The Demilitarized ZoneSouth Korea

The Demilitarized Zone is the buffer on either side of the 38th Parallel, the armistice line dividing Korea into North and South. It is famous for its tension, as it represents not a permanent and peaceful divide, but rather a tenuous cease fire, while technically still remaining at war. Since its creation, there have been many incidents to add even more tension - the ax incident, infiltration tunnels, etc.

We expected it to be a somewhat scary place, imagining the famous image of Panmunjeon within the DMZ where Northern and Southern soldiers stand mere yards from each other (Recreated quite amazingly for the setting in a B-Boy movie, seen here). Instead we found it to be a strange, but not frightening place. We first went to Imjingak, an area with memorials, a small observatory deck, and an amusement park across the street. No idea why, but there you have it.

We continued on to the 3rd infiltration tunnel, where we watched a documentary about the area. It highlighted the violence of the war and the suffering of separated families, but then switched themes quite rapidly to show a more positive view: the DMZ, having been untouched for many years now, has become a wildlife refuge.

The documentary was rife with excessively positive propaganda, and drilled home the notion of hope rising out of despair and life out of tragedy (just to show that the South isn't immune to its own form of political propaganda).

We then proceeded to the museum, which catalogued the violence, aggression, and overall just plain sneakiness of the North. They dug a total of 4 (if I recall) infiltration tunnels in an attempt to infiltrate the South, each time getting closer and closer towards Seoul. If they did manage bring their army through one of the tunnels (some of which have enough room for up to 3-4 soldiers waking side-by-side), they would pop up mere meters away from the heart of the South.

After that, we were allowed to go into one of the tunnels, although only to a certain distance. After that limit, it's blocked by a giant wall of concrete.

Overall, it was a rather odd experience. I (Jay) have to add that it was definitely a tad disappointing, as I was under the impression we would be traveling right up to the main border, at Panmunjeon, which is what everyone automatically thinks of when the words "Demilitarized Zone" come up. As such, it was a let-down from my expectations, but that aside, it was an (if nothing else) educational visit.

Ginseng festival and hikingPunggi and Sobaeksan National Park, South Korea

This weekend, Jay and I went on our first organized tour, to the Punggi Ginseng Festival. Punggi is a small town near Yeongju, an area known for its ginseng and, from the look of their orchards, apples. We left early on Saturday morning to catch our tour's 7:00 am bus from Seoul. the tour group we used, Adventure Korea, had been recommended to us by other teachers at our school. It organizes weekend trips based out of Seoul and caters primarily, but not exclusively, to the English-teaching community. Anyone can go, and as such, our bus was full - 40 passengers, being foreigners from America, Canada, England, South Africa or Australia (mostly Canada though. Good Lord there are a lot of Canadians), all teaching English here in South Korea. Apprehensively, as Jay and I both normally are when large groups of native-English speakers gather together, we settled in, shocked to see so many caucasians in one place.

Our drive lasted about 4 hours, as Yeongju is significantly southeast of Seoul. Oh the way, we stopped at a couple rest stops for food. The first one we saw surprised us in that it was nothing like the bare-bones toilet-sink-bench variety that you find along highways in the States, but a full-blown center of shops, restaurants (people actually drive out here to come to work!), and restrooms, plus a decent-sized jungle gym for kids, a small garden, a "petting zoo" (3 chickens and a couple of rabbits, all looking bored out of their minds) and a designated stretching area with a large amount of diagrams and directions, just in case you were confused about how to best go about your specific stretching needs.

A few hours later we arrived at the Ginseng festival. It was similar in layout to the Palo Alto Art Festival or the Portland Saturday Market, but on a much large scale. First we had to dodge our way through the parking lot and the minor vendors, and then we came to the food. Oh, the food. Stall after stall of boiling soup, stuffed squid (with their own legs, nonetheless), roasting pig, blood sausage, pancakes, fish and other way too many varieties of food that shouldn't be allowed near breathing people. When I say "stall," the proper word is really "tent," as each place had plenty of tables and chairs to accomodate its diners.

After the food, we continued on through smaller stands where vendors sold gingko nuts, chestnuts, beads and trinkets. Next came 2 tiny restrooms, and along the river was a stand for pony rides for the kids (with this lovely carved item bobbing up and down in the water. The children seemed confused but everyone else found it either amusing or scandalous). This next area of the festival had 4 rows of tents selling ginseng roots, ginseng wine, ginseng snacks, and so on. Interspersed were also craft tents (pottery, weaving), photography galleries, history mini-museums, and the traditional tea ceremonies. Our group took turns (20 people at a time) on a large stage to properly learn how to peel ginseng roots. We were each supplied with a small "basket" [Ed. note: Jessie's writing appears to say "hash elf" - not quite sure what that is], a paper towel, a sharp bamboo stick (halved), and a ginseng root. Jay named his Betty.

We were taught to gently-but-quickly peel the skin from the anthropomorphic root using the sharpened bamboo. Everyone promptly made a minor race out of it as some Koreans with a film crew conveniently stopped by to marvel at the foreigners trying to peel ginseng. We were quite the spectacle. Afterwards, we got to keep our roots and taste some fresh ginseng. The Koreans believe this to be, quite simply, a miracle drug. It cures or aides in curing any illness, gives you energy, and (like all things in Korea that you would not want to put in your mouth - dog meat, abalone, silk worms, poisonous snake liquor) gives men "stamina". Perhaps that's why the "funny" wooden object from the river was such a sight here.

Ginseng tastes somewhere between a radish and a carrot, but somewhat earthier, maybe like potato skin. I wouldn't eat it on a regular basis, but it wasn't vile and it theoretically cures everything, so what the hell, right? [Ed. note: As of Dec. 2007, neither of us have yet to eat ginseng again. Maybe we're allergic, who knows.]

After exploring the area and a bit of Punggi, we returned to the food area for lunch - Jay and I shared stuffed squid with blood sausage (quite a good combination), then made our way back to the bus. We recovered our books and sat on some rocks lining the river where the buses were parked, reading for a good hour before we moved on. One thing about Adventure Korea: they give you ample free time.

During that time, a fearless dragonfly visited us and made friends with Jay.

We then went to a ginseng harvest and helped to dig up the roots - an activity accomplished with a scythe-like tool and done with care. Although we were told beforehand that we could not keep the roots we harvested, the farmers changed their mind and, along with a milky alcoholic ginseng beverage, they sent us off with one or two roots for each of us. We suspect this was due to the fact that many of us fell short in the caring of our roots and, in Jay's case, went for maiming the poor creatures instead....and chipped ginseng doesn't sell well.

After working the fields, we boarded the bus again and head for Seonbichon, our weekend accommodations. We stayed at a traditional Joseon-era village, with some slightly modernized amenities. That is to say, the buildings were preserved in the traditional architectural style that they had been built in some 100+ years ago, but they also had "ondals" - a glorious heating system that runs hot water through pipes under the floors on which we slept.

Before going to sleep we ventured into the mini-town of restaurants in the village. All were traditional style places, meaning that we took off our shoes and sat on a raised floor to eat (there were western tables and benches as well, but when in Rome...). The village seemed to be fresh out of meat - not just this restaurant, but the entirety of the region - so galbi and bulgogi were out, making the menu significantly more confusing. Luckily we sat by 2 other tour members, an older couple - a Korean woman and a Dutch man. The lady helped us to understand the menu and ended up with bibimbap (rice plus lots of side dishes and you just mix them all up into a glorious and very munchable mini-meal) and duinchang jiggae, which is a stew made with fermented soybean paste much stronger than the kind found in Japanese miso, and smells quite unpleasant. The taste however, is delicious, and once you realize this, the smell sort of grows on you.

After dinner we went to bed early in preparation for our hike the next morning. We got up at around 7, had breakfast provided by our tour (bread and PBJ), and most of us headed to Sobaeksan National Park. Those who didn't want to hike went instead to a temple for the day.

Our hike was supposed to take 5 hours (3 up, 2 down), but our leader was somewhat overzealous and made the trip in about 3 hours total. Jay and I held to the original plan with a moderate portion of the group in order to take pictures of all the lovely views. We were passed on a long flight of stairs from behind by a Korean woman (looking 40, so probably 60), who was belting out a song the whole way up, singing along with her little radio. And although the stairs were seemingly endless on the ascent, it was actually the descent that killed most of us (Jay and I both had shaking legs and my knees threatened mutiny).

The views were lovely and it was wonderful to get out of the city for a while. After the rest of us non-mountain goats caught up with the temple-bound group, we returned to the Festival to make some ginseng wine. Jay participated in this while I simply looked on in amusement; 20 foreigners get to peel ginseng roots again, this time with a much larger group of onlookers and a much more adament film crew, all in the middle of one of the most active tents. The instructor who was next to Jay clearly deemed his efforts futile and took the job from him to finish the job herself. The resulted in a his being the first to finish and proceed to the next section. He got up and went to a nearby table, where he was given a decorative bottle. It was filled with soju, Korea's hard alcohol of choice (basically Vodka), and gave the root to a man who plopped the ginseng root right on in, screwing a cap on top to keep it tucked away. Then he posed with the bottle for about five different (and giant) cameras before we made our way out.

When everyone was finished, we boarded the bus and headed back to Seoul. We were pleasantly surprised by how the whole experience had turned out and promptly signed up for a variety of other trips with Adventure Korea.

The wine bottle now sits proudly on our shelf. We doubt we'll be touching it anytime soon, as the taste of soju is absolutely unappealing to us and the prospect of adding ginseng to improve the taste seems somewhat counterproductive. Either way, it's a lovely souvenir from a lovely time. Hopefully if we go hiking more, we won't hurt as much on the way down or on the next day.

Classes, Vacation, etc.Ilsan, South Korea

It's been a while since we've updated - partially because we've been busy, but mostly because the internet (or Jay's computer) was being obstinant, leaving my computer as the only one with internet access for about a month. Oh, and also, we're lazy.

So, life in Ilsan. We're now about to finish our second full month of teaching, with all the attendance sheets, daily logs, homework corrections and student evaluations that go with it. I could say there's a lot of paperwork. It would, however, be more accurate to say that there is a lot of paperwork for teachers at any school, but the plethora of useless paperwork at this particular school is quite impressive. We have daily attendance sheets (including the pages covered in every class) that are copied by the Korean women at the front desk, class lists of all our students, monthly curriculum plans that change weekly, and at the end of the month we write evaluations for every student and send it to the parents... But the thing is, only a few of those parents will be able to read the English evaluations. Additionally, since this is a private school and the enrollment of the students is entirely dependent upon the happiness of the parents, we do not ever give poor evaluations. In each category, on a scale of 1-5 (1 being "needs extra help" and 5 being "excellent), we need to consult our co-teachers before ever marking anything below 3 ("good"). Because, clearly if a child is not good at doing his or her homework, it's the teacher's fault and the child should simply go to a different school. Oh well. But it makes me wish I could teach in a school like the ones I went to - if the student is a horrible slacker, rip 'im (or 'er) a new one on the evaluation and the parents will punish the student - not the teacher. 

Paperwork aside, we're both pretty pleased with our jobs - we love our Korean co-teachers, with whom we work every day, and like the other foreign teachers a lot, but we work at a separate building and rarely see them. Our students - or the majority thereof - are wonderful kids. The exceptions are thankfully few and far between and can be kept in line - they are easy to frighten into behaving. At least, for me they are. Jay has some sort of nice-guy complex and he won't kick students out of class for speaking Korean or being rude. On the plus side, he'll learn some new Korean words.

A few weeks ago, I decided to change my routine a bit: trading in the tried-and-true method of teaching English through English, I opted for a day of clucking and whistling instead. Actually, I got sick and lost my voice, but it certainly did change things! It was a true test of my kids, as my first class was a bunch of rambunctious seven- and eight-year-olds. Upon seeing that I was unable to talk loudly, they behaved perfectly throughout the lesson, did their workbooks with no arguments or distractions (and without even teasing the slower student, who takes a long time to do her work), sat silently and patiently as I corrected their work, until we could play a review game. I love those kids! I knew they were good, but I never would have imagined how well-behaved and patient they'd be - normally they can't even sit still for one minute.
But even with the older kids and the few "problem" classes, my being unable to speak made talking in Korean (even whispering) an impossibility, so it actually led to more practice of English - and an overall quieter classroom. Hmmm, maybe I should adopt this cluck-whistle-approach more often. Either way, I was impressed with the results. But I am also happy to have my voice back.

On the note of schedules, our classes changed a bit this last month - Jay has 7 ECC (non-kindergarten) classes on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and another 6 ECC classes on Tuesday-Thursday, plus a kindergarten class of a whopping 2 students. I have 7 classes every day - one set on MWF, and another set on TTH - all at ECC. We're tired, but enjoying it. Now if only they could add a "nap time" class in the middle, it would be perfect. "Hello! Today we're going to learn about nap time. Everyone, say 'nap time'. Good! Now, how do you spell nap time? Good job! Okay, now let me demonstrate. Now, you have to be very quiet for this demonstration..."

Truly, the Korean work ethic is rather ridiculous. Our boss expects us to come in on various Saturdays for seminars/decorating classrooms/going hiking with the parents of the kindergarten kids... Actually, only Jay has to do the last one, as I don't technically teach at the kindergarten. Additionally, as ours is a private school, it doesn't have the kind of summer and winter vacations that schools in the US (or even public schools in Korea) have - there are no vacations that are even a full week in duration. This week was in fact our longest vacation - 4 days off - for Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. As this is the huge vacation of the year, everyone travels at this time - either out of Korea or within Korea to visit family members. Plane tickets are therefore very expensive, so we decided to stay in the Seoul area for the vacation and rest. Yes, we are lame and cheap. But on the plus side, we went hiking to Bukhansan National Park, a mountainous area just north of Seoul.

We woke up around 6AM and took the subway for about 90 minutes to Dobong-san, the station nearest to the beginning of our hike. Finding the trail was easy, as we simply followed the masses of Koreans in hiking gear past the many stalls selling food, backpacks, hats, hiking poles (we paused to buy these), gloves, hiking boots, water, soju, soda, and other random items, past a small temple to a set of various trailheads. We headed towards Jaun-bong peak, and simply followed the signs pointing in that direction at every fork in the trail. As a result of our early start and of our general lack of recent hiking activity, Jay moaned and whined for the first few hours of the hike, insisting upon rest stops every few feet. So, it was a slow climb at the beginning.

Along the way, we certainly had company. Although we knew that hiking is popular in Korea, we didn't expect so many people to be on the trail. This may have been silly, as the park is right next to Seoul, but oh well. Also, the Koreans have their own form of Smokey the Bear. I'm not sure what his name is, but he seems quite popular.

After lunch, the going got a bit tough, as the trail bottlenecked into a very narrow area that was very steep granite - including handrails! I had wondered why some hikers seemed to have rock-climbing gloves on, but I understood why when we reached this point. Jay loved this part, though. Fricking billy goat.

The view from the top would have been more impressive if there weren't so many people on all sides of us. Most of the pictures we took from here are in the Bukhansan gallery.

The way down was thankfully not nearly as steep as the way up, though my knees were hurting. Jay enjoys the downhill portion, though. I wonder how I always manage to hike with people who hate the uphill but love the downhill... Clearly they must all be crazy.

We reached the Mangwolsa temple about halfway down the trail, but didn't go inside, as we were tired and inappropriately dressed for a temple.

At the end of our hike we went through a lovely mini-town in the outskirts of Seoul that was very laid back and reminded us of a combination of Venice, Berkeley, and some city in Austria. We then proceeded to the next subway stop and the 90-minute ride home. All in all it was a lovely day and a wonderful hike, but now we're sore and tired. Maybe we're out of shape? Hmm.

Our classes start up again tomorrow, then we have the weekend, then two more days before our session ends and we have a day off on Wednesday. Hopefully we'll get another chance to go hiking sometime soon before our legs forget how to.

For now, we have to fill out student evaluations again and get ready to go back to work in the morning (and by morning, we mean 2:00 pm). Good night!

Home cooking, vacations, and Jehovah's witnessesIlsan, South Korea

Today is Korea's Liberation Day, a celebration of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II and Korea's resulting independence. Flags are displayed all over and it's a public holiday (hence my writing this instead of teaching). 

The next big holiday coming up is Chuseok, equivalent to the U.S. Thanksgiving. For Chuseok, we will have four days off from work (Monday through Thursday) and of course the proceeding weekend, so we will be leaving Ilsan for a while. We'd hoped to go with Mark and some of his co-workers to Beijing, but the tour we were interested in  is already full and most plane tickets at this point (before we even have our first paycheck) are prohibitively expensive. So, our next plan of action is to attempt to book flights to Jeju, South Korea's most tropical area - an island off the southern coast of the peninsula. Known as Korea's "Hawaii", it is a famous destination for Korean newlyweds and Japanese businessmen, so booking seats during such a busy time may be difficult, but we'll see what happens. :-)

On a completely unrelated note, let's talk about food. Of course, this is mostly to reassure the worried Californian mothers that we are in fact getting our nutrients and daily vitamins, but it may be interesting to others as well... 

Although it is entirely affordable to eat out (and well!) for every meal, we prefer to make our own food. However, it would NOT be affordable to go to the grocery store and buy steaks, western pasta sauces, and ice cream. So it's a good thing that we aren't interested in that sort of a dinner. Instead, we're trying to adapt to a sort-of Korean style of eating, with a reasonable budget and my forays into cooking without a stove... this is what we've come up with: salmon steak cooked in soy sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, pepper and olive oil with white rice; watermelon; various kim chi dishes; fermented yellow radish; a spicy squid tentacle side dish, and soju. On the note of soju, it is not like sake. It's more like vodka. And we bought a crappy version, apparently. Either way, we're not terribly fond of it.

So that's about it. The salmon is interchangeable with pan-cooked marinated tofu and other types of fish. The fish here is amazingly fresh - in a supermarket they have tanks of live fish -cuttlefish, crabs as large as our torsos, and a basic silvery-fish (no clue about the name) in a simulated stream... Plus you can buy any and all parts of the fish here - it's good that we're not squeamish. In fact, we would have happily bought a whole squid, but it was so much cheaper to get a different type of fish that we didn't. Maybe next time. But it's entirely possible to feed both of us with a main course of fish that costs less than $3 total - amazing. Chris and Mona - you should be happy to know that the beef is absurdly expensive in comparison and, since Korea's now importing beef from the U.S. (oops), we aren't going to bother. Oh, and in the way that we can buy cheap top ramen in the States, they sell fresh udon noodles that are pre-packaged with spices. Add some veggies or fish and voila, amazing dinner.

Also, we're becoming steadily more accustomed to teaching - we've now taught for two weeks, know most of our students by name, and are not nearly as tired at the end of the day as we were when we started. Despite one or two problem students apiece, we're enjoying teaching a lot, and are discovering new techniques and games for the kids each day. In fact, we're to the point that it only takes about an hour or two to prepare for all our classes, paperwork is now a simple matter finished in a few minutes, and we have time and energy at night not only to cook and eat dinner, but also to walk around Ilsan and see where we live.

So there it is - updates on the past week and a half. The only other story of note is an interesting wake-up call that I received last Saturday. Exhausted from the week, Jay and I were trying to sleep in when the doorbell rang. Granted, it was about 10:30 in the morning and not an unreasonable time to visit, but we were very confused because rather than the typical "ding-dong" chime, the doorbell plays a video-game style mini-song. Assuming it was someone related to the school who had come to fix our air-conditioner (that currently empties water into a large bucket, which must be emptied on a daily basis), I went to the door-phone and responded in English, "hello?". No answer, so I fixed the nest of hair on my head into a reasonable door-answering state, and went to open the door. Two women were walking up the stairs, but hurried down excitedly when I opened the door and started speaking rapidly in Korean. I mumbled that I didn't understand Korean... English? they asked. Yes, English. So the younger woman, who was dressed in what almost looked like a cross between traditional Korean dress and the attire of the American pilgrims, rifled through a miniature book and handed me a page in English. I skimmed from the first line "Even though you and I don't speak the same language...." to halfway down the page "message of God. Jehovah's..." and then shook my head quickly and handed the book back to her, closing the door as she said something that sounded strongly like "sorry". 

I was awoken by a Jehovah's witness. For the first time in my life. ...in Korea. I don't quite know how to deal with that, but Lindsay, a Canadian teacher at our school, said that it's actually quite common. What did I miss when researching Korea? I mean, I know that it's supposed to be a huge notch in the Christian missionaries' belts, but door-to-door proselytizing? I wasn't expecting that. And it would have to be in the Christian fashion too. I mean, it wouldn't bother me to leave for school and have some monk chilling out on the stairs and meditating meaningfully, but do you have to ring the doorbell? Is waking me up and pointing a book at me really going to make me think "oh, you're right! How have I been so wrong? Sign me up for this redemption business!" ? I think not.

Our first week of teachingIlsan, South Korea

Holy crap, we're tired. It's pouring rain, and we're hiding at home and trying to recouperate. We each have 14 classes total (7 on MWF, 6 on TuTh, and one daily summer intensive course) and, including time to plan our lessons and fill out general daily paperwork, we're at the school from around 11 in the morning to 9 or 10 at night. Our courses range from the youngest children, about 5-7 years old, who do not know the alphabet, to the oldest students, in high school, who will be studying abroad soon. Despite being tired, despite the huge range of lesson plans we have to prepare, and despite the 70+ names we have to remember, we're loving it. The students (or the vast majority thereof) are wonderful, the variety of lessons is exciting, and no matter how tired we are at the end of the day, we are energized for every class by the students themselves. I'm sure that we'll have more to say on this later but for now, we are very happy with our decision to come here and to teach. We've both found that we love teaching (so far), and are inspired to work hard to teach well. Hurray for inspiration! And now for a most-welcomed weekend of relaxation and laziness.