Jon's Korean Experience

I've done so many things lately, and I just haven't had any time--or any energy--to write about anything. The fact that this blog entry tool doesn't like to keep up with my typing and I frequently have to go back to add letters it couldn't keep up with doesn't help...

 

Anyway, a few weekends ago, May 17th to be exact, myself and a couple friends from Jinju went to a baseball game in Busan. The Lotte Giants vs. the Woori somethingorothers. The game started at 2, and the seats were all "festival seating." I hadn't heard of this before, but apparently it means first come first serve. So we aimed to show up at 12pm, which we almost did. On the way out of the train station, there were people selling roast chicken everywhere. I bought a box, but then realized something very important. I didn't see a chicken roaster anywhere... Often people sell them off trucks with an oven in the back running off a generator, but not this time. I was hungry enough at that point though, a little salmonella only meant flavour. Us coming from Jinju had to meet up with 2 of my friends from Suncheon--a town in the southwest province--so when we arrived I called them up. We eventually found where they were supposed to be, and my friend asked "don't you see us?" Now, my friend is short for Korean standards, has olive skin and black, shoulder length hair. Her friend has similar features, but is shorter. And I, of course, am a six-foot-tall, white blonde man. The only one around, oddly enough. Thus I felt it made more sense for her to look for me. Which we did, and in we went.

 

Now when my friend who bought the tickets said we had to arrive so early, I just assumed there'd be plenty of seats. It made sense.. 2 hours before the game, who would be there, right?? Yeah, it was half full already. We got decent seats in the front row in the left field and settled in for roast salmo... err.. chicken and waited for the game. People wandered by selling the traditional beer and other drinks, but also more roast chicken, cardboard hats--which we bought for 50 cents each--and of course dried squid. Before the game started, the cheerleaders--yes, they had cheerleaders--came out and got the crowd going. They were led by a guy jumping around like a maniac, and there were also some guys playing drums. And naturally the mascot running around and doing tricks.

 

Once the cheering started, it didn't stop. The first batter came up, and the crowd started to sing a song with the batter's name in it. Then they started to sing songs that translated simply to "get a hit" or "home run!" and things like that. They obliged often. The score in the end was something like 9 to 2. Woori went through 3 pitchers. The number of cheers and songs that everyone seemed to know was really amazing. And the fact that they sang a song for every player as they got up to bat was really cool. My frieds and I decided on songs for ourselves were we sports players in Korea. One chose something by Wagner, another chose Beethoven's 9th, and I just chose Beethoven's 5th.

 

After the game, we headed to the Haundae beach area for some tacos, which were amazing as always. After a beach dinner, we split up with some of us going off to other places in Busan, myself and one friend heading back home to Jinju, and two other friends heading back to Suncheon. Got back in time to meet up with friends for a usual night out on the town.

 

Last weekend, the Canadian Embassy gave an information session in Gwangju, the capital of Jeollanam-do, west of Gyeongsangnam-do where Jinju is. We asked a bunch of people if they wanted to go, and lots were willing, until they found out we'd have to get a busat 7am to make it there on time. So only Carolina and I ended up going. It actually wasn't so fantastic. The consular information was stuff I already knew, at least, and the Korean government informtion offered was delivered in some pretty poor English which made the topics, difficult to understand already, even more difficult. Some people came clearly just to complain about some things that the Canadian and Korean governments do. Like, the whole residency thing for taxes which is ridiculously confusing, and labour laws in Korea (which are actually quite good but few people bother to stand up for their rights, and Korean employers do tend to try and steal money from foreign employees trying to say some laws don't apply to us).

 

After the information session, a local brought us to a place for lunch and showed us how to get to some points of interest in town. Gwangju was the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in... the 60s I believe, and one day--May 18th--the military government sent troops to quash their protests and fired on the protestors, killing hundreds (I think..). Thus, there are parks and memorials everywhere, and Gwangju is often called the seat of Korean democracy. We only got to see one memorial park among many, then headed downtown for some good, western style food for dinner and a bit of a night out. Hotels were really hard to find, but we eventually found one good enough that didn't gouge us. The next day, a light breakfast and heavy, steak-filled lunch. Hard to turn down really.

 

I swear I did something cool on the intervening weekend between these two events, but it mustn't have been too amazing because I really can't remember what I did. If I remember I'll write something. Tomorrow I plan to go to Seoul with a friend to listen to some jazz, without interruption, and do some palace tours. I'm probably going to have to stay in jimjilbangs though. These are places like spas, with public saunas and baths, as well as different rooms to make you sweat in different ways, apparently, and places to sleep at. I always have a picture of people sleeping with wooden blocks as pillows, which is a definite possibility if you get there late and all the pillows are gone... hope that's not me!

For a long time, I'd heard of this temple called Bul-guk-sa. Since I started here, really. All my students would talk about it and say how amazing the place is. I was told that the picture of the really giant Buddha from the cover of my Lonely Planet came from there. So I was psyched when I got a long weekend off with nothing else on the go. Everyone had Monday off for some, at the time, unknown holiday, so I got a couple of friends to come down with me.

 

So saturday afternoon, myself and a friend head to the bus station for Gyeongju, the town with this giant temple complex. It's particularly famous for being the capital of the Silla empire. Quick Korean history lesson: back in the day (I think something like 400BC), the Korean peninsula was neatly divided into 3 seperate kingdoms: Silla in the south east, Baekje in the south west, and Goguryeo in the north. Well, the Sillan king Munmu was the one that finally conquered the other two and brought about the first united Korean peninsular nation. As you can then imagine, there's lots of cool stuff around Gyeongju to see!

 

We arrived late in the afternoon--evening really, around 5:45pm--and our first order of business was food. This is when we discovered the disturbing lack of restaurants. That's not to say there weren't any, but they were quite sparse, to say the least. We eventually found a doaeji-galbi (marinated pork barbecue) resturant and ate there. Next order of business, hotel. There seemed to be plenty of new ones about, so we didn't think we'd have trouble finding one. Well, all the new ones were either booked up, or much too expensive (like W130,000 for one room for one night!). After going to somewhere between 12 to 15 hotels, motels and yeogwon's (like a Korean-style hostel, but usually with single rooms and no dorm option), we found a small yeogwon with a room for the night that wasn't going to cost us an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, it didn't have a business card, but there was a nice, big, new hotel across the streert, with a tall sign, called Hotel Business. We figured this was a good a landmark as any and headed off for some sightseeing.

 

Our first stop was a series of parks known to have a large number of Korean traditional tombs. These things aren't really exciting to look at, aside from the fact that these particular tombs were everywhere between 5 meters to 5 storey's tall. Otherwise, they just looked like large mounds of grass. We couldn't really take pictures because of the lighting, but that didn't stop us from trying. After the first section of park, we went in to a temple area to have a look. We were greeted by an eager monk who wanted to know where we were from, a made sure we'd eaten and found a place to stay. He said it was very busy because of Buddha's birthday celebrations. It finally clicked. That explained why it was so busy, Gyeongju essentially still being the capital for Buddhism in Korea, given it's large temple complexes (more than just Bul-guk-sa). The monk let us know that there was a free "Korean traditional music concert" just down the street that was scheduled to start soon. We thanked him very much and wandered off, deciding to detour throuh the rest of the park--whose gate was half open--on the way to the concert. The park was better maintained and landscaped than the previous sections, but again too dark for photos. We found our way out of that section to a third, larger, flater section, which also went past which I believe they said was Korea's first observatory. It was made of stone, with 12 layers, each layer with 30 stones or some such thing, with 366 stones in total. One layer a year, one stone per day for the whole year. Sort of strange actually, given that those numbers are for a solar calendar and the Koreans used the lunar calendar at the time (as far as I know).

 

Eventually, we made it to the park with the concert. It wasn't actually free in the end, we had to pay a whole dollar. The park was actually an old sight of a palace that, naturally, had been completely destroyed by the Japanese in the invasion from 1592-5. They had restored some of the pagodas and the pond it was on. It was interesting, as were the relics on display in the pagodas that were dredged up from pond when they restored it. The music was... well, Korean folk music played by a concert band.

 

After the concert, we started the walk back in to the town center--at least, we hoped. We actually got back in to the town reasonably easily, but we didn't recognize where exactly we were or where to go next. We walked around for quite a while, then decided to stop at a police box to ask directions. I asked, in Korean, where the Hotel Business was, and the police officer said he had no idea. He didn't think it was in Gyeongju at all. I assured him it was. He called many places, and as he was talking, my friend and I found a map, found out where we were, and found a good idea about where to go. I tried to tell the officer that I had an idea where to go, and he told us to sit down. Eventually, he called a consulate of some sort to translate. I told them we had an idea where to go, but the officer was really intent on helping us. Well, that didn't work, we still had to wait. Eventually he said, in Korean, "Oh, I know the hotel! It's that way!" And he pointed vaguely off in the direction we thought we had to go. So we said thanks, and went on our way. We got back to the area we knew the place to be, but still couldn't find it exactly. After another hour or two, we finally found the place and discovered we'd been close to it for the past two hours, we just had to walk a few feet further down a road. Our room found, we decided to get a drink at a bar called "Perhaps." A small, nicely interiored place with cheap drinks and a nice owner who spoke some English.

 

The next day we eventually got up around 9:30am to go out and meet another friend at the bus station. After breakfast we hoped a cab for the famous Bul-guk-sa temple. We knew it'd be about W20,000, but figured it reasonable between the 3 of us, especially given it'd save us the hassle of getting lost taking a wrong bus, or getting off at the wrong place. We got there easy enough, the driver trying to convince us that the hiking trail between the temple and a famous grotto was closed. We thanked him and got off. The temple complex was pretty amazing. I got some great photos of the grounds, and a lot of Buddhas. I've never seen so many Buddha statues in one spot! So much gold! We were allowed in to almost everywhere to pray if we wanted, but none of us were Buddhists, and felt uncomfortable going in just for a photo op. Actually, many places, though not all, prohibited photos from the inside. I dealt with this by taking photos zoomed in from the outside. ;-)

 

After seeing wandering around the really crowded temple complex for an hour or so, we started the hike towards the grotto. Much harder than I anticipated. Though it was paved, it was entirely up, usually steeply. That took us about an hour or so, whereupon we had to wait for almost another hour in line to see this thing. I had thought this was going to be where my big giant Buddha was, but I was sadly mistaken. Almost wasn't worth it, though it was free, so hard to turn away. We also saw another temple on the other side of the grotto, so it was like a bonus feature. We hung out for a bit there, then decided to head to this place called Girimsa, which the guide book told us was nearly as big, and so just as impressive, as Bulguksa, but much less visited owing to it's difficulty to get to. We looked around to see if there was a bus or taxi we could get, but couldn't seem to find much. Eventually, one of my friends managed to chase down a cab, and we got in and headed towards Girimsa, for another W20,000. The ride was much longer than I had anticipated--it looked like it'd be a 10 minute drive on the map, but it turned out to be almost 30. As we were talking about stuff, the cabbie saw the cover of my guide and figured we were talking about it, and mentioned that statue I`d wanted to see was actually in Daegu. Oh well, next time. As we were getting closer, the cab driver said that getting a cab from there would be hard, and offered to take us there, to another place called Golgulsa, and back to Gyeongju for anothrt W40,000. At this point, we figured we could either do that, or risk getting stuck, so we agreed.

 

Girimsa was similar to Bulguksa, though the area it sat in was flatter, and the temples weren`t as tall. We went through a bunch of the different temples, and as we were walking through we heard some Buddhist chants off in a side temple. We wandered around to have a look to find a monk praying. Kind of cool to hear that sort of thing for real. We left him to his own peace, and carried on towards a bit of a museum in the middle. Everything was marked in Korean, though, so we weren`t entirely sure of all the significance of everything. Though the one Buddha in the center we surmizedto be the one mentioned in the guide book, made of saw dust and paper, and lacquered over, about 500 years ago or so. Though it really just looked like any other statue.

 

Off to our awaiting cabbie, and the ride to Golgulsa. This was a series of `caves,` though they were mostly erroded, in a cliff face. There were monuments and carvings in each of the twelve caves, and a large carving of Buddha in the stone at the top--I believe it`s the largest such carving in Korea, though I could be mistaken. Climbing around the mountain was pretty cool. I was disappointed that my camera battery had died before going to the grotto, and I was stuck with only a quicksnap I`d bought, with no more photos left at this point. The view from the top was pretty amazing.

 

Back to town--not sure how long the drive was to be honest, but I wouldn`t be surprised to find it was an hour. One of my friends had a craving for chicken from a place called Kyochon, so we had the driver find us one and drop us off. We offered for him to come with us, but he wasn`t interested. This time, when we went to find a motel, we just got the closest one we could, that didn`t seem to dodgey. The one we settled for just had a couple of Korean traditional sleeping mats for the floor, but we were just happy to find a place to sleep that wasn`t too expensive or crowded.

 

Monday, our final day there, and the day Buddha`s birthday is actually celebrated. We decided to hop a bus this time to the sea tomb of King Munmu, credited with uniting the Korean peninsula under the Silla banner. It`s also credited with being the `worlds only sea tomb,` officially I guess. We got there easy enough, and say the tomb: a series of rocks about 200m off the shore. Ultimately, not too exciting. We couldn`t get any closer at all, even if we had a boat, because the sea was quite rough. After hanging out on the beach a bit, we decided to seek out a pagoda built on the spot where, according to legend, King Munmu transformed into a dragon and went in to the sea to defend his kingdom from foreign invaders (ie, the Japanese). We weren`t sure how to get there, so we asked a passing monk, who was very happy to give us directions. Though he told us to go along the street and cross a bridge, we decided to walk along the beach, and if we couldn`t cross the river from there, we`d just walk up to the bridge.

 

Well, the river was extremely narrow when we came up to it, but still a hair deep, and the rocks weren`t great for crossing on. However, as a wave swept back, one friend hopped across, getting only slightly soaked on one foot. Having little choice at this point, I waited for the right moment and hopped across myself, though I missed the second rock and went in to the drink. Not too bad though, only up to my knees and I was out quickly. Next came my other friend, but before he went over, the first friend to go over suggested he take his backpack off so he`d get better balance. Before I could point out that holding your heavy backpack in one hand would hardly give you better balance, he was hopping across. He almost made it perfectly, though in the last skip he missed and also ended up soaked a bit.

 

We wandered up the other side of the beach, and eventually found the pagoda, where we took our shoes off to dry, and changed in to dry socks. We hung out there a bit--not an amazing spectacle, but a decent view of the ocean, and it was empty so it was quite relaxing. After a while, we caught a bus back to town, and then, after some lunch, headed back to the bus station. Buses to Jinju ran every 2 hours, but we were fortunate enough to be there about 40 minutes before the next bus. Got our tickets and waited. The bus comes in, and it`s already packed from the previous towns, with only one or two seats left--and of course there was 3 of us. So we decided to head to Busan first and get a bus from there. We swapped our tickets and got on the next bus to Busan, which had only 5 seats left.

 

A quick trip, but it didn`t take us in to the main Busan station, but instead to one in the east. Still, we were able to get another bus to Jinju easily enough, though we were told it`d come at 4:05, and it came at 4:40. And, it wandered through Busan for at least an hour before heading on the expressway, not stopping for any more passengers at all, despite the fact there was a gate to the expressway 5 minutes from the station.

 

Anyway, made it back just fine! And that was my latest adventure. Pictures to come soon. I have yet to develop my quicksnap--hopefully I can get the photos on a CD as well as prints. Photos from my digital camera that I did manage to get will be coming soon.

 

Tomorrow (Saturday) I`ll be heading to Busan for a Korean professional league baseball game. Should be exciting!

 

EDIT: Photos are up, and yes, I know my captions are lame. A tumuli, by the way, is the name of the giant tombs that Koreans use for burial. These ones are for kings and stuff, so they`re huge of course. Common people also use them, though they`re much, much smaller.

Well, it's a long story really. It boils down to work craziness--and not in a good way--and me becoming single after a year long relationship that had been really quite good (if anyone's concerned, there's actually no hard feelings there in the end, and we're still good friends!). These things combined really didn't help me see the funny side of things, or anything at all that was really entertaining. As such, I felt that the wider internet society, who might just wander in to this site for entertainment or informative purposes, would not enjoy another person complaining about how horrible life treats them, and only them, and why does fate have such a vendetta against them anyway? But now, things are better. I feel better, my job has achieved a state of tolerableness, and I've been doing fun things!

 

Ironically, my computer troubles, which had been fixed, are returning. Turns out my system just loves overheating itself. I've ordered a new one, but it could be some time before I see it (a week or two). Until then, I have to deal with a computer that my overheat and turn itself off at any moment (and I even have it set up so that air can move freely beneath it so it can cool down better...). But, once I DO get my new system, I'll likely be doing more things like gaming... we'll see how it goes.

 

Anyway, last weekend (12th to 13th) I went to Seoul with some friends, because one of them was going to pick up his buddy visiting from Canada. Did that, went to a bunch of clubs and stuff. Went to the jazz bar I'd gone to before. It was awesome, so naturally my friend leading the expedition said we had to leave after only an hour. Then, a $40 cab ride later, we went to another bar, that had a decent atmosphere, pool tables, and $2 drinks. We had to leave there after 30 minutes. And only 2 other people paid their bar bill (of 8) so I was stuck with the rest. Yay for cheap beer! After that, we went to a club with a $10 cover. Went in, full of a couple of hip hop Koreans, and some gaggles of girls that wouldn't give anyone the time of day--even when I just asked if they knew any other good bars around. We stayed here for a couple of hours, because apparently it was fun. Next, we had to go to Itaewon. Regulars to my site might remember how much I dislike Itaewon, because it's the foreigner district. Full of pretensious people, much too good for Korea, and American servicemen who have a reputation for fighting and being general, well-rounded jerks. It cost us another $10 cab ride to get there, too (cheap, actually). Went to a club where we were promised beautiful women, and we got a large number of gay men and some average women who looked like they may have preferred the hooker trade, except they were much too good for men.

 

At this point, myself and two of my friends who were tired of this sort of thing went to a lounge next door, then outside for some schwarmas (mmmm schwarmas! I didn't realize how much I miss those!) and to another bar to relax with people who didn't feel they were too good for us. The whole while I had maintained that because I had to go to Busan for a friends birthday the next weekend, I wanted to stay on a $100 budget. So, I had always planned on leaving on the first bus around 6:00am or so to avoid an expensive hotel. And so I did, with one other friend from Jinju. A friend from Seoul that had come to join us started his hour long subway ride home at the same time. Well, despite how this might sound, I did enjoy myself. It felt good to finally get out of Jinju for a bit, see other things.

 

This, as you might have guessed, brings us to the Busan birthday party. Now, a bunch of us went out on Friday night to begin birthday festivities--it was a 30th birthday after all! We finished work at 11:00pm, so we didn't get to the bar until quite late. But, after a few hours and a few long island ice teas (I know it sounds like a pansy drink, but YOU have 4 of them and see how you feel!), we went off to norae bang (karaoke/singing room). Were there until 5:00am or so. The guy just kept giving us more and more free time. We kind of go to that one a lot, and we're always really nice to the owner, so he's really nice to us!

 

The original plan was to meet at the bus station for noon. Got a call at around 11:00am saying that, given 3 of the 6 people were really quite hung over and tired, including the birthday girl, we'd push it back to 1:00pm. No problem. Set an alarm for 12:15 and went back to sleep. Of course, my alarm is set for Monday to Friday, and it was Saturday. I woke up at 12:50 with a text message asking if I had coffee. I cursed, answered back that I slept in, and got a move on. Fortunately, because so few of us were coming from Jinju, a friend offered to drive us in her giant, US-style van/suv. So, that gave me time. We left around 1:30, and after a bit of a detour for various reasons we got to Busan at Haeundae Beach around 4:00. Met up with friends from Daejon, and we went for the ever famous Mexican taco restaurant. It's pretty much the only place in Korea that has any mexican food at all--I heard that day there's another in Daegu or some such place, but not nearly as good. Carolina said they were as good as any mexican food she's ever had. And, from someone from a mexican family, that's a good rating. But, of course, they were closed for an hour. And we were hungry! So we went for Thai food instead. Met up with another friend down from Seoul (not the same as the one I'd met, who couldn't make it), and back to the hotel so that the girls (most of the group ;-) could "prepare." They were damn good looking too. Why I forgot my camera this weekend, when I KNEW there was going to be so many more good looking women, and I brought it to Seoul, I'll never know.

 

Anyway, all ready, we went to a club with a live band that was average for Korea--read, amateurish but they could play guitars alright and sing as well as anybody. Hung out there for a bit, then actually out to norae bang quite soon! But it was really nice. While we were waiting for our room to be cleaned, a drunk Korean in a suit wanting to practice english wandered out of a room (likely a hagwon director) and asked where we were from. I said Thailand. He seemed to believe me... Once we got in to the room, it was awesome. Had a giant window out over towards what would have been the beach, had the sun been out. And it was quite large. Though I found the song selection a little skimpy, others found it better. I guess it's just a little different (this is rare in Korea--most places I've been have the same song choices...).

 

The next day (Sunday), we finally got a chance to get our tacos, after about a 30-45 minute wait--it's only one guy in the shop, and he's REALLY popular. Some people took off towards their homes in various parts of the country, while those of us from Jinju went for some ice cream to take to the beach. We didn't actually get a chance to sit on the beach too long, but it was worth it. At this point, we had to leave to avoid big traffic. We got back around 6:00pm. And that's that!

 

 

In other news, people may find it interesting that I now have a beard. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, but most people like it so far so I'll keep it for now. Also, I'm looking to come back to Canada to work. I'd really prefer Ottawa or Vancouver, but I'm not overly picky. I'm toying with the idea of seeing if some big corporation, that hires people from overseas often like in the tech sector, might need/want an ESL instructor for some employees to help with every-day sort of things. I mean, I'm sure all these people can communicate well enough for their jobs, but a little help here and there could boost productivity, yes? Even if it's just water-cooler chat in some cases. Anyway, other than that, I'm not interested in a job teaching ESL any more. I need a career change! Any suggestions with what someone can do with a BA in poli sci and 4 years teaching experience (with no TESOL) can do in Canada, I'll be happy to entertain. Outside of business-to-person sales (I could do business to business, in the right context) and call centers of course.

 

So, I'm back! I'll put up random photos I've taken recently soon.

Well, it's about the end of 2007. Some people might've noticed my lack of blog entries for the past month or so. I've just been busy with random things, and plenty to do with Christmas. Everything was great until, on Christmas Day, I discovered my harddrive had crashed. I managed to get it to a technician and found that it was actually a virus. Most of my stuff will be saved, but I won't get it back until later on this week. If all my photos are still there I'll try to put some up and actually tell you all what's been going on. Needless to say, lots of fun stuff! I hope I remember it all. For the moment, I'm forced to use Carolina's computer or the one at work, so I don't want to spend too much time writing here when it's not my computer to use... Soon though!

Yes, I've actually posted some photos! Amazing isn't it? I have some from the lantern festival this year. As last time, I only posted a fraction of what I took. I wanted to get some pictures in the daytime this year, but it never happened. Things kept coming up. Anyway, I also have photos from the Pusan International Film Festival. Film festivals, by nature, don't tend to be very photo-y events, so not many there. And of course, I also have plenty of photos of my new kitty, now named Jigae (pronounced Jee-gay, and it's the name for a spicey soup most often made with kimchi :-) She went to the vet for the first time today and had some tests done. She's all good and healthy, but not heavy enough to get her vaccines yet.

 

I'll try to get some apartment photos up. This place really is 100 times better than my last one, you'll see (eventually...)!

 

Enjoy the new pics.