Wedding Prep

Well, it's pretty much all done now. Not too terrible really, although I DID have to suffer through an entire day of picture taking (8 hours), which there's some pictures of below (none of the dresses or tuxes that we're wearing are the actual ones we'll have at the wedding), and I did have to wait for a while while Hye Sook tried on several different dresses (the top 6 of which are below), but otherwise, things were fairly easy on us. Just 23 days until we walk down the aisle (and 16 days until the folks come a truckin' into town).

R

The hair from the back. 

Hye Sook in one of the many dresses she wore that day. 

Posing before the pictures actually took place. 

Us posing. 

Between pictures. 

Us after the wedding picture fun. 

Here's the wedding dress selection process. This is option 1 (of six). Options one through five, of course, you won't be seeing her wear. 

Option 2 

Option 3 

Option 4 

Option 5 

The real dress. What, it's all smudgy? Sorry, this one you'll have to wait until the wedding to see. 

Jo Marshall (a coworker) on her birthday with her daughter, Madeline (which I probably spelled wrong). 

The view from one of the buildings where I teach. 

One of my classrooms (from over the summer, actually). 

Now, we can give you the small face, which I know is important, but we're only going to be able to make one breast lovely. The other one is going to have to stay ugly. 

I wish you would understand, but I know you won't. 

A tank full of squid, but not at the aquarium, not at the zoo. Nope, at a restaurant near my house. When you're eating squid, it's important that it be fresh. 

A play we went and saw. 

Clothed bottles now available. 

False Advertising. 

Not wedding related, but funny. Hye Sook decided to take a nap one afternoon, and I was getting ready for work, so I laid my clothes out. 

The Crazy Foreigner Haters

After having a nice lunch with Hye Sook and Rose, we decided to head to another part of town to look for some new sheets for Hye Sook and I's bed. While waiting in the subway, we were chatting in English when a rather strange looking woman in her late 20s or so walked by us. She stopped, looked at me, and then launched into a tirade that started out fairly quiet but increased as the words gushed out of her.

I caught bits and pieces: "foreigner," "selling," "Not in English," and snippets that barely made sense. Now, Hye Sook informed me later that it wasn't just my Korean that made it hard for me to understand. She said even to her the woman was barely intelligible. But she did catch the gist of it.

The woman wasn't too fond of foreigners, and blamed them for seemingly random problems in Korea. She also wasn't too pleased with the fact that Hye Sook and Rose were with me, calling them both whores, and saying that they were selling themselves for English lessons.

The subway came and we three stepped on, and the woman continued on her way. I tried to get out of Rose and Hye Sook (who both are rarely shy) what the woman had said, but they refused (even in English) to repeat it. I didn't find out until much later when we got home.

This is a rare occurrence in Korea. Foreigner hating isn't tossed around often or anything, but the crazies do seem to blame us for an awful lot.

In fact, my university (which has a very large number of both foreign professors and students) has its resident crazy. There's a man who hangs out by the library who, I'm told, likes to throw out epithets, blame, and occasionally sticks at foreigners. The police didn't want to handle it because he was on campus. The campus guards didn't want to handle it because they're basically traffic control and little more. But eventually, he was caught harassing some foreigners OFF-campus and got carted away.

For a day.

He was back on the street in no time, and still hangs around the campus, although I rarely have seen him at all, and only once up close. The one time I DID see him was right in front of my apartment building, where when he saw me, he yelled three words that neither Hye Sook or I could understand.

Koreans don't really handle crazy well.

R

The Science of Sleep

I just saw this movie (and really liked it), but I'm not writing a movie review. Instead, I'm just filling you in on the funny experience of watching it. The movie is mostly in English (I'd say 70% or so), but it's also partly in French. Now, I speak French...but not well. Luckily, there were Korean subtitles, and I speak Korean...but also not well. So when the French parts came up, I was trying my best to read along with the Korean subtitles at the same time I was listening along with the French and trying to figure out what was going on. Both were too fast, so I couldn't really catch either perfectly, but I'd say I got about 50 or 60% of what was said in French between the two ways. It's just funny that watching a moving was such an ordeal. Luckily, the movie was worth it.

R

The Largest City in the World

I happened across this website today: largest cities in the world.

There's a couple things I want to point out. As I've mentioned many times (and my pictures confirm), Korea is a very metropolitan country. If you didn't believe me before, notice Seoul is the largest city in the world. Also notice number 36. The city I live in, Pusan, is larger than Los Angeles and larger than Chicago. Pusan is no village. Anyway, just thought I'd give you some perspective.

I've been super busy for the past month or so, but the semester is over now, so I should have some time to update the blog soon. Check back in the next few weeks to hear tales (and see pictures) of wedding preparation, crazy foreigner haters, and changing jobs.

Ryan