Glass, Leonardo Da Vinci and South Korea, Oh My!

There are a ton of pictures in this post. Consider yourself warned ;)

I am happy to report that any residual issues I had with driving were completely resolved today. I was even able to listen to the radio! My first stop this morning was the O'Sulloc Tea Museum. The museum was a bit of a disappointment. It was really more of a gift shop than it was a museum. However, the tea fields were lovely! I was able to walk around the fields and smell the tea and listen to the birds. The fields were quite large. 

After I left the tea fields, I went to the Glass Castle. This is one of the newer tourist attractions in Jeju Island. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it was so much fun! When I walked up to the museum, there was this whole underwater scene made from recycled glass bottles.

Immediately after you walked in, there was a giant bejeweled bean stalk. I don't know if this was the intention or not, but it definitely reminded me of Jack and the Beanstalk. It was probably 40 feet tall, and all made out of glass. 

Even the jewels are made from glass.

Outside there was some rather nice scenery. All of this is natural and glass free. 

In one of the exhibit halls, they had a tiny orchestra made from glass. 

Each little figuring was only an inch or two tall. 

They had quite funny expressions though!

And, because this is still Korea, there was a large tray of glass bean sprouts. You can buy bean sprouts out of containers like this on any street in Seoul. 

This was a glass museum, so of course there were glass slippers.

There isn't much glass in this, but I thought it was interesting. It was called "A Fool's Tears". 

There was a pyramid (made from glass) that acted as a compass. Each direction was represented by a spirit animal. This dragon represents East. 

There were a few cafe style tables that were set with different kinds of glassware. 

I want a dancing cup! But they didn't have any in the gift shop. 

There were small, helpful fairies to help direct you to each point in the museum. 

The handles on all of the doors were the recycled bottle fish!

These are bathrooms. Be sure you click on that picture to make it larger. It amused me a great deal!

There were a variety of kinds of fruit, flowers and produce, all made out of glass. 

When I left the museum, these giant glass fairies were bowing to say "thanks for coming".

I'd heard about a new museum that just opened last month, but it wasn't in my GPS, and it wasn't on any of my maps. I had tried to find it, but wasn't having any luck at all, so I eventually just gave up. I was driving somewhere when I happened to come across the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum, which was exactly what I was looking for! It had real size, working models of a lot of Da Vinci's crazy inventions! 

He made a pair of robotic arms, controlled with ropes. 

Then he expanded it into a full body. It was pretty crazy. 

There was a rescue system that also doubled as defense in a raid or attack. 

And the first fire escape!

We can thank Leonardo Da Vinci for life vests and inner tubes. 

These are the water skis that make a cameo in the movie "Ever After"

The first working pulley system.

Pliers and tongs that increased the strength with which they gripped an object the heavier the object got. 

Leonardo Da Vinci invented a working backhoe. Who knew??

I also didn't know that he was the person who came up with the whole idea of chains. 

Which he then used in his prototype for a bicycle. 

I wasn't entirely sure what a mirror room was doing in this museum, but it was pretty cool!

This is just a random vase I saw sitting somewhere. 

I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to meet this horse in a dark alley!

Adventures in Jeju: It's like being 16 all over again

I have the next few days off of work, and I found a really incredible deal on some plane tickets, so I'm spending the next three days on Jeju Island. Jeju is part of Korea, off of the southeastern coast. It is a semi-tropical island, and is often called "Korea's Hawaii". We'll have to see if it actually lives up to those claims.

The adventure started in Seoul this afternoon. I went to work this morning and taught my classes like normal. I stuck around and dealt with some ridiculousness on the work front, then I left early to go to the airport. There is a bus that goes from close to my apartment to the airport. There are two airports in Seoul. The big one (Incheon) I've flown in and out of before. The small one (Gimpo) was unknown to me, but that's where I was headed this afternoon. The bus took a full 45 minutes longer to get there than the schedule said, so all of my cushion time and then some was gone. I was so afraid that I was going to miss my flight.

Instead, from the time I stood up from my seat in the bus to the time I sat down in front of my gate was somewhere around 15 minutes. It was pretty crazy. I went to the check-in counter, got my ticket, went through security and found my gate. It was all really painless and quick. I still had the great pleasure of waiting in front of the gate for 45 minutes.

The flight itself was relatively uneventful. There was a little bit of turbulence, but nothing too major. It was a little different from any other flight I've been on before. Jeju Island is THE premier honeymoon spot in Korea. There are quite a few people who come here for vacation. In fact, it might be the biggest tourist trap Korea has. The flight attendants made an announcement about all of the newlyweds on the plane, and we all clapped for them. Then, there was a drawing for a prize based on a series of numbers on our tickets. Crazy. I've never been on an airplane that gave away boxes of chocolate.

Jeju is significantly smaller and less crowded than Seoul. There isn't a subway here, and everyone agrees that the buses are unreliable at best. There are two basic options for getting yourself around on Jeju. You can rent a taxi and driver for about $85 per day, and he will take you wherever you want to go and wait for you until you are done. The second option is to rent a car.

I have an international drivers license, and I really really really miss driving. Plus, I didn't want to try to muddle through that much language barrier my entire time here. So, I rented a car. One of my Korean friends helped me find a good deal, so I bit the bullet.

When I got to the airport, it was easy enough to find the place where I needed to wait for the shuttle bus to come take me to the rental place. When the correct company bus pulled up, I got on. Well, I tried to get on. The driver couldn't believe that a foreigner was actually going to try to rent a car. I had to show him my confirmation and everything to get him to let me on the bus. After I got on the bus, he called ahead with the Foreigner Alert.

The Foreigner Alert must have worked, because there were several people waiting for me when I arrived. They had forms in English for me to fill out, and a whole line of people to make sure I didn't get lost walking from the office to the parking lot. It was almost kinda cute ;) They showed me how to work the car -- such vital things as how to turn the key in the ignition and where the brake and gas pedal were, then tried to send me on my way.

I had asked for a GPS to come with the car, because there was NO way I was going to survive this trip if I had to read maps. They gave me a GPS, but it was all in Korean. Now, I can read Korean pretty well. I know basic direction words and phrases. I can muddle my way through. But somehow, the thought of hurling down the road at 80 kl/hour while trying to deal with traffic, a different set of road rules AND a foreign language didn't sound like such a good idea. Thankfully, they had an English language GPS in the office, so they switched it out for me, and I was off.

It was a little strange to be driving at first. It took me a few wrong turns to figure out how to read my GPS. By the time I figured out the GPS, I'd gotten a feel for the car and was feeling pretty confident. I've ridden in enough taxis in Seoul to know the basic differences in rules of the road, so that wasn't such a huge deal. Trying to adjust to speed limits in kilometers rather than miles will take some work though. I'm going to have to fight speeding, because when I see 80 on a sign, it's a VERY different 80 than it is in America.

I was feeling pretty confident. It didn't matter that it was dark, I had no clue where I was going, and I was driving a car in a foreign country. I could do this! One of the things I liked most about driving in America was being able to listen to music and just be by myself in the car with the music. I even put together a special playlist in anticipation of this trip.

The only problem was the driving was more taxing than I thought it would be. When I was 16, and first started driving, my parents had a "no music" policy. I hated that policy. I didn't understand why it was there. There was no possible way that music could interfere with my driving. Or so I thought until I tried to turn on the music tonight. Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, I have to confess. You were right. I understand now why I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio when I was 16. You'll be happy to know that I voluntarily turned the radio off after about 30 seconds. Maybe tomorrow, when it's daylight and I've had a bit more practice, I'll try the music again.

For now, I'm at my guesthouse listening to an assortment of sounds in the common room. It's relatively late, and I think I might head back up to my room and go to bed. Because what else would I do at 10:00 at night when I find myself on a semi-tropical island by myself!

Hopefully I'll have more adventures and pictures to share in the next few days!

You know you're a Foreigner when.....

I went to dinner with one of my colleagues the other day. She is also American. We walked into this small Korean restaurant and were greeted with the normal stares and flurry of nervous activity because there were foreigners in the establishment.

We read the menu, decided what we wanted and placed our order, all in Korean. Normally, you sit down at your table, and there is a small box that contains the spoons and chopsticks that you use to eat your meal. We had both gotten our own spoons and chopsticks and were waiting for our food when the restaurant owner came out and brought us these, just in case we couldn't eat with the chopsticks ;)

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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. 

(source)

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. 

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!