Bens Class

This is a class of little people that I teach three times a week and are alot of fun. They all have made really tremendous progress in thier English skills in the short time that they have been my students.
We play a lot of games, hide and seek and kick the can are very popular right now but dodgeball is running a close second as they start to get the hang of it. They are cute kids and it is a real joy to have them start to use English more and more as they get comfortable with it.

The Festival that Wasnt-Sorak-san

Pictures-
1. These are prayer tablets, written with the hopes and reams of many people stacked outside a statue of Buddha.
2-4. Some shots of a temple on a midwinter day.
5. The mountains of Sorak-san with some weather moving in.

The Festival that Wasn’t

Sorak Snow Festival 2007

One of the things we look forward to here in Korea is the plethora of festivals. Every weekend it seems there is a new festival celebrating something, kimchi, fish, ice, and mushrooms. It seems like everything on the peninsula has a festival for it. Down south they even have a mud festival in the early summer and a festival celebrating the lowest tide of the year where some mudflats get exposed to the salt air.

Here in Sokcho we are lucky enough to have a snow festival celebrating, you guessed it, snow, and on a bitterly cold day Paul, Aubrey, and I headed out to the Sorak-san Park with great excitement, looking forward to a real festival atmosphere.

When we got off the bus at the entrance to the park we found our way in with what seemed a smallish crowd of people, at least for a Korean festival, and headed towards the main clearing where we expected to see tents and displays showing the beauty of the winter season. We were sorely disappointed.

I don’t know about you but when I hear the words “snow” and “festival” put together I expect it to be in the winter, with the possibility of some poor weather. Where I come from this means that any festival in the winter would have made provisions for cold, wind, and snow. Twenty-degree temperatures with a little wind would not have slowed things down one bit. One only has to look at the eelpout festival to see a true winter festival.

Here in Korea it is another thing entirely. Throw a little wind and chill into the mix and bang, no festival. Down come the tents! The exhibits, well they are just a distant memory. In other words, the festival was, well it wasn’t.

Needless to say, while the festival did kind of suck, well the fact that there was no festival sucked, I did get some great pictures of what is fast becoming my favorite part of Korea in the winter.

A Day at the Museum

One of the things Greg and I had plans to do while we were in Seoul for my birthday was to hit a couple of museums.
The first one we hit, and the one that I most desperatly wanted to see was the Korean National Museum. Not for the Korean artifacts, no I wanted to see the exhibit of paintings that had been sent over from the Lourve to celebrate one hundred and fifty years of Franco-Korean relations.
It seemed to me that the Lourve had known that I would be in Korea for this exhibit and had included, amongst a bunch of minor landscapes, my most favorite painting in the world, one that I had previously seen only in books, Thomas Gericualts work, "The Raft of the Medusa".
All in all the exhibit wasnt that good but I stood transfixed in front of the Medusa for at least fifteen minutes while the line of people behind me became angrier and angrier at the waygook holding up the line, admiring the lines and brillant use of shading that Gericault used to depict the survivors of a shipwreck off the coast of Senegal fighting through cannibilism and thirst trying to signal to a British ship on the horizon.
After the Lourve exhibit we headed over to the main museum for a taste of Korea, but I am ashamed to say, I quickly became bored and basically forced Greg to head over to a place that I had already thourghly explored, the Korean War Museum.
While not the best war mueseum I have ever been too, the Imperial War Museum in London easily takes the cake, it is cool for all the neat machines that they have sitting outside. From the Scud missles to the Russian equipment captured during the Korean war to the mamouth B-52 with two smaller planes parked under its wings are pretty cool to look at.

Picuters
1. In the subway station outside the museum is a mosiac depicting the building that houses the treasures of Korea.
2. These are punishment sticks, used until early in the twentieth century to keep slaves and peasents in line.
3. A little boy as tired of the Korea National Museum as I was at this point.
4. A North Korean infiltration boat used to run spies and commandos up to the shore of the south in the early 1980's
5. A Mig fighter flown by a defector from the North in 1983

My Birthday in Seoul

Pictures
1. The riot police and their bus full of fun, on guard against any trouble in one of the nicer parts of town.
2. Just a monk walking down the street. A five thousand year old religion on a modern metropoli Edit Posts s.
3. All dressed up in neon in one of the many red light districts in Seoul
4. Three Seoul rookies with cameras ready to go.
5. The round bed of love that I got to sleep in for two nights, incredibly hard.

My Thirty Third

18 February 2007

Well finally it was here. After waiting thirty-three years I finally had my 33^rd birthday. Yippee.

I had been planning to meet my friend Greg, who is working my old job done in Pohang, up in Seoul for some well-deserved R.R. for a while now. In fact we had both been looking forward to getting together for quite awhile and finally the big day came when we thought we would be partying with around fifty million Koreans, all celebrating my birthday.

Well not really celebrating my birthday, they had another reason to celebrate, along with a fifth of the world’s population. You see, by a total quirk of fate, this year my birthday happened to fall on the biggest celebration that will hit Asia in 2007, the Lunar New Year.

This year is the Year of the Pig here in Asia and millions of Asians are looking forward to it.

The Year of the Pig, which comes around only once every twelve years, according to the Chinese zodiac, is the best year to be born. According to the tradition every animal in the zodiac has a purpose, a sign and the pig is the symbol for good fortune and prosperity. To have your birthday on the actual day of the lunar New Year, well that is probably the best luck you can have. Millions of people have been waiting for twelve years for this moment alone and birthrates here in Korea, and Asia, are sky rocketing as people are using every means available, including fertility treatments, to have children in this, the most prosperous of years.

Getting to Seoul was pretty easy as most people in Korea look at this holiday as a time to be home with their families. Much to my disappointment there would be no celebration in the streets, no fireworks or spitting dragons to delight the crowds. This holiday would in fact be pretty quiet, a time for reflection and family instead of a massive party. That is for everyone but us.

I met Greg in the train station, he had taken the KTX high-speed train up from Pohang, and we immediately started shopping and celebrating.

After checking into our hotel we hit the electronics mart and the foreigner district where we met some friends, had beer and some Indian food before heading out on the town.

And that, because my mom reads my blog, is where it all ends.

Inje Ice Festival

pictures
1. Ice fishing, Korean style. This little plastic hut they use to cut the wind would last about ten seconds on a Minnesota lake.
2. Being that this is the year of the pig, fitting we should see a bunch of ice blocks in the shape of the wonderful animal.
3. Rack upon rack of drying pollack.
4. So this was kind of wierd. On the river ice was placed a giant pool into which were relesed a kind of trout or salmon, I never could get a straight answer. The brave men in the pool hunted around, scaring the poor fish into the corners and then kicked them to death with their boots, charming.
5. Just a random child with his little faux animal hat.

Inje Ice Festival

25.2.07

On a cold brisk day in the middle of January we decided to head up to the Inje Ice Festival. I know I know, it is not the type of ice festival that those of us in Minnesota are accustomed to, in fact it was pretty lame compared to what we are used to. What we think of as ice, huge sheets covering lakes and rivers to a depth of several feet, safe for cars where people have little huts on where they spend the short winter days and long nights fishing and drinking, well that is just unknown here, in fact, ice like that would probably scare the Koreans out of their wits, but it is the only ice we have and we were determined to enjoy it.

After a long bus ride, longer than it should have been, up to the mountains high above Sokcho, and a walk through snow on a sunny but cold day, we finally came to the site of the gathering.

A patch of river had frozen, in itself quite a surprise considering how warm it had been this winter, and there, in the bright sun of a midwinter’s day, the festival was in full steam.

Well, not really. As far as festivals go in Korea, this one was pretty damn small.
On the sheet of ice were drilled a few holes with some little plastic windbreaks were some people were fishing with handlines, for what I do not know. The river seemed pretty small, too small to hold anything but a few small trout, and I never did see anybody catch one in the short time I stood in the wind watching them.

After a short while I headed downstream, or upstream, I don’t really know, past the fairly large crowd of people using incredibly sharp stakes that they were driving into the ice while sitting on sleds to push themselves along. Because I was in a fairly dark mood, angry at almost all things Korean I longed to see someone, while they were jabbing their modified ice pick into the frozen river, instead pierce their foot, it was a dream left unfulfilled.

Moving further along the ice I did marvel at the wonderful site that the city of Inje sits in. With jagged peaks all around, Inje sits in a high pass, the site of the road to Seoul. It is very narrow; at this point there is barley enough room for a little town and a small two-lane road. Stretching up the flanks of the mountains were pine trees, and above the tree line, you cold actually see good, solid snow, like what should be down in the valley where we were if we had had a good winter.

A little farther along, really at the midpoint of the festival grounds was the oddest, actually the most gruesome part of the festival. A small type of swimming pool had been placed on the ice, kind of like a little kiddie pool but bigger, and in it were four grown men, stomping around, splashing and kicking. I moved closer through the crowd to see what all the excitement was about.

What I got to see was an example of animal cruelty that I have not really seen for quite awhile. Into the pool were released some fish, a kind of trout or salmon I presume, I never really did get to see them clearly. As the crowd egged the men in the pool on, or at least I presume they were egging them on, I don’t know enough Korean to decipher what they were saying, the men pursued the fish in the confines of the pool, driving them into the corners where they proceeded to kick the fierce animals into submission.

A Late Winter Walk

pictures
1. A graveyear, Korean style. Each mound contains the body of an anscetor. The living members of the family are responsible for taking care of the grave site.

2. A bunker of recent vintage, probably used for war games.

3. Old and new. An ancient wall lines a lane through a village while modern houses are behind it.

4. Conner being Conner near a sign warning of danger near some new road construction.

5. Rice fields with mountains in the distance.

A Late Winter Walk

25.2.07

This past Saturday I went for my first big walk since the winds and light snow of winter had finally stopped in my part of Korea, making it possible to go outside without completely getting geared up like I was going out for a polar expedition.

After a late night out I was able to convince my good friend Conner, a nice Irish lad who cracks us up on many occasions to head out around 12:30. To be honest, it was Conner who was more than able to get up on time and come bang on my door, but well, that’s a different story.

Because I really enjoy walking around the north side of town, up in the rice paddies, with a view of the mountains, we headed north, looking for a cool place to get off and start exploring.

After cruising through a couple of small villages we reached the ideal spot. There was a small fishing village on one side of the road, a few houses scattered around a long breakwater with a few fishing boats in the water. Along the narrow semi-circle of beach that was not enclosed with the omnipresent barbed wire that one sees on almost every beach in this country, to guard against the ever-present threat of attack from the north were scattered a few small hotels and chicken restaurants, there were a few people walking in the streets, carrying their shopping and doing errands but not many.

In the summer this place was quite different. I had been here a few times with my friend Chris to go fishing, and then the scene was much more lively. Then crowds of people from Seoul and Chuncheon flooded the area. All kinds of people crowded the little beach and filled the now closed fish restaurants that stretched along the edge of the small harbour drinking beer and eating fresh caught fish, but now there was nothing. The town simply was waiting quietly for the two months of the tourist season to make a little money.

On the other side of the main hi way, route seven, was the country we wanted to explore.
The countryside all back to the mountains was the dark brown of winter. Spring has not yet come to this land so there is almost no green to speak of. The fields and the trees are all a uniform brown colour.

We started out our walk heading up a small tar road, past a closed factory of some kind and then turned left and went through the rice fields. Going through the paddies is quite easy now that they are not flooded or planted like they will be in a few months.

For quite awhile we totally neglected the paved roads that threaded through the fields and stuck to the dikes themselves, the dikes, these round lines of terrace that we walked upon, who knew how old they were. They had probably been here for five hundred or a thousand years, making the fields that have fed a nation since time began.

Even though spring will not come to these parts for another three weeks, there are sings that soon the landscape will change. A few of the fields where we walked had recently had last years rice stubble burned off and had witnessed the blade of the plow coming to slice up the rich earth. Where the tractor had been the earth was not the dry dusty brown of winter but the rich brown colour of dirt that was until recently hidden, gathering moisture, awaiting the chance to again grow the crop that sustains Asia.

After walking awhile on this pretty, yet cloudy day, we crested a low ridge and went down into a broad plain filled with rice fields. Negotiating the dikes and paths we passed through an area that had seen heavy combat during the war and was still used by the army for war games.

We were parallel to route seven; the main road going north and south, in other words the main route for any type of combat that would take place here and the area was full of the debris of older and more recent war games. Passing along low hills we passed by a few bunkers, firing and observation slits pointing toward the road and the fields, the only open places that tanks and trucks could ever come south on this part of the peninsula.

Coming to the end of our stroll we passed through a new landscape, almost Mediterranean in appearance. Here the land changed from limestone to craggy rocks that littered the foothills of the mountains rising to peaks in the distance. Passing through a small village we got to see a few of the older buildings that are becoming rarer and rarer in Korea as modernization takes hold and the rural people are thrown into the new century.