Today

Today............

11.28.06



The last few days have been filled with a never ending rain. Not just a lite drizzle but a constant, steady downpour with wind, fog, everything. For the last few days even the bases of the mountains, just a few miles away from my apartment, have been obscured by fog the consistancy of clouds that have fallen from the peaks and settled into the valleyes that surrond the town.

When I went to work today the rain had almost stopped but their was no sun, no blue sky, just a steel grey covering the town, the mountains, the sea.

So the day went and dragged, one class, two, three, then four, and finally, after the fourth, a break. It was time for me to run downstairs and catch the bus to go to the other branch. As I put on my coat and backpack I was so happy to finally be getting away from the students, even if it was only for a moment, and go outside into the moist air.

As I went through the door of my school and turned left to go down the three flights of stairs to the street I happened to look up and through the huge picture window that brings light into the halls of the building and I stopped short, stunned by what I saw.

There, in front of me, was the gift that all the rain, wind, and gloom in Sokcho had given us. Just behind my school, framed by apartment blocks, is Chundae-san mountain. Its not really a mountain, just a big hill, about 800 meters, but it is big, and there, from the crown almost to its base, was pretty, fluffy, white snow.

The entire mountian, almost down to the bottom was covered with it. This brilliant white carpet with the black shafts of trees sticking through the snow cover was like a white mat, covering the slopes of the hill.

Sorak-san, early winter

Sorak-San in winter

25.11.06

There is a story about Sokcho, a very old legend really that says after there have been three snowfalls on the mountains that the next one will fall on the sea. Don’t know if I believe it myself but it has snowed twice already on the high peaks, so we must be due for a little white stuff in town proper pretty quick.

Today started out pretty blah after spending the previous evening drinking beer and eating chicken at the local Hof after work.

Hof-Noun

A Korean drinking establishment that serves beer, soju, and snacks, usually chicken based

Anyway, after having a few with Karen, Kirsty, and Helen as we demolished a few plates of salt and pepper chicken getting up early was not that big a priority!

Finally rolled out of bed around eleven because of a phone call and try as I might could not get back to sleep so I rang up Wojtek and we decided to hike into the park and get some good pictures of the snow that has been falling on the high peaks for the better part of the last week.

After meeting him downtown we caught the number seven and headed into the park. We must have had the same idea as about a million other people because the road into the main entrance was backed up about five miles and we got the bus driver to let us out long before the entrance gate, we figured we would make better time heading in on foot

Our first views of the park were just amazing. Over the river, to our left, we could see a huge peak, one of the largest in the park, framed by two others that were almost all white down to about the thousand-meter line. You could see where the snow was clinging to rocks and trees and they shone through in their darkness against the white of the fresh powder.

In front of us where the two twin peaks that one sees just past the Buddhist gate that is the entrance to the park. The back peak, the taller one, is a shear triangle and it too was completely covered with snow, while the one in front, only a hundred meters shorter only had a light dusting.

To the far left of them is a narrow valley, really just a cleft between the ridges of the mountains, and that to was covered with a new snowfield that looked completely smooth, covering its rock strewn face with a velvety blanket of fresh, white, snow.

When we reached the entrance we decided, since the vast majority of trails were closed, to hike up to the waterfall.

This isn’t much of a hike, and to be honest, there is not much scenery to look at. The tree cover is too strong to see the mountains, and well, with the leaves all down; it just wasn’t a nice hike. When we finally reached the falls we were slightly impressed by the amount of water cascading down the lip into an emerald green pool at the bottom but it just wasn’t a great time and we headed back quickly, stopping only to grab some homemade wine and eat some potato pancakes before heading back into town.

Pictures

1. Snow on the peaks, the ones on the left are just a little shorter, yet the snow line has not reached them yet

2. The waterfall at the end of the trail

3. I took this just as I was leaving the park, right when the clouds were starting to come down for another night of snowfall

4. Almost the same picture as number three but from a little farther away

5. And one more

A Walk Around the Lake

A Walk Around the Lake



23.11.06



I am so sorry to everyone reading this that I have not been blogging with the regularity that I was earlier in the year but man I have been busy. With this trip to Bohol that I am going on this Christmas, booking airfares and hotels, work, a social life, well, busy, busy, busy! I am cooking for nine, a little Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment this Sunday, but I will try to get out four or five entries next week, I have about a thousand pictures and an equal number of stories that I want to tell!

A Walk Around the Lake


Outside of my window there is a lake, a saltwater lagoon really, that dominates my view. I wake up every morning and throw my drapes back and gaze upon the gray surface that usually has a crowd of ducks and geese upon it and is, almost everyday know, a slate of ruffling whitecaps.

So I have been looking at this lake for almost three months, at the bike path that winds around it, the people taking their morning strolls, and believe it or not, I have never, not once, been to it. Sure I have been saying that I will “go around the lake”, almost everyday, but I just have never had the time to do it, to enjoy a little piece of serenity that is smack in the middle of Sokcho.

Sunday was the big day. After going out and having a few drinks on Saturday night I really did not feel much like going on a grand hike or doing anything really constructive, after I woke up at the crack of noon, o.k. maybe it was a little later, and then, as I stood naked in the window, showing my all to my neighbors, I decided that the best cure for my raging headache was to finally, after all this time, walk around the lake.

I threw on a pair of cargos and my ever filthy and faithful B.S.U. hoody, and away I went, down the elevator and out the revolving door of the Dungeon and into a crisp, clear, fall day.

With the sun shining bright against a clear, cobalt blue, fall sky I headed first east, towards the sea, and then, when I hit the Family Mart, past the last gingko trees, I headed left, to the path that winds its way around the lake.

The lake itself is called Yoengan Lake, and it is, for you Bemidji residents out there, about half the size of Lake Irvine. Unlike almost any other body of water that I have seen in Korea, I have never seen people fishing, swimming, or doing any other type of water sports other than windsurfing on it. It just seems to basically sit there in all of its glory, a blue gray oval surrounded by hills and trees.

The total circumference, according to the signs on the bike path is about ten kilometers and I set out with the goal of speed walking the entire thing in two hours. Not really a daunting goal considering how fast I walk, but a good way to get the heart rate up a little bit.

Going along the path I first passed what must have been an old age home by the shear numbers of elderly Koreans out and about in wheelchairs and pajamas, some with I.V. stands connected to their shriveled veins.

This finally answered a question that I had been asking myself for quite some time now. You see, almost every night an ambulance or two goes screaming by my apartment building, their sirens and lights rending the night’s silence with the screech of alarms and chaos. I always thought that they were heading towards route seven, the main road, to some tragic accident filled with broken bodies and blood, but know I realized that they were just heading off to rush another aged member of society to the hospital. Another mystery of Korea solved!

After passing by the old folks home, keeping the lake to the right, I continued on through a growing quiet. It was amazing, here I was, not really far from the main drag yet the only sounds I could hear were the occasional yells of kids playing, birds, and sometimes, the pitter patter of a runner as they came up behind me, or the gentle hum of bike tires as couples enjoyed the day by riding around the lake. All around me were fallen leaves, browns and reds, carpeting the path and small rode that winds around the lake, and occasionally, ever so quietly a magpie would appear, suddenly, quietly, on the path or just off into the edge of the brush, eating their daily worms.

Off in the distance I could see a huge rock formation that looked like a tiger lying down. This is where the gods of old Korea came and sat after they were tired of Sorak-san and just wanted to soak up a nice view, at least that is what the sign says.

According to my co-workers, the Korean ones, the rocks serve a much more sinister purpose than a quaint place for gods to chill out. Because they are about five stories tall and easy to get to in the dark of night, they are the prime spot for suicides in Sokcho, (a little known fact, Korea has the highest rate of suicide in the OEDC), and people are regularly found splattered on the rocks, maybe the ambulances are not going to the olds folks home after all.

Past the rocks I came to the local country club, brown and drab at this time of year but still filled with golfers. A fairly nice looking course, it is the one nine holer in the city limits, and neatest of all, they have woman caddies!

This golf course is actually quite considerate as well. Along the part of the path that parallels what I think is the eighth hole, there is a net above the trail that is there to catch the occasional wayward shot, sparing those walking below from a plunking!

Passing the golf course I came to a bridge over a dirty stream that came down from the mountains and happened on a pretty neat site. There in the water were hundreds, maybe thousands of crap, right in the inlet. Why there? Maybe to get at the fresh water before the salt of the sea diluted it farther in the lake? Who knows, but it was cool to see this huge mass of fish moving and shimmering in the water, pushing each other out of the way, jumping, the dull brown bodies interspersed with a few that were orange, white, and one huge red monster!

The other side of the lake was far duller, no trees, a few grave mounds on small hills overlooking the scenery, pretty much nothing but some building sites and small villas for the city folk to rent, that’s about it.

I finished my walk early; I made it around in an hour and a half. After walking along the sea wall on the other side of the outlet of the lake, I headed home to rest my head and have some soup!

Pictures

1. The "stress relief walk". You find these all over Korea, by walking over the differant textured stones you can relieve stress. To answer your questions, yes it does work, at least for me.

2. The "suicide rock"

3. Another view of the "suicide rock" from the other side of the lake.

4. Almost a full shot of the lake. Just in front of the building at the far left is the Pacific Ocean. My building is the one on the far right.

5. The bike path.

Daechunbong Revisited

14 November 2006



Bak-dam-sa is a small town at the top of Misyroeng pass, just to the west of Sokcho. It sits at the west entrance of Sorak-san Park, and its entire reason for being is the entrance to the park. While some people actually live here, it is mostly a staging area for hikers heading into the park through the back entrance, avoiding the crowds that fill the easier side of the park at Sorak-dong, or East Sorak.

Bak-dam-sa is for serious hikers. The only trail goes almost eleven kilometers to a five hundred year old temple that clings to the back side of Sorak Mountain like a piece of fruit on the end of a branch.

The trail itself is fairly easy, that is until the last bit, and winds along a river past waterfalls and rocks with stunning cliff views and mountain crags along the entire distance.

We had planned this trip for a while, Karen, Kirsty, Helen, Conner, and I. We had all wanted to hike up to the peak from the back way because Karen, the only one of us who had trekked this trail, had said the views were spectacular.

With the coming of winter here in Korea, the days have gotten much shorter. We knew that we would be spending the night up in the mountains as there would be no way that we could summit and be down the other side before dark fell around 5:30.

Saturday was the big day. We had all loaded our rucksacks with food and water, enough for two days, and had stocked ourselves with many layers of sweatshirts, hats, gloves, and thermals. We knew the mountain wind would cut like shards of glass the higher we got and we expected to encounter ice and snow, winter had defenantly arrived in the mountains.

We got up late, we knew we would only have to walk for about six hours, around eight, and made it to the bus station to grab the nine o’clock bus for Bak-dam-sa, and rode for about an hour.

The way to the village went first north and then west. As we climbed higher into the mountains we weaved and swerved along a very narrow rode through cliffs and crags, along mountain streams. The road went through small towns, almost deserted, and past the usual army bases crammed with tanks and trucks, keeping their silent watch for northern aggression.

When we finally reached Misyroeng Pass around ten we got off the bus and headed into the park. After paying another two thousand won for a quick shuttle bus ride into the first temple we were on our own, in the wild.

We wound our way up a long river valley. Reaching the first temple we stopped and had cinnamon tea and hot roasted potatoes that the monks cooked for the hikers that made their way into this rather secluded valley. After filling our water bottles at as small Buddhist shrine we kept making our way farther and farther into the hills.

As we went up the trail we could see the damage that had been done by the recent heavy winds and rains that had swept the Sokcho area for the past several weeks. The orange bridges that usually litter the park to help hikers on their way had been washed away and temporary bridges made of logs lashed together with ropes had replaced them. Everywhere huge trees had been uprooted and thrown down the river channel sweeping rocks and debris downstream.

I have to hand it to the Korean Park Service at this point. These tireless men and women had obviously laboured for hours in the cold and wind to make the trail passable clearing rocks and trees so that people like us could use the trail.

After walking for about five hours we reached the second temple. Built in the early seventeenth century it has been destroyed and rebuilt many times since. It sits in a beautiful setting, high up on the edge of the mountains. From the trail below you could hear the chanting of the monks long before you came to the temple. Their chanting and knocking on their begging bowls filled the air with sound and spurred us on to our goal.

After sitting for a while in the setting sun we had a few cups of coffee and soaked up the warmth that the orange disk in the sky was dispersing before it settled down for the night. We knew we had to get going to get up to the shelter but we just sat there for a while soaking up the atmosphere.

Finally it was time to go and we headed up the mountains for the last slog to the shelter. Winding our way up a rocky, narrow trail, we looked back on the sun that was starting to settle behind the mountains. Down and down it went, slowly settling and leaving us to scramble up the path in ever decreasing light.

As I finally neared the shelter I could barley see my hand in front of my face but I could hear a flapping, like a sheet in the wind, and I looked up to see, ever so faintly, a crisp Korean flag waving in the wind, finally I had reached the shelter, my home for the night.

After a relatively sleepless night, although the girls told me that I snored my ass off when I did get a couple of hours, we woke with the sun to make our assault on the summit. Kirsty and Helen decided to cut it short and did not go up the mountain with us but Conner, Karen, and I decided to go for broke and bundled up for our climb up the third highest mountain in South Korea.
My God it was cold. Winter in Bemidji is bad enough but up here the wind cut like the proverbial blade, wafting through the four layers of shirts. Luckily I had remembered to bring my good hat and choppers so my hands and head were warm but my face felt frozen as we clambered over the broken trial to a height of 1780 meters.
And that is pretty much it for probably my last big climb of the year. We went down the front, finally getting warmer as we reached the foot of the mountains. We finally left the front entrance of the park at three on the nose, exhausted but happy having done about twenty miles in two days, much of it over huge rocks and up incredibly steep trails. Put it this way, I am writing this on Tuesday and I still cannot go up stairs without pain!

A note about pictures-

1. Looking up one of the many waterfalls that littered the trail on the way to the summit

2. On the way to the summit, the mountains in the distance like folds of paper

3. Coming down the mountain, the moon is still in the sky early Sunday morning

4. The sun sneaking down behind the mountains from the temple

5. Conner, Karen, and myself at the summit

Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes

An individual from seventeenth century England who attempted to blow up parliament. Caught before he could load the basement of the building with gunpowder, he was sentenced to die and burned at the stake. Five November is now known as Guy Fawkes Day in the British Isles and celebrated with fireworks, bonfires, and general drunken mayhem.

Sokcho Diary

Because I both work with and hang around several Brits here in Sokcho we deceided that it was only proper that we have a Guy Fawkes party. Kelly and Shawn, by virtue of their new and very large apartment agreed to host, and about twenty of us agreed, in principle, to come down and drink!

The Dongjin Crew, Kirsty, Helen, Kelsey, and I headed down to E-mart to get supplies around six. After getting beer, vodka, and other party favors at our local discount mart we proceeded to run into a bunch of students who pointed out that we had a lot of alcohol and proceeded to ask us what we were going to do with it all, we said the only thing that came to mind, “Well we are going to a party”, it worked!

We then hopped on the number nine bus and rode out to the site of our adventure.

Kelly and Shawn live in a very small town about ten miles outside of Sokcho in a new, very nice building. When we got there there was already about twenty people eating, drinking, and talking and we settled right in.

It was a pretty fun night. The party was potluck so everyone brought something to eat and drink, (I brought homemade vegetable pot pies, Kelsey guacamole, and Helen and Kirsty gingerbread men), and we had a blast until three or so in the morning.

Of course it wouldn’t be a really great party unless the police showed up about the noise as they did around 2:30 to tell us the entire building was complaining about the noise!

We finally left close to three and tried in vain to hail a taxi on the very narrow, deserted road after stumbling and weaving our way down the road for about fifteen minutes we were finally successful and got home close to three thirty at the end of a great night!

Pics-
1. Kelsey and I
2. Oue hostess, Kelly
3. Jason for some reason demonstrating his skiing technique
4. Lee and his girlfriend
5. Kelly and Shawn

Halloween

31 October 206

Surprisingly enough one of the big holidays here in Korea that they have adopted from the west is Halloween. Yes the festival of paganism worldwide has become quite the commercial day here in the land of the morning calm.

Last week Yeon-soo came to us, her loving and devoted staff, for ideas for Halloween. As I have done this sort of thing in Korea before I was all about doing the bobbing for apples thing. Messy I know, and kids need to be prodded a little to do it, but if it works, well, they just love it, anyway that was my suggestion.

Kirsty for some reason wanted to get a Mexican influence in the day and chose to make piñatas, why I don’t know but she spent last week getting all of her classes busy smearing balloons with paper maiche and the like to create about forty of the things.

Karen was big on pin the tale on the cat and she made a freakin’ huge black cat that she put on the wall, ready to be stuck by pin after pin as the kids tried to win some candy.

Finally, Wojtek chose to make masks, a thankless task as it turned out as he was forced to dismember about a million paper plates as the majority of our junior achievers lacked sufficient strength and muscle coordination to cut the eyes out of the plates making blind mans masks instead of masks for the visually able.

Finally, today, the big day arrived. We had spent the previous week forcing our kids, with sticks and threats, to decorate the halls and classrooms for the festivities so the halls and rooms were littered with paper pumpkins, signs, bats, and ghosts to impress the parents who would surely arrive with their young hellions in tow.

With a flourish I cleared my room of desks and chairs, leaving only a small table on which to put my bobbing bowl with a towel and a deck of cards (I do know one magic trick) and, armed with a huge sack of candy, I waited for the little terrors to arrive.

With a roar of noise they came tromping up the stairs, ninety kids already heavily dosed on sugar and looking for more. With a fling and a jostle the first gaggle of them came into my room, saw the bag of candy and the bobbing bowl and looked quizzically at me, wondering what in the hell they would have to do to earn their precious lumps of tooth rotter.

I only had to demonstrate once and the kids were on their own. Pushing and shoving me out of the way they scrambled for the bowl and the apples. Time after time I had to dump the water and change the apples but it probably will have turned out for naught. If just one of these kids were sick, well it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we all wound up with a raving case of typhoid.

All in all the day was pretty fun, as was the warm up to it. We, the teachers, got out of doing some real teaching and got to do some arts and crafts, the kids, well, they did not get much out of the thing but they did get a break from the endless, dreary cycle of learning that is the Korean educational system and got to be kids for a little while.

Pictures-

1. This is my classroom all decked out for the holiday.

2. Three boys going head to head for some quality apple bobbing

3. Ben gets his face painted

4. One of the girls, not mine, grabs an apple

5. Jin-ho, always good for a laugh

A Walk with Wojtek…………….

28.10.06

With no festivals on today, for once, I was required to make my own amusements on a beautiful Saturday in Korea. Wojtek and I had been talking on Friday night about heading for a little walk on Saturday up north, no not that north, just a little way from Sokcho, a little ramble through the countryside if you will, and made plans to meet around 12:30 at Gimpap Click for a quick bite and then head out.

Before the day’s festivities I had to go get a haircut as I was getting a tad bit shaggy so I got up early and headed down to the Headline Barber Shop for a little trim.

My first haircut here in Sokcho was pretty uneventful. I picked out my hairstyle from the book; sort of a Brad Pitt/Edward Norton look, and the lady in black went to work.

The lady in black was the only actual hair stylist in the place. Dressed entirely in black, hence her name, she was tall and thin with, you guessed it, a mane of thick black hair that cascaded like black ice over her shoulder and down her back. On her hip were a veritable holster of scissors, combs, shears, and other assorted implements of her trade. As I sat down in the chair, I knew I was in good hands.

I was literally strapped into the chair by one of the two assistants that stood at the beck and call of my stylist. Around my neck, against the bare skin, a hard plastic color was secured. Over that came a cloth half shirt, and over that, the typical cloak to catch the falling hair. When everything was in place, she started to work.

As the scissors snipped and snapped around my head I looked in the mirror thinking the other two girls in the shop were also stylists who were just not cutting hair at the present time, but served a far more valuable purpose.

As the lady whacked my hair into shreds the roles of the other two women came into play. As the shears neared my ears, the lady in black clicked her fingers and one of the assistants sprang into close proximity to me. Moving quickly to position she proceeded to hold first one ear, then the other in place as the scissors zoomed around them. Now I understood, the women who seemed like stylists were just trainees, or maybe assistants, there to help the chief Shearer in every part of the operation.

After a little while, no more than fifteen minutes, I had my new cut and proceeded to meet Wojtek for lunch.

After a quick stop for sundubu, hot spicy soft tofu stew with pork, clams, and rice, we hopped the number one bus and rode out north.

As the bus speeded down highway seven we looked out at the countryside spinning by and wondered where we would get off to begin our little stroll. A few bus zoomed by but the surrounding countryside seemed to unappealing for us and we waited for our moment.

Finally it came, a small seaside town with a decrepit beach on one side, and across the road little hills, ridges, and a few villages, perfect.

We walked down to a mangy beach first, filled with rubbish and debris from the storms that we have had in Sokcho, it was deserted except for a few fishing boats and old nets that the storms had tossed up along a breakwater. Climbing a small hill we came to a scenic overlook with a pagoda where we stopped and got some pictures before turning inland, towards the rice fields and mountains that really interested us.

We headed across the highway towards a low ridge and pounded down the side, past some old bunkers with firing slits still in place and a Republic of Korea ammunition dump with armed soldiers and extremely stern signs saying keep out and forbidden in Korean, Russian, English, and Chinese for some reason.

After a while we reached a broad plain filled with rice fields and migratory birds that were eating the fallen grain, gleaning, while the farmers moved their small combines up and down the fields, cutting the grain in straight lines and shooting the chaff out into waiting trucks. The air smelled fresh, like things growing with an undercurrent of diesel fuel from the farm machinery that littered the plain.

As we crossed a large river, running swift and clean, straight down from the mountains, we entered a small, very rural village, no stores or busnisses of any kind but filled with friendly people who kept stopping us and asking why two waygooks would be running around their neck of the woods. When we told them that we found their part of Korea sunningly beautiful they nodded thier heads knowingly and wished us a good journey with waves and thank you's for the respcet that we showed their land.

A note about pictures-

1. A waterfall streaming off of Miseyrong Mountain. I did not take this on the walk today but it is a great picture. Thank you to Kelly and Shawn for taking me up there to get this shot.

2. Drying red peppers in a small courtyard.

3. A traditional house, still inhabited in the small village we went through.

4. Drying seaweed next to the beach. Seaweed is loved in Korea, rich in iodine this will be boiled into soup.

5. Garlic drying in the fall sun