that heading and scoffed in disgust... But hey, pleasure in the little things. No, wait! That came out really wrong. Ahh... maybe you've had a really bad day, gotten into a fight with your boyfriend, ect. Problem is that now you're at work and you have no one to take your anger out on. Now I'm not talking about bringing a whip and exacting a blood price, but there is an alarming amount of satisfaction to be gleaned from shutting up an entire room of overly boisterous, misbehaving children with a few choice words. I felt bad about losing my temper maybe once afterwards.... then I passed by a Korean teacher going to class with a switch in her hand. 

The Catch-up

So I realize that I am terrible at these things. But I'm getting to the end of my time here in Korea. As of today, only three weeks until my last day of work. So instead of giving you a play-by-play of the last months I thought I would touch on some of the highlights.

Christmas
It was definitely a different experience having christmas in Korea. There wasn't the normal brouhaha that dominates North America. Without all the marketing and advertising, and having no family around; it was actually harder to get excited about the holidays. Mike and I decided to try to make it as traditional as possible. After a tree debacle in which Mike (with the best intentions) brought home a black christmas tree of death, which prompted me into a crying session over aforementioned tree; we went back out and got a few things to make the apartment a little festive. With the help of our parents back home we even had a big christmas brunch and classic christmas dinner... from a box of course.

Moving
So Mikes employers decided to screw him out of his pension and bonus, so they fired him at the end of January. Which in turn screwed us out of an apartment. You'll now find me living underneath the subway line, down the street from a scrap yard and just around the corner from a drug-muling operation. The good thing is that the place has unlimited hot water. The bad thing is that I'm desperately needing money and conveniently leaving the country soon...

Snow Day
In a city that normally doesn't drop below freezing, we somehow had a snow day on Monday. Don't get me wrong, there was a fair bit of snow, but coming from a country like Canada.... come on! I remember snowdays as a kid. I would be told to buck up and get my ass to school, walk through a blizzard uphill both ways (it really was uphill both ways... I lived at the bottom of two hills) just to get to school and find it closed. So in comparison, this Korean snow day seemed a little silly. They just didn't know how to handle it. Cars were skidding all over the place, korean girls in stilettos were skidding all over the place and for some strange reason everybody was holding umbrellas..... because apparently that will stop the snow from getting on their winter coats?

Run-In at Costco
So I was hanging out at Costco two weeks ago, just about to sit down to dig into a piece of pizza when this tiny Korean girl-child comes running out of nowhere (they don't exactly keep a close eye on their kids over here) trips over my foot and falls face first into the bench that I was about to sit on. She stopped and gave me this 'WHAT have you DONE' look and then ran off. About five minutes later this shadow eclipsed the table and I looked up to see this hulking four-hundred pound Korean man looking down at me while leaning over my shopping cart. He stuck one of his short, chubby fingers in my face and started going off at me in Korean. Now, after eleven months I have had just about enough of all of the sexism and racism thats glaringly prevalent in this country so I started going right back at him. We yelled back and forth at each other for a while before he got frustrated and stormed off. Three seconds later there are Costco employees running around like headless chickens and trying to placate the blob. After watching this guy yell for a while longer and point at me I went over to Jabba the Hut and told him exactly what I thought of him and his parenting skills. Grr.

Stay tuned for the next installment of my bitter monologue... "The Best, Worst and Most Interesting Things About Korea." It'll be a no holds bar rant on the country that I've been living in for the past year and will probably heavily border on blatant racism and kimchi-fueled delusions. It's the best thing since Charlie Sheens flaming fists!