Busan and Making Plans

A few weekends ago, I visited Busan.  I wanted to get out of Jeonju for a weekend, but it was still cold weather and I didn't want a repeat of Seoul, so I went south!  Unfortunately while the KTX serves Jeonju now, there is no easy way on the train to get to Busan, so that meant an express bus.  "Express" is a relative term, as it takes 3 and a half hours to Busan, plus another hour on Busan's subway to get from the bus terminal to downtown.  By the time I checked into my hostel, it was 2:00 p.m.  Since I only had about a day and a half in Busan,I wanted to do two major things:  visit Yonggungsa temple and go to Spa Land.

 

First, though, the view from my hostel was amazing!

Anyway. Yonggungsa Temple from my hostel was about a 40 minute bus ride away.  So again, by the time I actually got to do anything in Busan, it was already 3:00!  This is a reconstructed (as with almost all things in Korea) Buddhist temple.  I'm not very interested in "temple hopping" in Korea, but this is a unique temple in the fact that it's on the coast, and not secluded in the mountains. The view was beautiful.

To view the entire album, Click Here.

Some of the highlights are below!
 

 

After the temple, the next item on my list was Spa Land.  Spa Land is a massive jjimjilbang (Korean sauna) attached to the World's Largest Department Store, Centum City's Shinsegae.  It takes up three floors and is fed by natural hot springs.  It was the most relaxing thing I've done in Korea!  I went early enough in the day that I got a discount and also enjoyed less people at the facilities, it was starting to get busy by the time I left.  After that, I headed back to Jeonju with one of the craziest bus drivers I have ever ridden with in Korea (and that's saying something).

The weeks since have been mostly uneventful.  I have told my school this, so now I can comfortably say it in a public forum, but I am not renewing for another year.  My last day is July 27th, which means almost less than four months! I still have a few places to go before I leave. 

My mom is coming at the end of July, and we have a big trip planned!  We are going to visit Korea, Japan, (hopefully) take the trans Siberian railroad across Russia, and then spend some time in Moscow and St. Petersburg before visiting parts of Eastern Europe.  I also hope to meet up with my German host sister.  I stayed with her family in 2005 when I visited there with my high school German class.  Considering all of this, I will probably be back in the United States around mid-September.  I will be around the Midwest for a little while, before hopefully moving out to Washington, D.C. and searching for a job there.  I think what hindered my job search the most after college was the fact I was applying for entry level jobs from half a continent away.  I think if I try again with a DC address and be available for interviewing the next day, I will have more luck. That's my hope at least.

For now I hope to enjoy my last months in Korea, visiting a few more sites, and then enjoying my trip with my mom before coming home to all the faces (and wet noses) I have missed!

Until then,
Karin

Update

Hello, everyone.  While my attempts at blogging about my experience has been pretty lackluster, but I'm doing much better than I usually do.  So it's time for another longer update!

I've been here seven months this coming week.  It's a huge accomplishment, but then again I tell myself that at the end of every month.  It's the simple things in life you treasure. 

The last few months have been a very stressful time at the school and in life.  We changed classes in January and also changed our scheduled teaching hours.  I moved apartments in January along with three other foreign teachers.  I said goodbye to a friend whose time in Korea was all too short.  With the beginning of March also brings a new school year in Korea, so each afternoon we have wide-eyed kindergarten and first grade students dropped off at our door.  Most days this has been an exercise in futility, but eventually I'm sure they'll get into the swing of things (probably in time for me to leave. Har har.)

Travel wise, I rang the new year in not in Jeonju but in Nagoya, Japan with my former roommate from U of M.  It was a short but nice break from Korea and school.  I am eagerly awaiting going back to Japan and touring more of the country!  Most of the pictures didn't turn out super well (owing to the fact that it was freezing and we were all bundled up, most attractions were closed, and my batteries died after half a day because I didn't have the right adapter), but I am thankful just for the break the trip gave me!  I also learned the important lesson that you must reserve the bus going to the airport, even if you are leaving at 2 in the morning, because everyone else in Jeonju has the same idea!

We spent New Year's Eve at a theme park just outside of Nagoya.  The lines were short at the beginning of the evening but after midnight we waited 2 hours to go on a roller coaster.  But it was an exciting one!  We also had a great time right as the clock struck midnight.  We screamed the English numbers in a sea of Japanese as loud as we could. We may not have been this obnoxious if they had waited to sing Auld Lang Syne until after midnight, and not before.  Nah, who am I kidding, we probably would have yelled just the same.

Crepes are delicious!  Even when it takes forever for the employee to make them when they're not doing anything else.

 

Like a boss!  Yes, that is Tommy Lee Jones.

I found out on my trip I am allergic to rabbits. But he was so cute and fluffy. Once the allergy medication kicked in I just couldn't resist!

Not long after I returned from Japan, we moved into our new apartment.  The owner of the school built a building out on the edge of Jeonju (seriously, there's a mountain in our backyard and after that it's just fields).  There is a cafe on the first floor, then we're on the second and third floors, and he built a penthouse on the top. I am much further away from school now.  It's a 15 minute walk as opposed to about 5.  I am no stranger to walking to work, I walked to my call center job in college for about 3 years, rain, shine, or -40 windchill!  But I still miss the convenience of being close by.  The apartment itself is a tradeoff between being all new furnishings and appliances, but being immensely smaller than even what I had in the old apartment.  However I am thankful for a roof over my head.

After the debacle of moving (it was January and we had no heat for a few days because of a wiring mixup), it was time for the Lunar New Year. As you may recall it is the year of the Dragon.  Being born in 1988, and turning 24 this year, I am a dragon as well.  It's our year, Dragons!  Anyway, we had a Monday and Tuesday off, so I went to Seoul.

Bad choice.

It was the coldest week in Korea during the winter by far.  Official temperatures ranged from about 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit.  With the wind (which comes from Siberia...) it felt below 0.  Needless to say, after the first day and a half, I spent much of my time in Seoul partaking in indoor activities!  I am anxious though to return when the weather warms up and stays warm consistently, which hopefully should be by the end of March.

A common sight in Korea: modernity and history together.


What sucks about traveling alone is not having anyone trustworthy to take your picture for you! This is Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul.


Still at Gyeongbokgung. This artificial island was man made around the 1800s, which is still impressive. Even though it was January, fall leaves still clung in defiance. This must be beautiful in the spring and summer. I hope to return then and go to other palaces when the scenery is greener.

On the grounds of Gyeongbokgung is the National Folk Museum and National Palace Museum. This was the Folk museum, and on display was a cute little design for stairs (I don't think you can go up the stairs even when the banner/mosaic thing isn't there, anyway).

The next day I went to the Namsangol Hanok Village.  'Hanok' just refers to a traditional Korean style of house building.  It was completely underwhelming mostly because I feel Jeonju's Hanok Village is more extensive, beautiful, and interesting.  Perhaps in the spring I will give it another chance.  This was also one of the coldest days!  And trying to walk around and enjoy the scenery while a 25 mph wind is blowing in from Siberia is difficult, I learned.

The one interesting thing near Namsangol is the time capsule.  You have to know what you're looking for, but it was buried in 1994 for Seoul's 500th anniversary, and it will be opened in 2394 for it's millennial anniversary (assuming anyone is alive on this planet anymore). 

Maybe in 500 years when it is opened, and the internet is a medium that historians use as our own version of a near-infinite time capsule, a descendant looking for information about his/her ancestors will find reference to me somewhere.  Therefore, dear descendant, I present to you:  A PICTURE OF ME AND MY JEONJU-FAMOUS FRMUPY HAT in front of a time capsule.  And dear future reader, I really do have hair, and no I know that I am not pulling of this hat at all, but it was the cheapest thing I could find at Home Plus.  Sometimes we must make sacrifices.

The time capsule is that cement thing, with Seoul Tower in the background.

That was the last outdoor thing I did that weekend.  I spent the rest of the weekend in museums (the National Museum of Korea is a must if you ever find yourself in Seoul!) and shopping malls to keep warm.  Unfortunately the rest of Korea also had the same idea!

February as I said was a busy month at work.  We also held a contest at the school which required a little extra effort as far as planning and helping students went.  Now that the first week of the new term is over, I am heading to Busan on Saturday where it will be at least a little warmer than Jeonju for a nice relaxing weekend with a lengthy spa visit and going to a temple by the ocean!  It will hopefully be a 'zen' weekend, as one of my coworkers is fond of saying.

Until then, I hope everyone is having a fantastic beginning (almost?) of spring. 
Karin

Merry Christmas from Jeonju!

Merry Christmas dear readers! I hope you had a fantastic holiday filled lutefisk, lefse, and meatballs! (Can you tell I'm missing Christmas food?) The weather is turning colder here. It's nowhere near as bad as the Midwestern winters I'm used to, but it has snowed twice in December, and most of it has stuck this time around!



This was from the first snow on December 10th. It was super fluffy but it melted right away.



The weekend after it snowed, one of the Korean coteachers, David, was interested in going to Jirisan mountain. The original plan was we would drive to the national park, drive up to the parking lot, and hike ten minutes to a viewing area. However since it's one of the higher peaks in Korea, the weather had been bad the few days before and they closed the road due to snow and ice. So we went to another peak in the park and hiked up two hours (well, Michael and Rob only took about an hour and a half) and one hour down. It was worth the pain, though!







To see the full Jirisan hiking album, click here.

Christmas itself has been uneventful. It actually hasn't felt like Christmas at all, which is helpful though because besides missing the Christmas feast with my grandma's lefse, I haven't really been too homesick! It's been just another week, although it's hard to believe December and 2011 are already almost gone! I have been here four months, and with the beginning of January almost upon us, almost five. I am excited for the adventures I will have in Korea in 2012, but also looking forward to returning home and starting another new chapter in my life.

In the short term however, I am visiting Japan December 29th through January 1st to visit my college roommate. She lives in Nagoya, and our plans so far involve Cirque de Soleil which is in town while I am, and a New Year's festival at an amusement park type place which is staying open late for the occasion. It will be nice to be out of Korea for our small Christmas/New Year's break! I wish I could see more of Japan, but due to the small time window I have, and the fact that Japan closes down during the days I am there due to the holiday, we will be staying close to Nagoya. But I plan to gather intelligence for when my mother comes to join me on vacation sometime in the near future!

When I come back in January, we are all going to be moving into our new apartment building the owner of the school is building. It will be exciting to be in a completely new apartment that's never been lived in before! The building we're in now is slowly falling apart, not to mention my bug problems, so it will be a welcome change.

Also changing in the new year is the makeup of our classes. I don't know how much mine are changing at the moment, but even the smallest change will be a relief. Although their behavior and performance have improved in the four/five months I have been teaching them, the memories of how they acted are still very fresh in my mind and it is some days very hard to remember that they have gotten better than what they were! So I think the move will be good for all involved.

Well, that's all for now! I will make another post after I come back from Japan and we move apartments. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Karin

Long time!

Hello again!  It's been a while since I've posted.  Unfortunately I haven't done anything very exciting the last month and a half.  My weekends have either been spent recovering from the plague and/or being allergic to Korea, and others have been filled with social events for work:  welcoming new teachers, saying goodbye to others, etc.  This weekend however, was Amy's wedding.  Amy was a Korean teacher at the school, whose last day was a few weeks ago to prepare for her wedding.  She invited everyone at the school, and it certainly was an interesting experience.  They style it as a "Western" wedding but as you may imagine by my use of quotation marks, it's pretty far from a western wedding.

These weddings are held in large buildings, with many floors and up to six or seven weddings going on at one time (depending I suppose on the size). The bride sits in a room attached to the wedding hall, which is basically a photo studio with good lighting, and people come in and take pictures with her and then go out into the lobby to wait.  The hall itself wasn't enough to  hold all the guests, only those who got their first actually got to sit at the tables.  The father and mother of the bride and groom sit in four regal-looking chairs on either side of the catwalk, facing the bride and groom.



The whole wedding is very theatrical.  On the right you can see the champaign fountain, and the left is a cake display which had candles all around it that lit up and dry ice which added some steam.  There was also a part where three of the grooms friends sang karaoke like the wedding hall was a norebang, and after that the groom sang a song to the bride.  What happened in the actual ceremony I am at a loss to tell you, as I don't speak a word of Korean.  What I can gather though, was that there was not a lot of a traditional Korean wedding going on, save for the end when the groom gave his bride, her mother, and also his mothet piggy back rides, which symbolizes accepting obligations to both his mother and new wife.

After the ceremony, we went to another level and handed in our buffet ticket.  It put any large scale buffet I've ever seen in America to shame.  This isn't all for just Amy's wedding, these were people for all the weddings that were happening at the wedding hall.



It goes on and on past this photograph.

We joined the owner of the school for lunch, where we at least got a better understanding of what we had just witnessed!  He said it was definitely different than when he got married, which had been more of the traditional Korean wedding, but younger people are moving more toward this ceremony.  From the way he was talking, this ceremony doesn't make the marriage official, but it's rather a celebration of what's to come.  After the honeymoon, the bride and groom return to Korea and go to an office to register the marriage.  The person who was standing in front of the bride and groom was a former professor of the groom, and the one on the microphone leading everyone and being what sounded like a happy fellow was a friend.

The timeline for a wedding here is also very different.  We were invited about three weeks ago, and I couldn't believe how soon it was!  But whereas back home you have to make a hundred phone calls to arrange a hundred different things, here you just find a wedding hall with an open time slot and they take care of everything:  hair, dresses, bridesmaids (seriously), photographer, flowers, everything.  I suppose it's still a very stressful time in Korea, but at least the pain is over a short period of time and not a year or more!

Amy and the groom stopped up at the buffet floor to say hello to a few people and I managed to grab a picture with them in their hanbok.  They do the main ceremony in Western clothes (tux and a white dress) then afterwords change into the traditional clothes and take pictures, and I think also have a smaller and private ceremony with the family.

All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday and I'm glad I was invited along!

To see the rest of the album, you can visit it by clicking here

, or you can visit Facebook.

Karin or "Carrot Teacher," as my babies garbled my name most recently.

Two Months

Hello again everyone! I have recently celebrated my two month mark of living in Korea. Even though it's only two months, things have become "normal" pretty quickly, all things considered. Some days my puppy and my family seem like a lifetime ago!

But it's hard not to miss a face like that!



Okay, okay...maybe it's a face only a mother can love!

The kids are still the same at my job, my morning classes make me want to bash my head against the wall, while the evening classes with the older kids make me slightly less suicidal. I can do the paperwork more quickly now so it's much easier to just leave work at the door and come home and relax.

As I may have mentioned before, Korea opens late and closes early, so there isn't much you can do around town at 8:30 at night, so I usually just come home and ruin the lives of my Sims or watch movies and TV. Which means by the weekend I'm pretty anxious to do something, but I have yet to go somewhere since Jinju!

The weekend after Jinju I just wasn't in the mood to travel. The next weekend it rained. This past weekend I got slapped with my second sinus infection in as many months and it rained! And this coming weekend is forecasting rain again! Of course there's nothing that outright prohibits travel during rain but it's certainly not as fun to be carrying around an umbrella all day and trying to take pictures, and even then your pictures don't come out well anyway.

We'll just have to see where the weekend takes me!

Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival

Hello again!

This weekend was our last vacation day before the Lunar New Year, and so for my first solo trip in Korea I decided to go someplace a little further away.  I decided on Jinju, which is in South Gyeongsang province.  My goal before I leave is to visit a city in every province in Korea!  


Jinju's location in Korea:
View Larger Map

As you can tell from the map, there's very little in between Jeonju and Jinju.  It was a three and a half hour bus ride, and while the scenery was beautiful (mountains! everywhere!), the places we stopped were old towns where the "terminal" was little more than a stop at a gas station or even the side of the road.  It reminded me of Jefferson Lines back home that way.

Anyway, I arrived in Jinju on Saturday for the first day of the festival.  I was very hungry at this point so the first order of business was to eat food!  The festival was just setting up as far as food goes, but it wasn't too long before I found someone was open.  I have absolutely no idea what this is, but it was delicious!

I continued a lazy journey along the Nam River, where the lanterns were already set up and came to the Jinju Fortress.  Admission was free because of the festival.  I walked along the whole thing, and it was massive!  I didn't expect it to be that big but I spent a good four hours just walking around and exploring the lanterns and the beautiful park inside.  The weather was gorgeous.  It started out as a cloudy day but the sun came out and it was about 65 degrees!


Oops, looks like I cut off part of the main entrance.

Defenders of Jinju!

The pavilion inside the fortress.

A view of the city.


The west entrance to the fortress.

The festival commemorates a siege of Jinju in 1592/93.  It honors the 70,000 who died in the siege.  And, of course, the lanterns are beautiful especially at night on the river.  A camera just doesn't quite capture it!

After wandering the fortress for most of the afternoon, I decided to find a place to stay the night before the evening festivities began.  As I feared most of the places were sold out.  I ended up finding a love motel--and yes it's exactly what you think it is--that was way overpriced.  It was probably because the owner knew she was one of the last people with rooms and hey, I was white so I can afford the extra 15,000 won (/rant). But her business strategy was sound, because I was desperate after going to five or six places already.  Room key in hand, I went out again for the evening ceremony.

Everything looked amazing lit up at night!  This was my first time taking pictures at night with my new camera, and I still have to play around with the settings, but they turned out fairly well.
Here are some of my favorite lanterns, during the day and night.


A nice shot of the river.

He's such a cute....whatever he is.

A replica of the Jinju Fortress

That pretty much sums up my past weekend! For the full album of 211 pictures, click here!

Until next time!

One Month!

I feel really ashamed that this blog has just turned into a running tally of how long I've been here. It's supposed to actually be chronicling my story. Oh well, guess I'll have to do better at that.

Anyway, Descriptive Blog Title is Descriptive! It's been almost one month since I have been in Korea, and I'm still alive! Unfortunately, the last two weeks have been a little on the stressful side. After the last blog post, three of us got sick. The boys had some kind of virus/bacteria, but I think mine was just a combination of allergies and not being used to talking for 8 hours a day. I had a really bad sore throat for about 3-4 days (it wasn't strep though). The week after this was the "end of term."

Every two months, you collect the materials you have graded for the students and put it into one big file and grade them on reading, speaking, writing, behavior, etc. It doesn't sound so bad...until you realize I'd only been teaching solo for about two weeks! On top of that, the class has been in flux for the past few months due to teachers leaving/getting fired, Korean teachers taking the class, other teachers taking over, etc., so the files weren't exactly well organized. Needless to say, they got done within a few days, and now I just have to catch up on the grading I missed out on while I was filling out 70 evaluations and I'm all set until the end of October!

I finished the progress reports on Friday. Two weeks ago the new teachers were sick, this last week it was the other teachers who got sick. Add to that the joys of having the blue sheets and a new term starting, and you can believe that we were all ready for Chuseok! Chuseok is basically Korean Thanksgiving, it is a tradition from when Korea was agricultural based. Basically everyone goes back to where their family is from and makes a lot of food. Traveling in Korea during this time is basically suicide, and most of the foreign teachers stayed around Jeonju.

The Thursday before school let out, we went out for my first taste of duck!

It was a little bland, but once you dipped it in the sesame oil and put garlic and onions and some fruit on it it tasted delicious! 

After this, we ended hitting up a coffee shop which had the best white mocha I have ever tasted in my life, and by the way everyone else was drinking their drinks of choice I think the feeling was shared by the group!  Also, this was the night that I learned there is ACTUAL SHEESHA in Jeonju.  Michael was excited when we started talking about it, apparently he hasn't found anyone who has wanted to go with him before, so we're planning on stopping by after the next makgeolli tour. I will probably be horribly disappointed, but hey.

Friday, we were all exhausted (the Korean children were beyond unruly on Friday!), but felt that we somehow needed to celebrate the holiday.  We headed to a bar about a 15-20 minute walk from our apartment.  It had cool decor.  The place was massive, two levels and full colorful bottles wrapped all the way across the building.

My culinary luck continued on Friday, as I also had the most delicious Kahlua and Bailey's here.

This is a picture of my Korean co-teacher Jessie! Please note that she started the random peace sign, not I.



This night was pretty laid back as far as Korea is concerned...we were all exhausted and we were all home and in bed by 1 a.m.!  It was a good thing though because about 10 minutes after I got inside the floodgates opened.  It has been raining since Thursday and it is suppose to rain through all of Chuseok!  So today I didn't do much except go over to Jessie's grandmother's apartment and watch/help them cook Chuseok food!  Normally they do not eat it today, but her grandma was amused by Michael and I and so we got to nibble.  It was delicious!



I am hoping it doesn't rain too much tomorrow.  Michael is an avid hiker around Korea, and he is willing to take Rob and I around and show us the good spots!  Otherwise, the rest of the vacation is a lot of relaxing and getting mentally prepared for the next two months!  Until then,

Karin