There is a horribly horrible song that is constantly playing all over Korea. Quite literally, I cannot go more than a block in the Nampo-dong downtown district without hearing this song blasting from street stands or stores. It is everywhere, all the time.

The song is "Nobody" by The Wonder Girls. The chorus basically repeats the word "Nobody" over and over. It's so bad that if I ever say the word "nobody" in class I can guarantee at least one if not a dozen of my students will start singing this song.

It's driving me nuts.

But to share some Korean culture with you, here is a video of the Wonder Girls performing their hit song, "Nobody." Enjoy...

Happy Thanksgiving from Korea, where it's not actually Thanksgiving. Here the third Thursday in November is just like any other day.

Koreans do celebrate a kind of Thanksgiving or harvest festival. Ch'usok is a three-day event beginning on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, so usually in mid-September. It's a major holiday, bigger and more significant than our Thanksgiving for us or Christmas for them.

Ch'usok is a time to give gifts, take off from work to spend with family and generally eat and drink a lot more than usual. When I'd ask my students what kinds of food they eat at Ch'usok they'd always say "Songpyon" which are small rice-cakes. I don't believe that's all they eat for three days, but no one ever offered additional answers.

Koreans are serious about this Ch'usok; virtually eveything is closed in the entire country. By comparison, Christmas is only a single-day event and people usually go out so things stay open. I went to a department store by accident before Ch'usok and it was more crowded than any American mall I've ever been to the day before Christmas or the day after Thanksgiving.

For our Thanksgiving in Korea, Danny, Brandon and I are going with some of Brandon's teachers to a vegetarian buffet in Seomyeong. We were there once before and it was fantastic, which is good since I believe it is the only wholly vegetarian resturant in the city.

This morning, one of my Korean co-English teachers came up to me in the faculty lounge and said, "You are probably sad because it is American Thanksgiving and you miss your family and friends. So I got you this present." She handed me a box. Inside was the beautiful blue scarf with white stars I am wearing in this picture.

Friday night, Danny wasn't feel particularly well, so the boy-os and I decided upon an easy evening at home. The plan was for them to come over to my place where we'd get a pizza, rent and watch a DVD and maybe have a single cocktail.

We choose my home because I've got a connector to hook my MacBook up to my television making it a makeshift DVD player. Unfortunately, I was an idiot and forgot said connector at school.

Unwilling to admit defeat, I offered to go out and buy a new DVD player; I justified it as a worthy investment should a similar situation arise again in the next 10 months.

Here's where the story gets strange. I walked from one electronics store in my neighborhood to another, and each turned me away. Not only did they viscerally deny they had DVD players for sale, they would rush me to the exit after my request. Keep in mind, DVDs aren't novel here. You can buy them on any street, in subway stops and rent them in any neighborhood. Where then do people get these players?

I called my Korean friend who lives in the area for advice. He replied, "Oh... you will have to travel very far." What? I thought, I'm not asking to buy Egyptian spices.

It gets stranger.

In at least three of the stores I walked into, I actually found DVD players sitting on the shelves. When I would bring them to the store owner, he/she would get the same uncomfortable look and send me out the door. A Korean friend later suggested perhaps these were all DVD players that were being repaired at the store and weren't for sale. That could have been the case at two of the stores (the players were just sitting out on the shelf without much care to their display) but in one store the player I looked at was still in the package.

In the end I settled on buying a VHS tape player that was literally sitting on top of a DVD player. When I asked in Korean, "How much for this one," and pointed to the DVD player, the owner simply replied, "No, no. Bad." He continued wrapping up my new old VHS player and sent me on my way.

Today in a second grade class a student was trying to use English to ask his friend to bring him a dustpan. The only problem was he didn't know the word 'dustpan' in English.

After struggling for a moment, the student said, "Bring me broom's best friend."

And it worked.

You know how holidays in the West like Valentines Day are manufactured by big business trying to unload over-priced greeting cards and sub-par candy? Well here in Korea it's just the same, only better.

November 11th (Veterans Day back in the States) is Pepero Day; a day to buy your loved ones, friends and teachers a particular cookie from the Lotte company. It's a long pretzel stick dipped in chocolate.

It's November 11th because it's the 11th day of the 11th month and when you put four Pepero sticks next to one another, it looks like 11 11.

What's great about this "holiday" is that it's completely manufactured. Nobody has any false notions that it's about love or some historic incident. It's just about getting and giving one particular cookie. And it works! Marketing genius!

So if you're sick of commemorating the sacrifice of veterans on November 11th and would rather celebrate the true hero of the west, commercialism, pick yourself up some chocolate-covered pretzel sticks.

After an evening out with Brandon, Danny and Emily, I descended into the subway to make my way home. I waved my Hanaro card over the turnstile reader found an empty bench and waited for the train to arrive.

Moments later, a small elderly man who looked as though he hadn't showered or changed clothes in a few days came and sat next to me. Considering the limited number of benches in the station, this wasn't unexpected, except that this particular man seemed to want to strike up a conversation with me.

I smiled politely. Apparently, this gentleman took that as an invitation.

He pointed at my hair. Flattered, I smiled politely. Another invitation apparently.

He reached over to pet my hair. Now thin, naturally blond hair is unusual in Korea, but no one's ever tried to pet me before.

Luckily he only pet for a moment or two. The train arrived and we both boarded, he offered me a seat next to him. Not wanting to be rude, I took it, although tried to position myself so further hair-touching would be difficult for him.

Instead he simply started talking. He spoke at length. About what I'll never know, it was totally in Korean, and mumbled for the most part beyond that. I just smiled and nodded as he pointed again to my hair and carried on. At some point he looked at the book I was carrying World War Z a fictional account of a zombie-infested world. He seemed to start talking about either war, or books or zombies. Again, I just smiled and let him carry on...

In the last part of our conversation (though that's a generous term since I hadn't said more than a few words) he rolled up his sleeves to show my his Popeye-sized forearms. Then he rolled up his pant leg to show me his equally large calf muscles. I had no idea how the conversation could have led here, but again, I laughed politely and showed my incredibly skinny forearms. He laughed too.

We reached my stop. I waved goodbye and scooted off the train.

This blog post is dedicated to my aunt Judy who I once believed followed the stock market too closely for her own good. Now I think I'm even worse.

A week or so ago, a couple of friends from back home who I hadn't heard from in a while sent me an email on the same day. The impetus: they'd both heard a program on NPR discussing the South Korean economy's historic slump during the current crisis. "Well," I thought, "at least I'm getting some friendly letters out of this."

The South Korean economy has been on the same roller-coaster ride as most of the world. But since I've got steady employment, my rent is taken care of and no health care costs, you'd think I'd be one of the last people affected.

The problem for me is a matter of currency. The South Korean currency (the Won) has been making unpredictable plummets and gains against the U.S. dollar, but mostly plummets. At one point, when those two friends emailed me, the Won was at a 10-year low against the U.S. dollar; an exchange rate unseen in the country since the 1990s Asian financial crisis.

Let me use my monthly salary as an example -- this is how I think about it on a regular basis. I make approximately 1.8 million Won per month. When I first arrived in Korea at the end of summer, that translated to approximately $1700 per month. Today, it only translates to about $1500 and at the lowest point it was only worth about $1250.

Even this horrible exchange rate wouldn't be an issue for the time being if circumstances were a little different. I could I would simply sit on my savings of Won here in the country and wait to exchange them for U.S. dollars when the markets stabilize.

But I've got a number of student loan payments I must make each month in the U.S. Very soon I'll be forced to transfer some of my Won to my Bank of America account, exchange rate be damned.

Most folks I've talked to here expect the markets to settle at the start of the new year with a much better exchange rate. I'm not sure if this is self-delusion or blind optimism, but let's hope they're right.