Hiking Gwanaksan

It was an interesting day today.  I signed up for a meet up to go hiking on Gwanaksan.  This is a challenging mountain.  The peaks were very scary to climb.  It was really more like mountain climbing.  There was a point when we went past fun into insanity.  I would have turned back but that would have meant having to go over some of those parts again.  Every peak it felt like it was worse than the last.  I don't have pictures because the path was so narrow, there was no way to stop and take a picture.  Here are a few pictures from the third peak I believe.

We then climbed to the top of the rock you can see here, which was very steep and went down the back side.  Here it got worse.  We started to used ropes and wires and had less than a half a foot to stand on.  Here are some pictures I took when I got to the other side.  It's hard to really capture the dicy-ness.

Here are some pictures of the top of the peak seen in the third picture.  They are of Seoul and myself, disbelieving my sanity.

The hike was supposed to get better.  There was only one sketchy part left.  Near the bottom of it something awful happened.  A girl fell.  She is alive, as far as I know.  Considering the fall (which I saw), she didn't really have many external injuries, and those she did have were minor.  As long as there isn't something wrong internally, she will be fine, but that was terrifying.  I honestly thought I was watching somebody fall to their death.  Luckily, there was a point where she didn't continue to descend, and miraculously her injuries weren't bad.  She was even conscious and communicative, and she could feel her arms and legs.  Needless to say, we were all extra careful and after the emergency responders were on their way, all but five of us headed down to get off of the mountain.  We were all ready to get off of that mountain.  

It was a bit of a stressful day, but things could have ended a lot worse.  I will definitely not go to the peaks on these mountains again, and make sure I understand more what the routes are like, and avoid the more difficult ones.  I will stick to easy/beginner from now on, although that's what I thought I was doing this time.  So, as I said, next time I will make sure of it.  On a semi side note the Koreans in our group say it is very unusual for something like this to happen, and that none of them had ever seen anyone hurt before.  So, please don't worry, I will be smart and more careful in the future.

Osaka!

Hi!

Last week I was on holiday and I went to Osaka, Japan.  It was a great trip and I got to know the city really well.  My only regret is that I didn't travel outside of Osaka.  There were so many things within a few hundred kilometers.  However, that just gives me a reason to head back to Japan.

The first few days were packed with things to do.  I got a pass that gave me free subway and free admission to most of the local sights for two days.  On the first day, I went to the science centre/museum, Osaka castle, the zoo, and rode on one of the largest ferris wheels in the world (or so they say).  The science centre was pretty interesting, but it would have been ten times more interesting if they had any of the information in English.  The highlight for me was sitting next to Einstein (I'll post pictures at the end).  Osaka castle was wonderful.  It had two moats, and outer one filled with water, and an inner one filled with foliage.  It was beautiful.  Osaka was hot,  I mean hoooot.  So, it was obviously a good idea to climb up 8 flights of stairs to the top of the castle, but there was a good view, and going down was fairly easy.  The zoo was kind of cool and depressing all at the same time.  It was cool to see some of the animals so close, but there was a polar bear that made me sad.  It was in its' own area, which was probably good for the other animals, but it only had a foot or two of water, and with how hot it was there was no way that water was cold.  It had scars all over its' face and kept pacing back and forth and had a little froth around the mouth.  It really depressed me to see that.  Poor polar bear.  The ferris wheel was kind of cool.  I'm normally fine with heights, but I got really nervous as we ascended.  I felt fine after I realized we were going down again.  It was a really slow ride, but it only lasted about 15 minutes (one rotation).

The second day I went to the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan, cruised the harbour in a larger  replica of the Santa Maria, and went to the Osaka floating observatory.  The temple was a huge complex and there was a garden I was able enjoy, although I paid with bug bites for the rest of the trip.  The harbour cruise was nice and relaxing and I saw cargo ships from all over the world.  Osaka is a major shipping port.  The floating observatory provided an amazing view of the city, and I went about an hour before sunrise, so I was able to enjoy the view in both day and night.

The rest of the trip was pretty relaxed.  I walked a lot, checking out the stores.  My favourite shopping area was a restaurant supply area.  It had more traditional Japanese items.  Japan seems to be more westernized than Korea, and it was hard to find traditional items.  Overall though, I think the trip was a success and I'm glad I went and am happy with the few souvenirs I did find.  I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Canal downtown near my hotel

Well, look who I found!

Three great thinkers?

Osaka castle and moat

Osaka castle

Inside Osaka castle - The only thing you were allowed to take a picture of

Two random tourists getting a ride

Garden in Buddhist temple

At the Buddhist temple

View from the observatory

View from observatory

Aquarium - diver cleaning the tank

Lady and the Unicorn tapestries were on loan to the art museum in Osaka

Dealing with Normal Schoolhouse Antics

Hi!
I haven't done anything that exciting in a while, but I'm going to Japan at the end of the month, so hopefully that will be interesting.  This last weekend we said farewell to one of the teachers.  She had been here two years and she is the first to go during my year here.  In two months another one will go, and then a month or so later another two will go.  Of course, they will be replaced by new people.  It's such a transient job.  It's nice to get to know people for a little bit, but in the grand scheme of things it is for such a short length of time.

Work is better than it was a few months ago.  My class is still quite unruly.  It's kind of a known fact that I have the worst class.  It may be in part because of my lack of teaching skill, but I definitely think there are factors beyond my control.  I have twelve students.  Six of them are boys, two of these are pretty much uncontrollable, three of them join in easily, and they occasionally suck in the sixth.  This means that no matter what technique I try to get them quiet, they are not quiet enough for me to get a word in edgewise.  As I said, things are definitely better than when I first started and none of them knew any English, but they are still a challenge most days.  I do have to say though, if I can survive them I can survive any class.  My other classes are nothing compared to them.  Thank goodness, or I would have gone insane by know.

I do have to say, as difficult as they can be, most of them can be super sweet and cute.  Not so much when they are beating on each other, or running around the room, yelling, and flailing their arms over their heads, but they can be enjoyable now and again.  They are learning English pretty well, and are picking up things pretty fast.  Some are picking it up faster than others, but that happens when some just stare at the wall, or the ceiling, or the floor, or the desk, or at their hands, pretty much anywhere but where I need them to look. They are reading more and more words and can read simple stories on their own.  This is pretty impressive considering four months ago they didn't even know the alphabet.  The credit doesn't all go to me.  I share the class with a pretty amazing teacher, and she feels the same way as I do about them.  She finds them very challenging as well, and she's magic.

I have two really challenging students.  The one started with a broken arm and still managed to get into at least one physical altercation a day for the first two months.  He always has a smile on his face, even when you are telling him to stop.  He loves to sing, but only when I'm talking, not when we are all singing a song together.  Last week he kicked a kid in the head because the kid hit him in the arm with a piece of paper.  A couple days ago he threw his activity book on the ground because he thought it would be hilarious, and how he laughed.  This kid also cannot stay seated more than five seconds.  Actually he may be up to ten seconds now.  He is improving.  Every time I turn around he is out of his seat, bothering someone.  Again improvement, because the first two months every time I turned around he got out of his seat and hit someone.  Ahhh, the joys of progress!

The other boy, also has problems sitting down, but isn't as bad.  Unlike the last boy, this one has no real fear of me.  So, he will just refuse to do things.  He also get in physical altercations.  He was the boy who got kicked in the head for hitting the other boy with paper.  Today, he was thrown hard against a wall and had his face scratched by a boy that doesn't usually do things like that, so he may or may not have aggravated the other boy to that point.  This boy, too, thinks he's hilarious and is always performing  for his classmates.  However, when you punish this one he laughs in your face, and may feign  remorse before going back and doing the same things again.  A few weeks ago, one of the other teachers said he was spitting in his shirt, collecting a nice little pool of spit.  Then he began encouraging the other boys to join him, which they did.  He apparently felt they weren't doing a very good job, because he then started spitting into their shirts.  The teacher looked shell shocked, as I know I have after some classes with them.

So, this is the fun I deal with on a daily basis.  As I've said it isn't all bad, but there are definitely days I think I may be insane.

Take care all!

Nature Walk

Hi,
Sorry it's been so long.  The one weekend nothing exciting really happened.  The last one was so exhausting that I didn't really have time to write.  Last weekend I went to an area near the DMZ.  I didn't actually go to the DMZ, but we "trekked" along a river towards it.  It was such a long and incredibly hot day, that we didn't even finish the walk.  It smelled so good there though.  It smelled like home.  Here are some pictures.

Yesterday, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say, I was tricked into climbing up another mountain, two really.  I'm not sure how this keeps happening.  I signed up for a leisurely walk through a forest.  They didn't mention that the forest was on a mountain, but it may have been a little stupidity on my part to not realise that the whole country is mountainous, where else would a forest be.  In my defence the pictures showed flat paths.

The first part of the day we walked half-way up a mountain barefoot.  For the first little bit, we were walking in red clay.  This was challenging in spots where the clay was hard and wet, and the path was on an incline.  Luckily, I did not fall (that day), or slide down the mountain backwards.....much.  Part way up there was a sign stating the lofty health claims.

Shortly after the sign, the clay pretty much gave way, but we continued to climb up a mountain barefoot, and then climbed halfway down barefoot.  Shoes and sock had never felt so glorious as they did after that walk.

After lunch, we went to a recreational forest.  After some delicious watermelon, we decided to walk around.  We started walking up an incline and continued up, even though the incline got steeper and steeper.  Until we ended up at the top of a mountain.  Then we had to rush down the "hiking" side of it because we were going to be late for the bus.  It was a beautiful area and it would have been nice to have more time to explore it.  It would be a great place to camp.  Here are some pictures of it.

Long Weekend

Hi!
It was a long weekend here in Korea.  Friday was a day off because they celebrate it as Buddha's birthday. It was a good weekend.  I did so much, but most of  it wasn't anything exciting.  On Friday, some of the other English teachers and I went to the underground shopping mall in Gangnam.  I found some great t-shirts under $10.  It was a large mall, so we spent five or six hours there but it went by in the blink of an eye.  Saturday went much the same.  We went to the I-park mall and browsed a bit, and then we went to a movie.

Sunday was the most noteworthy day.  I went on a bike riding tour of a couple of islands off the coast of Korea, near Incheon.  It was very beautiful and worth it, although it was one of those days where we were lucky it ended well, or even began.  We started early, at 8:00, to get to where we were supposed to meet the rest of the group.  We thought we had the way by subway all figured out, but we were wrong.  We took a way that was supposed to save us time, but because of a detour it took over an hour longer than it would have if we had taken the more familiar route.  The line we were on forked, and our subway took the wrong fork, so we had to go back and figure out another way to get to our desired station.  Luckily for us, the group waited.

We met the group over an hour late, and they were very nice about it.  We rented our bikes, and then got back on the subway until we were near the airport.  We then rode our bikes to the ferry, which due to a series of delays, we just missed and had to wait for the next one.  Luckily the ferries were only 20-30 minutes apart, so we were able to continue fairly seamlessly.  We finally got to the island, and started riding.  It was not what I was expecting, but it was fun.  I was expecting a leisurely ride near the coast, but that was not the way it would be.  We biked up and down the large hills/small mountains.  It was way more effort than I had planned.

During our ride we stopped at the coast of the island and went into a beautiful house/museum, where they had once filmed a movie.  This house was amazing.  It had a spectacular view, tons of windows and balconies.  One the second floor it had a round room made of glass with a white piano in the center.  Our leaders new how to play (one was a piano teacher), so we had some wonderful music while we toured.  I didn't actually take pictures of the house, but it was amazing, and a lot of us wanted to move in an clean the place up.  We couldn't understand why it was, seemingly, abandoned.

Here is the view from the house.

This is where our trip took a bit of a bad turn.  We had just started off back down this hill and the girl behind me, one of the girls I work with, fell over her handle bars.  Thankfully, she didn't hurt her head, and mainly just had scrapes, but she did hurt her wrist pretty bad.  We walked our bikes to the nearby beach and had lunch.  The girl was not able to ride her bike, so she couldn't continue on.  The three of us were going to stick together and head back to the pier to wait for the ferry, but Koreans can be unbelievably kind.  There was a couple heading back and the group's leaders asked them if they could take her back.  They didn't have room because their car was packed.  Did they say no and leave?  Nope, they got out and reorganized their entire car so they had room for her.  They never once complained or gave a look of impatience or inconvenience.  She later told us they even bought her a coffee.  It was so nice to see that people or a culture can still be so generous and kind.

We finished our tour of the islands and headed back on the long journey home.  For the most part it was a pretty great day.  I don't know if I would go biking here again, just because I don't think I can handle the hills, but I'm glad I did it at least once.  I would also like to head back to these islands because they were beautiful and the view was gorgeous.

Have a great week.  Here is a picture from the ferry on the way home from the biking trip.

Lantern Festival

Hi,
This weekend was the Lantern Festival in Seoul.  It celebrates Buddha's birthday, which is on this coming Thursday.  If any of you were every thinking of coming to Korea, come for this festival.  It was one of the best festivals I've been to.  I generally don't care for parades, but theirs was impressive.  They also have tons of free activities.

Saturday night was the Lantern Parade.  The parade marched from a nearby university to a temple.  There were so many beautiful floats, lanterns, and dresses.  They had two incredible floats.  One was a huge elephant that could move its' head and ears, and made elephant sounds.  Trumpet?????  The second one was a dragon that could breathe real fire, and once you were thoroughly impressed with that it let out a resounding roar.  Seriously, it was impressive, but unfortunately my camera died well before they came by.  Here are some of the pictures I did get.

I kind of like the ones with the Buddhist monks in focus but it blurry around them.  It looks like life is moving super fast around them, but they are still.  I'm super deep.  It was actually really hard to get any really steady pictures, especially of the walkers.  I couldn't figure out their pace and they are all blurry.

Today I went back to the festival to make my own lantern.  I did and it was challenging.  I was told it is an activity in which to practice patience.  While I was making mine three or four film crews video taped me.  I'm not sure what they are using it for, but they got super close and stayed for a while.  I refused to look up, but maybe they liked that.  The 10 year old near me even said that I was in the hot spot.  There are now so many videos of me making my lantern.  I didn't take a picture when I had finished.  I figured I would take one later, but that didn't work out.  It was near the end of the lantern making part of the festival and there was to be a competition and then you could collect your lanterns.  Sadly, I did not make it back in time to pick mine up.  I'm very disappointed, and trying very hard not to blame it on the girl I work with.  Ultimately, it was my fault because I could have went back by myself to get it.

They had so many other activities there as well.  They had a bunch of places where you could make mini lanterns, clay buddhas, Korean paper, prayer beads, and many more things.  They also had a few different kinds of temple stay foods.  That is the kind of food you would be eating if you spent a day or two at temple, which I plan to do, but I didn't try the food.  I figure when I go there I will really experience it.  There were also buddhists from all over the world, each country had their own little tent.  

The festival was very enjoyable, and affordable.  They barely charged for anything.  I made my lantern and prayer beads for free, and I even got a wagon wheel for free (they love wagon wheels here).  It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend it.

Take care!

Hanboks

Hi!
This weekend was much more relaxing than last week.  I went to Seoul again on Saturday.  I went specifically to try on the traditional dress, a hanbok, at the Korean Tourist Organization (KTO).  Every other Saturday, you can go down there and try them on for free.  You can also do a little calligraphy and origami, all for free but you do have to sign up, so there may be a short wait for your turn.  It was kind of fun.  You put them on to take pictures in them.  While the girl who worked there was taking our pictures some random Korean girl was taking pictures of us too.  Perhaps to giggle with her friends about later, who knows why, but it made me laugh that she was doing that.

After that we checked out Namdaemun.  A large outdoor shopping market.  I picked up a great $10 t-shirt, and some socks.  This market takes a while to get through, and it was very crowded, and Koreans push.  I mean push.  If you are not moving and they want to, they will push you out of their way.  That goes for everywhere, getting on and off the subway/bus, washrooms, markets, and of course the street.  I don't care for it.  

It was a good afternoon though.  The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed a coffee on the patio and admired Seoul.  It is a beautiful city.  It's clean, and calm (other than the pushing, but that's all over Korea), and doesn't smell of sewage.  Ahhh, not smelling sewage..........I'm just kidding, you only get whiffs, frequents whiffs, of sewage where I am.  So basically it was a relaxing day, and  a relaxing weekend.  

Hope you all had a great one too.