My Korean City: Yangpyeong!

Hello Badger in Korea readers! Thanks for continuing to stop by and catch up with me. I really appreciate all the comments and well wishes from everyone... you make it hard to be away!

Well, today I wanted to give everyone a bit of an idea of the city that I'm living in here in South Korea.

The name of the city is Yangpyeong. It's a decent sized city about half an hour directly East of Downtown Seoul. It's one of the last stops on the East Seoul Metro line and has a population of about 100,000. The city is famous for it's scenic placement right on a major river way and is nestled in between tree covered mountains. It's also famous for it's organic farming and gardening and you see them sprinkled throughout the city blocks and of course out into the countryside.

The downtown itself is a mixture of open-air markets, streets lined with traditional Korean shops and bigger streets with high-end western-catered businesses. There are poor shanties and food stands and there are high rise luxury apartments and office buildings. Yangpyeong, like most of Korea is UBERconnected with internet and cell phone stores occupying about every 4th or 5th store front. It's a very mixed vibe. To be honest I haven't quite figured out what to think about it yet. One minute you'll be taken back the simplicity of a poor store front with an old women selling roosters, crabs and hot chili peppers and the next minute you'll find yourself standing outside an ultra-modern, ultra-hip I-Phone store with an all white interior and loud Korean Pop Music (K-Pop) playing from it. I'm finding it a bit challenging to understand how everything works and what the routine is here because of the intense mixture of things. It's really quite different. But I suppose that comes with living in a different country, right?

Alright here's a short clip I put together showing you some of the landscape around Yangpyeong:

Here are some pictures and another video I took from around town:





Here's my apartment building. I think it's called "V2". The door is on the right corner and I climb up that glass stair case to the 4th floor every day!

         


  Here's the subway station that is  a  block away from my apartment.                                                                                                                                   

   A market on the side of a street. (Lots of these)




        
  






 One of the shop-lined pedestrian streets.
Lots of western shops on this street.

                                           Video of downtown Yangpyeong

                                                                           

 So you can see it's this very unique combination of Korean shops of every different kind. Pet shops, food stands, barbers and everything in between. Then... there are these random western implants that stick out like a sore thumb!

The strangest part for me is that they are the most random American stores that I would never guess. What would you guess would maybe pop up in smaller town in Korea? I would say maybe a Subway? Maybe a McDonald's? No... the first stores I see are an Adidas, a Dunkin' Donuts and a Baskin Robins. I don't think I've even seen any of those in the U.S. let alone seeing them in my town over here. It's a bit strange!






OK everyone! Thanks again for stopping by. Leave your comments, questions and requests on here or on Facebook and I'll get to them as soon as I can! Peace!

Mike

Hello from Korea!

Hey everyone!

Sorry that posting has been so sporadic- internet access and time have been limited for me this week, but I've finally had some time this weekend to update the old blog!

Well... I finally made it to Korea! The flight was long... (14 hours to be exact)... but I've got to tell you, Korean Air is by far the best airline I've ever experienced. The service was incredible, the food was above average (for airline food) and there were personal movie screens for every passenger! I watched 4 movies which made my eyeballs want to bleed. Plus, the flight attendants all look like this!

So when I arrived in Seoul, I had to get my luggage, go through customs... yada, yada, yada... and finally, after I got through customs, I saw two people holding up a sign with my name on it "MICHAEL PRELLWITZ" which was a huge relief for me. It was a great moment because I felt for the first time in months that everything had worked out. All the applications, background checks, Apostilles, passports, visas, contracts and fees were finally over and sure enough, someone was there to meet me in Korea and they were going to take me to the place that I was going to live for the next year.

I greeted my co-teacher(s) and was suprised, but apathetic, to learn that I had been moved to a different assignment. Instead of going to Anseong in the very bottom of the province, I was told that I would instead be living in a city called Yangpyeong (not to be confused with Pyeongyang hahaha). Yangpyeong is actually right on the outskirts of Seoul and my apartment is right next to the Yangpyeong Rapid Transport Metro called "Korail". The city is pretty big, about 100,000 people and my apartment is right in the downtown. I really, really like it and I'm really happy that I got re-assigned here. I don't really know how to describe the town yet, and to be honest I haven't seen a whole lot of it yet, but it's got lots of open air markets, hundreds of small shops and coffee shops and then there are a couple high end western streets that have stores like Dunkin' Donuts, Adidas, Paris Baguette and lots of other really nice unexpected Western familiarities. I'll do another post on the city later on. I was dead tired on the car ride home, but my co-teachers insisted that we stop somewhere in Seoul to eat, so we did and ironically my first meal in Korea was (sorta) pizza and (sorta) pasta from a somewhat upscale "Italian" restaurant in Seoul. So, we had a nice meal... I ate the pizza that you dipped in honey and the pasta which had all kinds of seafood in it (I didn't even bother to ask what) and we were off to my new place. After about a 45 minute drive out of Seoul, we arrived at my place and a guy dropped off some bedding for me and that was it! I was on my own! It took me about 30 minutes to figure out all of the appliances which were all in Korean, but I finally got my AC working and after that I was ready to crash. 

Here is a video I made of my apartment- enjoy!

School has been pretty good so far- I haven't taught any classes yet, but I will be starting tomorrow. When I went to school for the first day, they had hung banners with my name on it that said "Welcome Michael Prellwitz!" (Yes I felt cool). They showed me my computer in the teacher's office and then I was then told that I had to give a speech at a school-wide assembly that was being put on just for me. I rolled with it and introduced myself in a room filled with noisy elementary school kids, co-teachers and my principal. Principals are a really big deal here and everyone bows really low and treats them with lots and lots of respect. Speaking of bowing... yeah, that's hard to get used to. I feel like an idiot every time I do it and not knowing any Korean doesn't make things easier! The school lunch is pretty hardcore Korean and is a bit rough for me to get used to as well. Lots of fermented crunchy vegetables and lots and lots of spiciness. I'm not a picky eater, but I can only take so much!

I spent the weekend visiting a friend in Seoul which was a blast. I'll probably do a separate post about that later on, but Seoul is absolutely nuts- I'll leave it at that.

Alright- that's all for now! I'll probably post again once I get my cable and internet set up later this week!

Mike