The harvest.

After Korean Thanksgiving, which is called Chuseok and was in the middle of September, Jeremy and I got on harvest watch. Around where we live there are lots and lots of rice fields (and green onion fields, pepper fields, various leafy greens and root vegetable fields) and it seemed to us that they were all becoming ripe (or whatever you call rice that is ready to be harvested). Soon after Chuseok, however, there had been no signs of the harvest and the rice started to grow bits of thick black on it and we assumed that it was going bad. We had already watched corn rot on the plant and fall to the ground without being picked and bean plants never put on anything to grow up so they just laid on the ground to die and there are hot red peppers going bad and falling off plants as I type, so we have become confused. Why plant all these things, go through all that effort, if you aren't going to harvest them? Is it for show? Does planting help keep the ground fertile? Was there a mix-up in communication?
Then yesterday, at long last, the rice harvest began.
A big machine that deals with strips of rice field a meter and half wide at a time was brought into our neighbouring field. It swept over it in the style of a zamboni, clearing the whole area of rice. The machine cut the rice stocks close to the ground, scooped it inside the machine where it then striped all the rice from the stock and dumped the remains back out onto the ground. As we watched, the machine rid the entire place of rice with incredible efficiency. When I think about watching the rice being harvested in South East Asia, people bent over at the waist, sickle in hand, I can not help but marvel at this very very cool invention.
So they didn't forget about the rice, but we still want answers about the peppers and the corn!

Books in the mail.

As many of you know, Jeremy and I have been ordering books online. Most of the time it works like a charm. You get second hand books, super cheap, delivered to your mailbox or front door. What more could you as for?! But we ordered two sets of books from different places. One shipment got here really quickly, but the other one (which happened to have all MY books in it) was taking its sweet time. When we got back from our vacation to Jeju there were several slips on our door saying that we had post, so we went to the the post office to pick it up. Unfortunately, apparently if you don't show up fast enough they send the mail back from whence it came. We weren't fast enough and our books had been sent back.
Luckily, soon after I had finished the last of my books here that I actually wanted to read, Jer and I went textbook shopping for the new semester. At the textbook shop I picked up a copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". Perfect for recapping before the movie comes out in November!!!! Unluckily, soon after I started reading "Harry Potter" I made the mistake of reading outloud to Jeremy one evening. He instantly got sucked in (who wouldn't!!) and I lost a book for reading while he is at work. Of course it is nice to read outloud to him, and what a perfect book for the job, but that wasn't exactly the point!
Finally I gave up on waiting for our books to re-arrive and started reading "The Great Gatsby". A classic that I wasn't enthused about reading, but one that it wouldn't hurt to have read. Then, as predicted, as I stepped with two feet into reading this book... our books arrived. Now I have to make a decision. Do I finish "Gatsby" even though I'm not overly excited about it and I'm not that far in, or do I put it down and start to read "Dune" which I have been waiting to read all summer long? Dad would say that that isn't a decision, of course I should just stop and read the book that I want to read. But for some reason quitting a book once I've started it has never been in my reading vocabulary. Perhaps it is a holdover from when I was younger and reading was always a real challenge. Like I always put so much effort and discipline into getting through each page that giving up on a book was like wasting all that I had put in.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I do know that I'm excited about our new books! Three arrived: Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Iron Heel. All of them are really old and it was kind of exciting just to open up the package and see such old things while we are in a country that is big on everything being new new new. The oldest of the three is The Iron Heel. It was published in 1944 and is in great condition. Here are some pictures of it. We both got a good laugh out of Penguin Books advertising cigarettes on the back of one of their books. Not something you would see now for sure. The ad on the inside cover is pretty funny too. It turns out that Horlicks is a malted milk drink. After reading the ad, that is NOT what I would have guessed.

The lights of Seoul.

I guess it was a couple of weeks ago now, but I went to Seoul (the BIG city!!) with my friend Stacie. We went there in the late afternoon one day and then I left before dinner the next day, so it was a whirlwind of a trip, but it was fun.
Stacie took me to the Seoul shopping Mecca. I was super happy that she did, despite not really in the mood to do any serious shopping, because there is no way that if I went to Seoul with Jeremy he would have wanted to go there at all. Everyone who you talk to here raves about the shopping in Seoul though, and it would have been a real shame to not at least check it out. It was fun. Most fashion here is really different then home, so the clothes in the stores were not exactly what I am used to. It is hard to put your finger on, but it is definitely not the same thing. Stacie also took me into stores that I would have never gone into on my own. Having her take me was like getting the real Korean shopping experience. We went up Seoul tower late at night and the view was stunning. It was cool to be able to walk the 360 and get a look at the city in all directions, but it didn't give me any sense of where things were or how big it was even from there. The subway maps look like a maze. Although it is easy enough to find your way around once you know where you are going (if you count several metro line transfers easy), but I can't imagine actually knowing where you were at any given moment. Seoul isn't set up like a North American city with the high rises in the city center, it seems to me (but then again what do I know) that most of the high rise buildings in South Korea are apartments. That is the case outside of the city and from the looks of it things weren't that much different in the city. This picture is of a fence up by Seoul tower that had locks of love on it. People made promises of love and locked the forever to the fence. It was huge and really quite beautiful, especially with the city sparkling behind all the hopes that are attached to each lock and note. There were even a few couples up there making them. Very romantic. Day 2 had lots of plans to see lots of awesome sites, but things did not really work out that way. We ended up spending the whole day at the palace and its corresponding museum. This was Stacie's work... she insisted that we look at every artifact in every room and read every sign. Not exactly how I would have approached the museum visit, but at least I got to see it. She is a hoot though so having her explain what the Korean signs meant was pretty funny. The palace itself was unreal. My favourite part was that when you look back at the gates from the inside you could see all the modern buildings of Seoul. I like that the palace is so large and so plunked in the middle of the city. I suppose the city was built around the palace, but it feel somehow the other way around.

Halla-san.

Jeju is relatively flat for the most part. There are a few beautiful mountains poking up here and there, but other than that it is basically flat. Other then the heat and the sun, we sort of envied the dozens of groups of people we saw who were riding their bikes around the island. We even met one guy who was walking around the coast. Halla Mountain (Halla-san in Korean), however, is the largest mountain in South Korea and is located in the center of the island, as it is the reason for the island being there in the first place. The mountain takes up about one third of the island and is 1,950 m tall. For english testing at Jeremy's school the kids had to write essay, which I helped mark. One of the questions was about the place they found most memorable and I got to read many essays about Jeju island, specifically Halla Mountain. They said that they were so proud of themselves for climbing it and that it was what they would recommend to anyone (Jeremy) who was to visit South Korea. So, mostly because of their recommendation, I was very excited to climb it (although I must confess I was also nervous as I am not overly confident in my mountain climbing abilities).

But we did it! It took us almost exactly 8 hours and was totally awesome! We were both sore for days afterwards. Funny that your muscles rebel when you climb a mountain after sitting on your butt for a few months straight. We took Seongpanak Trail up, which is 9.6km, and then took Donnaeko Trail down, which is 9.1km. The trail down was much more difficult then the one up, but to make up for its steepness and sketchy paths it was far more beautiful. We were so glad that we decided to see more of the mountain by going down a different route. It was super cloudy when we got to the top, so we didn't get to see the crater lake or appreciate the size of the volcano. In fact, it was so cloudy up on Halla-san that even from the island down below we only saw the top of the mountain 2 times. On the way down the mountain the clouds parted for a short time and the sky and sun was beautiful, we felt so lucky to have the cloud break just as we reached the best views of the hike.

When we were almost at the bottom Jeremy was pooped and grumpy, but I kept thinking “I wonder if we have time to climb it again before we leave?” My muscles would not have approved of such an attempt, but those thoughts show how much I enjoyed the hike.

Stormy weather.

Yesterday morning and all last night there were the most incredible storms. I am hoping that they continue because, although they make it hard to do anything, they are very exciting and very different from home. The rain pours down, the thunder is right overhead and almost constant, the lightning could give you a seizure with its frequency and the wind blows so that the rain doesn't hit the puddles outside in any kind of downward motion, it comes in sheets flying in every which direction. One thunder strike was so close that I jumped out of my skin. And they are so loud that some of the car alarms in the parking lot go off when they s0und.

It is fantastic!!!! I can hardly imagine what they are like on the edge of the country where the storms are coming off the ocean. Typhoon warnings across the country. Very fun.

Beaches and craters.

We arrived on Jeju island in the evening by plane with hoards of Korean tourists touting straw sunhats. From the airport we took the bus to the Jeju city bus terminal where we caught the last bus leaving town. It dropped us off at the closest beach to the West of the city. By the time we got there it was dark and we were unsure what the camping scene was going to be like. I suggested we stop for the night on one of the patches of grass in the parking lot thinking that it was the best we were going to do. When we saw the beach actual beach my hopes of good camping plummeted. There was a small area of the sea sectioned off with a few very bright spotlights shining on it. The water was maybe knee deep, but there were many lifeguards. Not exactly the serene beach that I envisioned on a subtropical island. But Jeremy didn't lose faith and we kept walking along the shore to find a fairly large area of sand and grass where there were quite a few tents set up with people sitting around... camping. We were stoked and set up our new tent for its first use.

The next day was one we would have liked to forget for the most part, but one we will not for a long time. The reasons for wishing to forget are mostly surrounding issues with buses and going places that turned out not to be anything like what we expected and far from what we wanted. The reason for not being able to forget is singular: sunburn. Between waiting for the bus and walking to where we could catch another bus, we got fried. I didn't even think about the sun because we weren't doing anything in particular, like going to the beach or going on a hike, but the little sun filled moments added up. It is maybe three weeks later and I am finally starting to stop peeling. My arms (and Jeremy's too) are splotchy because I have patches of peel from that first day and patches of fairly dark tan from the rest of the trip. Needless to say, we were very conscious of sunscreen from then on. Two good very good things happened that day however.

One: We climbed up Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise Peak). It is a small volcanic crater. It only took us maybe 20 minutes to get from the base to the ridge, but those 20 minutes were ruthless. The heat was hardly bearable. I sweat a few liters of water out and as we were reaching the top I remember thinking to myself that it felt as though my head would explode. As we climbed those last few steps, however, and stood on the edge of the crater itself a cool breeze off the ocean hit us. It felt like heaven. I'm sure I laughed out loud as I stepped from that heat into that refreshingly cold air. When we had driven past the crater earlier that day it had been completely shrouded by clouds, but when we climbed it it was clear and looking out over the island behind us and over the crater and the ocean in front of us I was pretty darn happy.

Two: We ended up staying that night at Pyoseon beach. At first we couldn't find the camping space there and we were less than impressed as we had been so many times that day, but then Jeremy spotted it. It was a large grassy space with a few trees up a few steps from the beach. It was lovely. We ended up staying there several nights and then even coming back there later in the trip. We laid around and read. We ate, we swam, we watched the ever changing sky. Just relaxed.

Unwanted visitors.

Probably the most memorable moment of our whole summer vacation occurred when I was attempting to retrieve something from my bag. You would think that it would be something to with the awesome scenery; perhaps the white sand beaches contrasting with the black volcanic rocks that lay as a constant reminder of the million year old history of the landscape, or maybe the bright green subtropical forest covered mountain sides of the tallest mountain in South Korea contrasting with the rich blue sky and constantly moving clouds of white and grey. But, no. The most memorable moment, for me at least, was a moment with me and my backpack.

It was morning and I needed to go into the clothes compartment of my backpack to get a new outfit that was at least theoretically more clean then the one I had been wearing the day before. I unzipped the pouch, rustled the clothes slightly and saw something that made my heart skip a beat. It was orange and grey, but it was gone. I thought to myself that it kind of looked like the chords we were using to tie down our tent. I said out loud “Boy am I jumpy!” and thought back to the snake that had wriggled in front of me on the sidewalk a few days early nearly giving me a heart attack. I took a deep breath and stuck my hands back into the mess of clothes. At that moment what I had feared deep down, but had refused even to admit to myself happened. A centipede, about 4 inches long, bright orange, as fast as light, ran out from amongst my clothes, across my hand and into the top compartment of my bag. I screamed. I jumped. I was surprised to not feel tears running down my face. Jeremy thought I was being a big baby and that there was probably a little spider in my pack, but then he kicked my bag and the centipede made its final escape. As we watched it run off with its many legs into the grass, I was redeemed in Jeremy's eyes for being scared of a "scary bug".

Jeremy had never seen a bug like that before, and I had wished that I would never see one again. I can still feel those little legs making their way across my hand and it makes me cringe. It took me days to be able to go into my bag again with giving it a few hard kicks first.

Take me out to the ballgame.

Last week the first and second years got to go away for a few days to play. I think they went to a water park. The third years had to stay and study, but, despite there still being kids at the school, Jeremy didn't have to teach. He doesn't have any third year classes. When he doesn't have classes, he still has to be at school 9-5, but there is no planning or any real work. He gets a lot of reading done on those days. We went to the school just as they were headed off and there were 7 busses packed with very excited teenagers all in matching jerseys. They all work so hard, it must blow their minds to get some days off once in a while.
Friday was the last full day for this round of student teachers, so with most of the kids gone, they got the day to play too. They invited Jeremy and me to play games with them. I dreaded the thought of playing dodgeball or something like that, but when we got there they were playing a game of t-ball. After a quick game of rock-paper-scissors (the traditional way to make any decisions in Korea) we were assigned to teams and the game was on. One of the girls explained to me that we had to play hard because the losing team had to buy icecream for the winning team - high stakes. It was super hot and Jeremy and I totally roasted in the sun getting a burnt nose each and a little bit of nausea from the heat, but we had fun anyway. Most of the girls were terrible at t-ball, but everyone was good natured and people who were struggling got second tries and no one made fun. My team had a very big comeback to tie the game and we held them off for the last inning; no one got icecream. Then a third year PE class came out and challenged us to a game. Jeremy and I were both picked to be on the "all-star" team to play them and we both lived up to the responsibility with some good hits to the outfield. All said and done, it was a great day.

You say to-mae-to, I'll say to-ma-to.

Yesterday I went for lunch with my new friend, Staci. She is very nice and we had a very good time. She is eager to practice her English and even more eager to help me with my Korean. She says that she has to sweat over her speaking now, but soon she will make our conversations all in Korean and then it will be me who has to sweat. I don't think it will be soon, but I look forward to a day when I can converse in a new language, even if only conversing like a child. Some Korean words are easier to learn then others, for example, tomato is tomato with a slight Korean accent on it. I like words like that. Jeremy and I sometimes try to get away with only speaking English by putting a "u" on the end of words and hoping someone understands. When we were shopping for camp cookware it was easy enough to find a gas stove, it was gasu burner. I'm really bad at getting pronunciation. I find that their b's and p's sound the same often and their g's and c's and ch's. Staci spells things out for me and it helps a lot. That is why I am trying to learn the characters for the language, then it won't have to be translated to English spelling.

Just when you thought you were ripped off.

Last night Jeremy and I didn't get around to dinner until we were so hungry that we both felt sick, so instead of cooking we decided to go out for jajang. Jajang is a sort of Chinese-Korean food unlike any Chinese food I've ever had in Canada. It is a big bowl of wheat noodles with a thick dark brown sauce that I think is made of black soybeans. At the restaurant we go to it has peas, onions and some type of meat in it. It is really really tasty. As side dishes our restaurant serves raw white onions that you dip in a black paste, kimchi (of course) and the most delicious mondoo (Korean dumplings) that are baked not boiled. Mr Che says baking them like that makes them Japanese style, but whatever style they are, they are to die for. Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a drool over delicious food post. When we paid for our meal, we were charged 10,000 won, but usually it is only 7000. We assumed they must have charged us for our mondoo. That annoyed us especially because we only get 4 of them and usually we get 6. So to go from 6 free mondoo to 4 mondoo that we had to pay for was more then a little lame. We didn't feel like arguing the point so we just left. As we walked away we discussed being ripped off and that it would be a while before we returned. Then a scooter started to come up behind us and Jeremy said "it's probably them going to give us our change". I laughed, but sure enough the guy that served us our food (not the guy who charged us for it) drove up to us and handed us 3000 won, with many apologies! Very cool. We will definitely be going back for jajang again soon.