May is an interesting month in Korea, filled with a vast array of festivals and intimate family/cultural events. It starts just as the cherry blossoms fall from the April foliage, and by the end the weather is closer to the summers I know back in Boston- temperatures reaching upwards of 80. My teacher at 대리초 (Daeri elementary) tells me the spring time only lasts for about 3 to 4 weeks… and I believe him now. I can’t complain though; as a old soul who once lived in Cambodia, I concur that hot weather suits me better than most others.
Me with my Korean-language class
Just before the month began, I decided that this would be a month for positive self-improvement. This meant making some changes to my life that would benefit me in the long run and also give me some rest from my life on social media. This meant no facebook, no drinking, no smoking, exercise every day and watch my eating habits more closely…. and fix my posture, and hold things farther away from my face, and try to learn Chinese so I can better speak with my girlfriend who lives in China.
Me and Jinpei!
May has filled me with such productive and positive energy! I’ve nearly finished the first section of my Chinese language program… not chapter but section!! This is a bit of a big step for me because all this time I’ve spent off of facebook I’ve been getting surprisingly efficient and engrossed in the Chinese language. Going to Shanghai a few weeks ago also bolstered this love I never knew I had. Perhaps next year I will be finding a new life there. Who knows? Traveler life is far from predictable. I’ve started selling calligraphy or giving it away as gifts too. I figure I can give some good Chinese stuff to westerners, and then give some Korean style calligraphy to Chinese friends I may one day meet. I also have an article getting published in the Dudespaper soon (more on that later, so check back). So many good things in such a short time! Writing this has been the most time I’ve spent at a computer for non-work reasons.
My caligraphy. Not good yet but whateverJeonju Calligraphy Museum
I visited the Jeonju Calligraphy museum the Friday before Children’s Day to get a better idea of the styling of traditional calligraphy. Three great ones are below (left: bronze-age Chinese. Middle: Korean. Right: traditional Chinese).
I digress; for I mentioned before that May is a time of celebration in Korea! Every weekend I am not out traveling, I am missing a festival. The weekend I spent in China made me miss the 다명(Damyeong) bamboo festival, last weekend was Buddha’s birthday; a day bursting with festivals. Because Buddhism is very traditionally celebrated but the country is now predominantly Christian, the temples will offer a free lunch to laymen during the morning, and every other town will initiate its own reason to celebrate something different (like Osu with dogs, Namwon with it’s love story, etc).
I decided to go to the 오수(osu) dog festival with the Chinese family from my Korean language class, although our region is more famous for a festival in 남원(Namwon), which celebrates a story similar to Romeo & Juliet. They even do a traditional Korean wedding that I am sure is unforgettable. Going to Osu had it’s benefits though! I got to see so many cute dogs, spend time with my friend and her family, practice more Chinese speaking, and get to be an impromptu member of a Chinese cultural parade.
Other celebrations in May include Sports Day which is a randomly chosen day for students to play sports all day… I love it because I don’t need to teach those days 😀 There are many field trips, family day, children’s day, teacher’s day, and parent’s day. It’s a great day to give gratitude to the people you love… (below are my Daeri students on sports day)
If you don’t got a loving family living in Korea, this is a perfect time to travel as all these days happen close to one another. This was the time I went to Shanghai to see my girlfriend. My birthday happened to be the following Monday, so it was nice to be cuddled up with someone I love in another country. Probably the first happy holiday I’ve had since I left the States (Family-oriented holidays like Christmas and New Years were incredibly lonely for me, and filled with bad luck aparently).
Did I mention that Shanghai and China in general is very beautiful. The pollution is a bit of a shame, but the streets and everything all over Shanghai were so clean! recycling was very prioritized and rubbish bins everywhere. This was so lovely because in Korea, I get self-conscious about finding someone else’s rubbish pile to toss my own when I am out in the city (people clean these piles every morning though).
Jinpei and I in Shanghai
The Shanghai tower was so amazing, with it’s glass floor, and the food was so good, tea shops everywhere. I just can’t get China out of my head, even though Korea is so beautiful and peaceful now too. The people seem to have gotten a bit friendlier as well. Must be the ice melting off of everyone!
The glass floor seriously freaked me out to be honest
Anyway, if you had to ask me, the best time of year to come to Korea is the Month of May. There is always something going on, good weather, and fun to be had. Here are some extra photos of my students celebrating a day off hiking with me, a birthday gift, and celebrations being had so far this month:
Hello all! Man it’s been a long time since I posted! The end of November through mid-December gets awfully busy! Students have exams, my schedule gets pulled everywhere, and I come home most nights wicked tired and ready to go to bed. It’s so nice that things are starting to wind down a little bit. I’m currently in school right now; classes ended early so I have three hours to kill which means it’s time for a belated update!
As I’ve mentioned before, I live in the town of Imsil (임실) which is famous for cheese and being a lonely place for a guy who can’t speak Korean (yet!!) or properly fit in culturally. This means when my friends are all busy, I spend my days unable to communicate with people. I stick out like a sore thumb and folk around here tend to be very shy about speaking to me, which I understand… and there isn’t much to do in my town but sleep and hike the local mountain. I spent two weeks in isolation and I was ready to beat my loneliness in Seoul. As you can see in my above pictures, I had no problems finding Ho’s and Cocaine not long after arriving in the university party district, Hongdae (홍대). The party started well!
After enjoying the rich drinking culture of Makkoli (막걸리) I went to find my hostel, The Lazy Fox. Their slogan is good thinking in my opinion. “Just be lazy” and I was pretty lazy about getting there… at midnight. The poor girl who owns/lives there waited so long for me. I was very very grateful! It’s very cheap too and a five minute walk from Hongdae; nestled into a very quiet area a minute from the subway. I had a bunk in a cozy men’s dorm room for 18,000 won per night (something like $12-$15 USD with the current exchange rate. They also have women’s dorm and mixed dorm). I got to know the staff and other travelers very well in the morning over breakfast. I think this is going to be my go-to spot for whenever I visit Seoul in the future :). If you wish to book with them, Their website can be found here!
If the outside doesn’t catch your attention, the cool art inside might. If I had to describe what it felt like staying here, it was a lot like being able to chill at your cool aunt/uncles house, and your other cousins chilling there come from all over. I can be a somewhat shy person but I felt nothing short of friendliness here.
Considering how much I had to drink the night before, I woke up surprisingly early with no headache; ready to explore the unknown. I also paid to stay a second night here because although my original plan was to drink until I crashed at a Jimjilbang (찜질방), I had second thoughts about stumbling into a bath house at 5am to get naked and pass out in a pool. Doubt they would let me in, especially if they saw my huge back tattoo (some places won’t let people with tattoos stay. Old minds relate tattoos with being in a gang).
So, a good decision later I was looking at a map. One of the guys (from Canada!) I talked to who I shared a room with suggested I go to the war museum. Museums are a great thing to do when it is early and you have no plans, I thought to myself. And it’s true! I came here with no plans for the daytime; just nighttime shenanigans! I grabbed the subway and got off about a mile away from the museum (next time I am in Seoul I will take photos of the subway for the seoul purpose of making you cats down in Boston hate me for being here). As I walked, using my GPS, I missed the war museum entirely and found myself at the national museum instead.
I gotta tell you; IT IS SO HUGE!!! I looked around found the information center and was like, “Hey, how much for a ticket for the museum?” and the girl there looks at me, confused, and tells me “It’s free.”
“All of it?” I inquire.
“Yeah…”
“Like, all of the museums, the garden…all of it?”
“Duh…” I’m sure she would say if she were versed in the preferred American nomenclature. But she just said yes. I was there (at the museum, not the info center) for five hours… FIVE HOURS! Didn’t pay a dime. I didn’t even see the whole thing because I was exhausted by the end of it. Like, I barely even got to see inside of the main museum. I spent most of my time nerding out in the Hangul (한글) museum and the large absolutely beautiful garden. See for yourself how big it is; I barely do it justice.
A view of the reflective pool
Me near the gazeebo (a gift from someone to the museum…with the massive pool that has koi fish in it).
Closeup of the traditional style gazeebo
Some of the statues all around the garden. There were many more but I only had enough room for these pictures.
A bell from 1,000 years ago. I forget what it was for but it was a very important artifact (please message me if you know!)
And some nature and natural water and birds around the museum.
I think I spent two hours taking it all in. It isn’t super huge (it is big though) and if you were to speed through it you might see everything in 30 minutes but I like to take things slow and really soak it up. It was much more beautiful than I could give justice to here.
From this point I decided to go to the Hangul Museum because I am a huge nerd when it comes to written language. In fact, Hangul is probably my favorite written language of all time (this has been true even before I knew how easy it was to read and write the language). Once upon a time there was a king who was also a devout scholar/intellectual named King Sejong. Remember that name because he is one hell of a historical figure. Makes me wish we had more politicians like him because my countless studies in US and Asian history all point to one thing: When someone who values both education and being educated comes into power, GOOD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN! In the US we had founding fathers like George Washington and Ben Franklin take charge and shape things. Once they died and the basis of what became today’s political arena got shaped up, everything slowly went bad. Same is true(ish…things got much better after American-Korean War) for Korea. King Sejong made a large number of grand contributions to his people and the country but he is most famous for Hangul. The general history of most Asian countries goes as follows: China created a writing system so complex that only rich men could afford to do it. They believed that if women tried to learn to write, their heads would probably explode (same was true for men and most people today too…). Peasants couldn’t afford to sit down and learn over 10,000 characters even if they wanted to. Some countries kept it, most reduced it to 2,000 common use characters after WWII. Japan tried to change it but the rich men in power made it even worse than before, even with the reduction to 2,000 after WWII. Korea instead made a new written language based off of tongue/throat placement that everyone could use. I learned the basics in about 2 days, and I mastered all the little rules about pronunciation and sound-change (there are roughly 12 of them) in about a week.
Here is a cool trippy video featuring one of the first books written by Sejong as he formed the language. It is incredible how beautiful and technologically advanced the exhibits here are:
Here is a close-up of the book.
Unfortunately due to wars with Japan and China, Hangul was always being made illegal but because of it’s cultural importance it kept resurfacing. Today as a result of efforts to preserve culture, all of Korea (even the north) use it… This was a problem even up until the mid 1900’s as well. The common use of it country wide is, as a result, still finding it’s place. There was an exhibit about the place of Hangul in the digital age that was also really really amazing! Before I go into that though, just realize that the place of poetry and artistic use of the language is still a newer thing. It’s beautiful I think. When I have more of the language and culture down, I can’t wait to write some Hangul poetry 🙂
Here is another video showcasing Hangul as an artistic medium. It is also trippy because Korea really knows how to make everything so impressive!:
I love old books! Especially on language! I was in here for an hour and a half just marveling at all the history, books, translations, etc. I would have stayed in longer but it was such a small exhibit and I wanted to see the guest exhibit before it got to be too late.
Here are some of the things I got pictures of. There are more but I figured for most people once you’ve seen an old book in ancient text, you’ve seen em all maybe.
The next was the digital exhibit. I have a video of the main room and a few points of interest. They even had my favorite typewriter there… BUT IN HANGUL!. The rest is just a lot of the retro tech we’ve seen back at home but with Korean letters on them. It was super neat to see it all. If requested, I’ll put them up in a seperate post.
My body projected onto the wall in digital form
TYPEWRITER!
Finally, I walked around in the main museum for 30 minutes and saw this neat sculpture inside of the MASSIVE main hall. I can’t believe that this and most museums in Korea are free. Our art museum in Boston is very nice but so small in comparison and tickets are upwards of $30! Unless you are smart like me and my poor-friends and stock up on $15-ticket coupons, a day out with a friend can cost you $60 just to go inside the Boston Art museum. I didn’t stay for long sadly because I was so exhausted. I decided to shrug off the physical exhaustion… by walking 2-3 miles to N-Seoul tower…
I won’t write too much about the tower because this post is getting long, but it was great! I don’t know why I went… or went alone since it is a couples spot. You can see the locks in the following pictures. Lovers write something sweet on them and put them up to preserve love forever. No regrets though! I met a nice Korean man and his brother. Both spoke some English and Khmer (which was so surprising!) so we spoke to one another in a mishmash of 3 languages as he followed me all over and got to be my boyfriend for the day I guess lol! He took a lot of photos of me, but I didn’t get any of him. I guess it wasn’t meant to be 😥
Here are some of those locks:
No idea what this was doing here… especially since pot is super illegal in South Korea!
This is how Koreans see us Americans.
Such a pretty view!
Me!
Inside the tower
Outside the tower
Long day! I walked maybe 15km in total and I was so beat!
All’s good though! After an hour of RNR, I met my dormmates from France, Canada, Ireland, and we hit the pubs. Think we got back at 5am and watched classic Irish short films until passed out 🙂
galestudio.wordpress.com 