Temple Time

Last week I went to Chuncheon, located about 150km N/NE of Seoul, pretty close to the NK border. And I discovered a delicious candy called "Crunky". I documented his adventures through Chuncheon to the Pyeongcheong Buddhist temple. Hijinks ensued.

Crunky arrives.

Chuncheon is a nice place, not much to the city itself besides a market and its being the birthplace of dalkgalbi, a delicious chicken dish.

We took a quick taxi through the city and arrived at Soyang Dam, built in 1973. Soyang Lake was created as a result. At the time it was the largest private dam in Asia. (If you can find a more interesting fact about a dam, or a waterway, related to the 1970's, I'll eat my hat.)

After walking down to the ferry, we arrived at the other side of the lake, a rocky beach that lead to a rockier pathway to the foot of the hill where the temple was. In Korea (and I imagine in other Buddhist countries) there's a superstition involving the stacking of rocks in order to receive good luck. Anyone who walks by and adds one is said to achieve good luck. Normally, this is seen as a joke, just something to do while taking a hike. The closer one gets to a Buddhist temple, the less of a joke it becomes.

More pictures of the way up:



At the top is Cheongpyeong Temple, a rather small temple by Korean standards, but remote--it's a four km hike after taking the ferry. There was a few open air restaurants on the trail and some food shacks as well. Korea has 45 million people squeezed into an area the size of Indiana, so the concept of "remote" is relative.

According to the legend, a princess fell in love with a commoner, but he was killed. His soul, in the form of a snake, came to her and drained her energy. She made a pilgrimage to Cheongpyeong Temple, and prayed for release. There was a huge thunderstorm, and when it passed, the snake's corpse was floating in the river. She prayed for another 100 days and her lover's soul, free of the snake, returned to her one last time. Oh my...

Here's a few of the temple. There'll be more posts soon, I promise:

The entrance

A quick one

The other day, I'm leaning over to repeat a phrase for a student, and the kid next to him starts rubbing my arm hair. So I jerk my arm away, and repeat the phrase again. And the other student (the one I'm helping) starts doing it too. As I'm talking to him.

"Very good teacha, very good!"

Thanks, kiddo.

"Very good arm!"

Strange children.

Why I Teach English

How is Korea?

Korea is full of Koreans, most of whom aren't fluent in English. So I shriek in their faces, spittle flying from my mouth.
"Do you sell colostomy bags, crone?!"
I ride the subway at one in the afternoon and it's completely packed with people. Old women punch me in the back when they want me to move. Korean women have stout shapely legs and they love skirts. Korean men probably have nice legs as well but I rarely see them. You can drink on the streets and they sell a 40 proof liquor/beer hybrid called soju for $1.30/12 oz. bottle. My school is always 42 degrees F. no matter what the temperature outside. You can eat an excellent meal with soup and side dishes for 4 dollars. The air is filthy but the city is surrounded by mountains. The subway goes everywhere, as do the buses. Their alphabet is wonderfully intuitive. The street food is amazing, and everyone drives like an asshole. Korean women love skirts.

My Favorite Part of Seoul

Hello friends. It's been a while since I've posted anything, because I've found facebook to be so endlessly fascinating. This Saturday was the St. Patrick's day celebration in Seoul, and it was pretty fun. There were a ton of sloppy obnoxious waegukin (wae=foreign, guk-land, in-people) acting like jackasses, but the city put on a pretty good show, from what I heard. There was a small parade in the Jongno area, which I have decided is my favorite part of Seoul, in the one week that I've been here. Here's a picture facing north:
I'll eventually get some other photos going to give a sense of how central this district is. To the west, east and south of this intersection is downtown Seoul, which has just as much steel, glass, and inscrutable public art as New York or Chicago, if not more. There's a great shot if you can get in the middle of the boulevard, which I think here is called Gwanghwamun-sam-ga (sam for "three" and "ga" being a special designation for large streets. Interestingly enough, a named street in Seoul is something of a rarity) In the foreground there'd be a statue of Yi Sun-shin, a Korean admiral who defeated a Japanese fleet under Hideyoshi in 1532 using the world's first ironclad boats, the geobuk-seon or "turtle boat", and behind it, Bukhansan.

I can't stress how often one sees some peak or another while taking a bus or walking down the street here. It's quite a change of pace from Chicago. You're really in the middle of everything here, and look at that view. There's an English language bookstore about fifty yards south and all kinds of street vendors selling various wares for at least a square mile around here. Really really nice place.

Big Mama

Introducing Big Mama. Four Korean "housewives" who sing in a Korean pop group. None can be classified as "eye candy", but they're really good singers, and apparently quite popular. I would love to see something like this in the States. But I don't see that going down. Watch until the end. There's a rub.

My Orientation Room

Good day to you all. My name is Daniel Plainview, and I'm an oilman. I've just arrived in Korea last night, after a sleepless 14 hour flight sitting next to the can. I will never sit next to a bathroom again on a long flight. No sleep with all the openings and closings. Arrival was uneventful. Here is a video of my orientation room. Yes I do fall. And hit a bar.



I DRINK IT UP!