Sakura Spring in South Korea!

We had the pleasure of seeing one of the more beautiful natural events on this side of the world this weekend. It's sakura season (cherry blossoms) and they bloom for a short window of time which is about a week before they blow away or rainfall gets to them first. The Japanese sakura are very popular and well known, but these beautiful trees also bloom here in South Korea!

A special thing about this is that Cheongju also held its 10th annual Art Festival downtown by the river, which just so happens to be a big place to see all the trees in bloom. So not only were there tons of people out and about to take pictures with the scenery, but the art festival meant lots of families and art students out as well. It really was a lovely weekend and we had an awesome time. It's a special thing to see the trees in bloom in part of the world where they're such a beloved event.

First things first, after stopping at the usual stores in Shinae (Anipop and Artbox) we had to go get lunch at Rice Story. Rice Story is delicious and we have a tendency to get it to go when it's nice out and go eat by the river and have a sort-of picnic. Zach got the red curry and I got kimchi rice. Delicious!

I figured it would be fairly busy down by the river because of the sakura blooms, but what I wasn't anticipating was a huge crowd due to the 10th annual art festival in Cheongju. I'm glad we got to see it though, it was pretty neat. Lots of kids activities and some entertainment. Lots of artists too, of course.

This was pretty neat. There is apparently a local college that has some sort of silkworm program and they help educate people about silk and silkworms. There is apparently a silk museum somewhere in Korea too. I picked up a cool pamphlet with pictures, but I can't read it. At least it looks neat.

These fellows were very cool. The kids were getting a little rowdy and pestering them to get a reaction out of them, but they were very patient. Pretty impressive. You can't see it, but the man on the right has a sword.

It was a lovely day for being out. So many people though!

We walked by some live music by some young guys. They were pretty good.

We walked up toward the road and the line of cherry blossoms and saw lots of artists at work. These were particularly vibrant.

I also spotted someone with their mind on the sakura. Lovely art!

Because I insisted that we walk toward the Buddhist temple, we happened upon a festival going on there too. It was a good decision! We walked in initially and had people directing us toward the food stands (despite just eating lunch) since the whole thing was free. It was neat with live music, balloon sculpting, lotus lantern making, cotton candy, tea sampling, and various other things. 

I made a lotus out of a cup, paper, and rice paste/glue. It was fun and easy and now I have a fun little souvenir to take home. You can see more complete versions than the one in my hand further back.

I mentioned live music, here there were drummers! There were also ladies that came out to sing in hanboks too. They were all pretty amazing. 

These ladies were stunning. You can see a video I posted on Facebook using this link. Click to change the video to HD for better quality. :)

I like collecting fun and unique things and Korea has been fun for me in that aspect. I spent a good amount of time looking at the bracelets and things on a small table near the temple and the lady was very helpful. In the end I got two very beautiful bracelets and Zach got a strand of prayer beads. The lady was so helpful and slightly after we stepped away she took this picture of us. There is also a balloon dog in my hand that a man rescued and turned into a "poodle" for me. Everyone was so very sweet.

We finally decided to continue our trek and found tons of people taking pictures in front of the cherry trees. The picture above is very Korean to me and I thought it was kind of cute. We did the same and I speculated while all this was going on about why the do it the way that they do. By that I mean that most people had cell phones in hand and despite the ability to ask one of the many, many people walking around if they could take a picture of them or their group, they decided to take "selfies" or photos of themselves. 

As another note, as unpleasant as it was, there was a man throwing up down near the line of bushes while we were people watching. He was dressed nicely and someone (presumably a friend) was hitting him on the back while this was happening. Seems like someone spoiled their sakura viewing with too much soju! A guy even snuck up with his cell phone (what seemed like a stranger) and snapped a photo. It was... interesting.

This was definitely a worthwhile venture, enjoying the lovely weather and sakura in bloom!

Modicum of Mementos (or Manda has more pictures to share)

I love the cute stuffed produce and food in the picture above, I'm trying to figure out if I want to get one to bring home with us! I am a fan of the banana, but there's also toast, a burger, and donuts down in the very bottom row. They're just too cute. 

So welcome to another round of me posting various interesting pictures from our location here in South Korea. I like taking pictures and I especially like finding things of interest, so this should be fun for everyone! Of course, any questions are welcome, I will do my best to explain things though. 

I understand that the delicious items found in this bag are a regional specialty here in the Cheongju area. Unfortunately my searching has come up with nothing, so I'm not sure what you'd call them. I'll keep trying. 

This is the delicious contents of the above bag. Take a moment and think of waffles, delicious warm waffles that not only taste good but smell amazing too. That's what these yummy treats are, but the large walnut shaped ones have a sweet bean paste inside while the peanut shaped ones have peanuts. Both are delicious and can be found while walking around on the streets. Some of the stands that sell these also have waffles too which are delicious. 

We found a delicious little restaurant around here with very reasonable prices and I'm slowly looking at sampling the various items on the menu. The one above was from this week. It's bibimbap and it is quite amazing. Bibimbap has many variations and it sometimes served in a hot stone bowl. This was one of my first introductions to Korean food at home at a small restaurant near Indianapolis. In the stone bowl you're supposed to stir everything together and that helps ensure that the usually raw egg placed on top is cooked.

This is one of my favorite little girls-- trying on my glasses. She's seriously too cute. 

Homework has become a big thing here at our hagwon, a project taken up by our director. I'm sure you've noticed my many criticisms of our boss's English abilities and I see errors probably everyday. This was one of them and I'm just not really sure what's happening?

Periodically I take toys from small children and photograph them. Nah, not so much. I ended up with Carley's Pokemon toy, however, because she was not being very good and I took care of it until class was over. It was kind of cute and I figured I'd get a picture. 

Another unique thing I've seen while we've been here has been this inflatable baby-shaped body to display diapers. There was the Huggies brand one and another Korean brand. It makes sense, it was just a rather interesting thing to see. 

We went to a local mall that's also part of an apartment complex (huge, rich area of the city) and I thought it was interesting that there is a female parking lot for the customers. Makes sense considering that South Korea has very high sexual assault rates, sadly. :/

This is really cool and I wish I had gotten a better picture, but they're moving so quickly on this building that I didn't get the chance. Looking through the doorway on the floor you can see the tubes placed for the ondol heating for the apartment. They were placed very precisely and it's pretty neat to see how it works. The ondol heating pumps hot water through the pipes to heat the room/home from the floor.

This unique work of art was found on the Chungbuk University campus here in Cheongju. There's a handful of art displayed on the grounds which I may post later, but this was particularly cool. 

 

Finally, on our walk across the river from Shinae (downtown) I spotted this on one of the pillars. It's pretty neat. The text in the balloon reads: "where is human rights?" and if that isn't a cool message, I don't know what is. I've enlarged the image below for detail and easier to read text. 

I'll keep hunting around for more photographic evidence of life over here. Hopefully some video too!

Wasps Attack

Let me just start out this blog entry by saying that the bugs in Korea are some of the most terrifying things I have ever encountered.  I am cheating when I say this because I am corralling the HORRIBLE spiders that we have around the school in with the terrifying wasps we have been dealing with for the past month or two. To fully detail the our experience we have to go back to a sunny and (relatively) warm morning around two months ago.

The sun was shining that day, I remember because I could hardly read the words on my laptop as I sat up around 9:30 in the morning.  Manda was sleeping soundly next to me and I was getting my daily dosage of internet in before the cold dead reality of my life in Korea set in for the day.  Luckily it was the weekend so my daily depression could wait.  Now when I am on the computer and Manda is asleep I mute all sounds on my computer, because I am a nice guy and that is what nice guys do.  I sat there browsing the internet in vegetative bliss until I hear a distinct buzzing noise to my right.

Why hello there

I turn my head inquisitively only to have a black blur buzz by me before slamming itself into the window.  It falls into the little crevice beside the window out of my sight.  Now prior to this incident a praying mantis appeared out of nowhere in our room and felt the need to go and rest need Manda's foot.  So I am used to the whole large bugs appearing out of god knows where, but this was not a mantis, it was smaller and blacker.  The sickening buzzing echoed out from window and the biggest wasp I have ever seen crawls out and stands there looking at me with its beady compound eyes.

 I had two choices, either try to deal with the problem myself without waking Manda, or wake her and give her pants soiling terror.  I decided that I would probably cause a flurry of noise when trying to squash the intruder to our sacred abode.  So I quietly said "Manda there is a giant wasp in the room."  I would like to think that is the fastest I have ever seen Manda wake up ever, as we stared at the intruders segmented body.    I had grabbed a fly swatter from downstairs to deal with the mosquito menace at the end of summer which has stayed in our room.

This is a closely related species eating a god damn mantis

So as Manda and I stared down a fine specimen of the Giant Asian Hornet family, also known as a "commander bee" in Korea.  I grasped my fly swatter like the finest Hanzo steel and used my cat like reflexes to flail around attempting to hit a small black and yellow object sitting nicely on the windowsill.  One of my swings connected and the wasp went struck the ground like a meteor before being repeatedly smashed by the blunt side of the swatter.

So with a breath of relief Manda and I went about our lives after the initial wasp had been unceremoniously destroyed.  That is until one evening while sitting up, probably playing World of Warcraft or something equally nerdy Manda saw another wasp.  Unlike the first wasp this one was out during the night time, and the outside was cold as Jack Frost's symbolic testicles.  This attack ended fairly uneventfully, but left us with an impression we wouldn't be seeing the last of the wasp menace.

Manda's discovery

Fast forward to yesterday,  five wasp attacks later. I am currently doing extra work at another school to make up some money that I had lost working part time most of January.  I get a text from Manda informing me that she has probably figured out there the wasps are originating from, and oh yeah there is a giant wasp in our room again.  I was about three hours away from returning for the evening so I tried my best to encourage her to do the brave thing and retreat to another room until I could return and deal with the latest invader.

She informed me that the light fixture of the light slightly to the right of our bed was hanging down on one side and was in fact big enough to fit giant death wasps, spiders, and other bugs I'd prefer not to meet.  With the solution to our problem (hopefully) without our grasp I finished my tortuously long middle school class and grabbed my stuff.  I hurried home after I finished my classes for the night and came home to strike down the beast and then formulate a plan to banish the wasps from our realm permanently.  First however we needed to make preparations.

Now here is your problem right here Ma'am.

The next morning after several hours of uneasy sleep we hurried to Homeplus to grab materials to fortify our room from exoskeleton-ed intruders.  We secured the goods and headed back the apartment to duct tape the hell out of that light.  Duct tape we did, and while we were doing that we discovered the one screw of the light had become loose like so many of my college aged Korean students after a few to many Soju's.  We used the tape, to put it up and then tried to screw the offending screw back into place.

Manda putting on the finishing touches

While I would like to say that I am completely sure that we will be wasp free I sadly just do not know.  We are currently on day two without wasps.  I am hoping that we are actually wasp free and that this will lead to having less other nasty bugs in this upcoming summer near the end of our ESL Honeymoon Adventure.

A Day in the Life of Zach Teacher and Amanda Teacher (2/2/13 edition)

Happy Saturday! I've decided that today will be a recap day because I sometimes like to attempt to make sure this blog is updated in a timely fashion. Pretend with me that this is, in fact, the case. Since this is the case, I'll walk you through our day, so that you too can experience life as an expat in South Korea.

Now, this weekend is a bit unusual in the fact that we've recently had issues with large wasps in our room. They haven't been spotted elsewhere, but lately they've been showing up in our room. It's the beginning of February and needless to say, this is a bit unusual for this time of year. Did I also mention that wasps are rather aggressive and not my choice of roommates? As of yesterday, February 1st, we have had 6 wasps, large wasps, come to visit. Pretty weird.

We couldn't figure out where they were coming from, but then I noticed yesterday that the corner of the light had dropped down from the ceiling and it seemed probable that this was where they were coming from. So top priority today was to stop at Homeplus to pick up some duct tape to take care of that little problem. Zach will tell you more about our crazy wasp adventures in another post coming up.

So upon waking up (after a somewhat restless night, even though wasps are diurnal), spending a little time waking up and relaxing, and getting dressed we headed to Homeplus for the necessary materials for our anti-wasp mission. I did snap some decent shots of these azure winged magpies this morning though, before we headed out.

It's been hovering around freezing temperatures depending on the time of day, so I found some very pretty natural artwork this morning on the way toward town. Frost and frozen water are very interesting.

Frosty!

After making a brief detour at the local Paris Baguette for breakfast munchies we stopped at Homeplus. We were surprised to find some sort of mystery sale going on when we went up to the second floor. There were red boxes at a small table just near the checkout area and two ladies were taking money and rallying people forward. The cost of a single box was 1000 won and after a little debate we decided why not, and pulled forth our 2000 won.

Victory is mine! And also Zach's.

We had to take the items out of the boxes so we could wander around the store without too many problems, so we stowed them away. I'd say we got a pretty good deal, the items we got are below.

It's also almost the start of the Lunar New Year here, so there are lots of gift boxes and sets of items to be given away as gifts. Here's just a small handful of featured items.

We also ran into something cute up on the second floor. Zach wanted to take it home and I would have liked to as well, but we can't have pets and I don't know how we'd get it home. :(  Instead we just admired the hedgehog's cuteness from the other side of the glass and noticed that Homeplus has an escapee on their hands.

Lizard-zilla is on the loose!

Finally, having secured a few gifts to be sent homeward, admired the adorable critters, and obtained the necessary tape for our project, we headed back homeward. The ceiling/light was a pretty quick project between tightening a loose screw and taping up the gap, but I'll let Zach talk more about that later.

We had a quick lunch and then spent some time doing things here including cleaning, organizing, studying, and playing some games. Finally, I got bored after getting things all cleaned up and we decided to head to Chungdae a bit earlier than originally planned since I figured it'd be nice to have more daylight rather than less. We were lucky enough to hop on the 105 bus before too long and take the ~15 minute ride to the Chungdae area. Chungdae is part of Cheongju that is a little more bar and restaurant laden with a crowd leaning more toward younger people and foreigners since it's the home of most of the foreign bars in the city. I took a few pictures along the way as we roamed around.

These little guys and gals were so cute, I was excited and made a lot of noise and scared them. Sorry!

Check out the upside-down tea kettles, super neat.

We found this neat looking doorway on our walk.

Koreans aren't the most cleanly people. Sadly, you find a lot of trash and waste piled up on the streets.

This thing resides right outside a restaurant on the small streets of Chungdae. It's been around since Christmas, maybe before that, but it freaks me out. When you walk by or get close she bows and speaks.

These painted wings are right outside of this small restaurant, we had to get pictures, of course.

The sign reads: Wink: Pub and Restaurant for Women. Don't ask me!

This sign was on some sort of building, though I couldn't tell you what kind. It's neat to see Keith Haring's work in so many places. Also, I <3 king Kong! Some of my kids would love this.

We found a small arcade which I hope to visit again while we wandered, it's right near the boardgame cafe that we had visited previously. There are a variety of toy game machines right outside of the arcade, most of which are crane games. I figured since it was only 1000 won for 6 tries I would give it a shot. They have cute plushies from different things, but I finally managed to win myself a cute Chopper from One Piece, he's so cute. I'm hoping to visit again and actually check the place out (and win a few more cute prizes too). 

We finally decided that it was time for dinner and stopped at Pizziaolo, which is a small Italian restaurant close to the foreigner bars. We'd been there once before with two Korean students and it was delicious, so we figured we'd stop again. They serve water in a wine bottle with a sprig of rosemary in it and it's quite refreshing. Zach ordered pasta (Carbonara) and I ordered pizza (Margherita) and we sat upstairs on the second floor and watched outside as it got dark. 

Having finished our meals we stopped at a small store next door that is similar to Claire's where I picked up a few things since I'm trying to do a lot of gift shopping lately. I also saw some earrings that I had seen previously and finally got them. Finally, we headed toward the bus stop and hopped on the 105 a few minutes afterward and came home. Here are some of my collected items for the day.

Here's the Chopper plush that I won from the game, a piece of walnut pie from Paris Baguette, and dark chocolate cubes that I found at Lotte Mart. A successful day? I'd say so.

Now we're winding down for the night and hoping that the wasp problem has been solved. The Seollal holiday is upcoming here in South Korea so we'll have some time off, I'm really hoping to be able to get out and take some pictures since I just haven't had the opportunity lately.