Korea Hearts Dong (Poop) and Other Random Photos

I'll start with my final birthday purchase, which was actually a spur of the moment buy. They were $12, so a little pricey for a street purchase, but this is a product I have long wished existed. So, when I found out they really DO exist, I had to have them.

Yes, they are dust mop slippers. You're jealous, aren't you? Now I can channel my inner Apolo Anton Ohno as I clean my floors like this. ;-) The dust mop-y part is velcroed on, so I can wash/ replace them. What a perfect marriage of frugality and luxury. "Luxury" because my full-sized dust mop didn't cost $12. Of course, I can't speed skate with a mop, or use it for any Olympic sports for that matter, except fencing or javelin, and I've found those to be inferior sports for floor cleaning.

Next up is a statue I saw in Seoul. I don't know if you'll be able to see it, but the woman's expression is decidedly blow up doll-esque and the horse is vomiting water.

Here is the titular dong-love photo. When I told someone about this statue in mild disbelief, I found out that there are at least several more similar dong-y statues around Seoul. If you can't see, the mouse is covering his mouth and pointing at the pile.

This really is an obsession here. My students will sit in class and draw little spirals of poop which all look exactly the same, like they all took a class. Art 107 Dung Piles. The pig's expression is also a kind of pop culture reference-- it's a pose girls (of all ages) here think is "cutely pouting". Where I'm from, pouting is considered somewhere between childish and pathetic, but whatever.

Finally, a church. With land the premium that it is here, churches rarely have a free standing building all to themselves. Usually, you just see a spire on top of an office building to let you know that somewhere inside is a church. This one is pretty awesome, though. It's about a block away from a huge, European-inspired cathedral, so maybe they thought they had to keep up with the Popes. Gs25 is Korea's 7-11.Actually the sign above says Gloria, but the sign below is The Holy Mother of Jesus uh... Religious Goods or something like that (where you can get crosses, rosaries, veils-- which they still wear to mass here, etc.). So, I don't know if there is a shop and a church, or if the shop has two names. At any rate, I wonder if the shop sell statues that large. My birthday shopping may not be quite over just yet...

Okay, by "finally" I meant "penultimately". The last picture is an Ecuadorian band which was playing on the pedestrian mall between my school and the subway station. They were just getting started as we were going home, so we watched them for a bit. They were really fun. All of my coworkers speak varying degrees of Spanish, so the musicians talked to them while finishing setting up. I think they were really excited that someone could understand them. My Spanish is limited to items found on a Tex-Mex menu, but that didn't stop them from trying to talk to me, too.