burberry rag

hello 5AM once again. they say to recover from jetlag you need a day for every hour you displace...which, given the thirteen hour time difference and my two week stay, might give me just enough time to recover before i have to go back home again. oh well. it means i get to see Seoul at its quietest hour when all the clubbers have gone to bed and the businessmen haven't gotten up yet for their morning commute. Seoul has some very beautiful sunrises, poking between the mountains and the skyscrapers. moments of it remind me of Vancouver, another city nestled in the mountains.

we've been very busy fighting off the jetlag while exploring the city. food! food everywhere tastes so good! even the street meat! sold out of the back of some sketchy guy's van! absolutely delicious! yesterday my dad bought some mandoo (dumpling) and chimpan (dough pastries with red bean paste) and i think the street cred only adds to its deliciousness.


my parents buying ho-dduk from some sketchy guy out of a sketchy van.


yummy street snacks - octopus and squid for sale


this street vendor was really mad that i was taking pictures of him. but first, master the credentials.

yesterday morning we went to Youngnak Presbyterian Church, which was housed in this magnificent old building, and this was pretty much the first time i went to a korean church that actually owned the building it held its services in. often in Canada, Korean churches have to rent beautiful old church buildings from white people, or else buy a converted warehouse (as in the case of Toronto's Youngnak church). the church service offered translation services in English and Japanese, which i thought was pretty interesting, and I should also note that this is the only time in Korea that I ever had a Korean person talk to me in English. it figures. Koreans are really big on the church as a part of their culture, and even bigger on evangelism. i'd love to go into a discussion about this reflecting a fascinating counter-appropriation of western colonial influences on Korean indigenous culture, but i suspect a travel blog isn't the best venue for re-hashing my social science undergrad education.


young nak presbyterian church


i am not kidding you. it's a Korean Mother Mary and Child

after the service we went to Myeongdong (i haven't the faintest clue how to spell this in English) which was an exciting shopping and eating district. my father had planned to just pass through this area, but of course when you're traveling with three women, you can't just "pass through" a shopping area. i have seen so many wonderful t-shirts that just beg to be put on the Engrish website; it's almost overwhelming.


Korea's use of engrish is both fascinating and poetic.

i really don't understand why they love to use random english words here. is it a trendy thing, like the way in North America if we want to sound sophisticated, we slip in French phrases we don't understand ("She has that sort of je ne sais quoi about her, you know?" "Your mom just gave me a deja vu."). Also interesting is the korean phonetic spelling of english words. i don't know how many times i painstakingly read out the korean characters on a sign ("Eh-li-beh-tuh" or "Su-tu-ra-beh-ree Men-go") only realize they are actually english words ("Elevator" or "Strawberry Mango").

most fascinating, of course, is the Korean love of designer labels. So many grown men carrying Louis Vuitton handbags. i'm sure there are a lot of knock-offs (like, i'm sure the street vendor outside my hotel is not selling real Chanel earrings) but i'm sure a lot of them are the real thing, because Koreans really love that stuff here and if the rest of them are anything like my cousin, they can tell if its genuine Coach at a glance. When I passed by an optician's shop yesterday, i definitely saw a Burberry rag that was used to wipe glasses. BURBERRY RAG.

...and yet despite this love of ridiculously expensive brands, it's amazing how cheap a lot of other things are. like socks. really cute socks, all for a buck a pair. i am pretty sure i'm going to fill up my suitcase with only socks as souvenirs when i come back.

to balance out our hyper-consumerist morning, we spent the afternoon ascending Namsan, the mountain providing a startling retreat into nature, smack dab in the middle of the city. it looked like everyone else in Seoul had the same idea - the paths were pretty crowded full of families and children climbing over perilous steep steps that just screamed TORT. still, it was an amazing view at the top, allowing us to see just how far the city spans, the cityline framed by the pretty tree blossoms that cause me such woeful fits of allergies. also, intense moments of acrophobia. Bukhansan is going to be even more interesting when we get to that.
for dinner, we grabbed some bibimbap and kimbap at the Hyundai department store in Sinchon. yeah, i didn't know that Hyundai had a department store either, but if it's going to be anywhere it makes sense that it would be in Seoul. my mission for today is to find some noodle bowls that don't contain octopus. Koreans like to to a lot of weird things to a normal bowl of spaghetti.*

*yes, i know that "normal bowl of spaghetti" isn't historically correct since asians invented pasta first and Marco Polo only stole it from us to bring back to Italy, so really, the "normal bowl of spaghetti" is what you find in Asia, not East Side Mario, but still, it doesn't change the fact that i'd love to have a good bowl of noodles that don't contain anchovy eyes or octupii...


view from partway up the Namsan mountain

bathroom self-portraits: korea

seoul, south korea
this was the bathroom in my hotel room.



another shot of the bathroom in my hotel room. fancy sink.



incheon, south korea

at Incheon airport. the engrish signs in korea read smooth and poetically, like haikus

the hills are alive with the smell of ddukbokki

well, it's five AM on Sunday morning, and i'm still fighting against the horrors of thirteen hour jet lag, particularly exacerbated by that screaming baby on my flight who had the extraordinary lung capacity to keep going all night. my biological clock, by the way, has been smashed to pieces. to quote Patton Oswald, i'm going to instead have an imaginary baby called Ten Hours of Sleep a Night.



so i write to you from the future, although my body *feels* like it's 4PM Saturday afternoon. my experience in Korea so far has been pretty mind-blowing. Up until now, every thing i ever knew about korea was from my parents' stories (who had left the country when it was still a developing national with an impoverished economy in the 1960s and 70s), and from the Korea soap operas. so far the Korean soap operas haven't lied - everyone does look identically pretty and young, and people do spend a lot of time passionately yelling at each other. but it blows my mind to see it all in real life. Korea is a totally fascinating world where paradoxes meet: hyper-capitalism thrives right alongside third world country standards of social welfare - where you see people in trendy designer suits sporting trendy designer handbags stepping around shoeless emaciated beggars dragging themselves on a board along the bustling street. Magnificent ancient Asian gates and huge statues from Korea's folklore stand alongside ultra-modern skyscrapers and giant billboards selling shoes. You breathe in the strong smells of the city that alternate between delicious street food like ddukboki...and sulphuric sewer, equally strong.



and all the korean people. i suppose it's not that surprising to see a lot of korean people in korea, but i have never lived in any place with so many korean people. i've been to north york where the overwhelming majority of people were asians, but there is nothing like being awash the sea of homogeneous faces like the streets of seoul. so many hipsters glasses, even on the old ladies. we've started playing a game of "Spot the White Guy", where you find the one caucasian pedestrian on the street, and then you wonder if he's a tourist, someone's world-savvy spouse, an english teach trying to find himself, or just plain lost ("hey, wait, this isn't Spadina...").

we've been getting a lot of stares ourselves on the streets. my sister thinks it's because we aren't dressed fashionably enough. my father says it's because we're just so beautiful. my mother is convinced that it's because of my tattoo - she claims only gang members have tattoos here. me, i think that they just know that we're ee-seh, just like i see chinese tourists and our eyes meet, and we just know in an instant of a mutual recognition that we both really, really, really suck at speaking in korean.

we did a two-hour tour of Seoul yesterday, which is just really huge, about two or three times the size of Toronto. we walked through the crowded street markets of Insadonggil, where i discovered that in all twenty-five years of my existence, i never learned how to say "Excuse me" in Korean, because nobody ever says it when they ram into you unexpectedly. we went up the in-city mountain Namsan past throngs of schoolchildren all in identical uniform all enjoying the escape from the city into nature as well as the breathtaking view at the top which lets you survey the whole cityline. we've walked past all sorts of delicious street food vendors, and yes, we went to McDonalds where i ate a bulgogi burger. i'm working up the courage to try the kimchi bulgogi pizza...




Mr. Pizza: Love of Women.

Thoughts at Toronto Pearson Airport

And here I find myself at the airport bar again. come three hours before international flights, what garbage. Now I have three hours to kill.

There are three classes for Korean Air: Economy, Prestige, and Morning Calm.

The Korean Air desks are right next to KLM's desk for Amsterdam Schipol. More of my past/future juxtapositioning.

Haven't eaten any dinner because I've been too busy packing. I should probably grab my last chance at western food in a while (cheeeeeeeeese!).

Oh my, tell me that screaming baby isn't going to be on the same plane as me...

today i leave for korea!

a punk version of 애국가, the national anthem.

tomorrow, korea. today, another bathroom self portrait.

Just ate an Asian-style croquette at Toronto's best Japanese restaurant. This makes me simultaneously nostalgic about my past (Netherlands, kroket country) and excited about my future (Asia! Tomorrow!).

until then, i'm back with BATHROOM SELF PORTRAITS. since i am feeling a bit nostalgic about the Netherlands, here are some Dutch bathroom shots:



my apartment, Diemen, the Netherlands.

this isn't a particularly unique bathroom (except for the bizarre shower) but i figured i have to include one picture of the bathroom in my apartment in Holland. it was a pretty awful apartment; there were cockroaches, i had no heater, and i was paying far too much money for what i was getting, even if there was a housing shortage in Amsterdam. still, i woke up every morning to a view of the Dutch countryside, and four little black horses grazing in the farm field nearby.

the Dutch are a tall people; my feet don't reach the ground.



if you could see my face, you'd be able to see the look of utter confusion, pondering the existence of this female urinal in the women's washroom at my school.

Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam



residence on weesperstraat, Amsterdam.

no offense to my friends that live here, but parts of this building really look like a dump. i was intrigued by this bathroom, which had two tiny strategically placed mirrors that allowed you to see: 1. that creepy dude on that poster 2. your modesty, while you pee.

moving again

apologies to everyone that it's been such a long time since i updated. my main reason is that i haven't been traveling at all, save for the distance between the library and my home. but now that school is over, gloria is on the move again! this thursday, i will be heading for Korea (south, not north...don't think they'd let me out again if i got in) and you can be assured that there will be many more blog updates then.

in the meantime, i've decided to use this blog as a venue for a photography series that i've been working on, called Bathroom Self-Portraits. because i love traveling, and i love bathrooms, and i especially love searching the world for interesting bathrooms. two rules:

1. it's in a bathroom

2. it's a self-portrait

here's the first one:



Isabella's Chocolate Cafe, Oshawa. April 16, 2010

i play banjo for a band called gatesgatesgates and we were invited to play a special show at this Oshawa venue. The owners, who were a big part in supporting the arts community in Oshawa, were packing up and leaving for the East Coast, so a special thank you concert was held for them.