Week 6: Field Work, Eat, Sleep (maybe), REPEAT : 7/1-7/7
This past week was grueling, it's all mostly a blurred memory that feels like one very long day. I wish I could say it was from all of the Soju I drank but it's mostly because we had crazy and near sleepless days of field research. That isn't to say there wasn't a little Soju as well :). Anyways, at the beginning of the week we took a little field trip to a local cinema attached to a large mall. I'm kind of a huge fan of the Transformers, originally a TV show series back when I was a wee-lad and now made into blockbusters directed by the amazing Michael Bay. Wait, let me rephrase that, Michael Bay is awful at directing movies. Luckily however there are plenty of explosions, babes, and fighting robots to keep you somewhat amused. I wanted to see a flick at a Korean cinema just for comparison and it's safe to say they're basically the exact same.
Differences include: automated machines to buy tickets (which some US theaters actually have now too), popcorn covered in red powder (spicy maybe?), and subtitles in Korean while the movie plays in English. For the first ten minutes or so of the movie I was preoccupied thinking about the fact that I was watching a movie in Korea that was in English and not dubbed in Korean, but with only subtitles. I think it would be strange to see a movie in the states that was in Korean with English subtitles, it has to be weird for Koreans too. I also snuck in some sour gummy worms, delicious of course. I think I'll try another movie theater in Seoul in August when another movie I want to see comes out - the internet claims it's the best theater in Korea and maybe even all of Asia! The website shows that you can buy beer and shots of liquor just like the normal popcorn or a slushy, I'll let you know how it is :). |
Before the girls arrived this week to do research, we decided to stock up on some groceries from our local eMart. This store by our house is one of many large-inventory style stores similar to our Walmart or Target. It's nice for our convenience and is more comfortable shopping because it essentially feels like you're just in a Target, except there are Koreans everywhere crowding the isles instead of Americans ha. The layout of the stores vary but a typical store has 2-3 levels, one for food, one for clothing, and then maybe another for everything else like electronics or camping gear. Easy accessibility to each floor by LONG slowly moving conveyors that allow you to bring your cart along for the ride. Imagine a really long treadmill belt that brings you to the top of each floor. Carts, the carts are interesting but smartly designed haha - the wheels are basically balls so the cart can roll around literally in any direction. Unlike our carts which use wheels and are restricted...you can travel the world with these shopping carts...haha just kidding, but I think they're neat. They also magically lock in place when you're going up the conveyor belt to another floor..I knew you were dying to learn about the shopping carts here, so you're welcome.
Oh one more interesting fact that one of the girls told me here is that luckily for small businesses, the Korean government has significant say on how these large conglomerate companies can operate. The e-Mart by our house was closed on this Sunday weekend and when I asked Jun-Young why, she said that the government forces them to shut down on Sunday. This allows small businesses to not be overtaken by large companies like e-Mart and to get some business still, pretty awesome system.
Oh one more interesting fact that one of the girls told me here is that luckily for small businesses, the Korean government has significant say on how these large conglomerate companies can operate. The e-Mart by our house was closed on this Sunday weekend and when I asked Jun-Young why, she said that the government forces them to shut down on Sunday. This allows small businesses to not be overtaken by large companies like e-Mart and to get some business still, pretty awesome system.
Normally we shop with the girls each week, but since they had been busy we went on our own and they would compensate us for the bill. We managed to rack up our most expensive shopping trip yet at 200,000₩ (about $200)! That symbol is the currency they use, the Won (pronounced like the first part of the word "Wand"). The extra 0's always make me feel like I'm rich because even the smallest bill is 1,000₩ which is relatively equivalent to our Washington.
My favorite part of the grocery store shopping are the free samples, they're in every aisle sometimes multiple!! They do yell at you loudly sometimes and try to get you over to taste whatever it is they're presenting, one lady started speaking in Korean at me and knew I was interested in her product so said it loudly in my direction "Chicken nuggets"! I went over to check it out because I love nuggets, so she already had it sold but continued to impress me by grabbing a freshly cooked nugget and splitting it open showing me the heat rise and pointing at the nugget repeating 'CHICKEN', as if I was still unaware haha. It was a 2-for-1 deal so it was an obvious yes ha; nice work free-sample lady. There are familiar foods like bread and PB & J, but then there are also various alien foods, such as sea critters and odd looking fruits to choose from; it's sort of a game choosing items. I typically get a combo of familiar and alien food :). Next visit I'll take some pics of some alien food and maybe buy some to try out..haha. I did try this new candy which was in a questionable section of "alien type foods" like dried squid (literally an entire squid dried up in a bag like jerky, haha) and dried octopus tentacles. The candy was...uh...different, haha - tasting like nothing and having the texture of a sponge. I call it "sponge candy" because I have no idea what it really is. It looks cool at least - I have resorted to feeding it to the neighborhood cats and/or my roomates. Oh yeah, so one more thing that was a little weird since we're on the subject of shopping. We checked out some shops at the mall where the cinema was at and some employees are die-hard commission sellers. For those of you who just like to browse on your own without the interference of annoying sales people, this will make you cringe. When we went into the Nike store we were immediately greeted by multiple employees who nicely welcomed us but then followed us on our heels the entire time we were in the store, haha. This one employee I thought I had lost for sometime suddenly reappeared on the other side of the aisle HAHA! He had a bag all ready to throw my future purchases in, it was awesome the service and enthusiasm but way over the top. I don't like being followed while I shop maybe I'm weird ha. |
The girls arrived as they normally do except a day later (Thursday) due to the weather the day before. This time they brought along three new undergraduate students to help with the field work. I would be lying if I said I remembered all of their names but the two I do sort of remember are He-Jin and Son-Young. It's always interesting meeting new Koreans here they're all pleasant and eager to speak to us but the ability to speak English is different with each individual. Sometimes it's short words or phrases, sometimes it's perfect fluency. Very nice girls, we got to know them a little better during a new type of meal we ate at a restaurant in Paju. The name of the dish slips from my memory but it's a vegetable soup with Korean style sausage (called Sundae, not to be confused with ice cream, like I thought we were having haha), spiced with cayenne, and a salty shrimp mixture. You also typically get a side of rice with most meals, and various appetizer dishes. It was great. However I'm not getting any better at this whole sitting on mats on the floor thing with a table that's 6 inches off the ground, ha. The traditional way is crossing the legs but after a short while both of mine are fast asleep so I've taken a different sitting approach...where I'm basically sprawled out, I call it American style.
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This is where the week becomes a blur of research packed excitement.........! We did our usual two-day paddy and forest field research. We had a new type of meal delivered to our door, Tofu soup and then a bunch of various side dishes. The soup was more like a chowder, or curry and was orange - basically mashed up tofu cubes with a mixture of seasonings. Many places deliver full course meals to your doorstep like room service at a hotel, even out here in the middle of farmland. It was pretty awesome ha they even give you dishes to eat off, silverware, and then the warm food! A guy drops it off, you eat your food, and then he comes back sometime later to pick up all the stuff he dropped off. Cool stuff and a hell of a lot healthier than American delivery foods BUT I will admit this food aint got a damn thing on a large pepperoni and sausage original crust from Domino's!! We did this the next day also, probably because everyone was too lazy to go anywhere plus we now had 9 people to stuff into a van. The next ordered meal was by far my favorite but only because we had a new item that I found fascinating, not sure why. The fascinating item was a hardboiled quail egg, yes a QUAIL EGG! Maybe I like them so much because they're like minis of chicken eggs..haha. If you don't know what a quail is it's that little bird with that signature little black comma shaped feather on it's head that curls over, you know what I'm talking about? Anyways they were delicious but mostly just entertaining to me, especially trying to chopstick grab them - they're slippery. This lunch was delicious and the girls threw together the leftovers into a phenomenal stir fry...wow, could eat it everyday. I'll throw up some pictures of the deliciousness.
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Most of the girls left before the real fun began for field research, us guys and Jun-Young, the main graduate student working on this research, decided that we would start doing our tracking of the frogs. Oh boy did we have fun!! In a nutshell, tracking these frogs involved a few steps:
1) Finding them in the forest and at night because that's when they're most active.
2) Devising antenna trackers to be placed on the frogs using gauze, wiring, thread, & diodes.
3) Securing the newly made trackers onto the captured frogs.
4) Releasing them at the same spot they were captured
5) Tracking them using a tracking device in 30-60 minutes intervals, for 72 hours.
6) Once tracked and found written documentation of movement, height, plant vegetation, etc.
7) Picture taken of the frog where it sits currently.
8) Repeat every 30-60 minutes, depending on rate of movement.
1) Finding them in the forest and at night because that's when they're most active.
2) Devising antenna trackers to be placed on the frogs using gauze, wiring, thread, & diodes.
3) Securing the newly made trackers onto the captured frogs.
4) Releasing them at the same spot they were captured
5) Tracking them using a tracking device in 30-60 minutes intervals, for 72 hours.
6) Once tracked and found written documentation of movement, height, plant vegetation, etc.
7) Picture taken of the frog where it sits currently.
8) Repeat every 30-60 minutes, depending on rate of movement.
A little more in detail, the point of the tracking is to figure out where these frogs are going exactly. We have some ideas but the point of research is to get data to back up your hypothesis or potentially dismiss it. Finding the frogs was probably the hardest task, the nights are dark with only the light from flashlights to aid you. The forest is dense and located on a steadily elevating hillside, making the trek at night difficult. Some nights there were swarms of bothersome insects, some nights it wasn't bad. There are other critters running around the forest too that startle you, including pheasants (which lay low to the ground until you get right on top of them and then quickly burst into flight), spiders (some are larger than quarters), snakes (I later found out are slightly venomous??), and feral cats whose eerie bright eyes glow back at you.
Once we found our few test subjects, it was time to get their little tracking suits on. They're fairly basic, made of a degradable gauze so as to allow them to fall off eventually - with a wire antenna attached with a signal reflecting diode. The antenna is sewed into the gauze and is picked up by our handheld tracking device called a RECCO. The device emits signals that bounce off of the diode and return to the device. Think of it as a metal detector, beeping louder as you get closer to the metal or in this case the diode. The suits are looped around the back legs keeping them secure and look like diapers on a baby. I got a kick out of watching them hop around with these things on, looking like frogs wearing diapers.
We tracked these little guys for 72 hours straight. We would take shifts sleeping and tracking the frogs. Each time you would go out to track a frog, sometimes it wouldn't move an inch and other times it would be halfway up a tree - a good distance from where it last was. Sometimes you'd lose the signal and the frog would be lost and other times you would find a tracker without a frog. Great experience but I was happy when it was over with.
Once we found our few test subjects, it was time to get their little tracking suits on. They're fairly basic, made of a degradable gauze so as to allow them to fall off eventually - with a wire antenna attached with a signal reflecting diode. The antenna is sewed into the gauze and is picked up by our handheld tracking device called a RECCO. The device emits signals that bounce off of the diode and return to the device. Think of it as a metal detector, beeping louder as you get closer to the metal or in this case the diode. The suits are looped around the back legs keeping them secure and look like diapers on a baby. I got a kick out of watching them hop around with these things on, looking like frogs wearing diapers.
We tracked these little guys for 72 hours straight. We would take shifts sleeping and tracking the frogs. Each time you would go out to track a frog, sometimes it wouldn't move an inch and other times it would be halfway up a tree - a good distance from where it last was. Sometimes you'd lose the signal and the frog would be lost and other times you would find a tracker without a frog. Great experience but I was happy when it was over with.
Anyways, getting away from the research - a couple fun things that happened over the weekend also. I spent my first fourth of July not in America, yeah about that. I look forward to this holiday every year being up north with the family, drinking, eating delicious food, fishing, fireworks, Northern Lights ;) -- all of that fun stuff. This year was obviously different since 1. I'm in Korea and 2. We were in the middle of field work. Even though I was sad to miss out, Jun-Young surprised us with a little Independence day dinner though which was cool. She went out and bought us a basket of various pieces of spiced chicken, some sweet curry biscuits, Korean sausage stuffed with some sort of deliciousness, some kind of steak, a cheese cake with a candle, and my favorite part --> a six-pack of Kloud BEER! She definitely knows how we like to celebrate, great job Jun-Young!! It was a little gesture but it meant a lot that she went to the trouble, thanks Jun-Young!
I've also mentioned that we have a clan of street cats that roam around our house, here's an update on them. So all of their kittens are now starting to get adventurous and running around, including onto our steps. We bought them a bag of cat food and so now they have this idea that we owe them food whenever we leave or enter the house. It's hilarious because many times we can't even open our door without hitting one of the cats, they wait patiently for us to refill their food dish on our steps. If they see us coming back from doing field work they'll run up our steps, sometimes laying down in front of the door. It's pretty damn cute.
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