We're Home!

Jeff and I are finally back from Korea! It was an awesome time, but we are definitely glad to be back home to celebrate the (belated) holidays with our families. We were able to spend three days in Seoul before we left Korea, and when we have a little bit more time we will definitely post a blog and some pictures from the trip. I just wanted to put up a quick post so you know we are home and that we may not put up any more posts for a little while! We aren't sure where or when we will be leaving again, but Jeff is on vacation for the next week, so at least not until early February. We will definitely post when we know more!

On a completely unrelated note, we finally have our wedding photos and we posted all of the professional pictures on our yahoo photo site. Enjoy!

Ganjeolgot Point

About 30 minutes southeast of Ulsan is Ganjeolgot Point, where the earliest sunrise on the entire Northeast Asian continent can be seen. I guess this is a really popular place to go on New Year's Eve, as you can see the first sunrise of the new year. We got up really early a few days ago and drove down to the point to see the sunset. It was an incredible view (though it was also FREEZING outside).


We got there just before dawn, and the lighthouse light up the sky. We aren't sure if this statue is hailing the arrival of the new sun, or giving a angry fist to the Japanese (snicker, snicker).

We watched a few locals place fruit and other food on a blanket, and then gather around and pray during the sunrise. The explanation was that it was an offering to the Dragon God.

Many statues are placed upon the point. This turtle was pretty cool, with a fiersome snake sitting atop the pyramid coming out of his back.

What was really interesting was the statue of the Golden Pig. The year 2007, in the Chinese Zodiac, is the year of the pig. But that is not the end of the story, it is more specifically the Year of the Golden Pig, which occurs once every 600 years. The golden pig symbolizes prosperity and wealth, and they say any child born during the Year of the Golden Pig will enjoy a prosperous and wealthy life. For this reason, the Korean birth rate is expected to increase by 10% for 2007. The festivies on Ganjeolgot point for New Year's were more popular this year due to the coming of the Golden Pig. You find references to the golden pig everywhere, as street vendors try to sell cheap plastic pigs to Jeff on his way to work as well as the golden pig adorning numerous store signs and billboards.

I Found Another Catholic Church!

So one thing that I really find cool about traveling is searching for Catholic Churches. I just think its really interesting to see the different architecture and the cultural influences. I previously posted about the Catholic Church near our hotel (see "Jesus Is Korean" post), but the other day I decided to take a really long walk to another church that I found on the map.

Here are a few of the pictures:

I wasn't able to go inside the church or get too close to it because it was a weekday and school was in session. The security guard standing outside was giving me some dirty looks, so I didn't want to push my luck! When Jeff and I leave here we are planning on spending some time in Seoul (just a few days). The hotel we are looking at staying in is really close to a historic Cathedral (in fact its the first Catholic Church in Korea), so I am sure there will be more pictures to come!

Korean Basketball League

Ulsan is not a very large city, but one thing they do have is a professional basketball team, the Mobis Phoebus. We just realized this yesterday (after being here over two months!), and here's how. First off, KBL (Korean Basketball League - the Korean equivalent of the NBA) games are on TV all the time, but they are never in English, so we have never heard or seen the word Ulsan associated with the KBL. Also, since Ulsan is such a small city, we never really thought about it having a KBL franchise.

On numerous occasions we have seen large buses painted with team names and logos outside of our hotel, but weren't sure what sport they represented. While these buses were outside, we also noticed that there were some of the tallest Koreans we have ever seen milling around the hotel (as a complete tangent, its funny to go down to breakfast when these teams are eating, because they empty the buffet of pretty much all food). We aren't geniuses, but we put two and two together and figured they were probably basketball players. I asked Jeff if he thought they were professional players, but since we were convinced Ulsan wouldn't have a team we just decided they were either University players or some sort of lower league team (like the CBA in the US).

Before continuing, there's one thing you should know about the KBL. There are very strict rules about having non-Koreans on a team. Each team is allowed a few foreigners, and only two non-Koreans may be on the court at a time. In practice this has meant that each team has picked up a few African American players. Jeff and I figured out these rules quickly when watching the games as there would be 6 Koreans and then 4 much taller African Americans on the court.

Last night, we took the elevator downstairs to get dinner and barely fit in with the 7 or 8 other basketball players in the elevator. The last guy to get on the elevator was an African American wearing all Memphis Grizzlies gear. At that point I decided I would do some research to try and find out if in fact these were professional players. A few internet searches later I found our mystery man in the Grizzlies gear and discovered that the Ulsan Mobis Phoebus were actually a professional KBL team. In case you are curious, our mystery man was Kimani Ffriend, who played his college ball at Nebraska from 1999-2001 and was drafted by the Grizzlies in 2006 (not sure where he was in the five years in between). Apparently that didn't work out long, because now he is over here in Korea playing for the Incheon Etland Black Slamers.

Signs We've Been Here Too Long

1. Though there are many people who work at the front desk, when we go up there they know our room number immediately (same thing in the gym).

2. Mr. Pizza now gives us a 10% discount because of our frequent visits.

3. The Pyung Chang Laundry Shop now also gives us a discount because of our frequent visits.

4. We walked into the liquor store yesterday and the first thing the owner said to us is that they were out of our favorite Finlandia Vodka.

Touch of America in Korea

When traveling I always find it interesting what American stores and restaurants make their way into other countries. I thought other people might be curious too, so here's what we have seen in Korea:

Stores (not too many)
The Body Shop
Wal-Mart

Restaurants (far more!)
Baskin Robbins
Bennigan's
Dominos
KFC
McDonald's (is there any country that doesn't have a McDonald's?!?!?)
Outback Steakhouse
Pizza Hut
Starbucks
TGI Fridays (we haven't checked to see if they do Tuesday night karaoke like at home!)

Korean Chaebols

Having been here for 9 weeks, we have learned that chaebols (conglomerate corporations) impact almost all areas of our daily lives here in Korea. The most prevalent that we have seen here are Hyundai, LG, SK, and Lotte.

Though it is only the seventh largest chaebol in Korea, Lotte is by far the biggest chaebol here in Ulsan. We recently learned that the CEO of Lotte is from Ulsan, so that explains its popularity here. To give you an idea of how big these chaebols are, these are just a few of the ways that Lotte touches our lives in an average day. First, we wake up in our Lotte Hotel. We shower with our Lotte soap. Jeff goes to work at his Lotte owned KP refinery. I shop in the Lotte Department Store. We drink Lotte bottled water and eat Lotte candies that we bought at the Lotte Supermarket. And these are just the obvious ways that we notice!

Happy New Year

Happy 2007 everybody! We are still in Korea, so we thought we would share our experience regarding the new years celebration here. Jeff had to work on New Year's Eve, so we thought we would relax in the evening and head out around later at night (10:00 or so). We had been searching online for good bars in Ulsan, but we couldn't find anything reasonably close to our hotel, so we decided we would head down to the Jungle Plaza. Its a cool Thailand themed bar in the basement of our hotel. We have been down there for drinks a few times, and it was never busy, so we figured we would be fine just hanging out there and listening to the live music. We got ready and headed downstairs only to find that all of the seats at the bar were reserved for the night! Who would ever think of reserving a seat at a bar!!! We were shocked and decided we better get moving to try and find another place to celebrate! We went upstairs, got our coats and headed out. We didn't want to go to an all Korean bar, and had earlier seen a bar called "Miller Time," so we thought we would head over there and hope it was fun (and that they had seats!).

When we got there it was about 10:30 and there were 8 tables or so still available. We sat down and ordered some nachos and a pitcher of MGD. We knew a bar like Miller Time would carry Miller products, but what we didn't realize is that Miller was literally all they had (no other beer, no wine, no liquor)! We ate our nachos (which were very interesting - they had mustard all over them), drank our beer, and waited for the big countdown. There was a large screen at the back of the bar that started counting down with two minutes to go:

At midnight everyone cheered and toasted, just like you would expect in any American bar. However, as soon as the cheering began, it was over and the bar went back to normal. No confetti, no noise makers, no singing Auld Lang Syne, in fact, no music at all! This gentleman wasn't even awakened by the low key celebration:

Our waiter was kind enough to take a picture of Jeff and I to commemorate our first New Years as newlyweds:

I guess we realized that New Years is not quite as big of a celebration here as it is back home!