road trips, seafood, mostly-clean beaches, horrendous traffic

01 May 2009~

the second half of the spring term at HUFS (my school) included a change in classes and schedules for the teachers, and after a couple weeks of adjusting and organizing class materials, i was ready for a break. saturday was my birthday, so on friday night, i went out for some 삼겹살 (samgyeopsal) with my old 1A class and had a thoroughly good time. at one point i was drinking a pyramid-waterfall of shots of soju, immediately after which i received a returned call from YBM english school about scheduling a korean class (i told the guy it wasn't a good time). the night stretched on quite late; i invited 1A to hang out at my apartment, and we stayed up past dawn. i remember sitting on the steps to the building as the sky was brightening and chatting drunkenly with MK (the class's captain and one super swell guy). most of us slept on the floor.

03 May 2009~

on sunday i was meeting up with my two old students and friends from suwon, philip and daniel, and daniel's fiance in suwon from where we would be driving out to 동해 ('donghae'), the east sea. having never been there, i was really excited to get out and do a road trip. it was fine sailing as we flew down the beautiful country roads, and the weather was perfect. upon arriving in the smallish town of donghae, we immediately embarked on a quest to conquer our hunger on raw seafood. the local fish market was quite sizable, albeit a little cramped with all the people running to and fro.

we selected our victims and followed a hired butcher to her personal killing station. i watched with awe and just a little bit of horror at the offhandish-deftness with which she dispatched our prey and sliced it up for us into neat, little, bite-sized morsels.

[we took our food to a little restaurant that doesn't sell food, but rents space and a means to cook your recently-purchased seafood]

after a large and satisfying meal, we took a stroll of the docks where the fishermen and fishing boats were resting.

we then made our way to the beach, and here we rested for a few hours to digest, soak up the sun and fresh air, and watch the children playing and exploring.

[daniel and me]

strangely (and unintentionally) i can't seem to find any photos of philip (well, there was one, but he was blinking and making a dorky face, so i left that one out for his sake).

anyway, with the afternoon mostly spent, we decided to start our drive back to seoul. little did we know of the horrendous madness that awaited us on the road...

traffic. serious and terrible and ridiculously congested traffic. i will spare the details and just leave you with the image of an endless crawl that tried the patience and spirits of us all. running out of things to say is bad. playing the same music over and over again is worse. and the slow realization that what had previously taken less than 3 hours was going to take 8 and that i would not be able to get home because the subway was going to close brought my anxiety to its apex. our own fault for coming back on sunday evening. ugh.

afterwards, when we finally reached suwon, i stayed at philip's place. he was a very gracious host and i was incredibly thankful for his accommodation. luckily, i didn't have to teach until 11:30 the next morning, so i was able to go home early in the morning when the subway opened and take a nice nap in my own bed before heading to work. donghae was great, but i needed another weekend afterwards.

andong - old buildings, mask dances, soju, phalic ring-toss

weeeellll.... it's been quite a long time, hasn't it?

although in the past, my absence from the blog-o-sphere has been entirely due to laziness, this time i have a good excuse

as you may or may not have been aware, my computer has been in dire straits recently; about a month ago it decided to quit on me completely. i had to replace the motherboard and so i have been without easy access to the internet ever since then. now things are mostly back to normal, but part of me misses the blessing in disguise it was to be freed from the distraction of owning a computer.

anyway, i have it back now, and im gunna put it to good use, and that means making up for lost time. our first stop is 안동 ('andong'), a city in central south korea about half-way between seoul and pusan, rich in traditional culture.



sometime in march i made some tentative plans with a couple of my students to visit there for a weekend once midterm exams were over. so on saturday, april 18, we met early in the morning at the express bus station in seoul, grabbed a quick breakfast of ramen, and got our trip underway. we stopped first in downtown andong from where we took another bus to 도산서원 ('dosan confucian academy'), a historic site about 40 minutes out of the city.


[hadi and david on the bus to 도산서원 ('dosan confucian academy') - established by Lee Hwang in the 16th century]

[walking down to the academy]

[view of the flooded river valley]

[really sweet-looking little island temple in the middle of the river; at first we thought we HAD to go over there and check it out, but later we decided to leave it alone (actually we were just feeling lazy but we rationalized it by saying that it would be better remembered as a mystery in our imagination - pretty good, eh?)]

[dosan confucian academy]

[froggies in a pond]

[david has trouble figuring out how to use the old fashioned toilet]

[little closer shot of the distant temple on the river]

after wandering around the academy complex for a while, we thought about our options for getting back. the next bus to the city wasn't going to be coming for about 2 hours and we also wanted to look around and see some other places too. so in the end we opted for climbing up over the hill and exploring what was beyond on foot. it was hot, and climbing over the ridge was not easy, but it was exciting to just go wandering down a road in an unknown area and see where it led.

[on the road]

[this is what we stumbled upon eventually: another little complex of traditional buildings]

[coming back over the hill]

we ended up missing the next bus as well, but while we were standing around like a bunch of fools, a ski-lift operator guy from the states who was working on a 2-year contract as a electrical engineer here offered to give us a ride in his truck. we got into town in no time flat and popped into lotteria (a fast food chain in korea) for a rice burger (instead of a bun, it has rice on the outside). it was pretty gross.

[downtown andong]

after walking around town a bit, we chose to take a walk on the 월영교 ('weoryounggyo' - a bridge along the river that runs through andong downtown)

[weoryounggyo]

[path up to the top of the ridge]

[view of the river from above]

[a natural refrigerator dug into the stone cliffside]

[some old grass and adobe huts]

[we find a park and take a break on this huge swing]

[david gets his ass handed to him at see-saw]

starting to get hungry again, a call is made for heading back into town in search of what had been on all our minds since we first caught a whiff of the downtown streets: 안동찜닭 (andong jjimdark - steamed chicken in a tasty sauce with potatoes, green onion, spinach, red peppers, sesame seeds, and bean noodles). it's a spicy, succulent dish that is just perfect with andong soju (totally different from the chemically-tasting, factory-made soju, this stuff is thrice distilled and is usually 30-40%).

[seaching the back streets for the right place]

[some ajummas playing street 윷놀이 'yutnori' - a traditional korean game played by tossing 4 sticks in the air and interpreting their landing]

[our delicious dinner]

fully satisfied with our mean, we decide to head to our hostel, a traditional house that david found on the internet (there are many such places for visitors to andong). when we arrived, we noticed some people gathered outside the main building, playing the 거문고 ('geomungo' - a traditional, black, stringed instrument with ridges and frets, plucked with a wooden stick and leather thimble)

[the instructor invited me inside and attempted to teach me 아리랑 'arirang' - an old, korean folk song representing the korean feeling of 'han' (an emotion that is not easily explained in english - a deep sorrow that is a result of many years of oppressive rule)]

아리랑, 아리랑, 아라리요...

아리랑 고개로 넘어간다.

나를 버리고 가시는 님은

십리도 못가서 발병난다.

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo...

Crossing over Arirang Pass.

Dear who abandoned me [here]

Will not walk even ten li before his/her feet hurt.

[david gives it a try]

[go stop occupies the majority of the rest of the night - hadi looses by epic proportions]

[view of our hostel from outside the next morning]

after a tasty breakfast at 'mammoth bakery', hadi parts ways with david and i, having to return to seoul for some rediculously lame reason. david and i, having shed our cumbersome burden of a companion, jump on a bus for 하회마을 'hahoe village' (an entire town preseved in joseon-dynasty period architecture, folk tradition, and clan-based culture).

[view of the countryside as we walk from the bus to the village]

[old medicine cabinet]

[a church - obviously not from the preserved time period. it's here because of the people who actually live in the village]

[building style and community structure]

[an interesting traditional version of 'ring toss']

[wait a second... is that stick shaped like a...?]

[while we were chilling by the river, some strange guy was posing the whole time with his wooden sword for his parents]

[an old, outd00r stove]

we were lucky to have picked sunday to visit the village because sunday afternoon is the only time to view a mask dance performance. we headed over to the open-air auditorium early to secure a good seat. despite the apparent japanese high school excursion that seemed to have coincided with our visit, we were able to get a pretty good view of the performance.

[see andong mask dance post]