Mudeungsan!

     One beautiful weekend in late October, three foreign dudes decided to hike up a mountain near Gwangju, South Korea.  This is their story.

But seriously, I was blown away that our boy Aaron had never actually been hiking before--not really out in the woods, or in a big national park, much less a mountain halfway across the world.  We got an early start to our Sunday, and hopped a taxi all the way to the base of Mudeungsan Mountain.  Which I should probably tell you a bit about.

     Nestled into an extremely mountainous area just about 5-10 miles southeast of Gwangju (toward Suncheon, Jinju, and the coast) is Mudeung Mountain, referred to by locals as Mudeungsan (pronounced MOO-DUNG-SAHN).  It is a relative beast of a mountain, especially considering the urban landscape from which it rises in the distance.  Standing at 1,187 meters (or 3,894 feet) it towers over much of the surrounding areas--and though this doesn't sound particularly huge, it does tend to look and feel really cool because most of that 1,187 or 3,894 is gained during the hike--in other words, it makes for an impressive vertical hike.  And a great place to kick off Aaron's obsession with hiking.

Here he stands, swagged out and ready to hike.

Even if you're one hell of an athlete, it's impossible to walk up Mudeung and not stop occasionally because one is simply blown away at the sights.  It's as simple as some mossy rocks with the sun hitting them perfectly.  

Had to snap a pic with this beautiful scene behind me.  It's pretty great to be a 10-minute taxi ride out of the city and doing things like this.  That's really the story of the South Korean outdoors so far--from urban jungle to out in the sticks...as fast as you'd like.

I decided, for the purpose of this post and of further posts, that these pictures at just gonna be huge. Especially for a post like this, it just makes sense--blow it up as much as possible.

Seeing for miles.

So on Mudeung, there are plenty of places to stop and take a rest, but there are none in an open place like this. You sort of dodge who you can, and the trail is a pretty constant flow of people--being a warm Sunday, the crowds came out. This picture, with Erik being the only visible waygook, is also solid testimony to the fact that Koreans love to get absolutely swagged out when hiking--matching jackets, backpacks, poles, boots, hats, you name it--look no further than the woman in the bottom left. Now she, my friends, is ready to hike.

I was happy enough to get this high up, considering how out of shape I was. Great to get a morning workout in, and take in the views that we did.

Bros.

One really cool thing about any effort you make to hike a mountain in Korea is that Koreans themselves get to see that you're committed to doing something of which they are very proud. To see foreigners hiking the mountains they believe to be so important, whether for traditional, recreational, or spiritual reasons, tends to put a smile on their faces more often than not. A few ex-Samsung workers from Daegu (a large city about a 2-3 hour bus ride northwest of Gwangju) stopped us to practice some English, ask where we were from, if we liked Korea so far, and if we'd enjoy a bit of food they had to offer. Koreans love to bring food and drink and picnic at the summit!

And here's the view from Gwangju near the top. Are you kidding me? South Korea feels, at times, so small and yet so big, and this is just testimony in favor of the "big." This city holds roughly 1.5 million people, Seoul holds just over 12 million, and all of Hampyeong COUNTY carries 41,000. Just a constant back and forth with this small world, big world thing.

Loved looking at this picture again and thinking it really looks as though we're walking off the side of a  mountain, about to fall to our death in the hills surrounding Gwangju. There was some hiking in this exposed field for a while (in which the fall colors were still around, and really striking), but then it was back to a tree-filled mountainside of steep paths.

The descent.

Here's another cool photo that gives some steep perspective--the idea that, if one rock slips, or your foot finds an odd place, you will literally fall OFF the mountain.

And with that, the boys have conquered Mudeung. Had a Korean snap a picture of our sweaty mugs before we jumped on the bus back to Aaron's apartment.

     The Mudeung round trip was about 5 hours, and I'd say we absolutely flew up and down the mountain. I don't know how we didn't get lost--there are countless ways to get up Mudeung, depending on one's preferred difficulty. Likewise, there are plenty of ways to get down--some lead to places further out in the sticks, some lead to temples, some lead to towns, and one leads back to the buses and taxis and food. We were lucky enough to have chosen the right path. Great for a first big hike in Korea as the weather was still nice out and the colors were changing.

     Anyway, there's a post for you to chew on. I'll be back with another, and I believe it will be about our big Halloween festivities in Mokpo and beyond. November was great, December has been nice, and life is flying by here in Hampyeong. I have the day off from school, so maybe I'll just go ahead and start that next blog post ASAP.  Thanks for reading! All the best, and love to all,

Sam Teacher

Oh Yes I Did.

     Oh yeah.  I know what you're thinking.  Sam Hurd has broken his record for Blogger productivity, with 2 posts in the last 24 hours.  Take this one for what you will and get psyched to get caught up on my life, because things are only getting better.

     Although I should give you some sense of where I'm currently at: tomorrow (Wednesday, December 21st) is the final day of my first semester here in Korea.  I would normally work my 5-day week, but my Thursday and Friday schools, being finished with all their material and having experienced the antics of my soda-infused elementary kids firsthand at the first annual Sam Teacher Christmas Party, decided no school was a better option.  There's one school that hasn't yet experienced any end-of-the-semester fun with Sam Teacher, and that's Sonbul Elementary, tomorrow's school.  They're in for about $40 worth of soda, candy, and snacks.  It's gonna be a good time.

     That being said, there is by no means a "Christmas break" of sorts here.  It just so happens that Christmas falls on Sunday this year, a day I'm off of work anyway; had that been a weekday, it would be up in the air as to whether I get that day off, and I would certainly report to school the following day in any scenario.  As it turns out, winter English camps begin for nearly all of us in Jeollonam-do province on Monday, the 26th.  So I will really have to live it up while I feel as though I have a Christmas break of my own!

     Now that you know a little bit about where my schedule is headed, I'll get back to telling you about stuff from my rich past here.  Our journey will start at the Hampyeong market, which operates near the bus terminal, on every day of every week ending in a -2 or a -7 (so, every 5 days, more or less).  It is bigger than expected, given the size of the town and the county, and fully stocked with your usual batch of market stuff--fruit of all kinds, plenty of fermenting vegetables, some fresh (and some not so fresh) fish, plenty of clothes, shoes, blankets, pillows, and general Korean swag and merchandise.  There's not a whole lot of it I personally need or tend to buy, but it's always nice to pick up little things for the family (I promise you guys, you'll be getting all of your Christmas/year-long gifts in one giant box come August or so).  That being said, let's kick off the tour:

This is a long aisle of clothing--everything from visors and hats which might be of us to those out in the fields, to flannel and trendy stuff for (mostly) older women to wear.  Note the tent that tends to cover everything, at least in warmer weather.

Here's a good picture of the traffic--as I said, this market tends to operate consistently based on the efforts of (and for the commercial benefit of) elderly women of Hampyeong.  They love chirping at each other about produce, favorite clothing, and price bargaining in general.  

Here's one angle of a vendor's stash of mostly fish.  In the foreground, in those red bowls, you can barely make out various sizes of minnows and fresh, salty little fish--these are often used as side dishes in restaurants and sometimes served in soups.  Beyond that, it's hard to make out much, but rest assured the seafood selection is prime.

As evidenced here.  This man was in the middle of chopping up what seemed like 5 or 10 pounds of fish fillets.  Can't imagine how sharp the knives must be; he slices and dices like its nothing, and promptly puts it in a plastic bag, where it then goes out for purchase (again, to probably be put in soups), most likely less than 24 hours after it was caught.  Pretty cool!

Here's another look at the selection.  Toward the upper left of the tables, you see the fatter fillets of a fish that I can't completely identify.  In the middle/front, we have the dried carcasses of pollack--Koreans love their fish dried as much as anything here, and pollack tends to be a popular choice.  It tends to taste like a rich, salty jerkey.  Then we have some extremely thin, bony and fragile fillets that sort of hang over the edge of the table--again, it's difficult to identify those.  One thing I can PROMISE you is indeed here is the dreaded Hongae-heo, the fermented meat of a skate fish that smells and tastes like pure, grade-A ammonia.  Hampyeong's specialty, or so I'm told!

Another look down a shady aisle of the market.  Food on the left, shoes on the right.  Elderly women (Koreans would generally refer to them as "ajummas") everywhere.

You can guess what these are.  Still alive, of course, ready for soup.

And here's a photo that provides a stark contrast to what you just saw.  This is a nice, typical Friday night scene of lights and people in downtown Gwangju.  Wa Bar, featured on the left, is a foreigner-friendly bar we often check out.

And here is a pretty spectacular light show put out by the one venue we cannot seem to steer clear of upon entering Gwangju for a weekend--the much maligned but always beloved Bubble Bar.

A sunny Saturday afternoon spent in the Chonnam National University neighborhood of Gwangju, not far from where our friend Aaron lives.  This area is full of various coffee shops, small pubs and soju rooms, and good eating options.

And, without warning, we jump right back into the market scene.  This is Yangdong market, Jeollanam-do province's largest of its kind (nestled in a busy part of Gwangju, near the downtown area of shopping and dining).  And these...are fresh octopus.

Came to the market a little too late, so here's a quiet shot of one outer alleyway of Yangdong market, as it begins to close down for the night.

...And here we are again in downtown Gwangju.  Saturday night this time.  So many people, so many options for dining, shopping, boozing, you name it.

On this particular night, we settled for some BBQ and some drinks, but decided (at least us boys, as we had a big hike on tap the next morning, which you will soon see some pictures from) to indulge in more food than drink and opt out of Bubble Bar for a night.  That always proves a controversial decision.  Nonetheless, the food was delicious and came to us on the recommendation of my Wednesday co-teacher, Kim Ju Hui.  Here are, from left to right, Erik, Aaron, and Gina.

And here is just a well done wrap if I do say so myself.  What you're looking at is barbecued beef soaked in some sesame sauce, wrapped in a nice romaine leaf, joined by sesame-sauced onions and grilled garlic and a hint of red pepper paste.  

And speaking of Ju Hui, here she is!  Happy to have met up with her on a weekend night--she lives in Gwangju, but not particularly close to the downtown area.

And here are the 5 of us at Ethnic Cafe, which is an indescribably cool place set in the basement of a building in Gwangju's bright, busy downtown.  It's all set to more or less look like a cave, or a temple, with candles to light the entire place and nothing else--there is a pond with a small, quiet waterfall trickling in the middle of the establishment, and private, comfortable floor seating all around.  They even serve long islands! 

Here's a better look at what I'm talking about.  It's a very intimate setting where many couples go to get all romantic.  Candles and lanterns everywhere, lots of pillows and blankets, good drinks, so why not?

     So there's another post in the books for all of you.  I'll be right back tomorrow with new one, as I feel like I'm starting to turn a leaf and update you folks more and more.  Thanks as always for reading, and we'll be out of October and into November soon enough.  All the best, and love to all,

Sam Teacher

October Flies By

     This blog post is gonna give you a quick recap on a couple of things--life around my apartment, school food, some school volleyball, and (of course) plenty of cute kids.  This should just about round out the month of October up to Halloween or thereabouts.  This week is what we like to call "video week" in our semester--that is, it's time to show the Korean-subtitled "Shrek The Halls" Christmas special, which all the kids seem to love, as well as make some Christmas decorations to put around the school or have the students take home.  Also...plenty of candy, and some occasional soda and snacks, which always makes the kids freak out.  Note to myself for the rest of the semester and going forward--grape Fanta for 3rd graders at 9:15am is never a good idea.  Anyway, let's kick this off:

Mostly pictures in this post, so as to keep things moving.  Here we have a University of Wisconsin hockey jersey, which I conveniently hung from my A/C unit which sits just above my bed.  Great to wake up to or fall asleep to a little momento of my alma mater, and just in time for hockey season.  "UH, RAH, RAH...WIIIIII-SCCOOOOOOOON-SIIIIIIIIN!"

And here are some photos of friends and (mostly) family.  These hang right above my desk in the corner of my apartment room, right next to a sign that states my (more or less) motto in teaching the elementary runts: "GIVE 'EM HELL."  Always a nice reminder of where I've come from when I'm sitting at my desk lesson planning or checking out the interwebs.

So one cool thing about Korean schools is that there is (quite often) plenty of food to be had in the teachers' lounge(s)!  These tend to be placed in the middle of the room, on long tables, like so, and surrounded by plenty of couches and chairs.  As Korea is still a very Confucian, traditional society, gender comes into play here--men tend to sit in the middle of the room, on the couches (I'm usually placed next to the principal or vice principal), while women are relegated to the perimeter, with their own share of food and expected topics of conversation.  Anyway, we have some snacks in this picture.  In the foreground, you see some delicious grapes (grapes here are a bit more sour, and taste more or less like wine grapes, but I love them), which have plenty of seeds that Koreans like to spit out along with the skin--they tend to only prefer the flesh, as the rest can be messy and tough to chew.  Those beautiful golden things pierced by toothpicks are persimmons, which are an extremely abundant fruit here in the fall...mild and delicious.  In the back are some rice cakes, but the following picture illustrates them a bit better:

These look a little more delicious than they are, but they're still dynamite; what with the colors and the texture, one might mistake them for the kind of cake that a Westerner might be more familiar with--i.e. icing, sprinkles, etc.  On the contrary, rice cakes here are delicious but extremely healthy--rice is mashed together into a cohesive, sticky glob that is then covered by various things--in this case, red beans on the left (my favorite) and straight-up food coloring and flour on the right.  

And here are those persimmons I spoke of.  Really nice looking.  Teachers will usually send me home with half a dozen on what seems like nearly every afternoon--often times, they are worried about my health and how much weight I've lost here; other times, there are just too freakin' many of them around not to dish some out to everyone.

It took a while for me to realize this, but it was probably a good time to start bringing my camera to school every day.  It was not until October or thereabouts that I started to teach 1st and 2nd graders on a weekly basis, but I have the pleasure of doing just that at Sonbul Elementary on Wednesdays.  The first thing I learned about them is that they love coloring, they love shouting out various alphabet letters and pictures, and they make for such natural photographic targets--everything they do in pictures looks so sweet and innocent, despite their sometimes mischievous and rowdy behavior away from the lens.  We mostly sing various "Hello" songs, review our alphabet, sounds and basic words, do some coloring, maybe sing a song or do a dance, and sing some "Good-bye" songs.  And we take lots of pictures.  Er...I take lots of pictures.

This sweet girl coined the name "Pinocchio" as the most popular alter ego of Sam Teacher.  When asked why, she really did respond in the most practical manner: "big nose."

She got a hold of my glasses!  And made for an awesome and cute picture.  Note the awesome rabbit teeth!

Again, lots of these pictures didn't look so cool in their time, but looking back on them, they make for really simple reminders of just how calm, cool, and innocent kids can really be--especially these ones, who can quiet down and concentrate on just about anything they're given the chance to color, cut, or glue, or all of the above.

...And she's back. 

All these 1st grade girls seem to have their own tendencies and quirks when it comes to interacting with the teacher--in the case of the previous girl, it's just an elephant noise and action, in this cute girl's case, it's sticking her tongue out and sort of spitting everywhere--although, I swear it's still really cute.

In her case, it's putting my glasses on, staring at the camera, and them promptly digging through every English dictionary in the room and asking me to review and repeat (so that she may practice) every word I see.

Again, her favorite quirk is the "Pinocchio" schtick.

     One last thing I should tell all of you about (and this is one of my favorite parts of life in Korea) is volleyball!  Korean teachers love playing volleyball together--I don't know if those goes for all schools, but most elementary schools (and especially those in Hampyeong) love to get together a few times a month and play volleyball together--either within their own faculty, in smaller teams, or at larger tournaments between multiple elementary schools, in larger teams.  There is always food, too!  In fact, some of the craziest food I've eaten (pictures to come in later blog posts) tends to come at volleyball sessions--this includes month-long fermented skate meat, raw eel, live octopus, and various other awesome treats.  These pictures were taken during the course of a Wednesday tournament between 4 schools, 3 of which I belong to--Singwang (yup), Sonbul (yup), Sonbul Seo (yup), and Haebo.  Two teams are currently playing, while folks from the other schools are seen in the background, sitting together around tables of food and drink on the stage of the gym.  Oh yeah, when I say drink...I mean beer and soju.  At 2:00pm.  On a Wednesday afternoon.  At school.  On the clock.  Awesome.

Between points.

Getting ready.  Koreans, as a general word of encouragement, tend to tell each other and their team (hell, the whole room), "FIGHTING!"  It comes out as more of a "PITING" or "HITING" and sounds really cool--no matter how good or bad a player you are, no matter if you score or suck, you can generally expect to hear, before, after, or during every point, "SAM TEACHER, HITING!"

Some nice peppers and pepper paste to go along.  A good rule of thumb when checking out peppers in Korea is: the bigger they are, the less spicy they are.  The seedier, the spicier.  The fatter and more hollow (what we're looking at here), the more mild.

Here are some random foods from volleyball--apologies for the distance, but I felt awkward enough snapping pics of the whole table!  In the foreground are some chewed grapes I described earlier, skin and everything.  The main plate you see is full of onions and greens that have been soaked in a thin red pepper paste to spice them up a bit.  Adjacent to this is a nice shallow bowl of kimchi-ed radishes, with a few lonely pieces of (probably) raw pork in the back.  

     Anyway, there are a few quick things for you to check out while you wait for the next post, which should hopefully follow tomorrow.  I don't see why not; it's video week after all...

     Thanks, as always, for reading!  Will be back soon with more good stuff.  Lots of love, and all the best.

     -Sam Teacher