October 6, 2008
Andong’s Maskdance Festival
First off, I have uploaded ALL of the photos taken in Korea to my google picture account. Mind you, these are all unedited and some are quite bad in terms of quality. I didn’t bother spinning a lot of them around, and a lot are blurry, too. Still, if you want to check them out:
http://picasaweb.google.com/vero.tays
This past weekend was a three day weekend for us foreign teachers, because Friday was a holiday celebrating the mythical creation of Korea. The regular Korean teachers had to teach on Saturday, so they only got one day off. Bummer. While a lot of our fellow teachers decided a three day weekend meant three days of getting drunk in Seoul, we valiant souls (myself, Molly, Robyn, Anna from Seoul and another Seoul teacher, Anne) decided to actually use it productively. So we went to the city of Andong, which was hosting its annual Maskdance Festival (I’m still not sure if it’s supposed to be one word or not). Andong is a more traditional city than Yeoju or Seoul and the mask festival was supposed to be awesome.
So late Friday morning, Robyn, Molly, and I bussed over to Wonju to catch the train to Andong. The bus ride was about 40 minutes and cost 3,000 won (probably about $2.50 since the won has dropped). Then we taxied on over to the train station. Here you can see Robyn and myself waiting with excitement for our train!
The train ride was a little over 2 hours and wasn’t very expensive at all- less than 10,000 won. The scenery was gorgeous. Right now, the rice is almost ready to harvest. It turns a golden color, so the rice fields are awash in green-gold all over Korea. It’s really pretty. I took a few shots out the train:
Excuse the quality, please. It’s hard to take pictures out of a train window.
So we arrived in Andong about 3 PM on Friday. Our first order of business was to find a motel. The information lady helped us a lot and we quickly found “M Motel,” which is actually a hotel, but they don’t differentiate over here. The room we stayed in was for three people, a double bed and a single, and was really nice. It had a big screen television, a computer with free internet, a mini-kitchen which included a single oven burner, and even a bathtub! It was the first bathtub I’ve seen in Korea. The overall price for two nights was 120,000 won, which meant 40,000 won from each of us. Not bad for a really nice hotel room!
Anna and Anne were coming via bus from Seoul and wouldn’t arrive for another few hours, so we headed down to the festival to check it out. It was really cool, but it did feel a bit like a “Korea Fest” would at home. There were tons of little shops selling junk and street food (pork on a stick = very good). We wandered around a little bit and shopped. There was a large stage in the center, and we watch a rehearsal for a traditional drum performance. I took a picture, but it didn’t come out well enough.
We also found the Korean food festival inside the mask festival, so I took a TON of pictures of Korean food that was on display. I really can’t post them in the blog, so here is a link to the gallery I put them in: Here. Enjoy! You will have to look for the pictures that, well, look like food. That’s my entire Andong folder right there. I don’t know what most of the food is, sadly, but it looks cool.
After that, we painted our own masks! Most of the stalls were covered with children, but later on in the night it opened up more. Molly and I each painted one. Here is mine!
Then we decided we wanted dinner, so we went to a stall and ordered their pork barbeque. There were about ten large restaurant stalls in a row, all with half of a huge pig slowly turning on a spit.
My picture isn’t very good. Of course we had to order that, and it was totally delicious. Korean meat is the best. I had duck last week, and I thought I was going to DIE it was so good. Anyways.
Then we met Anna and Anne at the bus terminal around 7:30 PM, and we went back to the fest for a little while but didn’t really do anything new. We decided to explore Andong. We ended up at a noraebang (singing room) where we did kareoke for an hour, and then we went to the bathhouse. Soooo nice. I have been converted. Hot tubs and saunas for super cheap!
Then we went to bed. Whew. Anna and Anne found a different motel (ours filled up during the evening). At our motel, we closed all the windows, which had large mirrors on the inside. At night, we couldn’t tell, but those mirrors blocked EVERY speck of light. The end result? We slept until 11:30 AM the next morning, when Anna finally texted me to find out where we were. Oops!
We decided to check out something outside of town, so we went to Dosen Seowon, an ancient Confucian school. It was a forty minute bus trip, but the scenery was absolutely wonderful because of the sea inlets and large islands. The school itself was defunct, of course, but it was very pretty. There wasn’t much to see, since its small and pretty much empty, but i was interesting to learn about some aspects of Korean Confucianism. Here are various pictures from the place:
Anne, Anna, me, by the way. We’re so Korean! You can’t even tell we’re American!
We caught a bus back to town and decided to check out the local giant Buddha statue. Anne asked for help for a young Korean guy who spoke English, and the next thing we knew we had a guide. Ok. He got us to the statue, which would have been really hard by ourselves.
It was cool, and, er, very big. What was even cooler was that temples give out free food to all visitors, so these little old ladies fed us noodles and rice cake and fruit (have I mentioned how delicious Asian pears are? Because they are. Amazing.). The noodles were really good, and we got to control the spice level, so I kept mine a little bland. And after that, we had tea with the temple monk! It was really good green tea. He didn’t speak any English, but our guide (whose name I still don’t know) helped us have some sort of conversation with him. It was really cool. I don’t have a picture right now because Anne was the only one who got pictures of tea, but once I do, I will post it.
We taxied back to the festival after that, and enjoyed more shopping and eating. Our guide got us tickets to the 8PM show which was a traditional Korean mask show called Good Morning Mr. Heo. It was … really cool. I think I’ll let the English translation explain to events and pictures to you.
The first act:
“The bride standing on somebody’s shoulder enters the stage.”
The second act:
“Two Juji (lions) dance to the rhythm.”
The third act:
“A butcher catches a bull and uses the ax to remove the heart and testicles.”
The fourth act:
“An old widow works her loom and tells her hard luck story and begs for some money from the audience.”
The fifth act:
“The Bune (flirtatious maiden) urinates and the fallen monk smells it and they run out together.”
The sixth act:
“Choraengi (meddler) calls the aristocrat and scholar and eventually they argue. Then the butcher returns to try to sell the bull testicles. The aristocrat and the scholar fight over who will buy them, only to be ridiculed by the old widow.”
It was a little confusing, but still cool to see their play, and it wasn’t too difficult to follow for the most part because there wasn’t actually much talking until the end. It’s a political play, as there’s lots of satire and mocking of the higher, educated classes in it. During the show, our guide’s friend (he called her his “younger sister” but they’re not related) joined us for, well, more food and drink. I was exhausted by this time, so Robyn and I bowed out around 11:30 PM and went back to the hotel.
The next morning we headed home! We got an 8:30 train. Originally we were going to go to Seoul, because we didn’t think there were any early trains to Wonju, but then our train stopped at Wonju so we got off there and went back to Yeoju from Wonju, which cut about two hours off of traveling time. Whew. I spent most of Sunday relaxing because it was a busy weekend, but lots of fun. It was cool to see more traditional aspects of Korea, because Yeoju and Seoul don’t really have much of those (especially Seoul).
This was a long entry, but it was a busy weekend. Expect another entry either tomorrow or Wednesday, because tomorrow is a school field trip to Seoul! We are going to the royal palace and to a museum, so I hope to have pictures up of those cool places and maybe even some of my adorable students. 
September 28, 2008
A Korean Wedding
Ok, sorry about the wait, but my usual day of writing (Sunday) last week got eaten up by a special event: a Korean wedding!
The third-grade teacher at my school got married last weekend, and because it’s a small school, all the staff was invited to the wedding, including me. So now I get to tell you about a Korean wedding. It was actually a fairly Western-style wedding, with a touch of Korea and a touch of, well, “not-quite-getting-it”.
The wedding was in Wonju, a city about a hour away. The teachers all met ahead of time and drove together in three cars. We drove with Mr. Shin, who played Korean pop music on the way there… I have to do a special post about the Korean music. Suffice to say we listened to the Wondergirls, and their hit song is “I’m So Hot.”
Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures of the wedding because I wasn’t sure if it would be appropriate or not. Then everyone else was taking pictures with their cell phones. If I knew how to turn my flash off I may have taken more. Sorry!
Koreans get married in wedding halls, the outside of which look like office buildings. Our wedding hall had two “chapels”. Here’s a picture of the one Mr. Choi’s wedding was in:
It was the white themed room, I guess. The other room had green fake trees and bright colors. Ours only had fake white trees with ornaments.
Before the wedding, everyone gets to eat upstairs in the big banquet hall. It was a mix of Korean and Western food. I didn’t take any pictures of the food. Sorry. I know everyone enjoys food pictures. After that we went back to the wedding room.
Most of the guests were dressed in semi-formal. The most interesting exceptions are the women from the families of the bride and groom. They wear the traditional hanbok (han-bock) of the Koreans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanbok)
Before the weddings, brides get dressed up (Western style) and sit on a bench in a little alcove off the side. People can come and look/talk/take pictures with her, and she just sits and smiles. I thought it was a little creepy. I didn’t think to ask if the groom can see her. He was just standing outside the wedding room talking to people.
Then the wedding was starting so we sat down. It’s… fairly informal. The other wedding ended as our was starting so there was loud talking from the hallway. Lots of people were standing up in the back and crowding the doorways when there were plenty of places to sit. I’m not sure why.
First the mothers (or nearest older female relative) go and light candles in the front of the room. I wish I could explain why everything happens, but my co-teacher abandoned me part-way through the ceremony. I probably looked a little strange because I was the strange foreigner sitting all by myself in a row of chairs (the other teachers sat in the row ahead of us).
So the ceremony took place, which included the bride being walked down the aisle by her father. There wasn’t a priest, but an “officiator” who talk a lot in Korean. The officiator happened to be the principal of my school. It’s a little weird, but totally something that would happen in Korean. He spoke for a long time in Korean.
Then the bride and groom had to go and bow to each set of parents, who sat up front on couches. The groom actually prostrated himself on the ground, the bride just did a formal bow to them. I assume they were asking permission to be married.
Then… they were married. A cake was rolled out and they cut it together, which elicited a big cheer from the crowd. Some goofy stuff happened, involving them saying stuff in Korean and people laughing (the groom is a funny guy, so I guess they were making jokes, but it was all completely over my head). Then it was picture time! Just about everyone got to be in a picture with them, including me. We did a picture with all of his co-workers. There was a picture with all of the bride’s co-workers and friends, and then she threw the bouquet. Except in Korea, they designate one person to catch the bouquet. There’s no competition involved.
And that was it. The ceremony was only a little over an hour. Then, of course, I had to go out to dinner with all the teachers from our school AND the superintendent of the Yeoju school district (he was previously the vice-principal of our school), and I had to sit in the honored position between him and the principal. Except they barely spoke any English. So it was a little long and boring, but the mountains were nice. We have raw fish for the main course and fairly standard side courses All things considered it was a tame dinner.
So, in essence, Korean weddings aren’t really all that different from Western weddings.
Oh, but the weirdest part: so the couple cut the cake together. You would think the cake would be brought out and enjoyed by people afterwards. Nope! They don’t eat the cake! What. I guess they just bake them and cut them. I’m a little surprised at the waste.
So that was the wedding! It was fun and a chance to see a part of Korean culture I didn’t expect to be invited into. Next time, I hope to finally post a large post about my city, Yeoju. Complete with a ton of pictures.
September 20, 2008
First Seoul Trip
So, let’s see… I had dinner Monday night with the school. School was a long week and very exhausting. Friday, Molly and I decided to take our first trip to Seoul!
Which was… two weekends ago. Um, yeah, I’m a little far behind.
We hopped on the express bus from Yeoju to Seoul. It only cost 4,500 won ($4.50). On the bus, a young Korean woman named Jung talked to us a little, and then tried to help us find our friends in Seoul but ended up only getting us completely lost. So we walked all over a huge mall called Central City until one of our friends finally found us instead. We ate dinner with them, a spicy chicken dish which I have neither the name of nor any pictures of, and then we parted ways. Molly went with her friends, and I went with my friend Anna to the northern suburb of Goyang, where she lives and teachers. We got Baskin Robins and watched Korean dramas, which are pretty awesome and will probably get their own entry one day.
The next day, we went exploring around Goyang because Anna hadn’t really had a chance to do so yet.
Here we are at Paris Baguette. They are ALL over Korea. There are two on the same block in Yeoju; it’s a little ridiculous. But good pastries.
Korea has plenty of random street games for people to try. Here I am trying to win a tamagotchi toy from one. It was pretty bad… I spent at least 2,000 won (about 2 dollars) and then the dumb thing cheated and knocked the toy off to side where the claw couldn’t reach it.
After exploring and shopping, Anna and I jumped on the subway back towards Seoul. But she went off to visit another friend while I met up with Molly again (yeah, it was just a tad confusing at the time). Molly and I had a few adventures in Seoul, such as getting lost and encountering some strange street performers:
We were in the Hongik University district, a popular place for young adults. There’s plenty of bars, nightclubs, and shopping in the area, as well as bad Korean rock concerts on the street.
Where did we stay in such a large city, as we had been cruelly turned out of our friends’ apartments? The bathhouse, of course! For 7,000 won (7 dollars), you get a locker, a pair of pajamas, and twelve hours of using the baths (we paid extra because we need the lockers to dump our bags into). The baths are supposed to be really nice… I confess I did not use it that night.
We met up with the group we were going out with and went to dinner, which was Vietnamese noodles, and then out on the town. One of our stops was the noraebang, the Korean singing rooms. Kareoke! Noraebang is incredibly popular here in Korea. A group of friends goes and rents a room out for an hour, which comes with large televisions, drinks, and places to sit:
The music selection is immense. There were plenty of English songs to choose from, including oldies and very current pop hits. With everyone jumping, dancing, and singing, its a really fun experience. Let’s not forget the drums and tambourines which come with the room.
We were put in a windowless room. Apparently, everytime the [American] people with us have gone, they were stuck in a basement room. Not this time! Probably because some other Americans beat us to it. To get one of the cool front window rooms, you need to special. Dramatic. Different. Dressing up in a bear suit is one such way to get these rooms:
It’s hard to see because it was bad lighting and I wasn’t taking a very good picture, but that girl is definitely wearing a full body bear suit. Why? We don’t know. We never will.
We finally got back to our bathhouse at 2:30 in the morning. I decided not to use the baths, as I was exhausted and not up for getting naked. Instead, I pulled on the pajamas and went downstairs where I grabbed a sleeping mat and a corner and went to bed, using my sweatshirt as a pillow. Not the most comfortable, but it’s cheap.
The next day, Molly and I went back to the bus terminal to go home to Yeoju, stopping by Central City mall for some shopping. There’s a large bookstore with a second floor dedicated to English books of all types. We bought some, of course. We hopped on a bus and were home by mid-afternoon. Whew. It was a great weekend, but we saw barely any of Seoul and didn’t even do sight-seeing. Next time, next time.
Well, that’s all for this entry. Coming soon: a post about my school, more about Yeoju, and a short day trip to Icheon.
September 14, 2008
School Begins
Ah, I am back with more exciting Korean adventures!
First, as a request, the exterior views of my apartment! This is the front. It’s 3 floors, but I think there’s something still on the roof which I haven’t explored yet. Nice white brick, nice little subdivision.
This is view from the back. It’s like a totally different building, ahaha. There’s a weird, empty half-lot behind my building which they use to hold construction supplies for now. It would be nice if they developed it into a nice little green area, but I’m not about to hold my breath.
Now on to adventure!
So I arrived Friday, and the next day, Saturday, I was off to school for the first time! Usually I have Saturdays off, but they wanted to introduce me to everyone. So I went, got my little desk in the teacher’s office (pictures in the next update), met the principal and the teachers (there’s about 10 in the entire school) and then was introduced to the whole school. It’s an elementary school with grades kindergarten through 6th, totally 64 students. Their working on a website, so hopefully I can link to that for everyone to check out.
My responsibilities are about 20 teaching hours a week. I have three types of class. First, the “regular” classes, which I teach with Hyojun, the co-teacher. Grades three through six have these once or twice a week. We teach from the state assigned English book, which… is pretty special. I hope to dedicate an entire entry to it, later. I also have “discretion” classes, which is once a week for first through sixth graders. I can teach whatever I want for these. At the moment, I’m a little clumsy, so hopefully it works out. Finally, I have eight “after school classes.” These are also whatever I want to teach. It’s a lot of classes. I go from being really bored at work to being super busy. Hopefully I can use the vacation I have this week to get ahead a little.
Saturday was a half-day of work, so Hyojun (the co-teacher), the 3rd grade teacher Mr. Choi, and Mr. Choi’s girlfriend (who introduced herself as Amy, so that’s how I remember her) took me out for lunch. I was still a little sick from the plane ride and jetlagged, so sadly I didn’t eat much. After that we went to E-Mart! E-Mart is basically Wal-Mart. There we bought lots of supplies for my apartment, and I also met up with Robyn, another of the Madison teachers. She lives in the building next to mine. After shopping I went home and slept.
Sunday I spent time with Robyn and Molly, the Madison neighbors. It’s really nice having someone else just to talk to. My co-teacher is quite good at speaking English, and there’s a few other teachers who are adequate and like to practice their English on me, but I still have to speak slowly, simply, and use gesture-speak. It’s great to be able to speak normally with the other “native” speakers.
Monday was a busy day of work, followed by my required health exam (which only contained x-rays, blood testing, and a urine sample… so much for the physical), followed by a traditional Korean barbeque dinner with the teachers at the school. I got to take some pictures of the food before the other teachers showed up.
Traditional dinners are eaten on low tables while sitting on cushions on the floor:
We had barbeque ribs, which I didn’t get a picture of. There are different ways to eat it. The way most of the Koreans were eating was to simply pluck a piece off the grill and eat it like that. Another way is to wrap it in a piece of lettuce and including sauces or veggies in the lettuce, which is really good. I didn’t get a picture of the grill, however.
Here is what the table setting looked like:
Individual people aren’t given a large plate to scoop their meal onto, but rather a small, flat bowl which has veggies in a sauce. You just grab whatever you want off the large plates, and either eat them right away or temporarily put them in your small bowl. The bowls are also “trash” areas, where bones and other inedible parts are left.
Some of the food:
I’m not sure what this is… looks like vegetables and shrimp.
Shrimp and octopus. The shrimp was all right, but a little tasteless, which was disappointing. It was also hard to eat because it comes whole. The octopus was tough and rather tasteless. I’m a little surprised everyone seems to like it so much. Maybe I will have to try it at a different place (we’ve had it for school lunch, but… it’s school lunch, so it’s never very good).
The dish in front, with brown noodles and vegetables, is… chopchai?? I don’t know how it’s spelled, but it’s really good. Behind it is just a vegetable salad in sauce. It looks like potato salad, but it’s not.
Other things not pictured included crabs, which are something I usually like, but I didn’t like the sauce and having to deal with a whole crab is hard. They also boil little sweet potato cakes which are really good, especially if there’s good vegetable cooked in them. Molly has figured out how to make them, so I should be able to get a picture of them sometime.
At the dinner, I was also given flowers!
That’s the principal in the picture with me. He’s a very nice man but doesn’t speak a word of English. Communication can be difficult.
Here’s a picture of the whole group!
Er, yeah, most people aren’t paying attention to the camera. Whoops! Hyojun, my co-teacher, is the one taking the picture so I can’t point her out.
So that was my welcoming party! It was fun and a great experience with lots of good food.
This weekend is Chuseok, which is the Korean Thanksgiving, and it’s one of their two largest holidays (the other being New Year’s), so the kids are gone from school all week, except for the loyal, diligent few who are coming to my English camp, which will undoubtedly be a disaster. 
Thanks for the advance warning, a whole hour before I left school on Friday! I think we’re going to be watching a lot of movies. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. I wish I could tell more about Chuseok, but it seems to be that everyone just goes to their hometown and eats food together… Kind of like our Thanksgiving.
That’s all for this post! I hope everyone has a good Chuseok back home.
September 7, 2008
Anyang haseo from Yeoju!
Now that I have both the internet and some free time, it’s time to start the blog, even though I have been in Korea for more than a week now.
A lot has happened, so I guess I will start at the beginning.
After landing in Korea, we went through customs, got our baggage, exchanged money, and then were met by our co-teachers. I was met by the English teacher at my school, Miss Yun. She’s very nice and speaks really good English. The school’s vice-principal was also there and he drove us back to Yeoju. Either he speaks no English or wasn’t comfortable enough with it to talk to me. Unfortuantely, we missed a turn and ended up in Seoul. At rush hour. So it took much longer than expected. On the way Miss Yun asked if I was hungry, and I said I was, so she said she had some chocolate she had gotten in Seattle. I allowed myself to get a little excited because she actually got it in America! She handed me a few pieces, and when I saw the wrapper, it said “Sugarless chocolate calcium.” It was a bit of a downer. It tasted like chocolate-flavored taffy, but it was all right and I was quite hungry.
It was quite late when we first arrived in Yeoju, so I didn’t see much of it that night. I’m not in the heart of downtown, but rather in a district next to it, straight down the main street from it. Buses are both easy to ride and cheap so getting downtown isn’t a problem. Two of the other teachers from Madison also live in my small apartment complex, Molly and Robyn, so we hang during the week.
The apartment is very small; more like a glorified dorm room. It’s also quite nice and comfortable, so for one person it’s a great apartment. Here is a tour:
Here is my kitchen. It’s what you walk into when you first enter. The fridge is elsewhere. In Korea, it’s traditional to take your shoes off when entering a building, so I also have a small step where shoes get left.
Finally, here is my bathroom. Toilet, sink, and … a shower. In the middle of the bathroom. It’s really strange not to have a stall to shower in. Notice the drain below the sink. Water drains into there. It’s a little weird, but I’ve come to like it in its own way.
The area around my apartment is also very nice. It’s basically suburban, if you put apartments everywhere instead of houses. My apartment is only three stories tall with about five rooms on each floor… Not quite one of the highrises. Those are across the street. There’s a grocery store about a block away from my apartment which has a large variety of food, including some western foods (I got some peanut butter, for example, as well as spaghetti noodles). It’s nice and close. Down the street- either a bus ride or a car ride away- is E-Mart, which is basically a Walmart/Target/Kmart store. I’ve only been there once, to buy some starter stuff for my apartment. There’s plenty of convenience stores scattered around as well.
The tour is all we’ll be doing today. Next time, look forward to some actual impressions of Korea and my first few days of school, as well as a traditional Korean dinner (yes, complete with pictures of the food). I just got back from my first Seoul weekend so I’m a little tired.
I hope everything is going well for everybody!
