I'm backkkkkkkk.  Long time, no update.  Almost 6 months!  Korea has become a home away from home.  Lately, with the return of warm weather, I've had the pleasure that comes from random sights and smells that take me back to my first few months here in Korea, when everything was new and exotic.  I want to say I haven't done much at all since December, but I'd obviously be lying!  Time continues to fly here, and I finally have an official last day of work. September 28th, 2012, will be my final day at school here in Korea.  Following that will be a few months of travel (more on that later) and I will arrive back in the USA some time just before the holiday season!  Of course, I'm excited to see everyone, I constantly think about home and all the things happening and the people that I miss dearly.  So what have I been up to over the past 6 months?  Here's some pictures and videos to give you an idea of it all!

SPORTS

In April and May, the weather has started getting much nicer in Korea.  Bucheon is sandwiched between Seoul and Incheon, which is a former suburb of Seoul and now a major city in it's own right, as it will be host of the 2014 Asian Games.  So being only a few blocks from the Incheon city border, I can say I'm a proud Incheon sports fan.  Baseball, I'm all about the SK Wyverans.  They are in Korea's Major League, SK is the team sponsor (a mobile phone company) and Wyverans is some sort of mythical creature from Korean folklore.  The stadiums are evenly split between home and away (small country, easy to travel for away fans I suppose?).  The pictures are from a game where the away side did not show up so much, but the video is form opening day, and the house was packed.  My friend Kieran and I ended up sitting in an aisle basically for that game, standing room only.  The great part of these games is how much effort the crowd puts into cheering! The entire time your team is up to bat, the crowd is doing various cheers, think European soccer matches!  

click on the pictures to see bigger images!

 Earlier in the year, I made my way to an Incheon United game.  Here is a video below of a little of the action from that game.  The team doesn't have quite a following, and I think only a few of the big teams in Korea have strong attendance at the games.  Apparently when rival teams show up, the stadium can get pretty full.  Not as fun as the baseball games, put fun to be close to the pitch.

                                       

Best part of the sports thus far in Korea? 

Major League soccer - about 12 bucks.  

Major League Baseball - 9 bucks

cost of food n booze at the games?  No worries here, you can bring in anything you'd like.  I recommend buying pizza and 2 liter jugs of beer at your local carry out just outside the stadium. Gotta love that policy..

Seoraksan National Park

Located on the east side of the country, on the shores of the East Sea (NOT Sea of Japan!!!), is the city of Sokcho and Seoraksan National Park, home to beautiful mountain ranges only a few miles inland from the shore.  I spent a weekend here at the beginning of May with friends and hiked up to Ulsanbawi rock, one of the more famous peaks in the mountain.  It was not easy! Incredibly steep stairs and several areas that if you chose to act like an idiot at, you would be dead pretty quickly.  Anyways, enjoy these pictures!

Sokcho Beach

Cool Sunset

Ulsanbawi rock inside Seoraksan National Park

they were raising money for temple renovation, 10 bucks for a message on a tile for the roof

myself in front of the temple area.  Side note, I now have prescription sunglasses, so no more double glasses usage!

A better view of the mountainous valley the temple is located in

giant Buddha statue

about halfway up the hiking trail is a temple located in the rocks.  This cliff wall next to it was covered with Buddhist sayings, which being so old are written in Chinese (Korea's hangul writing was invented only about 600 years ago(i think)))

amazing views!

a daring couple...

the rock covered peaks!

There were many trails here, we only did one.  I may try and make it back during the fall just before my departure from Korea in order to see the colors of the foliage take over the mountain sides..

Templestay

Back in March I had the unique opportunity of staying in Geumsansa Temple in the central area of Korea. It's the head of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism.  My thoughts? Don't do a temple stay for the food!  It was a great experience.  We spent most of the day Saturday there and stayed the night, leaving early Sunday afternoon.  Things I did:

-We got to ring the bell!  You know the giant bells you see at old temples in Asia? Yep, got a chance to ring it. Kind of thought these were never rung, but it's the call to prayer always. 

-We made Lotus Flower Lanterns. We used these lanterns on our night prayer walk through the temple grounds. The lotus flower grows out of the mud, so you can see how they work nicely from a religious viewpoint.

Here's some more photos of the temple...

the main temple with a three story high Buddha statue. This is where I did 108 bows, one for each bead that I placed on my prayer bracelet.  It was intense, and got pretty damn cold..

the temple hall at 4am!

Our monastic meal was on Sunday morning at 530am.  You can see below how there are four bowls: one for dish water, one for rice, one for soup, and one for sides (radish/kimchi stuff).  You MUST eat all the food, no wasting food!!!!!!  To top it off, cleaning the bowls involved swishing water around each bowl, scrubbing them each with a radish.  Then, you must drink the water and eat the radish...yucky.  Oh well, it was an experience!

Randoms.....

Here are some random photos and things I have done!

Here is a video of a wedding I went to. Unfortunately my camera died right after this. This is when the moms of the bride and groom light the candles.  Just to give you an idea. Weddings aren't taken as seriously as we take the ceremonies in the West.  While the wedding looks really nice (and is), but this hall is one of several on the top floor of a department store.  Every ceremony is the same, and you can see these two girls in the video kind of leading the crowd in applause and such. Really cookie cutter like.  No party afterwards, just a really good buffet right after.  Best part? During the ceremony, the best man gives a challenge to the bridge and groom.  His challenge to the groom? To give a piggy back ride to the brides mother, running up and down this runway you can see, and then shouted "tonight I'm making babies!".  I was pretty surprised, but this is normal tradition!

Some electric car presenting a bride and groom to the lobby area.  It made a tiny lap then was parked again. Interesting right?? This bride and groom wore tradition Korean clothing.  By the way, most Koreans I gathered don't necessarily enjoy going to weddings, most want to get in and out.  There are kids constantly chatting and running around at the ceremony, and general conversation can be heard in the crowd.... 

Grace, the bride, with some of the girls.  The bride sits in this room on a throne like chair, receiving guest before the wedding??  She seemed thrilledddddddd to do it.

Cool buildings in Gangnum, a kinda rich area of Seoul.  Finally cool to see some interesting architecture here!

Seoul tower. Beautiful views of Seoul!

Lockets for lovers locked to the fences around Seoul tower.

Earth Hour at a big subway station, we noticed all these dominoes set up, to be released at the hour.

I sent birthday cards to my mom made by my students in a kindergarten class.  These kids are about 6 years old, and come for all English kindergarten! Awesome! Here are the kids making the cards!

Miss you all!! Going to Jeju Island this weekend, the "Hawaii" of Korea. It's also a 4 day weekend, thanks to Buddha's birthday. So I will have some incredible pictures, and I will try posting about my adventures more often!

a Christmas Eve balloon launch...

So Christmas Eve I awoke  at 7am, and was up in Itaewon by 9am to board a bus head off to the DMZ, which is as close as civilians can go towards North Korea.  I went with some friends who told of this opportunity with North Korea Peace Organization, a non-political, non-religious organization that launches balloons with socks into N Korea every month.  While the organization is young, Mr. Lee, a North Korea defector, has been launching balloons into N Korea every month for the last 5 years, since was able to escape N Korea, at great risk to himself (he carried poison with him in case he was caught by N Korea or China).  Anyways, we went to launch socks into N Korea, as we could seen about 100 socks on each balloon, and N Koreans can use these socks on their black market to buy up to 1 months worth of food for a family.  Also, Mr. Lee told us about how many people are missing toes, feet, and legs due to frost bite from a lack of socks in the winter.  Even the well kept military has people missing socks.  Instead of messages of propaganda, the organization just had a simple message, that  said we the world community has not forgotten about North Koreans, and that the world loves them.  Live long until unification (with the South).  The wanted a simple message because the organization would like to one day be allowed to directly hand out food in North Korea, and sending over any kind of anti-N Korea leaflets would immediately make it impossible for them to ever reach this goal.

Although it was freezing, we were able to launch 4 balloons.  There was a lot of media there, and the organization was excited to be getting the message out.  AP, Reuters, and press from 6 other countries were there.  I was just really happy to be doing something very unique yet very helpful during Christmas time.  While it wasn't too dangerous, we did have to do it behind a hill from the DMZ line, as N Korea has publicly said they will fire artillery onto anyone they see launching balloons.. but anyways, here's a video!  Mind you, I'm freezing cold and tired, so keep in mind with my comments...

I'll add more photos later, but I have to get to work. Enjoy the video, and Merry Christmas to all!

Please check out the website www.northkoreapeace.org to donate and see pictures, also Like them on Facebook!

Christmas in Korea

Merry Christmas...almost!  I cannot believe it's already Christmas time, but sure enough it is here.  The Christmas atmosphere is definitely felt here in Korea, though Christians are the minority for sure.  Nonetheless, the departments stores and all the coffee shops and everywhere else practically enjoys dressing up for the season, and there's a lot of Christmas music being played everywhere.  Koreans celebrate Christmas as almost a Valentines like day, I've heard everyone goes out on dates / wants to have a date for Christmas.  They exchange gifts, too, and there's even Santa's in the mall....but no beard and very skinny!  Anyways, I'm very excited to have a 5 day weekend, As this will be the first time off I've had since September!  I'm going to check out some temples here in Seoul and keep it low key, but I'm ready for the time to relax.

My apartment bldg's Christmas tree!

A couple of weeks ago I went to Saodaemun Prison Museum.  It was built by the Japanese when they first colonized Korea, and was used all the way until 1987. The prisoners were those who protested against Japan and after WWII, those who protested the military dictatorships.. It was really interesting, and had a good amount of information in English as well.  The Japanese killed and tortured many Koreans there, and you saw the building/ room where the hanged people...very creepy.  It reminded me a lot of going through the Holocaust Museum in DC...pretty depressing stuff.  By far the weirdest part of it was in the basement where prisoners were tortured.  Pretty graphic, they even had a display that took a 3-d picture of your head, and then placed it on the a body that was then shown on a large TV..first you were protesting, then arrested, then put into your jail cell, then it showed you getting tortured in various ways!  We were all a little taken aback, and agreed that something like that would never be put into a Museum back home!

A few weeks before that I checked out a random temple in the northern part of Seoul.  The name has escaped me since, but it was a newer temple up in the hills. and had some beautiful scenery for still being in the middle of the city.  Here's some pictures!

A few weeks previously I had also gone out to Insadong, which is a big shopping area and kind of a touristy area for the tourists looking for souvenirs.  I liked the area because finally, there was some decent architecture!  This is something that is definitely lacking in Korea, but there are more and more buildings going up with a modern look to them.. here's some pictures of Insadong...

Here's my street when the leaves were nice colors a couple months back....

I thought this was pretty funny of myself....the girl copied a friends summary (or the friend copied hers), either way, I crossed out my Great comment and I wrote Do Not Copy, which you can see she then scribbled off and I Don't not copy.  I'm guessing she didn't quite understand or appreciate the humor in my response to her comment...

 So based off of the Thai food alone that I've been having at this restaurant in Itaewon, I can seriously see myself teaching in Thailand sometime after I'm done here in Korea...the food is just that damn good. Here's a pic of one of my recent dishes....

And finally here are some pictures of my new kids in my M21 class.  I had them in teams coming up with questions to ask the other team about the book we were reading in class.  All you have to say is boys vs girls and everyone instantly does what you ask them to do.  Quite the competitors....

Chris is the boy in green, he honestly is an old man trapped in the body of a kid.  He's so funny.

I started teaching kindergarten classes (just a science class 3 days a week) this semester as well, so I'll have to get you some pictures of those kids, cuz they are cute and it is pretty fun to teach them.  They're at the age where they love there teachers, unlike the kids in my school, who would never say "teacher, I love you!" haha.  But anyways hope everyone at home has a wonderful Christmas time! I miss all of you!