11 Hours in the Big City

I picked up an old friend, Jeremy B. who's now a US Army Captain on a short visit to Seoul as aide-de-camp to a two-star, at noon at Noksapyong. The plan was to return him there between 10 and 11 in the evening, see what we could, and make sure to attend a Korean baseball game. We managed, and with about five minutes to spare.

We started at Tapgol Park, which is renown as home of the 1919 Independence (or Sam-il) Movement, where its leaders planned to read their declaration to the public. Though it actually took place at nearby restaurant, Tapgol Park is a seminal site in modern Korean history. Using my Nikon, I got photos of all the bas-reliefs that tell the story, and include a few below.


Tapgol Park is also home to National Treasure #2, the ten-tiered pagoda from the Wongaksa Temple site. A kind Korean gent instructed Jeremy on exactly how to pose.


Insadong is a must-see, I think, for a first-timer, because of the concentration of traditional art objects, shopping opportunity, street food, and restaurants. We first encountered a traditional marching band, and I got my picture took:


There were knick-knacks to peruse, then time for a late lunch. Samgyupsal, natch. With a bottle of soju. We ate and drank every bit of it.


We made a quick tour through Gwanghwamun Plaza, including the highlights of the underground museums, before traipsing across to Gyeongbokgung. We hit the geunjeongjeon or main throne room, with its irworobongdo screens, meaning, The Sun, the Moon, and the Five Mountains. Then we stopped by the Gyeonghoeru, the Royal Dining Hall, or Party Central, surrounded by a lake.


Next we stopped by the Cheonggyecheon, but nothing seemed to be going on there, so we refreshed ourselves with a quick draft beer and made for Jamsil Sports Complex to catch the Nexen vs. LG game (my Heroes lost 5 - 4, but it was a good game). We dined on dried squid, sundae (blood sausage) and KFC--Jeremy impressed all day with his willingness to give anything a try!--before returning to Noksapyong.

And since we had a few minutes, we strolled down to HBC, sat at Bonny's and a tried a couple of fine foreign lagers before calling it a night. It was great to see an old friend, and also great to see a bit of Seoul through fresh eyes.

How's the Weather?

Today the temperature hit 90 F for the first time this year (and summer is nearly two weeks away); I turned on the AC in my classroom today.

But I've been turning on the AC for two weeks or more, if the heat has made me uncomfortable. Furthermore, last weekend I went to TechnoMart and purchased a small, desktop fan to put in my office. It works really well, and cost 13,000 W, down from 15,000. That's not much of a discount, bargaining-skills-wise, until you consider that it's 13%.

I won't keep you long, but I just want to mention how different my experience of Korea is compared to some others; over on waygook.org, there are a couple of threads about how people are wilting in the heat, students are fainting, and the school won't allow them to turn on the AC until July 1, or July 14 or whatever.

No one has given me any such instructions, and my co-teachers have at most merely commented that it's nice and cool in the classroom (I'm keeping it at 23 C with low fan during class). In fact, last week, some maintenance guy came in to clean the filters and didn't say a word about it. Not to me, at least.

Anyway, it's now the time of loose knits, short sleeves, light chinos, and absorbent handkerchiefs at the ready. And will be until September.

Must Be A Korean Thing

I'm not much of a reblogger, or whatever it is, but I found this amusing, so I thought I'd let it take up some space in the Patch:


Enjoy.

School Samgyupsal Party

Following my "re-contracting interview" yesterday, the principal informed me there would be a samgyupsal party on the school rooftop at 3:30. Here's the view that greets you:


Pandora's Garden, the sign says, the name chosen in a student competition. What it is, is a garden tended by the principal and some volunteers, with boxes specified for the various teachers--they are expected to come up to the roof periodically to harvest Nature's Pandora's bounty. Here's my little piece of Earth with a view:


The occasion for the samgyupsal party was unrelated to my re-contracting interview. It mostly had to do with yesterday being a really nice string day, and the planting boxes starting to bear. The samgyupsal was cooked in regular frying pans instead of griddles that can drain off the oil, so those who cooked needed to soak up grease with paper towels.


Here's a pic of the scene on the rooftop at Yangmyung Cho. That's the VP poking her face in at right.

"Drunken"

Snapped this on Saturday morning, coming home from teaching my Public Speaking class. Cool.


Crazy Korean hat in the wild. I have a couple other blog posts of caps in captivity, look here, here and here.

Recent Reading

• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith - Yet another wistful visit to the Botswana of Mma Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies Detrctive Agency, and her new husband, Mr JLB Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The story told here continues the arc of the lives of the above-mentioned, with interesting, if non-sinister, twists, such as the usurpation of Mr JLB Matekoni's old home as a speakeasy.
• Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding - A young publicist, spurned by her 'Famous Club" lover, devotes four years of her life to running a refugee camp in a war-torn region of sub-Saharan Africa. An impending crisis magnified by bungled NGO bureaucracies causes her to return to London to ask the celebrities she once for their assistance. At once a piercing indictment of charity "events" and convincing plea for recognition of the troubled political situation that leads again and again to mass starvation in this part of the world.
• Eleven Days by Donald Harstad - Solid police procedural about a gruesome murder spree with Satanic overtones in a sleepy Iowa backwater. Ex-cop's first novel may have some trite elements, but his believable characters--on both sides of the law--suggest this is a name to watch the publisher's lists for.
• Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon by Stephen Leather - Bob Turtledove is an ex-pat who runs an antique shop in the City of Angels--aka, Krung Thep or Bangkok. Some time ago, he set up a website for his shop with a Q&A section; some requests are easy, some are hard. A Mormon youth has gone missing, around the time of a disastrous bar fire in a seedy district of Bangkok, and the boy's parents plead with Bangkok Bob to find their son. Regular visitors to Thailand will recognize many of the names, places and environments described in the story, and probably decide never to become an English teacher there. Fair enough.

• Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm - I never think of a tourist guidebook as a Bible--but if I had, I certainly wouldn't do so after reading this NON-FICTION account of Mr Kohnstamm's sixty-two day stint writing/updating the LP guide for the Brazilian hinterland. A story of drinking, drugs and deceptions, it throws into doubt any single fact you may read in any guidebook ever (except perhaps Arthur Frommer's rather staid tomes). As to the title question, 'Do travel writers go to hell?', I think the answer is that they probably should, but they're so hung over they miss the bus.

School Sports Day 2013

We recently had Sports Day at my school, which in the States would doubtless be called "Field Day". Which is what I told the Principal when he asked me if we had anything like this in America. At The Heritage School, it takes up the better part of a week, and is called "Jubilee". At Oak Mountain Academy, it is organized and run by the senior class as their Last Hurrah. The Greeks did it in the nude. Anyway, at Seoul Yangmyeong Elementary School it begins with calisthenics, as seen above. There were flag-waving cheer groups, as seen below:



Each grade gets a tee-shirt with a specially designed symbol, and classes within the grade compete against each other in one event. By and large, the events were pretty standard. Some classes did a simple foot-race:


Others did a relay race, cheered on by other classes:


The sixth grade did a tug-o-war. First, they were marched by their homeroom teachers to their spots along the rope:


Then they had to pull:


The second grade event was a new one on me. Each class had a barrel full of bean bags. They had a set amount of time to toss as many bean bags as possible into a suspended basket. I think, though, the construction hat is a bit of Health and Safety Gone Mad.


For comparison, check out last year's Young-il Sports Day.

Caricature Me!

While I was at the cherry blossom festival yesterday, I did something I had thought about most of the previous years--I got a caricature done. Near the top of Yunjungno, along the left hand side, there is quite selection of portrait artists to choose from; some are straight pen-and-ink, some do pencil sketches, some are "couples specialists". I wanted a caricature, and the price was right, at 10,000W (about USD 10). Have a look:


And the finished product:


Of course, this is not the first caricature I've had done in Korea. Just recently, as shown in an earlier post, a young lady presented me with this:


And, going on a long walk down memory lane (i.e., searching through the Seoul Patch--all the way to December, 2008), I found this one, made by a high school boy:

Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2013

Ah. So I have now attended more than half of the "official" Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festivals--they've all been pretty similar, except that this year, thanks to a particularly jealous winter (꽃샘추위), there weren't any actual cherry blossoms in evidence on my first visit, last Saturday. They actually extended the dates because of the late blooms. There was a profusion today, however, when I made my way out of Line 9 National Assembly station, Exit 1, across the street, and right to Yunjungno. Just look:


Below are links to my previous posts about the Festival. You can see more pictures, but actually (since flowers don't change all that much), they're more interesting for the historical and cultural elements that I'm not going to repeat here:

Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2012
Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2011
Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2010
Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2009


Remember to click on the pic to see a full-screen version.

Still Nothing to See Here

People often say that Koreans don't pay much attention to DPRK's saber-rattling. Well, today's Korea Herald front page apparently didn't get the memo.


That story they head "NK warns foreigners to leave South Korea" is titled "NK trying to scare foreigners in South" by the Korea Times. Neither article plays up any actual concerns about imminent threat--and certainly none that should worry foreigners more than natives.

Curiously, none of my friends and family back home has emailed or FB'ed me or anything to tell me to get the hell out. Maybe you guys don't care about me any more ... Or maybe you are getting accustomed to the rigmarole surrounding the Kim dynasty's need for attention. Still, just to waylay any fears, I do have ready access to sufficient assets to effect a timely exit, should that be required.

The downside is that by the time I could actually get a flight out (to anywhere), make my way home, and have a patty melt on white plate, scatteredsmotheredandcovered, the game here would be over and time to move back. ,br>
In other news, I see Hyori is set to release her first album since 2010. I'm not too excited, as I didn't care all that much for the last one. It seemed so ... derivative.

A Security Message for U.S. Citizens

... from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. It begins:

The U.S. Embassy informs U.S. citizens that despite current political tensions with North Korea there is no specific information to suggest there are imminent threats to U.S. citizens or facilities in the Republic of Korea (ROK). The Embassy has not changed its security posture and we have not recommended that U.S. citizens who reside in, or plan to visit, the Republic of Korea take special security precautions at this time. The U.S. Embassy takes as its highest priority the welfare of American citizens in Korea. Should the security situation change, the Embassy will issue updated information.

We urge U.S. citizens to keep in regular contact with family and friends. U.S. citizens living or traveling abroad are encouraged to enroll in the Department of State's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), to receive the latest travel updates and information and to obtain updated information on travel and security issues.

It then goes on about how to contact them, etc, etc.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Spring Flowers at School

This is the view of the front walkway at my school. A keen viewer, or at least one who has read the title of this post, will observe occasional bursts of color along the edges of the walkway--indications that Spring is upon us. At last.

It's been slow coming, this year, but arrived all at once; I'm pretty sure that when I left school last Friday, practically none of these blooms had, uh, bloomed. Korea's harbinger of spring is the 개나리 kaenari, a variety of Japanese cornel dogwood, immortalized in the Korean children's song I blogged about back in 2010:


I've been starting classes this week with some questions about spring time and greenery, and what flowers students have seen blooming already. They know the kaenari and the 진달래 jindallae, which is the Korean azalea, member of the rhododendron family--a third grader who has some in his yard even (more or less) knew the term azalea. It is a delicate fuschia:


I also found this petite blue groundcover starting to spread in the flowerbeds alongside the main building. I think it may be something called veronica:


Already springing forth with massive hand-sized blossoms, the Korean magnolia flanks the side stairways that lead up into the building. The Korean name is 태산목 taesanmok:


The 산수유 sansuyu is another variety of cornel dogwood (like the kaenari) that shares its golden color but not its droopy bell shape. In the picture at the top of the post, you can see two fine specimens in full flower on the near left. The school has put labels on exemplars of many of the species on the grounds, and I include one here just FTR:


I took these pictures around lunchtime, and a bee was also having a meal. No doubt there's a tiny amount of nectar in each little flower, so he didn't hang around very long posing for my camera. In fact, mostly he showed me his ass abdomen:


I shoot flowers every spring in Seoul and post them here, as well as snapping them wherever I travel. Gotta be a hundred or two pics by now, so if you're interested, click on "flowers" in the label cloud on the right. Or just hang around the Patch--the Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival is coming soon!