Christmas

Christmas is celebrated in Korea as a national holiday, but it's more on par with Labor Day in terms of significance. Nevertheless, the big department stores here put up Christmas trees, and they play "Last Christmas" by Wham, and it is the start of the week-long Winter holiday at school. Ranell and I celebrated Christmas in my apartment by watching Christmas Vacation and making ginger bread cookies (Ranell had enough foresight to bring gingerbread cookie kits from home. Brilliant). Christmas day was spent traveling to Seoul for a day before jetting off to Shanghai!!

my angry gingerbread cookie

Mexican food in Seoul, this was actually of "back home" quality

White Trash Thanksgiving

Due to a lack of proper American Thanksgiving options, my Irish friend Ashleigh and I spent the special night at Pizza Hut. A night at Pizza Hut is always a special occasion; despite tasting the same as a Pizza Hut at home, you get to pay around $25 for a pizza! It should be noted that whenever an expat eats greasy pizza on a holiday that centers around wonderful food, that expat must wear the worst clothing they have:

pop songs!

I let some of my classes have a weekly "pop song day," where we just sing American pop songs. It was my favorite day of the week at the school. Enjoy:

Love Motel!

Love motels were maybe my favorite part of Korea. Here is why:

Autumn Trek

NOTE: I stopped updating my blog after the last entry. It is now almost 3 years later and I'm adding posts as if I was writing them at that time. So all of the blog entries from now until July 2012 are written from memory, with my pictures as a guide...





Ranell and I decided enjoy our Chuseok (Thanksgiving) holiday/long weekend to trek in the mountains to see the Autumn foliage. Our first stop was an old castle in the town of Jinju. It's always nice to end up in a town that's only meant to be a stopover on the way to your journey, only to find something really cool you never knew about. We did have a connecting bus to catch, so we didn't spend too much time here, but it was a nice break:

From Jinju we made it to our destination: Jirisan National Park. Our destination was a supposedly large and beautiful waterfall, set in a glorious Fall setting. After perusing the Buddhist temple at the base of the trail, we made our way up. Several miles in, we stumbled upon a little hermitage, where someone was blasting "Unbreak my Heart" from Toni Braxton (haha) through the speakers. Only in Korea. We finally ended up at the waterfall, which was nothing but a trickle. Damn. It was still a great experience, as I was able to take this picture, which has become one of my all-time favorites:

From there it was off on another late-night, multi-stop bus ride to some podunk Korean country town called Suncheon (hooray for memory!) and a stay at the BMW love motel (hooray again for memory!). The next day we trekked to one of my favorite temples, Songgwangsa, which I had visited my previous time in Korea. Unfortunately, they had put a footbridge over the old cobblestone walkway, which ruined my epic photo spot that was the purpose of going there. However, it's still a beautiful temple in a great setting. Here I was able to get my other all-time favorite pics, the red leaf in a bamboo forest one. There are only 2 pics from Korea that I have kept in my portfolio, and they both came in consecutive days from the same trip. This one has won me a couple awards and made me some money:

the new view at Songgwangsa, see 3/08 entry for a  pic of the view I was hoping to re-create:

 On our way back home, we stopped in Masan to try out some Mexican food we had heard great things about. Ranell and I were both dying of Mexican cravings for months, and we finally had the chance to get some. Now that I've been home for a couple years, this meal would probably taste awful to me. But at the time, it was the best we had, and it was an awesome experience:

The MIGHTY falls of Jirisan

Temple Stay

(Golgulsa temple)

This past weekend a few of us spent the weekend in a Buddhist temple called Golgulsa, which means "Stone Buddha Temple." It's a small, yet fascinating temple which gets its name from a 1500 year old Buddha carved into a cliff. It also has some small caves, one of which has a temple built into it, and has been used since the 7th century. The most unique thing about this temple is martial art they teach called Sunmudo. This martial art had existed only at this one particular temple for hundreds of years, being only taught in secret among monks, until the 1940's (when they decided a war of fighting monks was unlikely to happen). They call it a "meditative martial art," meaning they never spar, and any contact during training is accidental.

(our sleeping quarters)

The temple stay consisted of a couple hours of Sunmudo training. The training was fun, but the best part of it came after we finished, when we got to watch the monks training. It was kinda entertaining to watch Buddhist monks, with their robes and all, kicking and jumping around the place.

(practicing the moves on my "bed")
(monks practicing sunmudo)

The temple was very quiet and serene. After the training, it was dark outside, which made it even quieter. It was the calmest I'd ever felt in Korea. We went to bed early, since we had to get up the next morning at 4AM!!! for a chanting session and meditation. The chanting sounded more like singing, it was really cool sounding. I didn't know the chants so I couldn't follow along, but I could do the bowings (after each verse).

(cave temple)

After meditation we had some free time. The sun was just starting to rise, so I planted myself on a rock next to the Buddha and soaked it in. When I got hot, I went into the cave temple and just sat there for awhile. It was very quiet and nice.

(buddha carving)

Next came breakfast. The meal is eaten in a very special way. You are instructed not to talk, or to look at what others are doing, just to think about your food and where it came from and what it took to get it to you. You get 4 bowls which come in a Russian doll-like container; you take the bowls out smallest to largest using only your thumbs to minimize sound. Each bowl has to be in the right spot on your mat; largest bowl in the lower left corner, and descending in size clockwise. You put water in the largest bowl, swich it around, then pour it into the next bowl, repeating this until you put it in the last bowl, where it stays. You eat the food, but not a single morsel of food can be wasted, so you must eat every speck. When you're finished, you take the only thing remaining, which is a piece of kimchi (after having been washed of pepper flakes in your soup), and use it like a washcloth to clean off the last remnants of food. After this, you get more water, and you rinse the bowls again, and you drink the water and eat the kimchi. Then you take the cold water that was sitting in your smallest bowl this whole time, and rinse AGAIN, but this time the water goes into a bucket. That bucket gets dumped into the stream, but there can't be any speck of food in it or else it's considered to be polluting the water. So, if the water you pour into the bucket has any crumb in it (like mine did), they pour that water back into your bowl and you drink that too. Needless to say, the meal was more stressful than peaceful, but it was still an interesting experience nonetheless.

All in all, it was a cool experience. I'm glad I did it, and I might even consider doing it again. Maybe.

tea time with a monk

funny

One of my class lessons was about toiletries, which meant I had to explain to the kids what deodorant was (for whatever strange genetic reason, Koreans don't need to use it, and the kids have no idea what it is). I decided to bring in a stick the next day. When I waved it around so they could smell the scent, two 11 year old boys decided they really liked it. They liked the smell so much, they high-fived each other. I find that to be a fascinating use of the high-five, as shown by my dramatical quizzical expression I gave them.

recent adventures

Three weeks ago, Liz, Ashleigh (two other foreigners here), and I travelled to Seoraksan National Park. It's a spectacular mountain area with dramatic granite spires. We had to leave Friday night in order to make it on time for the tour Saturday morning, which involved a 4 hour bus ride leaving here at 11pm. We attempted to sleep at the bus terminal, which is to say we really didn't sleep. We then had another 4 hour bus ride to Seoraksan, and a 4 hour hike to the top of the mountain (how everything kept turning out to be 4 hours, I can't explain). Saturday night, we visited the fancy bath house, which was fantastic (and much more comfortable than my last experience). Sunday, we had an easier, milder hike to a waterfall. After 2 more 4 hour bus rides, we made it home. It was a great time, and the sky looked cool, so I got good pictures.
This past weekend was Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). I had a 4 day weekend, so I took Ashleigh and Ranell to the west side of the country for some exploring. On the first day, we saw a giant Buddha in a town called Cheonan. Then, we took a bus from there to Daejeon, where we spent the night. That day, we took another bus to a mountain called Daedunsan to climb a mountain. That climb involved a suspension bridge just like the one at Wolchulsan, plus a giant ladder-staircase that gave me vertigo. We took a bus that night to Jeonju, where we spent the night in the best love motel I've ever seen: 2 computers, giant tv, 2-person jetted tub, personal sauna, massage chair, and heated toilet seats. The next morning we took another bus to a town called Jinan, and from there a bus to a mountain called Maisan (horse ears mountain), to see the weirdest mountains and weirdest temple in Korea. The temple is called Tapsa, and it's surrounded by hundreds of stone "pagodas," basically piles of rocks that manage to stand even though they're not adhesed together in any way. After 2 more bus rides back to Daejeon, Ashleigh and Ranell had to go back, and I enjoyed my extra day off the next day at Beopjusa. I wrote about this place last year (see blog), it has a really giant Buddha.
I'm pretty exhausted after all these bus rides and hikes, but it was worth it. I had a great time. Sorry I glossed over the details, but I figure a blunt recap is better than none at all..

redeeming experience

Today I went to a store to buy a drink. While I was waiting in line, with my one item and exact change, an old woman butt in front of me. Maybe I wasn't close enough to the person in front of me, or maybe she felt entitiled to my spot. This happens frequently, but I never say or do anything. First of all, it's not a big deal, just a small annoyance. Secondly, I never know if it comes from overt rudeness or some cultural thing I don't know about. At the risk of it being a cultural thing, and since I'm a guest here, I just let it go.
However, this time, the clerk ignored the old woman and took my drink instead and rang me up and checked me out in about 10 seconds. I gave a gracious "kamsamnida," and walked away with the woman having the most incredulous look on her face. Priceless.

PS since that happened, I'm guessing it's "not" a cultural thing..

I don't want to be one of those foreigners who comes to a country and tells the people there that everything they do is wrong. However, I do want to introduce a few aspects of my culture to this one:
First, the ability to walk in a straight line. It really is a struggle for people here. Several times I've been standing still, and someone approaching me has drifted into my space and bumped into me. Add to that the fact that everyone has cell phones, and they all spend all their walking time texting people, and it makes a bad situation worse. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any rule regarding which side of the sidewalk to walk on. It's chaos!
Second, I want Korea to know that if a national holiday falls on a weekend, you take either the Friday or Monday off. Here, when a holiday falls on Saturday, there is no day off (except for the kids who have to go to school on Saturday). There's a wonderful world of consistent weekday holidays out there, I think Korea should grab it. Another weird thing: last year, Christmas fell on a Thursday. Guess what? Everyone took Thursday off, then came back to work Friday, then took their weekly holiday break the next week. I'm sorry, but that's stupid.
Third, I appreciate that Asians take their shoes off whenever they enter a house, or sometimes a restaurant. But that does not need to apply to gyms. It all originated from the fact that people ate on the floor, and shoes tend to be dirty, and they didn't want their eating area to get dirty with street junk. That's good, and I do that at home. But what reasonig do they give to apply it to the gym? Now, you don't workout barefoot, but you are expected to leave a separate pair of "indoor" shoes at the gym and change them when you arrive. That's just dumb, admit it...
Finally: coffee should be black, not yellow. Putting 2 tablespoons of grounds for 8 gallons of water does not make coffee, it makes brown-flavored water. It also makes you sleepy. Yes, coffee is much more expensive in Korea than it is in the US, but that's no excuse to ruin it like that!

That's all for now. I'm sure when I return home, I'll have a list of ideas to import to the US from Korea.