Palgongsan #2

When I first got to Daegu I felt that every weekend I had to be doing something, going somewhere, seeing the sights of the City. Now after being here for more than two months and it being winter and all, I am not doing the touristy things nearly as much. But, since my friend Marla's dad was in town visiting we thought that we should get out and see a new place in Daegu. We decided to go visit the Donghwasa Temple at Palgong Mountain. This was not my first trip to Palgongsan (san = mountain in Hangul), but it was my first trip to this part of the big mountain range. The village around the Donghwasa temple and the temple itself were beautiful and very peaceful. We thought we had seen everything in the village, but stopped into the tourist information booth to see if there was a gift shop anywhere in the area. Luckily we did this because we almost missed seeing the Tongil-daebul Buddah statue. This statue was built in 1992, and is the largest in the world - 33m high! It was definately the highlight of the trip.

Slacking

So, I have to admit that I have been a slacker lately with this blog. I apologize and I'm going to try harder this month to post every week. I feel like I have finally gotten into a steady routine here and that sometimes there just isn't much to write about. Either that or the things that I found extremely exciting/strange/crazy when I got here have now become the norm.

So here is what I've been up to the past little while:

Last Saturday a few of us went to see a performance that was part of the Korea in Motion festival going on in Daegu. Out of the many performances we chose the one called "The Ballerina who Loves B-Boyz". Does this sound very "Save the Last Dance" to anyone else? It was really good - lots of amazing breakdancing and hip hop music. Sorry about the lousy photo, it was difficult to get a good shot in the theatre.

This past Wendnesday was my official 2 month mark! It's hard to believe that I have been here for two months already (even though some days it seems like I've been here forever). Ten more to go!!

This Saturday we went to Seomun Market, the biggest market in Daegu, to try to do a bit of Christmas shopping. This market is huge, with sections for food, clothing, bedding and other goods!! It's very easy to get yourself lost, or find youself thinking you're in a new area, but then pass by a shop you just went into ten minutes ago. It was a fun time, well mostly - I would advise staying away from the rooster/chicken isle where they have hundreds of them for sale, both dead and alive.

After the Market we met up with friends at the Ariana Brau, a restaurant within the Ariana Hotel that has an all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink-beer buffet. It was an all Canadian crew out for the night to celebrate our friend Laura's birthday - a new Daeguite who I was connected with through a friend from back home (thanks Paddy!). I think we all got our money's worth with the beer alone. After dinner we went downtown to hit up a variety of bars. We ended up finding the place that we were looking for - a hookah bar - and spent quite a bit of time there in the chill atmosphere. A birthday night cannot be complete without a bit of soju and dancing, so we picked up a couple bottles of soju from the convenience store, and drank our way to the dance club Monkey. Good times were had by all!

Hockey night in..... Korea?

This past Friday we went on a field trip with our kindergarten kids to the apple orchard. It was a great day for the trip - the sun was shining and it wasn't too cold - it was such a fall thing to do. The apple orchard did not compare to the ones we have back home, but it was still fun to see the kids picking their own apples and playing some games. The big hit of the day was the swing - ohhh ahhhh. They even brought out a big long rope for us to play tug-o-war. All of the classes got a chance to go against each other to see which one was the strongest. At the end we even had a foreign teacher vs. Korean teacher tug off. I was sure we had this challenge in the bag - 5 foreign teachers, 2 of them being men, against 10 female Korean teachers. We were doing pretty well until about 20 little kids decided they would help out. We'll definately have to have a rematch someday.

Sunday a few of us went over to a restaurant downtown run by Canadians called the Holy Grill. This place has great food when you're craving something Western, but Sunday we went there for one particular reason - hockey. The guy who owns the bar tapes the Hockey Night in Canada games from the night before and then replays them Sunday. This Sunday was a Canadian showdown with Toronto playing Ottawa and Calgary vs. Edmonton. We only stayed to watch the first game and it was great to see Toronto kick Ottawa's butt. It's nice to have a little bit of Canada here in Korea.

New places. Familiar faces.

This past Friday after school I hopped on a bus and headed to Suji to visit some friends from teacher's college - Ryan and Allison. It was so nice to get away from my place in Daegu and see some familiar faces.

We had planned on spending some time in Seoul, so after a hearty breakfast - including Tim Horton's coffee!!!!! (Thanks to Ryan's mom) - we took a bus into the big city. We met up with a friend of Ryan and Alli's and went for a little hike up Mount Namsan to Seoul Tower. This place is the highest point in the city and is a great spot to see the view, even through all the pollution. The tower is the third tallest in the world at 240 meters tall , but since it is built on the top of the mountain it ends up being 483m above sea level. The hike up to the tower was great, aside from the smell of silk worms brewing at one of the random vendors. When we got up to the top we were greeted by two very strange and random acts taking place. The first was an older man hoola-hooping three hoops around his waist and one around his neck while holding batons. There were a lot of young kids around watching this guy, and there we were with them. This guy was so hilarious that I had to include a photo. Right behind this guy was another man jumping rope. We were in this area for about 30 minutes and the skipping guy did not stop once. Judging by the size of his calf muscles I think he skips quite often. Even on our way out of the tower and back down the mountain a couple hours later this guy was still skipping. We think he must have been raising money as he had something written on his shirt - Korean of course.

Sunday, after losing Alli to the Korean Soju gods, Ryan and I headed to Suwon, an ancient fortress city. It was a great day for a walk, so we walked pretty much walked the entire wall around the city. After the walk we headed back to Suji and then I took off on my trip back to Daegu. I am definately going to have to check out Seoul a few more times while I'm in South Korea.

In other news: I offically started taekwondo yesterday! I'll let you know if I make it through the week.

The Big Bang!

This weekend I lost my B-card. That's right. I finally had my first Korean bang* experiences.

* pronounced 'bong'

Friday night I went to the Noribang.

The staff of St. Peter Junior School was taken to Gyeongju for a little 'field trip' of sorts. After the hour drive east of Daegu, we arrived at a very nice hotel in a tourist area of the city. We all dropped off our bags and headed to the little grocery store downstairs, being told to pick out anything we wanted for snacks. Half an hour and two full bags later we made our way back upstairs to have our junk food feast and to play drinking games. After a couple hours of fun, and six forties of beer later we decided to check out what the hotel had to offer. This is when we stumbled upon the Noribang. A Noribang is literally a singing room. You walk into the place and are taken down a long hallway with doors on either side. Each door opens to a singing room, similar to karaoke, but instead of singing in a bar full of people you don't know, you sing in a small room with friends complete with tambourines and many microphones. Marla and I picked quite a few songs to sing together (my favourite being Journey- "don't stop believing") and also got a couple songs picked for us by our Korean co-workers ("don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me" - how random!). The funniest part about the whole thing is that they play all of the foreign music to random korean videos that have nothing to do with the song you are singing. This place was soooo much fun and we're definately going to frequent more noribangs in the future.

Saturday night I went to the DVD Bang.

Similar to a noribang, a DVD bang is a place with many small rooms where you watch movies (already released on DVD). We picked a random 24 hour bang downtown and were given the VIP room, which had a huge sort of couch that four of us could fully lay down and chillax on. After two movies we decided to call it a night and headed home at 3:30am. We're going to have to do more training before we try a 24hr DVD Bang-a-thon.

Halloween - Korean style!

Sixteen - that's the number of kids who left the haunted house in tears on Friday.

We celebrated Halloween a little early at St. Peter Junior School and had a school party on the 26th. All of the staff at school had been preparing for weeks, trying to get the school Halloween ready. It turned out to be a pretty good party, and not just because we didn't have to teach. Each of the 7 rooms of the school was transformed - we had a Haunted House, a room of feeling (grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for brains etc.), face painting, movies, games, and we slid a little educational material in there too.

I got lucky and was put in the Haunted House for the day, wearing a pretty awful looking pirate's mask and scaring little kids by jumping out of coffins and from behind curtains with 4 other teachers . We were a little easy on the Kindergarten kids, rounding out the morning with a total of 6 kids crying. After only 6 criers in the morning, we definately didn't think we would have a very good shot at getting many more in the afternoon with the older kids. I think we must have stepped up our game, because we got 10 more! We were all pretty impressed with our spooking skills and naturally gave high fives when another one of our students left bawling. Aside from the criers, we did have our fair share of kids who fought back (I got punched in the face and hit with an uncountable amount of wands and swords), and kids who could not be fooled ("hello Danielle Teacher").

Of course, Halloween couldn't be Halloween without mounds of candy, donuts, chocolate and kimchi (joking - this is the one day we didn't have kimchi!).

Happy Halloween to everyone back home!

It's a small world after all!

It's funny to think that my ears perk up whenever I hear the English language here in Daegu. I find that you hear so much of the Korean language all day long, that when you hear English being spoken in your surroundings you have to look around to see where it is coming from. This is also true for seeing other foreigners. It is still a novelty for me to see other Westerners in town, even though I know there are lot of us living here. Today, while walking downtown, I heard my friend Sarai say "foreigners at 12 o'clock". Of course we all looked that way to see a group of foreigners. As the crowd parted I saw a familar face... and ran into a guy that I went to school and swam with at Guelph. I knew that Jeremy had just recently arrived in Korea, but he is living in a town about an hour away from Daegu. Him and his co-workers were just in Daegu for the day - what are the odds of that? It is definately a small small world!


sorry no photos - I'm mad at myself for leaving my camera at home today.

A Weekend of Walking

This past weekend was devoted to doing a little more exploration of the city I now call home.

Neither me, nor my friend Marla have cell phones, so we thought we would spend a nice little Saturday trying to find one - easier said than done. We had heard that there were quite a few cell phone stores close to one of the US Army bases here in Daegu, so, thinking that we may have a better chance finding some English speaking sales reps close to the base, that is where we headed first. We were pretty stoked at the possibility of getting phones, so when we arrived at the base we were pretty bummed to find mostly all of the stores closed. 'Maybe they just open late on Saturdays' we thought. We found a place to get a bite to eat while we killed some time, and then returned to find that the stores were just not open. So downtown to 'cell phone street' we went. 'Cell phone street' is literally a street where every store sells phones... I don't know how they all stay in business. To make a long story short, we didn't end up getting cell phones. We quickly found out that unless you want to blindly get yourself a phone, there is no way to buy a phone on 'cell phone street' without a Korean friend.

We've heard that there is quite a bit to see and do in Daegu, therefore Marla, Jillian, Sarai and I decided to take advantage of one of the many bus tours that the city tourism bureau offers. For only 6500 won (about $7) we were taken to 4 different places of interest in Daegu over a period of 6 hours - the only downside of the tour is that it was all in Korean!




The first stop was the Daegu Arboretum. The Arboretum was originally the city's waste landfill site and over the past 10 years it has been transformed into what it is today. We walked around for about an hour and didn't even come close to seeing all that the Arboretum has to offer. This is definately a place where you could spend a day exploring and chilling out.




The second stop along the tour was the Hwawan Resort. This was also a nice little spot to tour around and enjoy the nice fall day. In the summer, this place is a sort of amusement park with a huge swimming pool with waterslides and play areas for kids. The highlight of this stop on the tour was the three story lighthouse that got us up above the trees for a great 360 degree view of the city.





The third, and I think everybody's favourite stop along the tour, was at the Yongyeonsa Temple. After a short hike we arrived at the entrance to the temple only to be greeted by our own personal tour guide, who we found out knew a few English words. We were first taken to the main worshipping hall and were able to see the Triad Buddha - three beautiful gold Buddha statues (sorry, no pictures allowed). On our way to another site we passed by a small souvenir shop where we were welcomed inside by a woman who sat us down and gave us some tea and rice cake - Koreans are very friendly! We then went on to see the Stone Gyedan Altar, where one of Buddha's bones is enshrined under a bell-shaped stone. After the walk back downhill we were off to our last destination.



Finally, we rounded out the tour at a small museum devoted to the Korean War. Since we were all a little wiped and the museum was so close to our apartments we just did a quick look and we were gone.



Time is flying by here. I can't believe the weekend is over and I'm already starting another Monday at school. We will be having a Halloween Party at our school on Friday, so really this is only a four day week. I can't wait to see the kids all dressed up! Stay tuned for some stories and photos.

Day trip to Mt. Palgongsan

After being in the city for almost three weeks now I thought that it was about time to do some exploring of the surrounding area. So, with a vague idea of where we were going and how to get there, a friend and I set out for a day trip to Mt. Palgongsan.

The day started out in an interesting way while I was waiting for my friend Keiran at the Dong-Daegu subway station. I was sitting on a bench, just people watching, when I looked over to see a man standing about 7 feet away from me with his pants down taking a pee. Now, after treeplanting I though that I was used to this sort of thing, but I just could not believe that the guy could do this in such a busy public place. He then poceeded to lay down on the bench beside mine for a morning nap. Napping on benches is something that you see on a daily basis in Korea.

Upon getting to the mountain and regaining the use of my hand and arm muscles (try standing for 40 min while holding on tight) we started off the hike with some pretty big goals. We had no idea what this hike would be like, but looking at the map we thought we could possibly make it 8km to one of the farther peaks. Little did we know that we would be hiking up stairs almost the entire way, while dodging thousands of hikers. They say that Koreans are very serious about hiking, but I had never imagined this trail would be so packed. After over an hour of hiking, and seeing a few small temples along the way, we were sweating buckets and had just made it to Gwanbong peak - only 2km, but 850 vertical meters from our starting point. This was a great place for a break and a gorgeous view. This peak is the site of the Gatbawi Buddha, the buddha of medicine, standing almost 4 meters tall. This was an amazing site. In front of the Buddha lay a platform of approx. 25 square meters covered in prayer mats. Koreans of all ages were worshipping while music played over a sound system. After a short break we continued down the other side of the mountain and out to a road where we found ourselves sort of lost but within walking distance to some good Korean eats. We eventually lucked out and found a bus back to Daegu.

Since I do not have too many photos I found these two short video clips (1) (2) of people worshipping at the Gatbawi Buddha. The videos are not the best, but it will give you an idea of what this truly amazing experience was like.

My Apartment in Hyomok-dong

Aside from the jetleg, I'm starting to get settled here in my apartment in Daegu. My walls are still mostly bare - I'll have to look around to start finding some posters to fill the space - but once I've done that I'm sure it will start to feel more like home. After my last post you probably all think that I'm living in some crazy roach infested place... here are some photos to show you that it is actually half decent and a lot bigger than I was expecting.

Photos: My kitchen, living room (has a tv, and my wardrobe) and my bedroom.

In South Korea they organize each city by district and then again by neighbourhood. I'm living in the district of Dong-gu, and the neighbourhood of Hyomok-dong. I've done the rounds of my neighbourhood and have found the market, the post office and a small grocery store. It seems like my area of town is in a good location. Only a short taxi or subway ride in one direction to downtown, and the same in the other direction to Costco (items from home... yeah!!). Once I find a place that sells postcards and when you all email me your addresses I can start to send out some mail!

I've added in some links to this post and the last one. I will try to do this more often so that you can easily find out some more information about some of the things I talk about in my posts. The words that are linked to other pages are highlighted.

Thats all for now. Wish me luck in my first full week teaching! Everyone back home in Canada have a Happy Thanksgiving - make sure you eat extra turkey for me!!!

The Official Week One Post

It is hard to believe that it has been a week since I have left Canada and arrived in South Korea. During this time I have experienced many new things....

1) A super long flight.

I can't complain really. I took one direct flight from Toronto to Seoul, which took 14 hours, and then another short flight from Seoul to Daegu. After hearing a few flight horror stories from some of my co-workers I now feel like I had it pretty easy. I was excited at the fact that even on the Air Canada flight we were given chopsticks with every meal. I guess it gives the foreigners time to practice.

2) Unwanted roomates.

Throughout my University career I have been very lucky to have some awesome roomates. Coming to Korea I thought that my days of sharing houses/apartments with roomates were over. And they were - until I ran into my unwanted roomates on the second night. Yes, that's right, I found cockroaches. I guess my apartment had been empty for over a month and some cockroaches decided they would move in. The first night was the worst as the thought of cockroaches running around my place kept me awake. It has now been a few days since I have seen any - I hope they decided to move out - but I have taken some preventative chemical action just in case.

3) Being a 'waygook'

As you've probably guessed, waygook is the Korean word/slang term for foreigner. I think that me and the other English teachers at my school are the only foreigners in our area. My most memorable experience so far is being at EMart (kindof like walmart but bigger) and having a little kid point at me while tugging on his mother's jacket and saying I don't know what. I guess it doesn't help being semi-blonde. All I can say is that sometimes you feel like you're at a zoo, and you are one of the animals.

4) Soju

I had my first soju experience over the weekend at a place called Festival. Festival is a Korean restaurant right in the heart of downtown Daegu. We arrived at the place well after midnight, and were presented with many side dishes of food upon ordering one pitcher of kiwi soju. So we sat around the table drinking soju and eating kimchi, corn, pickled radish and a weird desert that mixes ice, red beans and different sweet sauces. We liked the soju so much that we returned to Festival on Tuesday night hoping to try a different flavour - peach. Since the menu is in Korean, we didn't really know if they even served peach soju, but we tried to get our point across to the server. I guess we didn't do a very good job because we were presented with grape. Next time we will have to learn the Korean word for peach before we go out.

So that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing well back home. I miss Canada, but so far I think that Korea is going to be a pretty amazing place too.

Geon-bae (Cheers!)

Goodbye Canada.... and Timmies.

So, this is it. Goodbye Canada; I'm off to Korea!

I don't think I will ever get to the airport at the suggested arrival time again - 3 hours early is just a little to much. Since there is not a whole lot more to do than wait right now I thought that I would write my first post to help pass some time.

Welcome to my blog! I have followed quite a few of my friend's travel blogs over the past couple years, and their blogs have inspired me to start my own for this trip. I'm hoping to post frequently, and I will try my best to keep it interesting.

Today my day started out with the drive from Cambridge to Mississauga, and a great breakfast with my parents. I have now arrived at the airport and, like I said, am waiting. In approximately 19 hours I will be in Daegu, South Korea and at the apartment where I will be living for the next year - I can't wait!

I will post again as soon as I can. For now I am off to get my last 'large regular' coffee from Timmies until I arrive back in Canada next year.