Temple Stay

It's really wonderful to be able to hop on a bus and 2 hours later find yourself in the woods on mountain in a buddhist temple. Temple Stay Program in Korea is really popular with travelers and locals. People go on mini-retreats to temples to relax and get out of the city, or to experience the life of a monk, or to practice meditation.

Me and Caitlin went to check it out and see what it was all about. She made the reservation by phone although you can reserve on line too. The monks are tech savvy these days. I was surprised to see a buddhist priest checking his texts during a tea break.

So you reserve your room and what kind of schedule you want to participate in. The choices include making lotus lanterns and studying buddhism, talking to a buddhist priest, walking meditation. Because the temple was having an event that weekend they didn't offer any program for the temple stay guests. A temple shrine from the year 500 had just been renovated and a huge party and prayer ceremony were scheduled to take place all weekend. I was just happy to be in the woods and eating vegetarian food.

As a guest you have to wear a simple uniform of baggy pants and a top (ours were too short and the baggy to the pant was lost and stretched narrow). The monks on the other hand wear really beautiful costumes and look spectacular (some monks were wearing individual digit toe socks which was cute). We had a chance to ring the bell to evening prayer and wake up at 4 am to attend morning prayer. This wasn't as traumatic as I worried it might be, the waking drum was very gentle- the drummer walks around the grounds and you feel like you actually have a snooze alarm. The temple has a small farm where they grow their own tea, so we spent the long morning hiking an

d sipping tea.

The drum, rasp fish, and bells are

played to awaken all the

beings to prayer.

Art show

An art show in Gwangju. Container boxes converted into a gallery. Lots of digital installations, the project was put together by a corporation of artists, (ETOY.com). As a business they make some products and sell them in order to fund their events. We were treated to music, spray paint, food and drink. This installation will move to another city and travel the world.

A Gwangju specific installation honored the people who died during the May 18 Democratic Uprising.

In order to see, to focus the pixels of these digital images displayed on monitors all through out this room, you had to look through a digital camera.

A photo of Gwangju from a trail up Mudeung Mt.

I live near the 2nd green blob on the far right.

Teachers' Health Day

I've lost my voice, something that started out as a tickle turned into full on laryngitis. I can't teach so I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on some postings....

Here's a photo of the parking area near my apartment. It doubles as a handy place to grow cabbage, there's always room for kimchi.

It's fall and the hiking has been beautiful. Earlier this month

all the teachers at my main school cut out early and loaded onto a tour bus. We drove about 2 hours to Wolchulsan National Park.

Along the trail a park ranger required us to take a bag of soil. Every person takes a bag of soil and carries it to a check point, here you leave the soil and rangers use it to maintain the trails. We didn't realize this and carried our bags until we saw a well eroded spot to get rid of the soil.

We hiked for an hour and then loaded onto the bus to watch the sunset. The trip ended with a huge meal of fresh caught fish served raw and then singing karaoke style on the bus. I wasn't expecting the singing, I was terrible and had a limited English lyric selection (no excuse) but it was really fun. I wonder what the bus driver thought, I forgot to mention that a lot of soju and beer was drank at the dinner. The principal was really excited to pull into the school driveway singing some popular anthem of a song, (yup two full hours of singing) that's how we roll.

Art Street

Gwangju really does have a lot going on. Any Saturday you can go down to Art Street and see music performances and art by local crafts people. The street is closed to traffic and lots of vendors set up selling food, drinks, and crafts.

kimchi festival

Yum, the Kimchi Festival just so happened to be down the street from my school. Today all the special subject teachers drove the 3 blocks in my coworkers new SUV and sampled our way around the event. My favorite 2 are green plum kimchi and the perilla leaf kimchi(wild sesame - a basil/mint taste). It was all so tasty, with one exception, I have to try to block out the texture of the pickled fish liver. I bought 1 kilo of baechu kimchi (the popular napa cabbage style kimchi) which fortunately did not tear through the bag in my backpack. We ended to afternoon with my favorite food- kimchi pajeon ( kimchi and green onion pancake).

In case you are wondering how Koreans can afford all this cabbage. (The prices have been really high given the shortage of Korean grown cabbage due to the late summer floods.) Well, the government decided to lift the import tax on foreign cabbage for a few weeks to bring supplies in for the kimjang season(pre-winter food stocking/pickling season).

apartment and settling in

here's a tour of my apartment.

it's called a one room for a reason.

mine is small and sweet.

there's some mold hiding between the walls of the bathroom and the main room but i think that is a common problem.

the apartment by contract was furnished with: a bed, a table, a chair (but I have 2), a dresser, a t.v., a washing machine, a microwave, a refrigerator. the woman who lived here before me left some goodies including cookware, utensils, a clothes line, a fan, a hairdryer, a little bookshelf, and 2 little tables. i was also lucky enough to take over her internet and phone service, which otherwise would have left me out of the loop for a month (about the wait time to secure my alien residency status, which you need to set up any account except for a bank account).

there are 9 other units in this apartment buiding, but i rarely see any neighbors. i do hear them though, the guy above me wakes up a 5:30 am. and the woman across the hall blow dries her hair around 8:20.

i've lived here about 2 months and i just figured out the garbage protocol. for the most part people will leave the garbage (non-food waste or recyclables) outside in its designated orange pickup bag any day, but it's technically picked up on mondays. the alley cats are usually pretty happy to help themselves by the opening the bags if they sit out too long so i try to get the day right and spare my landlord the cleanup. also on the topic of garbage, you buy garbage bags that are orange for non-recyclables, blue for recyclables (although i haven't done this because people with carts will come by and pick it up and take it themselves to make cash - so why bother paying for a bag) and the compost bucket you can buy at any 1000W store (a.k.a the dollar store) and purchase a sticker which designates it serviceable.

and yes there are free piles (I think), people leave unwanted goods by the trash and if you find it useful it's open to taking.

EPIK application

I want to write briefly about the application process for teaching with the EPIK program.

English Program In Korea, funded by the Ministry of Education. It's a national program to give all students the opportunity to learn English.

Because of English Fever, which escalated with Korea's economic boom in the late 90s, English has become a much sought after skill opening many doors of opportunity (in employment and or simply travel). It's true many people want to travel and explore

outside of Korea which is a fairly new option given the countries traumatic history of occupation and poverty.

Kids from wealthy families had an unfair advantage in being sent to private English schools. To balance opportunities and form an even playing field/up the competition, the government decided to bring English into the public schools around 1995 with about 60 Native English Speakers, today the number is close to 5000. That is a huge investment.

After a day like today I wonder if my students get the full advantage of my being in their classroom. Half of them aren't interested in English. Of the interested half, a quarter are so shy they are paralyzed to speak. So part of my job is to make myself available to these kids so they can take advantage of being in my classroom. But with 30-35 kids per class x 21 classes it seems close to impossible to form relationships with all the students. Sad! I am noticing that after a month and a half of teaching I have started to 'get' some of the kids (not that I can remember names).

I know many people who went through recruiters to apply for EPIK. They have good and bad stories and mostly express feelings of having hassles (the good stories include having their hand held through the application process and getting a free t-shirt from a nice representative of the recruiting company at the airport in Korea). I applied through the consulate in San Francisco and had a fairly easy time with it. The main issue I ran into was long gaps of waiting and slow response to my questions. Oh and there was the unexpected last minute acceptance of my application with a two week window to pack up and move to Korea, which after a few days of thinking about I passed on and reapplied without a problem.

Arriving in Incheon airport there was a group of about 500 new arrivals who were ushered to Jeonju University (about 4 hours S.E. of Seoul) and there we stayed for a week of orientation and socializing, EPIK's strategy to get the new teachers comfortable and making some friends before we were shipped off to provincial towns or swallowed by the big city. Activities at orientation included lectures in education theory, a field trip to a local temple, lots of delicious food, movie nights, traditional Korean dance performances, and a paper fan making workshop. Basically it was like summer camp for teachers . The EPIK staff is really helpful and wonderful. Their job is to make newbies feel comfortable and they do their best in answering any questions and helping with the basics such as setting up a bank account and processing with imigration for a Alien Resident Certificates, health insurance, taxes, etc.

It's so tasty

street food. those delicious food carts. selling everything from savory fried food to fresh popped rice cakes, hot dogs to bungeoppang (waffle batter poured in a carp fish shaped griddle filled with bean paste) or gyereonppang (similar waffle dough but rectagular oval in shape and filled with a well done egg). the popped rice carts are amazing. the truck has a red hot steel form (either a tube or a flat iron), rice falls from above on the heated metal portion and almost instantly puffs and flies off with a snap and pop and jumps into some container where it waits to be packaged. there's noodle booths, kimbap (veggie and rice filled seaweed wraps), fishcake on a stick, tteokbogi (chewy rice cake cooked in a spicy sauce), fried veggie fritters, fried sweet potatoes, sundae (not what you think. it's actually pork sausage filled with blood, parts, rice, and veggies. it's a deep purple color and served fried). all this food is really cheap (like under 3000W) and you eat it standing at the cart. food is either served on a stick or on a plastic plate covered with a plastic bag for easy cleanup no washing just peal the bag off and serve another portion. the carts don't have running water so this makes perfect sense and cut out the need for lots of wasted paper products. most people stop and chat with the cart owner, if it's the local neighborhood vendor it's easy to form a relationship if you have any korean vocabulary.

October Festivals

Award winning apples at the Mask Festival in Andong.

Taehwa River Art Festival in Ulsan, and a free canoe ride.

School sports day.

Persimmon season, yeah trucks topped with persimmon playing techno music.

Miscellaneous

I challenged this boy to a game of "bonk the mole"...neither one of us got a prize!

Koreans don't drink as much water as I am used to. Water coolers have these tiny envelopes that you use as cups, I have to fill them about 5 times while making a mess spilling water out of my envelope.

trip to Seoul

I stayed in the Hongik University neighborhood. Definitely a good place for night life (of course the usual bar scene) but also live music in the street, improv street theater, street food vendors, cafes, etc.

Fortune telling is really popular with young people. There are fortune telling booths all over university neighborhoods.

The photo of what looks like a mess of plastic locks is just that. A whole fence covered in locks with notes attached.

Gwangju has no street art, I think it has to do with all the surveillance cameras throughout the city. It was nice to see some random bits of street art in Seoul.