Jeju Island

At the end of July, I had three days off from school for summer vacation. Fortunately, those days were a Friday, a Monday, and a Tuesday, so I was able to do some traveling. Dan and I decided to make a trip to Jeju Island, off the southern coast of South Korea, since it was close, inexpensive, and because it's still within Korea, no new visas were required. We left late Friday morning to fly down to Jeju. The flight was only about 45 minutes, which was another plus. When we arrived in Jeju, our first order of business was to get some food and decide where to sleep that night, since my contribution to planning for this trip was to book a hostel for two of the five nights we were staying in Jeju, and the first night was not one of them. Fortunately, Dan had done some research and had found several beaches that permitted camping for free or for a very small campsite fee. "Awesome!" we thought. "We have a tent, we like to camp, and we like inexpensive accommodations". Unfortunately, while we had been basking in the air conditioned coolness of my apartment for the past two weeks, we had neglected to notice how incredibly hot it was outside. Still blissfully unaware of what the camping conditions would be like, we hopped on a bus headed out of Jeju City and found one of the beaches with a free campground.

(This is where we camped)

We spent Friday night camping on the beach, but at any given point during the night, one of us was lying awake sweating, cursing the lack of ventilation in the tent and the street lights keeping the beach (and our tent) well lit, and contemplating the possibility of packing everything up and finding a motel with air conditioning. I finally got up around 6 on Saturday morning to try and figure out when the shower houses opened. I wandered around in the sun for a good half an hour without learning anything conclusive, and by the time I got back to the campsite, Dan was awake too. I'm guessing the guy using the field right next to our campsite as a mini runway for his paraglider had something to with that. Between the sun, the heat, and the paraglider that was (apparently) powered by a lawn mower engine, we decided that no more sleep was happening, so we went to the nearest convenience store and drank coffee for the next four hours until the shower house opened.

(This is a campsite. Or a place to set up your paraglider.)

Saturday afternoon, we hopped on a bus and went to a huge lava tube system that was about half an hour away from the Hamdeok Beach, where we had camped the night before. We spent an hour or so wandering around in the blissfully cool underground lava tubes before heading back out to the heat and humidity. After making our way back to our campsite, we packed up and hopped on a bus headed back in to Jeju City to find more comfortable sleeping arrangements and stumbled upon Yeha Guesthouse, a relatively new hostel near the Jeju City Bus Terminal. The staff at the front desk was incredibly helpful, not only with setting us up with a room at the last minute with no reservation, but also with helping to confirm our reservation at a different hostel for the next night, as well as putting us in a taxi to the airport the next morning to catch the shuttle to the southern part of the island to arrive at said hostel.

On Sunday morning, we headed for the southern part of the island. We caught a shuttle bus almost all the way to our next destination, the Jeju Hiking Inn. After checking in, we went to see a couple of waterfalls that the owner of the Inn suggested, and then we set off to the ritzier section of the island to see what we could see. We ended up seeing a teddy bear museum (cute) and a chocolate museum (delicious). We headed back early that night, because we had big plans the next day.

(Jeongbang Waterfall)

We woke up early on Monday morning to go climb the tallest mountain in South Korea. At 6,398 feet, Halla Mountain is not that tall, but it was definitely on our list of things to do while in Jeju. Fortunately, this was not our first hiking experience in Korea, so the massive amount of people on the trail that day was not a surprise. It was a beautiful day, and one of the clearest days of our trip, so the trail were packed with people wanting to get a nice view from the top. Everything was going along well until I realized halfway up the mountain that I had forgotten to pack sunscreen. Nothing could be done at that point, so I stuck it out and hoped that the sunburn wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately, for the last nine hundred meters or so before we reached the top, there was no shade. Three months later, I still have tan lines from climbing Halla-san.

(The top of Halla Mountain)

(Also the top of Halla Mountain. People weren't allowed to wander in to this area.)

We hadn't planned much for Tuesday, mostly because we weren't sure how we'd be feeling after our mountain climbing adventure. That was probably a good thing, because I, for one, was not feeling amazing. We slept in as late as possible before we had to get up and check out of the hostel, and then returned to one of the waterfalls we visited on Sunday and walked around a small island near one of the ports on Jeju. That afternoon we hopped back on the bus to go back to Jeju city. We had decided to stay at Yeha Guesthouse again on Tuesday night in order to make our 8:30 am flight back to Seoul. On the bus ride on the way back, we had a conversation that went something like this:

"Hey, did you get those chocolates that we bought at the chocolate museum out of the refrigerator?"
"No...did you?"
"No..."

So, we made it to Yeha Guesthouse, checked in, and turned around to go back to Jeju Hiking Inn for the gifts we had bought for our co-workers and bosses. Yet another reason it was a good thing we hadn't planned anything for Tuesday. We made it back to relax at Yeha Guesthouse for a little bit, and the next morning we headed back to the airport to catch our flight home, since I had to be back at work that afternoon.

All in all, it was a really great trip, even if we did come home from vacation more exhausted than when we left.

Long time, no update

I didn't realize how long it had been since my last update until someone brought it to my attention on facebook, so I will try to do a quick summary of all of the happenings in Korea since my last post. When I finish putting pictures on my computer, I'll post a few pictures from each trip here and put the rest on facebook.

The months of June and July were both pretty uneventful...teaching during the week, and not doing much on the weekends. I was pretty excited to break out of my routine come the end of July when I had three whole days of summer vacation to use. Fortunately, those three days were a Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, so I had a total of five days to go do something exciting. After looking a couple of options outside of Korea, we settled on taking a trip to Jeju Island, which is a subtropical island off the southern coast of Korea. It's also part of Korea, so we were able to take a nice trip without having to deal with visa requirements for another country.

After we returned from Jeju, we went on an organized trip to the DMZ. We didn't actually go in to the DMZ, but we visited several sites near the DMZ, including an observatory where we could see North Korea, a tunnel that North Korea dug in an attempt to invade South Korea, and a subway station that South Korea hopes will eventually connect to several major train lines in Asia via North Korea.

Once summer vacation was over, I began preparing to take the GRE. My intent was to begin studying for it while I was here, and take it within a week or two of returning to the States. After emailing a couple of graduate programs, I decided to try and take the GRE here, which proved to be an interesting experience. I began researching the possibility of taking the GRE at the beginning of September and discovered that Korea has a unique procedure for administering the test. The writing section is taken separately from the math and verbal sections, and must be taken before the math and verbal sections. The math and verbal sections are offered twice a year, so everyone who takes the writing section during the first six months of the year goes to one math and verbal test taking session, and everyone who takes it during the second six months goes to the next math and verbal test taking session. By the time I figured all of this out, I had one week to register for and take the writing section. If I hadn't taken the writing section when I did, I wouldn't have been able to take the GRE in Korea, because I would have missed the deadline for the math and verbal section, and it wouldn't have been offered again until after I had returned to the States. Anyway, I took the writing section of the GRE on a Friday morning before school, and fortunately I had the next week of school off thanks to a generous director and a three day Korean holiday called Chuseok, which is a harvest celebration.

Because Chuseok is such an important holiday, people travel to their hometowns to pay respects to their ancestors and the roads can get pretty crowded. Our original plan for the holiday was to take a hiking trip in Seoraksan National Park, which is about a three hour bus ride away from Seoul. We had planned on leaving before Chuseok traffic picked up and returning on Chuseok day, when traffic would (hopefully) be at it lightest. In the end, we adjusted our travel days slightly, but we did make it to Seoraksan National park and had a nice three day trip, two days of which we spent hiking. When we returned to Seoul, it appeared that fall had finally arrived after a long, hot, humid summer. The arrival of fall was fantastic, even if it did bring another month long sinus infection along with it. At the rate I'm going, I have a sinking feeling that I'll be spending the next four months in and out of the doctor's office.

I had five weeks from the end of Chuseok vacation until the GRE, so the remainder of September and most of October were spent either teaching or studying. I took the math and verbal sections of the GRE on October 23rd and went in to a two week sleep coma immediately afterward, where I went from doing nothing but studying and teaching to doing nothing but sleeping and teaching. That pretty much brings be to today...or yesterday, rather, when I attempted to drag myself out of my sleep coma and start some graduate school applications, since that was the whole point of taking the GRE in the first place.

It's hard to believe that I've been here for over 8 months, and that I only have a few months left before I'll be heading home. I didn't come to Korea with any real travel goals in mind, but I have seen a few of the places the Koreans consider to be important places to visit, as well as gotten to know Seoul pretty well from frequent weekend trips. I have another seven days of vacation to take advantage of before my contract is up, so I'm hoping to plan a trip outside of Korea while I have the opportunity to do so. I'm also looking to make more of my weekends now that I only have three and a half months worth of them left, and I still have a list of places in and around Seoul that I would like to see. With that in mind, I'm going to work harder to update this blog once a week. It should be easier to do when I have more travel adventures to share...I've been caught up in my GRE adventures and my doctor adventures and my 5K training adventures (which I'm back to square one on, thanks to cutting back on running while studying for the GRE and doctors orders to take it easy on the exercise until I've had a chance to fully recover), but I didn't think any of those really warranted their own blog post.

Stay tuned for posts about Jeju Island and Seoraksan National Park, coming next week! I even put it on my to do list, so you know it will definitely happen...eventually.

A Day In The Life...

I've had some questions about what exactly I do here in Korea, so I figured I would take a moment to run through a typical day. My working hours are from 2 pm to 8 pm, so my mornings are completely free, which I sometimes love and sometimes hate. It's great having time to go to the bank and run other errands that I wouldn't be able to accomplish with a public school teaching schedule, but for the better part of my first two months here, I spent my mornings doing absolutely nothing. I was so bored and tired of just sitting in my apartment all morning that I found a training plan to run a 5K. Now I get up and go to the gym right down the block from my apartment most mornings.

My day really gets started around 1:30 when I have to catch the bus to head in to school. This quarter I'm teaching 5 classes a day, except on Fridays, when I only teach 4. My classes are 50 minutes long, and my largest class is ten students. For each 50 minute class, I only have to cover a page or two of material, which means that I spend most of my time trying to come up with games and other activities to review the material we've covered and keep my students occupied. All of my students go to public school in the morning, and most of them go to at least one other private school in the afternoon, so by the time they get to my class, they've already been sitting for 6-8 hours, and they might have another 2-3 hours of school left in the day, depending on how old they are. Because of this, I try to play active games, which is a little difficult in my tiny classroom.

My last class of the day is a class of middle school students. I have two classes, and I teach them on alternate days. One of my middle school classes has started a beginner's level book to prepare for the TEOFL, the exam they'll have to take if they decide to study abroad in the US. This is one of my favorite classes to teach because I feel like I'm actually being useful in my job. My younger classes are lots of fun too (most days, anyway), but some days it feels like I'm just doing crowd control, and other days it's like pulling teeth to get some of my students to talk. It's hard to blame the students in this equation. Their schedules are ridiculously packed, and Korean society is incredibly competitive. Between the crazy schedules and the pressure to be good at everything, it's little wonder that some of my students are completely off the wall crazy little balls of energy and others are tired and burnt out.

After classes are over, I have phone teaching. I call each of my students once a week to ask them questions related the chapter we're covering in class and practice speaking over the phone with them. Phone teaching usually takes between 10 minutes and half an hour, depending on how many students I'm calling that day. After phone teaching I eat dinner with the other teachers at my school, and then catch the bus home.

Weekends are theoretically my time to go out and explore, but I haven't been doing very much of that lately, as evidenced by the lack of pictures and entries I've posted here lately. Hopefully that will be changing this coming weekend...

Doctor Fish

I've been to the doctor a lot over the past three months, having come down with a seemingly invincible sinus infection, but by far my favorite trip to the "doctor" happened a few weeks ago and didn't involve white coats or a 15 pill a day antibiotics regimen. After reading about some spas and cafes that offer the services of amazing little fish called Garra rufa, we decided to seek one out in the Gangnam neighborhood in Seoul.

Garra rufa are small fish that will eat the dead skin off of your feet, it's become very popular in Turkey, where you can get a full body treatment. I'm content with just having my feet nibbled on, since it ended up being incredibly ticklish. Pictures are below...the fish (unsurprisingly) preferred Dan's feet to mine, so the next time we go back, we'll either have to take turns or get separate tanks if I want to get any dead skin taken off my feet.

Buddha's Birthday

Buddha's birthday fell on Friday, May 21st this year, which means we were able to enjoy a long weekend. I was hoping to plan a trip to one of the national parks in the area but never got around to it. Also, with the entire country having a three day weekend, the parks were bound to be crowded. Instead, I headed back out to Yongin and Dan and I went in search of a more traditional Buddhist temple on Friday afternoon.

In the weeks leading up to Buddha's birthday, temples hang strings of colored lanterns leading from the street or main road to the temple itself. So, we hopped on a bus and rode it out past Waujeongsa to look for a temple that the gentleman in the Hummer told us about when he picked us up at the bus stop. We managed to get off at the right stop and followed a string of lanterns up a hill. A big hill. When we finally made it to the top, we wandered around the grounds for a little bit until we attracted the attention of somebody inside what appeared to be the administrative building. She spoke zero English, and we didn't speak enough Korean to communicate with her. They humored us and let us wander around a bit longer, and then we were herded back to the administrative building, where the women inside sat us down and fed us a meal. I had read that Buddhist temples provided a meal to visitors on Buddha's birthday but completely forgotten this fact until they put chopsticks in our hands and started piling plates of food on the table in front of us. What followed was a tasty, if slightly awkward, meal of traditional Korean food (rice and vegetables). All in all, it made for a good afternoon. Below are some pictures of the temple grounds.

Waujeongsa Temple

Waujeongsa Temple (Wawoo temple from here on out, because it's easier to type) is located on the outskirts of Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. It was built in 1975 by a former North Korean monk in order to promote and pray for peaceful reunification of the peninsula. I haven't been able to find much information on it because their official website has been corrupted, but according to Gyeonggi province's website, it is a head office for the World Buddhist Cultural Exchange Association.

Dan and I were waiting to catch the bus home and were offered a ride by a Korean couple that we had crossed paths with a couple of times on the temple grounds. According to the guy who picked us up, Wawoo Temple is not a traditional Korean Buddhist temple as it is a private temple and has no monks living there. I think he was trying to tell us that the temple is privately funded and not typical of what we would see at other temples throughout the country. Some pictures are included below.

Two months in, and my first blog post from Korea

I have bad visions of this blog turning in to the online version of one of the many, many half filled journals littering my bedroom, but I'm determined to keep some kind of blog going while I'm here.

Unfortunately, about two weeks after I arrived in Korea, I came down with a massive sinus infection, which lingered for about a month. I kept telling myself it was a bad cold because I didn't have my alien resident card and therefore, could not go to the doctor. So, I spent a month dragging myself to school, sitting in a small room with 5 to 10 screaming Korean children, and then dragging myself home at the end of the day with a splitting sinus/noisy Korean child induced headache, ready to do it again the next day. I didn't go anywhere or do anything for that whole month. If it required more energy than laying on my floor (no couches in Korea) and staring at the TV, I was not participating. So I apologize for the lack of blog posts, but I'm better now. I got my alien resident card, a paycheck, and so many pills from the doctor that I felt like a walking pharmacy. Also, I didn't really mind being sick last month, because the weather was still terrible, and I didn't feel bad for not going out and exploring Korea when it was 13 degrees Celsius and raining.

It's almost May now, and everyone keeps saying that the weather is going to get better any day now. Saturday seems to be the day...20 degrees Celsius (about 68 degrees Fahrenheit) and sunny is the weather report. I'm planning on climbing Sorae Mountain (not technically a mountain, but the closest thing I have to a mountain within walking distance of my apartment) and am really looking forward to getting out of the apartment.

I realize that I have a lot to catch up on, having not written anything for two months, so I will try to do that gradually. Today's topic will be food. The food here is amazing. I love spicy food, and I've found plenty of it here, but even if kimchi is not your thing, there is plenty of good food to be had. Fortunately for me, my school provides dinner for the teachers every night, so I was able to sample Korean cuisine right off the bat. Some of my favorites so far include kimchi jjigae, galbi, mandu, and bibimbap, although to be honest, I haven't really had anything over here that I've disliked so far, with the possible exception of seaweed soup. The food here is pretty basic, but still delicious. Meat is expensive, so most dishes are rice, vegetable, and egg based. Generally, meals are rice, soup, and various side dishes (usually veggies and fish). The most common spice seems to be red chili paste, which can be bought in huge containers at the grocery store. Anyway, below are some descriptions of some of the food I've had so far.

Kimchi Jjigae: Spicy kimchi stew with tofu, onions, beef, and sometimes rice noodles and mushrooms. Usually served still boiling in an insulated bowl. I did not like this the first time I had it as it appeared to have seared the taste buds off of my tongue, but now if a week goes by with no kimchi jjigae for dinner at school, I head down to the amazing little restaurant near my apartment for a heaping bowl of it.

Galbi: Seasoned meat (chicken or beef) cooked on a grill on the table in front of you. Generally served with lots of delicious side dishes and eaten right off of the grill with chopsticks. One of the few decent sources of protein in my life right now, this is becoming a Friday night tradition.

Mandu: Dumplings (sort of like won ton) stuffed with meat and/or kimchi. I've eaten these for lunch almost every day for two months and still have not gotten tired of them. It doesn't hurt that there is a restaurant close to my apartment that sells seven of them for 1000 won, which is about 89 cents.

Bibimbap: Rice and vegetables topped with a sunny side egg, sometimes served in a hot stone bowl which continues to cook your food as you eat it. Also has the unfortunate side effect of cooking your hand if you accidentally touch the bowl, but still delicious.

Gimbap: The sushi of Korea, but less fancy. Seaweed and rice roll stuffed with strips of egg and vegetables, and sometimes crab, tuna, or beef.

I'm still trying new food all of the time, so I'll post more about new discoveries as I make them, but one of my favorite things about meals in Korea is that most of them are communal. Generally, everyone gets their own rice and soup, and all of the side dishes go in the middle. If you want some kimchi, you dive in with your chopsticks and eat out of the same dish that everyone else is eating out of. When you eat galbi, everyone eats the meat off of the grill and the sides out of the communal dishes. I like this in part because I almost never finish an individual portion of food in a restaurant at home, but also because I like to share. And maybe eat a little bit of every single thing on the table.

I'm going to get ready to head in to work now, but I will post again after this weekend, and maybe even include some pictures if I can figure out how to post them. Next topic: climbing Sorae Mountain, and the fine art of teaching English to non-native speakers (or, how to make classroom discipline overcome the language barrier.)

Countdown

I've made some vague promises of keeping a blog while I'm in Korea. I can't promise regular updates at this point, but hopefully I'll get in the habit once I'm settled in over there. This is where things stand at this point in time. I've accepted a job teaching English at a private school in Gyeonggi-do, which is a province right outside of Seoul.

I'm incredibly excited and a little bit nervous, but I know this will be a great experience. For the time being, I'm preoccupied with packing, visas, and all of the little details I need to take care of before leaving the country for a year, but I will try to update when I find out important details, like my actual leave date.