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Earlier this week my roommate and I decided we would go check out one of the local tourist attractions, the large palace in downtown Seoul. I had never been to any of the palaces, I figured when I was here before that I would save a couple things to come back and do later, and this was one of them.

The palace is set right next to a high rise part of town with lots of commerce and news media buildings. Also several of the embassies including the American embassy is right by there.

Gyeongbokgung royal palace was constructed in the late 14th century, but it suffered severe damage a couple different times from Japanese invasions. They are still working to restore it, but only about 40% of the palace is still standing or been restored. For being only 40% the size of it was still quite impressive. I’ve been to the Forbidden City in Beijing and this had some similar construction. It was much smaller, but really didn’t seem to be a whole lot smaller.

The football team is getting ready for our next game. We play on Sunday at 10:30 in the morning, which means I need to be at the school at 6:30 am. We’ll be playing a very tough team, but we’ve got some great guys on our team so I think it will be a good match.

I kind of got sick yesterday (Friday) so today I was trying hard to take it easy. I was supposed to go to a baseball game with a friend but the game was canceled due to rain. So instead I went to the bath house to try and get a good sweat and freshen up.

I came upon an interesting addition to the bath house, cupping therapy. This has always interested me, those ceramic cups where they use fire to blow inside them and then stick them on your body. I’ve heard of this and have seen it in movies. I thought that would be a good thing to do, they say it’s supposed to help detoxify your body and force the bad things out. The practice has been used for over a couple thousand years and the claims of what it can do vary anywhere from nothing, to curing cancer. The idea is the suction can affect the skin 4 inches deep, bringing up toxins to the surface and allowing fresh blood to repair the deeper tissue. It invigorates blood flow, opens up your veins and capillaries. So anyway, why not give it a shot?

Now I have never done this before so I didn’t know what to expect. One thing I didn’t expect was for it to be extremely painful. It felt like a small alligator was clamping onto your skin. Just out of instinct I wanted to reach around my back and yank them off because they hurt! But sometimes good things hurt, a good massage can hurt, so I just went with it. She left them on for a long time and after a while the pain would go away. She would come over and take the cups off and it felt so good, but then she’d add a couple more and I really didn’t want her to, but I was pretty sure I was going to be paying the same whether I told her to stop or not. So I get home to look this therapy up on Wikipedia and here’s an interesting passage:

Usually treatments are not painful, but treatment should be discontinued if the person receiving it experiences more than minor discomfort.

I wouldn’t even call it discomfort, it was way beyond that. Great.

As for another thing I did not know, I did not know I would leave looking like an animal. This is great because I know tomorrow after the football game I’m going to be showering and changing and I look like an alien with all these purple circles on my back and stomach. And they do hurt, they feel like bruises. So this is go for tomorrow morning’s game.

But I wanted to try it, it’s something they do here. So when in Rome. I was looking it up online and found some interesting pictures from the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Apparently several swimmers use this therapy (maybe more athletes, but with swimmers it is more revealing).

So that makes me feel a little bit better. Yes I’m that much of a serious athlete I need cupping therapy. I highly doubt I would ever do this again though, unless I feel some benefit tomorrow. For now though its just painful and I look funny.

This is a long post since it’s been almost a week and it’s the first one.

I left Korea in July of 2009, it is now May 2011 and I am back to visit for a few weeks. First impressions upon coming back were interesting. I can’t really place what my expectations were of coming back, but adjusting to being back was a bit more difficult than I thought. I’m not sure what it is that makes the adjustment difficult. The jet lag doesn’t help, being that its a 16 hour time difference. My first couple days were frustrating, I was tired, a bit unsure of what to do, I began to wonder why I even came. But then the adjustment started happening and I started to really enjoy myself. I think it was probably the football game on Saturday that did it for me. I’ll get into that in a moment.

I came back to Korea because I wanted to see my friends and I wanted to do some soul searching (in Seoul). I’ve considered going back to school to do a masters in Korea studies and work in government, but I’ve also thought about doing other thing. So I thought this would be good for me. I made several Korean friends during my time here as an exchange student. I remember one night going out with one of my friends for the last time. We were at a bar having a few drinks and I told him I wanted to come back and visit a year later. He told me that I say that now, but I most likely will not. He himself was an exchange student in California, and always thought he’d go back and see his friends but he never did. He says that’s always the case. Exchange students come and go. I understood what he meant, and I wanted to try very hard to keep my promise of coming back. Coming back and reuniting with my Korean friends I hope will show that I care about the friendship and it is something I would like to hold onto for a long time.

In sort of a funny coincidence I am staying with the roommate I had while I was in Korea before. He is from the Netherlands and came back to Korea this year to take more schooling. So again we find ourselves rooming together and it was a great time to come in that I get to see him at the same time as so many other friends here.

I had arrived Tuesday night and Wednesday we had football practice. I showed up for practice with the team and was delighted to see several of my friends I had played with before. There are several new guys as well, and they are all very nice and were very welcoming. The practice was in the evening, but it was about 4am my time back home. I struggled to keep up and my head was cloudy. When we were counting off our stretches (1,2,3… 10) It came to my turn to count off the stretch and I began counting in Korean, I got lost halfway through and I repeated some numbers and left a number out, so it went kind of like 1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10,7,10. They all laughed and cheered me on after the attempt. I met the coach for the first time and after practice he took me into one of the tents on campus. There was a festival this past week at the school, so there was a lot of tents you could sit under and order drinks and food. We shared a bottle of makgori and chatted it up. He is Korean but grew up in the states and studies comparative literature so his English is better than mine and his Korean is just as good too. I enjoyed his company because his attitude is American so it was fun to have that in common. We then went out to eat with the team and to my surprise I was served a bowl of soup that was just pig ears and blood sausage. Wasn’t the tastiest thing I’ve ever had, but it also wasn’t the worst. We then went back to campus for the festival and we all sat under a tent and played drinking games. The guys helped me play the games since I wasn’t keeping up very well.

Thursday I was sore beyond belief. I had bruises all up and down my arms, my neck, hip and legs were incredibly sore. I was able to go to the pharmacy and get some Ibuprofen though and that helped. I have a Korean tutor I meet with back home in Seattle and I met up with a friend of hers who kindly took me out to eat for dinner, then we met up with her sister and sister’s boyfriend and went to a bar.

Friday I had football practice again but this time it was easier since we had a game the next morning. I went out that evening for a farewell party to a friend of ours who was headed back to the states for the summer. We went out to a club, and strangely the club was full of swastikas. And no I didn’t mistake it for the reverse religious symbol, it was the same as ones paraded in the days of WWII. I felt strange being there, I didn’t get it. But the going away party was fun, I had only one drink so I could be good for the game.

I had to wake up at 6 am to join the team and we took a bus ride to the location of our game. It takes about an hour to get there. Upon arriving at the field and suiting up I was informed I was starting on special teams, the front line on kick return. I was surprised they gave me a starting spot, a little confused why I was on the front line, those are usually big guys, but I didn’t care. I was also 2nd string backup for split end and corner back. It was a very close game, the other team started out strong and drove in a touchdown in the first few minutes. But then our defense picked up and it was a scoreless game for a while as both defenses were keeping the offenses still. We ended up pulling it out though 25-24.

After the game we headed back to the school to drop our stuff off. The team went out to celebrate but I was meeting my friend as she was taking me to a Korean baseball game. I had never been to one before but I know crowd participation was a big deal. She is a big fan and has a season pass. We went to the game and she bought me a jersey, the jersey came blank with no name and number. She told me by the end of the game I should decide who to put on there. The game was a blast, our team was down 5-1 but they came back to tie it up in the 9th and ended up winning the 11th inning, I had decided that if a player won the game for us, I would get their name and number on the jersey and that is what I did. Most of the time we were on our feet, singing songs and moving to the cheer motions. For people who think baseball is boring, you should really go to a Korean game, there is no down time in the cheering and songs. I learned the Korean baseball terms for home run, strikeout and some others. I also practiced some Korean by creating some things to shout out. I yelled one players name on the opposing team and said “jeep eh ka!” which means “go home!” Several people around me laughed, I’m sure I had a terrible foreign accent. It was fun. There was a guy sitting infront of us who was for the other team, strangely sitting in our teams section. He cheered out in Korean “home run!” to which I replied in Korean with a cheer “strikeout!” he then said “home run!” again and I followed it up again with another “strikeout!” cheer. People around laughed again. It was a great experience and I know I’ll be going to another game soon with my jersey.