Surviving South Korea 101

Korean Music

2009-04-05T10:33:00.008+09:00

Since we've been here at the start of 2008 we have heard several hit songs that get overplayed by every shop, TV commercials and anywhere else with speakers. I have managed to get a list together and I have found the videos on "youtube" for you to watch in no particular order. All the videos have subs and can be viewed in HD. Enjoy!

Wonder Girls - So Hot

Jewelry - One More Time

Big Bang - Strong Baby

Generation Girls - Gee

Lee Hyori - U Go Girl

Super Kidd - Love Dance

Uhm Jung Hwa - D.I.S.C.O.

Rain - Rainism

Wonder Girls - Tell Me

I could keep going but I'll stop now. Most of these groups have several his songs that you could find on "youtube".

Taekwondo Event

2009-03-06T13:00:00.013+09:00

Our Tae-kwon-do teacher was watching competitions on his computer one day and we asked if he could take us to a tournament. He was very glad to hear we wanted to see a tournament and he immediately called a friend and found one in Busan for the following weekend. He drove us there and back and took us out for lunch.
We were expecting to see some fighting and maybe a little blood but we didn't. Instead we watched a bunch of kids doing some routines and forms which was still amusing. At the start of the event, a pro broke some yellow brick thing with a chop and everyone cheered him on and then the event started. It was fun to see the kids compete and most of them looked bored, tired and wanted to go home to play video games but a few of them took it very seriously.
Most of these kids have black belts and from what I'm told it is vurtually impossible to have a black belt at the age of 10 in Canada as there are requirements that a 10 year old kid would not be able to accomplish. We were doing Tae-kwon-do for 5 months or so with a white belt and then one day without testings our teacher gave us each green belts which means we skipped the orange belt. He said that we have learned the routines required to receive the green belts, no tests required.
We had a great time doing Tae-kwon-do and even though we aren't going anymore I feel much more confident in my abilities to defend myself if the situation demands it. I would want to strech a little first if the attacker allows it though.

Penis Park

2009-03-06T12:55:00.015+09:00

On one of our trips with our Korean tour guide, Charles, we stopped by what we have come (no pun intented) to call a penis park. The park was about a mile long, along the shore of the East coast of South Korea, North of Busan. There was a pathway with several monuments, posts, totem poles, benches, fences and almost anything else you can think of shaped like a penis.

It seems to be a family attraction as we saw several families there with kids running around enjoying the artwork. Charles bought us a bottle of Soju that is ment to increase stamina and stiffeness. The results aren't in yet. There may be a hint of viagra in it.

Subway, Eat Fresh?

2009-02-28T12:05:00.002+09:00

Pierre and I recently decided to visit the one and only Subway restaurant in our city. Pierre has already been and was rather disappointed, and we have heard less then raving reviews from friends, but we were hungry, in a rush, and in the area. So, away we went!
When we got there, it had just opened, so we were thinking “Alright! Fresh toppings!” Well, were we mistaken! First of all, the topping containers were almost empty. Then, as we began to list off the toppings we wanted on our sandwiches, we noticed that the lettuce was wilted, edged with brown, and rather sad looking. As we notice this less than thrilling fact, the server begins to proudly boast “We have the freshest lettuce in Changwon!”
As we’re trying not to laugh, Pierre notices the fresh cookie display. As I’m a lover of cookies, Pierre excitedly says “Look Honey, you can get fresh-baked cookies!” The proud server once again pipes up, “Yes! Fresh-baked! We made them yesterday!” This guy is not a marketing guru.
Now we’re laughing, finishing up our sandwich order. The server is diligently placing 4 tiny pickle slices, a couple of green peppers, and to Pierre’s horror, only 3 thin tomato slices on his 12 inch sub. So, Pierre asks for more tomatoes. At this point, I should clarify that my 6 inch sub is tomato-less and the server is holding up two slices. As the slices are hovering over my sandwich, the server points out that he only has a few tomatoes left, so he must use them sparingly, in case he gets another customer. Pierre is in disbelief, and asks in a pleading voice “So, I can’t get any more tomato?!” The server, feeling the pressure, says, “Sure. You can have one more.” Well, guess where this extra tomato comes from? My sub! His hovering hands move from my sub over to Pierre’s, where my tomato finds its final resting place! Now, I have a 6 inch sub, with less than fresh lettuce, one tomato, and about 4 shaved bits of turkey meat.
Less than satisfied, but hungry nonetheless, we move to a table to eat our lunch. Well, the server watches us the entire time, waiting for our reactions of joy and glee. When he gets nothing, he finally asks us if it’s delicious. Of course, we politely thank him for the delicious sandwich. Satisfied with another job well-done, he states “Yes, I am good food maker. I have proud in your sandwich!” Still wanting a little more glory, he continues to ask us if Subway restaurants in Canada are the same as this one. We couldn’t bare to tell this proud fellow the truth about our abundantly fresh and overloaded sandwiches prepared with as much, or as little, fresh toppings as we please, so we just politely nod and say, “It’s pretty close!” All this for the whopping price of 14,000 won. Rather steep for a lunch in Korea.
Subway, eat... not fresh!

Korean Traditional Music

2009-02-25T12:42:00.009+09:00

On one of our trips, our faithful tour guide Charles brought us to the middle of nowhere and we stayed at a traditional guest house which is also part of a temple. We were 30 minutes late and our tour guide was on the phone getting directions that whole time. When we arrived we found out that there was an event planned for us and we were going to see a small group of young girls do a preformance of traditional Korean music for their families. We walked into a small room filled with people sitting towards the back leaving the front seats for us. It was really something for these young girls since it was a really small town and we were the second group of foreigners to ever stop for the night so it was big news that we were there. We heard a group of 6 girls playing on their Gayageum then 2 girls each did their own traditional Korean dance and then we heard an older girl who was very very good play the Gayageum alone. We later got to drink and eat food from a BBQ to our hearts content and we got to sleep in one of the buildings with blankets and pillows on the floor. It was a great time and I would do it again. I have attached a link to someone playing the Gayageum on YouTube.

Temple and Sights in Hadong

2009-02-19T12:13:00.016+09:00

Hadong is very secluded and very beautiful. They have a really old temple and the residents of the temple harvest tea and sell souvenirs for an income. We saw the same things we usually see at a temple however we did get to see monks in action this time which is a rare experience for us thus far. Several of them stood at a big drum that was sideways as one monk drummed a beat and the others stood and listened until it was their turn. They played for a good 20 minutes each taking their turn by smoothly transitioning from one to the other without missing a beat. The sound was really loud and could be heard from a distance which is how we found them in the first place. After they were done beating on the drum they sounded a big bell for a good 10 minutes and walked back into their temple.
The grounds had a few buildings that were open to the public and we saw some carvings that were really big and kind of scary. This one is trying to stab Angele. Every temple has a large quantity of plants that are well maintained. The plants often overgrow walls and other buildings which makes it that much more beautiful. We also found a really nice river that had a few waterfalls in it and we have several pictures of my doing crazy things in front of one of them but I chose to only post 1.

Green Tea Festival in Hadong

2009-02-19T10:32:00.021+09:00

In the summer of '08 we went to the Green Tea Festival in Hadong. We took the train to a nearby city and from there we had to take a bus through the mountains and the smallest towns imaginable with really old hut looking buildings. I remember asking Ben several times, "are you sure we are on the right bus?"

Hadong was not much bigger than the towns we saw on the way but it did have a few modern buildings built for tourism and a small tourist strip with restaurants and souvenir shops. Once we got there we went to the information booth and saw that they had a few English translators walking around. We also got these awsome paper ajumma hats that didn't last long and some free green tea.

The festival had a lot of great things to see and do such as making green tea soap, a traditional banner, candals, other arts and crafts, face painting, getting your name written in Korean on a fan and much more. There was also a stage where various artists played music and they had presentations but they were in Korean.

The best activity is visiting all the tea-makers' booths. You can sit with the pros and talk with them. We managed to find a booth with an English speaking lady who spent several years in Vancouver and she told us all about tea. There are a few variations to the tea we were tasting and I only remember the green tea, yellow tea and black tea. Each tea is made the same by pouring warm to hot water through the tea leaves and that's it. You don't let the leaves sit in the water like we do with regular tea back home. They use ceramic 2-3 ounce cups and they sometimes have a ceramic lid to keep the warmth in.

In the museum we got to read all about how green tea was brought to South Korea by a king in the good old days and how tea became well known and important in South Korea. We got to read about the 5 effects of tea and my favorite was #5 Eliminates a hangover. We got to sniff the multitude of tea variances that is grown in South Korea which is what you see here in these gars on posts.

At one point during the day we spotted our translator running around franticly looking for all foreigners. She grabbed us and told us to follow her. We ran to a gathering where a contest was about to start. We were all brought into a quarantined area of green tea bushes and were told to look for small bags that would contain prizes and one golden bag which contained the big prize. I pushed my way through kids and old ladies and searched like I never did before but I didn't find anything.

Making Green Tea

2009-02-19T10:00:00.016+09:00

At the Green Tea Festival in a very small town called Hadong we got the opportunity to take part in the process of making green tea. It's really quite simple. First you have to roast the tea leaves in a very hot, big bowl-shaped thing that has a fire burning under it. You have to be sure to toss the tea leaves around while this is happening so not to burn them. We could see the leaves lose life and shrivel up.

Next, the tea leaves are dumped onto a big piece of dry cloth and with your dry cloth gloves you scrunch and roll the leaves around to break all the outer cells of the leaves so that once you make the tea the inside of the leaves will easily be released into your hot water.

And lastly, the leaves are placed on what looks like a screen door and placed on a rack for a few days to dry. To participe, it cost us each $5 and we got a small package of tea made by the previous people. I wonder who is drinking the tea I made?

Wolseong Palace

2009-01-28T22:40:00.010+09:00

There was a great palace built by King Pasa in 101 in Gyeongju called Wolseong and it was also called Jaeseong meaning a king's residential palace. Ever since, the succeeding kings made the castle their residence until it was destroyed when the Silla rulers were ousted. Only a few remnants remain from the palace such as corner stones that the pillars from the buildings layed on. You could walk the grounds of where the palace once stood and see where the buildings were as you see in the first two pictures.
The only building that remains is the Seokbinggo, the ice storage. We went to Gyeongju for our 1st year wedding anniversary which was July 7th and it was extremely hot that weekend. We walked for 4 hours touring the sites and had to go back to our hostel to shower and change since we were soaking wet. When we climbed down to the gate of the ice storage the tempature dropped dramatically to the point where it was almost too cold and there wasn't even ice in it. The building was 3/4 below ground and was really damp. I bet the kings took breaks from the hot days in there, I know I would.
Close to the palace grounds is the Cheomseongdae which was built during the reign of Silla Queen Seondeok between 632 and 647 and is the oldest astronomical observatory in East Asia. the observatory is 5.17 meters in diameter and 9.4 meters in hight. The bottle-shaped tower made of square granite stones stands on the square stone base. The lenght of the stone base is 5.25 meters. Up to the 12 layer from the bottom, this hollow tower was filled with soil and pebbles. Between the 13th and 15th layer, there is a square opening through which an observer can ascend to the top.

Royal Tombs

2009-01-28T20:23:00.017+09:00

In Gyeongju, there are hundreds of royal tombs scattered across the city dating back as far as 2000 years ago. It's kind of strange really as you will be on a bus going down a business street and there is a break in the line of buildings for a nice grassy mountain which is a royal tomb. I don't think they know who's under all the tombs but they have quite a few of them labelled. They have excavated a few of them and we got to go inside one tomb called Chonmachong (Heavenly Horse Tomb) which got its name from an artifact found in the tomb which was a painting of a white Heavenly Horse on birch-bark saddle flaps. We were able to see the painting up close but we were not allowed to take pictures. In the tomb, which dates back to the 5th century, was 11500 other artifacts such as a golden crown, bracelets, jade ornaments, weapons, pottery and they even found some ancient eggs. Knowing I was going to see a crown I had an image in my mind of what I was going to see and I was wrong. The crown was not a rigid chunk of gold like a ring would be but more of a sheet of gold paper formed into a crown with three tall stems with designs carved into them and bean shaped jade pieces tied into them.
The tombs were built the way they are to prevent people from digging them up to get the riches that were burried along with the kings. Each of them are a little different when it comes to size and this one was 13 meters high and its circumference is 157 meters. They placed the body along with his treasures in the middle of the tomb in a wooden box and pilled small boulders on top until it was a big hill. Then they put 6-10 inches of clay, 3 feet of dirt and finally grass. The idea is that no one can dig it out without it caving in on top of them. Althought I wasn't allowed to take a picture inside I managed to sneak this one in which shows the layers under the grass.

The Divine Bell of Great King Songdok

2009-01-28T19:48:00.008+09:00

The bronze bell, nicknamed Emille Bell, is housed in a pavillion on the grounds of the Kyongju National Museum. The bell is 3.33 meters high and the diameter of its mouth is 2.27 meters. Known as the most outstanding bell in Asia, it is also the biggest one in Korea. King Kyongdok had a giant bell cast with 120,000 kun of copper to be dedicated to his deceased father, King Songdok. However, the bell was completed in 771 during the reign of King Hyegong. The bell holds a dragon-shaped hook that suspends it. the sound of the bell is exceptionally magnificent. The bell's body is decoreated with heavenly figures, floral designs and an inscription showing details about the casting of the bell.

I got the details from a guide book I bought, what it doesn't say is how it was built which we got to see at the museum. The mold was made below ground and the fire melting the copper was above it. There was an intricate system that allowed the melting copper to pour properly into the mold. It was first made of bronze but it didn't work out since it was full of cracks and didn't sound good. The second attempt is what resulted in the bell you see here. We didn't get to hear the actual sound of the bell but it is said that it could be heard over a 3km radius when struck only lightly with a fist but you are not allowed to test this claim. Regardless, the bell is extremely famous in Korea and small versions of it can be found in just about any souveneir shop right next to all the buddhas.

Paradise Island in South Korea

2008-11-27T11:22:00.016+09:00

On our sailing trip we stopped at a beautiful island that made us feel like we were on a cruise ship in the Caribbean but no, we were in South Korea eating Kim-chi. The island had a very small village on it and the "hut" properties were surrounded by walls, some of which were up to 7' high making it feel like we were walking around a maze. We had breakfast at a small restaurant on the island and we ate fried fish, mashed / mixed seafood, small clams, kimchi, rice and a few other Korean side dishes. We had plenty of time to explore the island and we found a little shop that sold beer and other corner store products. We found all kinds of neat things like the rock face that Angele fell in love with and kissed. I'm pretty sure he blushed. The island was connected to several other small islands by sand bars and as the tide would go up some of the connections were lost so they built bridges to connect the main ones for high tides. We wandered away on our last day and found what I thought would be a perfect place for a small hotel. There were a few small pools in the rocks that were frequently filled by waves splashing in. Some of those pools were a little dangerous so we didn't swim in them, but others were a little more safe like this one. We spent a good 2 hours just sitting in there talking about my hotel idea while drinking beer and soju and getting washed by the waves. Don't worry mom, it was completely safe. The most dangerous part was going back to the boat as the tide had come in and the sand bar was almost submerged under water. Another hour and we would have had to swim back I think.

I climbed a rock that was a little easier going up than down, but once I was on top I was really glad I did it. The waves were coming in really hard and were slamming on all the rocks around me, which made it hard to talk to the guy I was standng next to.

The sound was really good but I thought they needed a maestro to direct the orchestra and did they ever. As soon as I got on board the waves came in more organized and it was beautiful.

Dinosaur Footprints

2008-11-25T11:57:00.016+09:00

On our sailing trip we were brought to a beautiful small island that had sand bars connecting several islands together. We were told that there were dinosaur footprints on the island. Someone thought this would be a major tourist attraction and it might have been at one time but not anymore. This building behind the dinosaurs is near the docks and used to be a tourist information centre but now is just an abandoned building with washroom facilities. We spent 3 or so hours wandering around the island in search of these so called dinosaur foot prints but not one person from our boat found them. Angele and I decided to pretend we found them which is what you see in this picture here. Her drawing wasn't far from the real thing other than the size difference. We were expecting huge footprints like we saw in Jurassic Park.

Since no one found the footprints our captain decided to stop by the island on the next day to give us another chance and this time I found a picture of the island with the "X" marks the spot. I was able to find the area where the dinosaur footprints were. We figured out that unless you were there in the morning before the tide comes in you can't see them because they are under water and that's one of the reasons why no one found them the day before.

We were told that the dinosaurs stepped in clay, or something like it, and it hardened shortly after which created the footprints. The footprint was filled with sand and then covered with more rock which helped preserve it. With time the top layer of rock broke off and the sand washed out leaving the footprints for us to find.

This information about the process is only as accurate as I remember hearing it so please don't quote this on any kind of important paper you may be writing.

Tall Ship Sailing Trip

2008-11-19T10:47:00.020+09:00

We found a group on Facebook that is lead by a Korean man by the name of Charles. He does foreign relations for one of the major companies in South Korea and he plans all the trips for the important people from other countries that come to Korea on business with his company. On his spare time he plans trips for the foreigners that are already here. We have been on two of his trips so far and we will surely be going on more. They are very cheap as he doesn't do it to make a profit and since this is what he does for a living we find all kinds of things that we would never find on our own.

Near the end of August, Angele and I went on a sailing trip with Charles. It was a big party on a boat really but it felt like we

were on a cruise. We left Friday night at 12 midnight and drove through the night to our destination. We climbed a small mountain near the ocean shore to watch the sunrise from a temple. After picking up supplies, food and booze, we went to our ship, the Koreana.

The ship was really amazing as it had surprisingly enough room for 50 + to sleep below deck although almost everyone slept above deck under the stars. We made several stops to swim and tour one of the islands along South Korea's Southern shores. We came back Sunday afternoon and bused it back home at around 11pm.

It was a beautiful weekend and we would definitely do it again. The trip was $150/person and worth every penny. I will be posting about a few other things we did on this trip later.

Speech Contest

2008-11-07T10:24:00.005+09:00

This Halloween, we had a speech contest which, no matter how low key the event is, it seems to be very important to kids and their parents. I had the honour of being one of the judges and it was quite fun. Most of the kids recited a poem or a short story, some recycled a small speech they had written for another contest, and very few wrote a new speech.

The winner was one of the students that I had previously mentioned in another post. He wrote a speech specifically for this contest and I corrected it. At first, I thought it was a joke since the title was "My Sexy Panty". The origial version was even funnier since there was some pretty good Konglish in it, but this is the corrected speech that he did in front of the class. The best part was his sidekick who was wearing a gold cape and he held out the briefs as Raphael proceeded to point out the characteristics of his briefs, with his retractable pointer! This picture was taken a week later.

My Briefs
Hi, I'm Raphael! I will tell you about my sexy briefs. Yesterday, I observed my fantastic briefs. Why did I observe my briefs? Because they are shiny and beautiful and attracted my line of vision. First, I observed the colors. My briefs are brown and dark brown with stripes and they have a cute mouse on them. Second, I observed my lovely briefs shape and noticed they are quadrilateral. (his word, not mine) Third, I observed my beautiful briefs height which is 30 cm. I observed my briefs and realized that briefs have a great task, they hide our things. I think everyone should join me to love and honor our briefs. Thank you.

Halloween Pumpkins

2008-11-03T09:22:00.008+09:00

They don't celebrate Halloween the same as us in South Korea. Some kids will wear a custome but it was mostly just at our school. They don't go trick or treating and they don't carve pumpkins. Angele and I and four other teachers got together and carved pumpkins for the schools. It took us 3.5 hours and a big mess later and we had 6 beautiful pumpkins. During this process we found out that they don't trick or treat in Australia, England or South Africa either. The idea of knocking on someone's door and asking for candy seemed crazy to our non-Canadian friends. It was the first time carving a pumpkin for Vanessa (SA), Sonia (Aus.) and Anna (Korean). Ben was a seasoned pro and is unfortunately behind the camera on these pictures so you can't see him. The pumpkins turned out quite nice and were a great hit at school. The kids were amazed to say the least and I found out that most of the Korean teachers had never seen a carved pumpkin in person before. A lot of firsts were had in South Korea this Halloween. I made the one I'm holding and Angele made the big one one the ground. She also made a small one the next day with the School's logo on it.

School Trip #2

2008-10-31T11:38:00.012+09:00

Every several months our school takes us out on what they call a school picnic but it's really a school trip with a lunch. This time we drove for 1.5hrs or so to an unknown destination where we had a wonderful Korean style picnic, saw a temple and bought some pumpkins.
The picnic had a variety of Korean dishes and we did try most of them however Angele and I mostly ate the vegetables as you can't go wrong with those.
I climbed a tree for the first time in probably 15 years. I didn't make it very high and it took me a while to get back down but it was still as fun as I remembered it.
The fall season has arrived and so have the beautiful colours of the leaves. The mountains are amazing and a must see.
The temple was one of the nicer ones we saw since they had recently repainted some of the buildings and they had nice landscaping. They had a lot of trees which added colour to what is usually a very green scenery at a temple. They also had a tree that it is said was planted over 1000 (I will verify this fact) years ago by a monk (will verify this fact.) Each year this tree was fertilized with rice wine by the monks which helps it grow and stay strong.

Costco

2008-10-19T18:13:00.008+09:00

Ok! OkOk! Ok! so I haven't posted anything in a while. I have been getting emails and threats so here I start up again.
There is a Costco in Daegu which is approx 1hr drive or train from Changwon and we have done both in the past 4 months. Our last trip was by car so we were able to purchase a little more and we spent a whopping $425.00. It was cheaper when we took the train, $240.00.

Costco in South Korea is pretty much the same as in Canada. A few differences are: The food court serves chopped spanish onions that you mix with mustard and/or ketchup for a beautiful side dish, dig in. They also sell alcohol and they carry a lot of brands from back home that you can't get anywhere else. We have been able to find most of the products that we loved from back home like bacon, cheese, gronala bars, cereals and Angèle's favorite, Crown Royal.

We could also order online from Costco and they will ship the cold products in a cold box however there is a $10 or $20 charge and you have to set something up with your bank to make the online purchase as they don't accept most major credit cards. If you are coming to South Korea and you have a Costco card, bring it. We didn't think there was one here so we didn't and we found out that we could have used our membership card. Oh well. Learn from my mistakes.

Lanterns, lanterns and more lanterns...

2008-07-27T10:41:00.006+09:00

Near the end of April, the entire country of South Korea decorated itself with lanterns in preparation for Buddha's birthday. This is a National Holiday in May that changes dates each year. This year it was May 12th.

Our friend Ben found a free lantern making event being held at Hong Beop-Sa temple in Busan. It was an event for foreigners only and it was very well organized. They had a bus pick us up from the closest subway station and it brought us to and from the temple. They also had several English speaking people to assist us in our lantern making attempts and they had everything required to make our lanterns. Did I mention the event was free? Very nice of them...

I cloned the end result of our lanterns in the grass on the left in the second picture. The lanterns are hanging in our living room to add color to our white apartment.

School Trip #1

2008-07-13T23:13:00.016+09:00

Here are a few pictures from a school trip we had a few months ago. All the teachers from the 3 Reading Town schools went on this trip organized by the school owner. We had a traditional Korean meal with very tasty fish and the oppurtunity to make some famous Korean food.
First off, we went far into the mountains to get to our destination. We saw buildings that told stories from long ago just by looking at them. It was a very small town with a lot of beautiful scenery. It was like the Ramore of South Korea.

Next, we made some tofu using these 2 solid stones that crushed and grinded beans into the white pasty cream you see falling off the side of the stones. We added the beans in a hole on the top and a little water to make a better fluid consistency. The rest (boiling and such) was taken care of by the Korean chefs. Next thing we knew, we had made tofu.

We also made some Korean rice cakes. More fun to make than it is to eat. Basically, take cooked sticky rice and hammer it until it's turned into one thick gluey consistency and add some kind of flour and it becomes a rice cake!

Our last stop was at a train station where there was an old TV/movie set for a Western cowboy style movie, where we met this cool old guy making everything out of straw. Shoes, hats, bowls, stuffed pets, you name it, he made it. He loved having his picture taken with foreigners too and he had a great smile. Thank you Reading Town for a great trip.

Wildlife

2008-07-12T08:42:00.009+09:00

A long time ago, Greg posted a question: "What kind of wildlife (if any) is in South Korea?" I have since been looking for wildlife and I haven't found much. They have a lot of birds and cats, does that count? By the way, I think the sand in the small park outside our building is one big litter box because we frequently see several cats hanging around there.

We have recently taken a trip to Gyeong Ju which is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) and famous cities in South Korea. They had ruins that date back to BC times. They have made several tourist attractions in this city and one of them is a nature walk where some of the old ruins remain, which was really cool. We saw some of the most beautiful flowers, trees and what is really rare here, nice grass.

We took some really cool shots of butterflies and my favorite is the spider. The white lines must be the mark to where his home base is on his net. Angèle caught a spider in action and the story is quite long but if we are sharing a drink at some point and looking for something to talk about, bring it up...

We also saw a few squirrels and chipmunks and this little guy was running from tree to tree while I was trying to take a picture of him. As I was about to snap the shot he stopped, stood up for 1.2 seconds, just long enough for me to take my picture, and ran off. It almost felt like he posed for me.

If we see any more wildlife action, we will try and capture it for you.

Stone Walk

2008-07-03T12:35:00.011+09:00

Throughout Changwon, and I'm sure other cities as well, there are parks and school with stone walks. I don't know their real name so stone walk it is.

There is usually a short path of about 20 feet and then a circular path at the end where you could walk around for hours massaging your feet. You are supposed to take your shoes off at the start of the path, then walk to the circle on the stones then walk around the circle until you or your feet have had enough. We usually see children playing on them. However, I have seen one older man walking around and he did it for at least 30 mins and he was still going when we left the park. He looked like it he was doing it as a prayer more than to massage his feet.

It looks painful but we haven't taking time to take off our shoes and try it to be able to comment on how it feels.

Rice Fields

2008-06-11T10:09:00.006+09:00

As we travel across South Korea we see thousands of flooded fields everywhere and it tooks us about 2 months of wondering what they were before we finally asked and it turns out that they are rice fields. I figure they must build the field in a bed of clay or something that retains water as I never see them being filled. Read more about it here.

According to Wikipedia, the traditional method for cultivating rice is flooding the fields with or after setting the young seedlings. This simple method requires sound planning and servicing of the water damming and channeling, but reduces the growth of less robust weed and pest plants that have no submerged growth state, and deters vermin. Whilst with rice growing and cultivation the flooding is not mandatory, all other methods of irrigation require higher effort in weed and pest control during growth periods and a different approach for fertilizing the soil.

Golfing Disaster

2008-06-04T11:41:00.004+09:00

Here is a little story about Ben and Pierre's golf adventure. We went to a "driving range" style place and I think they call it screen golf because of the screen tent to keep the balls in. We were wondering about the cost and if they had simulation golf and we were going to play if we could afford it.

It was almost 10pm and the place was packed so we couldn't play simulation golf, but we were allowed to shoot a bucket of balls called a box, which is a little bigger than the large basket of balls back home, but the wait was 20 minutes. Then, we asked about clubs and she looked on the computer and said there is a 7 iron we can use. That's it, one 7 iron.

Then, the club Pro showed up and asked a few questions and told us to come with him. He brought us to his bag and his bucket of balls and said we can use his stuff and we get a special discount - FREE! We got really excited and I got ready. The Pro wanted to give me an iron and I asked for the driver instead. I streched a little and then lined up for my shot.

I should probably mention that Ben and I walked for about 20 minutes to get there and it was a warm night so I was a little sweaty and the club's grip wasn't very good, it was quite slick.

So, I lined up for my shot and everyone stood around to see the foreigner play golf. I'm sure they were asking themselves if he was good... Then began the worst swing of my life! I missed the ball and the club slipped right out of my hands, hit the metal rooftop and bounced near the person playing behind me and flew to the next person behind him! I was so surprised as I'm sure everyone else was that I didn't even get a chance to feel embarassed right away. I turned around and saw a bunch of faces all saying the same thing, "Holy Shit!" Once the shock settled and the Pro got his club and inspected it he said very firmly in a small yelling tone to "RELAX!" I think he was mad. I asked for a glove and tried again and it went much better.

I managed to only make a small dent in the Pro's golf club and I think I ruined it for all foreiners who might stroll into that place in the future. I don't think he will let anyone use his clubs anymore!

Mask Museum

2008-05-31T16:47:00.009+09:00

We went to a museum in Changwon called the Seongsan Art Hall and it was showing a mask exhibit with masks and other artifacts from all over the world. We saw some really interesting pieces from Tutankhamun to Native American totem poles. If you were wondering what they had for the Canada section, it was a few Chief head dresses and totem poles.

We saw some really nice wood carved masks that were really old, some were interesting, some were not. A few of the masks were half the size of a grown man with detailed carvings on every inch which was really quite amazing.

We found this really cool wood carved chair called the Dogo Chair and it belonged to the Dogon tribe leader in Mali. They carved it out of a big log and again every inch had detail. The back had a very intricate statuete carved in it. Very awsome!

The event was easy to get to and at $3.50 cnd a person (if memory serves me right) it was quite cheap. Angele, Ben and Vanessa went back the next day and made a mask of their own using the arts and crafts they provide for kids. Angele's mask didn't turn out as fancy as Ben's and Vanessa's but I still like hers the most.

Cherry Blossom Festival

2008-05-30T10:55:00.013+09:00

We had no idea what the Cherry Blossom Festival was until one day out of no where we were, just like every other day of the week, walking to school and imagine our surprise when we saw what used to be bare trees look like this overnight. As soon as we got to work we asked about the beautiful flowers growing on the trees and that's when we found out what the Cherry Blossom Festival was.
We were told that the best place to be for the festival was in Jinhae which should have been 30 mins away but because of all the traffic it took us a little over 1 hour to get there and we were still not at the centre of the attraction. We walked for about 1 mile through a beautiful town glowing with cherry blossoms. The sad part is that these flowers only last about 2 weeks and sometimes less due to weather. They had bloomed about 1 week before we were there and already they were falling from the trees. With a little wind the pedals from the flowers fly away, my kids call it snowing cherry blossoms. We tried to catch it in action here but it's hard to see.

They also have a hiking trail in Jinhae that is lined with these trees and you can see where the trail goes in the mountain as you see a white cherry blossom line along the mountain. Read more about cherry blossoms here.

The Festival's Food Options

2008-05-26T12:23:00.013+09:00

Where there is a festival, there has got to be food. We managed to find some of the best foods for festivals that we would like to see back in Canada and here are the top 5.
1. Chicken on a stick, taco-gui go-gi in Korean is definitely our favorite. We find it everywhere and there are several stands that are loyal to their daily spots and would know us by name if we spoke Korean. We have blogged about this before but look at the size of these ones. Wow! 52 cm of chicken goodness. Yummy! $1-$2 cnd.
2. Tornado Potato. We don't see this as often but everytime we find someone making these puppies we buy one. They have a spiny tool that cuts the potato in one big spiral then they impale it onto a stick and deep fry it until crispy then they shake off the excess oil and you get to dip it into salty flavoured seasonings like BBQ and cheddar. We have got to make these back home. $1 cnd.
3. Coconut juice stands. Angèle loves these and they are full of coconut juice and lasts quite a while for Angèle. Then we bring the coconut home and she eats the coconut after I break it up. $3 cnd.
4. Crab booths. We have seen several of these guys at big events and we haven't tried any since Angèle doesn't like seafood and I don't think I would like crab without the garlic butter. From what I've seen they don't get much tools to eat this with either.
5. Last but not least, pig roast. They only roast the sides of the pig and we didn't try any yet because we saw them cut the portions for people to buy and they have 50/50 meat and fat. It smells great when we walk by and if they only gave you the good meat we would totally buy some, but they don't...
6. Beer. You can buy beer at just about any booth that sells food or small convenience stores around the festival and you can get a good price if you look around. We were paying $1.50 cnd a can and you can walk around anywhere you want while drinking. The liquor laws are very relaxed here.

Festivities - Cherry Blossom Festival Cont'd

2008-05-26T12:01:00.008+09:00

Here are a few more pictures and stories about the Cherry Blossom festival. They shut down several roads around the city's roundabout, which is where the stage was located. Along several streets there were a lot of tents and vendors selling everything from souvenirs to food.
They had more than 1 stage with random singing and little shows throughout the day. However, we were not really impressed with most of these preformances as it seemed more like karaoke.
They had a few advertising stands which would promote a few products or a company and sometimes they would offer samples. For advertising a new store opening or a big sale they often place 2 girls on a 8 foot stage dressed in similar attire (as you see here) and they talk and dance a little to some music playing on big speakers. We also had the pleasure of seeing this same kind of advertising at a small bakery/coffee shop by our house that sells 4 products: a roti bun, coffee, tea and 1 more item. We could hear them from our apartment for several agonizing hours. These girls are present at every new store opening.
This is a game we frequently see at festivities. You place your planks on the numbers you want, then you pick a card out of a tin can and if you covered the number that you picked, you get the prize as described on the plank, which is a kind of sugar candy of various shapes and sizes. We haven't played. Maybe one day...

Jinhae Cherry Blossom Concert

2008-05-14T10:22:00.018+09:00

This post has been brewing in my mind for a long time now and I'm finally writing it. In early April, we went to a Cherry Blossom festival in Jinhae, South Korea. The concert part of the festival started at 8pm and finished at 10pm, which seemed very early considering the amount of work they put into the set up, as you can see in the pictures.

We saw all kinds of different groups and most of them were military performances, which really got the crowd going since they are extremely proud of their military. Every male has a mandatory time to serve in the military and when I asked my kids about it they were all really excited and looking forward to doing it, which explains the hype of these performances. They did some marching and gun twirling, which was quite impressive. However, they weren't as synchronised as I thought they would be.

We saw a few traditional performances, such as these 4 guys drumming away. Some of them also twirled big flat wheels (like plates) on sticks and did some tricks, which I'm assuming is a traditional Korean thing.

Nothing beat this Backstreet Boys knockoff group of young, skinny, Korean Sailors. Oh yeah baby! The crowd went wild! They missed a few notes on the singing, although they did pretty good since it was in English. They did however lack the choreographed dance moves. They all just did their own thing up on stage.

Maybe I should have started with this, but the stage set-up was magnificient. It had all the light effects you can think of, topped off with a disco ball. The stage was a great show in itself! We really enjoyed the evening, and everything was free-of-charge, which was also impressive.

The Ballerina Who Loves a B-boy

2008-04-12T13:36:00.010+09:00

We went to see a play called The Ballerina Who Loves a B-boy a few weekends ago and I've been putting off blogging about it because I had too many pictures. I wanted to try and do something cool with them first and I just finished.

The theatre wasn't the best venue I've been to. It reminded me of a cheap school theatre that didn't take comfort into consideration when it was being built. The seats were hard plastic and the back of the chair only went 3/4's of the way up my back (made for smaller people I guess) which wasn’t the recliner feeling I was hoping for.

The crowd was very involved and everyone cheered throughout the play. It made the crowds at NHL hockey games back home sound like nothing. Let’s just say that if they did the wave, everyone, and I mean everyone, except for a few foreigners, would have gotten up.

The play was really cool. There was no dialogue but lots of music and dancing. “B-boy” stands for break-dancer and that’s exactly what we saw, a lot of really amazing moves that told the story. Since you probably won’t see the play, in the end the Ballerina becomes a break-dancer to be with her man, any they live happily ever after.

The tickets were $40 Cnd each and were very easy to get (click here to see what I mean) since a friend of ours figured it all out for us. Thanks Ben!

Drinking in South Korea

2008-04-11T11:55:00.012+09:00

Every now and then we find ourselves going out on the town and drinking some of South Korea's finest alcoholic choices.

The most famous has to be "Soju" which is South Korea's version of Vodka, in my opinion. Koreans usually drink this straight by the shot, and at an average of $1.00 Cnd per bottle at 20% alcohol, you could easily do some major damage with this stuff. We find it is best mixed with other fluids like juice or pop and although it isn't the best alcohol we've had, it is definitely the most cost efficient.

Beer or "Mek-ju" is probably the most popular drink here for foreigners and Angèle is even finding herself with no other choice but to drink beer. Hite, also known as "Shite" by foreigners, is our favorite, although it isn't that good of a beer, it will do the job while we are here. (that rhymed, unintentionally.) The most cost efficent for drinking at home is the 1600ml bottle which is $4.30 Cnd.

Drinking is very popular in South Korea, as it is in most countries, and it is very common for a group of men to go drinking after work while the wife takes care of the kids. We often see groups of men wandering around downtown drunk out of their minds by 9pm. If you are asked to go out for drinks after work, it is considered insulting to decline, so no one does. It would be hard to be a recovering alcoholic here.

Drinking at the table with friends in Korea is quite fun. You don't usually order anything for yourself, but everything is ordered as a group and you share. You never pour your own drink, even if you get a bottle or pitcher and start pouring for everyone else. Once you're done, someone will quickly take the pitcher from your hands, grab your glass and pour one for you. Koreans are very good at noticing when your glass is low and they quickly fill it up. It's sometimes hard to keep an empty glass! Restaurants or bars never split the bill. I'm sure they would if we asked but we just figure it out for ourselves.

Corner Store

2008-04-07T23:16:00.008+09:00

This is a little blog on the corner stores here in South Korea, they are pretty much all alike. Out front they have a few stands with some product for sale, the one we shop at the most has a lot of produce outside. The corner stores don't have a back room so they stock all their product in the store on the floor or on the outside as you see in the pictures. The floor on the inside in some stores is so packed that we have to walk down the aisle sideways to get to what we want. The prices are usually pretty good and somewhat compare to all the other shops and stores around except for when it comes to pop, I pay an extra $0.90 Cnd for a Coke Zero at the corner store compared to the grocery store.

Recycling

2008-04-04T11:21:00.004+09:00

We realized that we were wrong with some of the recycling procedures and we knew that there was a small window for when recycling was done but we could never figure it out. The only time we saw it being done was on a Friday night when we got back from school one week. We have been reading this sign in our elevator and we were almost sure it explained the recycling details and so I took a picture of it and asked one of the Korean teachers at school.

It turns out that every Friday between 6:30am to 9am is recycling time and our building which is 102 needs to take their recycling to the front of building 104 along with building 101 and 104.

This explains a lot since every Friday morning there is a guy giving 1 minute announcements every 20 minutes on the very loud speakers in our apartments. It's hard to sleep in on Friday. I don't understand why they need to keep announcing it. It's every Friday from 6:30am to 9am, WE GET IT ALREADY! Too bad I can't turn off the speaker.

Police Action

2008-04-04T11:04:00.007+09:00

This is the first time we've seen any police action since we've been here. Usually we just see the police driving around or sleeping on park benches but yesterday on my way to work I saw these 2 cops trying to deal with a drunk woman on the side of the road. That green bottle is Soju which is a very popular 20% drink of hard alcohol. The police officers stayed with her for over 1 hour and did nothing more than you see in the picture. At one point the officer helped her light a cigarette as she was yelling at the top of her lungs. We were in our school on the 4th floor with the windows closed and I could still hear her.

In Canada she would have been off the street in 2 minutes and would have received a 24 hour luxury stay at "hotel" jail. She might even have been charged with 'drunk and disorderly' or whatever that charge is. I don't know how this ended because I got bored and I had to go teach. I think they waited until she was sober and then went on their way.

Norebong Superstars!

2008-03-31T20:28:00.013+09:00

Gloria Estefan was right...the rhythm will get you! And get us it did! On Saturday, we experienced our first Norebong (pronounced No-ray-bong). A Norebong is a Korean karaoke room that you rent for the hour with just your friends. You get your own private room (bathroom included - although it only had a urinal...), beer, food, and all necessary karoake equipment. Some rooms come quite elaborately equipped with a glass-floor stage, lights and a disco ball. Others come with props such as hats and accessories, and then some are less extravagant and only have a couple of tambourines, like ours did.

Regardless of the level of accessories, a good time is surely to be had by all! We sang our hearts out for over two hours for the low price of $40 CDN (roughly $20 an hour). We belted out some of the world's greatest hits, like Ricki Martin's 'Livin' La Vida Loca', Eagles' 'Hotel California', Roxette's 'She's Got The Look', Blur's 'Song 2', Neil Diamond's 'I'm A Believer', and A-Ha's 'Take On Me', just to name a few.

When you book the room, it comes with a huge three-ring binder of all the available songs, and you simply punch them into a wireless keyboard, pick up the mic, grab a beer, and let 'er rip! Before going into the room, we were a little hesitant about singing in front of others and doing karaoke. However, it wasn't intimidating at all. As a matter of fact, it's much more fun because everyone sings together. It was never just one poor chap standing at the front of the room, akwardly singing out of tune, and swaying to a song for which he barely knows the words. Instead, we were all horribly massacring the songs together. Angèle actually sang until she could barely speak!

Koreans love Norebongs! Even the super shy Koreans that speak just above a whisper have been known to hit some high notes in the privacy of a Norebong room. Our students also write about them quite frequently in their weekly diary assignements - and now we know why! We had an awesome time and we'll definitely be doing it again.

Teaching English in South Korea

2008-03-25T11:26:00.006+09:00

I figured since we've been here for over 2 months we are due for a blog on teaching since that is what brought us here.
We work for a school called a "hagwon" which is a private school. There are countless numbers of hagwons in South Korea and several franchise chains, the people who own our hagwon owns 3 of them within 30 mins of each other. Any parent who can afford to send their kids to hagwons do in the hopes of giving their kids the extra edge on the competition. The hagwons are located in business buildings across the city and feel more like an office than a school. Some hagwons are very well organized and some aren't but most franchises probably have a curriculum to follow which makes teaching way easier since you don't have to research your material, but just go to the next lesson in the book.

I have 10 classes that I see during the week and there is a well organized rotation between them. Monday, Wednesday, Friday I have the same 7 classes and Tuesday, Thursday I have the same 3 classes with 4 free periods to do some correction and prepare for my next classes. Each class is 45-50 minutes depending on the class and I have anywhere from 5-10 students but most classes are under 8 students.

We are 3 foreign teachers and 5 Korean teachers at my school and this is my work space in the teachers lounge. I have a Korean partner teacher for each class, so if I teach them on Monday the Korean teacher teaches them on Tuesday and so on. If a student is absent, the Korean teacher calls their home to let them know what they missed and so they can do their homework to not fall behind. That phone on my desk is mostly used by Jade, the Korean teacher who sits next to me, and she calls most of my kids when they are sick. Sometimes the phone rings and I want to answer it as force of habit with my previous job (I tried to get the phone on 2 rings max) but then I remember that I won't be able to speak to the person calling anyway.

Since most of our students come from rich families we do get the spoiled kids that won't listen and do what they are told, which ruins it for the rest of them. When they are bad or they don't do their homework, they get detention like this group did, although they still look like they are having fun. These kids are 13-15 years old and have regular school starting at 8 am, they go to various hagwons throughout the afternoon and end up at our school from 7:15 pm until 8:50 pm. Then they had detention, which was probably until 9:45 pm. They then had to go home, do their homework, sleep and be ready for school at 8 am the next day, just to do it all over again.

To view larger images, just click on them.

Favorite Students

2008-03-25T10:10:00.012+09:00

These are some of my favorite students for various reasons, mostly because they are nice and quiet in class and they do their homework, which tends to be the smarter students who do well. One of my newer students made my "favorite student list" because his mom told me in front of everyone during parent teacher day that her son loves my class. He said he likes it because the teacher is nice and he gets to learn and have fun at the same time. I don't want to brag about "all" the compliments I got, but this one was worth mentioning.

The first picture is of Raphael, the student I just talked about.

The second picture is of Ben, the cutest little guy who loves to do good in school, but has way too much energey for his own good. I think he might be drinking some energy drinks before coming to school!

Then I have Kelly, a very smart, quiet girl, stuck in a class of 4 attention seekers. She always does her homework and when we do correction, if I'm not sure what the answer is, I will ask her to answer first and go with that.

Next is Rooni, who named this kid? He is in the newest class I have and they are very new to the English language. Rooni seems to understand better than the others. I have a hard time explaining what they need to do for homework and such, but Rooni usually understands first and when I see that he just got it, I ask him to explain to the others for me and he gladly does. I also got 3 new students since the class started in March and Rooni has helped me get them up to speed.

Last but not least, there's Susan. I actually really like every student in her class and you will see her class picture in my other teaching blog, but she is the cutest. She is very shy and every day she has a cute outfit. One day, she looked like little red riding hood. She is very smart, but because she is so shy, she has weak speaking skills for her level of written English.

To view larger images, click on them.

Changwon Sports Complex

2008-03-22T16:43:00.014+09:00

There is a strech of road in Changwon that has 4-5 "stadium" buildings in a row. There is an olympic size swimming pool, a cycle racing dome track, an international racing track, an archery field, a gymnasian, a soccer field and a basketball stadium. We plan to go watch something at some point, but we haven't been able to find out when everything is playing yet.

This blog isn't really about the sports they play at these stadiums, but more about what they do with the parking lots when there is no event. No wasted space here in South Korea! The parking lot is used by hundreds of kids, teenagers and families as a place to rollerblade, bike around and whatever other toy they have that runs on wheels. You could rent everything you need and we were surprised at the variety of things they had. You could rent a morotorized kid size car, a go-cart for young kids, a full size pedal car for a family, roller blades, bikes, funny-looking skateboards and scooters to name a few.

For a country that spends so much time on education, we are surprised to see how many parks and other places there are for kids to play and have fun, considering the kids in Canada have so much time to play but they barely have the space to do it in, in comparison to here. This is why kids end up skateboarding in mall parking lots or churches or anywhere else they find the proper pavement and rails, which are mostly places they aren't wanted.

The Main Market

2008-03-18T23:11:00.010+09:00

We thought we had been to the market until we found out that every 4th and 9th day (14th, 19th, 24th...) there is a huge market in downtown Changwon. We have since been there just about every opportunity we had and it's not that hard since I work less than a 1 minute walk from this market.

"The Market" is a big 3 floor building that has lots of no frills shops and on market day tons of local farmers and others surround this building with their little booths. There are so many booths that the sidewalks for 1-2 blocks from the market centre are filled with more vendors. Inside the building they mostly sell the following: what looks like knock off clothes, homemade pillows and blankets, some bulk food, frozen and dried fish/seafood, shoes, bags, flowers, knick knacks and a strange kind of grocery store in the basement where we managed to finally find some familiar spices like basil, parsley and oregano.

The first time we went to "The Market" we were so excited that we spent $60 Cnd on produce and eggs. What would have been 1 month or more worth of produce back home lasted us 7-8 days here. We bought 10 English cucumbers for $4 Cnd, 30 eggs for $5 Cnd and 8 big Asian pears for $5 Cnd among other things. Some of the deals seemed like it was the same price as we would have seen back home, however for here it was a good deal.

A side note, whenever we walk around this market we think of John. All the good products at the best prices available and if you speak Korean you could haggle a little. This place had John written all over it.

Kimchi is the most consumed product in South Korea. Koreans eat kimchi (pickled cabbage) at just about every meal so it would only make sense to be able to find some kimchi at "The Market" and we did. There are several stands that sold kimchi but we have yet to buy any and I don't think we will since we always get kimchi as a side dish with whatever we order at any restaurant. This booth had kimchi of all flavours and several other pickled items like whole garlics.

Some of the vendors yell out their deals like you see this fish guy doing. He was quite entertaining and when someone would buy his long scary looking fish he would clean them 3 at a time, chop them in into 3 big pieces each, salt them and bag them for sale all in under 20 seconds. It's not that he had "the mad skills" but all fish guys would do this at that speed. We also found a shop on the side of the building that had hanging pork. There were 3 butchers chopping away yelling their deals, which kind of felt like I was at the Korean version of"Licks". (the hamburger place that the employees sing songs while you wait in line...)

I know the prices look confusing but we just take off one "0" and add a $ sign and it's pretty close to the conversion. (5000 won = $5.00 cdn) So far we bought a pillow the size of Angèle for $17 Cnd and a new pair of no name shoes for Pierre at $17 Cnd. We haven't found any good priced electronics yet, which is what we were hoping to find.

To view larger images, click on them.

Seongjusa Temple, Changwon

2008-03-15T23:42:00.008+09:00

We have visited our first temple and let me say that it's nothing shot of breathtaking. The amount of detail that goes into the construction of these temples is amazing. Most of the fancy designs are made out of carved wood and painted with a great amount of detail. Each building has it's purpose, one was clearly a place to eat and read as there was a library and a kitchen on each side of the room. Another building was blocked off to the public which tells me it's where they live and the one we went in was where they had their ceremonies. Every inch of that interior was covered with art and meticulous detailed paintings and wood carvings. The front of the room was covered in Buddhas and other relics.

The grounds around the temples are covered in little Buddhas of all shapes and sizes that were left by visitors, I thought of taking one as a souvenir but my consciense kicked in and I didn't. There was one relic Buddha that was about 4'5" tall and was enclosed in a secured structure and this is it's story:

Standing gwaneumbosal statue in Seongjusa, Changwon

The Gwaneumbosal, representative of Buddha’s compassion, is believed to appear in various forms according to the wishes of human beings to bring them salvation. Thus, this Buddha was greatly worshipped as mentioned throughout all the sutras of Mahayana Buddhism.

Made from granite, this statue is carved with a nimbus and lotus flower pattern pedestal. The head is bare and the round face has a tender expression. The hands position represents a Bodhisattva lecturing on Buddhist sutras; thus, the thumb and index finger of the right hand are touching and raised up toward the stomach. The shoulders are rounded and both feet can be seen stepping on the lotus flower patterns. The clothing is draped upon both shoulders in the shape of a thick U and falls down to the feet. Compared to the upper torso, the lower torso is shorter and less detailed, and considering its rather two-dimensionality, this figure probably dates to the Goryeo dynasty (918-1392). This statue of Gwaneumbosal was unearthed at the present location, and at this very spot Yonghwajeon was built around it as a protective structure for this statue.

Website with more Seongjusa info. http://eng.changwon.go.kr/sub02/sub_01_10.jsp

To view larger images just click on them.

Here is a video that I made from all our pictures and the music is a Buddhist medetation song from a CD we bought at the "Seongjusa Temple Gift Shop". They have to make money somewhere since it's free to visit their temple.
Seongjusa Temple Video

Tongue Tied - South Korea

2008-03-13T22:47:00.005+09:00

Here is an interesting video from YouTube about the English situation in South Korea. Keep in mind that it's from 2005.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwjt7zRiWOw

Crossing Guard

2008-03-10T07:40:00.009+09:00

We were out shopping this weekend and we saw the coolest crossing guard ever. He reminded me of Micheal Jackson with his outfit and of Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 3 when he's directing traffic at the start of the movie. This guy had some major moves to tell cars which way to go and although he was talkng non-stop and he was definitely dancing. This would have been way better shown if I had a camcorder but the rapid shots I got with my camera will have to do. There was so much movement that I had a hard time knowing who's turn it was, but the cars all understood him. At the end of each traffic direction change, he would finish with a bow as you see in the picture. It was kind of like a nice thank you, as is the norm in Korean culture.

Tastes Like Korea

2008-03-05T11:58:00.010+09:00

I recently had a post that briefly explained our "tastes like Korea" saying and I felt I could elaborate on it. On most street corners you could find a vendor that is set up to have some parts of what you see these vendors selling. They have 3-5 things cooking or boiling and most of it smells like boiling fish water. Sounds delicious doesn't it?

We have tried some things and the one that we like is a chicken kebob that is grilled and constantly sauced to perfection. It's pretty good but it's very spicy, John would love this. We have also tried the silk worm larvas (see picture) which is "boon-day-guie" in Korean and it wasn't the worst thing we ate since we've been here but it's close and we won't be eating it again. Also, we think "boon-day-guie" is one of the leading causes of the wonderful aroma in the air near these markets that we have come to call "tastes like Korea".

We have seen a lot of dried fish or jerky style fish. We have no idea what kind of fish this is and I don't think we will ever get to know what it tastes like. We have also seen huge bags full of dried up minnows and we can't figure out what they do with them.

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.

Beverly Hills of South Korea

2008-03-03T09:33:00.013+09:00

We found the Beverly Hills of Changwon and it's about 10 minutes away on foot from our apartment. The houses were awesome and there were some very interesting designs. Most houses had solar panels on them and every inch of property was covered with what I call clutter. I don't think anyone in South Korea owns a lawn mower.

They have these signs posted everywhere and I thought it meant no private investigators but I was later informed that it meant neighbourhood watch in effect, "if you see any suspicious charactors please contact..." no one called to report me.

Angèle says: "I had the opportunity to go into one of these massive houses to attend my first official meeting of the International Housewives Club. In this club, a different woman hosts a meeting in their house every last Friday of the month. Everyone brings something to eat, and they share stories and chat over a potluck lunch.

The whole experience was a little surreal, as most of the women were much older and living in Korea because their husbands were Engineers working on huge bridge projects, or the construction of new ports in Busan. We were only English teachers, making a little money and living in tiny old apartments.

The inside of the house was quite nice, although I only saw the sunroom/livingroom, a second living room, the kitchen and a small bathroom. Security was tight considering the extremely low crime rate, to enter the yard, you have to ring and look into a camera, and then they buzz you in through the gate. The rooms are large and very bright. The floors were marble and heated. They had cathedral ceilings, very modern style furniture and the kitchen was enormous, especially by Korean standards. I can only imagine what the rest of the house looked like!"

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.

Meat Department

2008-02-27T11:32:00.008+09:00

Meat has been a small challenge in South Korea. We miss beef. To our parents reading this, we would like to place a order for the best and biggest steak (Angèle wants mushrooms) when we get back to Canada.

They eat a lot of pork in S. Korea and they don't clean off the fat as much as we would like. The only clean piece of meat that we found was pork tenderloin which was reasonably priced at approx $2.50 cnd for 1. We bought what we thought was bacon, as you see here with bone in it, but it didn't taste like bacon at all. We are assuming that in Canada they cook, smoke and season the bacon before packing it. We think this is bacon straight from the pig, untouched, bone and all. So, we'll have a side order of bacon with our steak.

Ground beef isn't common in S. Korea either, we only found chopped beef which is extremely expense as you see here this pack cost approx. $11.00 cnd and tasted like steak in our spaghetti sauce. We aren't sure if we will do that again.

We have yet to find a clean, boneless, skinless chicken breast either. They seem to only pluck and gut the chicken then chop it up into small pieces, in no particular order, and price it for sale. *Yummy!

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.
*hint of sarcasm.

Produce Department

2008-02-27T10:57:00.013+09:00

There is a grocery store called the GS Supermarket that is 10 minutes away on foot and we buy most of our products there. We find just about everything we could need there but it is more expensive then the market shops. The produce department is pretty good and the cheapest item that we purchase would have to be oranges. We buy about 25-30 clementines (Christmas oranges) for about $3.00 cnd. You could buy them by the case, bagged or loose. If you bag your own you must give your bag to the produce employee who weighs it and prices it for you which is something that is usually done at the cash register back home.

One really cool thing is their lettuce. They don't seem to eat bowls of salad like we do, they mostly use lettuce to wrap the meat they BBQ. So buying a head of lettuce or romaine isn't common. Some poor Joe's job at the grocery store is to separate all the leaves from the heads of lettuce for sale by weight. This pile looks kind of picked through so the leaves aren't nicely placed like it usually is but you get to see the cool fog machine that keeps them moist.

We can buy watermelon (with seeds) and they are the size of a cantaloupe for $21.00 cnd. I hear they are huge and cheap in the summer so I'll have to wait. One item that we haven't seen is celery but I was never a big fan of celery anyway.

I know this isn't produce but I don't want to make a blog on just eggs. You can easily find chicken eggs all over and if you shop around you can get 10 eggs for $1.50 cnd but they only have brown eggs and we find that the yolk is much darker and has a stronger taste. The coolest thing that we got to try was Quail eggs which are also all over the place. We only had a hard boiled one at a restaurant as it came as a side dish with one of our meals. To our surprise, it tasted just like a normal egg but smaller.

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.

We Finally Made It To The Top!

2008-02-26T12:25:00.012+09:00

After three attempts to make it to the top of Daeam mountain, we finally made it! We realized why we couldn't make it the first few times, we were carrying to much weight, so the third time up we didn't bring the camera. The problem was once we made it to the top we realized that we had no proof to show that we were there. So, naturally we had to do it again.

We have since been up to the top 4 times and have managed to drag along other foreigners with us and we created an unofficial mountain climbing club of 6. We go up every Sunday. It takes us approx. 1:45 hours to make it to the top and approx. 30 mins to get back down but we feel the burn for 1 to 2 days.

The hike continues around the mountain tops for about 9 km's and if you want you could somewhat make your way around Changwon City on mountain tops. We would like to do this with 1 overnight camping experience but we haven't decided if we will or not. If you are wondering about the wildlife, we have only seen a few birds during our hikes.

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.

Dick Sticks, Booby Bands and Body Yogurt....

2008-02-24T16:59:00.010+09:00

Could this be an embarrassing purchase at the grocery store or a novelty shop? Nah, just a regular day of shopping in South Korea! This was actually some purchases that we could've made at the market, all in a day's work.

To our surprise, Dick Sticks, which can be purchased at the bargain price of about $1.50, are actually chocolate covered bread sticks. We're guessing they wanted to say, Dip Sticks, but we could be wrong. This could be a very effective marketing ploy. It sure made us look twice!

I know what you're thinking, Booby Bands? Maybe some fancy nipple covers? Nope, just some cute band-aids for kids. A whole pack for just $0.40! Perhaps they meant Boo-boo Bands, for when you fall and get a boo-boo. The best part is that in smaller font under the name, it reads "Spring is Booby's season!" We think there might be an entire line of Booby products.

A little Body Yogurt to top it all off? This moisturizer must be a little thicker than the line of 'body milk' creams that we sell back home. There's something about the word yogurt, however, that sounds less appealing...

So, a clever marketing ploy? Or another case of Konglish? I hope they're not paying these translators too much money!

Public Toilets

2008-02-20T11:26:00.004+09:00

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering how the toilets are in South Korea, so here goes. The public toilets are less than desirable to say the least. Let's just say I would really, really have to go to use some of these facilities.

Most restaurants don't have their own toilets but there are toilets on each floor of every business building and each business share these toilets. They are usually not heated and are poorly cleaned. You could find a mop hanging somewhere in the way in just about every toilet.

Most toilets are the western sit down style and some of them have electronic options on the side that I have yet to figure out, but I think you could give yourself a little spray for cleaning and the flush is on there as well. They don't flush toilet paper in South Korea (I think it's to avoid clogging) but they have little garbage cans in each stall for your TP. I wouldn't want to have to pick up the trash! We just flush it anyway.

Most toilets do not have toilet paper, soap or paper towels so you have to bring your own. We carry TP with us a lot and we bought some hand sanitizer.

The scariest toilet has to be the whole in the ground. I have yet to try one of these and I hope I never have too. Angèle, however, has had the pleasure of using these toilets on several occasions, as many of the women's washrooms only have squatters.

I'm sure we'll encounter stranger toilets along our travels through South Korea, and we promise to bring you all the 'crappy' details!

South Korean Police

2008-02-18T10:26:00.020+09:00

Oh no, it's "5-0" in the park! Nevermind, they're sleeping.
We haven't seen too many police officers around Changwon but the few that we have seen look more like security guards. They are very young and they don't carry firearms, so Angèle and I are guessing that they are cadets and that they use cadets a lot. The police officers in the cruiser looked to be older and probably do carry firearms but we couldn't tell since they were in the car and I didn't ask if he was packing heat.

We have not seen one police officer pull anyone over on traffic violations, which would explain why everyone drives like maniacs and treats red lights like Yield/Stop signs. We also noticed that taxis have a lot of radar equipment and we think that they have radar detectors which might be part of that problem. We also found a police station by luck but we think its a community police station since it was closed during the weekend and they used a bike lock to lock up the doors.

To view larger images, just click on the pictures.

Spam it up!

2008-02-14T11:23:00.004+09:00

Lunar New Year was kind of like Christmas back home. Everyone visits family during their 5 days off and people buy each other gifts. Angèle's school bought every teacher a very popular gift set of Spam. Yes, Spam. When she first saw the gift set, Angèle thought it must be really good but thought she would wait to be home with me before opening it so we could share the surprise. Imagine our dumbfounded look when we opened it and found 10 cans of Spam!

I alone have been eating it and it's not that bad when it's fried. So far my favorite dish has been Spambled Eggs as you can see in this picture. Not Bad. The gift set came with a pamphlet that gives you ideas of what you can make with your Spam and our favorite one was Spam-uffins. Doesn't that sound appetizing? Picture a little muffin with Spam chunks in it. Angèle refuses to eat anything that comes out of a can smelling like wet dog food so it looks like I'm on my own with the Spam.

Busan Subway

2008-02-13T14:16:00.012+09:00

The subway in Busan is very similar since it has the same basic principals as every other subway but here are some differences.

You must purchase your ticket from a computerized terminal by entering how far you want to go. It cost us about $1.10 cnd to go about 10 stations along the line with a transfer so it's pretty cheap. You take your ticket and proceed to the entry point which controls entry to the trains. You enter your ticket in that machine, it lets you in and spits back out your ticket as you will need it later. You take your ride and get off where you said you would and on your way out there is another machine that you place your ticket in again to ensure you got out at the right spot. A security guard monitors (at random I think) the exit to ensure you are indeed getting off where you are supposed to.

If you have ever taken the subway in Toronto you will definitely notice one difference which is the cleanliness of the subway cars. I have never seen public transportation this clean.

The picture of the Korean guy wearing a sports jacket was very interesting to see. There are salesmen that walk from car to car trying to sell their items. In Toronto they would get kicked out or arrested for harassing others but this was quite pleasant considering what it was. The salesman made his way to the middle of the car, gave his sales pitch that lasted 1-2 mins, never directed his pitch to an individual giving you the opportunity to listen or ignore, asked if anyone was interested and made his sales and left. We saw two salesmen in total during our subway trip, one was selling LED flashlights that had a magnetic bottom and was able to shoot a straight light beam to the end of the subway car and even with all the lights on we were able to see it and the guy you see here was selling a pocket size electric shaver.

Busan Fish Market - South Korea

2008-02-13T13:55:00.009+09:00

We have seen many markets in South Korea and most have a variety of booths that sell different things but in Busan along the ocean shores there is a market that is strictly fish. I didn't see anything that looked like what I would call fish for sale though. This picture shows less then half the booths that were set up and everyone was selling the same things.

The second picture really reminded me of, well, I'm sure you see it too.

The third is full of small octopuses that people eat raw and alive. I've only seen a few video clips on "youtube" but they dip these little guys in a sauce and eat them head first. The tentacles wiggle around their faces and try to get out but of course they fail since they are being eaten alive. I'm told that if you don't chew the tentacles enough they can stick in your throat and choke you. I'm not a "save the animals" kind of guy but this is cruel in my opinion.

The forth is squid which we see a lot and it's funny to see them swim in tanks as they don't maneuver much and just have a big burst of speed in 1 direction and hit the tank walls.

Crossing the Road

2008-02-11T17:01:00.003+09:00

Crossing the road in South Korea is a lot more controlled than it is in Canada. I don't know what the penalty is for "jay walking" (is that how you spell that?) but not too many people do it here. They have two controlled ways of crossing the road. There is the simple crosswalk and the underground passages.

The simple crosswalks have the big white lines as you see and they have a red/green stick man light indicator. The fascinating part about this is when it's green and time is running out rather than the flashing green man like back home, they have an arrow indicator on the left that counts down. It takes forever to get a green crosswalk signal and the amazing part is that most people wait for it. I still sometimes just look both ways and cross if there aren't any cars.

They also have underground crosswalks. The major intersections have an entrance at each side and everyone walks down and comes up where they need too. I think this would be very useful in downtown Toronto to control pedestrian crossings. However, they would have a hard time building it now and I wonder how many people would actually use it since they're all used to crossing whenever they want.

Korean BBQ

2008-02-07T19:00:00.001+09:00

Angèle, Erin and I went to a Korean BBQ today. We didn't have much choice since a lot of places were closed for Lunar New Year but we finally found a place that was open and lucky for us they had a 'half sitting on the floor' area and a 'half sitting on chairs' area which was great. I don't like sitting on the floor because you have to take off your shoes and well, having my feet close to my face while I eat isn't my favorite thing.

What is a Korean BBQ?

They have a little BBQ in the middle of each table, some are charcoal and some are natural gas. Some have a BBQ grill and others have a hot plate type surface. I prefer the charcoal with the BBQ grill however it sucks when you drop a chopstick in the fire through the grill but you look around you to see if anyone saw then you shrug it off.

You have a choice of a few meats that you can see posted on the wall in the seated areas and they bring you several side dishes that you can either cook with, use as add ons when you eat or eat just as is. They usually just bring everything to your table and place as much meat as they can on the grill and you’re on your own to do the rest but because we were foreigners that looked lost the waitress helped us along by cutting our meat in small chunks for us.

How do you eat? Well, there is no clear separation of individual foods, we all share. You pick up your chop sticks and poke at whatever you want on the table and go nuts. Picture a bowl of coleslaw and everyone’s sharing out of the same bowl with chopsticks, no word of a lie. You can also make yourself a little lettuce wrap which goes like this: 1 piece of lettuce (red leaf or some minty weird leaf) and you take a piece of meat off the grill and dip it in whatever sauce you want that we all share and you place your piece of meat on your leaf, then you place the side dishes like onions or garlic slices that you grilled with the meat or raw and you place that on your leaf and then you roll your leaf up like a fajita and you eat it all at once. Very yummy.

The only thing I don't like very much about all this is they don't clean the meat very well. You get a lot of fat with your meat and it's sometimes hard find the actual meat.

The entire meal for all 3 of us and 2 bottles of beer cost $22cnd.

Fast Food

2008-02-07T15:07:00.002+09:00

So, food. Angèle and I have tried several things and some are good, some are not. We have come up with a saying and it goes like this "That tastes like Korea" which loosely translates too that taste like that gross taste in the air you get when all the markets are up and running.

They have several kinds of restaurants in South Korea. They have the market style which is kind of like the Korean version of the "Street Meat" hot dog vendor back home but they sell Korean stuff. They have traditional Korean restaurants which are mostly Korean BBQs that you have to sit on the floor. We have seen some Western name brands like McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, TGI Friday's, Dunkin' Donuts and Subway and we have also seen some look 'a' likes that seem to be very much the same until you go in and look at the menu and notice that they put pickles on every pizza as it's melted in with the cheese. A plain cheese pizza also has pickles.

I have yet to try to eat at McDonald's since my favorite part is to wash it all down with a Super Large Diet Coke but they don't have diet pop in South Korea. I have found Coke light which seems very similar but not quite and they don't have it at McDonald's. We did eat at 1 fast food restaurant called Lotteria (I thought it was a store that sold lottery tickets until I went in) and we ordered a "Bulgogi set" AKA Cheese Burger Deal but it "tasted like Korea". I think it's the sauce they put on the burger so we will have to try another one sometime before we leave. The "set" was the size of a kids meal back home including the size of the pop and it cost $4 taxes in.

McDonald's appears to be similar to back home but one thing that stood out was that they have an option for a side of corn instead of the fries.

I will be posting on the other kinds of restaurants that we have experienced and the funnest has to be the Korean BBQ which I plan on eating at tonight and I will bring my camera. I think I may have gotten food poisoning there last time so we are going back to see if it was really that restaurant or just some bug. Luck favours the brave.

Korea Celebrates Lunar New Year

2008-02-06T12:49:00.001+09:00

From Feb. 6^th to Feb. 10^th, Koreans are celebrating Seollal or Lunar New Year.

According to our Lonely Planet book on Korea, "The Lunar New Year is celebrated on the first day of the first lunar month, which falls between late January and early February. Lunar New Year is one of the two most important holidays in Korean culture, during which half of the country ventures to their ancestral hometown to pay respects to deceased forebears with a big feast."

I’ve asked many of my students what they will be doing, and over 95% of them are headed to their grandparents. From what I can gather, there are no New Year’s fireworks, or huge celebrations. This is simply celebrating a new year according to the moon, and enjoying the comforts of family and friends. Most family run restaurants and stores will also be closed during this time.

Here is an article I found in The Korea Herald, an English newspaper that explains just how many Koreans will be travelling around the country, as well as coming back to Korea to visit their families.

Long Seollal Holiday Starts

Some 6.7 million people per day are expected to be traveling during the Lunar New Year holiday, raising concerns of traffic congestion. Highways across the nation are likely to be most congested today and on Friday, according to a Korea Highway Corporation survey of 5,000 households.

Half of the respondents said they would go back to their hometowns today and some 33 percent will return to Seoul on Friday, the survey showed. The first day of the Lunar New Year is on Thursday.

The survey also found that over 85 percent of households would be driving, 9.7 percent said they would take buses, 3.0 percent said they would go by rail and 0.4 percent said they would go by plane. An estimated 3.4 million cars per day will be on the expressways, an increase of 3.9 percent from last year’s Lunar New Year season, the KHC said.

The KHC anticipates that the average car journey between Seoul and Busan will take over nine hours, six hours between Seoul and Daejeon, and eight hours between Seoul and Gwangju. Motorists using the lanes reserved for cars with more than six passengers will save one or two hours, the KHC said.

The Road Traffic Safety Authority cautioned that car accidents could exacerbate the severe traffic jams. The number of injuries from road accidents typically increases by more than 20 percent during the New Year holiday season.

Meanwhile, hotels, condos and ski resorts are inundated with funseekers making the most of the five-day holiday. In Gangwon Province, famed for its ski resorts, over 1,900 guest rooms in condos and hotels were already booked up some 20 days ago.

Incheon International Airport expects 400,000 overseas travelers from Feb. 1 throughout the holiday.

By Song Sang-ho, The Korea Herald, Wednesday, February 6, 2008
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/

What would you like to see?

2008-02-04T14:33:00.000+09:00

This is a post for you to comment on and tell me what you would like to see or know about in Changwon, South Korea. If it merits a post then I will work on it and if it merits an email than I will do that instead. If you wish to ask me something personally, just say so and I will not publish your comment.

Scooters

2008-02-04T12:08:00.008+09:00

One method of transportation that is considered strange and socially uncool in Canada is scooters. They are everywhere here and that's probably because of the lack of space and the small distances needed to travel.

Changwon is 292KM²compared to Sudbury, Ontario which is 3 200KM². The population of Changwon is 549 507 plus Angèle and I compared to Sudbury, Ontario which is 157 857 minus Angèle and I. If you do the math Changwon has a population density of 1 803/KM² and Sudbury is 49/KM². Things are a lot closer here than they are back home so buying a car isn’t as necessary.

We have seen all kinds of scooters being used for all kinds of reasons. They are used for personal transportation, deliveries and moving stuff around like you see here, now that's a powerful scooter. They drive really fast on these things and they honk when coming near to intersections they plan on driving through. I think they close their eyes sometimes and hope for the best.

This is scooter parking which is also just about anywhere they can squeeze the little things. I've seen them park in a parking spot with a car and the guy who owns the car just moved the scooter to the next parking spot so he could get his car out. If I would have seen that back home I would have thought he was going to steal the scooter.

We have also seen a few funny accessories like a clear visor that is strapped to their head and can be pulled down much like a welding mask to protect against the wind since they don't always wear helmets. I would like to learn about the traffic laws to see how different they are from ours. Green is go and red is stop but the rest here is just a big mess.

The Mountain again

2008-01-31T12:36:00.002+09:00

This explains our journeys up the mountain. I might not be drawing the lines properly and where the stops are exactly but it's gotta be close. This picture is taken from our apartment window on the 12th floor of our building. Click on the picture to enlarge.

The Skate Park

2008-01-31T11:06:00.002+09:00

As we were walking towards downtown Changwon in South Korea we found a skate park so we went to check it out. A few things that we found interesting was that no one had a skate board but everyone was on roller blades (makes me wish I brought mine). There was a dozen kids skating around on the Sunday afternoon and I think they were all between the ages of 7-12. There was not one teenager which made me wonder where they all were and then I realized that I rarely see anyone between the ages of 13-23 and I was told that it is because they are all in school. The saying is if you get more than 4 hours sleep a night you aren't studying hard enough.

As we approached the skate park everyone stopped and looked at us in amazement which happens a lot in South Korea, if I walk past 10 Koreans during a stroll I will hear 5 "hello, how are you"s as they marvel at the opportunity to talk with an English speaking Westerner. Angèle feels like we part of a freak show sometimes.

Back to the skate park, I had my camera out and I signaled to everyone that I wanted to take some action shots of them and the crowd went wild. Everyone started yelling with excitement hoping they would impress me with their "mad skillz." They each took their turn rolling around and taking 6'' jumps off some ramps and I snapped away. They all gathered around me to see their picture and one kid didn't have one. Well, imagine the sadness, I sent him off to do his thing and he got the whole group excited with what he said he would do and I was a little worried that he was going to do something too dangerous. I placed myself where I thought he was going and he zoomed right by me going 100 miles per hour and I got my best shot of the day but it wasn't what I was supposed to get since he took a high jump of about 1' high off the top ramp. So, I had to reposition myself and he had to do it again and this last picture is what he did. He got to look at his picture and everyone was happy so we said our good byes and went on our way.

As we left Angèle asked me, "Did you notice there wasn't any graffiti"? Not one spray of graffiti could be found anywhere in that skate park. Just goes to show you how innocent and wholesome their way of having fun is.

Cabs in South Korea

2008-01-28T17:30:00.002+09:00

This is kind of interesting. Taxis can be found all over South Korea, obviously. There are a few spots like right in front of my apartment building where there will always be a cab. As soon as it leaves another pulls over to take it's spot. I have yet to walk past that spot and not see a cab. They also drive around and when they pass pedestrians they honk as if to say "do you need a cab?". If you want him to pull over all you have to do is a wave and dance that says yes and the cab will honk again to say "10-4" and the cab does a U-turn or drives over sidewalks or whatever it takes to get to you before another cab gets there. The cost for cabs is ridiculously cheap too. It cost us about $3.50 cnd to get as far as $20.00 cnd would have got us in Kitchener, Ontario. That's probably why a lot of people travel by cab. At that price, I don't see the need to ever purchase a mode of transportation.

Higher up the Mountain

2008-01-27T15:55:00.001+09:00

This is just a nice picture from our hike today. We went 0.6 KM up the mountain the first time and this time we went 1.5 KM up the mountain and this is our picture from the hike. The trail kept going for another 0.8 KM however we were too tired but we plan on doing it sometime.

Moving in South Korea

2008-01-27T09:14:00.001+09:00

We woke up this morning to some really loud noise and decided to find out what was playing the alarm clock today. We were shocked to see that someone was moving. It wasn't the fact that they were moving that shocked us but how they were doing it was completely out of the ordinary for us.

They have 2 trucks, 1 is to load their stuff in and the other truck clamps into the ground like backhoe doing some heavy lifting and raises a ramp to the required floor. A shelf moves up and down the ramp as required effectively bringing their things down from the 14th floor to the ground. I'm thinking they bring down the furniture through the elevator though as we saw a big pile of furniture near the security guards hut yesterday and people were tearing through the pile looking for gold, and that's were we found our new mirror.

Waste Disposal

2008-01-25T17:18:00.001+09:00

Yes, that's right, waste disposal in Changwon, South Korea, is complicated enough to merit a blog post. I'm told that the process for waste disposal is different depending on the building you live in so this post is how waste is collected in my building which is several different ways.

- First, there is a bin for used clothes, blankets...
- Second, there is a bin for organic waste (compost),
- Third, there is a bin for used light bulbs,
- Fourth, there is a container for used liquid waste (oil, bacon fat I guess),
- Fifth, there is a pile for used large items like ironing boards, baskets, buckets...
- Sixth, on Friday nights every building in our subdivision piles their cardboard along the side of our building (we are closest to the main road) and it's collected Saturday afternoon.
- Seventh, on Saturday I found large canvas bags filled with glass bottles however I don't know how to get those bags yet. (added Feb 4th - On Friday nights/ Saturday morning there are 6-7 canvas bags for various recycling options in front of a neighboring building and the security guard monitors the area to ensure proper disposal. They open and clean milk cartons, they save every piece of plastic wrapper and they separate glass bottles from liquor glass bottles. We just started piling everything in one big bag that we will bring to separate everything on Fridays.)
- Eight, I have only guessed that plastic containers are placed in a separate bag and disposed in the large trash cans. I'm probably wrong on this. (see above)

Ninth, regular trash deserves it's own paragraph. First you must purchase blue waste disposal bags as shown to the left with my 9 1/2 slipper next to it for scale. These blue waste disposal bags can be found at most convenience type stores and grocery stores and cost 480 KRW which is about $0.48 cnd each. Why you ask? I heard someone using the term "paying the garbage men". So, you fill your little blue bag up and place it in the large waste containers when you are finished. This kind of makes sense, if you can't recycle it, you pay for it.

Most of all this is placed in a specific location around your building and is unique to each building. Our spot is in the far corner of our parking lot (top right of the parking lot picture in the "Apartment building" post) and I think the garbage men come by daily to pick everything up as I hear them just about every day.

And that's waste disposal in South Korea. I might learn that I'm doing something wrong at a later date and will change this post to reflect my new findings.

South Korean Malls

2008-01-23T08:35:00.001+09:00

So far finding things in malls has been quite the challenge. The malls look more like small apartment buildings covered in signs. The signs advertise what store, shop, school, restaurant, gym, pharmacy, dentist, pool hall... etc is in that building. Most signs have a number on the bottom right and the letter F which tells you what floor the business is on. This makes it very difficult to find things since I don't read Korean and not all signs are self explanatory with images. I found myself having to walk up each floor of a few buildings to see what they had and it's amazing how many stores they can fit in one building.

I really enjoyed figuring this out because I always wondered what all the lights and signs on city buildings were for in movies that have a set in Asia, now I know.

Hike up the Mountain

2008-01-21T16:07:00.001+09:00

On our first weekend in South Korea we decided to hike up the mountain that we can see from our apartment. As it turns out a lot of people hike up the mountain and there are several trails. The first thing we saw that we thought was quite interesting is that they have a Gym set up at the start of the trail and we saw a few people lifting weights before or after their hike. We aren't sure if it's free yet because we haven't tried but we saw a sign-in book and there is a guy watching the area so we think there is a fee or he just makes sure everyone signs in.

As we hike up the mountain we pass a lot of other hikers but the funniest thing we saw was forest advertisements. There are banners hanging in the trees as advertisements. They advertise everywhere around here. It's worse than Toronto with all the apartment flyers.

The mountain goes up pretty high. There isn't any snow on it however just a few cms below the dirt there are ice shards.

We hiked as far as we could and turned back. I think we made it almost halfway up the mountain. We plan on hiking this mountain weekly if not almost daily for exercise.

Apartment Buildings

2008-01-21T15:49:00.001+09:00

Apartment buildings are way different than in Canada. There is only 1 row of units per floor and some buildings, like ours, are not closed in as you can see by the pictures. The first picture is of our lobby and the second is from the elevators leading to the "hallway" and you can see all the buildings around us. There are groups of buildings (6-8) that form small sub-divisions and ours is called "Green Vill".

This is a picture of the parking lot and you will see that people park wherever they can and I must say there are no parking restrictions like in Canada. I think the rule is you need to leave your parking break off and your car in neutral so people can move it to get out. I'm going to revisit apartments at a later date.

The Flight

2008-01-21T12:12:00.001+09:00

The flight was painfully long. We flew 5 hours to Vancouver and had a 3-4 day layover with André which was great and good for the rest. Then we flew out on January 14th and followed the sun during the 11 hour flight to Seoul, South Korea.

We landed and went through customs. I get asked more questions at McDonald's than I did at the S. Korean Customs. We picked up our luggage and proceeded out of the airport where we handed our declaration form to a strapping security guard at the gate. We had checked yes to: Illicit drug such as opium, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, cannabis, or any medicine such as diet pills that may be prohibited or subject to restrictions by law. (Angèle didn't want to hide anything, just in case) The security guard said "Hey, hey, what's this?" Angèle said "Advil for headaches" and he said, Ok, and let us go. I thought I was going to have my first cavity search.

We then had 1 hour to run across the airport reading Korean signs to find our way to our domestic terminal that we didn't even know what number it was. After 10 minutes of following Angèle, who was speed walking with her few pieces of luggage, we finally made it to the check-in point. We gave them all our luggage again and got our ticket and proceeded through the security check, which was just a metal detector. They barely even looked at us and we moved on. We then took our 1 hour flight to Busan where we were picked up by a representative from the school who brought us to our apartment.