Drum Festival

This weekend I planned to go to Daegu with a group of people from Jinju. I wasn't really looking forward to it because they didn't have a solid plan of what we were going to do, other than go to bars and dance clubs and, to paraphrase Danny Glover, I'm getting too old for that shit. I also didn't want to go shopping or to a cat cafe, which were other ideas being thrown around. I had emailed Jeff a long list of upcoming weekend plans so we could see each other again before he leaves. As of Friday afternoon, he still hadn't responded, so it looked like I was going to Daegu.

On Friday right before my last class, I get a call from Jeff asking if I want to go to Seoul and go to a drum festival. I jumped on the deal. We were also possibly going to try and do the bus tour that I didn't do with Cindy. I had dinner with Cindy and then met some people at Wine bar but left around midnight because I had to get up at 5 am to catch the 6 am bus. I got less than 2 hours of sleep and probably caught another 30 minutes on the bus. So I was kind of sleepy when I got there. I took the subway to the army base in Seoul. Yongsan is HUGE - we took a cab within the base to get to the club for lunch. Apparently it is part Army base and part Korean park, or something like that (at least according to my guide book). The base is really close to the subway and to "downtown" areas of Seoul, plus it has lots of stuff to do on the base itself.Jeff was staying on post and I dropped my stuff off there and we went to brunch (he had breakfast, I had lunch) at the Navy Club. We watched the last quarter of BYU football while we ate.

Large boat and fountain outside of the Navy Club

Pirate keeping guard next to the door of the club

Pretending like we went to Memphis for Sara

After lunch we went to Seoul station, which is where we thought the drum festival was supposed to be. We got there and...no drums. No stage. Nothing that looked remotely festival-like. So we walked around the station (it's quite a large station housing Korail trains and a subway train). The place generally smelled like pee and we found out why when we walked down the stairs and saw a guy peeing in the corner. This is also the only place I have seen homeless people sleeping on the streets in the entire time I've been here. After walking around and through the station, we ended up going to the information counter inside and asking where the festival was being held. Turns out, it was one stop away on the subway at City Hall.

Statue in front of Seoul Station. This guy was thrilled that I took a picture and gave me a thumbs up to see if it was ok.

We jumped on the train (it was super crowded) and walked up to the event. It didn't start until 2, so we had about an hour to walk around. Luckily, one of the palaces that I wanted to visit was across the street. We went to Deoksugung palace (Palace of Virtuous Longevity) and walked around the grounds. Korean palaces are different than European ones. You can't really walk inside them, and there's no furniture etc. to look at. Basically, they look the same as fortresses. The buildings are interesting to look at, and the ceiling decorations are very good, and generally the grounds are very nice, but it still feels a little disappointing because you don't get that sense of grandeur that you get in France or other countries.

Lily pond to the right of the main gate. We went the "wrong" direction and ended up doing the tour backwards from the guide book.

Jeff took a rest on this while I looked at the ponds and read about the palace.

We walked around and saw all the buildings. We did not pay the extra to go to the art museum, which had an American art exhibit. The entire walk around the park took 20 minutes. We sat on a bench and watched a crippled pigeon and a regular one for around another 20 minutes.

Wall inside the palace grounds

Building on the left is Junmyeong-dang and it's where state affairs were conducted. The other is  Jukjo-dang is where 2 kings were crowned.

This is the English style rose garden and fountain with seals. Why? Don't know.

This is the back of Seogeo-dang and it's unusual because it has 2 stories. It's also where some king died. It had a throne inside and a very cool ceiling with dragons, but you couldn't take pictures inside.

The only picture Jeff wanted to be in

Heungcheon-sa bell cast in 1462

Dragon on the stairs. Their teeth were funny to me. Like happy dragons.

Again, this was a time I wish my other sibling had been present for picture taking purposes. Instead we found this replacement for her.

Then we went to the main gate to watch a changing of the guard ceremony which seemed quite elaborate. I do enjoy Korean drums, but those horns they play are mega annoying.

Us and the main guard. Jeff's eyes were closed in both pictures.

After the changing of the guard, we walked across the street to a large open area and the drum festival. They didn't have chairs or anything set up, so you either had to stand or sit on the ground. Luckily we got there close to the start and sat near the stage. Unfortunately, it was to the side and a rope was in the way. But we could see most of it. Koreans are really weird about sitting on the ground. They have no problem with it, but have to put a piece of paper or a handkerchief or something under them. They stared at us for sitting straight on the ground. After about 10 minutes, a mom and her kid left and she poked me on the arm and offered her piece of cardboard for us to sit on. We watched about 6 groups perform and then decided to give it a break and look around. When we got up, there was a mini fight over who got our cardboard.

Fountain next to the park. The water shoots up at random times and at random heights.

The first group of people we saw were a bunch of guys dressed in white. They were pretty entertaining. This view is probably the best of all the videos because I was standing in front of the stage. Later we moved over to the right. My favorite group was a group of kids. They were a mix of Koreans and foreigners (see the white girl?) but they were also the most entertaining. They had people spinning plates, they jumped off the stage and played water drums and there was this guy spinning a ribbon on his head. After them, came this group of people who had a little dance vibe going on, but the horn noise always makes me want to stab my eardrums out


They didn't have the typical food and random crap stands that other festivals have, but they did have a huge tent with all kinds of drums and gongs and chimes that you could play with. Jeff was like a kid in a candy store. He hit all kinds of things. I played some as well, but there were so many kids around that you couldn't get a good whack on some of the more popular (i.e. more fun) things.

Group of drummers and a baby

Big drum

He tried to play a song of some sort on this one. A random lady kind of stared at him.

Another big drum

After playing the drums, we walked across to the other side of the street to try and find another palace that was on my list. We ended up walking in a giant circle underground and then, in one of his flashes of stupidity/brilliance, Jeff bought some plastic stools from a family mart and we headed back to the drum festival. He was really proud of the stools. We watched another 5 performances or so, then decided to call it a day. We hopped in a cab (stools and all) and went to Itaewon for dinner. Jeff got in an argument with the waitress at the pub over stupid seating policies. We ended up going back there anyways and sitting at the bar. Rugby was on and it was slightly crowded. I had sheppard's pie and Jeff had Guiness stew. Both were very good.

After dinner we walked back to base, and we passed a small group of women dressed in traditional clothes doing a fan dance. Jeff looked at me, then at the stools and we decided to plop down and watch for a bit. People did seem impressed with our seats, although the plan somewhat backfired when people stood directly in front of us.

Fan dance on the street corner

Last use of the stools. I missed a traffic light and Jeff waited on the other side of the road.

We walked back to where Jeff was staying and the sun started to set. There is a great view of Seoul and Seoul tower from the hill on one end of the base. We got to the house and my favorite part of the weekend happened. Jeff was packing and complaining that he had too much stuff. He was in town for 3 days (Thursday - Saturday) and had a huge suitcase plus a backpack. I told him he packed more than mom (which is saying something because our mother needs to be prepared for anything from tropical weather to snowstorms at any given time). He then listed all the clothes he needed for the 3 days including formal attire, regular ACUs, golf clothes and civilian clothes. I started laughing. Then he said, "The worst part is that each outfit needs its own pair of shoes." That's when I lost it and laughed for like 5 minutes. Oh and he also had 3 hats and a set of golf clubs. We ended up walking down a hill to the Dragon Hill lodge to catch a cab to the bus terminal. We crammed in the cab and the driver was really nice. We then put the stools to use one more time waiting 15 minutes for our bus. We watched 3 episodes of the office on our way to P-taek. Then we piled into another cab. This cab driver was nice too and showed me pictures of his wife and son. He then gave us each some mandu.

Seoul tower at sunset. It lights up about 10 minutes after this picture.

We were both really tired at this point and watched some TV and fell asleep. I woke up midnight and watched some GameDay. I do not like the new intro as much as last year's. I do very much like the fact that David Pollack was on it at the end. I then stayed up and watched the first half of the UGA game. When we had a commanding lead, I fell asleep (around 2-3 am). Then Jeff woke up and watched some more football and I slept on the couch for awhile. He went to base to get his car and check some email and I think he went for a run. I made breakfast and we watched some more football. Then he went out for about 2 hours and I did laundry. Then we ate pizza and went bowling and came home and watched The Office. We got up early to watch some NFL football and so I could get to the bus early.

As usual, it was a good weekend and I am dreading the day when he's not here anymore.

Kids essays - Part 5 - Summer edition

I thought I posted this about a month ago - whoops.

So during the summer one good/bad thing is that kids don't write essays. It's good because I don't have to grade them. It's bad because I don't get to read the hilarious things they write. However, here are a few things that did happen over the summer.

One day in class we were talking about exercise. I asked if they knew what sit-ups were and a few kids said it was how to get a chocolate stomach. I was like, "what?" One kid knew the "American" term six-pack. Apparently in Korea, a six-pack is called a "chocolate stomach" or "chocolate abs" because they look like a Hersey bar (that grid pattern).

One class had to draw pictures and then explain the drawings so that another kids could draw the same picture. Here are 3 of the drawings that I thought were funny.

This is a picture done by Mary, a super smart, cute kid. That's Jacob (one of my favorite kids in the school), me, and me when I was younger (aka I think teacher at child time).

This is Jacob's self portrait. It was funny because I did a drawing which was the backgroud of this picture with sheep instead of Jacob. He saw my picture, drew himself then copied the rest.

This is a picture of Toby, done by his little sister, Laura. It was funny because I also have Toby in another class. I'm not really sure what all the flags are supposed to be, maybe golf?

Leggo my Lego?

Today I had a discussion with different people about the term Lego (the toy you play with that are like little building bricks). A kid wrote that his favorite toy was Lego. I asked my co-teacher, who is from England, how she would spell it in the plural - Legoes or Legos? She said that they don't pluralize Lego in England. They either say I was playing with Lego, or, I was playing with Lego bricks.

I have never used the term "Lego bricks" in actual conversation. I then had this same discussion later with 2 people from South Africa. They never played with Legos, so they weren't quite sure, but tended to think they just used Lego.

So, what do you think? We always pluralized it in our house and I honestly think anyone I ever talked to about Legos in the US also said Legos. Is this an American thing? Do we just tack "s" on the end of brand names while no other countries do? Thoughts?

Chuseok weekend

Chuseok is Korea's version of Thanksgiving. Most people return to their hometowns (where their families have often lived for decades). They are supposed to visit and clean the graves of their ancestors and they eat traditional Korean food and play games etc. It's a 3 day holiday based on the lunar calendar and this year it was Sunday through Tuesday (today). So we got 2 days off of school.

My original plan was to take Saturday off and do nothing, then go do a bus tour of Seoul on Sunday during the day, then go to Jeff's until Tuesday or Wednesday. People started freaking me out about the buses being crowded etc. so I decided to have my boss buy me a bus ticket for 6am on Sunday morning to Seoul. He couldn't buy a return ticket because those are intercity and not express buses. So I decided to come back to Jinju early Tuesday morning and not Wednesday, in part because I was afraid the buses would be full and I would get in trouble, and in part because Jeff only had Monday off.

On Friday there was another going away party for a girl named Emily. I was still fighting off my cold, so I went out only until midnight. This turned out to be a good thing because a fight broke out later that night and a guy ended up needing stitches. I went to dinner beforehand with Cindy and a new girl named Bridget (she's still in college and doing her student teaching here - if I had known about this, I would have told Bret to come over!) to a Vietnamese place close to my house. The food we had was really good, but we couldn't order everything we wanted because the place was closing soon. We actually ended up getting kicked out because it was closing. So next time I go, I'll go for lunch!

I almost accomplished my goal of not doing anything on Saturday, but instead, I went to an early dinner with LeeAnna and another new girl named Sarah who lives in my building. We had dinner at a Korean place downtown called A1 and it was pretty good. I had these chicken roll things and an omelet with rice in it (a very Korean food that I had yet to try - not bad). After dinner we walked around the castle at night. All the buildings are closed, but you still get a view of the river at night and it's a pretty walk.

Sunday morning I got up at 4:30, so that I could leave my house by 5:30 so that I could make sure I got the 6am bus. My friend Cindy had decided to join me for the tour and to visit Jeff. It was nice having someone to go with, but as you will see, it sort of changed my plans. I had previewed the bus tour and decided on 4 places that I wanted to see with 3-4 other maybes. The first 4 were all palaces and the other 4 varied. Cindy wanted to go shopping in Myeong-Dong and we decided to go there first. It took forever because Cindy had to try on lots of stuff. We ran into Liezle and some other people in a store there, but they left before we did. We went into a few more shops and then had lunch. After lunch they had set up all these kiosks outside and we stopped at a bunch of those. I bought some socks and a scarf. Seoul tower (a maybe on my list) was basically across the street from the shopping area. Cindy wanted to see the tower, so we decided to go there next. We ended up walking up a huge hill on a back street somewhere but eventually found the cable cars up to the bottom of the tower. We decided to take the cable car because we had lots of shopping bags (well Cindy did and I helped her carry them) and because it was getting later in the afternoon.

The cable car ride is pretty short, but you're crammed in a car with a bunch of other people. We got stuck in the middle and it was hard to take a picture, but you could still see the city. When you first get out, there is a small fountain and snack stand. Then you climb a bunch of high stairs to the fire beacon system. Then you climb some more stairs to the base of the tower and a sitting area.

Part of the fire beacon system

When we got to the base of the tower, there was a traditional Korean demonstration of swords and some music. We watched that for a few minutes and then played some traditional Korean games - like archery, playing drums and a game like hacky sack but with something that looks like a shuttlecock with streamers on it. We walked around the base of the tower and looked at the "locks of love" walls. There was a story that if a couple made a wish together on the mountain top, it would come true. So they put a wall with a chain link fence and now you're supposed to put a lock on the wall to symbolize everlasting love. It's a very cute idea and from a distance it looks nice, but up close all the locks are kind of rusty. We opted not to go to the top of the tower because it was kind of expensive ($7 elevator ride), it was a hazy day and me no likey tall buildings.

Me and a drum player from the demonstration

Me and one of the sword guys. He had to keep yelling at people for picking up those flags poles/spears behind him

Me playing the drum

This guy was at the bottom of the tower. His sign says, "Haechi, Seoul's symbol, is an imaginary creature that helps realize justice and enhance safety and happiness."

Christmas trees of locks

Lock wall. The wall went around a fairly large area. They didn't have locks for sale at the top (or none that we could see), but they did have some at the very bottom in 7-Eleven. We didn't put a lock on the wall.

The tower from the base

View of Seoul from the base of the tower

The other side

After the tower, we decided to call it a day and go to Jeff's. So, no bus tour and no palaces. Oh well. It gives me an excuse to go back and next time I can cross two places off of my list (both Myeong-Dong and Seoul tower are stops on the tour). The subway back to the bus terminal where our bags (and the bus) were took us an hour. We randomly saw another friend there for about 5 minutes. We hopped on the bus to Jeff's and he picked us up and made us nachos (I made guac!) and we had pina coladas (but did not get caught in the rain). Then he decided to make a pumpkin pie for some reason. It was very good although he made his own evaporated milk (because he saw that you could on the internet). That night we played a little Wii sports and watched Jimmy Fallon and fell asleep around 1ish.

Monday morning (so Sunday afternoon EST) Jeff set his alarm for around 4am and we "woke up" and watched football. Jeff was awake for most of it and only fell asleep for a little bit. Cindy and I were mainly asleep. I watched about 10 minutes of the Eagles game, saw P. Rivers throw a few passes and then woke up around 7 for the start of the Jets game. Jeff had been slow cooking a pork roast since the night before and it smelled really good. He then shredded it with BBQ sauce and made some Grands so we had pork biscuits for breakfast. At about halftime, Jeff's boss and his family (wife and 2 of 5 kids) came over. They seem really nice and Jeff played Wii Uno with their daughter while the game was on the other TV. Then Jeff and I played 101 Wii games (so that we could unlock all of the games) and Cindy napped for awhile.

After napping and some snacking, we went bowling on post. Cindy was excited because they have cheap Coronas. We bowled for awhile, then we went grocery shopping at the convenience store for some snacks, then headed out for dinner. We wanted to get some kebabs but the place was closed. So we had Mexican instead. My pork nachos and Jeff's chicken quesadilla were very good. Cindy "beef" (which was bulgogi) burrito wasn't great, but was still better than what we normally get. The tequila shots were trouble, although they did give us blessed limes!

After dinner, we went to a bar called Shooters and played darts for an hour or so. We played Cricket girls v. boy. We won once and he won twice. They gave us a Chuseok present of grapes. I have decided that grapes with seeds are just not worth it. After darts, we went home and watched some TV and fell asleep because we were getting up at 6 to go to work/the bus. I got home and watched the first half of the Raiders game and took a quick nap. Then Cindy and I went to dinner with Liezle and her mom at the dak galbi place.

As usual, it was a good weekend, even though it wasn't what I had planned.

Jinyangho revisited

Today (Friday) one of my good friends, Jesse, left Korea for home. So on Wednesday night a few of us went out to say good-bye. He's a really nice guy and I'm going to miss him.

Me and Jesse at Urban Drink doing the typical Korean photo stance - peace signs

On Thursday morning, I got up and met Liezle and her mom so that we could try, again, to find the park near the lake. This time, we were armed with a map and a guess that it was on the other side of the lake from the zoo. We ended up at the water treatment facility/museum up at the top of the lake on the opposite side from where I went with mom when she was here. The museum was actually nice, but was all in Korean, so it was a waste of our time. The lady at the musuem was really nice and helpful and tried to show us how to get to the park. Here are some pictures from our walk to, around, and in the museum.

Totem poles outside of the Women's Wellbeing Center. We didn't know if it was a hospital or like a community center. 

View of Jinju from above the dam

Inside the water museum

Some type of monument outside of the museum, near the lake. I don't know if it is some tribute to water, or a war memorial because of the people in the statue on the side.

We finally found it and it was pretty lame. It was actually a really nice park for kids, with a skate park and some other jungle gym equipment, but it wasn't what we were expecting. We ended up walking across the street and then following a path next to the river for quite some time. About halfway down the path, I realized where we were and that I had actually been biking down the road parallel to the walking path, but that I just hadn't gone far enough to find the park. The day was really nice when we started out, but the walk next to the river wasn't shaded and it got really hot. The river was teasing us too because it looked really nice and I wanted to jump in. Here are some pictures from our walk next to the river:

There were different types of bridges - this one, one that looked like hopscotch, and a wooden walkway

This guy was doing something with that bag. I don't know if he was trying to catch fish, or collect trash. If you look closely, try to decide if he's picking his teeth, or giving me the finger.

There were lots of wildflowers along the path. These were some of my favorites. Check out my sweet artsy photography.

These are on a tree. I have no idea what they are. The cluster looks kind of like it's all in one "pod" type thing and the berries are about the size of a malt ball. Any ideas?

After our walk, Liezle had to run home to shower and go to school. I had about 2 hours before school, so I took the bus to homeplus to buy some Christmas presents because they had some traditional sales for the Chuseok holiday. That night, I was exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately after getting home.