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!

In Loving Memory...

Heather's twin sister, Emily (정화경), passed away in hospital at 5:20am on Tuesday the 13th of August due to complications with a respiratory infection. She had only been sick for a few days and it was a shock to everyone who knew her.

This photo is from one of the many enjoyable weekends we spent together. Emily is on the right. She was only 28 years of age and will be greatly missed.

Life is precious.

This blog will continue after a short break.

Art, Shapes, Daegu

Having reached my 2 years in Korea, it was time to extend my F4 visa at the immigration department. Immigration offices here tend to remind me of the old Centrelink offices in Australia.

Although a little skeptical that immigration could really be that wonderful, I was pleasantly surprised. All I had to do was fill out a form and pay around $30. I sat nervously on the other side of the desk trying to look like a model immigrant while the officer looked at my card. For a while it seemed like he was using his tongue to remove a piece of food stuck in a molar. Then he looked at me and asked me if I'm enjoying Korea or not.
"It's really good here" I replied, not knowing what the correct answer was supposed to be. But sure enough, a few keystrokes later and kabam! Two more years in beautiful Korea.

The thing I like about Korea is that I still find things amusing on a daily basis. I guess I'm still a little immature too.

So anyway, last weekend we decided to take a trip up to Daegu city, the fourth largest in Korea. Prior to this, I had only passed through the city once and that was very briefly.

Daegu is well known for being involved in the art scene. Last weekend in particular there was a special exhibition called Art, Shapes, Daegu. The focus was on art submitted by foreigners living in Korea. Some of my co-workers in Busan submitted some works (Michelle Lynch, Logan Fry and Randall Mosman).

This pagoda was made out of stacked up soju glasses. Now that's what I call fine art.

I must say that I'm not that much of a cultured art critic. Some art I get, and some art I don't. This one belonged to the latter category.

This is what I'd call good art.

'Cept I probably would not buy it.

One of my co-workers at the Saha Branch, Michelle, took these photos in the Middle East. Nicely done Michelle!

This exhibit encouraged observers to crouch down and become immersed in the silhouettes. Heather felt like she was part of an African wildlife stampede.

These two pictures are my attempt at artistic photography. I call it 'Two Photos of Heather and Emily outside an Art Hall and Heather is Sitting, while Emily is Standing."

Pretty good eh?

As dusk approached, we wandered the shopping districts of central Daegu. It was very similar to the Nampodong district of Busan, but a little nicer because traffic is kept out of the area. Clothing in Korea used to be cheap, but these days it's about the same as prices back in Australia.

Daegu also seems to have a bigger presence of foreign restaurants. We stopped at this French restaurant called Dijon to grab a bite to eat. Compared to Australia, there isn't as much easy access to quality international cuisine in Korea. The main reason for that being because Koreans love Korean food more than anything else in the world.

Oysters with melted European cheese, wrapped in char-grilled aubergines.

Dee-ricious!

Slow-cooked duck with apple sauce.

Oh look, here is my second attempt at artistic photography. These two photos are entitled "Waiting for Food - Arrival of Food."

It was a nice quaint little restaurant and away from the busy crowds. We lazed around for a bit and then headed back to Busan on the KTX.

We enjoyed Daegu and it does have its own distinct atmosphere. The roads were more peaceful and there seemed to be a few more trees around the place. Our taxi driver was also very chatty and apparently funny, judging by the laughs of my fellow companions. My Korean still isn't good enough to understand Korean humour. I usually laugh just because other people are laughing.

And last week we also had a training session for April English, the program that I'm partially responsible for. Here are some of the April teachers from across Busan and Changwon city, enjoying their lunch after some morning training. They're a friendly bunch.

That's all for now. Soon I'll be filling you in on the 10th GOA'L Anniversary in Seoul that I just got back from yesterday.

See you then!

Boryeong Mud Festival 2008

We arrived in Boryeong late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel and wandered down to the beach. Boryeong is a small city of around 100,000 residents, but its mud festival has attracted 1.5 million visitors since it began in 1998. This success has largely been due to a clever marketing campaign that runs nationwide in the weeks leading up to the event.

There were noticeably more people and attractions than last year. This mud slide welcomes visitors to the main entrance of the beach.

The idea of the mud festival is to get covered in mud, relax and have some fun. It was a nice weekend away, and we managed to fulfill all three criteria.

One of the new additions this year was a 'Mud Prison', which you can see here in the middle of the photo. The idea is to stand inside the little room and then people from outside fling mud at you through the bars. I chose to put my camera safely away into my plastic bag at this point in time.

We got ourselves muddy and then washed off in the sea. After that we made a sandcastle. I've made a lot of sandcastles in my time, and I believe the key to making a good one is to bring some equipment like buckets and spades. But we didn't have any.

You are free to imagine what our sandcastle looked like. Or didn't look like.

It wasn't long before our grumbling stomachs drowned out the sounds of our voices so we decided to seek nourishment in the town. Many of the visitors to the mud festival were English teachers, and the town had gone to efforts to make our stay more 'homely'.

We ended up choosing an open-air seafood barbecue restaurant. At this particular restaurant they had live shellfish in aquariums and you could pay around $50 as a group of 5 people and eat an unlimited amount. You grill them over a charcoal barbecue and dip them in chilli sauce.

I remember the first time I cooked live shellfish and it was quite a shock. These days however, it only seems mildly strange. I'm still not a fan of live octopus though.

To help manipulate the tasty morsels out of their hot shells, seafood restaurants like these will issue cheap cotton gloves. The standard size proved a little too small for Erick's long tendrils.

This was a game set up at the festival during the night's activities. The idea is to knock the nail completely into the wood using only 2 hits. You'd have to have been a builder or carpenter for a few years to do it properly.


It's very difficult, but I've seen the vendors do it before. This vendor however, was not spot on the mark when challenged by a bystander. The key seems to be more about focus and confidence than brute strength.

We walked up and down the beach at night. There were some performances from Korean celebrities, but we opted to stay out of the crowded area in front of the stage.

Later in the night they had a fireworks festival. It was surprisingly impressive and much longer than the one last year. I've always been a big fan of fireworks in any shape or form. Back in middle school, I remember I used to buy firecrackers on the 'black-market' for around $2 each.

You know that when fireworks explode, it looks like they're coming towards you, right? Well I only just realised on this night that they're exploding in 3D, so if you had a more encompassing view of one, it would look like an inflating balloon. I'd love to see one in a panning Matrix-style effect one day.


Here's a video of the action, shot by Emily.

One of the few annoyances of the festival is the large number of mosquitoes in the area. Last year I was bitten dozens of times. This year there weren't so many, in part due to this council vehicle that was driving around the streets. All of that smoke coming out the back was insecticide. Probably non-lethal, but we still ran for cover to avoid being engulfed.

We arrived back in Busan late on Sunday evening. Here's one of my souvenirs from the festival that I'm posting to a friend soon. It's mud-soap, made from the silty mud in the area. Although the idea of soap is usually to make one cleaner and this seems like a bit of a contradiction, Boryeong mud is supposed to have quite a lot of mineral and cosmetic properties. They also sold mud-shampoo there.

That's all for this week. Next week I'm heading up to Seoul for the 10th GOA'L anniversary, and also to have a poke around Seoul National University. I also still need to fill you in on our past weekend to Daegu city.

See ya!