Thankfully We Have Internet

I'm not sure how big of a news story this is in the US, but there is a huge telecommunications outage here in Asia. Thankfully it did not reach us here in Ulsan but Seoul and other northern parts of Korea were impacted.

I guess there were several earthquakes near Taiwan which impacted undersea telecommunications cables. Yesterday on the news they were saying that up to 2/3 of all telecommunications (including land lines, cell phones, cable, and internet) for Taiwan, Hong Kong, parts of China, Japan and Korea were affected. Businesses were scrambling and as I am sure you can imagine there was a lot of chaos. Here's an article today from CNN World talking about the outage and how it is being repaired.

As I said, luckily this didn't impact us otherwise there could have been problems at Jeff's refinery and I would have had no source of entertainment all day!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We are still here in Korea, but it has been fun to celebrate in a different country! We did our best to improvise and give ourselve as normal a Christmas as possible. We put up stockings (using my scrapbooking supplies), a tree (thanks to a handy lamp and Jeff's dirty laundry), and even had presents to put under the tree (thanks to local retailers)




As you can see we have 2007 calendars from Mr. Pizza (our favorite pizza place) and the Lotte Penninsula (where we eat breakfast everyday), a hand towel from Kaja (our liquor store), and finally a Baskin Robbins cooler which contains the following cake, compliments of Mr. Ko, the man in charge of the refinery here in Korea:

Even though Christians comprise only about 30% of the population here, Christmas is a national holiday in Korea. We have noticed that the celebration is really not all that different than it is in the US. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Christmas in Korea:

South Korea recognizes Christmas as a public holiday. Non-Christian Koreans otherwise go about their daily routine on December 25 but may engage in some holiday customs such as gift-giving, sending Christmas cards, and setting up decorated trees in their homes; children, especially, appear to have embraced Santa Claus, whom they call Santa Haraboji (Grandfather Santa) in Korean, Local radio stations play holiday music on Christmas Day and a few days before, while television stations are known to air Christmas films and cartoon specials popular in the Western countries. In addition, increasing numbers of stores and buildings are displaying Christmas decorations.

As in the West, Christian churches in Korea hold Christmas pageants and conduct special services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Young people especially enjoy the fellowship these observances provide; after the Christmas Eve services, for example, they go caroling to the homes of older church members, where they are usually treated to hot drinks and snacks.
South Korea is the only East Asian country to recognize Christmas as a public holiday.

Finally, Jeff and I decided to take a Christmas picture to commemorate our first married Christmas, so here it is:

Korean Christmas Decorations

The Lotte Corporation is definitely in the Christmas spirit! We love all of their Christmas decorations so much we thought we would share some pictures with you:

Christmas Tree in the Lotte Plaza

Decorations at the base of the Lotte Plaza Christmas Tree

Decorations at the base of the Lotte Plaza Christmas Tree

Decorations at the base of the Lotte Plaza Christmas Tree

Scene in the Lobby of the Lotte Hotel

Christmas Tree in the Lobby of the Lotte Hotel

Lights outside of the Lotte Hotel

Doha Asian Games

Most of you know that Jeff was in Doha, Qatar from October to April last year, and he flew me out for New Year's. Down on the Corniche (the main city walkway/park area) there was the Doha Asian Games mascot, Orry the Oryx, with a countdown until the 2006 Asian games. Check out that crazy Oryx:

Here is a picture of some real Oryx, if you care, courtesy of our visit to the Doha zoo.

When we arrived in Korea, there were commercials galore for the Games. Well the Doha Asian Games have finally arrived. I am guessing the coverage in the US is non-existent since before I went to Doha I didn't even know the Asian Games existed. You would be interested to know that the Asian Games are the second largest organized sporting event outside of the Summer Olympics.

What's cool about the Asian games are all the sports I never knew existed. Take Kabaddi, which is an Indian game that seems like an organized game of group tag. A sport that is popular with Koreans is Soft Tennis. Basically its tennis with a lighter racquet and ball, in which longer rallies and enjoyment ensue. There's a martial arts competition, called Wushu. It looks pretty cool. You will be suprised to know that Chess and Cue Sports (billiards, snooker, carom, and pool) qualify as sporting events in the Asian Games. Of course, the Koreans kick ass in Taekwondo, they invented it.

Because of heavy news coverage, we have learned to support some Korean athletes. There is this baby faced swimmer who won some medals. He seems cool. Since we cannot understand Korean, we don't know his name or his demeanor, but whatever. Godspeed little doodle.

-Mia (with help from Jeff)

The Bulgogi Experience

Jeff and I have not eaten a lot of traditional Korean food (generally, its really spicy and heavy in the seafood department - not really our favorites). However, we found one dish that we love. Its called Bulgogi, and its basically a Korean Barbecue. They bring out a big platter of meat marinated and covered in sea salt that you cook on a small coal grill in the middle of the table. They also bring out a ton of other side dishes with it (sauces, vegetables, leafs for wraps, etc.) so that the table is completely covered with small dishes of random food.

We have now had bulgogi three times. The first two times we had bulgogi it was with Jeff's Korean co-workers and was at an upscale restaurant where we sat on the floor in our own private little cubicle. It was extremely helpful to have Koreans there with us because they ordered everything and explained to us exactly what was in all of the smaller dishes and how we should eat it all.

We felt we had the hang of things after our second time eating bulgogi, so a few nights ago Jeff, Lewis and I decided to try bulgogi on our own. We knew the restaurant we went to the first two times was very expensive, so we thought we would try a less expensive place. Lewis looked up the word for beef before we left so we figured that if they didn't speak a word of English "beef" would get our point across.

We arrived at the restaurant and sat at a little table with blue plastic stools. The waitress came up and gave us an ordering card . . . all in Korean of course. Lewis said what he thought was the word for beef, but our waitress was not at all getting it. She kept saying a whole lot of stuff in Korean and we just sort of sat there and laughed because we had absolutely no clue what she was saying. This went on for seriously two minutes. Finally she said something that sounded like what Lewis said, so we thought she had it. Well I guess she didn't, because then she went to try and find someone who worked at the restaurant who could speak English. She was gone for a while and clearly couldn't find anyone. Finally she asked aa table of Korean guys next to us if they spoke English, and one came over. Thank goodness the waitress wanted to confirm what she though we said because the Korean man told us she thought we wanted long fish! He was able to convey to her that we wanted three orders of beef and we thought we were on our way!

Our waitress brought out the meat and all of the fixings. She placed the meat on the grill for us and sort of showed us how to cook it. We just sort of nodded because we knew how to eat everything. She left and we started to eat. About two minutes later a woman that seemed like a manager of the restaurant came over and started managing our grill for us. We kind of looked at her as if to say "we know what we are doing, this isn't necessary," but the message was not getting through to her. As Lewis said, apparently we must have looked like dumb Americans who needed help. Basically, she stood there for the rest of our meal and kept instructing us on how to eat the food. While it would have been helpful if we had never had bulgogi, we just found it to be hilarously awkward. After the meal we quickly paid, left, and laughed the entire way home!

Cabin Fever Part Two

So I guess Jeff's cabin fever is contageous, because this is what I spent my day doing today:

Yes, those are paper snowflakes (I had to show them by day and by night). I guess I was just sad we missed the big snow storm at home :)

12 Scenic Areas of Ulsan

Despite the fact that the visa office seems to think Ulsan has no tourist attractions (and lets face it, this really is primarily an industrial city), Ulsan has what it calls "The 12 Scenic Areas of Ulsan." There are countless pamphlets and brochures promoting these areas, and they are highlighted on every single map of the city. Jeff had some shorter days at work this weekend, so on Saturday we decided to try and check out some of these scenic areas. There are about four or five of these areas in the mountains to the west of Ulsan, so we decided to head out that way and see as many as we could before the sun went down.

It took about a half hour to get out there. Once in the right area, we followed the brown tourism signs pointing us to the 12 scenic areas. Suddenly the road narrowed and went from paved to gravel. We thought it was odd, but there were no tourism signs pointing us in another direction, so we just kept going straight. Then out of nowhere this little gravel road pretty much just ended. We took out our map and tried to figure out the route we had taken (the streets are not named on the map and there are few if any street signs, so we literally were thinking "okay we drove about two minutes and the road curved left, then there was a street on the right," etc.). We decided that we were most likely at some random park, so we turned the car around and tried to head back to the last place we remembered seeing a tourism sign. It continued like this for about another hour. We would follow the tourism signs, but they would literally just take you to a dead end. After about our 10th examination of the map we realized that two of the places we were trying to reach didn't even have roads to get to them! There were just hiking trails, which according to the map would take us about two hours to get to. We decided enough was enough and called it a day. We were disappointed that we were unable to find these elusive scenic areas, but on the way back we pulled over and took a few random pictures:

On late Sunday afternoon Lewis (another UOP employee who was in Ulsan during our first week here, left, and came back again this week), Jeff and I decided to check out one of the scenic areas closer to the hotel called the Daewangam Songnim Pine Forest. After our Saturday excursion I was not optimistic about heading out there, but we actually found the place with no problems and it far exceeded our expectations! It was a beautiful pine forest with a lighthouse and all of these gorgeous rock formations in the water. The day was perfectly clear, and we were there at sunset, so we got some incredible pictures like these:

We posted the pictures we have on our Yahoo page, but since the batteries in my camera died, we will make sure to get Lewis' pictures and post those soon too.

Why Its Good to be an American in Korea

There are people all over the streets here (especially at night) who are constantly handing out flyers for different things (for anyone who has been to Las Vegas, its similar to the guys with the flyers for the strip clubs). The lights can be pretty long, so if you are stopped at a crosswalk you could have many people pestering you. The best part about being an American: they COMPLETELY ignore you! Its great, people all around us can get constantly pestered, and we are totally ignored :) I love it!