Anyeong Haseyo (안 녕 하 세 요)!

I hope the end of September is finding you all well. September is such a beautiful month, a time of transition for everyone; A change of season, a change in job, going back to school, a new country. September has been very grey and rainy for the most part in Korea.

I don’t know if the updates will always be this frequent and long, but for now, when there is so much to say, I figure I better keep on top of it all.

Teaching
We had our second day of teaching, with our Day-Students (teenage boys), which seemed to go well, but I think a constant struggle for us will be the shyness of the children in Korea. They probably know a lot of English, but they often don’t respond to our questions right away, or at all, which can only lead us to conclude they don’t understand. But sometimes it is just shyness. This will be a challenge to overcome. It will be fun getting to know them, though, and they aren’t afraid to laugh. When Will and I were on our way to bring them outside for a break, the elevator closed on me, like right in my face, and I could hear them laughing from inside the elevator.

Love Cell Group
We attended the third Cell group meeting, this one was Love. We had a wonderful time, and everyone in this particular group could speak English very well, and did so the whole time. We felt more like we knew what was going on at this meeting. That evening we learned that Koreans have English names only for the purpose of English visitors (and their English names are just names that sound the closest to their Korean names), but would rather be called their Korean names. This was good to learn, but it means that we are going to try harder to remember the Korean names, which is quite difficult at first, especially when the names are hard to say. It was funny, they said we should pick their cell group out of the four, saying, “The greatest of these is love!” It was funny.

Kugok Waterfall
One day Will and I had some time on our hands and had the hankering to explore Chuncheon and beyond. We drove over a bridge that crossed a river, and once on the other side it was like we were in another world. We had entered a “river town”, a party town that went alongside the river, with a fair and a go-carting track, and it was also right beside some mountains. It reminded me of Banff, but a Korean version. The mountains were so close now that we had to crank our heads right up to see the tops of them. There was a stone path leading to the waterfall, which we presumed was the original old path, and around the path is a worn away newer dirt path. The river we walked along got bigger and more rapid the higher up we went. The air was cool, yet humid, and felt very tropical to me. We crossed over some beautiful stone bridges, a colourful Buddhist gazebo looking thing, and some rocks piled up by Buddhists, which they do in a meditative practice. We reached the wooden staircase that led up to the falls, about halfway up. We were pretty wet from the mist. The rest of the day was the most humid since we got here; Will and I were dripping in sweat just from walking around.

 

Chuseok
Chuseok (추 석 ), pronounced choo-sock, is the biggest Korean holiday, where everything closes down and everyone goes home to see their families. Naturally we had no duties during this time, and some friends of ours from Seoul (who are teaching English at Connexxus) came to Chuncheon to visit us. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of Brother Cha, who offered to pick them up with us (as our car wasn’t big enough to fit them all), and drop them and us off at a restaurant, then picked us up later to take us home. This is just one example among many of the shocking generosity of our JVC community. They gave us a gift of Korean rice cakes, which are a Chuseok tradition, and they are filled with sweet bean paste. I never knew there were beans that were sweet.

We brought them up Anmason, as they hadn’t had a chance to climb a mountain yet, and we had all the exercise equipment at the top to ourselves (because of Chuseok, there weren’t many people up there). We had hoola hoop fights, and tried this special hoola hop that had ridges on it for massaging, but it really hurt.

  

We went to the same Dak-Galbi restaurant, and learned from our friends that you eat it in lettuce and sesame leaves. When Will and I went the first time, we didn’t know what the basket of leaves were for! Some children walked by our table, which had 7 white people sitting around it, and their jaws dropped.

We brought them to church with us, and I sang with the choir, a beautiful song in Korean. They thoroughly enjoyed the pot luck that followed, and my promise to our friends that the pot luck dak-galbi would be far superior to the restaurant kind was true. Dak-galbi is the specialty dish for Chuncheon, and Koreans from other cities will come to Chuncheon just for it. Kyung Jung (the supervisor at the Korean Anabaptist Center who attends JVC) brought us all to the lake, and we all boarded swan paddle boats to explore the lake on. We would try to race each other on these boats, but they went so slowly it was just a race in slow motion.


We then went for a walk around the lake, and there was a special pebble path, made with stones of all shapes and sizes, beside the regular path, made for walking on in bare feet. It is meant to massage ones feet, but MAN did it ever hurt. The challenge was to get to the end but most of us couldn’t.

That night we went to a No-rae Bang, which is Korean karaoke. You rent a room with comfy chairs, and there is a screen that shows the lyrics, and there are tambourines that light up when you hit them. You can just sing your heart out, and not worry about embarrassing yourself in front of strangers.

Sokcho
The next part of the plan with our friends was to go to Sokcho (속 초 ), a coastal city to the east. The bus drive there was breath-taking; scenery of rice paddies, farms, mountains shapely green mountains and blue lakes. After driving through a 3km long tunnel, we came out in Soerak-san park, surrounded by mountains so high the clouds were covering the tops. When we arrived in Sokcho, we had a bacon dish for lunch, that involved frying thick squares of bacon, and eating them in lettuce leaves with the usual side dishes, like Kimchi, rice, and other kinds of Kimchi, made with squash, radishes, etc. At one point I saw a box of “Oreos”, so I bought them, thinking they were the real thing. The logo looked the same, as well as the packaging and the actually cookies themselves. Only when I ate them did I realize they were different. They were a knock-off, but they looked the same. Is that allowed? We saw some funny signs, including a “25 hour market” and “Hip Hop Rounge” (Lounge).

We went to Seorak-san (서 락 산 ) National Park, which is the largest mountain area in South Korea, and has the highest peaks. The traffic going into the park was unbelievable. Alongside the long line of cars and busses, was a stream of people walking there as well. Not a gap was in sight. At the entrance they were selling food, so we tried a number of different Korean snack foods; Sweet potato fries, fried silk worm larvae, and some Korean “street meat”. We wandered to the nearby Buddhist temple, and saw possibly the largest statue of the Buddha I have ever seen. I had seen 50 ft high golden statues of the Buddha in India, but this one was at least 60ft high, made of some kind of metal.

 

We went to the top of a mountain in the cable car, slowly passing through the clouds. From the top, we followed a stone stair case to a Buddhist temple on the mountain. We followed another set of stairs that led to the peak of the mountain, which people were climbing. Will and I climbed to the very top, and posed for pictures by the Korean flag that was flapping in the wind. It was so foggy we couldn’t really see the ground from there, but it was probably just as well. We were over 1,500 metres above ground.
    

That evening we found a nearby fairground, and rented some mini-motorcycles. They couldn’t have been higher than 2 ft, but they could go about 20-25km/hour. VERY fun. We all drove around the lake, on these little paths that seemed to be made for the bikes, but there were no rules or boundaries. It was awesome. The bikes ran on batteries, so every now and then one of our bikes would die, and the guy who ran the place would drive in to check on us and bring a new battery.

The next morning we had breakfast at a “Toast-uh” place (Koreans often add “uh” to the end of a word, and English words, when written in Korean, often end with that sound). We all ordered the “Spectal Toast” (it actually means “Special”), which had eggs, ham, cheese and bacon. Mmm. After an afternoon at the beach, we grabbed lunch at a beach-side restaurant, including squid sausage, which is a specialty of Sokcho, and a side dish of fried minnows.

 

On the bus ride back home to Chuncheon, we saw metal and cement cylinders protruding out of walls and cliffs along the highway. We both had heard that those are explosives, and if North Korea ever attacked, they would be detonated to block the highway in to the South. We saw them there because it was closer to the north.

Random Thoughts
~U-turns when driving are not only legal here, they are expected in some spots. There are signs that tell you where you can make a U-Turn to get where you need to go.
~There are people who come to parking lots in apartment complexes and ring bells to say they are selling something. One man came by ringing a bell, and he was selling octopus.
~I have noticed that when Koreans have pet dogs, they are always very small (many have little dog sweaters, or have the tips of their ears dyed). Our friends told us that is because Koreans eat dog meat, but only from big dogs. Haven’t tried that yet, and I don’t think I want to.

We have the rest of the week off, so we will spend this time wisely preparing class lessons and studying Korean. I would love to hear from all of you!