Thursday, July 7, 2011

May 23, 2011 Embarassing Neighbors

We have the weirdest and most embarassing neighbors!  :-(  They're from America (Colorado) and we found out going to church that they are Mormons as well.  They have beens staying here for a few days because the lady's son is getting married to a Korean woman and they decided to have a Korean traditional wedding ceremony here.  The man's family has no knowledge of Korean culture as we have experienced living next to them.  Very bad......

They have walked with their shoes everywhere!  Especially places where you're not supposed to have your shoes on like the veranda and inside.  It's really bad.  They left footprints everywhere, even in front of our doors.  Their room was really dirty and we saw bugs inside there.  The management thought it was us so they yelled Dr. Peterson (literally, they were furious he told us) because it was in front of our door and the neighbors.  Dr. Peterson came back and asked us if we did it and we told him it was the neighbors.  Dr. Peterson went back and explained it to the management.  However, the neighbors left before the management could talk to them. 

Also, the lady was yelling at T-Mobile ( she used someone else's phone) because her cell phone wasn't working here and that the plan didn't work.  Geez lady!  Did you do your research before you came out here??  T-Mobile doesn't work in Korea!  Everyone on the study abroad did the same thing you did and it doesn't work but they didn't have a cow about it.  Don't yell at T-Mobile; do your homework!!  Honestly, you're here for a few days.  Just relax; you're not here for months!  It's not like she had business calls or anything or was expecting anyone to come. 

The daughters are pretty nice but a little strange.  The son, that's not getting married, is just dumb.  He's 14 I think?  He's always complaining that they have to take off their shoes.  Oh my gosh kid, it's not going to kill you.  You're here for a couple days and it's not the end of the world.  Understand why taking off your shoes is a part of the culture first and then complain if you are able to.  He's also just weird.  I was doing my laundry yesterday as you know and one of my pant legs were rolled up.  He said I looked like I was part of this one gang (I can't remember the name but he said the name and not that it was a gang).  I didn't know what that was so I just stared at him and said, "What?"  Then he said, "Oh that's right, since you guys go to BYU, they don't teach you about that kind of stuff."  WHAT THE HECK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN??  That is just like me saying to him, "Oh, and let me guess, because you don't go to BYU, you must be a pawn of Satan!!"  That statement he said is out of pure ignorance.  Instead of telling him off, I just rolled my eyes at him and said, "Um, yeah, whatever pal."  Juni was also outside and said that he knew of the gang which gave off the idea that because we go to BYU doesn't mean we're cut off of what happens in the world. 

Later today, they came by with a present.  After the wedding, the inlaws gave them this chicken that was ornamently decorated.  They came by later and wanted to give it to us because they're vegetarian and also they thought the chicken/present was very strange.  It was cooked and everything but the fact that a head was in there, even though it was harmless, was really bizarre to them.  They had this look on their faces that they've never seen a chicken head before.  If they went to Hawaii or another place that does barbeque, they would probably freak out if they saw a pig or lamb's head too.  We took it because they're vegetarian but saying that the gift was strange?  No, they're strange!  There wasn't anything strange about the gift.  No of us thought it was strange at all.  Our neighbors are seriously weird.



In other news, since it was rainy a lot today, we still went out to see a couple things that Dr. Peterson wanted us to check out.  We saw these shell mounds that they excavated centuries ago and these villages from long ago here in 김해 Gimhae.  I thought the villages very pretty.  We couldn't look inside in a lot of them but the ones that we could were really interesting.  There was nothing inside of them but it gave us an idea of what they had to work with space wise.




May 22, 2011 Laundry and Ramen with Cheese

Since it was Sunday, we attended church and chilled for the day.  Today was the first day I had to do laundry.  When I was staying at a relative's house, they graciously did my laundry.  Also, for the first load while I've been here in 김해 Gimhae, there's a lady that does laundry quick, well, and cheap so I've been giving my stuff to her along with the other students.  But now we have a little tub and detergent so now we have been doing our laundry.  Although doing my laundry, cost effectively, is cheaper, I don't do nearly as good of a job as the laundry lady.  I have clothes  such as outerwear/sweatpants that if they attract any smell, are really hard to get the smell out of.  The laundry lady is amazing; I don't know how she gets the smell out of them. 



Since we're low on groceries, we had ramen noodles for dinner.  And no, we didn't have the nasty ones that you buy in grocery stores in America.   Korean ramen noodles are so much better.  We don't know why but it is.  It's tastier.  You can find them in any Asian market.  As we were about to eat, Kenwood put cheese and 김 dried seaweed (kim) in his ramen.  He told us it was really good so we tried it.  HE WAS RIGHT!  Who would have thought cheese in ramen would be so good!  We used white cheese slices.  Koreans are putting cheese in more things now like 떡볶이 spicy rice cakes (duck-boh-gi), 돈까스 Japanese pork cutlet (dohn-ga-seh) and other things.  It's funny, cheese mixed with Asian food (especially Korean) isn't that common and so it was different seeing it on menus.  Asians are generally lactose in tolerant but now I think that gene isn't passing on as much because they can consume more amounts of dairy now.