Fall Foliage

This Saturday was my friend Jess' birthday. She's a very adventurous and active person, so for her birthday she wanted to go down to Naejangsan to go hiking in the mountains and look at the fall leaves. This weekend was the peak weekend in Naejangsan, so it was rather busy and we were only able to get the slow train there and back because the fast train was booked. Half of the group went down there Friday night, and the rest of us followed on the first train out on Saturday morning. We made it to the train station around noon, and after a little debate on whether or not we should ask for directions, found the bus to the mountain and hopped on.

The bus was overly crowded with ajumas in hiking gear, younger couples in matching winter outfits, and Korean tourists, as well as our group of foreigners. We got to what seemed like the area we were supposed to get off at, and everyone got off the bus. The traffic was frustratingly slow, but it was still moving faster than you can walk. But because my Korean was the best out of the people there (and mine is severely limited at best), we got off as well when we should have just stayed on. So we ended up walking several kilometers to get to the area that we were supposed to stay.

We made it to a rather busy intersection full of hikers, tour buses, traffic cops, and some of the fittest people over 60 I've ever seen. After trying to have a phone conversation with the Korean man who owned the minbak we were staying in, we were picked up in a car and driven about two blocks to the place we had booked the week before.


Generally, minbak means a home stay. So you are essentially staying in someone's spare room in their home, and meals are often included. However in the case of Minbak Row in Naejangsan, the street of minbaks was simply a collection of supposedly low-cost, low luxury places to sleep at night. Our particular two rooms were supposed to sleep 15 people, but the 12 of us were in rather close quarters. When we first arrived, there was some confusion as to whether we were even in the right place, as there were no bags in the room and half our group had come in the night before. It turned out that they had stayed in town on Friday night and left their bags at the police station so they could go hiking in the morning. So we dropped our bags in the minbak and went off in search of lunch.

We got about 200 feet from the minbak before we ran into a restaurant. This turned out to be the closest place to get food, and probably one of the more expensive Korean restaurants I've been to. We did, however, get to see a whole pig on a spit right by our table.


After getting lunch, we decided to try and find the rest of our friends. They said they were heading back from one of the temples on the mountain, and we should just walk towards the main entrance of the park and hopefully we'd catch them in passing.


The walk was long and crowded, but we did manage to see lots of fall colors along the way, and beautiful scenery was captured by careful camera framing. :)


We didn't see the other members of our group so much as hear them. Jess is loud at the best of times, and we could hear her talking long before we saw the rest of our group. They had been waiting by a rather beautiful tree so we could get the whole group photographed together. Of course we couldn't get a Korean to take a picture for us, so Sean volunteered to take a group picture with everyone's camera.


After wishing Jess a happy birthday, the five of us that had come that afternoon headed up the mountain to see what we could find.


One person dropped out after we made it to a temple, so there were four of us that made it to the hermitage that was up some rather daunting stone stairs.


At the top at the hermitage was probably the ugliest Buddha statue I've ever seen. It's a shame, too, because it would have made a great picture. As it is, this picture just seems comical to me.


It was starting to get on towards early evening, so the two other girls decided to head back towards the minbak. James wanted to make it to the top before sundown, and I wanted to keep climbing, since we had long left the crowds behind us at the temple. So James, being the mountain goat that he is, loped off towards the summit, and I had a pleasant hour's walk by myself in the woods at dusk.



It started to get dark around 5:30, and the mosquitoes were starting to come out, so I turned around and headed back down the mountain. James eventually caught up with me, and by the time we had gotten back to the minbak 2 hours and about 5 kilometers later, it was pitch black. We met up with the rest of the group and sat around outside the 7/11 talking, drinking, and playing card games. I headed back to the room around 10:30 because we had decided that some of us were going to take the cable car at 6am the next morning to watch the sunrise. I was exhausted from climbing the mountain that evening, and I knew if I didn't go to bed at a reasonable hour I wasn't going to get up in time for the cable car, which was a good half hour walk from our rooms.

We had asked the owner of the minbak earlier that evening to turn the ondol (under-floor heating system) off, since the room was stifling hot, and with 12 people sleeping in the room it wasn't cold enough outside to warrant any heating at all. Unfortunately, the ondol was turned back on around 3am. So with sleeping on a burning hot floor, getting bit by mosquitoes and ants during the night, and being awakened several times by others drunkenly returning to the room at all hours, needless to say I didn't sleep very well.

I woke up at 5am the next morning, and guiltily roused the few people that wanted to catch the cable car at 5:15. I didn't mind as much as I would have if people hadn't confirmed the night before that they wanted to be woken up. I'm not a fast walker, even when I have gotten a good night's sleep, so I headed towards the cable car a little earlier than the other five people who had decided to get up. We made it to the cable car at around 6:15am, and even though we were late, we were the first ones to use the cable car that morning. It was still dark when we got to the top, and we found the observation deck to watch the sunrise.


It wasn't the most amazing sunrise I've ever seen, especially since the actual sun was blocked by one of the mountains, but it was a pleasant morning nonetheless.



After getting a minuscule cup of coffee from a restaurant located on the edge of the mountain and having a rather amusing chat with a group of Korean hikers who were still drunk from soju, we headed back down from the top. The trees below us reminded me of some sort of weird cauliflower garden.


By the time we got back down to the base of the mountain an hour or so later, the line to get on the cable car had about 200 people in it, and probably would have taken at least 45 minutes to get through. We looked around the bottom, and I was fascinated by the persimmon trees, which were prolific and looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book or a Tim Burton movie.

By the way, if you've never eaten a frozen persimmon, I highly recommend it. It's like a fruit slushy in a peel.


Then the six of us headed back to the minbak, because our train left around noon and we needed to pack up and catch the bus back to the train station. We took the scenic walk on the way back instead of the more crowded and open trail.


We did notice on the way back quite a few Koreans who all seemed to have the same super-expensive camera with giant zoom-lens and tripod who were all taking pictures of the same thing.


But the walk was nice, the colors were more vibrant that morning even though it was overcast, and we just barely made it onto the bus back to the station as it started to rain.

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.

Just a quick note or two

I changed the name of my blog. I wasn't too thrilled with the original one, but seeing as how my default user-name had been used by myself about 6 years ago for a class project, I opted for the next best thing. I have changed the name to my name in Hangul (it says "beh-ri-ahn-nah).

I've also been compiling a 'list' of sorts for a while. There's quite a few things I see here on a day-to-day basis that just don't seem either blog-worthy or have become so common-place now that once I've seen them I promptly forget about them. This list is still in draft mode, as I know there are about 20 things I've forgot to put on there, but as soon as I have been reminded of them, the post will show up.

On a school note, we had our monthly birthday party today. The requisite massive amount of pictures and pizza with fried chicken and noodle soup were all present. Afterwards someone had the bright idea to take the kids on a walk by the river, seeing as how it's a lovely bright and sunny day (it's been raining, or had the threat of rain for the past two months almost every day). Imagine taking about 50 kids, ice cream in a bag in one hand and their partner's hand in the other, on a walk down by a river full of insects, flowers, joggers, bikers, ajumas, and other fascinating things for a 6 year old. My class of 7 was mostly well behaved, which is more than can be said for some of the other classes. Part of it I'm sure is that my class is the oldest and has been with EWAS the longest. The other part is they know better with me - I don't let them misbehave, I don't care how old they are. The kids were hot and tired when we got back to the class, and Fiona teacher took all 50 of them into the Fun House, so the rest of the teachers have a relatively easy day today.

Temple Thursday

James and I checked out of our hotel at 7am on Thursday since we wanted an early start and had a decent distance to travel. We took a bus from Yeosu to Suncheon, and then caught another bus to Jinju. Jinju was a middle ground for the two of us. There was plenty in town for me to see, and James could catch a bus to go to Jirisan National Park. Jirisan has the second highest peak in the country, at 1915meters. At this point in the week, I'd had enough of climbing peaks, so I told him to have fun, and I'd tour the city (aside from the fact that James must be related to mountain goats on one side - he climbs really fast, even by ajuma's standards). So we found a place to stay in Jinju, since there wasn't any lockers at the bus station and we weren't about to carry them around, and I headed to Jinju fortress, which was only a few blocks from where we were staying. On my way there, I passed the biggest Buddha statue I'd ever seen sitting very happily outside a convenience store across the street from the fortress.

There are two gates for the Jinju Fortress, and I went in through the eastern one. 

The fortress is a registered historical site and sits just north of the Nam River. In 1593, the Koreans lost a battle with the Japanese and most of the population of the city in the process. It's apparently one of the best restored city-fortresses in the country, and is a pretty popular park for the locals to visit. It should have been W1,000 to get in, but I was ushered through the gates by the attendant without paying.

Just inside the eastern gate is Cheongyeolsa, which is a shrine for 39 patriots. You'd never tell it was a shrine by the large amount of people sitting inside (or standing underneath the floor) eating watermelon and enjoying the shade.

And it has a great view of the river.

Near Cheongyeolsa is Uigisa, a shrine to Nongye. She was one of several gisaeng (similar to a geisha) selected to entertain Japanese generals following the invasion. She led one of the generals to the edge of a cliff, put her arms around him and then threw herself into the river below where they were both drowned. The shrine was erected in 1824 in her honor.

There were several temples and pavilions in the fortress, which was really more like a heavily walled park. 

One of the temples had some interesting interior decorations, including statues in the left corner, 

the seemingly requisite gold Buddhas in the center,

and an odd painting of someone with several hands holding various objects, and concentric rings of hands surrounding them.

After spending a few hours in the fortress, I decided to head across the river to Wolgyeong-sa, the largest temple I've seen since I've been here. 

It's located in the middle of a large area of apartment buildings, and looks a bit out of place.

It's beautifully painted inside, with a 'restaurant' on the first floor where you can get kimbop (rice and seaweed), and large worship areas on the second and third floors.

The third floor was  amazingly beautiful. You had to take your shoes off before you even got to the top of the stairs, so I'm assuming the entire floor was a place of worship. 

This is also the only place I think I've seen with a white Buddha, at least on this scale. There were three ajumas sitting on the floor near the back of the room eating watermelon and some sort of bread pudding. They asked me to sit and eat with them, and then told me that I could go downstairs to get kimbop if I was still hungry (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were saying, since none of them knew English, we were using sign language and my very limited Korean vocabulary).  So I took that as my cue to leave and head further up the road to the next temple, Jeongbeop-sa.

(This sign says Jeongbeop-sa to the left and Wolgyeong-sa to the right. Sa means temple.)

On the way up to the next temple, I passed this sign:

I don't know what it translates to, but I think it's pretty obvious from the picture what it's about (the boat says USA on it).

I headed up to Jeongbeop-sa, but it was less than remarkable. I was greeted by a rather vicious, though chained up, dog that growled when I tried to approach, and started barking at me when I got too close. One of the monks came out and sprayed water in front of him and ushered me into the small complex, but it only took me about two minutes to walk around. The temple itself had it's doors closed and I didn't know how to ask if it was ok for me to go in, so I didn't. The monk had to spray near the dog again to let me leave, and I mumbled a thank-you to her as I scurried away.

After the temples I decided to head to Jinyang Lake. I had wanted to take a bus there, but couldn't find any bus stops, so I hailed a cab. The Nam River, which was dammed in 1969, creates Jinyang Lake. I had read in my guidebook that during the summer you could rent row boats to go out on the lake. 

I didn't actually see where you could rent any boats, but there were other things to see there. I missed out on the children's zoo, but saw a nice family park

walking trails, 

a traditional pavilion

and I saw the dam from a distance.

After a long wait for the bus, I decided to head back to the hotel and take a nap before James got back. When I woke up an hour or so later the air conditioner had stopped working. I went downstairs to ask for help (with my phrasebook in hand), and she seemed to say she could fix it from where she was. When I got back to the room it was running again, but blowing warm air. So I sat down to write out in Korean "The air conditioner is broken. I'm hot. Please show me how to fix it" since she didn't seem to understand my pronunciation. At this point James came back in from Jirisan. We convinced the owner, after much gesticulation and pointing to the phrasebook, to let us switch rooms since she wasn't able to get it to blow cold air again. James and I were both exhausted (him more so than me of course, since he'd just trekked up the side of several mountains), so we went to sleep early.