Artsy Adventures in Insa-Dong

Or, When Idiocy Strikes Again

Camera troubles seem to be a recurring problem for me.  First the battery dies when I leave the charger in the dorms, then the battery dies on me in the middle of a day trip, then I remember to charge the battery, take the camera with me, but forget to put the battery back in the camera.  So there we have it, I have no pictures for today...

But I'm definitely not short on adventures today!  (A wonder I still had some today, given how wiped out I felt early this morning...)  Class felt like a drag, and I simply conked out for an hour afterwards...then got up again, watched a clip montage of movies (that weren't synced properly, I might add), and then somehow mustered up enough energy to go to a tea house in 인사동 (Insa-dong).  It did revitalize me, somewhat--the cold teas of Jeongtong Dawon Tea House actually did wonders for the soul, even if my cold powdered green tea did get a little bitter near the bottom of the cup.  I should've gone with either the citron tea (which I'm convinced is made from yuzu) or the omija tea (literally "five tastes", essentially a fruit punch of sorts).  We were all addicted to the yugwa (유과), though, which are essentially sweetened rice puffs.  A shame that they ran out of the rice cakes when we got there, though...

From the tea house, we ventured the streets of Insa-dong and did a little souvenir shopping.  I managed to get myself a rather interesting t-shirt (with the design of King Sejong's first Hangul script, or something along those lines), as well as a pale pink necktie for my dad (or, if it doesn't suit him, me).  Jackie and Caroline, who were giving me that extra bit of reassurance as to whether or not to buy it, thought it was the "manly pink" (their words, not mine).

We had a little amusement with the street vendors, one in particular who sold Turkish ice cream.  He kept tricking Julie out of her cone, then pretending to drop it as he handed it to her (only for it to stay perfectly frozen onto his scooper-stick-thing).  I'm not sure what he was saying to her after he finally let up and gave it to her, but the crux of the matter: she didn't know what the heck he was harassing her about, and I chased him off by simply saying "She doesn't speak Korean!"  That shut him up, even if he was a little cheesed off.

Some more ambling around before we finally made our way back to E-dae, replenished our wallets with our latest meal disbursement, and headed for--what else?--a round of Korean barbeque.  We thought we were getting a lot of food (two orders of bulgogi, two orders of kalbi, and an order of samgyupsal), although Hao-Hua decided he hadn't had enough and got a Big Mac (with fries!) afterwards.  To be honest, it was the perfect amount for me...the table was a little too small to accommodate our group of five, though.  At least we didn't smell nearly as bad as we would've, given that there was a...vacuum, for lack of a better term, that sits right above the grill and sucks most of the smoke up through it.

Tomorrow, we head for Jeolla-do and Kwangju.  I promise to bring my camera this time, battery and all.

Time Machine: Destination 1796

We took a little trip back in time today as we made our way to Suwon, a city that's just a 20-minute bus ride from Seoul (provided, of course, that there's no traffic--more on that later).  Somehow I'm coherent enough to write this at 11 PM, seeing as I was probably about to pass out from heat exhaustion earlier in the day.  I'm still a little delirious from that, so if I don't make sense at times, you have been warned.

One of the most impressive sights was Hwaseong Fortress (화성), the still-standing fortress protecting King Jeongjo's palace in the middle of Suwon.  Quite an impressive feat; the wall by itself stands about 20 feet high and runs three-and-a-half miles long, enclosing about half a square mile of land.  Though I tried to capture as much of a traditional view as I could, you can see an interesting side-by-side view of the fortress walls with the high-rises that line the horizon.  Kind of an old-meets-new kinda thing, I guess.  You can actually see it better in the picture below, though very faintly so.  I could've spent the whole day just in this one spot, right under a small pavilion nearby, but there were other (read: more exciting) things to do.

If you notice in this picture to the right, you can see what looks like archery targets near the far right of the picture.  In fact, that's exactly what they are; there is, in fact, an archery range right by the fortress walls.  We got to use traditional bows and not-so-traditional-looking arrows for a short period of time.  Considering 2,000 won (~$2) each got us 10 shots, it's definitely worth it, even if you end up embarrassing yourself when it comes to actually shooting the arrows.  A quick tutorial later, and you're already firing away--I only wish I got more arrows, because I would love to learn how to do this in the long run.

The targets in the above picture were 140 meters away from where we took our positions.  Obviously, since (I'd venture to guess) none of us had ever handled a bow and arrow before, we shot at much closer targets (about 30 meters away from our spot--see left).  That's supposed to be a bear's head we're aiming at.  The video game geek in me got excited at the prospect of shooting arrows just like in the Zelda games, although one thing was soon very clear--I'm just as bad of a shot live as I am in the video games.  Although my accuracy leaves much to be desired, I hit the target maybe four or five times out of my 10 shots, which I guess isn't so bad for a first-timer (considering every one of us overshot the target at least once).  Not to mention the bowstring hit me in the arm a couple of times...that left a mark.

Break the targets!  (Or at least hit them.)

Link, if he were real, would've been disappointed with most, if not all, of us--we had to go scoop up our 10 arrows after our quivers were empty, and discovered that a lot of them wound up well past the targets.  I actually thought about shooting my last one at the far targets just to see how close I could get to them, but I guess I was too absorbed with trying to hit the close ones to worry about that!  There's just something funny about seeing a bunch of arrows sticking out of the ground behind the target, though...

The next few stops after the archery range were a little fuzzy, due to the blazing hot heat interfering with my memory for a little while.  I do remember taking a trolley around the fortress and near a huge statue of King Jeongjo (it had to have been at least 30 feet tall, probably more) and walking all the way down to the main palace grounds.  This was also around lunchtime, so we stopped at a local restaurant to try the famous Suwon kalbi (수원 갈비).  Because the BBQ would've burned holes in our wallets and made us smell like it afterwards, we opted for a much more inexpensive option: kalbitang (갈비탕) and naengmyeon (냉면); short rib stew and cold noodles, respectively.  I went for the kalbitang, which was quite good (if a little labor-intensive to eat).

After lunch, we went inside the main palace, Hwaseong Haengung (화성 행궁), which is evidently the site where they filmed the classic Korean drama "Daejanggum" (대장금).  The heat was starting to get to us, though; on the bus to the folk village (which was another 15-20 minutes away), most of us were completely knocked out!

Yet somehow, we were ambling through the folk village (read: staggering through in a dehydrated stupor...or maybe that was just me) without much of a problem.  My camera battery died (again) about halfway through our visit there, which was another letdown, but by that point I was too tired to do anything about it.  Another downer, too, was the fact that all the performances were finished by the time we got there.

I did, however, manage to snap some slice-of-life photos before the battery fizzled out on me...

In the courtyard of a nobleman's house (?)

Garden view of a part of the village

Traditional wedding procession.  Ignore the person on the far left who managed to get into the shot.

Exhausted on the steps of the local government building

Two Updates for the Price of One

That's right, folks, you're getting TWO updates for the price of ONE!  Chalk it up to me (gasp!) actually forgetting about the blog for a little while I had a little fun over the weekend (and today, now that I think about it).  First, take the time machine all the way back to Friday...

We took a class day trip to Cheorwon (철원), a small town near the DMZ.  It's mostly deserted except for some military outposts and cultural museums, which include an observatory.

Yes, I know I got more sky than I meant to.

Yes, we actually got to creep on North Korea from afar.  You see, this observatory has a deck where you can look out over the DMZ itself and, just 2 km away, the North Korean border (right).  What surprised me the most about the DMZ, though, was that it's not the barren wasteland a lot of people (who haven't been there) make it out to be.  We found out that it "accidentally" (for lack of a better term) became a wildlife reserve, due to lack of human activity in the area for the last 60 years or so.  It's a bizarre juxtaposition, the tranquil wildlife preserve with the observatory, telling of Korea's war-torn past.  It's probably the biggest irony the world has.

We also got to see one of the tunnels (left) the North Koreans dug to invade the South.  I couldn't take any pictures inside the tunnel itself, but it was quite the trek, never mind cold inside.  I wasn't terribly happy about hitting my head on the low ceiling about 10 or 11 times (thank goodness for that helmet they gave us), nor was I too pleased with these Korean schoolkids (probably middle or high schoolers) who were going in as we were coming out...and wouldn't get out of our way.  I mean, the tunnel's narrow enough already, and yet they insist on walking two-by-two anyway?  I was just about ready to pop my huge umbrella open and charging through to the end of the tunnel, bowling over any poor saps that happened to be in my path.

Also of curious note was this sign (right) that was just outside the tunnel.  That's 21,172 days since the cease-fire agreement that ended the Korean War all the way back on July 27, 1953.  (Well, by the time I publish this post, that'd be 21,176 days...)  It almost seemed--to me, anyway--that they're still waiting for something to happen.  Reunification, a northern attack, a plan to invade the north, whatever--just something so that they can stop counting the days and start anew.  I guess this is their way of saying the Korean War really isn't officially over, per se.  Eerie, if you think about it.  Just brought to light how tense the situation really is out there.

Anyway.  A long Friday in Cheorwon led to a day or two of rest (and writing a paper that was due Sunday at noon).  Saturday I got to meet up with my grandparents again for lunch, as well as some family friends who had moved back to Korea a few years prior for dinner.  Though this didn't exactly do me any favors when it came to writing my paper that night, at least I didn't write on an empty stomach.

Sunday itself was rather uneventful, thanks to most of the group going to the Mud Festival in Boryeong.  To Hao-Hua, Caroline, and I, rolling around in the mud all day didn't exactly sound like our idea of fun, so we decided to stroll around E-dae and the surrounding area instead.  We decided to make the trek to Hongik University via subway for lunch--Hong-dae, as it's called, is known for being a more hip hangout for college students.  It's certainly busier at nighttime, although we didn't feel like going at night (when it tends to get pretty crazy, in more ways than one).  We managed to find a pretty good Chinese restaurant in Hong-dae for lunch--victory for Hao-Hua, who had been craving good Chinese food since we got to Korea.  For dinner, we went back to E-dae and went to our reliable sullungtang restaurant--victory for Caroline, who was in the process of getting over a bad bowl of said soup from the day before.  And both of them are hooked on my favorite Korean dish--victory for me, who will eat said dish any chance I get.

(pause to catch breath)


Class resumed today, although most of us spent a good part of the day today in Apgujeong (압구정), a busy shopping/dining district not terribly unlike Hong-dae.  We met up with Esther's SAT tutoring student (who had been taking lessons from her in the States), who took us around.  After much discussion about what to go eat--most of us didn't care, although Matt adamantly insisted we have K-BBQ for the 24,198,687th time this trip--we wound up finding a chicken BBQ place, which actually wasn't too bad--it reminded me a bit of Mom's homemade 춘천 닭갈비 (Chuncheon-style chicken, for the Hangul-challenged).  Although I made the mistake of eating one of the raw Korean peppers; flesh, membrane, seeds and all.  Even though it wasn't so big, needless to say, I was in a world of hurt for the rest of the meal.  How can that puny little pepper be spicier than all the spices rubbed onto the chicken combined...?

Fight on, Wendy.  Doesn't it look good?

The rest of the night consisted of a board game café that smelled vaguely of cigarettes, though I definitely had a lot of fun playing (and failing at) pool, as well as learning some card games from Janina (pictured above, left) and Julie.  I'm pretty sure we were the loudest people in the room, as I was too busy laughing my head off at our ineptitude at some of the games, as well as our rather baffling explanations of the rules.


If there's one thing I can't stand about this trip, though, it's our consistent "what the hell are we going to do now?" meetings that we hold basically out in the open.  Most of the time (after wasting about 30 minutes figuring out what the hell we're going to do) they result in half the group splitting off to go drinking/clubbing/something along those lines, while the other half hoofs it to the nearest subway station back to E-dae so as not to show up to class with a hangover the next morning (or at least not running on <4 hours of sleep).  I'll leave you to figure out which group I went with, although one of the guards was, again, hell-bent on stopping me before I got through the gate, only to be foiled by my key card.


I swear, that guard must have it out for me or something.

Time Zone Shake-up, Movie Night

Sounds like something I should've posted on the first day, except now I feel like we've gotten used to it by now.  As evidenced by me waking up about 20 minutes before class and somehow still making it on time (despite not eating breakfast).

The real reason why I say this is a time zone shake-up: we caught the last Harry Potter movie here in Seoul two days before its scheduled American release.  And while I love that I can brag about having seen it before my states-side friends can, I must say I was...well, I'll keep quiet until it comes out in the States before I say anything.

I will say this, though: the Korean subtitles were distracting, but if I don't learn another speck of Korean while I'm here, at least I've learned "시끄러워" (shi-keu-ruh-wuh) means "shut up," and "미쳤어" (mi-chyuhs-suh) means "Are you crazy?"

Now you can't say I didn't learn any Korean while I've been here.  Nyaahhh.

Also, for our class, we watched "Taegukki," a Korean War-era film.  Easily one of the saddest films I've ever seen.  I nearly cried during this one.  And that's saying a lot, considering I virtually don't cry at all during movies.  There was a rather awkward silence after the film was actually over...our TA, Lucy, was bawling her eyes out.  Some of us were wrecks.

And then Hao-Hua and I each had a bowl of sullungtang (설렁탕) and forgot about it completely.  Korean soul food for the win.

Nothing Like a Day Off...

Much of yesterday was spent doing laundry, writing emails, catching up on sleep, and attempting to replenish the stash of spare change I mostly lost at poker over the weekend.  (Wendy, if you're reading this, just remember...you had to shell out a 1,000w bill.  Which I kept.  So there.)

About money...carrying around Korean cash makes me feel rich, since the numbers are so big...

I'm rich!  (What's that?  Only worth about $100 total?  Who cares, I'm rich!)

So the aforementioned 1,000w bill is, in fact, worth only about a buck.  And I'm still amused by the fact that we refer to them as "dollars" like we're in the US.  But, rule of thumb when in Korea: chop off three zeroes and that's the price in dollars.  So--going strictly by the numbers--I might be a quarter-millionaire at the moment in Korea...but when you consider that it converts to about $250, it's a little less impressive.  So we were throwing around our spare change in poker the other night, and we gasped in horror when someone threw down a 100w coin or two (or three) and won the pot.

And then we realized we only lost about ten cents.  Commence laughter.

We weren't betting with the 500w coins (or if we used them, we broke them down into 100w coins first), because we needed them for the laundry machines.  This led to some amusement on my part, as Hao-Hua essentially wasted 500w on a dryer when he didn't realize he had to push the coin in, and then press another button to set the dryer in motion.  (Needless to say, he was pretty pissed after that.)  As for me, I'm trying to hoard all my 500w coins so I have them readily available for my next load of laundry.  I had quite a few when I came over here, thanks to the subway deposit refund-thingies...guess spending them all early was a mistake...

At least laundry's much cheaper here than in the States!  1,000w (~$1) per load here vs. $2.00 at 'SC...I'll take the Korean price any day over the US price!

Which begs the question...since the 100w coins are the exact same size as the quarter, would they work in our laundry machines and register as quarters?  Inquiring minds want to know...it'd save me a little money...

Oh, and by the way, while in the States we're accustomed to going to find food at 11 PM, there's virtually none of that around Ewha.  Everything closes around 10 PM, and those places that are still open after 10 have a very limited menu.  Hao-Hua was none too happy about that one either.

Now that I mention it, I have never seen the front of a college campus so dead past 10 PM.  The streets are virtually completely empty.  It's kinda scary.

Weekend Trips Are Fun!

Full disclaimer ahead of time: my camera battery died halfway through the weekend trip, and I left my charger in the dorms.  So I'm stuck with only a few pictures of the first half of the Ulsan/Busan weekend trip, and without so much as a pixel of the second half.  But nonetheless, I'm always one to make do with what I have...and also, due to fuzzy memory, I may have some events reversed in the timeline.

We took the KTX train from Seoul to Ulsan bright and early Friday morning (evident by the large percentage of sleepers on the train, myself included).  I actually preferred the train to the plane we took back.  I don't know what it is, but I can virtually never sleep on planes.  Yet somehow, I slept like a baby on the train.  Interesting.

You know you get off at a city known for car manufacturing when you get off the train and the first thing in the station you see is this:

 A new car!  (Rich Fields would've been proud...maybe...)

Anyway.  About that whole car manufacturing thing.  We got to see the Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard and Auto Plant.  Was a little funny to me, seeing as I was thinking about getting an Elantra earlier in the year.  Didn't happen, although one of these days, Hyundai.  One of these days.  That Elantra will.  Be.  Mine.  (If my TPIR check still is holding up by then and if I win big on Wheel, sure.)

After getting our fill of business propaganda (complete with scale model of a Hyundai Genesis), we rested up and made our way to Seokguram Grotto, a tiny Buddhist temple nestled in the mountains.  Or was Seokguram first?  I can't remember.  Anyway.  It was a bit of a hike, but eventually the view looked something like this:

 Hey!  Who told that guy he could get in the way of my picture?!  Let's try this again...

Ah.  That's better.

I don't care what anyone says: it's impossible to hate anything after being in or around a Buddhist temple.  Especially one like this.  We were also mesmerized by various paper lanterns hanging on some poles, with what appeared to be prayer tags hanging from those.  Why, you ask?  If you saw a bazillion colors all of a sudden, you would be too!  See?

After feeling enlightened (slightly), we found our way to the Cheomsongdae Observatory...and then that's when it started raining cats and dogs.  The pathway to Cheomsongdae isn't exactly paved, so getting back to the bus was a challenge as we were all sloshing around wet sand.  Not to mention all the puddles we probably found...my tennis shoes were soaked for the next day or two.

I had to tough out sopping wet sneakers and socks when visiting the UN Cemetery, though...and really, I forgot about them when I was walking through there.  Even though it was still raining, it was actually relatively fitting weather for visiting a cemetery.  Of course, it's also fitting that my camera battery dies...in the cemetery.

This was before the downpour.  Kinda eerie-looking, if you think about it.

The rest is a little fuzzy, due to not having a camera to document much.  I do remember, though, making our way down to Busan after that, and finding the fish market later.  It was rather hilarious watching some of the more squeamish members of our group try to stomach chopped-up octopus that's still squirming on the plate, or watch as the salesman butchers live fish.  (Then it's really not live fish anymore, I guess.)   I've been desensitized to the butchery a bit, having seen such things on the original Iron Chef, but the rest of the group wasn't exactly privy to watching it.  I only wish I had a couple of pictures of this myself...

What was even more amusing at the fish market: Matt, our sole white guy in our group, was getting invites left and right from market regulars to come eat with them!  And apparently they thought I was Japanese, Julie (who's actually part-Japanese) was Taiwanese, and God-knows-what-else...

Sunday we had all to ourselves to do whatever the heck we wanted.  Naturally, we take a day at the beach--Haeundae, to be exact.  Not exactly the prettiest beach I've been to, as all the high rises surrounding the area kinda killed the atmosphere.  Not to mention the sand stuck to you, even if you tried washing it off.  But in the end, it was good innocent fun...even if the water was insanely cold.  I felt my feet going numb, for crying out loud!

The last notable bit from the weekend?  Bath house trip.  Quite amusing going in with a bunch of people who didn't know what exactly was going on (and frankly, neither did I until one of the attendants refreshed my memory).  Although--and I'm going to keep teasing him about this--my roommate didn't want to go into the bath itself, just the sauna (where they gave us robes to wear into the sauna area).  I guess he was a little weirded out at the prospect of completely disrobing to go in.

Wasn't going to stop me.  Screw it, I thought, I'm going in there by myself.  After the initial shock wore off, I found myself in a myriad of different baths...although whoever said a bath house was supposed to be relaxing was crazy.  So many little kids running around shooting their water guns and splashing around...I mean, I know it's a little early for me to be acting like a crotchety old man, but I couldn't relax with all that going on.  Maybe I was just cranky from a long day earlier on, but still...it wasn't exactly my idea of a relaxing end to the trip.

Oh heck, at least my camera's back in action.

Weekend Update

To tide you folks over until my head is clear enough to write a decent entry...

Got back from Busan just a little while ago.  Free day tomorrow, will blog then.  A damn shame my camera died on me while there and I left my charger in the dorms.  Not as many pictures this time around, though we'll see what we can do.

That is all.