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Published: April 4th 2012
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Spring has finally reached Busan, the weather has warmed up and it is making my life so much better. I've never really minded the cold but this winter has gone on way too long, it's been freezing since I first landed here 5 months ago! My motivation levels to go and do things are through the roof, so the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy.
A couple of weeks ago, three of my co-workers that left the school in March invited me on a road trip. I didn't really know what they had planned, I just knew we were going exploring through Korea. I had been feeling a bit trapped in Busan and felt I hadn't seen much of Korea, so it was the perfect opportunity to go on a bit of an adventure. We ended up pretty much driving the length of Korea in one weekend - back up to the freezing cold, snowy north. There was me thinking I'd packed the hat and gloves away for another year. First stop was a traditional Korean village called Hahoe, dating from the 16th century. It was pretty interesting wandering round all these old style buildings, so far removed
from the high-rises of modern Korea. My co-worker mentioned how her grandparents used to live in a house very similar to a lot of the houses here. It struck me just how much Korea has developed in such a short space of time. I recently read that the development in Korea in the last 50 years would be equivalent to the development of England from when King George III was in reign in the late 1700's to the present day. Can you imagine seeing an economic change that drastic within your lifetime? Going from nothing to playing angry birds on your smart phone and shopping in a virtual store (if you haven't seen this check it out
here). Pretty crazy stuff.
Hahoe is also home to a mask museum. I'm not normally a fan of museums but this one was pretty cool. The village is known for it's mask dance, and the museum had all these funny masks and outfits that they used. Apparently a very long time ago, the village always seemed to have big disasters. A spirit told one of the villagers to make 12 masks and use them in a shaman exorcism ceremony to prevent the
disasters. He died just before he finished the last mask, but it still did the trick and the villagers can now all live in peace. Check out the photos at the bottom to see some of the masks. Reminded me of home.
After stopping off at Dosan Seowon (a private school founded in 1561 by a Confucian scholar), and in Andong to try their speciality of steamed chicken, we headed up to the north of the country to Gangwon-do where we stayed the night in a pension in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains. It was so cold we made the obvious decision to have our barbeque indoors, which if you like choking in a room full of smoke was an excellent idea. Made even worse when Betty knocked the bbq over, almost setting fire to the place! But then a bbq without a bit of danger is not a real bbq in my opinion.
The route back consisted of stopping at a peninsula in a river that weirdly was exactly the same shape as the whole Korean peninsula, and at one of Korea's most famous temples, Buseoksa. The place is seriously old (established in 676),
and the place is stunning. Beautiful wooden buildings set in the mountains overlooking the valley below. If you're looking for somewhere nice to buy a house, definitely ask a monk as they seem to have the knack of picking the best spots. It was a great weekend, a lot of driving, but even this was good as I got to see so much of Korea's countryside. Every province seems to be famous for growing something in particular. The fields, mountains and fresh air were a nice change from the skyscrapers and nose-flaring pollution of Busan.
April 1st was the first day of the famous cherry blossom festival in Jinhae, about an hour from Busan. It ended up just being a festival though as rather spectacularly the cherry blossoms had not actually even begun to bloom, which was a bit of a shame. The festival was still great fun though, the best part was all the food. They had a bunch of different speciality dishes. They had pictures of the meat on boards outside - I initially thought the picture of the whale wasn't serious, but when I checked the translation (and saw plates of fins everywhere) I realised that
actually, yes, that was a plate of whale they were serving up. Now I know this sounds horrendous, but a small part of me did want to give it a go. But before you hurl abuse at me - I didn't do it! I thought killing whales for meat was illegal, but it turns out that as long as the whale is caught 'by mistake', it is ok for the fisherman to sell it. How many of them are actually caught by mistake though is anyone's guess. Instead we opted for a plate of
dongdoeji. This translates as 'poo pig', the reason being because these pigs are fed on, believe it or not, human poo. They then hog roast them, and I can honestly say that if you can get over the thought of the pig eating out of the farmers toilet, it does taste pretty incredible! Another culinary delight I enoyed was
beondegi, which is a cup full of silk worm larvae, and yes, they taste as disgusting as they sound. I managed about four before I gave up! It's a popular snack here though, you always see big pots of them in the street food stalls. Anyway, it
was a good day out - there are hardly any foreigners living in Jinhae so we were the centre of attention all day, getting our photos taken and big audiences whenever we played any of the fair games. I embarassed myself and cracked under the pressure trying to hammer a nail into a piece of wood - so much harder when you have a crowd of Koreans laughing and making noises every time you take a swing! Didn't even hit the nail once. I managed to forget my camera but got a couple of snaps on my phone.
I'm not going to bore you with what's been going on in school. Same as last time really. The kids are still picking their noses and wiping it on my trousers, their work, or just eating it. They're still crying. The only real change is that they now call me
gaemul which means monster. Can't think why. But it's still easy and I'm still loving it!
Thanks for all the birthday wishes, aside from losing the rugby tournament again I had a great day/weekend. And to those of you that sent things out here I can't explain how excited I
get when I see a package on my desk at work - so thank you so much, I know it isn't cheap but it always cheers me up!
Hope the weather is getting better at home too, keep me updated on what you're up to, I love hearing from you!
Love Ross x
PS Don't forget to check all the photos at the bottom - I added quite a few this time...
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Nice blog!
It sounds like teaching in Korea is a great way to overcome being in school for a long time. Your road trip sounds like it was good for you. Looking forward to reading more.