Jeju - Korean Style

Hello everyone,
Our Chuseok holiday is now wrapping up. We'd planned to go to Jeju-do (the 'Hawaii of Korea' simply because it's an island) but had trouble getting plane or boat or train tickets so my co-teacher found a Korean travel/tour package for us. All the itineraries and everything with the tour was in Korean (because it's a tour for Koreans) so we weren't really sure what to expect or what we would see.

We caught our plane to Jeju on Tuesday at around 4:40 pm after a flight delay due to rain and windy weather. We were kind of disappointed that the trip didn't have an earlier flight, but there was nothing we could do about it. We got on the tour bus and we were in a group of about 15 Koreans. There were families as well as old people, but we were the only 20-somethings I think. We were off to a late start because of the flight delay so we stopped at dinner first, at what my internet-assisted translation told me was called "overturned clay pot." I suspect the translation wasn't perfect. After dinner, the "evening city tour" began and we drove around Jeju city, the capital of the island and the most urban city. We saw some nice sites on the coast including "dragonhead rock" which is a rock unsurprisingly shaped like a dragon's head, although Ali had trouble seeing it. It was at this time that someone on our tour group approached us and said that he spoke some English and we could ask him questions if we needed help. This turned out being very valuable because no one else spoke a word so we wouldn't have known what time to meet people without him. Dragonhead.

Afterwards we went to our hotel. For some strange reason I still don't understand why, everyone on the tour was staying at different hotels. Our hotel was pretty nice. Korea does seem to do hotels well; often, the rooms are big and prices are usually no more than $80 a night. The night with the tour group was over, but we had read about a place called Jeju Love Land in our guide book, and it seemed like we wouldn't be going there on the tour. So we called a cab and made our way down there. It's a park filled with partially nude statues to very nude statutes, which was very surprising to see in Korea, given their conservative stance towards that kind of stuff. It was also a weird to see Korean families and their little kids posing for pictures with large penis statues. One of the more family friendly statues.

The next day we had to be outside by 8:10 am for the tour bus. Our first stop was "Psyche World" and the "Queens House," two places not mentioned in our tour book. The Queen's House was kind of a museum of jewels and other Queen-related items. Most of the jewels were clearly plastic replicas of the crown jewels and many were clearly unlike the Queen's like bejeweled Hello Kitty statues. Quite bizarre. "Psyche World" is a museum said to have the largest collection of butterflies in the world. It had some interesting sights such as large dead beetles re-enacting various events throughout history. Both places were okay, but weren't things we would have chosen if we'd planned the trip ourselves. Just like the one the Queen rode in... right?

Fooling people into thinking there's a swing there.

Our next stop was "Jeju Circus World." I hadn't been to the circus in ages and it was actually pretty impressive. There were many acrobatic performances that defied physics as well as an unbelievable site of 5 motorcycles are riding around the inside of a sphere somehow not crashing into each other. Ali ended up falling asleep for part of it so clearly she wasn't as awestruck as me but it was pretty cool.

After a buffet Korean lunch, we went to what I translated earlier as "Mushroom Farm Experience". Now this has to be one of the most bizarre experiences on the trip. We drove up to a greenhouse and a person showed us around the tour house speaking Korean. Then we went into a room where and sat down for like 15 minutes while this guy talked about mushrooms, I think. He was holding one while he talked and this was a mushroom farm so that's what led me to that conclusion. And then we went to another room and sat in this room with all these boxes of mushroom powder. It was like a seminar or an infomercial that you would watch on TV with someone excitingly telling you the virtues of their product. After the speech, they went around with clipboards trying to get you to buy some. Luckily, that's one of the benefits of being a foreigner: salesperson immunity. No one ever bothers us trying to sell stuff like they do to other Koreans. Strangely, no one else seemed to find the situation odd. I wonder if this is normal in Korean tour vacations and sitting through seminars is as regular as going to the beach.

Afterwards, we went to the other side of the island to the 2nd biggest city called Seogwipo, and got on a ferry that showed around the part of the coast. It was a actually really good. I always enjoy ferries and seeing the more natural side of Jeju was nice. Once we docked, we walked over across a bridge to a small island called Saeseom and went on a nice walk around the perimeter of the island. One of the sights on the cruise.

These statues called "harabang" (I think) are located all over the island.They are very symbollic of Jeju.

Then our bus stopped along a park where we followed this long walking path along the coastline. Jeju was created by an underwater volcanic eruption so the coastlines and beaches are filled with black hardened lava and protuding rocks, which gives it a unique flavor. This one giant rock in particular came with an interesting story. When the Mongols invaded centuries ago, the story goes that the Koreans dressed this large rock up to look like a war general. The Mongols thought it was a Korean general the size of a giant and decided to all kill themselves.

Yep... if that rock was wearing a shirt and had a face drawn on, I would definitely lose my will to live.

The tour was over for the day but the group decided to go out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The dinner wasn't included in the price we paid so we declined because it was only 5pm and neither of us were hungry. The English speaking tourist told us the bus driver would take us to our hotel. The bus driver came out, spoke Korean, and then went back in the restaurant. After 5 minutes he came out with another guy and told us that he would take us to our hotel. Thinking it was a taxi at first, we were surprised to see it was just some guy with a car. He drove us back and we still have no idea what happened. We can just imagine our driver yelling inside the restaurant, "Does anyone want to drive these 2 waygooks to their hotel?" It was certainily bizarre to say the least. We just relaxed that night in our room. Other things we wanted to do on the island including a teddy bear museum and these lava tubes but both were closed by 6 so we didn't have time for them after the tour.

The next day, which was our third and last, we first went to a souvenir and crafts store. We wanted to get something souvenir-esque, but didn't want to spend too much money, so I settled for Jeju cactus chocolates, a curious name given the lack of cacti around here. Our next stop was elephant land, another circus-like show with elephants as the main performers. It was a good show as the elephants were cute and performed a number of tricks such as bowling, playing basketball, and taking bananas from the audience. Later, we stopped at a ranch where we could ride a pony. We didn't do it because they didn't let you 'ride' so much as let a guy walking pull the horse in a slow circle.

The elephants taking eating bananas, peels and all.

Then we went to a folk village where there was some nice relics of Korean folk homes but we had to sit in another seminar-type thing, albeit, a much shorter one. After lunch, we went to ilchulbong, which is in our tour book as one of the best things to see in the entire country and it was a beautiful sight. Ilchulbong, is an odd-looking mountain with a large crater on top, located on the eastern most tip on Jeju. It is supposed to be a fantastic place to watch the sunrise. However, we couldn't climb to the top because our tour bus was only there for 20 min.
The peak we should've climbed.

Afterwards, we got on a ferry to go to Udo island, a much smaller island in the north east end, also called "Cow Island" due to it's shape from an arieal view. This provided some nice scenic views as the whole island is very rural with mostly farms and low stone walls dividing the land. We stopped at a peak and had time to climb to the top for a good view. Still on the island, we went to where the diving Grannies are located. In the 50's, there was a tax loophole where women weren't taxed on income but men were. So many wives in this village did the work of diving underwater, without breathing apparatuses, and collecting sea urchins and other fish. This became quite a big deal in a country that viewed women as inferior to men and the Government tried to ban the practice. It also didn't help that they wore loose white cotton which made the government make it illegal for men to watch them. 50 years later, now in their 70's, these women still work by diving into the water and swimming for shellfish. We just missed their actual work by minutes, and the area is now a tourist hotbed.
A view from Udo Island.

A statue of the famous diving grannies.

The rest of the day, we just had 1 or 2 stops at different small beaches where we just soaked our feet.


We were on a plane by 8 o'clock and back home in a few hours.

Overall, we liked Jeju and thought it had plenty to do for a 3 day break, but we didn't do all of those things on our tour. Some things could have been skipped and replaced but it was good overall. There were 3 things we didn't get to do in Jeju, which we would've loved to: climb Ilchulbong for sunrise, tour the world's largest underground lava tubes, and go to the Teddy bear musuem where teddy bears reenact events from that last century and "even the most skeptical come away impressed," according to the guide book. Ali went back to work on Friday and I'm not back until Monday. Ali also went to a training course on Saturday and I just hung out. It's been a nice break though, and now our next big thing is in 2 weekends when we go to the Busan film festival.

Hope you are all well,
Ali and Jesse

Baseball and Buddha's Birthday

Hello everyone!

So this was a three day weekend in Korea in honour of Buddha's birthday. With my three work days off 2 weeks ago and a Wednesday off in 2 weeks due to elections, we are in the midst of a great holiday blitz. With our extra day off, Ali and I decided to see a Korean baseball game. Korea has a professional baseball organization similar to the MLB in North America - except with 8 teams instead of 30 - and everyone has always told us that baseball games are so much fun here and that people in the stands are treated more as particpants than spectators (whatever that means). Now I've always loved baseball and enjoy watching it on TV. Ali, on the other hand, would rather watch paint dry - or even watch already dry paint stay dry - than to watch baseball, but she's okay with a day out in the sun, having some good food. So we made our way to Seoul to see the LG Twins vs. Doosan Bears.

The teams here are not named after cities, but the companies that own them. Hence, the LG twins and not Seoul Twins. Back when we talked about seeing a baseball game at some point this year, I looked at the teams to pick a favourite, because it's more fun to see a game when you have a rooting interest. Seoul was the closest city, but they had 3 teams owned by LG, Doosan, and one more. Well, I've owned things by LG before and they didn't catch fire, so LG Twins became my team. And Ali's kids love the Doosan Bears so they became her team. So at the subway stop at the stadium, I bought an LG Twins jersey and Ali a Doosan Bears one and the rivalry was born.


Ali and I showing our team pride.

We arrived at the game an hour ahead of time and it was packed outside. I don't know if it's always like this or if it was only because it was a holiday - similar to our soccer experience - but nevertheless, the stadium with a capacity of around 30 000 was sold out. Never fear though, Korea has ticket scalpers who must've made a lot of money that day. We bought $12 tickets for $25. It was hard to be annoyed though because the seats were pretty good. Definitely would be in the $25 price range back at the Roger's Centre. In fact, the whole sports-watching experience is much cheaper in Korea. Seats are cheap, food and beers are inexpensive, and you're allowed to bring in all the food and drinks you want from the outside.


Once the game started we soon learned what people meant by the audience being participants. The LG Twins and Doosan Bears both play out of this stadium so both teams had plenty of fans who sit in their own sections. We ended up right in the middle of the Twins sections so Ali, sporting her new Doosan Bears jersey, was in enemy territory. And the fans were energetic to say the least; all the Twins fans had these things we call 'bangers', big inflatable bats, and they banged them together and waved them around in the air.


Here's everyone with their bangers.

Every time LG was up to bat, a kind of male cheerleader blew a whistle and led the crowd in the cheers. He screamed a lot in Korean and waved his arms around, and the crowd ate it up. They sang, they cheered, they screamed. A lot of their songs were to the tune of other songs. We heard the melodies of Dancing Queen, Singing in the Rain, and It's a Small World. There was also female cheerleaders for both teams, dancing between innings. When Doosan was up to bat, our section took a breather. But everytime, LG was at the plate, it was back to standing on our feet, banging those things together.

LG Twins won the game 2-0, and despite the low score, I thought it was a pretty exciting game. Ali thought the first 5 innings was good... Overall, it was a fun experience and I would be up for seeing another baseball game some time in the future.

The rest of the weekend we just lazed about and relaxed. We went to the theatre and saw Robin Hood, bought some groceries, and just cleaned the apartment. Tomorrow it's back to work and next weekend, we will be attending a wedding of a teacher at my school.

Right now all the politicians in Uijeongbu are hitting the campaign trail hard because it is election day in a week and a half. Campaigning is definitely very different here than back home. When I walk to work in the morning, each candidate has several representatives, dressed in their candidate's colour, essentially doing cheerleading for their candidate. They all take turns to do their cheer and then the next candidate's people have a turn. Also, every candidate has these little vans that have a podium on the back and a big picture of them and they drive around town, giving speeches on the back of their vans.


One of the speech-vans.


Anyway, that's all that happened this week.
All the best!
Ali and Jesse

Football and Festivals

Hi everyone!

Hope you're all doing well! We miss you all a lot.

This week was a pretty great week because Wednesday was Children's Day, a national holiday. For me, it really broke up the week and made it feel very short and, for Jesse, it was very short since he had no classes on Tuesday, due to Sports Day at his school, and then was off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

At my work, we've gotten a third new teacher: an opera singer from South Africa. She's very nice and it's good to finally have enough staff. On Tuesday, we had a big party to celebrate Children's Day and we had a treasure hunt, a clown, a games room, face painting, and lots more. I got to do face painting, which was really fun.

Me concentrating very hard on the face painting.

On the holiday Wednesday, Jesse and I met up with a bunch of foreigners who are part of this Korean meet-up group on the internet and we decided to celebrate Cinqo de Mayo instead of Children's Day. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Itaewon (the foreigner district) and had lunch. We met a lot more people from Uijeongbu who we hadn't met yet, which was nice, and we got to eat some Mexican food - a rare treat in Korea.

Happy Cinqo de Mayo!

After lunch, we all took the subway to watch a soccer game at World Cup Stadium. We arrived late and there were long lines for tickets but we managed to see the last few minutes of the first half and all of the second half.
The half-time show was a bunch of little kids doing Tae Kwon Do who were totally insane. They were doing a million flips and spinning kicks, and chopping boards with punches and kicks - it was very cool but made me a little more terrified of making my students angry.

Kids doing Tae Kwon Do

I usually find soccer to be painfully boring but it was actually a very high-scoring game with a lot of action. We were watching FC Seoul play Seongnam. FC Seoul was the home team and the stadium was packed with more than 60,000 people, all wearing red (FC's colour). It was neat to be a part of such an enthusiastic crowd, especially when the home team won 4-0. Every time they scored, fireworks were set off and the crowd went nuts. Luckily three of the goals were scored in the second half so we didn't miss much of the action.

Fireworks after and FC Seoul goal.

After the game we just explored around Seoul a little and had dinner and headed home.

Friday night was the goodbye dinner for one of the teachers at my school, Mikey T. He had been in Korea for 2 and a half years so there was a very big crowd to send him off. Everyone went out for duck galbi (cooking duck on the grill at your table) and there was probably about 40 of us. Then we went out in the 'bu (downtown Uijeongbu). I was so excited because everyone was talking about going to a noraebong (private kareoke) and I haven't been yet and am dying to go but they didn't end up going until 4 in the morning so I went home before that and missed it again.

Saturday (yesterday), Jesse and I went back to Seoul for this massive music festival called World DJ Festival. We met up with some other teachers from my school, my cousin Paul and his friends, and some other people we've met since being here. It seemed like every foreigner in Korea was there, as well as tons of Koreans, obviously. There were 4 stages (one for techno, one for rock, one for hip hop, and another miscellaneous stage). We had a lot of fun and saw some cool acts in both Korean and English. The festival went from 2pm Saturday afternoon until 6am Sunday morning but we left around 2am because it was getting cold and we'd lost our group in the crowd and we were tired.

Crowd shot by the main stage.



Today we're just taking it easy and doing errands and laundry and that kind of stuff.

Happy Mother's Day to both our moms and all the moms reading this blog!! We're both sad to not be with our moms on Mother's Day but we're thinking about you!!

Much love,
Ali and Jesse.