More Hiking Adventures

     Yikes, I tend to keep promising constant posts that I don't live up to.  In my defense, it was an amazing weekend in Seoul that I just had, and I'm still coming down from that a bit.  Now that I think about it, my blog is starting to resemble "How I Met Your Mother" in that there's this constant promise of a story soon to be told that might never actually be told.  I can promise you that I'll get to everything in good time, and I'll throw you two quick posts about various hiking trips with my schools in the fall.

     So let's get that started, so I can move onto my first trip to Seoul, which will come soon.  Now we move into the first week of October, which saw Jeollanam-do looking as beautiful as ever as the colors began to change.  Lots of schools tend to want to go hiking with their staff and students, and Sonbul Seo, my Friday school, was no exception.  This particular hiking trip was to the same locale as my previous post/hike, with my Sonbul Elementary staff: Yeongchonsa Temple, in the northern part of the county.  It's only about a 15 minute bus ride from Sonbul Seo, so that was nice and convenient.  Here is a little bit of documentation from the day:

Here are the 6th grade boys of Sonbul Seo, all 4 of them.  Keeping in mind that this school has 49 total students (or thereabouts), it tends to function as one big family, and that's really cool.  From left to right: Bond, James, Harry, and Ricky.

A nice little bridge we crossed on the early stretch of our hike.

Here's a nice shot of Hampyeong's official flower (that I promise I'll learn how to spell, starting tomorrow at school) that I still cannot spell or pronounce correctly to save my life.  But it's beautiful, isn't it?

Two really cute 1st grade girls, who were happy to pose for a picture with me.  I can't stress enough how sweet these kids are; as mentioned before, it being such a small school, everyone seems to get along really well and look after one another, so even the particularly young students are more or less happy and humble (sometimes even shy) kids.

Lots of ups and downs walking through the woods, but lots of shade and beautiful flowers everywhere.

And here's a whole patch of them.  These things make snapping pictures too easy.

A nice patch of the beautiful flowers catching some sun.

Students all bring backpacks, like so, for field trips.  It's one of those days where cafeteria food isn't going to be an option, so teachers tend to let students run wild with soda, candy, and all kinds of snacks.  The one rule, often, is that Sam Teacher gets to sample everything.

Here is a picture of my co-teacher Colleen, myself, and two of the previously mentioned sweet 1st grade girls.  

Here are my sweet little 3rd grade students.  Eric, the one in the middle, seemed to be the only one who got the memo to look like he was happy to be away from school for the day. 

Cool kids.

Here's a nice picture in front of a cool little lake in the middle of the park area.  From left to right: Bond (6th grade stud), me, Bond's Mom, and a co-teacher of mine at Sonbul Seo, Janet (nicest lady, away from her home of the Philippines for many years, but she gets to go back during vacation in a month!), and my co-teacher Colleen.

Kindergarten kids being cute and awesome.

Running around in the park.  Big game of tag was on, and Sam Teacher seemed to be dubbed "it" just about every time.

One of the few flowers in sight that wasn't actually one of the brilliant red ones. 

Janet really has some quick hands.  She caught this dragonfly out of mid-air!

6th graders hopping around on the rocks in the lake.

Having some snacks with Carl, a 5th grader, and Mark, a 4th grader.  Really cool dudes, but it's unbelievably difficult to get them to smile!

     So that's a short one, I know, but I'm at that point where I ought to just start grinding out multiple entries per day in order to keep things moving.  I'll throw another one up if I have time tonight, otherwise I'll add some pics and chirps about the 3rd major field trip, which was the following week with Sonbul Elementary, my Wednesday school.  

     Thanks for being patient, and thanks for reading!  Lots of love to everyone back home, can't tell you how weird it will be to be away from Christmas this year.  Thanks for all your kind words and support.

All the best, and love to all,

Sam Teacher

Extra-Curriculars

     Hey, folks.  Apologies for the lapse in updates, it's been a busy last week in Hampyeong, believe it or not.  The holidays are upon us, and that means winter camp planning and vacation planning are moving higher up on the priority list.  Between January 17th and March 1st, I'm looking at 24 days of paid vacation in (most likely) Southeast Asia, so I'm trying to at least think a little bit about that stretch of days and keep me motivated through the rest of the semester.  This won't happen until winter camps finish; these start in less than a month and allow for 2-3 weeks of some back-to-the-basics fun for some of the most excited learners.  

     Anyway, those plans will take care of themselves in time.  For now, it's back to updating you on my life...and we will continue with a couple of school hiking trips from late September.  Luckily, late September in Korea means warm weather, an end to the rainy season and, most importantly, no preliminary signs of snow or cold weather to come.  One thing I've found pleasant about Korea so far is that the seasons have changed very gradually--we tend to think of Minnesota, or Wisconsin, or the Upper Midwest in general as having lengthy summers and winters, and little to no fall or spring, which I would argue are probably the most beautiful seasons worth preserving.  So, in late September, all flowers, fruits, and crops are still firmly rooted and nowhere near their days of changing or fading colors; late September in Korea looks much like late July at home.  Everything seems at its absolute peak.  

     Speaking of which, here are some pictures and words on a hike I took in late September with my Wednesday school, Sonbul Elementary.  One warm day, around 3:00 pm, all the teachers decided to go hiking together.  This is something that teachers do relatively often together in this part of Korea, but more often than not, they don't tell you in advance, so you end up in your relatively formal gear, trying to hike a mountain, looking like a clown.  My teachers all seemed prepared, but I tend to look ridiculous.  Here's a great field of flowers at the start of our hike--I just can't quite seem to remember the name.  My co-workers refer to it as Hampyeong's official flower, called "goh-meurr-uht."  I can't quite put that into a word that Google recognizes, nor can I accurately write it to perfection in Korean, so I'll leave you with that pronunciation at home.  Anyway, here are the beauties:

Red everywhere.

Here's one, up close and personal.  The macro setting on my camera has been too kind to me so far in Korea, especially with respect to food pictures, but I'm proud to report there was no photo-shopping done to create this shot.

     Oh yeah, I should probably mention where we went hiking.  Hampyeong surely has multiple Buddhist temples, but the most famous in the county (and probably the most scenic, as its wedged in between Hampyeong's highest mountains in the north of the county) is Yongcheonsa.  It's accessible by about 30 minutes of gradual, uphill hiking, making it a good destination for simple co-worker trips or larger field trips of students.  Here's a peek at some of the photos from our staff hiking trip:

The "guards" that greet at the entrance to the temple grounds.  I felt a little bad giggling, but they're funny looking caricatures of what guards may or may not have actually looked like.  My co-workers had a laugh at me having a laugh...if that makes sense.  It was another one of those wide-eyed moments in which I was snapping away with my camera, while my co-workers strolled by, knowing they'd seen it all before and certainly would again.

And here's a picture taken looking up the steps to the main temple grounds.  The view from the upstairs room in this building, overlooking what seemed like all of Hampyeong county, was unreal.

And here's the main temple, slightly smaller than the previous building, but glorious nonetheless.  The small hut in the right-center is an offering area, where, as per usual, gifts of rice, soju, candles, and other food and crafts filled the shelves.

Here's a peek inside.  Didn't feel so bad snapping this time around, as there were few people there, and nobody actually worshipping at the time.  As far as details go, this temple seemed very similar to Yonggunsa Temple, previously mentioned in a post about Busan.

Here are some stone-crafted lantern holders from the Choson dynasty era.  To put that in perspective, these stones may be up to 600 or 700 years old, and would once upon a time hold candles to light travel  routes around the county.  Fun fact: across Hampyeong, about 90% of these stone lantern holders were destroyed during the Korean war.

Here's that view that I mentioned, from the top room in the main building on the temple grounds.  This is looking (presumably) south, toward the rest of the county.  Just a cool example of the perspective one gets of just how well dug in these temples are--they sit between countless mountains and are ridiculously well built.

My co-worker suggested I mail this one home.  He said the same about almost every other picture.

Here is Kim Ju-Hui, a.k.a. Esther, my Wednesday co-teacher at Sonbul, happily posing for a picture.

One more look at the beautiful flowers in the evening sunlight.  Again, proudly un-enhanced.

     Another thing that's pretty cool about these frequent school trips is the extra-curricular fun and dinner that comes with the territory.  I'm sorry to report I don't have many pictures of my first true teachers' dinner, but it's difficult to gauge just how important it should have been to me, considering I have 5 schools and really no main school to which I feel like I belong.  What I can say is that I've done the most of this outside-of-school stuff with Sonbul Elementary, and that I was nonetheless ecstatic to be mingling and dining with my co-workers.  Here's a quick picture of a rousing "rock, paper, scizzors" ("gawi, bawi, bo" in Korean) game, in which the winner moves up a stone, and the loser stays put.  The first one to the building wins.  My 4th grade student, a daughter of a co-worker at Sonbul, won all 3 games played:

She's good.

And she even finds ways to ham it up with me before dinner.  We were eating some pretty thick, spicy soup, and were ordered to wear these aprons so as not to slop on ourselves.  Of course, in true form, I was the only teacher in need of one when all was said and done.

And here's a nice shot of the soup, before we dug in.  This one is a little hard to explain, but I recall pork meat with neckbones (which gave it kind of a southern or country feel), a spicy tomato and pepper sauce, lots of onions, greens, spices, and a bit of tofu.  Great stuff.  

     So that might not be the most in-depth description of what it's like to hang with co-workers outside of school, hiking and dining, but maybe I'm just feeling a little tired or lazy.  Anyway, looking forward to a pretty quiet week here in Hampyeong, so I'll come back with another post tomorrow or Wednesday for sure.  If I can knock down these quick outside-of-school-trip posts and tell you about our first trip to Seoul (in early October), I'll be happy.  Expect faster updates more often, folks.  Thanks, as always, for reading.  Missing all of you around the holidays, especially with Thanksgiving passing in the past 3-4 days.  Also want to take this opportunity to give a big birthday shout to the one and only Randy Hurd, my Papa Bear.  Give him a shout on Facebook, or tip your cap to him if you see him around Mankato, he's 62 years old today!  

     All the best, and love to all.

-Sam Teacher

The 2011 Wando Beach Party

     Alright, the blog is back after a quick weekend hiatus.  I last left you at a pleasant conclusion of our big weekend in Busan over the Chuseok holiday, and promised big things in my forthcoming recap of the annual Wando Beach Party.  As promised, another blog post that might make you wonder if I ever work here in South Korea.

     The Wando Beach Party is an annual event, a gathering of all the foreigners in our province of Jeollanam-do (and some from beyond) in Wando, which is more or less a county made up of many islands, about 50 miles to the south of Hampyeong.  Mostly made up of relatively poor fishing villages, Wando also has some idyllic beaches and amazing landscapes, which make it the perfect setting for a bunch of foreigners to leave reality and get rowdy on a beach for roughly 48 hours.  

     I hadn't really mentioned this yet, but I lost my wallet one night in Gwangju on one of our first few weekends in the city after orientation.  So, at this point (mid-September, one month in), I was mostly living off of borrowed money from my main co-teacher and the nice friends I'd met so far.  Every week, Aaron and Erik and countless others offered to spot me some cash, and I'm forever grateful.  The Friday of our trek to Wando that weekend saw me with about 5,000 won in my wallet, or enough to take a bus to Mokpo (about 30 miles west of Hampyeong, where one must change buses to eventually arrive in Wando) and little else...certainly not enough to make it to Wando afterward.  Erik, too, was scraping the bottom, as we hadn't yet received our mandatory allowances from our schools yet.  We were pretty concerned about our prospects of finally getting to Wando, but decided we'd figure something out in Mokpo--the least we could do was get on the road and see what happened.  As it turned out, our Texan buddy Zach came up huge and offered us 100,000 won each to spend for the weekend and tide us over until our allowances came, under one condition--we meet him in Wando to get it.  With about 5 minutes left in our launch sequence before heading to the terminal and getting the journey started, Erik magically found a small stash of emergency cash in his dresser, making us temporarily rich and forever grateful men who were about to have a great weekend.  We knew luck was on our side in this instance.  

     So we hopped a quick bus to Mokpo...no problem there.  As it turned out, buses from Mokpo to Wando only run until about 6:30 or 7:00 pm, and we had just missed the last possible direct bus.  One more bump in the road.  Luckily, we figured out that buses from Mokpo to Haenam (Zach and Monti's stomping grounds, more or less on the way from Mokpo to Wando) run quickly and even run from Haenam to Wando as late as 9:00 pm.  So we jumped on the first bus we could, bound for Haenam, and arrived at about 8:55 pm, with 5 minutes to spare and catch our final bus to Wando.  As it turned out, the bus was full of foreigners!  Folks from Suncheon and Gwangyang, on the other side of Jeolla province altogether, had been stopping in small towns for several hours and Haenam happened to be one of them.  So it was great to see some familiar faces for the final leg of our journey, and the luck had been restored.  

     The girls decided, upon arrival in Wando, to settle for a motel close to the bus terminal and check out the beach in the morning--they were pretty tired.  Me and the boys were just a little wired from all the traveling, and were eager to have some beers on the beach and get things started right.  After mumbling what we had heard was the location of the festivities, we exited a taxi and had no idea where we were--a couple convenient stores and a motel were all that we saw, but we also saw a path of sand leading somewhere...we knew we were close.  And sure enough, after walking on the sand-covered boards for a couple hundred feet, we arrived near the water on the stretch of boardwalk that lines Myeongsashimni, or Wando's finest beach.  A 5 minute walk and we knew where the party was.  Finally, after about 5 hours of traveling only about 80 miles, we had arrived.  A couple bonfires, two or three dozen foreigners, and a whole lot of booze ushered in a great weekend.  We took things pretty easy that first night, but were so excited to be there, we stayed up until about 4:30 am.  Here's a photo that nicely sums of some of the night's activity:

Monti getting toasty by the fire.

     Monti had booked a hotel, a short walk from the beach (bless his heart), and we crashed there--all 5 or 6 of us dudes, I couldn't remember how many...we just remember a cold floor, not a lot of space, and the smell of dude everywhere.  Here was the scene in the morning:

From left to right: Zach, Monti, and (introducing, for the first but not the last time) Reading, PA's finest, Dan Glucksnis.  Zach was still sleeping, but Monti and Dan were ready for a long day of drinking, circa 10:00 am.

It took us a few hours to get the wheels spinning that morning, but we came outside to what must have been 75-80 degrees and absolutely clear skies.  Oh yeah, and apparently this is the view from where we were the night before.  

Just try to tell me this is what you thought South Korea actually looked like.  Could've fooled me...I might as well have been in Hawaii or Jamaica.  

Psyched for the big day, with Julia.  Not pictured is the giant bloody mary I tried to make, using a 2-liter bottle of tomato juice (FYI, the tomato juice in Korea is straight up sugar and tastes nothing like a tomato, a little disappointing) and a bottle of soju.  Pepper and hot sauce would've helped, but nothing could've truly saved that terrible concoction.

Here are lovely ladies Toni and Nichole kicking back on the beach.  Also, a pale dude's nipple trolling in the background.  Nicely done, dude.

     As far as the day's activities, there's just not that much to tell...once you get on the beach, with all your friends and booze and sunshine in hand, things just sort of take care of themselves.  Everyone gets pretty rowdy, plays some drinking games, horses around in the water, gets some sun, and drinks some more.  One thing we hadn't counted on is a really cute dog that spent most of the day with us.  Our friend Mackenzie even took it home, as we decided it probably had no real owner.  Here is Sam getting some quality time with the little furball:

Whole lotta love.

Foreigners chilling in the water.

Just flawless weather...I could take pictures of this beach all day.

Either the dog got a little sleepy or someone decided to hand it a few beers, because it spent a good 3 or 4 hours under that umbrella.  As for the foreigners, they just kept on partying the afternoon away.  Eventually, I finished my terrible semblance of a "bloody mary" and a few beers had never tasted so sweet.

Snapping a quick picture with Tex.  Dude had the most rocking trunks of the weekend, and sported some solid, slicked back lettuce for hair.

     As fun as it was to get wild on the beach for 7-8 hours, we decided it would probably be a good idea to get some food in the system before Round 2 that night.  Luckily, there was a great barbecue restaurant right beside our motel/the beach, and we made ourselves at home.  Here are a few pictures from our dinner, as I continue to rave about the world of Korean barbecue:

Various onions in a sort of sweet and tangy sauce, which you wrap in lettuce along with your desired meat.  Really fresh looking and tasting.

This restaurant in Wando boasted the most rocking kimchi I've had to date.  That stuff had some giddy-up, but it was absolutely delicious.  

Me and Julia digging the scene.

Here was our choice of the night: "sam gyeop sal", which more or less means mean of the "pork stomach/rib fat" area.  It looks like thick slabs of bacon, really.  And although you'd think the higher fat content provides it with even more flavor, that's not really the case.  Still flavorful, still incredibly good, but not my favorite type of barbecue.

Here are various types of lettuce in which to wrap our "sam gyeop sal," as well as some mild, crunchy peppers.  Typically you dip the pepper in a tangy, red pepper paste and munch it down to the stem. 

...And it's back to the beach for some nighttime partying.  There's a peek of our aforementioned man Dan enjoying a beer in the background, but the real story of this picture is our friend, Rozanne, who teaches very close to Wando, and was really enjoying her time in the lap of our friend Shari.  Rozanne and Shari, in all seriousness, have been two of the kindest, most helpful people I've met in my life, and they've made my transition to Korean work and life that much more smooth.

Team Sam, a little tired and a little sunburned, but still psyched.

     The night looked a bit like the previous one, only, instead of 2-3 dozen foreigners, the number exceeded the 100 mark...we'd like to think so, at least.  A couple bonfires, some guitars, lots of inebriated young people, some ocean swimming in the dark...all fun things, eh?  We stayed up until about 3:30 am, but had to call it quits.  And OH, MY did it get cold at night near the beach.  I should mention that, instead of crashing in that motel again, we opted to sleep on these exposed platforms just uphill from the beach, and we all agreed we'd never spooned people harder in our lives.  The name of the game was A. body heat and B. don't get eaten alive by mosquitos.  Anyway, it didn't make for a very comfortably sleep (or really, any sleep at all), but still provided a nice, serene setting by sunrise:

The view from our platform.

Looking toward a few other ones...some folks brought tents, but a few of us literally used a blanket or two, and backpacks as pillows.  Not an ideal scenario, but probably the most interesting night of sleep I'll have in Korea.  

     Everyone was packed at a relatively early hour, and wanted to hustle back to their hometowns, as a journey from Wando to just about anywhere can take a while.  Some of us opted to stay until about 2:00 pm and catch some more sun and swimming on the beach.  It was another gorgeous day, and we just didn't want to leave.  

     We caught our bus back to Mokpo, and eventually Hampeyong, and called it another successful weekend.  Erik and I always have this tradition of saluting each other and tipping our caps to another great weekend as we both enter our apartments and face what is more often than not a lazy Sunday of napping, lesson planning, and watching internet T.V.  I wouldn't have it any other way.  Nor would I have this weekend any other way...some of the most fun I'm sure I'll have in my year here.  

     Hoping to get back to Wando again, as soon as the weather will allow us to do all of this...so it might be a while, but it will certainly be worth it.  This was the closest one can probably get to the idea of a tropical paradise on the Korean peninsula, and we lived it.  We lived it hard.

     That's all for now, I'll check in sometime in the next 48 hours, and I promise I'll get back to some talk about my actual job...maybe.

     Thanks for reading!  All the best, and love to all,

     -Sam Teacher