Nemeses

Two friends of mine are getting married (to each other), and this is how I choose to celebrate:

Nightlife, Exploring, Captain N, and the tower of Babel

Here's a short list of some places I've explored:

I met up with a friend from high school teaching near Seoul to go to the Seoul National Museum.  It detailed some of the history and prehistory of Korea, Singaporean art, private collections, and Buddhist statues.

Made famous by the song, Gangnam is a pretty nice, expensive area with lots of shopping malls, stores, and restaurants.  There's much less dancing, fewer horses and stables, and less colorful attire than I was ever expecting.

I've also been to Itaewon, which is kind of the foreigner or American district.  There are lots of American restaurants there and shopping advertised for "Big Clothes" (aka anything above an Adult M).  I'm still working out whether I have to make a shift up in clothing sizes to compensate for general Korean smallness, but typically buy an XL just to be sure it'll fit.  This tower is on a mountain near Itaewon, and I'll try to explore there before I go home.

Nightlife doesn't get too crazy because my dorm has a 1 or 2am to 5am lockout/curfew period because it's actually a Christian college complete with an on campus chapel right by the student center.  I haven't really touched that curfew yet, but maybe someday!

Seoul Searching

Here's a little walk-through of my days here in South Korea.  I wake up and check for any belligerent craziness coming from the North...  There always seems to be something new!  Then sometimes my day starts here (swollz, left) on the bottom floor of my apartment/dorm complex (right)...

Then on to my office at Yonsei University.  My whole goal in coming here was to keep a good working relationship with my academic advisor, set up a laboratory with funding he received from the Korean National Science Foundation, and then maybe (maybe) get some work done on my dissertation.  

From there, depending on the day and what's going on in my personal workload (doing research, writing papers about research), I'll head to our lab facility where I'm setting up an experiment to measure the health of cables.  The building that houses our lab was funded by the Korean Electric Power Company (KEPCO) and is established for future power grid research because, like it or not, the infrastructure of power companies is super old (think Thomas Edison, General Electric) and will shortly face some serious renovations.  

That was a side note, but essentially the story I want to tell is that to access the building after about 6pm, you have to put your hand inside a blood vessel reader to measure the unique patterns of (back of) palm blood vessels.  Apparently the width of vessels will change with things like excessive drunkenness, so I try to avoid that (or avoid working late/coming back to work late I guess).  I usually end the day by going out to eat with coworkers and then walking back up a pretty steep hill to my dorms.  Church here doesn't have many night time activities due to the fact that everyone seems to work late and people are spread out all over the huge city of Seoul and outskirts.

That's really all I have to say about that.

Galbi (간비), Delicious Grilled Meats

Many of you are aware of my love of grilled meats.  In Korea, they do a whole lot of that.  One of the big traditional types of Korean restaurants you run into is called a galbi (간비)  or ribs restaurant.  It's a really general term along with gui (구이) or grilled meats for any meat like beef (probably my favorite), chicken, pork, or various seafoods cooked on a grill in front of you at your table with a whole bunch of sides.  They bring the meat out to you raw and then depending on the type of meat you cook it yourself or they cook it for you.  Here's how it starts (this time with octopus, which is the weirdest one I've had so far in Korea):

This place brought us bibs to wear:

...and the final product...

This is the same story with chicken:

With the culture here, you end up going out to eat with your coworkers for most every meal.  People do a lot of working.  I try to get my adventuring and exploring in on the weekends!   Sorry most of the "adventures" everyone has seen so far have been adventures in food, but I've only had about 3 weekends here and lots more opportunities to go out and eat with coworkers!

Easter Nostalgia

Hristos a Inviat!  (Christ was resurrected or Happy Easter in Romanian)

This came up in one of my newsfeeds and has some details about one of the places in Bucuresti, Romania I visited with my family (and Stefan) in 2007 after my mission there!  I walked past it on the mission maybe once or twice, but I don't think I managed to tour it while I was there!

http://io9.com/strange-architecture-of-the-tito-and-ceausescu-regime-463206623

This is a little late, but I wasn't quite ready to celebrate Easter this year because in Romania it's always later (because the Orthodox church goes off of the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar).  I think it's on May 5th this year in Romania.  Some of my favorite Easter memories were of times I spent on my mission!  

The first year I was an extremely fresh (not fresh with the ladies, but new in the mission) missionary in a city called Galați near the Danube river by the Moldovan/Ukrainian border.  I think we had two separate families feed us 5 course Easter dinner/lunches, and I have never been more full in my entire life (including that one time Will Erskine and I stopped in the Combination KFC/Taco Bell and doubled down on dinner).

Easter is a three day celebration there (in Romania not at the Combination KFC/Taco Bell), and we would always take off our name tags and go to the Saturday night mass of the Orthodox church!  One of my favorite things that they did in that mass was the lighting of candles by Orthodox priests.  They normally wore all black robes, all year round but would wear these sweet white robes with gold inlay and elegant embroidery on Easter only (a day of victory).   They had this huge candle that they would light to symbolize the light, life, example, and Resurrection of Christ and would then pass that light to the congregation (a room packed so tight with humans).  Each member would then pass it on from person to person until everyone had light and the whole room was bright (from being previously kind of dim).  It was one of my favorite symbols of Christ.

My second year I was in Constanța, by the border of the Black Sea, with five of my favorite mission companions/favorite people (Step-M-wolf came later and was also a favorite).  We had heard that if you made it all the way back to your house with your candle still lit the Virgin Mary would grant your wish/prayer.  I'm pretty sure I didn't make it very far (the wind off of the sea was killer), but it was fun trying!

Easter in Korea was great too; I just wanted to share some nostalgia. I hope it was a great holiday for everyone and your respective families!

Much Love,

David Lee Coats

Just a dog chasing cars...

...I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one.  I put up my previous "newsletters" about a specialized version of "dating" that I practice out of somewhat of a lack of a complete confidence (among other things).  I don't always put together newsletters to encourage friends' girlfriends to break up with their boyfriend/fiancee...but when I do, I try to do so in a polite and informed manner!

Bulletin for November

Hi Friends!

This is my latest and probably last newsletter for a while!  Just as clarification for those new to the newsletter, the numbering of my newsletter provides that all issues are number 1 based on the quality of their contents, not their sequential order.  Also, due to personal laziness on my part.

For any who are wondering, my cat Isis is doing very well.  She is as temperamental and mangy as ever, the perfect complement to my own personality.

Much Love!

David Lee Coats