5-Day Weekend (or, Chuseok It To Me: Round One)

Wonder why it's been so long since I updated and why I haven't been responding to emails? Well, it seems that around mid-September the nation of Korea shuts down for a festival somewhat equivalent to Thanksgiving. And when I say 'shuts down', I mean everything: restaurants, grocery stores, and bars. And, strangely enough, it seems the holdiay also shut down the three wireless internet signals we had been stealing from our apartment... so, we were pretty unconnected. So now comes a (too) long round-up of our many adventures over Chuseok.

FRIDAY - Wild Duck Chase
Getting off from work early, and having a bit of relatively rare 'free time' (Alicia was at the dentist), I met up with my friend Isaac and travelled off to get a new set of tuning pegs for the broken old acoustic guitar I managed to get here. I have as of one week later still not replaced said part, not having a screwdriver or any sorts of tools to speak of, but knowing that I could fix it and learn to play guitar anytime I wanted makes me unexplainably complacent, like I actually believe that tomorrow I'll wake up and do it... and that will be the reason I probably will fail at my goal of learning guitar.

That night, after Alicia returned, our friends invited us out to dinner at a restaurant allegedly located in the far-but-not-too-far away Shin Jeju (New Jeju). Instead of actually being located in the city, we instead took a cab for 45 minutes into the dark dead countryside, arriving at a duck shabu-shabu restaurant (thin strips of raw duck cooked in a hotpot). Now, whether it was in fact too close to the closing time of the restaurant, or if instead the group of 14 foreigners was simply too intimidating, we were turned away, and left to making our long and hungry way back to the city, ultimately eating some cheap bar food- spicy chicken soup and some sketchy cheese sausages.

The night took an incredibly positive turn thereafter, as we met the aforementioned Isaac at a bar called Led Zeppelin, duly decked out in it's namesake's paraphenalia. The bar is one a few of it's sort in Jeju, having a collection of roughly 3,000 vinyl LPs of classic rock, as well as numerous CD's, DVD's and even 8-tracks of all manner of other music, which is requested and played on demand for the bar's clientelle. If the owner can't find a song in the stacks, he will download it. All in all, one of my favorite bars in the world, and incredibly close to our house. Nine beers later, and I made the short trip back up the hill to prepare for the long tomorrow ahead of me.

SATURDAY - Seogwipo: Scenery, Sickness, and Seafood
I was amazed to find myself perfectly fine the next morning when we woke up at around 9 am. Alicia's co-teacher (well, one of the many she has, being at four schools) was taking us out to see the island, an opportunity that we, the car-less, couldn't refuse. Seogwipo is the resort town which comprises the lower half of the island, and is often compared to Hawaii, having similar scenery, greenery, and such. It was about 45 minutes into our trip to this tropical paradise that my hangover hit. In reality, I later learned that it was probably the bar-food sausages that made me sick (a friend was ill as well). Regardless, I felt like an iron hand was crushing my stomach. If my body's goal was to teach me not to eat strange sausage, this feeling last much longer than it needed to to drive that point home. It was in such a state, clutching my gut and hobbling behind the group, that we came to our first destination.

Jeongbang Falls
A beautiful sight despite the overcast sky, the waterfall was quite impressive, though Alicia, apparently having run out of wonderment and awe in South America, found them to be nothing new or special in comparison to the falls she had seen in Brazil. We had to descend a steep cliff-side stair and hop across the volcanic rock to get close to it. At the bottom, near the cliff face, I saw the haenyo for the first time. These old women dive in the ocean for up to 2 minutes at a time without any sort of gear and collect sea life to sell as food to those visiting the seashore. Despite my curiosity, the thought of eating abalone or sea urchins made the nausea I'd been fighting all morning so much worse that I had to leave.

Yakcheonsa Temple

A beautiful Buddhist temple, and certainly the biggest I have ever seen. Apparently it is the oldest on the island. It looks out over the ocean, and has soft chanting and music piped in through speakers hidden all over the temple grounds. It really was an amazing place which for all to brief of a moment made me forget my stomach cramps. The ceiling was covered with small prayer sheets, and many monks still walked around the temple, going about their daily lives looking for enlightenment. We only were able to explore the inside of the temple, and not so much the grounds, because it started raining, so I will definitely need to go back. Here are some photos:





Now, the only way to top the serenity of a Buddhist Temple is with a:

Teddy Bear Museum
Seriously, this was one of the silliest things I've ever seen. And I don't really like to use the word 'silly' very often, but I don't feel as if I have a choice in this case. With a space about a third the size of the MoMA in New York, this gallery of ursine plushes was divided into three sections: History, Art, and Outdoor Bear Wonderland.

History included bears made in the likeness of historical figures, or reenacting various historical episodes, including landing on the moon, the Titanic, the discovery of the terra-cotta (or, as we quipped in the first of many puns, beara-cotta) warriors. Perhaps most disturbing was the fully armed teddy bears storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. But my favorite is shown in the video below.


[In trying to caption this video, I came up with: "The Bear-lin Wall", or "Mr. Gorbearchev, bear down this wall!". I couldn't decide which to go with, so here's both]

And (because I just found out how fast YouTube can upload videos) here's another:

[B-Day]

The Art section consisted of famous paintings and sculptures fastidiously recreated in bear form, some of which are shown below. The Van Gogh-Bear was one of my favorites. The outdoor bear garden was full of fiberglass bears having this or that kind of fun- fishing, having a picnic, happily rolling around. In some ways, it seems as if it would give a young, impressionable child the idea that bears are friendly, when they most certainly are not. Ask Timothy Treadwell.

Here's a smattering of bears to give you an idea:






To Be Continued
The Teddy Bear Museum was only the beginning of our day, yet it's all too much for one post. As indicated by the Seogwipo subheadline, I have eaten some of the strangest seafood, or any food for that matter, over the last few days. Many of those photos and videos are on my phone, so I will have to wait until I leave how to upload this media to my computer. Hope to do so this weekend. Live octopus, anyone?

And, yes, we did visit Loveland. But that's a whole 'nother story all together. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's how it is... Love isn't always on time.