Architecture Student turned Foreign-English Teacher: August 2011

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Chuseok + bowling

Chuseok is a Korean holiday that's very similar to America's Thanksgiving Day. It's a day for giving thanks to family and ancestors, getting together to enjoy traditional meals and visiting ancestral burial sites to pay respects. Unlike Thanksgiving Day, Koreans have a very specific routine that many people follow: prior to the holiday, families prepare traditional food; on the first day of the Chuseok, a family will go to the husband's parents and have a traditional meal, then visit their ancestors graves. Following that the family will then visit the wife's parents to have a traditional dinner and furthermore spend the night there.

Of course, we are not Korean, nor do we have any family to visit in Korea, so during this 5-day holiday Amanda cooked the two of us a delicious dinner that consisted of a juicy boiled chicken with double-baked potatoes and cheesecake!

We also met up with Iris and went bowling, and then went back to her apartment and played Nintendo Wii!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Temple Stay

What's a Temple Stay you ask? Don't be embarrassed, I had never heard of it before either. And actually really had no idea what it was until I was well into doing one. After experiencing a Temple Stay with Amanda with our coworker Iris at our side as a volunteer for the event, I can give you my take on what it is. A Temple Stay is an open invitation to anyone, sometimes just foreigners or sometimes just to anyone interested, to spend anywhere between 2 days and 1 night or up to a week or more living in a Buddhist temple as a monk does, practicing the traditions of a strict Buddhist lifestyle. During our Temple Stay we learned about Buddhist history from a monk that happened to be an American, while she also taught us the proper way to do a bow to Buddha (of which we did 108 in a row), what a traditional meal is, how to eat the meal, how to meditate (including on a pad and walking) and a number of other things that we had never even heard of. The real shocker was when we found out we needed to be up at 4:00am to continue meditation... That was not easy. We also had a chance to paint flowers on paper-covered CD's as a souvenir. It was all very new and completely unknown to us. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of getting up at 4:00am to meditate, I had an incredible time and learned a lot more about Buddhism than I ever thought I would.

See full photo album here.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Officially 1/4-century old

August 6 was my 25th birthday, and I must say, thanks to Amanda and our friends here it turned out to be quite the nice birthday. After work on Friday August 5 we went to a bar with our director Glen and her husband Luke, along with our two coworkers Iris and Anna. I was even lucky enough to receive a beautiful birthday hat which I was required to keep wearing while we were at the bar, along with a delicious cake from Glen and Luke. I even received an entire cheesecake from our youngest student Jack the next week, and handmade cupcakes from our student Jessica. I was quite shocked!

I don't know why Amanda was so excited... Maybe she wanted a hat too?

After Amanda treated me to dinner at VIPS in Gimhae on Saturday, Kang and Choi came over to our apartment to wish me a happy birthday and enjoyed some OREO Cheesecake cupcakes that Amanda's mom had shipped to us. We gave them a couple to take back home and give to Xavier and William. And prior to my birthday Amanda gave me the most awesome camera bag that I had been eyeing for some time: a National Geographic bag. She also surprised me with a book I have been wanting to get; one I read while I was studying in Denmark and really wanted to have as my own: Life Between Buildings, by Jan Gehl.

Thanks to everyone for making my birthday a remember-able one!

5-day Vacation packed with adventure

The following three posts pertain to the recent vacation time Amanda and I had from July 30 - August 3. During that time we went camping on an island with our friends Becky and Nick, got to see a little of the city they live in and finally spent a couple days in the city Suncheon. I am happy to finally share all the photos and blog posts with you! Enjoy :)

Suncheon Bay Eco Park

The last stop on our 5-day vacation was halfway between Mokpo and Jinyeong: Suncheon. We decided to go to Suncheon for two reasons. 1. The train went there and tickets were available. 2. The Suncheon Bay Eco Park looked pretty interesting. And it was! See all my photos here.

Mokpo + Museum of Natural History

After camping, we spent a couple days taking in the city our friends live in, Mokpo. The city is about 250,000 people, compared to Jinyeong's ~40,000. So it is much larger and has much more to do and see. We didn't need to go far from Becky and Nick's apartment before we were able to enjoy the waterfront, a couple really unusual rocks, as well as a whole cluster of impressive museums. We originally didn't intend to visit the museums, but after we got ridiculously sunburned from camping, the thought of being indoors out of the sun sounded great! Be sure to check out my Mokpo flickr set, as well as my Museum of Natural history set.

It's not easy being Wolverine from the X-Men, but I make it look good.

Camping with our friends on Bigeum-Do Island

The phrase "it's about the journey, not the destination" was my favorite line that Saturday and Sunday. We knew we had a lot of travelling before we set out for camping but we didn't realize how eventful it would be. With our extremely heavy packs, we departed our apartment early Saturday morning (July 30), walked about 10 minutes to the taxi stand; took an 8 minute taxi to the train station; took a 6.5 hour train to Mokpo; took another taxi from the Mokpo station to the ferry station where we met up with Becky and Nick; took a 2.5 hour ferry to the island; waited about an hour drinking beer and watching an angry lady hack apart fish; finally hopped in the back of the angry lady's truck and were driven to the beach; then humped it the last half mile or so to our camping spot. All in all it was probably the most extensive travelling we've done so far. The bit where we waited and then got a ride from the angry lady wasn't exactly planned. We were hoping to get a taxi on the island from the ferry docks to the beach on the other side of the island, but no taxis were there to be taken. So, we walked up to a shop attempted to inquire about a taxi and after a great deal of not-understanding, believed aforementioned angry lady would take us where we wanted to go. But, once she finally came out of her shop, we couldn't tell if she was saying, "Come on let's go" or "what the hell are you still doing in front of my shop!" So, we decided to slowly approach her truck to see if she got more angry or if she would let us jump in the back. Thankfully, we were able to jump in the back.

The beach we camped at was by far one of the most beautiful areas we've been to, and going camping with our friends was also incredibly worth it. We had a great time, despite the extensive travelling. Take a look at all of my photos here.