I’ve recently become moderately obsessed with the song “Solichyeo” by the Korean ballad singer Lee Sung Cheol. Lee Sung Cheol violates the young pop idol model in a couple of respects. First of all, he’s 37 with two kids, which is major downer. Second, by Korean standards he’s a pretty unattractive guy. To his credit, though, the song is fantastic. In general, too, Koreans tend to agree that ugliness is a pretty good indicator that someone is a good singer. I guess the thinking is that if someone was ugly AND had a terrible voice there’s no way he'd become famous, so if a singer’s ugly and famous, well, it's gotta be his incredible voice. (The lead singer for the group SG Wannabe, for instance, is generally considered to have a great singing voice on account of his large face--large face being a euphemism for complete hideousness, I think. When my teachers want to compliment me on how nice I look or how much weight I’ve lost, they usually tell me that my face is looking “so small!” Okay, and in a sidenote to this sidenote, it recently came to Robin's and my attention that the name of this complete pop-fantasy Korean boy band actually stands for "Simon and Garfunkel Wannabe." Too strange.) "Solichyeo" actually sounds pretty much exactly like the hundreds of other heart-breaking love songs that constantly crowd the ether of Korean cities, but it’s pretty popular in the Lee household…the passionate vocal stylings that often emanate from behind Yong Ju’s door while he’s studying more often than not seem to be based loosely around “Solichyeo,” and after standing outside a bakery in the freezing weather at 4 am just to listen to the end of song last time I visited Dana in Seoul, it’s basically been cemented as a favorite. (We weren’t up at 4 am after a wild night of partying, in case you were thinking we are at all hip and cool. Have I talked at all about DVD bangs? They’re basically like video rental stores, only you don’t take the DVD home to watch. Instead, you go into one of their special viewing rooms, usually equipped with a huge fake leather mattress-type thing and backrests, and they project the movie onto one of the walls. There’s not a lot of personal space in Korean homes, and a lot of couples go to DVD bangs just to have sex, which accounts for the large amount of porn available, often somewhat alarmingly mixed in with your standard comedies and dramas. “Notting Hill,” “Mission Impossible II,” “Something’s Gotta Give” then WHAM! Korean porn. That particular night, though, we were both pretty beat, so Dana suggested we just relax with a movie, and since he’s both as captivated by movies and as subject to extreme inertia in the presence of leather pillows as I am, one movie turned into three, which meant six hours in the same 8’x8’ room. So, DVD bangs. Awesome.) Anyway, I wanted to get the lyrics to the song, so Marina went onto Naver, the Korean Google (or, as Yong Ju calls it, “googles,” as in, “It’s true! Look on Googles!”) and found them for me. Actually, she found a blog that posted not only the lyrics but also the song itself. I guess this is pretty common. If you know where to look, I think you can find basically anything—movies and music—on Korean blogs. Koreans are way into pirated materials in general, though. On the street in Seoul they’re already selling DVDs of movies that are still in theaters in the US (think “Little Miss Sunshine”). One more incentive to learn Korean, I guess. The only weird thing about the blog with “Solichyeo,” though, is the name: Ku Klux Klan. What??? I asked Marina, who’s a better English speaker than pretty much any Korean high school girl you’re likely to come across, whether or not the name meant anything to her and she said no, that it was basically just meant to be cool-sounding gibberish. Brings to mind the unfortunately named clothes-store chain that Gillian pointed out to me when I was in Taiwan: KKK. Ugh, weird to have such strong associations with something that is completely meaningless to everyone around you.

This happened a while ago, but I’ve been so negligent about my blog lately that I’m trying to pad this post so that it seems really substantial. So when my students say bad words in class, I usually make them write me five sentences apologizing and explaining what they did wrong, which they then read out loud at the end of class. These are the five sentences one student chose to share with everyone: “Saying fuck is very bad. We should not say fuck. In America, saying fuck hurts people’s emotions. I said fuck because of surprise, but it was mistake. I’m sorry I said fuck.” I was like, great, that’s 25 more sentences.

Hm, that didn’t fill as much space as I had hoped. Oh! I know! Happy birthday to me. So I’ve been “24” by Korean years for the past month and a half, but tomorrow I turn 23 in REAL years. I guess it’s not that thrilling of a birthday…I guess I don’t get one of those until 30, huh? Does any monumental age-changing happen between 21 and 30? I don’t think so…god, I feel like I’m on a slippery slope to old age here. To celebrate, the host fam took me to “Vikings,” the fancy seafood restaurant in the Lotte Department Store. (“V” is pronounced like “b” by most Koreans, and for one terrible moment I thought we were all going to go biking to Lotte Mart for my birthday.) It was good. For presents the take included: three towels, a lucky pig piggy bank, and a ton of chocolate. Also pretty good. Tomorrow I leave for Japan. Hm, it’s almost midnight….I should probably pack.


But first!

SOME PICTURES OF THAILAND, SINCE I DIDN’T WRITE ANYTHING

This is like a sliver of the pinky nail of the Grand Palace, which is perhap the most overwhelming place I have ever visited. Inside was not only the big Temple of the Emerald Buddha but about a million gold and tile-encrusted buildings, towering, equally encrusted demons, statues of all sorts of bizarre creatures, I don't even know.


The interior of the walls surrounding the Grand Palace are all painted with murals of from the epic Ramayakin (this from the guidebook...maybe the same as the Ramayana? not sure...). Anyway, a major restoration was going on during the time when we visited.


Wat Buparram in Chiang Mai. This place was particularly devoted to the fauna of Thailand, and featured huge plaster giraffes in the front (wait, are there giraffes in Thailand), terra cotta monkeys along the outer walls and actual chickens pecking around in the yard. Chiang Mai used to be the capital city, and even though it's far smaller than Bangkok it has just as many temples, more than three hundred, which basically translates to a wat around every corner. Wat Buparram was definitely one of my favorites.


Also at Wat Buparram. This guy reminds me SO MUCH of the tuna fish guy in a white suit who commands one of the big flying spaceships in Return of the Jedi. Anyone know who I'm talking about? If I were a bigger geek I could probably be more specific, but as it is I'm just enough of one for this to have occurred to me in the first place.


I thought Thai writing was really pretty, even if spoken Thai sounds like a cat choking on a piece of lemongrass. No, that's mean. I take it back. Really. Thailans is wonderful and perfect.


A picture of the king of Thailand at the flower expo in Chiang Mai. Thai people really, really love their king. You can get thrown in jail for saying bad stuff about him, but I'm sure that only ever happens to tourists because he seems to be basically universally adored. It helps that he's considered at least partly divine, but he's also done a lot of grassroots work for the Thai people, and almost any restaurant you go into will have pictures of him trekking through Thai farmland frowning concernedly at the local rice paddies. We arrived shortly after the king's birthday, which was a major national holiday. Yellow was a pretty significant color in the celebrations (I think it has to do with the day on which he was born), and while we were there many, many people still wore their yellow polo shirts with the royal insignia, as though in accordance with some sort of national dress code.


Thai is around 90% Buddhist, and young Thai men are all ecouraged to become monks at some point in their lives, even if only for a week or so. The upswing is that in the major cities, there are many, many monks around, most of them pretty young. This is still at the flower expo, on the way to see the color guard. Oh man. The color guard was really good, and I really hope I didn't offend anyone with my loud snorf when the vaguely militaristic march ended and the soldiers started doing a full body wave to the song "Final Countdown." I tried to explain to Mom that it had nothing to do with the wave and everything to do with a magician named Job, but she wasn't buying it.


Of course we rode elephants! This was our elephant man.


We spent a lot of time outside of the big cities in areas like this one, Mae Hong Son.


I don't know why, but every time we encountered cattle on the road I got really, really excited, the way most women do when they see small children. So here you go: cattle in the road.