September Survival

September's been a rather busy month for me, both in school and out of it.

At the beginning of the month I took a level test to see if I could join the free Korean classes offered by city hall. It was a difficult test (it was all written in Korean), and I was impressed that I was able to get any right at all, let alone the 6/30 score that I received. But because I missed some of the earlier questions (they got progressively more difficult as you went), my level was determined to be beginner. Which would have been fine, except that the beginner classes are only offered on Wednesday from 4pm-6pm (I get off work at 5:30 and the classes are a half hour subway ride from my school). So I asked if I could go into the level 1 class, which is offered from 7pm-9pm once a week. They said it would probably be too difficult for me, but put me in for the October class anyway. I've since decided that I (probably) won't go, as I really do need to start from the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to start. I asked about the discounted language classes offered by my company, but you have to have been working with them for three months before you qualify. So I think I'm just going to wait it out and start classes in early November.

So on September 5th, the Seoul Drum Festival began. I wanted to see part of it, so I checked out the directions on the website, which were slightly confusing. I started by trying to find it at Children's Grand Park, but after wandering around for almost 2 hours, I got a little frustrated. I did get to see a rather large and diverse park that I'd never been to.

At the entrance to the park.

A large fountain of the type that's rather ubiquitous here. It lights up and plays music at night.

It says "Mushroom Village"

The rather depressing zoo located inside the park.

I'm guessing this was part of a "traditional Korean stories" section...

I called James, who checked the website and figured out that it was actually in Seoul Forest, which was several subway stops away. So I hopped back on the subway and headed to Seoul Forest, which is located in the middle of one of the smoggiest and most industrial areas I've been to in Seoul. Someone has since described Seoul Forest as more of a "twig-land" than a forest, as it's only a few years old.

I've been trying to get a picture of the completely dyed dogs, but the ability escapes me. Apparently you can't tell these two apart, so pink and green tails were in order.

I found the 'forest' to be more of a large park, and not even as large and tree covered as Children's Grand Park.

Part of the playground - kids could climb in and around a giant metal person.

After looking around for about 15 minutes, I decided to try the info booth. Through my broken Korean, I deduced that the festival was indeed in Seoul Forest, but I had missed the performance for the day, and the next one wasn't until the following weekend. So I headed to James' place, since we were meeting up with some friends of his for dinner and drinks.

We went pretty far north on the subway to get some Moroccan food, and then headed to a place called Ka Brew which had just opened. It was 5,000won for all you can drink beer at the pub, which had its own microbrewery.

The price was amazing, but the beer was only average (though certainly better than the bottled Korean beer).

The next weekend one of my closer friends Stephanie had her leaving party. She left to go on a short Euro trip before heading back home to DC, after which she's thinking about moving to Prague to study.

So James and I headed back to Uijeongbu, where we had dinner at an Indian restaurant, tried to go bowling but couldn't because the place was shut down, went to a bar that filled up immediately with all 27 of us, left and went to another bar, around 1am headed for a noraebang for three hours, and then headed to Stephanie's place to crash.

Me, Joey and Lauren at the Indian restaurant called Durga.

The biggest leaving party I've been to - 27 people showed up to say goodbye to Steph.

Steph and James getting up to some crazy stuff in the noraebang

I wasn't immune to the noraebang fever, either. It was 4am though...

So after crashing at Stephanie's, James and I headed back into Seoul because we had a picnic planned with Kathryn at 2pm at Children's Grand Park to celebrate her 30th birthday. Surprisingly, we were able to make it back into Seoul, get showered, changed, pick up food for the picnic, and make it out to the park on time with bright smiling faces.

Melissa, James, me, Fan, and Gary

Our amazing picnic, which lasted for about 9 hours!

Me, Fan, and Gary

There was a wild rabbit who kept hopping about and got rather close. The Koreans seemed to enjoy clapping and shouting at it to try and scare it.

We continued the picnic at Kathryn and Gary's house once it got dark at the park.

After a late night version of the picnic, we headed out to Itaewon for drinking and dancing. I had my first experience with the two hills in Itaewon - Hooker Hill and Homo Hill, both completely apropos names. The two hills are right next to each other, and while looking for the later to go dancing, we went down the former. I'm not naive, but I've never seen a place like this before. I won't go into details, of which there aren't many anyways, but suffice it to say that hill left a definite impression on me. We made it to the dancing street, where we (being James, Gary, Kathryn, Michelle and myself) danced for several hours before I decided to call it a night and head home around 3 or 4 am.


Stephanie had shown up to Kathryn's picnic for a few hours and left her sunglasses there, and I had left a necklace at her house over the weekend, so we decided to meet up for dinner. She wanted to go to Insadong one last time, as there's a vegetarian restaurant there she really enjoyed. Insadong is only about 15 minutes by subway from my house, so I headed there early to do a little bit of sightseeing and shopping (it's a big tourist area).

The face of a sculpture on Insadong street

Our vegetarian meal - yummy!

The railroad tea shop on Insadong street that I wanted to take my parents to. Everything has been taken from old railroad cars.

Steph had been wanting to go to a batting cage for a year. So when we heard the sound of metal bats ringing out, we just had to stop.

On Friday the 18th, my kids had a photo shoot for their yearbook. And yes, it was a photo shoot. We went to Dosan Park, and were there for about 2.5 hours, taking class, individual, and candid shots.

Sapphire class - me, Miss Alison and the kids. I was told my picture would be from the waist up, so since it was Friday I wore jeans. Oh well.

Playing the "cooperation game" so the photographer could get small group shots

The boys examining, and then later killing, the bugs on the ground.

The girls played telephony - an apparent favorite of the photographer.

This could have been a good shot. I think Anika made it a great one.

The next day, I met up with Kathryn, Gary and James for a French photography exhibit, and then an open-air jazz concert at the Seoul Arts Center.

An add for the photography exhibit.

Me, Kathryn and Gary at the Jazz concert

Gary and James

The jazz quartet, and the scenery behind them.

After the Jazz festival, the four of us headed to Habangcheon to a friend of James' house named Jess. Jess had recently moved to a new apartment and gotten her Masters, so she was celebrating by throwing a house party. The four of us waited for almost an hour for two girls I had met online who live in Apgujeong and had just arrived in Korea less than three weeks ago. The six of us went to Jess' house, where we stayed until around 3am, at which time things were beginning to slow down and I decided it was time to call it a night. I went to Uijeongbu the next morning for a doctor's check up, and met up with a former Korean co-worker of mine from EWAS for coffee, and then had dinner with another co-worker before heading back home to Seoul.

I'm also a member of the national council for ATEK. We've recently elected our first president, and we held our first meeting on Skype on Wednesday. It's a fledgling organization, and as hogwan representative for the country, I'm finding it a bit hard to know my role and what I can do to help. I'm doing what I can, though, and I hope over the next year the roles become a bit more defined and I'm able to help a little bit more.

This weekend I plan on going to the Seoul Mass Freeze, and then I'm throwing a housewarming party on Saturday on my rooftop. We'll see how that goes - I'm historically rather bad at throwing parties, but this will be byob so I don't go broke. The rooftop should keep the neighbors from getting annoyed, and I live close to a downtown area, so if people get bored we can always migrate.

And next Monday is International Costume day at school (I'm doing Ireland!), Thursday is a half day, and we have Friday off for Chuseok - the Korean Thanksgiving. I'll probably be going to the islands near Incheon for Chuseok with Gary, Kathryn, James, and Kobus (a friend of James').

Busy, busy!

Lotus Lantern Festival

This year Buddha's Birthday fell on a Saturday. It's a big deal in Korea, and had it fallen on a weekday, it would have been a day off for most Koreans. The celebration begins a few weeks earlier with people all over the country hanging lotus lanterns in the city, and especially near Buddhist temples, to remind people that it's coming. There is a Lotus Lantern Festival the weekend before, which I attended with several of my friends.

The main event for the festival was on Sunday April 26th, so I canceled my Korean class for the week and headed out late Sunday morning for Seoul. I had planned to meet up with friends later in the afternoon, but I got there around noon, so I wandered around to look at the area by myself.

A mass of lanterns in Tapgol Park in Insadong, in front of the remains of the Wongak Temple.

I wandered through Tapgol Park, and discovered that the station I got off at was an easy walk to Insadong - the ancient cultural tourist trap where I purchased all my traditional Christmas presents last year. I came across some ajumas making mini lotus lanterns for donations.

The ajumas hard at work making mini lanterns outside Tapgol park.

There was a woman standing near the ajumas, trying to get people to buy the lanterns for only 1000 won (about a dollar). She pointed to the sign that she had written, which said something to the effect of "meals will provide to men are old". I was able to tell the woman, in Korean, that I understood what she was asking for, but that her sign didn't make sense in English. So I offered to write her a new one. I wanted to write something along the lines of "The donations you give to purchase a lantern will go towards purchasing meals for older men", but it was too far away from the original sign. So this is what she ended up with:

Photo courtesy of a Chris Chien, who I didn't see at all that day, but who saw my sign later on that day and thought it was awesome enough to take a picture of.

She seemed very pleased, and after I gave her 1000 won for a lantern, she gave me another for free as a thank you. At this point I headed back to the subway station to meet up with Kathryn. Kathryn and I chatted over chaumchi-kimchi-jiggae (tuna and kimchi stew - yummy!) in the Jongno area.

Kathryn took a picture of me in Topgol park with my two lanterns, which I later lost.

I took Kathryn through the same areas I had been, and we went through Insadong as well. We had forgotten it was the Hi Seoul Festival as well, and we came across these lovely dancers, who broke out into dance in the middle of the very crowded street:

And right after the dancing, I ran into one of my students from my morning classes and his mom. She spoke no English at all, and he knew no English two months ago when he started, so communication was rather difficult. I had to explain to the rather worried looking mother that I was his English teacher, and not just some random foreigner talking to her son. She indicated with her hand for us (myself and Kathryn) to follow her, and then she proceeded to walk away, without a glance back to see if we were following, or even if her son was still with her. She ended up buying us a box each of some traditional Korean spun sugar candy (that I also lost later on in the evening), but it was a good distance away from where we had been and the whole time Kathryn and I were watching her son to make sure he didn't wander off and wondering where she was taking us, and even if she had meant for us to follow.

Little wooden statue men in Insadong. They're traditional, and I have no idea why.

After wandering around we went for coffee, but apparently it hit Kathryn wrong and she said she needed to go home just as James and Dayna got to the station to meet us. So James, Dayna and I went to look at the festival.

The first part we saw was an area with a bunch of tents that had everything from grinding your own coffee, to painting hanji paper crafts and meditating with monks.

Well-Being is Korea's version of the health craze. This is Well-Being Yoga. With plates.

Dayna talking about fair trade practices while grinding her own coffee.

The coolest version of double dutch I've ever seen. Look closely, and you can see the ropes form a cross that the person is jumping over. So you need 4 people to hold the ropes instead of just 2.

The penultimate Jenga game.

After wandering through the street of tents and such, we ended up at Jogyesa, which is the largest Buddhist shrine in Seoul and the headquarters of the Jogye sect.

The entrance to Jogyesa, which was overly adorned with lanterns. We thought they might have spelled something with the colors, but we couldn't tell for sure.

More lanterns just inside the entrance, with the seven-tired pagoda in the background to the left of the tree.

How can you take a scolding seriously when your mom is wearing a lotus on her head?

The white lanterns are hung for relatives or friends who have passed on.

The architecture of the temple was amazing- even the doors were beautiful.

A happy Buddha statue at the temple, seemingly asking you for money.

We stayed at the temple for a while, and watched a performance with dancers from the traditional Hahoe masked dance, though it wasn't the original dance itself but rather just the characters from it. After the dancing we met up with some other friends, who had just had dinner. We recommended to them that they watch the performance, and then Dayna, James and I went to get something to eat.

Girls in Hanbok, traditional Korean clothing, waiting for something.

James knew a small place in a back alley in Insadong that served home-made mandu (dumplings) that was delicious.

My favorite Korean food - steamed mandu.

After dinner we headed back to the main street by the Jongno subway station, which is where the lotus lantern parade was to be held.

Lining up waiting to start the parade

It started drizzling right around this time, and since the sun was going down it got rather chilly as well. We decided to move from where we were to get a better view, so we switched to the other side of the street. And before we saw anything, we heard this:

The parade was fascinating. I sat next to James the entire two hours, and we talked about all the different floats, people, and just random weird stuff that kept passing by us. After the parade was over, we headed to the subway to go home, at which point I realized I'd left my bag with my lanterns, my candy, and my brochures under my seat by the parade route. But it was late, I was cold, and I just wanted to go home, so I didn't go back for them.

Here are the photographic and video highlights from the parade:

I tried to catch the peacock on film while it was breathing fire, but it didn't want to cooperate.