Saturday, April 30, 2011

Cheongdo Bullfight Festival

A few weekends ago, I had the chance to go to a Bullfighting Festival down in the Southern part of South Korea. Korea is about the size of Indiana, so for those of you keeping track, it would be the rough equivalent of me living in South Bend and driving down to somewhere around Bloomingtom.
If you look on this map, I was in Gyeongsangnam-Do, about where the "ng" in "sang" is. I live up where the blue number 1 is. 

When most people think of bull fighting, they think of the Spanish style bullfighting between a matador and the bull. 

Something like that. Korean style bullfighting is quite different. It is perhaps a little more like bull wrestling. There are two bulls in the ring, and they lock horns and have a very extended staring contest until one of them decides he has had enough and turns tail and runs away. Some of the fights lasted quite a long time (upwards of 30 minutes) and some of them were quite short (much closer to 30 seconds). We got to see five rounds when we were there. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day!

The guys in the red and blue jackets are the trainers. They got really close to the bulls while they were fighting. 


The end of one of the fights.

He's probably only a few meters away from those guys. Crazy!

In America, you can go to a baseball game and buy a hot dog. In Korea, you can go to a bullfight and buy a giant back of rice cakes. 



This is probably my favorite bull related picture of the day. 

It wasn't all testosterone and fighting there though. There were lots of cute things, like this little boy that I don't know posing with the fuzzy mascots. 

There was an outdoor art display with various life-size or bigger models of bulls made from different materials. 



In addition to the rice cakes, you could buy dried squid tentacles.




Some of the bulls were perhaps less intimidating than others...



There were some school kids that had designed and were running robotic bull fights. It was pretty cool. 

We got the chance to walk around the countryside a little bit, and there were some beautiful cherry blossoms! Most of the cherry blossom pictures I posted earlier were from this trip. 


Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Palbongsan

A few weekends ago, I went hiking at Palbongsan (팔봉산). Palbongsan means "Eight Peak Mountain" in Korean, and that's exactly what it is. Eight small mountains all running together in a ridge. You have to climb up one peak, then back down it, then up the next one. It's pretty crazy. This mountain is in Gangwon-do, which is a province in Korea. 

Where it has the number 1 is Seoul. That's where I live. Gangwon-do is in the upper right part of the picture. For those of you keeping track, it touches North Korea. But I wasn't in Northern Gangwon-do. I was about where the "w" is on this map. South Korea is about the same size as Indiana, so it only took about 90 minutes to get from Seoul to the mountain. 

The scenery around the mountain was beautiful. This is across the river from where the actual hiking was. I've been pretty overwhelmed with work lately, and not getting enough sleep/getting a little bit sick, so I climbed 3/4 of the way up the first peak, then decided that I wasn't going to be able to both climb this mountain and survive the rest of the week at work, since Saturday is my only day to not be busy. So I left my friend (also named Sarah) to climb up the mountain with the rest of the group, and I went down to hang out along the beautiful river walk, take some pictures, and just enjoy the chance to be alone, outside of my apartment, without hoards of people around. That doesn't really happen in Seoul ;)

There were some lovely rocks in the river. The colors were beautiful. If you can't see them in the smaller version of the picture, you should click on it so it gets bigger!

There were literally mountains on all sides of the river. 

For part of the river walk, there was a lovely stone path. 



In other parts of the walk, you had to hunker down and go under these really large, craggy rocks. 

There weren't very many people out and about, comparatively speaking. But there were a couple of groups of school children hanging around. I assume that these two are siblings, but I didn't get a chance to try to talk to them. 

Perhaps this is the rural Korean version of an Abbey Road shot? :p

There were a lot of restaurants near the parking lot that had tanks of fresh fish that you could select to be cooked. There was a group of fishermen catching that night's dinner. 


All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a Saturday! I got to know the other Sarah a little bit better (she has only been here about a month and a half) and spend some time away from the city. I hadn't realized just how much it wears me out to live in the city. Even when I'm in my apartment, there is always noise and activity going on with my neighbors, or in the hallway, or out on the street. There are always people around, and lots of them! It can be somewhat difficult to find peace and quiet within all of that busy-ness. I have since resolved to be more intentional about getting out of Seoul more often. If you don't count the trip to the airport, this was only the second time I've been outside of Seoul since I came to Korea eight months ago. That's just ridiculous!

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Random pictures from my phone

The view on my way to work in the morning.




Bins of strawberries at one of the street markets.


A corner of Seoul near my school.





Sunday, April 17, 2011

Cherry Blossoms

It is cherry blossom season here in Korea, and they are absolutely beautiful! I had the chance to go to the Southern part of the country for a festival yesterday, and I was able to snap a few photos of some cherry blossoms.










I took over 600 pictures at the festival, and I'm hoping to go out this week and get more cherry blossom pictures. They are so amazingly beautiful! Have a happy day, and I'll write more of an update soon!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Saturday Afternoon


view full image

I went several provinces to the east today to go hiking today. I was pretty tired so when I got here I didn't feel much like hiking but the scenery was beautiful and the people were scarce. I could hear birds singing. I could hear water flowing. There weren't any traffic sounds or store employees clamoring for attention. It was such a lovely way to spend a day! I even got some pictures on my camera so look for those in the next few days. I hope your Saturday is as relaxing as mine has been!

Friday, April 8, 2011

The Rooftop Garden




Some of my students playing an exciting game of "count and noncount noun go fish" on the rooftop garden, because the weather was too nice to have class inside today.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Picture of the Day

I recently got some really cheap wall decals to hang in my classroom. I love finding things on sale! After I packed up all of my Christmas decorations a few months ago, my room just felt really bare. So I was happy to find these. There are two of them on the wall that my students look at, and one that is on the back wall that I see when I'm sitting at my desk. That one is by far my favorite! 





Friday, April 1, 2011

Spring is on its way!

Today was the first day that really felt like spring! It was also one of those lovely days that starts out around 30 degrees and goes up to 60 degrees. I'm discovering that it is a lot harder to do the whole seasonal layering thing when I have to wear dress clothes than it was when I could throw on a hoodie, but hopefully I'll figure it out eventually!

My church is having a retreat this weekend, so we are going somewhere to the East of Seoul to a little retreat center in the mountains. Cherry blossom season is coming really soon, so maybe things will be super beautiful out there! Apparently the cherry blossom season proper is supposed to start on April 5th. Hopefully we'll get a preview!

I'm in charge of food/meals for the retreat, and it has been a lot of fun to plan that kind of stuff again! It was definitely harder to plan for this than for other trips though. I never realized how many little pieces of information have to be put together. In America, I know if I should go to Wal Mart, Aldi, Sam's or the Gordon Food store for the best quality/price. I know exactly what is available. I know that there are 21 usable slices of bread in a Wal Mart brand sandwich loaf. In Korea, things are a bit harder, and take a bit longer. However, thanks to some help from some Koreans along the way, I think that we won't starve this weekend, and we were able to come in just under budget!

This will only be the third time I've been outside of Seoul city limits since I arrived here almost 8 months ago, and one of those times was to travel to the airport to come back to America, so it doesn't really count. I'm excited to spend some time in what will hopefully turn out to be countryside! Maybe we will even be able to see some stars!!

Stats