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!

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.