One looooooong day - Gyeongju (경주)

Whoa, I really haven't updated in a while. Hopefully, with school winding down, some vacation time, and the new year I'll have a whole new set of adventures in Korea to bring you. Much like the one I'm about to show you. Last Friday, my coteacher Sun-Young and I joined other English teachers from Masan and went on our way to Gyeongju. It's Korea's "ancient" city, so a pretty big deal. There was a lot of history that was packed into our heads during this day long trip.

We had a tour guide that was sort of gestapo-like in her determination to keep us completely on schedule. I think after a while a lot of us just wanted to roam free and explore whatever tickled our fancy. But we could not steer away from the path that was set before us.

First Stop!

Seokguram.

On the bus ride to the top of Mount Tohamsan I learned that whenever there are a lot of curves and bends in the road, most Koreans automatically say there are 99 bends. Although, I think there were way more than 99 bends.

Here's some cool traditional artwork we passed by on our way to see the grotto.Once we got to the top, this was the view. If you could see the past the mountains then you'd be looking at the Sea of Japan, or as Koreans like to call it the East Sea.

The main attraction at this site was the stone grotto that encased a huge statue of Buddha. According to our tour guide, it's the biggest statue of Buddha in Korea.

Yupp, that's it. We we're seperated from the going inside by the glass wall. At least we got to see it. Our tour guide had loads of information for us. I wish I had taken a notepad to jot down all the random facts. I do remember her telling us that there used to be a big diamond in the middle of Buddha's forehead, which has now been replaced by a crystal. Apparently, the Japanese took it. Our tour guide informed us that the Japanese took and destroyed a lot of things. No mention of the Mongols, though.

Alright our second stop.

Bulguksa Temple.

There's our tour guide on the left side of the picture. She always had her little mic in hand so that we didn't miss a sound wave of her voice.

This temple was burnt down during the Japanese invasion in the 1500s. Its been restored now with a few relics still missing. The two main stone pagodas that stand in the middle of the courtyard are the most prominent features of Bulguksa.

We were only able to see one of the pagodas. The other one was covered because it was under restoration. We got to see the simple Seokgatap pagoda. The other one is known as Dabotap. Seokgotap is known for its simplcity and balance. It stands directly across from the other pagoda that is more intricately designed. She said something about it representing man and woman. The simple one was supposed to represent man's simplicity and the intricate one is supposed to show how complex women are. Puuuuuuh-leeeeze! As we made our way through the rest of Bulguksa we came across these little stone pagodas on the ground. People place stones on top of other stones for each wish they make. Last time I tried to place a stone on a pagoda, I knocked it over. I was more careful this time as I made my one wish.

Here's another chill Buddha. His hand position is of great significance. It symbolizes his enlightenment and his teachings. The image of him grabbing on to his index finger, sort of like him teaching humanity about enlightenment so that they could escape suffering. Something like that.

Okay so I have no idea what the story with these creatures are. There was definitely a story. But I think at this point my stomach was growling, my body was tired, and all I really wanted was a nap. So I stopped listening. But they're pretty mean looking and colorful, cool huh?

What're we at, our third stop?

After lunch, we headed to Anapji.

Anapji is the name of the artificial pond that's a part of the Prince's palace. Nice place to stroll around. Again, I stopped listening after a while. Whatever historical facts our wonderful tour guide dropped on us, I pretty much missed out on. I did tune into the part about TV and cameras. Since, the place is pretty wide open a lot of Korean dramas set up and shoot their scenes here.

Don't leave yet! There's more. I wasn't kidding about how much they packed into one day.

Onto our next stop.

The ancient burial mounds aka The Royal Tomb Complex.

Here is the simple break down.

These mounds have once important figure heads of society buried in them. They were buried with their favorite possessions, their favorite servants, and sometimes their significant others.

They excavated only two of the mounds. We got to go inside one. Our tour guide said they've stopped excavating the remainder of the mounds because they want to make sure all the technology they have is up to date for digging up dead bodies. Also, digging up the dead is still very taboo in Korean society. They want respect their ancestors.

Our last stop was the Gyeongju National Museum.

Here's a bell.

It's not just any old bell, though.

We were told of a story about a baby being melted into a part of the bell and still screaming out for the mother. Although, later we were told the story is probably not true. I guess you can decide for yourself whether you want it to be or not. After the speech about the baby and the bell, we were finally let loose for an hour to go explore the museum. I visited two of the rooms and then shopped for a few trinkets at the gift shop.

We all piled back on the bus around 4:40 and headed off to dinner. The ride back from Gyeongju lasted about 2 hours. I was ready to pass out when I got home.

김범준

This morning I woke up to two big surprises!  I'm having a pretty awesome day.  I found out earlier in the week that classes were cancelled because my school is having a talent show today.  So  I get to chill out catch up on some reading, listen to more podcasts, and chat with my favorite students without class getting in the way.  Well if that wasn't enough goodness to begin the day with,  I opened my inbox to find out gmail had finally rolled out some new themes.  And my inbox finally got a makeover.  But no no . . . it doesn't stop there.  It gets waaaaaaaay better.

김범준(Kim Bam-Joon)  One of my favorite and best students  sent me an e-mail.  We've been hanging out a lot in between classes the past couple of weeks.  He'll come in and chat with me, fix my Korean for me, which is in need of a lot more attention that I am giving it.  But anyways,  it's always a pure delight to see him.  No matter how bad my day is going or how bad I'm feeling chatting with him, and exchanging langauge  skills with him always always brightens my day.  I momentarily forget all my responsibilties.  I wish everyone could meet my two favorite students and experience the proud feelings I get when I teach them new things.  Anyways,  I'll stop rambling.  Here's the wonderful e-mail he sent me this morning that made me twirl with joy.

from  김범준 <************@naver.com> reply-to   김범준 <***********@naver.com> to  ********@gmail.com date   Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 10:05 PM subject   trishna mailed-by    naver.com

10:05 PM (10 hours ago)

Hi, trishna

It seems like I have a lot to say but I can't really put it in to words
I always thanked you for helping me with my English
In fact, whenever I talk to you I really get nervous and worry about what to say
It is that much I care for it.
How good will it be if I could speak fluent English to express myself?
I should work on my English

I HAVE SOME 

MONEY

AND MY MAIL 

IS SECRET

 OK?

BYE!!! 

HAHAHA!!!

I really have no idea what the deal with the last part is. He's always asking me for money saying,  "You are rich."  And I always assure him that I am not

Junam Wetlands

This weekend Nolan and I decided to check out the Junam Resevoir site in Changwon. After attending the KBS Ramsar concert that highlighted the importance of preserving natural wetlands, I thought our mini excursion was quite fitting. The Junam resevoir is the largest bird migration site in South Korea.
Do you see the little black specs in the picture, right above the mountains? Yupp, those are all birds. It was hard to capture in photos. But the flock of birds were all flying in all sorts of directions and making crazy formations. It's really something else to watch in person.

We ended up going during some bird watching festival. I wish I was more of a bird enthusiast. I don't think I appreciated the whole magnitude of it all, because I didn't know which birds were which and which ones were extremely rare. The awe-ness of it all lied with the natural scenery and the amount of birds that were present at the site.
Here's nice view of the area as the sun's reflection hits the water.
More of the wetlands.
They had stations set up along the long pathway where kids and their parents could do crafty activities. I was also in the process of finding a present that I could send back home. I spotted this fan station where the ladies were painting names onto the paper fans.

A little down the road they had this other tent where people were pounding away at rice cake. Nolan got a chance to take a swing at the rice cakes. Here's a short clip of him using all his might as he takes his best shots.
After all the pounding was done with they put the wad of rice cake onto a pan and sprinkled the brown powdery stuff onto it. After sifting it for a bit they cut it all up and handed us a cup with a few pieces of the freshly made rice cakes. I took a bite of it. It was like biting into sweet dry sand with glutinous chewy rice cake inside.
We stepped into a gift shop for a few moments. It had a large map of the area along with a few pictures of the park. This picture features a handful of Korean bird watchers, along with one lone tall foreigner looking inredibly creepy right smack dab in the middle!

We also got to see a selection of crittery creatures.
That's a really big yellow snake, in case you couldn't tell.
This guy was fun to watch.
This picture really has nothing to do with the Junam resevoir. But as we were headed in that direction we noticed how colorful the mountain has become. Fall really shows itself in Korea and all the leaves have begun to show their true colors.

A long overdue post on the KBS Concert

So about a week an a half ago I had my first Korean pop concert experience. Complete with 5 member boy bands, flashy ensembles, and of course thousands of screaming teeny bopper girls going crazy for their favorites.

My friend Lindsay scored us prime seats at this outdoor event. There is a big circle in the center in Changwon, which is where the concert was held. The concert was being held as a part of the Ramsar Convention that Changwon was hosting this year. I didn't know about Ramsar until I started seeing signs for it all over the city the week the convention was being held. It's a treaty to help sustain and conserve our natural wetlands. Gooooo Environment!

To help raise awareness for keeping our wetlands safe, a lot of the Korean artists made their appearance and did their part so the young screaming middle school/high school aged girls would realize how important it is to protect our ecosystem.

Among the many big names present at the concert were TVXQ! I later found out this isn't even the real Korean band name they go by. Instead it's really Dong Bang Shin Ki (동방신기) which translates into Rising gods of the East. That's a pretty intense name! And let me tell you their attitude and the poses they struck right before singing were just as intense.

They even brought out the police brigade in case the girls stormed the stage. Fortunately no such event took place, but the thought of such commotion taking place excited me greatly.

This is ShinEE. Not as cool as a name that translates into rising gods of something, but they were pretty upbeat. The girls went insane for them as well. Believe it or not, I've been listening to their song Amigo on youtube, and I gotta say it's pretty catchy. I even know some of the words!

Here's a quick Korean lesson for you -- in their music video AMIGO

they keep repeat Ought to kay? Ought to Kay? which translates into What do I do? What do I do? It's become a favroite Korean phrase of mine. The song isn't musical genius but it's definitely a fun way for me learn new stuff.

Okay so now for some real up close and personal footage from the actual concert.

They started the concert of with a few mellow crowd pleasers. This guy was neat, he does Poppera. Awesome voice. This little bit of video doesn't do his voice justice.

The best and most memorable performance was by an artist named Son Ho Young. His song "I know" is definitely my favorite Korean pop song for the time being.

Here he is in action.

Here's another cool group beating their hearts away.

This next group call themselves the B-Boys. They were truly something else. They did mind blowing acrobatic stuff. It was insane. Just take a look.

This is just another clip of them doing crazy cool things with their bodies.

I had no idea what to expect when I decided to go to this thing, but I'm glad I ended up in the second row from the stage, in the middle of the circle in Changwon on a cold Sunday night watching pyros shoot off from behind my favorite Korean pop artist Son Ho Young.

Ji Yoon finally gets to teach the class

My favorite student, Ji Yoon, came in the other day saying she wanted to be the teacher for the day. It was after lunch and I was finished with all my classes for the day, so I told her she can have at it. My classroom was her domain now and she could teach her friends as she pleased. The clip below is five minutes of her imitating me to the best of her ability. I'm sure she would have continued longer, but the bell rang and they were all going to be late to class.
All I have to say is she is quite possibly the most adorable kid I've ever known. I hope you enjoy.

Jinju's Fortress

This weekend Nolan and I decided ed to explore Jinju. It's an hour away from Changwon. We really went with no plan, no itinerary of any sort. We left our home with no directions nor any names of places we should visit. We got to the bus terminal and caught the next bus to the city. We got off after an hour and found what has now become quite a familiar site for us in Korea. Narrow roadways filled with street stalls. Vendors selling their vegetables and street foods. After grabbing lunch we went into a PC room, which are ubiquitous in any Korean neighborhood you end up in. We did some googling and decided we wanted to visit the Jinjuseong Castle, which is the Fortress.
The Fortress was by the Nam River. There were a lot of boat peddlers out on the river. You can see a cute couple here in their duckie-mobile.
Here's some other nice views of the Nam River. The river runs right through the city, dividing it in half. The fortress used to guard the Jeolla province.
I don't know who this man is, but he was looking pretty fierce in his warrior stance.
The fortress was also surrounded by cannon over looking the city. This is me being super excited about all the possible ammunition that once shot through these things.


Night fell as we toured more and more of the fortress. This is a view from the opposite side of the wall. You can see the yellow glowing E-mart (The Korean Wal-Mart) sign in the middle.
After making our way through the Fortress we stopped into a shop named, Silkian. Jinju is known for its silk production as well. There were a lot of beautiful scarves and trinkets of all sorts to purchase. We got a few gifts and headed back towards the bus terminal. It was a pretty good trip considering we hadn't planned a single step beforehand.

Teacher email send

My week has been pretty insane,  I'll bring you some pictures from the open classes I've been teaching this week.  My fellow teachers were invited to see what my coteachers and I have been teaching our adorable students.  The pictures should be up soon.  So needless to say,  I've had a pretty busy week planning and preparing for these special lessons.  I was checking my mail at the end of the day and found this in my inbox.  Another e-mail from one of my students.  It makes little to no sense.  It's fun finding these when you are absolutely exhausted and you can't even begin to think about what they are trying to say.

☆레니☆  to Trishnab 2:30 PM (1 hour ago)

Teacher hello~

my name is emily

umm...

teacher email send

endlish camp finish next witing no

first???? 

it very short...

thank you..

I love you~♥

 

from. emily

Seoul round two

I should have written this two weeks ago when everything was fresher in my mind, but work started up again, and laziness set in. I'll write about as much as I can remember. After visiting Namsan Tower it was dinner time. We made our way out of the cable car station down onto the main street. We weren't really sure of where the train station was, and the walk back to the main part of town was a couple of kilometers, and we were exhausted from our trek up the mountain the entire day. This cab driver approached us and we asked him where the train station was. He cajoled us into getting into his taxi-van. Cabs in Korea tend to be pretty cheap. But this man's meter was running a mile a minute, and he took us the most round about way he could to Seoul Station. I was pretty pissed off at him. When we finally did reach the train station we made our way to the Itaewon stop.
Itaewon is known as USA street. I think a more fitting name would have been International street. There are a lot of foreigners and shops for most everything you'd want. It was weird stepping into Itaewon. I could understand everyone's conversation. I had to be careful what I was saying because other people could understand me too. Part of me felt like I wasn't in Korea anymore, but rather a college town with much older people.

I have to say, this trip to Seoul was the first time that I actually felt like a tourist in Korea. Even when I first arrived to Changwon I didn't feel like a tourist. I felt more like a lost fish in a big ocean full of people that didn't speak my language, but definitely not a tourist. When I go exploring in Changwon and Masan I'm exploring my own domain. But, walking around the streets of Seoul and in places like Itaewon I certainly did not feel like I belonged there.

I don't think I'd ever want to live in a place like Itaewon while living abroad. It seems pointless to me to go live in a foreign country such as Korea and live in a neighborhood where the things that make Korea, Korea are pretty much non-existent.
Here's a pretty back alley way we stumbled into while looking for a bookstore in Itaewon. We never did find that bookstore but we found a bunch of good places to eat. I will say the one thing Itaewon had going for it were all the places you could eat out. We settled on a place called Thai Orchid because both Nolan and I are pretty big fans of Thai food and we hadn't had any since arriving to Korea.Yupp, it was all yummy in our tummies.
After dinner we did a bit more wandering. The later it got the more crowded the streets seemed, swarming with inebriated English speakers.

The next day we decided we wanted to head back a little early so that we would make it back home at a decent hour. We grabbed lunch at a Moroccan place named, Marrakesh Night's. It was complete with hookahs and authentic couscous.This was one of the things we ordered. I forgot the name, but as all the food we'd had during our stay in Seoul it was just as delicious.

We got back Saturday night, and spent Sunday drinking coffee and reading the entire day. Pretty relaxing, oh and then there is this.In between our coffee drinking, and reading, we like to pop into the arcade from time to time and shoot zombies. I took this picture after a zombie had killed me and I was no longer of any use. There's always one or two kids that come watch in awe as we shoot at our enemies.

Finally, some Seoul

I would have brought this to you a lot sooner. However, all this traveling has taken its toll and I've been sick.

I finally got the chance to make it up to the heart of Korea, otherwise known as Seoul. It's a five hour bus ride from Changwon, thanks to the traffic. Just to give you an idea where I was going from and to -- here's is a map. I journeyed all the way from Changwon which is the red circle at the bottom, to the circle at the top of the map. Nolan and I left right after work on Thursday. After an entire day of dealing with kids, the five hour bus ride was actually a welcomed treat. I got to finish up the book I was reading, Life of Pi (which if you haven't read, yet, you should), and I got to listen to some RadioLab along the way (one of my favorite podcasts, here's a link to their website, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/.

I'd start with the Morality episode. It's the one I started off with, and it had me hooked ever since.)

Okay so back to my trip. After five hours of reading, and listening to podcasts and music, the bus finally made it to Seoul. Once I was off the bus I still had a while to go. Thank goodness Nolan accompanied me through the trip, although I still felt completely lost. The hostel we were staying at gave us complicated directions on how to get there. We maneuvered our way through the Seoul Metro and reached our final stop. Once we got to the street we needed to be at, our directions became more confusing. We asked around, luckily most people in Seoul know English. This was pretty awesome, since neither Nolan nor I have ever ventured the streets of Seoul. We located our hostel and Nolan spotted this sign welcoming us to our hostel. That's right, no guests allowed in the guesthouse!

We were starving the minute we got off the bus, an hour or so later after finding our destination and settling into our quarters I think we were ready to eat just about anything.

We befriended some other people that had just arrived at the hostel shortly after us. We went with our new friends to wander the streets and find a place to eat. We found a bunch a restaurants open. Don't forget we were wandering the streets at midnight in search of dinner. We settled on this outdoor place where we had Samgyeopsal.

Here's us enjoying our midnight meal along with some soju. This was our food that we all helped devour.

This was the cool Korean man that helped us grill our meat, because we certainly don't know how long to keep it on there.

I spotted this little gem on our way back. If you read nothing else in this blog post, then please just read this. It makes no sense but I found it funny. I don't know how I feel about men that are made from 100% beef.
The next morning it was just Nolan and I armed with a Lonely Planet guidebook. It's is an excellent companion for any traveler. That book has come in handy numerous time when we've been out searching for hostels or other popular locales in other cities.

After thumbing through the pages we settled on visiting the North Seoul tower. Before heading to the train station we stopped in at a place called the Persian Palace to have some lunch. This was by far my favorite part of visiting Seoul. All the food! Any kind you wanted from any country.
We followed the camels all the way into the Persian Palace.
This was our food. I forgot what Nolan got, but his thing is in the genie lamp. All I can tell you is that it had chicken in it. I got shami kebab. I have to say we were both pleased with our meal. We don't really get many places to have ethnic food out in Changwon, unless we take a trip to Busan which is about 40 minutes away. After we stuffed ourselves with delicious food we made our way to the tower.
We took the train to Seoul station.
Here's a view of the area right as we got out of the station.
When you make a turn the opposite way you can see the N Soeul tower from the station. We'd be headed to the top of that thing in no time! They have cable cars going to the top. We opted not to take them because we were keen on climbing up Namsan to get to the tower. Little did we know how many steps there were to the top.
I have no idea who this guy is, but he looks pretty badass on that horse. I'm guessing he might be a Korean independence fighter.

But, I do happen to know that this is Li Si-Yeong, and he is a Korean independence movement leader.This is just Nolan climbing up a whole bunch of steps. The sad part is that this was just the beginning of the steps. We had a ton more to climb.
Here are more steps. I just want to get the point across that there were a lot! On left of this picture is a cool science museum we popped into. I won't spend to much time on what was in there. It was pretty standard stuff about electricity, biology, engineering, and acoustics.

Here's a neat clip of magnetic fluid.

So we got back on track to go to the top of N Seoul Tower. Here's some more hardcore folks who are brave enough to take all the steps.
When we got to the semi top there was a lookout deck for people to stop ad enjoy the view.I managed to weave through the crowd and get to the edge to take this picture with the city behind me.
Here's some Seoul rush-hour gridlock.
Unfortunately, we hadn't reached the complete top just yet. Here's more stairs. When we did get to the top there were a whole bunch of things going on. There were street vendors to buy souvenirs from, places to chill out, and a neat heART exhibit that was displayed.
Here's the heART exhibit they had out in front of the entrance to the tower. This one is especially dear to me because half of it's an ostrich. I like to think of it as an turstrich. While I was teaching an English summer camp my first month here I learned some of the Korean words for animals, because I made my kids draw their favorite animals. One of the girls drew an ostrich and I learned that thajo is the Korean word ostrich. Don't ask why, but for some reason I thought that word was really cool. It was awesome to say and I felt cool knowing how to say ostrich in Korean. It's one of the words I'm never going to forget learning. So this is why I hold this ostrich-heart looking thing dear.

Straight ahead of the ostrich was this.
That's N Seoul Tower. It sits on top of Namsan, which is the mountain we climbed up with the help of all the stairs. The tower sits 479.7 m (1,574 ft) above sea level.
Here's some people chilling at a sweet outdoor eatery.
We saw a few historical performance artists walking back to store away a few weapons. This guy had some swords and shields.And then there was this guy. He went with the trusty, time tested, no fail sound box to ward of his enemies.
We finally made it up to the top of the tower.
Inside they have windows that lookout onto Seoul. The windows are also lined with names of different cities and their highest peaks.Remember those people sitting and enjoying their sweet view? Here they are again looking even tinier.
Even the view from the bathroom did not disappoint.
After making it out of the tower we rode the cable car down from the mountain.
I can't imagine having to walk down all those steps. This was not the end of our first full day in Seoul. I have so much more to share, which is why I'm splitting this Seoul trip into two posts. So I'll bring you the next half as soon as I get a chance to blog again.