Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

hello all

one month has passed by....already. i spent last weekend in seoul. started the day off in itaewon (near the us military base) and was surprised to see so many tourists...nothing like gangneung. in fact i could've been in china town back home. americans, europeans, lot's of us soldiers and gangstas...and little kids with their parents...to say the least, it didn't feel very much like the korea i've come to know...itaewon is packed with tiny tourist shops selling cheap mass produced souvenirs....lot's of crap. and subway and burger king, mcdonalds and starbucks, outback steakhouse....god, all the comforts of home, i hated it!!!!

so from there i headed to Insadong on the subway (extremely efficient, easy to use and cheap i might add). Insa-dong was amazing. more the arts and antiques market of seoul, i found tonnes of small alleys with vendors selling carefully and artfully created buddhist statues from nepal and india, authentic originaal korean paintings, korean paint brushes and pigments, lamps and hanji (a special very well-made korean paper) and pottery interspersed with food stalls all over old cobblestone streets. it was great. i bought some small korean pottery and ended up doing about 5 surverys for korean university students studying english who come to insa-dong in search of foreigners for surverys on everything from korean food to my favorite korean movies...(so far i don't have any....but a lot of them look really good, especially acacia which is a korean horror film about a family who adopts an evil young boy, who believes that in a tree in their yard lives the soul of his recently deceased mother...and it looks very dark and scary and it has all these scenes of red yard in rooms...creeping out from the walls until the entire room is covered....it has something to do with a stigma attached to adoptions here...very old world, but it's frowned upon...anyways, the movie looks good.)

so that was insa-dong. from there we went to jung...something, which was the typical collections of neon lights flashing, techno music blasting onto the streets while bar and restaurant proprietors stand on the street yelling to get people to come to their bar....bubbles are released from the rooftops, there's vendors and tonnes of people drinking and partying, smoking and generally moving around....for blocks and blocks and blocks....i went and saw american wedding for the second time and then went to bar seattle with some friends. a typical korean bar serves cheap drinks with the requirement that you purchase a food item which you can share....ranging from what was supposed to be nachos but turned out to be some corn chips topped with salsa and microwaved cheese with a fruit salad....to king cobra....or moist cuttlefish....dried seaweed salads or other snacks....

anyways seoul was exciting. i'll definitely be making a few trips there over the next 11 months.

my teaching is going well...the kids are still taking a lot out of me as they can be very badly behaved, i don't hesitate to call in a korean teacher every now and then who sets them straight....try and picture me literally chasing students around desks....and grabbing things out of their hands....getting them to read notes aloud and picking them up in their chairs and moving them around, getting them to stand in the corner and hold their hands above their heads....ahhh yes....satisfaction....sometimes i get them all to be absolutely quiet and sit still and not move or make a sound which takes about 10 minutes anyways...and then when they are all good i tell them it's playtime anyways.....just so they'll learn...heh

tonight one of the foreign teachers at my school is leaving to go home to wisconsin. we're all going out for dak-galbi (which is something we do every tuesday)....dak-galbi is the equivalent of korean chicken stirfry...you have the grill right on your table and they come around and throw a big dish of cabbage, spiced chicken, deok (sticky rice cakes), sweet potato and onions and then cook it there for you and then everyone eats from the communal dish....right off the grill. very fun and tasty....

i can now read and write the korean alphabet (hangul) quite effortlessly and it's getting easier everyday...although just because i can read it doesn't mean i understand it and i'm still trying hard to be able to speak well enough to feel comfortable. i'm learning everyday.

i miss vancouver here and there, especially on the days it's been raining here, because it kind of feels like back home...warm fall rain....although we have also been getting a lot of sun, and t shirts and shorts are really no problem on some days out here...

there's a beautiful beach and lake 30 minutes from my house....so i've made a couple of trips up there....

also went out for a huge hotel buffet on this hill that overlooks the pacific ocean on friday night and ate caviar and smoked salmon....ham, sushi, crab, octopus, urchin and squid....and all kinds of fancy soups and breads and desserts....all for free...my boss's parents took us there to thank us for coming to their daughters wedding...it was great

im planning a trip to chuncheon (the capital of the province i live in, gangwon-do) in the next couple of weeks....lot's of cool hiking trails through one of korea's most beautiful national parks....seoraksan which is home to mt. seoraksan and some cool hikes and waterfalls....i'll let you all know how it goes later....

december vacation i'll probably head to jeju island off the southern tip of the peninsula, korea's version of hawaii....it has tropical trees and is covered in these ancient guardian statues carved from black basalt...as jeju was once volcanic...

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Gangneun-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

HALLOWEEN at Bar Bumpin in Gangneung City!!!

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