First Week

Unfortunately, my camera ceased to function right before arriving in Seoul, therefore I have been unable to snap any pictures thus far. However, hopefully, I'll either get it fixed or get a new one. In the meantime, I'll with do my best with prose.

I arrived in Seoul a little over a week ago. I have found a place to live, a "living-tel", a boarding house type place with a small room with a television and refridgerator and, thank goodness, air-conditioning. However, I was told that I arrived right as the weather begins to make its transition to autumn; it has stil been pretty hot though. The "living-tel" has a bathroom for each floor. The fourth floor, where I reside, is an exclusively male floor, and the landlord is pretty strict about enforcing these rules. There is also a communal kitchen which provides us on this floor with unlimited rice and kimchi, a definite plus. My room is quite small, however very cozy.

School is a blast. I am learning a lot, four hours worth a day, and it literally zips by, and my Korean has improved immensely already, so I am quite excited to see where I am at come June.

This past week, and until this coming Sunday, I have religiously attended Seoul's very own International Film Festival; it has been cinematic bliss. The timing of my arrival in Seoul couldn't have been any better. I have seen films from all over the world and have also had the chance to meet with Korean national directors and award winning directors from France and Spain, not to mention one of the forme editors for Cashiers du Cinema. It has been quite the trip. Come October, Korea's most important festival will be coming up in the Southern city of Busan, and I will be there, at least for a weekend.

At the end of this month we have a holiday called Chuseok. I am not entirely sure what it commemorates, but I will make sure to post it as soon as I know. I will be going to Tokyo with a fellow Yalie that week to rendezvous with my former Japanese host family to spend a not so lonely birthday in my times of world travel.

I'll end this post with some peculiar things I have noticed since my arrival. First off, couples here often match, as in they are wearing that exact same outfit, and the couples here, as for the whole overall culture regarding human interaction out in the open are surprisingly warm, especially compared to my experience in Japan. Maybe it is the spicy food, probably no though. Interesting fact though, it seems to be that the reason Korean food is as spicy as it is is due to trade that they did with Mexico back in the day. I feel quite at home, not completely missing mi madre's cooking.

Next on the pecularity list is that maps here show Korea as just that, one united Korea, no 38th parallel or DMZ demarcated on their maps here. Cities and everything, although not very many, are marked just as relevantly as those in South Korea, and don't try to tell any South Korean Kim Jong-Il is a bad guy because they will not take it kindly; he is just another Korean, one of them with some serious, quite serious if you ask me, issues.

Lastly, a little trivial, but I still think it's hilarious, at the movie theatre, where I have been for near thirty hours in the past week, whenever you are going to give your ticket to the person who guards the gates to the theatres they do this little dance. That also reminds me, I was walking around my boarding house the other day, and randomly this music started blasting and what looked like people dressed in shampoo bottles, to me at least, with big asian animation-style eyes started dancing hip-hop. I later discovered they were soju, the Korean sake if you will, ah the far East, or at least Japan and South Korea's, sensibility for cuteness. Until next week.