Suwon Fortress

It seems like we've been keeping a good sight seeing schedule. We have been getting to one new event or attraction (historic or otherwise) each week. Jini and Sup took us to Suwon Fortress. We had planned it the weekend before, but then decided against tromping around in the rain so the following weekend we went. On the way there, I was so surprised to see my first spring flowers! At first I thought it was just light green shoots and buds starting to form on bushes, but when I asked about them, Jini said it was very popular and you see it everywhere. It's called forsynth - I looked it up. Here's the first look at the wall and a lookout tower.







The first thing we did when we got there was practice Korean archery. It was really fun and it wasn't as embarrasing as I had expected it would be. Curtis turned out to be a born natural and hit the target once or twice. It looks like all those years at summer camp paid off mom and dad!











There are two main parts to see at Suwon Fortress, the wall that is 5.7 km in circumfrance and in the middle is the fortress itself. We didn't have time to do both so we had to pick. We decided to do the walk around the wall. At some points there are lookout towers or other building to look at too. Here was one of the first buildings that we saw.























Even though we had a map, I still didn't understand what we were getting ourselves into. It's a bit deceptive too that part of the city is still inside the wall. We couldn't really see where the path was leading around us. One sights that caught our eye was a gorgeous mountain thick with pine trees. Little did we know, but our trip would carry us up one side of that mountain and down the other. In fact, while we were admiring it at the start, I began thinking I'd love to come back to hike on it someday! Here's the first part of the wall. Along the way there were tonnes of gorgous flowers and the starting buds.






























This was Curtis' and my first excursion with our new camera so we took liberties to see how well our zoom worked. There is a bit of haze, but this golden statue was so far away it looked like a leaf on the hilside. Needless to say we were pretty impressed.

This was the view from on top of the hill. It was an overcast day so you can barely make out the mountains in the distance. It was so refreshing for us to get up high and make sure Korea wasn't one big city.

This one is my new most favorite picture. It was the first time in my life I've ever seen magnolias. They're really stunning because they are such a big flower on such a bare tree. I'm not sure if they like Canadian winters, but if they do, I'm going to have one in my yard.

Promised Pics

So here are some pictures of the wedding.

This is a hanbok. It's very flowy and worn loose from the body not like a kimono. She looked so elegant!

The next picutures are from a shopping trip with Matt and Amber.

The top picture is of a market stall specializing in doggie duds. There was a bee costume and a hanbok for puppies.

We went to out first foodcourt in Korea, which is quite a bit different because you order food from one counter and then take your ticket to the kitchen window when it's done. There are separate kitchen windows for separate kinds of food. I ordered bibimbap which is basically like stir fried rice. Occationally it comes with crazy side dishes. This time I had baby octopus with mine. I wasn't going to try it and then Matt did so I did. It wasn't toooo slimy, hehehe, but it was a bit chewy. Always the daring one, Matt decideds he's going to eat some baby octoups off my plate.

The last picture is an example of the crazy t-shirts here. This one has text on the back that makes no sense, but feels like a political / anti-religious rant. It even says something to the effect of Clinton being the first black president. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, but this is comming from people who think I'm blonde, so it doesn't surprise me. ;)

These are pictures from when we saw the Van Gogh Exhibit. On the way to the museum there is a gorgeous walk. Comming the other way there was a colour party for one of the palaces that was close. It was a mini parade!

Rain Rain Rain

After Van Gogh, life has seemed normal and empty. Hehehe... no, I just felt like saying that to be melodramatic! ;P Actually things are going well. We have mostly just hung out with friends near or around home. We've been out with Jini and Sup a couple more times and Matt and Amber have graced us with their presence to keep us company. We even had a board game marathon in which Amber totally walloped the lot of us at "Taj Mahal".

We've tried to see more of Korea, really we have. The past two weekends in a row we were all set up and ready to see the Suwon Fortress. It's supposed to be a nice walk outdoors. We were rained out the first time and it's currently raining right now so we'll see if it holds up tomorrow.

Last weekend we went to church for the second time. The regular pastor was preaching instead of the youth pastor so it was good to know what that would be like on Sundays to come. Being that it was Easter Sunday, I expected a whole lot more ceremony. In fact, the pastor was in the middle of a series on salvation. I know it kind of fits with Easter, but doesn't Easter deserve it's own sermon? The pastor also talked about the "inner man". He referred to this part of all people that is their spirit essentially. It bothered me that he talked about it with a gender. I don't know what it is lately, but the more I attend church the more questions I have about my beliefs. I feel like all of my studying and past experiences is contrary to what some churches are teaching. Is it possible? Can a faith be so divided? I love God, I'm not the most diligent at disciplines - but I genuinely love God and want to follow Jesus example in our world. Is that not the call of Christians? I'm not sure whether I'm calling for help or just venting... bear with me on this one. It actually got to the point where I had to ask myself if I believe the same thing as the people around me. I'm tempted to say no, but does that mean that I deny my faith then? Always more questions than answers.

This blog is very quirky and jumbled. I hope it reminds you all of my and my quirky jumbled nature. :) Take care and I will update with more photos soon!

Van Gogh in Seoul

Upon deliberating whether we should see the Van Gogh exhibit or play boardgames, I forced Curtis to promise me that we would see that Van Gogh exhibit the next Saturday. Since it was the last weekend I was prepared for it to be completely packed so I insisted that we head out early. Early for us meant out the door by 10:00, which is admirable considering on weekdays we're not out the door before 12:30. Getting ready to head out, I noticed my own excitement. I was especially thinking about how amazing it would be to actually set my eyes upon "The Starry Night" and the sunflowers series.

We got there and at first weren't quite sure which direction to head. We had been given the exit number to leave the subway, but other than that it was more or less just assumed that it would be obvious. Not 5 minutes later, we saw a huge banner with "Van Gogh" printed on it. Hehehehe, in hindsight it makes me feel silly for thinking it wasn't obvious even for 5 minutes. :) Smaller banners lined the small brick street leading to the museum. Other exhibitioners were walking the same direction so we kept going for about 10 minutes. We saw a line forming and followed suit.

Coming up to the museum, it looked more European than it did Korean. It was concrete with pillars and mouldings. The glass revolving doors gave it the modern twist. It was not a long wait before we were inside. The inside of the building looked so much different than the outside. Panels of light coloured wood and flat panel garage doors concealed the works of art and sectioned off each exhibit. There was a huge banner declaring the presence of Van Gogh's art, but then no other signs. As soon as we entered the building, there was another line up. There were black strap gates to direct and move the traffic through this museum and attendants pointing and directing people. Once we were ushered up a set of stairs, it seemed like the rest of the museum was fair game. No more lines, no more black strap ropes.

As we went on, we noticed a pattern from the other viewers. It was common not to stand in line actually, but instead to go to a painting you wanted to see and elbow your way to the front, stand there for a minute, and then shimmy your way back out again. It made the line incredibly slow and so after about an hour of being patient we decided to do as the Koreans did.

We found the first room displaying Van Gogh. They were mostly drawings and chalk sketches. Not at all what I had imagined. There were human subjects in the sketches doing farm work. He drew and painted a lot of people just being people. It was really interesting. Halfway through the second of three rooms we started to see the oil on canvas that Van Gogh was famous for. It was really breathtaking. None of the ones that we saw were particularly famous except "Vase with Irises". The colour that he used were vivid and the contrasts were stunning. I didn't get to see any of the sunflowers paintings or "The Starry Night", but I feel lucky to have seen the ones I did.

Trouble in the Henhouse

Some different issues started to come to a head two weeks ago about rules at work. The details are pretty boring honestly, but lets just say that we've been warned over and over again that employers in Korea will take all that they can get and push for more if they think they can get away with it. I understand that this is a generalization and may be grossly inaccurate, but I've experienced it and have had many other stories to verify it.

Basically, the rules at work had been getting stricter and stricter around out break times. They were pushing us to use our break times for work because there were little other options unless you find twiddling your thumbs amusing. They also have been piling on more and more work. We totally revamped our speaking course to include much more preparation on the teachers part. In short, we didn't want to end up in a stressful situation where we hated work and were constantly bombarded by changes and impossible requests.

The foreign teachers united and made a formal complaint at our meeting with our director. At first the air was pretty relaxed, but then the vice director kept repeating the same illogical excuse for the strict rules. We then mentioned that Korean law stipulates a free break period of so many minutes per so many hours working... yadda yadda. They panicked a little I guess because the next day, during a regular meeting with our academic director, we were told that there would be no changes to the rules, but breaking them slightly wouldn't get us in too much trouble. She also mentioned that the director and vice director consulted their lawyer and that as for a break time, they give us 5 minutes after each class which adds up to more than enough to meet the requirement of the law. BAH! I feel a bit like it's 2 steps forward and one step back, but at least we gained ground. The other thing I think we gained was a firm foothold. Our director knows now that we can't be pushed around.

In the past two weeks we have been fed more food and given more praise than ever. We still don't have free breaks, but some of the restrictions have been removed. Hurray! As for more work, we'll see.

CONT"D

So... like I said, we were weighing the option of going to see the Van Gogh exhibit or going to meet up with some fellow board gamers. We called Gisela for directions to make sure Van Gogh wasn't going to be too far out of our way and she also mentioned that it was running until the next weekend. Being that we had an extra week to see it we decided to stick with the tenative plans of meeting these new people.

It all started when Curtis put a note up on www.boardgamegeek.com. We wanted to know if anyone had Korean translations for our boardgames so that we could teach Jiny and Sup because they are really interested in playing. Boardgames can be a little bit complicated even in one language, so we thought it would be best to get a translation for them. We got a response the same day from a guy that Curtis has noticed on that site before. It turns out he is a major boardgame reviewer and has a massive collection and has boardgame events every couple of months at his house. He's a part time english teacher and part time pastor for an english congregation in the north part of Seoul. His name is Tom and his wife is Larua. They have 5 little girls and have been living in Korea for about 7 years.

The visit was fascinating for me for many different reasons. First, their large family surprised me. I haven't heard of any young families that big in a while. Second it was neat to meet people who actually had a house in Korea. Third, I hadn't really heard of anyone staying more than 3 years 'till that point. Lastly, his boardgame collection would be the envy of a museum! It's HUGE! I think he has over 1,000!

Besides the fact that I was taken by surprise by so many things, they were really nice people and very hospitable. They invited us to stay for dinner, but because of the long train ride we declined. Tom said he'd keep us posted on when the next boardgame event would be so we'll probably hear from him in the next month.

We were headed through Itaewon and decided that Matt and Amber should be made aware so that we could meet up. We called them and they were just headed out the door to meet Leah (a foreign teacher from New Zealand we'd met about a month ago) in........ Itaewon! Crazy coincidence. So we met up and we had Quiznos and Cold Stone. It was so delicious!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

This post is dedicated to all of my loyal fans out there who post comments and tell me how much my blog rocks! I also love the questions! Keep 'em coming!

So, we resumed our rock lifestyle last weekend (March 8-9). What I mean is, we had plans all weekend and people invited us out and we met new people... Curtis and I were hot commodities!

Saturday morning we got up early to go to a wedding in Seoul. It was Erin's wedding. She is the Korean teacher that started at the same time as we did and she invited us to her house for Lunar New Year. I had gotten fairly close to her because we spent some time out of work together, so it was really awesome to be invited to her wedding. Since she was marrying a guy who's dad is an official in the Korean army, she had her wedding in a special venue that is reserved for military people. When we got there it didn't really look like an army base, but there were people walking on the roads with uniforms and there was noticeably less traffic than elsewhere.

We got there just in time to greet her parents at the door, find some standing room and get comfortable. There were men in uniform down the aisle at equal intervals. Erin was not hidden from sight but instead she was standing at the back of the room with her parents. The moms were called up first and they lit candles. When it came time for the bride and groom Erin kissed her dad at the top of the aisle and walked down with her fiance. As they walked, there was all this electronic fanfare, trumpets and timpani on a synthesizer. They also had fog and bubble machines pumping out the fairy tale effects. It was such a lot of hoopla!

Erin really sad as she walked down the aisle and at first I was concerned that she was not sure about what she was about to do. Then I remembered that Korean brides look sad because they are leaving their parents. There was about a 20 minute speech by a man at the front, but he wasn't done up in any special clothes. In fact, the wedding clothes looked very typical of a western wedding. She was in white, he was wearing a tux. Only the mothers were wearing traditional Korean outfits called hanbok. I learned later that this is the public ceremony and that there is a very small private ceremony after it where everyone wears Hanbok.

Ok, back to the wedding. The man makes his speech but we don't ever notice any vow repeating or anything like that. We also don't see any rings being exchanged. They do announce them husband and wife and they kiss in front of everyone. This is a big deal because Koreans don't typically show affection in public. Everyone hooted and hollered just like in a western wedding. The happy couple stood at the front, Erin was looking much less gloomy. They were serenaded by some close friends. One was a group of 4 guys that did a really good version of a love song I've heard on the radio. Then the MC asks the groom to perform several feats of strength to prove his worthiness. I kinda thought it was too late for that after they had already been married, hehehe. He even is asked to do squats holding his new bride! Yikes! Poor Erin almost went down in her beautiful dress! On their way back up the aisle, the men in uniform raise their swords, also very fairytale. The bubbles and fog start up again, too. The funniest thing happened at this moment. Each pair of dudes with swords lowered their swords to block the way just before the couple passed. They then asked the groom to shout out all kinds of promises to his bride. My personal favorite was, "I'll treat you good tonight!" Of course my laughter was several minutes after the fact because it had to be translated.

After the public ceremony everyone stood around and had their picture taken with the couple, and I mean everyone! There was even a huge group shot with all of their friends. We then proceeded downstairs for a massive buffet including all the sushi you could ever eat! Yum! It was an excellent opportunity to try some Korean food so I loaded up! It was really delicious.

Curtis and I then hummed and hawed about our options for the rest of the day. We deliberated seeing the Van Gogh paintings as they were on exhibit in Seoul. We also thought about meeting up with some board gamers we met on line... TO BE CONTINUED!!!