Korea's Jurrassic Park

Okay it's not exactly Jurrassic Park.  It's Goseong's Sangjokan county park,  and as the website says, it's "land of dinosaur".

I visited the park over the weekend with Zoe and Nolan.

Before we even got to the actual park we got a little taste of dinosaurs in the cab ride. The cab driver realized we were going to Sanjokam Park and wanted to show us what we could expect. This is what we got.

Once he dropped us off at the park we made our way through the museum, saw a short 15 minute 3-dimensional flick about dinosaurs, and made our way down to the tracks.

The park has fossilized dinosaur footprints.  It's a beautiful place to visit.  It has gorgeous cliffs, and huge boulders along the edge of the water.  

But, back to the cool stuff --  dinosaurs!  I was reading somewhere that the footprints are from the  Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic Era.  That would put the footprints being from 145 to 65.5 million years ago.  I think that's mind blowing!  Usually when people throw these numbers around I rarely ever think about it.  They're just numbers to me.  But when you have footprints right before you from that long ago and try to wrap your head around it, it's really something else.

Yupp, those are dino tracks.
This is a nice view from the top of the stair case that was leading us down to the tracks.  You can see the footprints from here too.
This is the landscape the surrounds the area.  Huge rocks and cliffs.This is taken from inside one of the cave.  Those are kids rowing out in the middle of the water.

This is just another great view. Before I move on from the dinosaur trip. I have one more clip to show.  Inside the museum there is a little game where you try to outrun dinos.  You get a score at the end, but we never figured out how the scoring system worked.  Anyways this is Nolan putting forth his best, so the dinos don't catch him.  

I think he was a little disappointed with his score.

On another random note that has nothing to do with dinosaurs I have a clip of Jhi-Yoon.  She was too shy to talk while the video was on, but she wasn't shy enough the do this little jig for the camera.

  I'll see if I can get her to talk a little more.  She's really smart.  As soon as I turned the camera off, she started telling me about her favorite Japanese baseball team.

Jhi-Yoon and Hae Mul Tang

I don't plan on buying shoes from this store anytime soon. This is a shoe store near the center of town. Just thought it was a funny name for a place selling running shoes.Last weekend, Nolan and I decided to be adventurous and try a new dish. There's a restaurant nearby my apartment named Hae Mul Tang. We stepped inside, took our shoes off, took our seats on the floor, and ordered just that. We got a big pot full of seafood. Some stuff we recognized but mostly things we had no clue about. Our seafood stew was pretty spicy. I thought it was good. Although, I would have liked to have a Korean tell me exactly what I was eating. Usually, when we got out there is always some middle-aged Korean man that happens to speak English and explain to us what the dish is -- we weren't so fortunate this time.

As for school, well this was a short work week because of Chuseok. It was hard getting back into the swing of things. The students didn't want to be back and I don't think any of the teachers wanted to be back from our 5 days off either. Thankfully, some of my students always help me get through my day. The schools here don't have janitors. They have the kids clean up the classrooms and hallways. When I first found out about this it really depressed me. But oddly enough the kids seem to enjoy it sometimes. Or at least, they don't complain about it like I'd expect them to.

This is Jhi-Yoon. She's one of my students and one of the girls that come into my class to help spruce up. She's always there in the mornings too, to open up all my windows. And she's always there when I get back from lunch, meticulously rearranging all the desks so that they line up perfectly, and sweeping the floor along with some other students. I've come to know her and some of the other students that help out with keeping my class in tiptop shape. They'll take a break and talk to me in English. Sometimes I'll ask them about random Korean words. We'll listen to poppy Korean chart busters like the Wondergirls. Jhi Yoon is absolutely adorable. I always tell her she's pretty and she always replies back, "Nooo, I'm a Mooooonster" in her crazy and cute voice. I think as the year progresses I'll have more funny stories about her.


All day Saturday there had been some sort of fair going on at mount Nam. The mountain right beside my place. We heard all the commotion from my apartment during the day. We were walking through my neighborhood on our way to a birthday party later that night . All of a sudden we heard loud bangs. I excitedly pointed up in the air towards the fireworks I had just seen. Nolan didn't realize they were fireworks. He got scared and ducked. I started to laugh. Once he realized they were fireworks he took out his camera and shot a few seconds of it.


The fair was still going on today. So we decided to go up there and check it out for ourselves.
There were a lot of food stalls. I even got to see a lady make pajeon. I waited for a while in front of her stall just to see her pour the batter. I wanted to watch her make it so that I could copy exactly what they do when I make it at home.

On the otherside there were a lot of kids and their parents flying their kites.
I didn't like how allt he kites looked exactly the same. It would have been prettier to look up at more colorful kites that were all different shapes and sizes.
But watching the kids reeling their kites back in and releasing them back into the air was enjoyable.
And this time around, I'll leave you with this. A sign for a clothing store that makes no sense at all.

A word on Agoo-Chim

When I decided I was definitely coming to Korea I started gathering information about the city I was going to be teaching in -- Masan. One thing that intrigued me for a while was something called monkfish soup. If you look up Masan on the internet you'll quickly find out that monkfish soup, locally known as agoo-chim is a famous dish here. I also read that they had an Iron Chef battle dedicated to monkfish soup. Masan is a port city, and as evident from the fish market post a few weeks ago -- people really like their seafood here. Technically, I live in a part of Changwon, but my neighborhood is pretty much the border between Masan and Changwon.

So the day before yesterday, my co-teachers wanted to come over and take a look at my pad. We decided we'd stop by my place and I'd give them the quick one minute tour. There's not much to see when all you have is a decent size room, a kitchen, balcony/utility area, and a bathroom. After a little chatting about how "big" my place was compared to theirs, we stepped outside and explored my neighborhood. We headed towards the busy part of Parlyong Dong and found a restaurant that served seafood pajeon (one of my favorites) and they wanted to introduce me to agoo-chim for the first time. I got really excited because I had been wanting to taste this dish even before I set foot in Korea.

Agoo-chim is a spicy stew that has monkfish. I looked up a picture of monkfish once and it's a scary looking animal. It probably has a lot of mercury in it since it's pretty large, but that's beside the point. Bean sprouts help make up most of the dish and some sort of shellfish.When the waitress brought it out, she asked my co-teachers if I'd be alright? She was concerned I couldn't handle the spice. I chuckled and told her not to worry about me. Agoo-chim is really spicy. Although I didn't have much trouble with it. I remember once Nolan and I went to a seafood restaurant and the man at the table next to us was eating agoo-chim. Throughout the whole meal his face was red and he was sweating as if the flood gates to all his glands had just opened up. Fortunately, I did not have this problem. I really enjoyed my meal with my co-workers. They taught me a little more about Korean culture, a few new Korean words here and there. And I tried to explain America's investment banking woes as best I could. Agoo-chim didn't turn out to be one of the best dishes, but I'm glad I satisfied my craving of it, finally. I'll blog again pretty soon about another thing I tried called Hae-Mul Tang.

Chuseok

I want to start off this post by saying that, "We are all prostitutes". At least that's what this guy's shirt said on the back. I saw him after getting off the bus in Busan.

I was in Busan visiting my Korean friend Jeong-Ah. This past Sunday was Chuseok. The Koreans say it's like Thanksgiving. Everyone gets a few days off from work to travel back to their hometowns and visit their families. Like Thanksgiving, the roads get clogged with vehicles, and people fill themselves up with delicious home cooked meals. We got to meet Jeong-Ah's mother and her grand mother. Her mom prepared lunch for us. First, she gave us some goodies to munch on before our meal. The thing on the left was sweet treat that reminded me of sweets my mom makes. It was very sugary and a little mushy. I think it was made of flour, they probably fry it and soak it in sugary syrup. I'm still not sure about the thing on the right. All I remember was that it was quite crunchy and looked cool.

After chatting for a good bit, Jeong-Ah and her brother pulled out their table which was covered with food. We took our seats on the floor and started to dig in. We ate galbi, some sort of soup, octopus, and other different types of seafood. The food was really satisfying for the stomach. I'm really glad Jeong-Ah invited me over. It was a good opportunity for me to take a look at a real Korean home. They had a flat on the 15th floor of this high rise building, which seems to cover a lot of the Korean landscape. The inside was spacious. All the other homes I've seen are one room apartments that my friends live in. Anyways, after finishing an awesome authentic Chuseok meal Jeong-Ah gave us a few options to decide what we'd do next. We ended up picking going to Yong-Kung Temple.

The temple is by another beach in Busan. One that isn't covered with umbrellas and is a little less crowded. We passed a few things on our way to the actual temple. The road leading up to it is lined by street vendors.
One thing I saw a lot of were stalls with vendors selling bundaegi. Bundaegi is silk worm larva. It's a popular snack here. But, something I still can't and won't stomach.

Before we got to the actual temple area, we saw animal sculptures lined along a pathway. There were 12 animals in total. Each animal represents a particular year in the lunar calendar. Rumor has it that I'm the tiger.
People offer up coins to the animal for good luck.This is a pagoda where people pray and give offerings to help prevent automobile collisions from happening. I hope it works because driving gets a little crazy on the roads here.

As for the temple itself. It sat by the water. I wont say much about it because I think the pictures can do all the explaining of how beautiful it was.
Here's a plump shiny happy golden Budhha. He was sitting at the top of the mountain.Here's a collection of miniature monks that visitors leave behind for the temple. My personal favorite is the one that is front and center showing off his tush.
And finally, I'll leave you with my favorite picture of the entire batch. It's another image of Budhha just chilling out by the sea.

Namsan

I didn't venture too far from the comforts of my own neighborhood this past weekend. I figured I should explore what I have right next door to me, like I've been meaning to for a while. I took a stroll up to Namsan, it's a mountain I have right next to my place. And when I say right next to, I mean all you really have to do is go up the street and cross the intersection and start making your way up. At the top of Namsan there are a number of neat things. Sadly, I couldn't figure out what most of the things were though.

These two monuments were standing in the middle of the park area at the top of the mountain. No idea why they're there, or what they stand for.

There was also a cool temple looking thing on one side of the park area at the top. It was painted beautifully and reminded me of the same type of artwork I saw on the temples at Haeinsa.This is on the second floor of the place. It was extremely quiet when I was up there. There were a few picnickers outside, enjoying the view from Namsan and their grapes (podos in Korean). They tried to guess where I was from and as usual at first they said Indonesia and then one man said Bangladesh. I was impressed. I told him I was American and that my mom is from Bangladesh, I would have gone into the whole born in Bangladesh thing but my Korean vocabulary is not that extensive, yet.The people sitting and enjoying the view were extremely nice. They even gave Nolan a whole cluster of grapes to take along with us.Here he is trying to walk and eat grapes simultaneously.In case you forgot -- the city I live in is named Changwon. These are the city's two main mascots. Why they chose aliens to be the mascots is beyond me, but I happen to think they're pretty cute aliens. The blue one with headphones is Chang-e and the yellow one is Won-e. One is wearing the headphones and yellow one has leaves for ears. Supposedly, this represents that Changwon is the city where technology and environment are both important.

This is one of the plaques that helped explain what was going on with Namsan. It was used as a defense fort. And, here is one last view from Namsan.

Brimming Hum and belly dancers at the fish market

I'm surrounded by poetry in Korea. It's in nature and especially all over people's shirts. Everyone in Korea wears English shirts with cryptic English sentences.  I've seen a lot of these shirts that make no sense. A lot of my students wear them and I can't help but smile in class as my eyes dart around from one shirt to another. I saw this lady sitting in the audience while I was watching the Korean Belly dancers. Her shirt is my favorite one so far. The back of her shirt reads, "The literally monochrome world of pleasantville blossoms Into a rainbow of color...color is introduced slowly and epiphanies experienced by the characters... Brimming Hum". 

I'll just leave it at that.Our friend Ryan wanted to show us the Masan Fish Market. Not too far from the place we had been hiking. We also knew there was some sort of festival going on. So we get to the market and hear some commotion and see an audience waiting and standing for the next act to take the stage. Then a group of girls in their sky blue gypsy outfits come on the stage.  I start hearing what I recognize as Arabic music. The girls started doing their dance. The choreography was kind of lame. I really stayed there for the music. I was enjoying it a lot. I was telling my friends that it was odd watching these Korean girls belly dance. Most of the girls here are sticks. They don't really have any hips. And it's kind of hard to shake your hip to cool Arabic music when you don't have one. I did enjoy it when they busted out the swords. I got nervous for them. I kept thinking one of the dancers was going to mess up and drop the swords.

The festival also had a flamboyant magician.  He made little birdies appear out of thin air. After about an hour of standing around we made our way into the belly of the beast. I saw all kinds of fish waiting to be sold and eaten. Even things that didn't look like fish. This is some sort of sea worm. I asked my co-teacher about it. She said Korean Ajoshis (older men) like to eat it with their soju.

There were stalls filled with dried fish like these and dried squids too.

This woman was working at lightening speeds.  She hacked the heads off so quick.  She was like a one woman fish cleaning machine.
More fish.
I really wanted to talk to some of the older ladies that were cutting and cleaning the fish. Some of them smiled at me as I took pictures of things they are used to seeing everyday. I could tell for some of them,  this was their entire life. That fascinates me. I think there's something a little depressing about it too. I wondered if they enjoyed doing this, or whether they'd pick a different way of living if given the chance.