10th GOAL Anniversary in Seoul

GOA'L is a non-government organisation based in Seoul that helps Korean adoptees who return to Korea. They'll help you out with everything from general living advice to finding you a job.

I've been involved with the organisation since arriving in 2006, but living in Busan has meant that I haven't attended as many of their events. I decided to go up to Seoul for their 10th anniversary celebration. As always, the KTX ride up was enjoyable. I'm still impressed with how green the Korean countryside is all year round.

The venue was the Olympic Parktel, which was financed by Koreans who were living in Japan at the time of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

Next to the hotel is Olympic Park, which was set aside by the government. There are a few large stadiums inside and a lot of walking trails. I can remember being in Australia during the Olympics in Seoul, and at the time I didn't really understand the milestone it represented for the country. Busan City is bidding for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

I wonder if I'll still be in Korea then?

The rooms were cosy enough. One gripe I have though, is that they didn't replace my little mini-bottles of shampoo in the bathroom as I used them. I wrote that on their feedback form, so let's hope that they've learned the error of their ways.

This is a view of Olympic Park from my hotel window. Korea doesn't really have any botanic gardens, so this is probably the next best thing.

The opening ceremony was in the grand ballroom. Every year there are new faces in the community.

There were adoptees from all over the world including countries like Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the USA, Australia and the Netherlands. They're just the ones I can think of from the top of my head. I'm camouflaged in the middle there somewhere.

The wonderful food, which has become a staple of such gatherings. It's always a buffet with lots of different options. I've started getting into the habit of stopping short of becoming extremely full. This is partly because I heard a documentary on NPR, saying that if you overeat at buffets to save money, you're actually costing yourself extra in the long run. That's because you don't digest any of the food efficiently enough, and the medical costs associated with overeating will aggregate over time.

The other reason I stopped overeating is because then I have more room for beer.

Some old friends and some newer ones. In the last picture on the left is Eric, who some of you may remember from the old days in Koroot. Eric and I have quite different backgrounds but we get along well. I like his combination of not caring and being nice at the same time.

This is Kevin Shea, an adoptee who is a rising star in stand-up comedy in the US. He was in a Mcdonald's TV advertisement here and has worked alongside actors from MadTV. Kevin gave us a 30 minute stand-up show, but unfortunately the subtleties of some of his jokes were not well-understood by the rather culturally diverse audience he had.

Another part of the entertainment that night was this girl, who is an American adoptee and celebrity B-girl. She travels with a Korean B-boy team and performs internationally.

The events for the weekend included a photographic exhibition by adoptee artists and various workshops.

Tammy Chu, an American adoptee, is in the process of making a documentary about a reunion of mother and son. We saw a preview of it and had a question and answer session. It's looking very professional at the moment, and will be showing at next year's Pusan International Film Festival.

Dae-won Wenger is the Secretary General of GOA'L and a prominent figure in the adoptee community. He speaks around 5 different languages and has all the hallmarks of someone who could oversee such an organisation. The first hallmark being patience. In these photos he was trying to explain the location of the next venue to Eric, who is sometimes a little slower than your average audience, especially after lots of free wine.

The next venue was Club Air, which we booked out for the first part of the night.

Around this time last year I was in exactly the same spot and took a very similar set of photos for the blog. How's that for nostalgia?

Suddenly a few of the boys had their shirts pulled off. This was part of an amazing idea that was thought up by a particular French adoptee, who we'll refer to by the code name of 'Erix'. Erix soon had my shirt off too, which would have been a humbling experience if I hadn't had so many drinks.

And I also had a photo taken with Kevin Shea. Now if Kevin gets really famous, I have proof that we met. Or maybe if I get really famous, the reverse will be true.

Ha.

This is Nick Leschly, a poker playing adoptee whose birthday it was. Nick organises fundraising events for GOA'L and says friendly things when he's tipsy.

Here's a video of Robyn Shultz attempting to complete a challenge. The challenge is to eat six crackers in sixty seconds and then whistle. Apparently it's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

Here's the aftermath of the whistle. Morgan was actually sitting on the chair at the time.

While I was in Seoul, I had also arranged to visit my new professor at Seoul National University. This was my first time to the campus, which was a lot larger than I had thought.

Here's the front of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, where I'll be doing my PhD. The venue is nice enough, but it was the professor who impressed me most. He has a very well rounded personality and is the kind of person you want as a supervisor. My PhD will be in agricultural biotechnology and for my project I'll be working on a specific rice pathogen.

This is the 'Sha' gate, which is the iconic entrance to Seoul National University. I'll be starting a new chapter of my life here in the first week of January 2009 and have mixed feelings about it all. Busan is a great city and I love my current job, but I also have unfinished business in the biotech field and this is an opportunity I shouldn't really ignore. I'm pretty lucky to have been given the luxury of choice between two fulfilling career paths.

Anyway, that's all for me this time. See you soon!

Guns, Thanksgiving and More Intestines

The end of the year is rapidly approaching. Seems like yesterday that it was New Year 2007. One day I think I'll wake up in Korea all of a sudden and say "Hey, wow... it's 2017 already and I'm 35".

Hopefully by that time I will have bought a house or something.

Is this yet another new addition to the household? Thankfully not. This 4 month old pup actually belongs to a friend of a friend and was just over for a visit. Because it hasn't been in the world very long, it didn't know how to get down if we put it on the drawers like this. It just stood and stared at us until we picked it up. I don't think I was too much brighter at 4 months of age too.

A while back it was (American) thanksgiving day, which is always a novelty to us Aussies. Devin and Tamara from the Gwangan branch hosted a turkey dinner at their house for all of the teachers at CDI. It was really good food.

More than 40 people showed up, but luckily they have a huge apartment. The logistics involved in catering for such a large group is always difficult, but they pulled it off flawlessly. There was plenty of turkey, salad, mashed potato, gravy and pie for everyone. I ate until I could eat no more, and then I felt sleepy and went home.
Have you heard that turkey makes you especially sleepy because it has the hormone tryptophan in it? I heard that a long time ago, but more recently I heard that it's an exaggerated claim and that turkey meat has about the same amount as pork.

In Beomnaegol, there is a cave bar. It's an artificial tunnel dug into the mountainside that used to be an old ammunition depot or something during the Korean war. It's pretty difficult to find if you don't know the way, but a large group of us managed to make the trek from the subway station. You can order food and there's usually water trickling down the sides of the walls. On the right hand side between the stone fence and the wall is a pool of water that has some dead bugs and stuff in it.

The speciality drink in the cave bar is dongdongju, homemade rice wine that is very similar to makkoli. It's the white liquid in the bowl there. As with makkoli, it tastes quite sweet and seems pretty mild until you stand up and try to navigate somewhere. Of all the alcohol in Korea, this stuff requires the most caution.

Who's that meat-head with a gun? Well, it's me of course. A couple of weeks ago we went to a shooting range down near the beach. The price was around $40 for ten bullets, so I chose a 9mm Beretta because it was cheapest. They also had Desert Eagles, Magnums and a Scorpion sub-machine gun for hire. I'm not particularly gun-crazy, but I think that you should try everything at least once in your life. Except things like suicide, cannibalism, reiki, etc.

In the lounge you can see everything on CCTV. The guns are really loud and had much more recoil than I expected.

Here are some of the more hilarious targets you can choose to fire at. Jordan chose the one on the left and managed to shoot the monkey-man in the eye, as well as the hostage. I'm not sure what the scenario is supposed to be for the poster on the right though. Kill or be killed, it's a dangerous world. I'm surprised they didn't have any 'terrorists'.

We recently realised that there's a ten pin bowling alley right near our house. The computer system is a bit old and you can't enter your name on the screen, but it's cheap and fun. Also, when the game's finished you can continue playing for free until the attendants tell you to stop. In this photo, Johnny-boy Ngo (my flatmate) is pretending to throw a ball at another guy we call 'Johnny blonde'. There are a lot of Johns in Korea, so we have to give them different nicknames. At Dongnae branch there is a Korean John that we call John-Actually (because he has a habit of using the word 'actually' to start every sentence) and at our branch we have a John that we refer to as Johnny Diamond. If you're called John and you're coming to Korea, think about choosing a nickname for yourself.

In some of the busier subway stations in Korea you can find ticket outlets for the movies like this one. This way you can figure out what you want to watch and get the tickets before reaching the cinema.

Here are some of my co-workers reading on the subway as they like to do. From the left is Nicole from New York, then Michelle from Ireland and Jordan from Canada. I haven't read a fiction novel since high school, partly because I'm usually busy and partly because I find Wikipedia much more interesting.

And here are the other two teachers that I work with, John and Logan from Philadelphia. At the U2 bar in Haeundae, when there's no band on stage apparently foreigners are allowed up to pretend they're rockstars for a fleeting moment. Well, no one complained anyway.

My students these days are usually pretty good. After teaching here for over a year, I've come to learn a few tricks of the trade and the job gets easier. When the students misbehave in class I make them write out lines like these during their breaktime. These two were written by some naughty elementary schoolers who were noisy and forgot their homework. You can click the photo to enlarge the text.

Last blog post we saw an intestine dish called makchang. In my quest for more intestinal knowledge here in Korea, I recently stumbled across a new kind of intestine called yang-gopchang, which is larger and comes from a cow instead of a pig. It's slightly pricier and slightly chewier. Restaurants in the Hwamyeong area of Busan specialize in this particular variety.

And here's Emily and Miya from the Hwamyeong branch. They're particularly happy in this photo due to the delightful anticipation of consuming aforementioned intestines.

Last weekend we went up to Seoul for the GOA'L christmas party which included a nice dinner and lots of merriment. Unfortunately I managed to leave my bag there and Heather's sister is going to send the contents down sometime. In the bag was my camera and MP3 player, so this blog post is missing a few of photos (I was lucky enough to put the memory stick for these photos in my jacket pocket). But that also means I missed out on taking some shots of Eric and Maria who came down from Seoul this weekend to visit. C'est la vie.

Hopefully it will arrive soon and blogging may continue.

Seeya!