Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Subway Adventures, 2.0

It's summer vacation in schools in Korea. My university semester finished back in June. I was supposed to teach some other summer classes, but there hasn't been a lot of student interest. I have three students that I teach two hours a day right now, and that's it. In the public schools, most teachers are either doing special English Camps, or else they are participating in the ritual known as desk warming. Basically, there are no classes, there are no students. But the government requires the teachers to be at work. So they have to go into school and sit at their desk and play on the internet for 8 hours a day.

My friend Rachel teaches at a public school. She is in the desk warming contingent this week. Last night, we decided that it'd be great fun to have a mid-week sleepover. In order for this story to make sense, there are a few things you need to know.

a) I tend to have issues with public transportation and I desperately miss my car.
b) Rachel lives in a different city than I do, and in the best of circumstances, it takes roughly two hours to get between our houses.
c) Korea has a rainy season, and we are right in the middle of it.
d) There are a TON of different subway lines in Seoul, and each one has their own quirks and personalities. Line number 1 is above ground, and it is the oldest, creakiest line in Seoul.

Just to make things easier, take a look at this subway map. I live at Giant Red Star 1 and Rachel lives near Giant Red Star 2.

Line 7 (where I live) and line 1 (where Rachel lives) connect, so the simplest way to get there is ride all the way down to the end of line 7. I made it to Rachel's house last night with no problems, and we had a grand time and stayed up way too late. This morning, Rachel had to start deskwarming around 8:30, so we left her house about 8:15ish. This means I should have been home by around 10:30. 

This is where the rainy season part comes in. This morning, it was raining rather hard and it didn't seem like it was going to let up. I was on line 1, and every time the doors opened, a bunch of rain blew in, and it was generally uncomfortable. But I only had 11 stops to go on line 1, which should have been about 20 minutes. 

I get 9 stops along on line 1 (which brings us to Giant Red Star 3) and the train opened its doors and some people got off and some people got on. It was the normal routine. But the doors didn't shut right away. This isn't terribly unusual, especially on line 1. However, after about 10 minutes of the doors staying open and rain blowing in, I started to get annoyed. The driver started making regular announcements, but I couldn't understand more than a few words of them. The other passengers weren't leaving the train, so I figured it was safe to stay on. 

This state of affairs continued for another 5-10 minutes. Announcements kept coming. Rain kept blowing in. Nobody was moving. Then a few people started to trickle out. But there were far more people who stayed on the train, so I stayed too. After about 30 minutes, I knew there was something seriously wrong. I started trying to look up words and sentences to figure out how to ask what the problem was. Thankfully, the woman sitting next to me spoke some English, and she took pity on me. 

According to her, the line 1 trains had been shut down due to excessive rain, and in her opinion, I should get off the train and try to find another way to get where I needed to go. ::sigh:: A bunch of other people got off around the same time. I walked down towards the station exit, and there was the closest thing I've seen to an angry mob in front of the little information desk trying to figure out what was going on. I needed to get to Giant Red Star 4, which was only two subway stops away, so I decided to just go find a taxi and be done with it. 

I knew since it was raining, it'd be a little difficult to find a taxi. What I hadn't counted on was the fact that I was in the middle of nowhere and everyone else was trying to get to the same subway stop as me. So, I joined about 150 other people standing by a bus stop trying to flag down a taxi. Keep in mind, it's pouring down rain this whole time. Buses are coming by and splashing water on the curb. Taxis are taking 4 people at a time who are all going in the same general direction. It was a mess.


This is a fraction of the people waiting at the bus stop. Of course, because we were in the middle of nowhere, there weren't any buses that went to the subway station that I needed. I kept trying to get in on one of the taxi groups, but the drivers didn't want me to get in their car. Some of them told me "no foreigners", some of them just waived me away.

I was talking with Rachel on google chat, and she and her co-teachers were trying to figure out a way to get me home. I also called my friend Amy who is really good with the bus system to see if she could figure something out. Things weren't going very well. 

Finally, Amy figured out that I could take one bus to a subway station on line 9, in the Northern part of the city, take line 9 down to the Southern end of the city and transfer to line 7 to get back to the Northern part of the city. It would have taken about 2.5 hours. Rachel figured out that I could take a bus and then walk about 15 minutes and end up at the original station I was shooting for. Neither of these seemed like very fun options, but I didn't have a choice.


Believe it or not, this is what the middle of nowhere looks like in Korea. I was stuck by letter A, on the left side of the picture. There just wasn't much happening. 

Despite the fact that there wasn't much happening, the buses were all full. There were two buses I could have taken. I watched 7 of them go by, all of them so full that they didn't even bother to stop. Koreans know how to cram into public transportation. When Koreans consider the bus too full, I don't want to be anywhere near it. 

I stood (in the pouring rain) at the bus stop for over an hour and a half trying to find a taxi or bus that could get me SOMEWHERE so I could find a way home. My duffel bag was soaking wet. My jeans had absorbed water all the way up past my knees. Thankfully I was wearing flip flops, so my shoes were none the worse for the wear. Finally, a taxi pulled up and he yelled out that he was going to Onsu station, which is where I originally needed to go. He spoke a little bit of English, and he was quite willing to take me along so he could practice. The taxi ride cost $4, took about 10 minutes, and then I got on the train and headed home.  I unlocked my apartment door just after 1:15, a mere five hours after I left Rachel's house. 

As all of this was going on, I was unable to understand how a country that has a rainy season was apparently unable to function when it rained... Then I got home and checked facebook and google+. These are some of the pictures I saw. 




 Korea has apparently had the worst rainy season in 100 years this year. We've gotten about 34 inches of rain in July, and apparently half of that has fallen in the last 36 hours. There has been some crazy flooding and such going on. They are expecting another 12 inches or so tomorrow. This is some crazy, crazy rain. All in all, I guess it's a good enough reason to have some public transportation issues ;)

All I know is I was quite glad to make it home, and I was even happier to sit down in dry clothes with a nice hot cup of tea. Today definitely ranks up there in the "most stressful days in Korea".

Friday, July 22, 2011

Bureaucracy is a many faceted thing

I've been trying to figure out exactly what I needed to do to renew my visa for another year here in Korea. The Korean immigration website is officially the least helpful website EVER, so I wasn't having much luck getting my questions answered there.

Normally, I could turn to a few specific websites where a lot of other expats write about living in Korea kinds of things, including immigration. But the Korean government just passed a bunch of new legislation about my specific visa type, and everyone is really confused about what is going on. Some of the new regulations are quite difficult to fill, and the paperwork has to be done from America.

I thought that I was on top of all of this. I ordered a background check from the FBI when I was Stateside in February, and my parents mailed it to DC to get an apostille put on it, and then mailed it to me in Korea. Of course, nobody really seems clear if I need this background check for this visa renewal, or if I'll only need it for the next one, but I have it, so hopefully it won't be an issue with this or any future visa renewals.

I have a stack of papers from my new school, and they all seem to be in order. One of the things that was terribly confusing was WHEN I needed to apply for this new visa. I technically have to apply for a visa extension and report a change of workplace. The thing is, I start my new job before my current visa expires. I didn't know if I had to apply for a new visa before I went to America, or if I had to go down to immigration twice... It was a giant mess. Immigration office visits take hours and hours out of your day. The office is quite far away from both my current apartment and my new apartment. The lines are nearly legendary, and the paperwork can get ridiculous. I didn't want to have to go twice.

To further complicate things, it has come out that the FBI background checks will only be accepted by Korean immigration for six months after they are run. This is particularly difficult, because to get the background check, get the apostille put on it, and get it to Korea can take a full six months in and of itself. I knew that it would take a long time, but the six month rule hadn't been announced in February. I was afraid that I would have to somehow try to get a new background check.

In the midst of all of this confusion, I decided that there was really only one answer. I looked up a list of Korean words, and I called immigration this afternoon. Thankfully, there was an English option in the menu, so I didn't have to try and muddle through all of this in Korean. I'm QUITE sure that would have been a disaster of truly biblical proportions.

The good news at the end of all of this is I have all of the documents that I need as of now. I'll probably pick up one document that I already submitted when I'm in Indy, just because I've heard horror stories about immigration losing documents that are supposed to be on file and denying visas because of it. My FBI background check is still acceptable -- but I only have four days to spare before it would have expired. I find myself in the odd position of both loving bureaucracy (on the American side) and being frustrated with it (on the Korean side). I only have to go to immigration once, and I don't have to go until after I get back from America in August.

So basically, in the next two weeks I'm going to finish one job, pack, move to a new apartment and fly to America. When I get back, I'm going to immediately start a new job and unpack said apartment for the last few days of August. In September, I'll apply for my new visa, start a new semester, and start a Master's degree. At least all of these things have the courtesy to be spread out a little bit!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Headlines in Korea

You'd think that with the proximity of Seoul to North Korea and the whole DMZ situation, there would be regular headlines about the conflict. Or perhaps the economy and exchange rates and such. Maybe the latest typhoon to blow through the peninsula. Check out a recent headline and article from the JoongAng Daily.

Gym rats shook TechnoMart: Owner



July 19, 2011
The mystery of what made a Seoul residential-commercial high-rise complex shake for 10 minutes, like in an earthquake, has been solved, according to its owner.

The cause, according to TechnoMart owner Prime Group, was 17 middle-aged people in a 12th floor fitness center performing Tae Bo exercises, a mixture of boxing and taekwondo that became popular in the 1990s.

And to prove it, Prime Group will stage a demonstration today to show that a bunch of middle-aged people exercising can shake a 39-story skyscraper.

The top 19 floors of TechnoMart, which has apartments and a large shopping mall, shook for 10 minutes on July 5, prompting an evacuation of the building for two days. About 50,000 people usually visit the complex each day.

“We will install tremor detectors on several floors above the 12th, and show how vibrations could be amplified by the Tae Bo, causing tremors,” said Park Hong-geun, a professor at Seoul National University who will participate in the demonstration, in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo.

In the demonstration, 17 middle-aged people will do Tae Bo exercises to the same pop song that was playing July 5, “The Power” by Snap. However, none of the people who were exercising at the center on July 5 have volunteered to come back, in order to avoid media attention.

“Another problem is that the Tae Bo teacher doing the workout when the building shook has disappeared,” Park said.

“A group of experts have already carried out a series of experiments and partly proved the connection between the Tae Bo exercises and the high-rise building’s shaking,” Park said.

Jeong Ran, a professor at Dankook University, said, “The total weight of the people who are expected to participate in the demonstration will be about 850 kilograms (1,873 pounds). But, actually, weight is not that important. Rhythm and music causes tremors. The demonstrators are now practicing how to dance to the beat of the music.”

Other experts question the theory, saying people beneath the center should have felt the shaking. On July 5, tremors were felt above the 20th floor.


By Lee Ji-sang, Kim Hee-jin [heejin@joongang.co.kr]

Friday, July 15, 2011

Making Sausage

Despite the setbacks with the butter, I have been able to figure out some good substitutes for other items from America that I miss. It's actually been rather fun, having to cook everything from scratch. Of course, I don't always have time to do this kind of cooking... But it's been a learning experience!

I recently made sausage, and several friends have been asking how I did it. Being a bit of a food geek, I read a lot about making sausage online, and combined several different recipes to come up with a pretty good blend! Of course, you can adjust the spices for what you have in your kitchen, but this is what I use.

2 lbs of ground pork (you want to find pretty fatty pork, so the cheaper the better! For readers in Korea - you can get a really good ground pork for this at Costco)
2 tsp dried sage (I use ground, not rubbed, but it probably doesn't matter)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano (if you like a milder, sweeter sausage, try marjoram instead)
2 tsp sugar (if you like a maple flavor, substitute 1 tbsp brown sugar)
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (this does give it a bit of a kick, so adjust accordingly!)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp salt (I use kosher salt, so if you're using ordinary table salt, reduce to 1 1/2 tsp)

That's basically it! Just mix everything together. It takes awhile to mix, because you want to get the herbs and spices mixed really evenly. I usually use my hands to mix this up. You can let it sit and cure in the fridge for a day or two if you want, but this isn't necessary.

From here, it just depends on what I'm making my sausage for. You can roll out the meat to cut it into patties and freeze them for breakfast sausage. You can cook it loose for gravy, lasagna, soups, etc. You can freeze it in rolls to decide what to do with it later. I usually try to let it sit in the freezer at least a week before I use it, but that's not always the case.

The sausage I made today will be used for biscuits and gravy tomorrow, so it's still ok if you just want to make it fresh.

That's it! Sausage isn't so very mysterious. If you get meat that doesn't have enough fat in it, you can get pork fat from a butcher. This is important to help it taste more like sausage. I've never seen ground pork in Korea that didn't have a good meat to fat ratio. If you look at the package of meat, and you can see the fat mixed in the meat, you're probably ok.

The beautiful thing about sausage is that it is very forgiving. You can add all sorts of different spices and in different amounts. But I really love this sausage recipe. It's definitely better than the store bought sausages in America!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Baking in Korea

When I first came to Korea, I was a little bit scared that I'd never really be able to bake. In the beginning, I went to rather desperate lengths to assuage that fear. Then my new arrival came, and I thought that I'd be in baking heaven from there on out. There was just one small problem. Ingredients.

I thought surely I could find the basics like flour, brown sugar, and salt with no problem at all. And I can. It just takes a lot of hunting. There are a wide variety of flours here, none of which seem to really be the same as "all purpose flour". You can get light and dark brown sugar, but they are much more extreme than brown sugar in America. I often end up mixing the two together to get something that has the right flavor and texture. Salt comes in a wide variety of colors, flavors and textures. It is conveniently located next to the packages of MSG. However, it has been difficult to find normal table salt.

At this point in my stay in Korea, I've managed to figure out how to work around almost all of these sorts of things. There is just one thing that continues to plague me -- butter. Butter can be quite expensive here. About $8 per pound. And it isn't even true butter. It's a strange mix of butter and margarine. Margarine only comes in tiny tubs of 200 grams, which isn't really any sort of convenient measurement. I was looking at the rather pitiful examples of butter for sale in my local grocery store when I noticed that there was a new contender to be considered. It was margarine, and it came in a 1 pound block, and it was only $1. I was a little leery because of the price, but I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a try.

It looks perfectly normal, right? This was a relief. Sometimes when I buy what I think is butter, and what is labeled as butter, is really some sort of semi-translucent shortening thing. It's pretty nasty. 


The package says "pound margarine" which seems fairly innocuous. I was making banana bread, so I decided to soften the butter a bit to help with the mixing. That was when I knew I had problems. 


This is what the softened margarine looked like. It doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary. Except this is after being in the microwave for over three minutes. When I took it out, the solid part was still the exact same texture it was when I put it in the microwave. It also had a distinctly plastic smell. Oh, the horror! 

Needless to say, the $1 "pound margarine" was a decided fail. Oh, well. I went and bought some actual butter, and my banana bread turned out quite well!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Apartment Hunting Begins and Ends

I wrote last week about getting ready to start apartment hunting. Based on stories I'd heard from other people who had gone apartment hunting, I was expecting quite the ordeal. There were several factors that gave rise to this expectation.

Most schools that hire native English teachers in Korea provide housing for their teachers. If they don't provide housing, they provide a housing subsidy for you to go find your own apartment. With this in mind, I'd been scoping out apartments in a certain price range. I started to get more details of the new contract, and I realized that this particular school doesn't provide any housing assistance. It's still a phenomenal job, there's just no housing.

The apartment I live in now is nice enough. It's safe, relatively quiet (most of the time...), modern enough, there are no mold or cockroach problems, etc. It's just really, really tiny and really, really far away from everything. I was really looking forward to moving closer to my friends and finding an apartment that was big enough to do some entertaining.

In fact, I had a whole wish list of things that would be amazing to find in an apartment. In no particular order, I wanted to have a separate bedroom and living room area, a kitchen that was big enough to actually cook in, a quiet neighborhood, a safe neighborhood, something that was accessible to public transportation, a balcony and/or rooftop access, something that came with the major appliances (not always the case in Korea...) and something that came with a bed, since my current school owns the bed I sleep in now. That was quite the list. I knew my chances of finding all of that together were pretty much zilch, but that was the wish list.

Then I found out about the lack of housing assistance, and my priority list quickly shifted to this. 1) be in a safe neighborhood and 2) be in my price range. Most of the realtors I'd been talking to were still telling me that I was starting to look too early (about 15 days before I wanted to move) so I'd started looking on the local Craigslist website. I found one apartment and it was in my price range, so I went to look at it. It was pretty terrible. I'd found another apartment that seemed a little bit nicer, but I was having a really hard time reaching the guy who had listed the place.

Finally, after four days he called me back and one of my friends and I went to see the place. I was blown away by it. Not only was it affordable and in a safe neighborhood, it had literally every single item on my first list. Two bedrooms, a huge kitchen with a pantry, a living room area that comes with some furniture that matches my decorating scheme... There's even a bed.

My friend and I went to lunch after we'd looked at the place, and on principle, I decided to wait and think for a few hours before I decided to take it. Neither of us saw anything to be really concerned about, so later that afternoon, I officially said I'd take it! I'll start moving my stuff over before I come back to America, so I can come back to the new apartment and not have to worry about moving when I get back.

So, that's how apartment hunting turned out in Korea. It was actually easier than when I've gone apartment hunting in America. I'm really thankful to have it all taken care of, and I'm especially thankful that God provided such an amazing apartment for me to move into!! I'll definitely post pictures once I get them, but it will probably be early September by the time I get back from America and get settled into it enough to make everything presentable. So stay tuned!

Friday, July 8, 2011

Food in Korea

I sometimes get asked what I eat for lunch. My students are very interested in my eating habits, since I'm a foreigner. My friends in America seem just as interested because I'm in a foreign country. I eat a mix of Korean and Western food. I usually avoid anything that has tentacles in it. I really love to cook, so I usually cook at home for dinner. I can cook a few types of Korean food, but usually when I cook, it is either Western food or Chinese food. Eating at a Korean restaurant is so cheap, it just doesn't make sense for me to cook.

I've been taking pictures of what I eat for lunch for the past few months. I kept forgetting to take out my camera at the beginning of the meal, so there aren't as many pictures as I'd intended, but here is a pretty good snapshot of what I eat for lunch.


I usually try to avoid this stuff. It is pickled yellow radish. But when it's in the bowl, it looks a great deal like pineapple slices. The very first meal I at in Korea, I was served this radish. Only I really did think it was pineapple. It might have had something to do with the really long flight and wanting to see something familiar on the table, but I definitely bit into it expecting to taste pineapple. It was a most unpleasant surprise. 



This is translated into English as "Pork Cutlet", and it's kinda like a fried tenderloin. You can get these all over the place with lots of different things inside of them. The strangest one I've ever seen was a pork cutlet stuffed with sweet potato paste. This particular one has mozzarella cheese inside of it. It is also served with some sort of sauce on top. Sometimes the sauce is sweet, sometimes it's spicy. This is always served with rice, cold corn, and shredded cabbage. Sometimes the cabbage has mayo on top of it. This day it was some sort of ketchup based sauce. 


Every once in awhile, there are days where I just don't have time to go get a proper lunch. That's when I dash over to the little snack store on campus and try to find something to eat. For about $0.60, I got two Peanutcream Sand. These sound really strange, and they kinda are, but they're pretty good. It's basically just white bread with some sort of peanut butter something inside. 


This is my other favorite thing from the snack room. Apple Lychee juice. Yum!


Sometimes I go out with my friend Renae. We often go out for Chinese food. Only it's Koreanized Chinese food, and isn't anything like real Chinese food or American Chinese food. This is fried pork with a sweet sauce on it, and it's one of my favorite Korean Chinese dishes. 


This isn't really lunch food, but it's great fun so I thought I'd share. It is called Pat Bingsu, and I'm not sure what the translation is. Basically, it's shaved ice with sweetened red beans, ice cream and some sort of fruit preserves or syrup. This particular one is strawberry flavored. You mix it all together, and it's really delicious!


This is a very foreign food called "Rich Cheese Pasta" that can be found at the local Pizza Hut. 


This is one of my favorite Korean foods. It's called Bibimbap, which means Mixed Rice. There's also some sort of strange soup. Every time I eat in the cafeteria, they serve me some sort of strange soup. I always taste it, but I never like it. Today was no exception.


This is what the Bibimbap looks like when it is all mixed up. It has rice, tuna, spicy red pepper sauce, lettuce and a fried egg. You should make it at home sometime!


Today was seaweed soup and fried rice with pork neck. It was pretty good, actually!


There are some days when my lunch looks more like this. Rice and some overly salty bean sprouts that I didn't really eat. 


Here's the reason I only ate rice for lunch. The other options were seaweed soup, seasoned grass stalks, and some sort of very spicy, very tentacle filled main dish. These are always sad days in the cafeteria. 


Sometimes I'll even go out with a whole group of people. We had some coupons for free pizzas, so we ordered a wide variety of delicious pizza to split amongst ourselves. 

There's not anything too weird here. I'll try to do better about taking pictures of the more adventurous stuff I eat!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The Secret Phase of Culture Shock

Normal life has been moving along here in Seoul. I finished teaching my normal semester classes, I turned all of my grades in, I planned all of my summer English camps. These are all normal things that normal teachers do all over the world. I've been doing my normal church activities, shopping at my normal grocery stores and going to normal restaurants and coffee shops with friends. Life is full, but relatively boring at the moment. I consider this to be quite an accomplishment.

Most places seem to agree that there are four stages of culture shock when you move to a new country. There is the honeymoon phase where everything seems wonderful and amazing. This can last anywhere between 2 weeks and 3-4 months.

One day, reality intrudes on the honeymoon phase, and you realize that you're living in a place where everything is different, and you don't really understand it. This is called the negotiation phase. It is often characterized by feelings of anxiety, frustration and sometimes anger. It can start anywhere between 3-6 months into your stay. This is usually the point where people get bitter and turn into haters. Unfortunately, some people never leave this stage. 

After the negotiation phase comes the adjustment phase. This is where you become more comfortable with life, and things start to seem more normal. Most people have figured out enough of the culture to know how to navigate basic situations and they start to rebuild some confidence and lose the anxiety and frustration. You don't go back to the honeymoon phase, but life becomes much easier to deal with. 

The last stage is for long-term expats, and it is the mastery phase. This is when you learn the host culture language and culture well enough to fully participate in it. You don't lose the aspects of your home culture, but you reach a stage where you are fully fluent in both cultures. 

My experience with culture shock wasn't exactly textbook. My honeymoon stage lasted about two hours. I kept switching back and forth between negotiation and adjustment for a really long time. I've been in Korea for a little over 10 months now. I'm doing a lot of things that are pretty normal. There are still plenty of things about Korea that I don't understand, and my Korean is still pretty terrible, but for now, this country is home. This giant, massive, sprawling metropolis has somehow turned into my city. 

However, there is one phase of this whole living abroad thing that wasn't covered by the traditional definitions of culture shock. That would be the phase where you are suddenly going out on your own to rent property in your own name and fill it with your own furniture without anyone from a school or employer looking over your  shoulder or providing basic things. Even though I've lived here for almost a year and navigated through a lot of culture shock, this still kinda freaks me out for some reason. It feels so much more permanent than moving into a school provided apartment furnished with school provided stuff.

This is when it hits me-- I really do have a life in a foreign country, and it really is a real, functioning, adult life. This isn't some extended vacation. It isn't a dream. This isn't even strange anymore. But at some level, it still feels like I'm on the outside looking in. 

It's also a bit crazy trying to navigate through the Korean rental system. I'm hoping to move sometime between July 25th and August 1st. That's 19 days away from today. I've been looking around online and talking with some realtors, and they are all telling me that it's simply too early to start looking for an apartment. I keep asking when it would be a good time to start looking, and they keep telling me that I should start looking maybe two weeks before I want to move. I think that finding an apartment and moving will be a grand adventure. Stay tuned for more updates on all of that!

In the meantime, life is kinda boring. It's kinda normal. Shortly after I move I'll be back in America for a few weeks to visit, then it's back to Seoul to start a new adventure at a new apartment and a new school - both as a professor and a student. Hopefully that doesn't mean I have to start the cultural transitions all over again ;)

Monday, July 4, 2011

Tea, Tea and More Tea!

On the third and final day of our trip, we spent the night at a traditional folk village, then went and did some cool stuff with green tea.

This is a shot of the folk village we stayed in. It was definitely an experience! Each of those little grass huts is owned by an older Korean woman, and she rents out rooms to people who want to stay in the folk village. It was traditional style bedding again, so there were four women piled into a relatively small room with a pile of blankets to sleep on.

Near the entrance to the folk village was this giant, massive tree. It's definitely the biggest tree I've seen in Korea. 

There were random bits and pieces of machinery sitting around. It made me feel right at home!

There were these poles with faces carved into them sitting in various places. They were working on carving these guys. The poles stand about 12 feet tall, and I think they are to represent the spirits of the ancestors as they watch over the village. 

There were two parts to the village. One was the poor part and one was the rich part. The poor part had thatched roofs on the huts. The rich part had private gardens with walls and tiled roofs. It was so beautiful!


There were a couple of stores where you could buy various spoons and things. They are all hand carved. 

The folk village was basically a walled city. There was a wall that you could walk around and there were North, South, East and West gates. This is the North gate. 

After the folk village, we went to the green tea hills. I've seen some other green tea fields in Korea, but these were pretty awesome! The hills were massively huge. Unfortunately, this wasn't a great year for green tea in Korea. It got too cold this winter, so there were sections of tea bushes that just lost their leaves. I'm told they'll grow back, but it definitely hindered some of the photography opportunities. 


After we toured the tea hills, we went to another small tea plantation. This other place is quite famous for pioneering a new method of tea preparation. They get gold nanoparticles and mix them in with the water they use to water the tea plants, so the gold gets absorbed into the leaves. It's supposed to have phenomenal health benefits. It also sells for about $1200 per box. It's pretty crazy stuff. The woman and her husband own the plantation, and it's been in their family for 300 years. The guy in the red shirt was our fearless leader and organizer for the trip. 

Stacks of gift boxes of $1200 tea. 


We got the chance to pick and roast our own tea leaves! It was seriously awesome!! This is the giant cooking device for roasting the tea leaves. We all had to wear special aprons, double layer gloves and arm protectors because we used our hands to roast the leaves. It was definitely hot work! We were too busy trying to keep our leaves (and our hands) from burning to take pictures, so you'll just have to imagine. 

After we roasted the leaves, we each took a giant straw mat and placed a white sheet on it. Then we cooled the leaves by tossing them up in the air and started to shape them by rolling them in a clockwise motion. The roasting and cooling process happens 10-12 times and the rolling process happens 6-8 times. It was a lot of work to make tea!

We were divided into teams, so here you can see the fruits of our labors after the first roasting/cooling/rolling round. 

I was part of team 2. Isn't it lovely? ;)


We also had a tea ceremony at the plantation. These are green tea flavored rice cakes. I don't normally like rice cakes. I try to avoid them in Seoul. But these were really delicious! And they were pretty too. 

We were served two kinds of tea. The darker tea on the left is a fermented green tea and the lighter tea on the right is normal green tea. 

We found out part way through the tea ceremony that they were actually giving us the gold infused tea. Each cup costs about $30. They just kept refilling our pots, so we kept drinking. I think I drank 9-10 cups of tea. The whole tour/tea making/tea ceremony only cost $15, so they must be getting a subsidy from the government for promoting tourism or something. The tea was good, but I didn't feel compelled to pay $1200 to bring a box of it home with me. 

After all of the tea excitement, we piled back into the bus and headed back to Seoul. It was definitely a fantastic trip! I was completely exhausted by the time we got back, but it was a lovely time with some great people!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Rocks and Flowers

When we arrived on Geomundo island, we took a boat tour of the Baekdo Islands. They aren't really islands, persay. They are these giant rock formations. Baek means 100, and people used to think that there were 100 of these rock formations. There aren't really 100, but they all have stories and myths behind them. Unfortunately, the tour was entirely in Korean, and my Korean is nowhere near good enough to interpret myths ;)

It was still pretty misty, but there were some lovely views. 


This one reminded me of Lord of the Rings. Doesn't that ring of stones on the top remind you of Weathervane?







After the rocks, we went to Suncheon Bay to check out their gardens and eco park. This cool building was an observatory/gift shop/restaurant. 

I got irrationally excited when I spotted these flowers. They aren't really flowers. They are some type of weed, but they grow in Indiana too. I used to pick them and press them in the set of encyclopedias we had so I could make paper and bookmarks out of them. Seeing as I was a foreigner in a national park, I refrained from picking any flowers to attempt to regain my lost childhood pastime. Also, I don't have any encyclopedias in my apartment. I doubt the flowers would be too impressed if I tried to press them with Wikipedia ;)

These are the reeds that were EVERYWHERE in the park. They were really beautiful. 

There were also lots of lovely flowers. 




Apparently this park was also home to a specific type of mud crab, although I didn't really see many of them. These boats are used for going out in the reeds to do things with the mud crabs. Again, the whole language barrier thing kept me from figuring out the intricacies of the mud crab boats. 

There were lots and lots of people around. It's hard to tell in the small version of the picture, but if you click on it, that line of people pretty much extends as far as the eye can see. 


There was a craft station set up where the kids could make their own wind socks. These two were quite pleased with their work! I absolutely love their faces!






Some of the rocks were really beautiful, but overall I was less impressed with our activities this day than I was the other days of the trip. We spent a really long time on boats and it was really windy ;)

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