10.11.05-- I peed in Seoul's best toilet.

Step aside folks! Yesterday I peed in not just one but TWO of Seoul's best toilets. Today's update is dedicated to showing you all sorts of weird and quirky and beautiful things they got out here. This isn't even half of it.

After lunch today, we went to pee and saw this sign in the lobby of the restaurant...

I was so excited! The BEST toilet in Seoul? And I was about to pee in it? I couldn't wait to see what it was...

Huh? It wasn't even working all the bells and whistles it was supposed to. There was supposed to be music that played and a little electronic something or other... but it didn't work and the experience was quite normal. Piss and flush. And it didn't even feel THAT great....

Then at dinner... we see it again!!! Another sign!

No Way! Not another BEST toilet. That's like the Winter Olympics four years ago when they gave out two gold medals to those figure skating pairs. This is what the other best toilet looks like...

Huh, nothing out of the ordinary, but I guess if we keep going to restaurants that claim to have the best toilet, it's not going to be so special anymore.

Well, there's an explanation to this toilet pride thing. First though, you need to meet Jacco, the expert on Korean Culture.

Yes, so today we had two lectures. One on "Survival Korean"(we learned 10 phrases to get us around in Korea) and the other on "Korean Culture." Anyway, Jacco came to speak to us because he knows about Korean Culture. He's taught English here and lived here for six years and is married to a Korean woman-- see, he's a qualified expert.... ahem.... Anyway, his explanation is during the World Cup, the city was trying to encourage businesses to improve their toilet facilities for visitors and was giving out these plaques.

Jacco also led an excercise where we learned about things Americans do that Koreans find rude and things Koreans do that Americans find rude. By talking about it... we acheive--- ta da! Cultural Harmony? Right.... Anyway, the excercise was to look at the following pics and guess what Americans find offensive about Koreans and vice versa, and assign captions to them...

You can't beckon a Korean to come to you with your index finger because that's how you would talk to a dog.

My boyfriend tells me all the time not to blow my nose at the table. I can't help that my nose gets runny. I guess I must be like this obnoxious white guy in the cartoon when I do that. Also, it's interesting that at Korean Restaurants here, they usually don't have dinner napkins out until after the meal.

Yeah, don't flatter yourself white man, she really don't care what heat you pack, she just wants to mop the darn floor.

It's ok for Korean men to be affectionate and tell each other they like each other. Funny how most Asian American men I know have jumped so far from this and are the biggest freaking homophobes imaginable. A lot of progressive women I know find it attractive when men are affectionate like this to each other. I especially appreciate seeing Asian men who aren't terrified of each other's bodies and can hug and dance together and not live in fear that someone will accuse them of being a "fag."

Yeah, I'm in Korea. It took a while to sink in, but then I realized, yeah, I'm in Korea. Thanks to these squat toilets, I really know now, where I am!

These are actually really great because they are ergonomically more sensible than sit down toilets which force your muscles to work against each other.

It's really interesting where this "modernization" aesthetic in Korea happened. It's like the architectural and design elements that were borrowed, were these fancy baroque, victorian-esque, flashy and overwhelming aesthetics.

We went to the Kyung Hee University, and is it just me or does this building look like the Supreme Court?

And this building that houses the school's theater, which has a stage bigger than a basketball court by the way, it looks like a church...

And check out the school's bathrooms, they are pretty unisex in set up and have these funky saloon doors and 1920's "man" and "woman" icons...

And here is something interesting, soap on a handle. In stead of pushing for liquid soap, you just run your hands on this phallic shaped bar. It makes a lot of sense, more so than a bar of soap in a tray that will melt fast...

Here is a gas station in Korea. Where are the pumps? They are in the ceiling hanging down. It's not like those big machine in America that are cemented to the ground.

For both our meals yesterday we ate on the floor. If you look carefully you'll see they put a dinner napkin on my lap only because I was wearing a skirt. Nobody else with pants got one. The napkins prevent the low crawling perverts from looking up my skirt.

If they keep feeding us at this rate... Man, I don't know. I'm going like 6 times a day already.

If I was a shoe thief, I would hang out at Korean restaurants in Seoul.

"Hey! Have any of you boys seen Rick Yune?"

Dinner theater performances. These women rock it. If I was born and lived in Seoul, I probably would be doing what they do. Except louder and with funnier faces.

No partying for me yet...

I was so exhausted last night that I didn't even go out. I'm still mega jet lagged, in fact it's like 5am here, I can't sleep anymore. Hopefully the exhaustion will pass and I will be able to get pictures of night time in Seoul. I got this last picture after dinner, before we got to the hotel.

Being around all these delegates is a trip for me because I spend so much time around the arts/ actors/ activists/ and Asian American/ People of color communities, that it's a trip to meet people who have full time day jobs that are their lives and existence. I think it's a trip for them to be around me. In all the official materials on this trip, my title is "Kristina Wong: Community Activist, Filmmaker." That's a little misleading that I am a filmmaker and activist only because my performance and writing is much more prominent. But a lot of the people I am meeting on this trip are like, "Wow! Filmmaker! Wow!." On the plane ride over, one of the delegates introduced me to someone sitting next to him that he just found out worked for the Military Channel-- because well, we were both "filmmakers" of course so we had to meet. It's kinda funny that one of the cops said to me, "You're the anarchist right?"--He meant to say "community activist"-- but I guess in his profession, anarchist and activist are synonymous. We had a good laugh over that, and I already said to two of the cops in my lighthearted retaliation, "Hey, do you guys smell bacon?" They laughed.

We've been here less than two days, and already it feels forever. I want to soak it all in until it has to drip out of me.

Until tomorrow! We go to the police station and police museum, expect lots of pictures.

Kristina