the winter doldrums

It's finally February and I have to say I'm happy about that. The city is pretty miserable in the winter. January had its fun times and everything but this last month of the cold season is something that everyone has been looking forward to. It has snowed here a few times and usually that's something to celebrate but here it only makes things a little more bleak. Earlier in this blog I talked about how dingy and confining this city seems at times. At that time I was writing in the early summer and early fall. Now it is cold and wet so we no longer hike because the mountain tops are covered in ice and snow, I've already hurt myself once this trip and I don't want to again, so you can only imagine how restricted I feel without that release.

It's an odd winter around here though. As I believe I mentioned, Seoul has gotten more snow this winter than it has in the last 100 years. This is strange because Seoul usually has pretty dry winters because of very cold North Asian winds which make their way down the land mass to our little peninsula. These winds are cold enough to keep the air very dry almost all the time, but for some reason this winter has been filled with precipitation. Snow falls once a week or so and when it doesn't snow it rains on the warmer days and then freezes the very next day as the temperature drops below zero again. This really isn't very fun at all. I'm not a huge fan of cold weather as it is, and I've experienced a deeper chill here than I ever have before, so the snow and ice makes the winter all the more uncomfortable. I bought my first scarf here, an article of clothing I don't believe I had worn before coming to Korea, and a cheap pair of fake leather gloves because the thin cloth ones I usually go for just don't cut it. On the whole I found myself pretty unprepared for the cold here and have repeatedly regretted not bringing warmer clothes. I wish I had some long johns or something, in fact I think that I've even had wonderful dreams about the joy and warmth that would come with a nice pair of long underwear, mmmm, they would be so nice. It occurs to me now that I should have just asked my mom and dad to send me some in the beginning of the winter but I never did and now it's too late. I wouldn't even get them until the temperature began it's slow climb back to ninety. Oh well, live and learn.

So I've found myself constantly chilled to the core for the last two months and it's interesting how fast the cold came. We were told that the weather would surprise us with it's swift changes but even still I thought mother nature would give me a little more warning. Early December went from decently cold to well below freezing in the span of maybe 3 days. I remember a week playing soccer where I wore shorts to practice, then sweats the next day and then needing an additional pair of sweats the next day to stand the biting cold. The next thing I knew it was the heart of winter, I only have one pair of (thin) sweatpants, one coat which upon winter's descent I immediately spilled soup all over. Luckily a coworker had an extra winter jacket so I borrowed his but you get the point, I'm ill-equipped for the cold, both physically and raimentally, made up a new word.
Walking to work is something of a trial, after it snows, or rains, we inevitably have ice and then I have to pick where I walk wisely. I do not want to fall on my bum arm again so I've been extra careful. I venture into the cold wearing my shamu jacket, a hat, my new scarf and gloves and then the thin pants I own. While stepping gingerly over the numerous ice patches the wind cuts through my clothes like a hot knife through butter and the only consolation is the music in my ears, and of course my job.
Oddly enough one of the few things that makes this winter bearable is my work. So many of my friends are working their first jobs right out of school, and they hate it. I guess I'm lucky in that the walk to work, while very cold, is not a soul-sucking effort. Of course there are days where I have to convince myself to get out of bed, I think that comes with any job, but I think that I'm one of the few people that genuinely loves what they're doing. That's been a nice realization for me in this miserable season. My job is the exact opposite of the weather, it's exciting, heartening, full of successes and generally warm, if it's not I now have the power to turn on the heater if I want so that's really nice. We're nearing the end of the term for our students and most of the classes are graduating. Korean children start attending daily school when they turn eight (I think) so the older kids will start in their new schools come March, that's about half of our kindergarten students right there. Fortunately none of the classes I teach are graduating. I will have Venus and Mars class until I leave in July and both classes are improving rapidly. I gave both classes their second test last week and the week before, both classes did great. I had two perfects, one in either class, and I think 4 or 5 kids who only got 1-4 wrong which is really good considering it's a 50 question test. I was so proud of them and it's made me really happy to see them making progress like this. I've found my groove and it's been really nice for me and I think for the students too.
Success like this at work has really helped sustain me. People talk about the winter doldrums a lot and I've become a believer in the phenomenon, people really are more inclined to depression in the winter months but I've found that trying to be positive about things is really the way to go in the face of all this. That of course is easier said then done, but if you look it's easy to see the good things around you. For me they're everywhere; I'm in a foreign country for one, I have a great job, great friends, a family that cares about me back home, a soccer team that cares about me here, and a blog that helps me realize how lucky I am. Just writing all of this down is a great reminder for me too. Yes winter sucks, but I'm incredibly lucky to be doing what I'm doing, to be in the situation I'm in, to be alive and just today to have a blog entry that started out as a complaint about winter turn into a reflection on how unfounded that complaint is, what a great life.
The other main thing making the weather easy to deal with (sort of) is my soccer team. I wake up every morning to play for an hour with the guys on a dirt field at Taeguk Elementary School. It is bitter cold in the morning, but that only really bothers me for the first five minutes, after that my blood is pumping, I'm running all over the place and loving it. I still can't talk to most of the guys but have struck up what I think are genuine friendships with quite a few of them. Ho Jin, one of the best players on the team, has become a good friend in addition to Sung Nam. My strike partner has also become a friend along with the man who took me to get my arm looked at, Kim Dae Nam. The Coach (I'm not sure if anyone knows his name, at least Sung Nam doesn't) and I also have an understanding, he's something of a soccer mentor for almost everyone on the team and has taken me under his wing. He doesn't speak very much English but we manage to communicate quite well despite that. He recently taught me the proper way to bow to him which I'm always sure to remember when I see him at practice and the games. Under the tutelage of the Coach and Ho Jin I'm becoming a lot better at playing within the team's system. My passing is improvement and I'm working well with the other strikers, I'm learning how to be a better, more efficient player and I'm really loving it.
My coworker Pete just started playing also so I've got one more person to talk to at the practices and games. He's enjoying and I think it's been good for him to get out of his apartment. He lives with his girlfriend of two years and they are very happy but it was apparent to all of us that they needed to get out more, everybody needs their space. He plays a more defensive role than I do so he hasn't taken any of my playing time thankfully and has done real well in the first few games we've played.

One of the many reasons I love the team is because it's been pretty interesting to play with them. I've learned quite a bit about the cultural dynamics between men of different ages. The age range of players on our team is pretty wide. Pete and I are the youngest at 22 and I think the oldest man may be in his sixties. The deferential treatment that the older players get is almost immediately apparent. They play whenever they want and do whatever they want just about. Respect for elders is an integral part of the culture here and in an earlier entry I detailed how that has it's negative aspects. I thought in playing on a team with such a wide age range I'd see more of the bad things that entails, in fact it's been quite the opposite. Though everyone defers to the older men they are fair and helpful. They are very aware of the limitations that age has brought and have proved to be equally deferential to the advantages of youth. While the older players do get their time the majority of the players on the field in any match are the younger ones. The older men assume the role of teacher with ease and aplomb and have helped me at least quite a bit. They are not afraid to speak their mind to anyone on the field but it has never been in a derogatory way as far as I can tell through their body language and their tone of voice. Everyone takes the time to listen when they have something to say. I can gather some of it but it's easy to see that the other men learn from it a good bit. All this is usually done in a really light-hearted manner culminating in a small joke, sometimes I think at my expense but I don't really mind, and I think the guys on the team respect that. They know I can tell when they talk about me a lot of the time and I think that the understanding that they can talk about me if they want without bothering me has led to me being accepted pretty easily, because of course everyone is going to make fun of the foreign guy, that's just normal. They have all been only helpful, I've never felt like I wasn't a part of the team or scorned at all, even when I perform poorly.

I'm getting distracted, the point is the older men don't take advantage of the respect they're accorded, they give it back to us by letting us play and helping us become better players, they joke around with us and laugh with us, and it's really nice to know that I'm 22 years old and I have the respect of a 63 year old. I've found that the general idea is that you give respect to them and they will return it to you which I think is what makes this team work. I have to respect the fact that the older men can't run as fast on the field and tailor my passes for them, they in turn will cater to my style of play as it can fit into the system of passing and control of the ball. I enjoy running on the field and at first I had to quell my nearly uncontrollable urge to sprint for ever because if I'm doing that the rest of the team can't keep up with me. I'm the fastest person on the team and while that is good I have to remember that the other players need the build up of passes to move as a unit up the field otherwise I'm stranded in the final third with the ball and six defenders around me. This has really helped me be more aware of the players on my team, my position on the field and I think has made me a better player. By respecting the talents and limitations of my teammates I'm becoming a more involved distributor and a more prolific scorer as well. Today I scored 2 goals, had five assists, that's obscene but shelving my preconceptions of the game and adopting a more well rounded approach is obviously paying off.

That's soccer for the most part, any new developments? Ben's girlfriend Kelsey just got into town tonight and Ellie will be here next weekend so we're pretty excited to have the company. We've had a few birthday's (Holly, Natalie) go by without to much drama, some but not to much, and have found a really good Italian restaurant right near our work. I'm starting to think more and more about next year but have nothing concrete in mind yet, we'll see when July rolls around what I have figured out.

That's all for today folks. It may be a while 'til my next entry, probably after Ellie leaves, but I'll be sure to stick to this afterwards. Hope your enjoying it!

Pat

So I know it's been a little while but there is a reason. I dislocated my left elbow a little over 2 months ago and was in a cast for a month. While I had the cast on it was very difficult to type so I didn't post anything. I am out of the cast now and ready to start blogging again, woohoo.

Well here goes, it's been an interesting last few months so I'll give you a short overview, 1 paragraph for each exciting thing. If any have been on facebook then you may have seen my pictures but we've done quite a bit. The main thing is that there are now 3 new teachers at ECC, Matthew, Pete and Holly. They replaced Liz, Chris and Jeremy who were all good friends. That's the nature of the Hagwan system though, one year contracts make for a revolving door of employment that forces you to keep on readjusting. I'm now one of the longest tenured foreign teachers and in February when Ben Wages leaves, Natalie and I will have been here the longest. It's weird to think that I've been here for almost half of my contract, in about a week I will have been here six months. Just now typing that I actually wrote three months instead of six, that's closer to how it feels anyway. I'm getting sidetracked, the new people are a lot of fun. They are all Canadian so the Americans have become the minority at ECC, that being said they are very nice, true to the rumors. Pete is Allie's boyfriend and they spend a lot of time together but are still a lot of fun to hang out with. Matthew is something else, this kid is from western Canada who has been all over the world traveling. I couldn't remember how many countries he had said that he's visited but it's certainly more than I have. He's also worked on a deadliest catch type fishing boat out of Canada and done some other pretty interesting things so it's been cool to meet him and pick his brain about travelling and the like. Holly is the most recent addition to our school, she is also from Canada and has a wealth of experience teaching. She was a substitute teacher back in North America and she's shared a lot of good ideas with us.

These three aren't really new anymore but I do miss my old friends fortunately they have all come back so that's exciting too. Anyway I guess I'd better get started from November. It was an interesting month. Right when Matthew and Pete arrived we went out on the town and I dislocated my left elbow running in a foot race with Pete. That was horrible and I'm still dealing with the reprecussions now. Fortunately I was only in a sling for a month but in that time I lost full range of motion in my left arm. I can no longer extend my arm straight, it stops at about a 150 degree angle and I have to do physical therapy to get my arm back up to snuff. That wasn't the defining part of November though, two other important things happened.

The first of these was a visit to Seorak Mountain or Seoraksan a very famous mountain on the Eastern coast of Korea. Seven of us went out there on a bus and stayed in a very nice condo that sits right at the base of a really picturesque stretch of grantie spires jutting out from the spine of the mountain. We got there and took the cable car up to one of the peaks in the mountain chain. It was really cool you could look out over the city Suyok and see the Pacific ocean from the peak. It had recently snowed there and we were lucky to catch it before it melted. This was the first time we saw snow in Korea but it wouldn't be the last. We had a snowball fight went down the mountain and turned in for the night. The next day we picked up a park map and realized that we couldn't actually get to Seorak because it was a two day hike! Too bad but we decided to hike around the trails that crisscrossed around the park anyway. We hiked for a while and then soon came to a steep incline that ended in a cave at the top of a rock face. It took us an hour to get all the wayup there but we made it encountered a monk on the top looking out over the snow christened mountains. It was surreal, I sat behind him thinking about how peaceful it must be, I mean besides the constant flow of hikers coming in and out of the cave, then the monk whips out a cellphone and she starts talking to somebody in a really annoyed voice. That kind of killed it for me. We went down and tried to find a waterfall but were unable to before we went home that night exhausted. I did all of this with a full arm cast in a sling. I'm awesome.

The other important thing that happened is I joined a soccer team. I had started to go to a park near my apartment just to juggle and kick the ball around and one night a Korean guy approached me and asked me if I'd play on his team. At first I thought he was fifteen so I asked him how old he thought I was, he said thirty I laughed and told him that I'm twenty two. "UUUHHH??!" he said, "I thought you were 30" we had a good laugh. It turned out that he is 30 years old and that I'd be the youngest guy on the team which now consists of mostly 40 something year olds, me, and with a sprinkling of older guys. I said yes but told him that I'd have to wait until I was out of the cast to play. His name is Sung Nam, I've been playing with the team now since I got my cast off in December and Sung Nam has become a really good friend of mine.

That brings us to December then. As I said I had the cast taken off and am doing physical therapy for my arm. The day after I got my cast off I started to play with Eunma FC and am having a great time. Sung Nam is the only one who speaks English well, the rest of the guys can get by, but they keep on getting on me about learning Korean, which is understandable. We play every morning before I go to work at 7, it's early but it's worth it, on an elementary school dirt field. More often than not the ground is frozen but I still have a great time. I'm getting better all the time after starting out pretty rusty. I've scored a few goals in our games. We play on a turf field thats right up the road from me on the weekends. The league is six teams that we play over and over again, it's great. Eunma FC hasn't lost a game since I've been here. The team is really good and I fit in pretty well, at striker, which is awesome. The game format is strange though, usually we show up and there are three teams there, we play half hour games for 4 hours or so usually having every third game off. It's good fun and the jerseys that I got for the team are awesome too, one short sleeve, one long and a pair of shorts. We had a holiday party the second weekend we played at a private samgibsal place where I was forced to take bombshot after bombshot because I'm the new guy. Then we went to the Noribong under my school and they made me dance with their wives, it was ridiculous but a lot of fun. These guys are quickly becoming good friends of mine so I'm really happy that I got into this team.

Anyway December. I had Christmas away from home for the first time and I have to admit it wasn't very good. Don't get me wrong we had a lot of fun but I missed home a lot, who wouldn't. On Christmas we went to this bar that was hosting a Christmas dinner for foreigners though and that was awesome. Turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, roast beef, green beans, pineapple glazed ham, and delicious microbrews meant that at least Christmas tasted good.

As is usually the case after Christmas, the new year came up pretty quickly and we celebrated by going out to the center of the city to enjoy the party. Jonngak was packed with people all waiting for the new year's bell to be rung, no ball, a bell, and it was a big one too. We were told that we could shoot off fireworks wherever we wanted and we did just that after watching the Korean Dick Clark ring in 2010. At midnight the square we were in exploded with color. Roman candles flew everywhere, bouncing off of buildings and just generally causing havoc. I had a great time afterwards we went to a few bars and I treated myself to some expensive imports with most of my coworkers, Andrew, Colby, Keeri and a few of Andrew's friends from Japan. A long night out turned into an early morning with a soccer game but New Year's in Korea was excellent I had a lot of fun getting wild in the city. The pictures are on facebook but maybe I'll post them to snapfish and post a link on here for everyone.

The New Year has been full of changes. My school's building was moved and it's a lot nicer. We had to spend the sunday after new year's moving our classrooms but that was ok, it was nice to see the building on the inside and it's really nice. The transition went really smoothly and apart from some excited, rambunctious kindergartners we had no problems at the new school. There is even a rooftop patio, sweet!

We've had to change the restaurants we frequent because we're far enough away from the old school to have had to find new ones. It's been a struggle, the restaurants around here just aren't as good as the one's close to the old ECC but it's ok it means I'm more inclined to eat the free lunch at school, which still hasn't happened, but maybe I might. I also stopped drinking coffee because there isn't a good place on the way to work. I'd been drinking coffee for breakfast accompanied by donuts and eggwiches from dunkin donuts, but no dunkin donuts on my commute so I stopped. Now I spend half off the money I used to every day, just lunch and it's helping a lot, plus coffee is disgusting and I'm happy I don't have as easy an opportunity to get it as I used to.

I've also begun taking a Korean language class every weekend with Ben and Matthew. It started out at a pretty remedial level, mostly just the alphabet, but when we graduated level one the difficulty really increased. It's ok though, it's been nice understanding every 13th word said around me. I have to put more effort into it but I am getting better slowly.

That's about it, of course this is only a short summary of events but I'm happy to be writing again. I'll probably post another one soon about this last weekend and then try to get back into doing this regularly, sorry for the wait, good to be back.

Pat

ulleungdo part 1

I'm going to jump ahead real fast to last weekend because I'm afraid if I wait to long on this one I might not be able to do it the justice a fresh memory would. So here goes.

10/2-10/5

This past weekend was the South Korean holiday of Chuseok which is comparable to the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Families return to their points of origins, have a family meal and generally express their thanks for the past year and their lives. We had Thursday and Friday of last week off as well as this past Monday. A lot of the students went to their grandparents' houses, one kid went to Guam, but for the most part everyone returned to their families and celebrated quietly. Having no family in Korea, their teachers took this opportunity to take short vacations around Asia. A lot of our coworkers had made plans a while ago to get out of the country. Ben and Liz went to Tokyo, Jeremy was going to go to the Philippines but wasn't able to because of the Tsunami that recently struck, Ben Yannuzzi, Natalie and I being relatively new had to fashion our own plans and decided to stay in the country rather than leave. We were lucky and found that Adventure Korea, the same company through which we did the Bungee jumping, had set up a trip to an island of the Eastern coast of Korea which was relatively cheap, so we jumped all over it.

We would be staying on Ulleung Island or Ulleungdo (do meaning island) and would have the opportunity to travel to Dokdo, another island farther our into the pacific that has an interesting story I will get into later. We booked in advance with no problems and by the time last Thursday rolled around we were packed and ready to go . . . for our 11:30 pm departure time, woohoo. We took a cab to the express bus terminal and arrived along with 132 other foreigners who had decided to go on the trip. Four buses filled up quickly in front of the terminal and we soon were just about ready to go. Our guide, the same one who we had ridden with to the rafting trip took roll, made some jokes in broken english, we all laughed, he explained to us our schedule and then we got to know our bus mates a little bit. We didn't end up leaving till about 12:30 in the morning which wasn't that big of a deal, most people were much more excited than tired, so we all talked and laughed until the guide told us we were leaving, shut off the lights and the bus lurched to life.

The plan was to leave and catch the sunrise on the eastern coast of the country before taking a ferry out to Ulleungdo. Our guide encouraged us to sleep on the bus because we had a long day ahead of us what with traveling and exploring the island, the problem with this was that the bus wasn't comfortable enough for me to sleep, not nearly enough. Most of our companions had the same problem, so instead of sleeping I listened to my Ipod for 5 hours. The ride was broken up by two 15 minute rest stops, and oddly enough seemed to fly by. I did try to sleep but the only time I got close to passing out we pulled into the first rest stop. After that I gave up, luckily though we reached the beach parking lot after not to long. We still had a little over an hour until sunrise so I got out of the bus, ate my breakfast and Natalie and I began the walk down to the beach.

The walk wasn't too long, about 200 meters and I was excited to see the ocean for the first time since the plane ride but before I could we had to pass through a fish market where a variety of smells were waiting for us. First sewage wafted into our nostrils followed quickly by the smell of rotting fish, yummy. We turned a corner and saw what our noses had picked up, rows and rows of squid impaled by bamboo reeds hung out to dry by the local fishermen. There were at least 400 of them and they smelled to high heaven. Ben had been complaining about how he doesn't like killing sea animals for the whole of our stay in Korea so far so I turned to Natalie and said, "Ooo, Ben isn't gonna like this." It was squidocide. That was the biggest collection of dead animals I had seen ever in my life. We hurried by after taking a few quick pictures and made our way down to the beach. In the early morning the beach was a welcome site. The sand was cool between my toes and the wind coming off of the ocean felt like a cool caress on my bare skin, it was everything I had hoped for.

We walked down to the water and drank in it's grandeur. Far out you could see the fishing boat's lights dotting the horizon, 10 or more shone like beacons, and soon we saw the rock sentinels that dotted the water close to the beach. Years of wind, rain and ocean waves had carved watchmen out of the stoney shore. The rocks rose from the water in stalwart fashion all weather beaten but stoic against the omnipresent forces of nature. They were a sight to see. I scrambled across the bridge leading up to a rocky outcropping on the right side of the pristine water line and encountered only more impressive examples of the artistic prowess of water. Where I was standing had at one point been a massive boulder of granite that had jutted out into the sea, millennia ago probably, but now there were 15 or so immense rocks across the water. These were accompanied by spits of grey stone extending from the shore which created small channels that the ocean ran up between, like fingers almost, reaching out to touch the sea. I continued along the path and found the entire coast to be a surreal mix of stone, small patches of vegetation and ocean. It was remarkable.

To think that such as this had come without anything but time, people look on the world and revel in the marvels we create, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids at Giza stun and fascinate people the world over. Our cities are monuments to humanities ingenuity and dominance, but at that beach I couldn't help but delight in the fragility and mortality of it all. This had taken millions of years to create. Millions of years of constant wear and tear, millions of years of destruction, degradation. There was no planning, there was no prototype for what I was looking at. We the builders rejoice in our successes, name the planners and the architects geniuses, but could any of them have done this? I think not. Shelley had it right, "look on my works ye mighty and despair." The nerve. Who are we to have named the eight wonders of the world? I could've picked eight from that beach.

I rejoiced in my exploration. As it the night faded I ran around the area snapping pictures of the landscape, which without water would have been pretty frightening, the rocks rose out of the ground like spikes in places, I felt like I could have been traversing a granite wasteland except that it was broken by the bluest cleanest ocean water I have ever seen. The rocks looked menacing, frozen as they were climbing up and out of the ground. I started to climb on them and took as many pictures as I could. It was still very dark so I had a hard time getting shots that weren't blurry but I did manage to get some good ones as the lighting improved. There were fences set up everywhere and signs written in Korean which undoubtedly said "Do NOT Climb!" luckily I don't speak Korean and despite the fact that I will try and learn I will forever use that excuse as a way to circumvent the silly boundaries preventing me from venturing into places I must see.

This was certainly one of those must see places. The sunrise came and went with nothing as a large cloud bank was sitting over the pacific in front of us so I took the time to fence jump and play on the rocks that had been screaming for me to scramble across them. The climbing was excellent. Nature had carved natural foot and handholds into the stones which I took advantage of. It was lucky to that it had because my rainbows probably wouldn't have done so well on sheer rock face. I made my way out onto the largest extension of the shore, it was as if I was tenderly picking my way across the spine of a once mighty sea creature, now long deceased with only its bones remaining, rising twenty some feet out of the water as proof of it's monstrosity. I went up and down the solid backbone of the smooth stone, testing its limits finding new places to go. Paths along the rock opened up to me freely and were I a little braver I could have certainly made it to the furthest edge. I had my camera with my so I climbed to the tallest point took a few pictures and left.

No less exciting was the climb back, I tried new avenues, different from the ones I'd taken before, they proved more challenging but all the more rewarding. Halfway through I had to catch myself. A spider bit me as I reached for the next hand hold and I wrenched my hand away leaving myself supported by only one foot with a 15 foot drop onto the sharp teeth of the earth below me. Reminded again of my mortality and now carrying some kind of stinger in my left pointer finger I took less risks and made it back safely to return to the bus. My finger swelled up a bit but did nothing more, I'm fine now, but I do think I killed the the spider.

We left the beach not soon after I returned. People were disappointed we had not seen the sun but the anxiousness was building, we were almost there! We got to the boat terminal grabbed out things and boarded the ferry. I had the misfortune to be sat next to a very large man who smelled rather funny and seemed to want to talk the whole boat ride there. He was nice enough but I was not in the mood. Luckily I hadn't slept in over 24 hours at this point so I quickly passed out and slept for the entirety of the ferry ride. My oversized seat buddy shook me awake when we reached the harbor at Ulleungdo. We were leaving and I had missed the approaching view of the island, no matter though, I'm on vacation. Slightly groggy Ben, Natalie and I climbed off the ferry and took our first look of a simple little fishing town wedged between the ocean and the towering mountains that make up the island. It was exactly where I wanted to be.

We carried our stuff up to the hotel and got put in our rooms. Ben, Natalie and I were in one room with an Irishman who was also named Patrick. I took my name and he took Paddy but we hardly saw him for most of the trip anyway. We got situated and after exploring a little bit with a new friend Matt, discovering a few goat and an incredible view of a beach we had not seen, we were corralled by the tour guides into four buses on which we would circumnavigate the Island. I was excited, though very tired. From what I had seen the Island was a paradise. The place was clearly dominated by the landscape, mountains rising unhindered from the depths of the ocean, but the people had managed to carve out small niches in the small valleys between the looming volcanic rock. The rock itself was ages old and now much of the surface had degraded into perfect soil for the multitude of plant life flourishing on the slopes. Trees, shrubs, flowers and much more covered the entirety of the Island and we would gt some good views of all of this on our bus tour.

The first stop we made was at turtle rock, a huge extension from the main body of the island that rose hundreds of feet over the water. It's called turtle rock because it looks a lot like a turtle when you look at it right, it took me looking at my pictures a few times to actually get it, but I did. We walked around and climbed a little bit, the tide was going out and had left pools on the edges of the rock which I took some pictures of, but the most impressive part of this entire stop I think was the ocean. I hadn't taken time to stop and look at the water yet as we had been rushed off of the ferry, into our apartment and onto the bus almost immediately, but now I had the chance to. There wasn't anything but flat blue water with the sun reflecting off of it as far as the eye could see.

Now I've been going to the beach all my life, I love it there, but it was not the same as this. The water was different, the air was different, everything, even my sense of place was not at all similar to what I remember it being at Ocean City (MD or NJ) or even Key West. The water was comparable to Florida, crystal clear yes, as it was on the eastern shore of Korea, but even clearer than that. It was almost as if I was looking through blue tinted glasses at the bottom of the sea. I had never seen water so translucent in my entire life, not even in water bottles. I remarked to Yannuzzi that I think I could probably live in that water and never have to come up for air, never, that's how clear it was. It stretched forever too, the water did, and it wasn't that dirty greenish brown water we know and love on the east coast of the US it was all blue, inexplicably blue, it molded itself with the sky so much so that the horizon looked like the joining of two parallel universes, embracing despite their significant differences.

There I was, in the middle of all of this rock, air and water finding it hard to decide to which of these worlds I belonged. I knew which one was right, but I wanted to live in the others so much. I felt like my place could just as easily have been flying around the sky or walking on the bottom of this pristine ocean in stead of standing on the edge of my solid grounded world looking into the two realms of this planet characterized by motion and ever present change. On solid land we live in the same conditions as everyone else; we have gravity, we stand, we walk, we sit. We jump and we come back down, we fall and we get back up, but no matter where we are or what we do we still inhabit the ground. We have engineered planes and boats that carry us through these other realms of sky and water, but they are not made for us anymore than we are for them. Our place is rooted to the earth and forever will be. On Ulleungdo for the first time I though I could live in these two other worlds, I thought that they could be for me, I hoped they could, but they can't, I'm still rooted here in Seoul. I still walk to work everyday, I don't fly, I still teach classes standing near a white board, not angling my way through reefs. I know that this is where I belong, but if for a day I could belong to the sky or the sea, just for one day, I would never complain again.

We were called back to the buses, but I stayed and stared out for a little while longer. It was beautiful, the varied world we live in is truly amazing and there are some places in it that force you to realize this, Ulleungdo's turtle rock proved to be one of them for me. Snooze and I walked back. I was mournfully dry except for my toes, but that was enough for me, for now. We loaded into the buses and passed several more rocks rising out of the sea, each as impressive as the last. There were several tunnels, lion rock, bear rock, each of which I feel are pretty self explanatory and then we reached our second stop. There would be five stops and this on was just a deck from which you could see this entire side of the island. From here you could see part of Elephant rock, the ocean and a really nice view of topography of the island. The ocean fed into the small harbor which sustained the village that climbed up the looming mountain that outstripped the village and soared in its majesty. The mountains really did dominate the island but they were so nice about it I felt. They were ever present and triumphant but people lived at their feet and in the crevasses between their toes and thrived. It was perfect symbiosis and it was a nice departure from Seoul where people have become the dominant ones.

We stayed for twenty minutes there, took a group picture and departed for the next stop. We passed more rocks in the water. The first of these was the rock that nobody cares about, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, very funny. The next few were a trio, the three sisters. Legend has it that these rocks were actually angels who had decided to stay near Ulleungdo because they had found it to be an earthly paradise. All right, at this point I was halfway to declaring the same thing. Next was the sitting man, crocodile rock and a few others. One was actually another miniature island where there was only one farm and a man and his son who lived there, lonely life. We continued on, reached a harbor and then started climbing. The roads were very steep and frankly I was amazed that the bus could actually drive up. The drivers were maniacs, they could probably have driven those buses through hell if they wanted to but luckily it was just a mountain road and we made it to the temple we were headed for soon.

The temple was framed on three sides by mountains one of which had a few holes poked through the top. Our guide told us that these are for the apocalypse. When the world ends God is going to pluck Ulleungdo out of the ocean by hooking his fingers through the four holes. I love the legends this place had. I took some pictures of the relatively new temple and them we continued on to the final stop, the crater.

Ulleungdo had been formed by a now dead volcano and we were headed for the center of it. When we got there we were stunned it looked like the midwest. The island, being dominated by mountains, had no flatland except for the few plots some industrious fisherman had carved out for their homes. Here in the center of the crater was flatland though, enough for rolling farmland surrounded by the rim of what used to be a volcano. We stayed here for a little bit. We got to see an example of old an old Korean farming village which had been built for tourists, drank some pumpkin makali, a rice wine flavored in this case with pumpkin which is very good in my opinion then left. The whole ride took about 5 hours and I was pretty excited still. I surprised myself in that I wasn't tired. I had been awake for almost 40 hours straight at this point but I was still going strong. Ben had passed out on the bus a few times but I was just so excited by this amazing place my energy was feeding off of it.

I'm gonna post this now and stop. There's a lot more to this trip I know it's a lot but this was the best experience I've had in Korea so I think it deserves the time and volume I'm giving it, enjoy.

The two Polar ceilings of Seoul

Okay so I know it's been a little while but this blogging stuff is rough.  I'm so busy with school and having different adventures on the weekends that I hardly ever find myself really wanting to settle down and do this.  Here I am though, four weeks later than I want to be.  Yesterday I wrote on my hand that I would go home and write my blog, but I didn't I was exhausted, I went to sleep instead.  I ran today and now I'm gonna do this while the adrenaline is still pumping.  

            This particular post concerns my trips to the two highest points in Seoul; Namsan Tower, built atop a mountain on the Northern side of the river and the 63 building, built on an Island which hugs the Southern coast of the river.  Both were interesting and allowed me to make some interesting comparisons and observations.  Ben and I went both times, Natalie and Allie came to Namsan, so Ben and I at least have seen all that can be seen from the best bird's eye views of the city.  We went to one at night and one during the day so that gave us two different perspectives on a city so large a million different looks at a million different times couldn't begin to completely perceive it, however both buildings are in the heart of the city so I got to see the inner workings of the Second largest city in the entire world.  Needless to say both were breathtaking, amazing, astonishing, stunning; there is no dearth of adjectives to describe what I saw from the top floors of these buildings so I won't refrain from using as many of them as I can but for this paragraph it will suffice to say that it was really something else.

            I will start with Namsan because we went there first.  Ben and Allie had just arrive that Thursday and despite wanting to go hiking Natalie and I decided that it would probably be a little nicer to not drag our jet lagged friends up a 2,000 meter mountain on their first weekend.  We did decide to go to a mountain though.  One we'd been wanting to go to for a little while if only for the view.  North Seoul Tower or Namsan Tower or if we want to call it by its official name, CJ Seoul Tower, is a space needle-esque tower that sprouts out of the top of Namsan Mountain like a white concrete, symmetrical flower.  During the day it is a light gray testament to the triumph of man over nature.  A cylinder of concrete, steel, and wire rising from the highest point of a mountain forest on which nothing else has been built.  After the sun sets it is a column of ethereal light, bright white against the smog filled black of the starless Seoul night, a new moon which with the help of the smog surpasses the old in the midnight sky.  It is eery, awe-inspiring and ghostly all at the same time. 

            We walked up to it from the subway around 630.  Well, we walked up to the cable car station from which we would ride the rest of the way.  We were trying to catch the sunset from the tower but as we stepped onto the cable car and departed we watched the day's last glimpse of the sun pass behind a cloud, so much for that.  Oh well, we'll be here for another 10 months, there will be other sunsets.  The sun however still put on quite a show in the sky after it had left for the night.  We made it to the top after a ride of about a minute and a half in the stuffy, smelly cables car.  The ride though short was pretty cool, we got to see some of the mountain and a little of the city.  The car had windows on all sides so we could look around a little bit but there were so many people that the only view you ever got was a short one or the one you had staked out the minute you got in, so I looked out the right side of the car the entire trip.  It was still cool though the sky was nice and though you could only see some of the city because of the smog I still got a pretty good look.

            So after almost 2 minutes we stepped out and walked the remaining 100 yards or so to the top of the mountain.  There were lots of people there.  It was a Saturday, but I figured come on, don't they live here?  Do they really have to come and see Namsan Tower when I do?  Of course they do.  No seriously the fact that there were a lot of people there was not a problem.  I broke my camera out and started taking pictures.  The first thing that caught my eye were the flying men soaring around, sitting on air, you know doing the normal things that flying guys do.  There were several wire sculptures of men suspended from cables about 20 feet off of the ground.  They looked like Peter Pan sculptures almost, except probably cooler.  I took a lot of pictures of them which I will post presently.  Around the bottom of the tower you could also walk around and look out over the mountain.  The view was pretty cool, and on the fences keeping people from stepping off into air there were little key-chains, locks and other knick-knacks you could buy and write your name on to show you were there.  Most were couples things so I didn't get one, but maybe I will in the future.  

            The view was spectacular despite the day being somewhat overcast.  Ben noted that on one side of the platform, if you stood about ten feet from the fence and looked at the people looking out it appeared as if they were on the edge of a void looking into nothing because the clouds were so uniformly dull.  It was a little jarring at first but then you walked the remaining ten feet below and the city appeared below, but it still looked like there was no sky, which was strange to say the least.  This was on the eastern side of the tower, on the western side the remaining sunlight had painted the sky pink, orange, purple and the view was phenomenal.  The smog contributes a lot to this as the sun has more dust particles in the air to reflect off of so for once I was thankful for the poor air quality.  As the color brightened and then faded away we watched the lights start to come on in the city.  First came street lights in neighborhoods, then the cars began to turn on the headlights and finally the neon advertisements flickered to life just as the color drained out of the sky.  It was almost dark and we decided that it would be the perfect time to take the elevator to the top of the tower.  

            The ride was short and the elevator was decorated with small lights embedded in the black ceiling in walls that were an attempt at stars.  The attempt was a good one, it looked like someone had dipped a paintbrush in starlight and whipped bright paint drops all over the inside of the elevator, I appreciated it a lot.  It was very high tech and for me typified Seoul and the architecture I had seen so far.  We made to the third floor of the tower, which is as high as you can go unless you're going to the absurdly overpriced restaurants occupying the fourth and fifth floors and stepped out into an observatory wrapped around the frame of the building.  Large windows reaching from the floor to the ceiling gave us a spectacular view of the city, now entirely lit by electricity.  There was no moon that night so the sky itself was pitch black and instead of the stars shining above us, the city glittered below us.  It seemed as if the two had switched places.  I for one was dumbstruck.  The buildings and roads looked as if they were on fire.  They glowed blue, orange, green and red alternately as the neon signs, the streetlights, and the turn signals of the cars changed.  The towering skyscrapers shone bright but the roads winding through them bordered on blinding.  If the city is a living thing than the streets are the veins and the buildings are the organs.  The light runs through the city streets and flows up the sides of the building like blood flowing through the body, underground water through roots into trees.  This was an interesting thought because it forces you to realize that in all this light, technology and splendor, the driving force behind all of it, the lifeblood if you will, are the people perched at the wheel behind those headlights, or laughing with their friends in a cab.  The water giving life to it all are the janitors cleaning the every floor of every office buildings, the man working late into the night on the 47^th story of the 63 building.  The city truly is a living breathing thing and the breath is the people turning on there porch lights to fend off the blackness of the light.  It really is something to see, I mean we’ve conquered it, the world is ours, the night holds no power over us anymore.  We can live at night just as we do during the day and we can glow like the sun, the sun!  We’ve taking bombed out rice paddies and in fifty years turned it into a thriving epicenter of humanity, a testament to our race, and a being of it’s own.  I've never looked at a city like I did that night and if you can’t tell all ready I rejoiced in it to say the least.

            We stayed at the top for about an hour going to different windows and seeing different sparkling metropolitan panoramas stretching out beneath us in all directions.  As much as triumphant as it was it was pretty scary as well.  The city went on forever, you couldn't see the end of it.  From the highest point of Seoul the fringe of the city was beyond the horizon in all directions.  There were mountains interrupting the complete and total dominance of man's industry on the landscape but you knew that even behind these looming dark earthen pyramids there was more. 

            There's a computer game, maybe developed in Korea but I'm not sure, that I believe is called just the blob.  In this game you control a rolling ball of sticky goo that compounds itself as it rolls over things like trash, plants, animals, cars, people and eventually buildings, cities, oceans until you can't roll over anything else and the goo becomes its own planet.  This metaphor isn't as well thought out as my next one but bear with me.  It occurred to me at Namsan Tower that humanity is like that.  We go out into the unknown and mold, bend or break that which we find to suit our own needs then we pack it into our existence and make it a part of our civilization.  As a race we are constantly digesting the things we encounter in such a way that they become part of us.  Trees have become first buildings, then chairs, tables, flooring, paper, and a variety of other things that can no longer be described as trees.  Animals have become shadows of themselves in domestication, stone has become statues, stairways, skyscrapers, paper weights, has been adapted for the benefit of people and everything else humanity has encountered has followed suit.  It's a beautiful thing our capacity to do this but if you think about it through the scope of the blob game it becomes a little more sinister.

            The blob consumes all, to the point where there is nothing left to consume, and the odd thing about the game is that this is the goal, to exhaust everything, to be master over all, to become so large and all encompassing that everything is contained within you.  What then?  I imagine the blob will sit sulking on a hollowed out shell of a planet with nothing to do, no one to keep it company and nothing else to eat.  The enormity of the city made me frightened of that day, of the day when the blob that we are has rolled over everything.  The day I look out from Namsan and know there really is nothing else out there but what I can see, that the beauty, grandeur and ingenuity I saw that night and was so awed by is normal, is everywhere.  It scares me to imagine that I could climb hill after hill and encounter only bright lights interwoven with roads over and over again.

            That being said while the view was frightening it was enormously beautiful.  It was beautiful in the way that a volcano is beautiful.  The city center erupts with light as I believe I've said before and out from that center flows the glowing magma of constant traffic bright against the few dark areas left in the city.  The roads flow ever outward, as unstoppable as molten rock, lighting everything in their path.  Homes are engulfed in the flames the roads carry as are buildings, streetlights.  The road is as insatiable as lava too, they just keep going and have spread the light of the city to places I could no longer see from where I stood at it’s zenith.  The roads, just as lava does on islands, bring new life to the rest of the world.  While Lava comes first with fire, brimstone and death, from the minerals it deposits as it burns develops a soil richer than any found on earth.  The roads are the same, they deposit us, everywhere to the fulfillment of our enterprises, the beginnings of new ones, and the continuing progress we make.

            Our time at the top was coming to a close.  We had to go to our coworker Ben’s housewarming party and so after a few more glimpses of the city we walked back to the elevator and took it down to the tower’s base.  The bottom had changed a lot since we had gone up.  As the city had lit up and come to life so too had the base of Namsan Tower.  The flying men were lit up as was the tower which now rose like a white marble column.  It glowed, and we stared for a while took a picture, turned our backs and left.  The trip had been a sensory overload for me and I was happy to go to Ben’s for a few drinks afterwards.  The tower had been thought provoking but after all that rumination I had to go have beer, the cheese we had at Ben’s was delicious too.  We rolled on to the club afterwards, picking up more and more as we left.

Next up: the 63 building.

Seoul Tower 63 building et all (73 photos), by Patrick Douville

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

The funniest thing happened the other day.  Ben, Jeremy and I were sitting outside of shamrock, a little convenient store that we go to sometimes after work, having a beer.  We had just sat down and were talking about what prize we were going to try and get from the Laser Target machine, a horrible horrible creation that is very good at sucking away our money.  Ben had bought an ice cream cone that he was happily eating and Jeremy and I are cracking open our first beer.  Ben is talking about how great the ice cream is:

"Man this really hits the spot.  I needed this man I love ice cream.  Who would've thought that Koreans can make good prepackaged ice cream cones just as well as westerners?"  He takes another bite and chews away contentedly for a few seconds when out of nowhere this big Korean guy runs up, snatches the ice cream out of Ben's hand, takes a bite and starts running away.  

Stunned, we all watch him take a few steps away before I yell, "Hey! What the hell man?"

At this the guy rumbles to a halt, turns around, meekly comes back and hands me the ice cream cone.  Then he turns back around and books it down the street.  The three of us are left sitting there as confused as we've ever been.  I'm watching a half eaten ice cream cone melting in my hand and I realize it's not mine.  I hand it sheepishly to Ben.  We sit and we stare at it for a few seconds before Jeremy and I start cracking up,

"What the **** was that all about?"  We're all laughing at this point even Ben;

"What?  I mean what?" says Ben, "Man, that cone was so good to, I can't eat it now, but . . . aw goddamit"  One of the workers at the restaurant next door to Shamrock comes out;

"Did you see that man?  That was nuts"  He nods an affirmative and makes the crazy sign, twisting his finger in a circle around his ear.  That explains it I guess but all in all, it was a pretty ridiculous happening that I will say would have made my day had the three of us not won the really sweet remote control car we did from that Laser Target game about , awesome.  What amazing way to start a thursday night. 

Some of my kids (49 photos), by Patrick Douville

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.