Korea update, including Hwaseong fortress and Seoul fish market

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I’m long overdue for an update on Korea so here it is:

Work has been great overall. I think everyone has finally gotten comfortable and fallen into a good work routine. I love my class and will be sad to see the 7 year olds graduate in a few weeks. Time really flies. I am extremely proud of my class and how far they’ve come with their English. The other day I overheard two girls arguing…in English! I can’t even begin to explain how proud that made me. Not that they were arguing, but that they had enough English skills to argue in English. My youngest student is 4 years old Korean age (about 3 American age) and he has made tremendous progress. He went from telling his mom “I hate Veronica teacher, she doesn’t speak to me in Korean!” to attempting to hold entire conversations with me. He is able to absorb English amazingly and I’m very proud. He invited me to his house so he could show me his collection of “Michael Jackson shoes.” I’m still not entire sure what that means.

I also started a “reading race” with my 7 year olds where they have to read certain books, then read them to me so I know they’re actually reading correctly, and then I give them a different colored star depending on the difficulty of the book. At first I thought I would have to seriously coerce the kids into participating, but many of them are reading in their spare time to accumulate stars, and competing with each other about who can get the most blue stars (the most difficult books). I have felt very accomplished as a teacher in the last two months. My kids love me, we have a lot of fun together, and they’re learning. What more could I ask for?

I found out that starting in March I will be teaching a 7-year-old class. Until now I have had a mixed class of 5, 6, and 7 year olds, but the school is restructuring in March so I’m curious to see what will happen. I get to stay with my current co teacher, which is great. We work very well together and our teaching styles are similar.

That’s about it for school. Aside from that things have been pretty mellow since I got back from winter vacation. I haven’t really been in the going out mood, so I’ve been doing a lot of fun, low key things with my friends. I’m extremely lucky to have found such a great mix of friends. One of my biggest fears about coming to Korea was not being able to form meaningful friendships. I think one of the things Korea does for all people that move here is “force” you to become friends with people you may otherwise have not been friends with. I have a very interesting and eclectic mix of friends, and I love it!

Now, on to the sightseeing. It’s been a while since I last updated on things around Korea, so this blog will include Gyeongbokgung Palace, COEX Aquarium, Seoul Museum of Art (Andy Warhol exhibit, Three Dimensions of Uncertainty), Hwaseong Fortress, and Seoul Fish Market.

Gyeongbokgung Palace:

Gyeongbokgung is one of the 5 great palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. If I’m not mistaken, it is also the largest. The palace was originally built in the late 1300s but was destroyed during the Japanese invasion. It was rebuilt in the 1800s and turned into a massive complex consisting of around 330 buildings. In the 1900s the Japanese government demolished many of the buildings, so only about 15 remain today.

We were lucky to arrive right as the changing of the guards was taking place. This is an extremely intricate and symbolic event that takes place 2 times a day. Along with the changing of the guards, there is an opening and closing of the palace gate. Each participant has on traditional guard clothing and the ceremony is about 10-15 minutes long. It was a beautiful but freeeeezing cold day and there was plenty of snow on the ground so the palace looked especially serene. We wandered around quite a bit, going in and out of various buildings. The best part of the palace was a pond area that had a small building on an “island” in the middle. The pond was frozen over, and a thin layer of snow rested on top, making the entire pond perfectly white.

After the palace we wandered over into downtown Seoul and stumbled on the “World Design Capital exhibit” area. Along with that was an outdoor exhibition on the Korean group of researchers (I think?) working in Antarctica (again, I think). One of the most interesting things was a tunnel you could walk through that simulates the sound of wind in the Arctic. Let me tell you, it was loud. After walking around some more we found a little light festival a few blocks away, then headed home.

COEX Aquarium:

I was extremely impressed by the artistic quality of this aquarium. Many of the aquariums I’ve been to simply stick some rare fish in tanks and call it a day. Yes, the fish themselves are impressive, but COEX went above and beyond to make it more of a museum experience. The first section of the aquarium displays everyday things like toilets, traffic lights, vending machines, refrigerators, and phone booths that have been turned into fish tanks. The next section is meant to look like a rainforest, with turtles, alligators, and other reptiles. There’s also a tank of sting rays, which I love. The big attraction is a shark tunnel, followed by a massive tank of sharks and other large underwater creatures. My two favorites at the aquarium were the jellyfish and the penguins. The aquarium itself isn’t large but makes great use of space and is definitely one of the most artistic aquariums I’ve ever seen.

Seoul Museum of Art:

My first visit here came with mixed feelings. I was extremely excited to see the Warhol exhibit. The exhibit included over 400 works by Warhol including commercial work, experimental, obscure work, and several films. The art was definitely impressive. I’m a big fan of Warhol’s work and after reading his book I became an even bigger and more informed fan.

The work did not disappoint. However, the layout and organization of the exhibit was poorly thought out. The works were grouped into 4 or 5 categories that seemed a bit disorganized. The worst part of the entire exhibit was the horribly translated text on the walls explaining the groupings of the works, as well as little biographical tidbits about Warhol. Many of these were completely incoherent. As if the museum had just pasted Korean text into google translate and expected it to be perfect. I was extremely disappointed at the fact that a major museum would embarrass itself that badly.

Anyhow, enough ranting about that. I highly recommend the exhibit—highly! Any fan of Warhol would appreciate the collection of works in the exhibit, which does a great job at explaining (without words, just works) the thought pattern and evolution of his work.

Another great exhibit at the SMofA was the “Three Dimensions of Uncertainty” exhibit which was an extremely innovative sculptural exhibition of works that focuses on “de-sculpturization” or the shift away from traditional sculptural works. The exhibit included liquid, gas, hanging works, and works that shift in appearance. Many of the works were extremely fragile, either stacked, hanging, or requiring specific temperature. One work was a large complex machine that combined various gases and liquids to make synthetic leather. You could watch as the leather “grew” from day to day. Incredibly impressive exhibition! It definitely succeeded in making me shift my definition of “sculpture” as something that is stable and unchanging.

Hwaseong Fortress

Located in Suwon, this fortress is about 5km around. A massive fortress wall surrounds the city (or city center) of Suwon. We walked along the entire wall. This journey took about 5 hours, including a lunch break and deviations to other sights nearby. This is definitely a fun, all day historic activity.

Overall the architecture and preservation of the fortress is amazing. Some of my favorite of the deviations from the wall, which runs along the outside of the city were a Buddhist temple and a massive “golden” statue of a Buddha, which stands atop another Buddhist temple. I don’t have too much to say about the fortress other than it was beautiful, large, and worth a visit. The pictures speak for themselves. It was one of my favorite sights so far in Korea. We felt extremely accomplished after having scaled the hills, stairs, and muddy slopes of the fortress.

Seoul Fish Market

I decided that I’m going to travel around Asia and visit every fish market I can find. The excitement and insanity of a fish market is an amazing experience. Smelly fish water thrown at your feet, fish heads, women in rubber aprons diligently butchering fish, sting ray sashimi, octopi larger than a child—all of it is intoxicating. We arrived around 9:30am, wandered around in search of scallops, salmon, and tuna that we could buy and bring home to cook delicious dinners (for the entirety of February). I was expecting it to be similar to the fish market in Tokyo, in that neighboring restaurants would buy the best fish early in the morning, and sushi restaurants would be open from about 8am until 2pm. Well, that part didn’t happen. Very few restaurants were open at the time that we were there, so we didn’t get to eat at an actual sushi restaurant. We did, however, buy some freshly packaged sushi in a box. I bought a box of salmon sushi that looked DELICIOUS and extremely fresh. It turned out to be smoked. Lightly smoked, but smoked nonetheless. This wasn’t the first time Korea has tricked me into thinking I was about to consume fresh, non-smoked salmon. The same thing happened at the Busan fish market. I’m assuming its because salmon is not located anywhere near Korea, so for it to be truly fresh and not smoked is probably rare. Again, that’s only a guess. Anyhow, we stocked up on smoked salmon, scallops galore, and tuna steaks and headed home. That night we had bagels with cream cheese and lox (smoked salmon) for dinner, along with a great salad that I prepared. The only thing missing was some feta cheese for the salad. Why is cheese so hard to come by in Korea? Ugh! We now have meals planned out for all of February. And when this supply of seafood runs out, we plan on making another trip to the fish market. This time I will be more on the lookout for fresh salmon. And if we’re feeling brave enough, we may even get some lobster or crab.

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