Seoul Arts Center

November 20^th, 2010

Today didn’t go quite as expected, although it turned out well enough! The plan was to go with Sean and Sacha to Insadong, which is the arts/crafts/souvenir district of Seoul, and then go see a photography exhibition at the Seoul Arts Center. After getting dressed, I ended up Skyping with Emily for over an hour, which was totally awesome, except I definitely wasn’t ready to go when Sacha came knocking on my door, lol.

After a bit of a mixup regarding which bus station to go to, we ended up at Express Bus Terminal, which took us into Seoul. From there we started to head for Insadong on the subway, realized that the Arts Center was closer, changed directions, and went there instead.

The Arts Center is huge, and kind of looks like the Western SSC, in that it is concrete and somewhat hideous. Once you get inside, go up the elevator, and see the veranda, however, the Arts Center becomes much nicer. It’s a huge complex of galleries, and there’s even an opera house! We bought tickets for the National Geographic Photography exhibit, and had to wait... I’m going to say 3 hours to get in? Possibly a little less, but it was around the 3 hour mark.

While we waited, we checked out all the free exhibits, including some rather delightful modern art, and then went into this Design show where various artists were selling their wares. I picked up a sort of emo-looking passport holder that I love, and Sacha got a hoodie and passport holders and buttons and various other paraphenalia.

The photography show was fantastic – some of those pictures, really, you have to see to believe. A lot of the landscapes, you have to do a double take, like you’re asking, “Wait, this is real?” And the animals shots were cool too – I swear there was one of a beheaded narwhale (or whatever those unicorn whales are called), but Sean thinks it was just poking its head up through the ice. My favorite was this image of a bear standing at the edge of a waterfall, mouth open, while a fish flies out of the water and straight towards his jaws. The fish has that classic, “Oh, s**t” look about him. Brilliant photography.

After that, we judged there wasn’t enough time to go to Insadong, so we went to a Vietnamese place, where Sacha and I had our first experience with Pho soup. It was really good – they give you broth and noodles and meat, basically, and then you add beansprouts and lemon and such. And it was also really healthy, which is a good change for me. Of course, we also had lots of deep friend spring rolls and such, so perhaps not so healthy after all.

Once I got home – took the bus back, which is about an hour ride – I ended up Skyping with Jesse for... I’m going to say an hour and a half? We started out on normal enough topics, but when I mentioned that I’m thinking about foraying back into WoW, Jesse went off on a tangent and started looking up characters specs and builds and stuff that left me flummoxed and amused.

So I didn’t actually end up going to Insadong, which means I don’t have Christmas presents yet, but I figure that I’ll just send all the gifts home with my mom when she comes up in February. I wasn’t sure about this at first, until I realized that any package I send will get there mid-January anyway, and that’s practically February, so why not send it home for free? Ahahahahahahaha.

Sudok-sa Monastery and Apple Festival!

Adventure Korea is a tour group in Korea that caters to foreigners. They do day trips and weekend trips – to the DMZ, to various seasonal festivals, to Jeju (the official Korean honeymoon island), etc. On Saturday, Sean, Sacha, Jenna, Jade, Nick, and I all headed up to Seoul to participate in the Apple Festival tour, which involved going to a Buddhist temple, and then hitting up an apple farm for an apple festival.

Because the trip started at 8 am in Seoul, I attempted to condition myself during the week to waking up earlier. Before this, I had been staying up until 3 am, following the theory which my fellow teachers prescribe to, which is that if you wake up at noon and go straight to work, you aren’t nearly as exhausted by the end of the day. It’s a sound enough theory, but man, setting my alarm earlier and earlier while my body protested wasn’t the easiest thing in the world.

I actually wasn’t doing very well with my plan – I think by Wednesday, the earliest I’d managed to get up was 11 – until CK called my internet company and supposedly connected my internet. The internet, naturally, did not work, so CK told me he’d be coming over at 11 the next day. Since I didn’t want my apartment to look like a sty in front of my boss, I got up around 9 and cleaned the whole place. He didn’t show – which was a bit on the frustrating side, I’ll admit – but at least I got up earlier than 11!

On Friday he actually did come over, although it was more around 1:30 than the 11 he had intimated the day before. That was another 9 am day – it’s amazing how dirty one’s single-room apartment can get in the course of 24 hours – and CK fiddled around with my internet for a bit before proclaiming that it didn’t work. The reason, he thinks, is that I actually have a different internet modem thingy than the company he called – possibly. Anyway, he said that I should wait until Monday and try again, at which point the internet will hypothetically work.

Long story short, I’m over a month in to Korea and I still don’t have internet, a cell phone, or a bank account. The upside, of course, is that they paid me my salary in the form of a humungous stack of W10,000 bills in a white envelope, which made me feel like some sort of gangster or hitman!

Moving right along to the Apple Festival. So I get up at 5:30 on Saturday morning, so I’ll have time to take a shower and wake up before the 6:20 departure time. I catch a cab with Jenna, Sean, and Sacha to AK, where we hope an express bus up to Seoul. Allow me to explain. Seoul is north of Pyeongtaek, but the apple festival is south, which means we were essentially backtracking about an hour both ways. Frustrating? Yes. But there wasn’t really a way around it.

We all attempted to catch some sleep on the stupidly early bus to Seoul, and I didn’t quite manage, although Jenna gave it her best effort. She hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before, which I’ve encountered before – you know how sometimes, when you really, really want to fall asleep because you have to wake up early, the last thing you can do is sleep, even though you’re exhausted? That’s what happened to Jenna. Luckily we had a three hour bus ride ahead of us for her to get some shut eye.

Arriving a bit early for our tour, we went in to the nearby *possibly* train station and got some Dunkin Donuts. Then we got on the bus, which was pretty cool – purple faux-leather seats, a weird, purple, tassle, fringey thing that went around the top of the windows, etc. The ride started off with our official Adventure Korea tour guide making us introduce ourselves, and there were the usual jokes – “I’m so-and-so, and I like poetry and taking long walks on the beach”, for example. I stuck with, “Hi, I’m Michelle from Canada,” which worked well enough. If I give away my secret identity, after all, they might find me.

After an obscenely long bus ride – we hit traffic coming out of Seoul, so it was closer to 3.5 than the 2 hours it was supposed to be – we finally reached the Sudok-sa Monastery. On the way, however, when I had almost fallen asleep, they started blaring Avatar! Very frustrating, although eventually I gave in and watched bits and pieces.

The temple was absolutely beautiful – a series of really elaborate, carved, and painted gateways leading up this gorgeous, tree-lined path to the temple proper, which had all these serene pools and statutes and stuff. I’m making it sound a lot lamer than it was, because it really was quite extraordinary, especially since the day was really warm, really bright, and basically the perfect fall day to visit a temple.

I think my favorite part had to be in one of the gatehouses. There were these four statues of huge, fanged men – not sure if they were kings or gods – and one of them was stepping on a statue of a woman, who was flailing under his shoe. It was totally bizarre and we all thought it was hilarious, mostly because I was under the impression that Buddhist temples were supposed to be more, you know, peaceful.

From there, it was on to the Apple Festival! It took place at a little apple farm/winery about 20 minutes from the temple. We walked up this long driveway, past long rows of apple trees, which were practically falling over from the weight of the apples, and over to the festival. It was on two levels, and the stage at the far end featured people singing... wait for it... Italian opera. I’d never associated Korean apple festivals with Italian opera, but there you go.

We went on a little tour of the apple winery, which was interesting, and then grabbed plates of pork roast for lunch. Unfortunately the pork was really fatty – and by really, I mean more than half of each piece was fat, and we had to try and eat them with toothpicks. Anyway, it was an alright meal, and following that we went down to the tent where we could make our own apple pies.

This turned out to be quite the adventure, as it seemed that every bee in a thirty mile radius had decided to pop by and terrorize we apple-pie makers. I managed to get through the whole thing without screaming, although there was a minor freak-out incident wherein Jenna had to shoo a bee that had landed on my arm away. Making the pies was really fun though, because you got to roll the dough, decorate the pie, etc. And eating it later was really tasty, although I almost forgot to capture my finished pie on camera because I was so excited to eat it! And it wasn’t half bad, either.

Following the pie adventure, I accompanied Sacha over to the wine-making area, where she got to throw apples in a huge grinding machine, mix up the mush with sugar and yeast, and try to understand the wine man as he explained how to let the apple mush ferment for a month until it turned into wine. Luckily there was an English speaking Korean there, who was of great help, and when the grinding machine broke down we had a lovely chat with a couple from the Osan air base, who had brought their kids along for a day of apple fun.

Then it was up to the top level to watch a bunch of Korean kids perform. I wasn’t terribly excited at the start, at least until they started yodelling, at which point I was completely enthralled. Again, not quite what you’d expect at an apple festival, but wonderful nonetheless. Nick got up on stage at one point to help the kids play their little cow-bell looking instruments, and he got a box of apples for his efforts.

After that things wound down, and we went back to the bus for our trip back. There was free wine and beer, and although I didn’t partake overly, some of the people on the tour did, and we stopped about half an hour later for the entire bus to go empty their bladders. Then it was allllll the way back to Seoul, and then back to Pyeongtaek.

When I got home, I watched Bring It On – not the original, but one of the sequels. It was delightfully awful, and I couldn’t stop laughing. I made myself stay up till 3 am, so I could get back on my usual sleeping schedule, and I managed to wake up at 11 the next morning, so I was pretty successful. All in all a wonderful day, despite the excessive bus time and waking up stupidly early!

Seoul Lantern Festival

The past week was... annoying. This is mainly because on Monday I developed a sore throat, which continued to plague me all week, and on about Thursday my ears decided to join the party, and now they hurt more than my throat does. Sacha tells me that if my ears start to itch, I’ll need to pop by a pharmacy, because it means I have an infection. Nooo! Every time I swallow now my ears hurt, and going to bed is a pain, because I can’t stop coughing. But enough about my medical woes!

Today was very fun, because we went up to Seoul for the annual lantern festival. First we went to AK to catch the train, which didn’t go all that well. There was a mix-up with the trains, and Sean and Jade ended up getting on the wrong train, while Sacha, Jenna and I took the correct one. We only had “standing room” tickets, which means we didn’t have seats. Luckily the wrong train ended up going to the right place, so it all worked out.

At the Seoul metro station, I had my first close encounter with a crazed Korean camera enthusiast. Allow me to explain. I was standing outside Paris Baguette with Sacha when a Korean guy wandered over, gave his camera to Sacha, and mimed her taking a picture of me and him. Apparently this is an actual thing, that some Koreans like to take pictures with foreigners – possibly because there are so few of us in Korea? Anyway, the guy sidles right up to me and wraps his arms around my waist, then slides them a little higher... at which point Sacha shoves the phone back into his hands and shooes him away. Our best guess is he wanted the picture to look like he had a foreigner girlfriend! Very bizarre.

From Seoul Station we took the subway one stop over to City Hall, which isn’t actually next to City Hall. It is next to a huge intersection, as well as a big, open plaza that is possibly one of the sights of the upcoming Seoul G20 Summit. I was confused by this, since I was sure that we had just had a G20 this summer in Toronto, but apparently I just don’t understand what’s going on. Anyway, after figuring out where the lantern festival was, we stopped for dinner at an Italian place. It was over-priced, but the pizza was really good, the carbonara pasta was good, and the salad was... strange. Supposedly it was caesar, but it just didn’t taste like Caesar to me. It was still delicious, though.

We met up with Nick and Jodie, who were exhausted from football earlier that day – I think they play every Saturday, apparently against a bunch of huge Russian guys. After trekking down a very large, very loud, very brightly-lit street, we found the lantern festival! Basically, they took a narrow-ish river and built little podiums, onto which they put hundreds of lantern sculptures. The lanterns were amazing – they had everything from the Statue of Liberty to Chinese dragons. Nothing overtly Canadian, which was unfortunate, but there were a few Canadian flags scattered around, which both confused and amused me.

The downside was the “crushing crowds of death”, as Sacha termed it. It seemed like the entire population of Korea decided to pop up to Seoul that evening. To get at the lanterns, you had to go down this long ramp that turned into a walkway beside the river. However, not only were there a gazillion people, there were no railings by the river! I saw at least one guy step into the river. It all seemed horribly unsafe to me, but I guess the festival coordinators weren’t concerned about people taking a dunking!

One very funny part was that, just as we reached the stairs to get back up, we saw a ladder on the far side of the bank, with people climbing up, kind of like an escape route. That brought to mind the question of – what happens if someone actually gets trampled byt eh crowd, which was entirely plausible, and needed medical attention? We were about twenty feet down from the main road, and there was only access via the ramp, stairs, and ladder.

I had been hoping to make a lantern myself, but the line was far too long, according to Jade and Jenna. I did get a picture with a demon-looking character, which may or may not be posted on Facebook, since it wasn’t my camera. Considering that I don’t have a camera, this makes sense. I also got a picture with the mascot of Seoul – Hae-something, I can’t remember the name – which is a cute cartoon character that is possibly yellow.

Following the festival, which wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be, but was still very entertaining, we trekked back to the train station, where we found an anti G20 rally! They all had signs, and were wearing running shoes, which we think meant that they were planning on doing some sort of marathon protest. Deciding that it would probably be a little safer inside the train station, in case the rally people got into an altercation with the 50+ cops hanging around, we proceeded into the McDonalds.

After a burger or two, we had a beer at a sketchy little place across the street with twinkly lights, Christmas bulbs, a huge picture of a semi-naked woman straddling a cowboy, and an odor rather akin to eggs mixed with a sewer. Nevertheless, great fun was had by all, especially when Nick lost W50,000, only to discover later that Jenna had found it on the floor, at which point the money was promptly returned.

Following a long train ride back to Pyeongtaek, Sacha, Jenna, Sean and I participated in what I have decided to term the “foggy cab ride from hell”. As soon as we turned onto the main road that skirts the city, there was so much fog that we literally couldn’t see more than a foot in front of the cab. This didn’t stop the taxi driver from pumping the gas, shooting down the road without a care in the world. Alright, possibly an exaggeration there – he did slow down, but it was still a terrifying experience!

Having survived this latest encounter, we proceeded to our rooms. I had intended to go straight to bed, but having downloaded the movie Tekken, I started to watch it while I edited my Flip video of the day’s adventures. Since it was actually a really interesting movie, I ended up watching the whole thing. Over the summer I watched the Street Fighter movie, and it continues to amaze me how filmmakers can turn these fighting-tournament video games into not-half-bad movies.

Going to Seoul and Korean Halloween

On Saturday, I had major plans to go and meet up with Sacha and Sean in Seoul – more specifically in Itaewon, which is a foreigner-friendly part of the city that purportedly has a wide variety of cheap knockoffs. Since I needed a winter jacket, Sacha suggested that this was an excellent place to get one.

Actually getting to Itaewon turned out to be quite the adventure, however. Because Sean and Sacha had gone to Seoul the night before to attend a friend’s birthday party, I would have to meet up with them in Seoul. The problem with this is that I don’t have a cell phone, so I had to first get to AK Plaza, find a phone, call them, figure out where they were, and then arrange a way to meet up with them.

The first part of the plan went smoothly enough – I got to AK Plaza without a hitch. Well, I ended up sharing a taxi ride with an ajima (old lady) who got dropped off at a hospital – possibly pharmacy – on Jungang-ro, which is a major road that leads to AK. Anyway, once I got to AK I wandered around looking for a phone, but came up empty-handed.

Then the heavens parted, and out of the golden mist came a sweet lady named Soon who offered to let me use her phone. It turns out she’s a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, and I listened to her spiel on “Where is God Now?”. Sacha and Sean turned out to be in Itaewon when I called, and Sacha warned me that by the time I got there they probably have already left. That was fine with me, since I’m more than capable of shopping alone, so I told her that I would call her again if I had any questions on how to get there.

I got a ticket to Seoul and got on the train. However, when we hit Yongsan, the loudspeaker claimed that this was the “terminal” stop, meaning the last stop. Everyone got off the train, so I shrugged and followed along.

For the record, Yongsan is technically in Seoul, it’s just not the main station where I had intended to end up. Since I was to all intents and purposes stranded in a random train station, I wandered around for a bit and looked for a phone. No missionaries came to my rescue, so I decided to just hang around Yongsan for a while, and hop a train back when I was bored. There was a subway I could have taken into the city, but I figured that it probably wasn’t a good idea to get lost on the subway when I didn’t even have a phone to call for help.

There was a really cool ski and snowboard exhibit right outside the station, which I watched for a while. It consisted of people skiing/snowboarding down an artificial hill, doing tricks off a series of ramps/bars, and getting cheered on by the crowd. They weren't very good, but it was still fun to watch, and I got a video shot for my vlog.

Back into the station, and I discovered Ipark mall, which has no affiliation with Apple. It’s a massive mall that had about five floors devoted to electronics. I found a book on learning Korean from the book store, as well as James Patterson’s “Wizard and Witch”, which I have not read but thought sounded interesting. I also found a really plush silver jacket that I splurged on and bought, since winter in Korea this year is rumoured to be freezing.

Back to Pyeongtaek – no difficulties this time! – and the day was complete. I stopped by Sean and Sacha’s to let them know I survived, then kicked back and read Purity. That would be an Inuyasha fanfiction I read... gosh, it has to be at least 6 years ago now. Anyway, I rediscovered it, and it has kept me quite entertained so far.

Sunday was more successful – success here being defined as me doing what I intended to do. Since it was Halloween, Sean and Sacha planned out a scary movie night at the AK cinema, since they don’t really celebrate Halloween in Korea. Well, there was apparently some kind of party in Seoul, but I didn’t go to that, so it’s irrelevant. Anyway, I went early with Sean and Sacha to get tickets – you get to pick your seats in Korea – and we bought ice cream from Baskin Robbins and chilled at the AK “Skygarden”, which is basically a really nice garden on the roof of the building with a view of the city.

Then it was time for dinner, and what an experience it was! We decided to have Pizza Hut, which is a much bigger deal than it seems, because in Korea, Pizza Hut is considered fine dining. A large pizza is about $25 – no joke – and the inside of the restaurant is very fancy. It was all very civilized, although I have to say that the pizza itself was nothing to write home about. Which is ironic, considering I am currently writing home about it. Meh.

The movie was... interesting. We met up with Jade and Nick, then took our seats. Paranormal Activity 2 started out kind of slowly, but once the devil-worship, poltergeist stuff got under way, it was scary enough. Sudden movements, loud bangs, etc. I quite enjoyed myself, and spent the rest of the evening jumping at small noises.