Life in Korea

Today is Thursday the 24^th of May.  The Queen’s birthday and Buddha’s are almost together this year.  Jay is doing his home workout, and I’m at the laptop, after sitting on the deck enjoying a fruit salad, coffee and peanut butter on some tasty flat puffed rice things that I bought after a walk on the hill the other day.  One of my favorite pastimes when I’m at the apartment is to sit on the deck that overlooks the street and watch the action of people’s daily lives.  When Jay leaves for school, I’m going to go out and walk all over the neighborhood, much farther afield than I have ventured up to now.  My main aim is to find a birthday present for my mom’s 91^st on June 7.  Mom and Dad’s 70^th anniversary is on June 20^th, so I might try to find something for the two of them.  I will modify the Korean custom of having matching outfits for the honeymoon by buying them similar pants and tops in the style of the old Korean people I see on Jay’s street, not that these couples wear matching outfits, in fact at that age there are very few men, so I might have trouble finding something for dad.  Jay says that in Korea, as elsewhere, men die younger than women.  But here it is even younger because they still smoke and drink a lot more than women do.  You hardly ever see women smoking in public here, certainly not while walking around.  It seems that men go out partying a lot together, often after work.  Women run the house and look after the kids for many years, but when that job is done, they get a bubble perm, start gathering in groups, hiking, etc. and carry on relatively freely for much longer than their partners.  Another thing I’ve noticed is that retired people seem to take on community maintenance tasks, picking up and generally tidying the neighborhood.  Jay’s neighborhood is really clean and well treed.  The whole of Incheon seems to have been planned to provide wide streets as well as sidewalks and bike lanes.  Even the main thoroughfares are lined with hedges and trees so that they are usually shaded whenever you walk down them, not like Highway 97 or 27^th Street in Vernon and Carling Ave. in Ottawa.

It’s Friday morning now, and I’m in a coffee shop near Jay’s.  It has an English name, Angel in Us.  Whenever you see English on t-shirts or signs, it’s usually ‘Konglish’, some enigmatic mix of words that may be meaningless or oddly cute or worse.  I ordered a Dutch Americano, which I am at pains to distinguish from an ordinary Americano, but it cost more, 5,500 won, about $5.25 Canadian and it’s just a black coffee.  I had to ask for milk because they don’t have the stations they have in Canadian coffee shops with everything from cream to cinnamon.  Things are more expensive in Korea than Canada.  I was unable to find anything that was reasonably priced and interesting for mom and dad yesterday, so I think I will buy their gifts at home.  I came to this shop at 9:00am so that I could Skype mom and dad because Jay’s Wi-Fi is down.  I had e-mailed Bert and Peggy to ask them to phone them but then I got the idea this morning that I could Skype from Angel in Us.  It worked, but as I didn’t want to talk loudly for long and as mom and dad don’t hear me unless I do, we had a short conversation.  Here are some pictures of life in Incheon:

A bar not far from Jay's with a name that is as close to my name as you can get in Korean.  May told me that it means 'cheers' in Korean.

One of the many soju and beer bars in the Seoul/Incheon area that has a German/Swiss/Canadian facade.  If you click on the picture, you will see the moose head more clearly.

A retired volunteer cleaning up the area outside Jay's apartment

These grandmas are walking together, although at first glance you might not think so.  They went around the block a few times in this formation.

Jay and the girls relaxing on Sunday morning

May rarely relaxes.  Here she's running back to the kitchen with a bowl of rice from the rice maker that is always warm  in the back porch.

Here's an enigmatic sign in 'Konglish'.  It's the name of an ordinary corner store,'Gag Story Mart'.  Jay says that Koreans always say gag for joke in English and that everything is a 'story'; the word is stuck on to any other word for no apparent reason.  

Tuesday, May 22

Monday I went shopping in the area around the Incheon Bus Terminal subway stop where May had told me to go in search of gifts for Jay’s bosses who have gone beyond the call of duty to show me the sights of the area and treat me to ferry rides and lunches.  Korea has long established practices in many areas that are strange to a Canadian, and one of them is the purchase of ‘gift sets’ as a thank you.  May said that I would find them in the big Shinsaegae and Lotte department stores near the station.  They are baskets and boxes of fruits and things packaged in a very fancy way.  Jay suggested that the guys might prefer a bottle of liquor and a box of oranges from Jeju Island, and that’s probably what they’ll get because I’m such an unpracticed shopper that I wandered around the stores for hours and saw nothing except some funny little Korean socks that I bought as gifts for my friends.  I don’t think anywhere else in the world has such silly socks as Korea; I really like them. 

Today was more successful, although it almost failed too.  I followed my ‘Rough Guide’ on the subway to the far north of Seoul again, an hour and a half to the stop where I caught a bus.  All went well until I got off the bus and discovered that my idea of 100 meters and the ‘Rough Guide’s are different.  I almost gave up after looking around, jumping to the conclusion that the bus had left me in the wrong spot and asking 2 taxi drivers for help, but they didn’t understand a word I said.  Fortunately I then asked a bus driver who pointed me further up the road, a distance that I won’t even try to estimate since it’s clear that I have no idea how far 100 meters are.  Some people might find this fodder for jokes, including the group of ajjashi, men of about my age, that I met on the hike.  The walk up Mount Bugaksan along the Seoul Fortress Wall is more of a stair climb.  In my weakened condition, it wore me out in record time.  I stopped at one of the shady rest spots to drink some water and eat some of the apple and cheese I had brought with me.  That’s when I met the group of ajjashi.  One started to talk to me in English that he said he had learned in the military but forgotten.  It was true he didn’t speak much, but he discovered that I was Canadian and that I had come all the way from Incheon by subway and bus.  The latter fact shocked him a bit.  Then he got down to a very common early question in Korea; “How old are you?”  I could answer that in Korean, and then one of the other men finally piped up in English; “ He sixty two.”  Then he looked at me and said what I think was; “ You good body.”  Out of the blue I responded; “New bra.”  It  surprised me that I had said that, but I was convinced that they hadn’t understood until I heard as they continued along the trail the last man who had spoken English to me say something and all the others roar with laughter.  I carried on to the top and along the wall looking out over Seoul until I thought I’d better return the way I had come because although I knew that the Fortress Trail carries on in a circle around Seoul linking all the hills, I didn’t want to go down farther and then have to climb back up or to end up in a part of the city that I didn’t know.  Near the gate I saw a deer.  Unlike the ones at home, it was full size but still spotted.  On the long subway ride home I was dehydrated and weak until I bought a bottle of barley tea and felt much better.  As nobody is permitted to take pictures on Bugaksan because of its strategic location above the Blue House, Korea's equivalent of the US White House, I include more shots of Buddha.

Jay with one of the many Buddahs at the temple on the hill near his apartment.  In the distance you can just see the tall buildings of Song-do, the newly reclaimed area of Incheon where Jay's school is located.

A ceiling of lanterns and another Buddha at the same temple

A worker touches up the paint on a small statue in preparation for the birthday this Saturday.

Saturday, May 26 is Buddha’s birthday and we will be visiting Seoraksan National Park that weekend, so this Saturday, Ines, May’s brother’s Korean girlfriend suggested that we should go to Seoul to see the light show and parade that is held there on the weekend before the big day.  Again we had a relaxing morning and took the subway into Seoul in the afternoon.  Thanks to cell phones, we met Ines in the confusion of the right station and walked to the cable car that takes you up to the top of Namsan Park, the first stop on the day’s tour.  More texts and calls brought Frank into our company, and we all got on the cable car.  Fortunately Jay and I had decided to get tickets up only and walk down because actually walking up and down would have been best but the girls probably would have moaned about it and we knew that we would be walking their legs off as the afternoon’s activities carried on into the night.  The views of Seoul both from the car and the top of the hill were spectacular in spite of the haze that made the distance milky and the surrounding mountains opaque.  The other highlight at the top, although it launched Jay on a rant about superficiality, is an absolutely breath-taking number of locks left by lovers as some odd outward and visible sign of their deep attachment to each other.  They are hooked to six or eight Christmas Tree shaped structures, each about six feet high, and also along meters of fencing that runs around the viewing area.  There are so many that they block the view for short people and are starting to bend the top of the barrier.   I read later that the same thing is done near a Tower in Tokyo; locks are left and the keys thrown away.  Some Koreans seem to have copied the idea on a visit to Namsan Park lookout and the fad took off in a big way.  Vendors at the base of the hill now do a roaring business selling locks to pairs of locals and tourists alike.  The popularity of this copied practice is doubly strange given the Koreans’ deep hate for the Japanese. The walk down was shady and pleasant and followed by a lot more walking before we reached the area where the light show and parade were going to be.

By about 7:30 we were gathered again in a restaurant around two tables with charcoal heaters in the center burning meat, as Jay describes these dinners, and drinking soju and beer.  Delicious!  The parade was good and the subway ride long.  We didn’t get home until midnight.  The girls and I went directly to bed, and they didn’t rise until noon on Sunday.   I walked to the top of the hill behind Jay’s on Sunday, puffing and perspiring in my weakened state.  I think I’m getting better but I don’t have the energy I did when I arrived.  Half way up I took a side path to the Buddhist temple to see if they were decorating for the big day, and they were.   

Seoul and the Han River from the top of Namsan Park

Another view of Seoul 

Lovers taking their photo in front of the wall of locks.

One of the many Buddhas at the parade in Seoul

A particularly luminous elephant at the parade

One monk and a lot of Ajamas with strawberry lanterns at the parade

Thurs., May 17, 2012

On Thursday I rose from my nest and took the subway to Seoul again.  I feel right at home on the system now, in fact I can navigate it better than I can the streets above ground.  Once I’m looking down at the ordered, colored, geometric lines on my ‘Rough Guide’ metro map and up at the clearly lit station names in the centre of each car, I feel I know what I’m doing.  Out on the streets I get lost after two turns, so many small shops, stalls, lights and people. It makes me think of the old song, “ He may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Boston…”  I may ride forever ‘neath the streets of Seoul/Incheon.  Aside from being clear, the metro is clean.  The toilets at every stop are spotless.  The paper is centrally located; you take some and choose whether you want to squat or sit.  The door of each cubicle is clearly marked with a picture showing either an ordinary toilet or a kind of horizontal urinal.  I don’t know whether you’re supposed to base your choice on what you have to do or what position you prefer to assume, but I usually choose the sitter.

This time in Seoul I visited Changdeokgung, the palace that the ‘Rough Guide’ refers to as, ‘the choice of palace connoisseurs.’  I bought the deluxe ticket that included access to the secret garden, which is no longer a secret but is wonderful to walk around, shady and quiet except when the people protesting on the main street get into high gear, beating drums and singing loudly, some into microphones.  I spent a lot of time inside the palace gates, wandering in and around buildings and gardens and looking for the enormous mulberry tree left from the days of the emperor whose wife tried to encourage the people to practice sericulture by setting an example of doing a bit herself.  I never did find it.  If I had taken the guided tour, it would have been pointed out, but I prefer to go on my own and have the illusion of discovering things that in fact millions of people visit each year.  As I returned to the metro, I passed the demonstration that had disturbed the peace of the secret garden.  There were more police than protesters, but the drums, loud chants and songs made the latter seem quite formidable.  I have no idea what it was all about, but Jay’s friend said that there has been discontent over housing costs in Seoul lately and as it was in front of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, perhaps it was related to that.  It’s strange being in a place where you have no idea what’s happening around you.  Jay and I both read the news on our computers daily, so if the world is involved, we might know, but locally, I’m clueless about the issues.

Friday, after spending some time with Jay in the morning, I took a taxi to Incheon’s Chinatown.  It was a long drive but only cost 12,000 won, about $11.00.  Incheon is a huge city and yet it’s small compared to Seoul.  Chinatown is near the port area, where MacArthur landed in Sept., 1950 during the Korean War.  In a nearby park, Jayu Park, there’s a statue of him and an acknowledgement of his contribution to South Korean history, even though there are many here and elsewhere who justifiably find fault with his readiness to use nuclear weapons on the peninsula and with some of his other less admirable contributions.  I spent about five hours wandering around the park and Chinatown.  I visited the Museum of Korean and Chinese Culture, which had some exceptionally fine pottery and china and ended with a ten-minute tour of a noodle museum.  It commemorates the specific Chinese noodle that was hand made in the area and kept the ‘coolies’ who built the port in the late 1800s alive.  I arrived at ten to six and it closed at six, but that was about enough time to dedicate to looking at noodles.  Eating them is another matter.  

A flower on a tree in the secret garden

One of the many buildings in the palace complex

Gargoyles on the roof of the palace

Loud protesters in front of the Ministry of Health and Welfare

A weird guy walking by the protest.  I thought he might be carrying a bomb in the briefcase.  Was he wearing a mask against the sun, the pollution, to protect others from his germs or for some more sinister reason????

The gates of Incheon's Chinatown

I took this picture in Jayu Park to show Micheline and Cathy Van de Vyvere a Korean chicken and turkey.  This was a large, very well-kept enclosure with all sorts of birds in it.

This giant pipe made me think of Albert.  There were older men all over Jayu Park playing this game.

Jayu park had more pansies than I have ever seen together before, all colours and sizes.  Many gardeners were still at work planting more of them as well as other flowers.  One of the best plots had different coloured pansies and Icelandic poppies together.  Unfortunately, my picture of that did not turn out.

This man in Chinatown is sticking pork and vegetable buns to the side of a clay oven to cook.  They are delicious.  

Me outside the Museum of Korean and Chinese Culture

Jay's school

Today is Wednesday and the market stalls were being set up across the street when I first went out on the porch this morning.  This cold has worn me out to such an extent that I am content to either lie in bed or sit on the porch and do nothing but entertain the odd vague thought that passes through my mind.  This morning it was about old women and how they seem to get bent differently with age in different countries.  At home osteoporosis usually effects women’s necks and they get a kind of hump high on their backs, but here in Korea I’ve noticed that old women often have either bowed legs or lean forward from the bottom of their spines, their whole back approaching the horizontal.  I haven’t any idea what leads to the bowed legs; Korea has hardly any horses.  But this morning as I watched a grandma cross the street to the market pushing an empty kids’ stroller, bum in the air and back almost parallel with the road, I began to idly entertain a theory.  She seemed to know one of the women selling vegetables, so she pushed the stroller right under the canvas roof and then crouched beside it for a conversation.  I noticed that in the squatting position she looked completely normal, like the many other women I see every day in the community gardens or selling things on the street.  I can only imagine that they squat at home too.  They seem perfectly comfortable in this position, but it strikes me that it does damage over time.  Now that I think of it, it might lead to the bowed legs too because who knows what effect having your knees bent much of the time and your body leaning forward between them might have.  After the chat she rose about a foot and a half and started checking the vegetables.  This position appeared painful, but it didn’t deter her from closely examining each pile of kimchee cabbage and every bunch of onions and leeks before making her choice, putting them in her stroller and pushing her labored way back home.

Yesterday Dave and Jo picked up Jay and me at the apartment.  We drove with them to the outskirts on Incheon, a beautiful area with bright green hills and gardens on every flat piece of land, where we went to a restaurant that specializes in ‘samgye-tang’.  It’s a whole free-range chicken cooked for a long time in a pottery dish.  The chicken is stuffed with uncooked rice, chestnuts, ginseng and some kind of fruit that looks a bit like a small prune.  Once cooked, it is cut down the centre of the breast with scissors, the Koreans use scissors a lot for cutting meat, and served with spicy side dishes of kimchee, marinated mushrooms, hot peppers and many more.  It was delicious and perfect for a person with a cold.  The dessert was sliced oranges and the ever-present small cup of sweet coffee that I am becoming addicted to.  After that we drove to the Song-do area where Jay’s school is.  We took a small ferry all around a man-made canal that is part of the whole reclaimed area.  Song-do has been reclaimed from the sea since 2005.  It’s a vast area that was planned as an upscale business and residential location.  Many of the buildings are tall and very well designed and much of it is in use now, but there has not been the rush to establish businesses there that the planners had counted on; much of it is unoccupied or unfinished.  They still hope it will take off soon, especially as the Asian Games will be held in Incheon in 2014.  From there we went to the school, and I sat in on one of Jay’s classes.  He was disappointed because it was supposed to be the class in which he began reading Alice in Wonderland but the books weren’t in so he had to fill the time with a exercise book that he doesn’t like.  I know what it’s like to have to switch lesson plans at the last minute and I thought he did well.  He’s lively at the front of a group of kids and made the most of what could have been a dull exercise.  I’m going to go back next Thursday.

Andy took me to the clinic right next to the school, and I saw a doctor quickly.  Right from the outset I knew the visit was not going to be a great success.  The doctor gave me a look that I interpreted as suggesting that I was the cause of my cold.  Andy’s translation of what he said confirmed my suspicions.  He suggested that I was not properly dressed for the weather.  Just my luck, I usually wear clothes and shoes that are sensible to a fault, but for this special lunch and visit I had chosen one of my best blouses.  It’s rather light and décolleté, but it had been sunny when we left Jay’s.  However, closer to the sea it was cooler, misty and there was a bit of a wind.  So I don’t know how seriously the doctor took my complaints.  He sprayed a little something up each nostril and down my throat, gave my back some perfunctory taps and had me breath in and out as he held a stethoscope to my back.  Then he gave me a prescription for some pills, which I had filled at the pharmacy next door.  I take them after breakfast, lunch and dinner for three days and should expect a miracle but don’t.  I’m sleeping a lot, drinking water and doing very little.  Tomorrow I’m going to go into Seoul because the palace that I most want to see is open for self-guided tours on that day only.  

Jay and me on the ferry in Song-do

Andy, Dave, me and Jay on the ferry.  You can see some of the tall new buildings in the mist in the background

These big, ugly, bronze boys are peeing into the canal.  They make the little Belgian boy seem downright descent.

Jay's school, Paradigm Prep Institute, is on the third floor.

Saturday in Seoul was fun.  We didn’t rush, had a good breakfast and boarded the subway around noon.  After about an hour, we got out at Insadong and spent the whole day walking up and down streets lined with vendors and galleries.  May knows how to pick good stalls for street snacks, so I was able to try some very tasty things.  She and the girls did a bit of shopping while I as usual just looked on.  Then we went to an area with narrow old streets that had some of the few houses from the past that still remain in Seoul.  Like much of Korea, the successful push to modernize since 1953 has meant the leveling of many old buildings.  Seoul is a mad house compared to Incheon, but this area was relatively quiet and uncrowded and lined by high, stone walls covered in ivy.  From there we walked to a palace site and toured the grounds.  At this point Jay and Frank began the cell phone calling and texting that finally led to the latter’s meeting us at the front gate of the palace about half an hour later.  By this time it was dusk.  We walked into an area of busy streets, bars, neon lights that rise up 8 or 10 stories and innumerable restaurants.  We were in search of a Korean barbecue place.  We found a good one and enjoyed a slow meal, cooking the beef and pork, drinking soju and beer and talking.  Frank is a friend of Jay’s from high school who is married to a Korean and living in Incheon; it was good to see him after all these years and changes.  We didn’t get home until after 11, by which time I was exhausted and the cold that hadn’t really bothered me up until then hit me.  I coughed all night and stayed in bed on Sunday.  Today I only left the house to buy ingredients for a chicken soup from a great little grocery and meat market down the street from Jay’s place.  May had made chicken soup on Sunday, but we ate it all and now it was all I wanted.  The girls and I just ate some of mine for our dinner. I was glad they liked it because some kids are pretty picky and I think Min-Hee is among those but she loves all soups.  Jay just called from work to say that he and Dave are having a bit of trouble organizing our trip to the DMZ for Saturday.  It appears that the tour we wanted isn’t available on Saturdays unless we get to the Marriott Hotel in Seoul by 7:00am for the only departure.  As that would mean rising at 5 and taking a one- hour subway ride, we decided against it.  We will take a less complete but much more manageable tour that leaves at either 10:00am or noon.

Tomorrow I’m going to go to Jay’s school to meet some of his students.  His boss has invited us to lunch and then Jay will take me to a clinic that is in the same complex as the school.  I’m not keen of the use of antibiotics but I think I need to bring out the heavy artillery before we visit the DMZ.

Shopping in Seoul

Sightseeing in Seoul

Two things you see everywhere in Korea are hills and these crazy cartoon characters

A group of ajjushi having their picture taken.  Jay loves the way men and women of a certain age travel in packs in Korea

The old and the new in downtown Seoul

The street where we found the barbecue restaurant

A sign inside a women's washroom in Seoul.  Jay said that in many areas of Seoul and Incheon you are asked not even to put toilet paper down the toilet. As it is not considered proper to have bare feet even in sandals, women often wear knee-high nylons and get runs in them, so I guess they have to be warned against throwing them down the toilet.  It reminded me of the signs on boxes in our church in the fifties saying, "If your nylons run, let them run to Korea."  Maybe they put them down toilets and permanently ruined the system. 

Alone in Seoul

By focusing like a laser beam on the Seoul subway map in my ‘Rough Guide to Korea’ and on the signs in the subway stations, listening to the English part of the trilingual directions piped into each car, standing in the middle of the traffic zone in the stations staring at my Guide until someone asked if I needed help and taking 21/2 hours, I managed to get from Jay’s place in Incheon to Gupabal station, one of the northern most stops on the vast Seoul subway network.  From there it was a short bus ride to the entrance to Bukhansan National Park, which is, next to Jay’s apartment, one of the main places I wanted to visit while in Korea.  Jay had bought me a subway pass, so I felt as free to fly as a kid with a new bike until I entered the Dongchun metro stop in Incheon.  Then all the reservations I had had when thinking about my first foray alone in Korea came down on me.  I always talk a good fight, but as soon as the action starts, I freeze.  The only thing that keeps me moving forward is the fear of having to face the hollowness of my own words.  For a woman who’s been retired for almost five years, this venture demanded much more concentration than I’m used to exerting on any matter.  I was helped twice by people who really knew what they were talking about and spoke English quite well and once by a man who hardly spoke English at all and pointed me in a direction that even I knew was wrong.

 I left Jay’s at 10:00am and was starting up the path to Baekundae, the highest peak in Bukhansan Park, by just after 1:00pm.  The trail was wide and well used.  Some sections were beautifully tiled with big stones that you could see from the drill holes in them had been blasted out to make the route.  Other parts were dry dirt, sometimes with steps made of logs the size of railway ties, sometimes with real metal stairs and sometimes with something I have only seen in Korea but which is quite common here, very heavy rubber matting.  The latter is used on moderate slopes and is especially helpful when descending, especially if it’s wet, I imagine.  The combination of stress and elation had tired me out even before I began the hike, so I went at a slow pace, took pictures and enjoyed finally being at Bukhansan.  There were not a lot of people on the trail by Korean standards, but I was rarely alone.  I can understand why they say that hiking is the Korean national sport.  If the whole country is like Seoul and Incheon, there are hills and mountains at regular intervals so that from almost anywhere you can walk, bike or take a bus or subway to a place to trek.  And Koreans do just that.  They are usually dressed in the latest gear, but there’s something in the way they hike in groups, talking and laughing, that makes it appear to be as natural as a stroll down the street.  The men huff and puff on the long uphill sections and stop at times on the flats to do some weird fast-paced arm and leg jerks, but the women just seem to carry on, perhaps a bit more slowly uphill but not talking less.  They seem very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, as if to say, “This is what we do.”  In Bukhansan the trail often parallels a stream that flows over enormous rocks; many people stop to picnic on them.  On this first visit I only went as far as the Buddhist Temple at Yaksuam.  If I had looked at the guide, I would have discovered that I was really close to the top, but I didn’t.  I wanted to make sure that I got back to the bus stop before dark because I didn’t want to have to navigate back to Incheon in the dark.  I reached Jay’s neighborhood around 8:00pm, had a delicious soup in a small restaurant full of Korean families and was home by 9:15.  Jay and May work late most nights, so the girls were there with their friends raising a little hell, which my presence put an end to.    The girls have best friends, sisters, who live across the hall.  It’s a perfect pairing because these neighbors are Koreans who can help Min-Hee and Jin-Hee with their homework as they make the difficult transition back to the rigorous Korean education system.  Usually they do their homework first and then play.  May cooks a lot on Sundays and the girls eat it through the week, along with a bit of junk food. 

We’re going to take the subway into Seoul as a family on Saturday to see a few sites and meet Frank, a friend of Jay’s from Gatineau who lives there with his Korean wife, for a Korean  barbecue dinner.

The first hill at Bukhansan, many of the others are craggier

Near the beginning of the trail, a gate left from the fortress wall of Seoul

A part of the path tiled with big stones

Little figures, mostly buddhas but some Hindu gods and elephants and even an Irish leprechaun and a broken china pony left in cracks in the rocks near the temple

Yaksuam, a hermitage just off the path

A detail of the turtle

All of Korea's national treasures are numbered. This turtle at Yaksuam was the first I had seen.  It's number 611, so I have a lot to see on either side.

A beautiful bush and an apparently random pile of small rocks near the hermitage at Bukhansan.  I've since seen such piles at a temple on the hill near Jay's apartment.  It appears as if they are created as worshippers each pile one stone upon the others when they visit.

A well on the path where you can fill your water bottle with good cold water

Children's Day, etc.

Children’s Day was a family happening.  May rose early, as she always does, and prepared a wonderful picnic lunch.  She’s a very good cook.  All went well, a nice quiet morning.  Then, just before we were to head to the stadium to meet a friend and her baby and enjoy the day, the girls had a fight.  We almost didn’t leave the house, but time and some tense negotiations settled them down and thanks to cell phones, we were able to renegotiate the time of meeting at the subway station.  When we finally got to the enormous stadium where the event was to take place, Jay was starving.  We set down our picnic blankets with the rest of the Koreans on whatever shaded patch of grass/sand we could find at the entrance.  After a great lunch, we were fueled for a walk.  There was a baseball game playing the whole time and the noise of the cheering fans was the loudest I’ve ever heard.  We walked around the baseball stadium and up a hill to a beautiful park area that overlooked a huge soccer stadium and track; it was almost deserted.  Koreans don’t like to be alone.  We spent quite a bit of time there just relaxing.  We then walked back by a different route.  We passed the largest climbing wall set up I’ve ever seen and some crazy kids’ games and then went back to the subway.  At this point I became aware of the most essential part of Children’s Day, presents for the kids.  In Korea, it’s bigger than Christmas for that.  This gave rise to the second bit of sibling difficulty.  It was finally settled, not to everyone’s satisfaction, with Jin-Hee getting roller blades and Min-Hee a promise of something she really wanted another time.  I haven’t been living with two young girls since I spent the month of February last year in Hawaii with the Pollack/Shepherd gang.  The level of energy is quite something.  It’s wonderfully invigorating, but I think that one month a year might be enough to keep my batteries charged.  I’m enjoying living with Jay and May, though, because their routines and those of the girls are mixed up, which mean that I have time alone with each and with all together.  I also have a few hours alone every day when I can walk in the hills nearby and read and write. 

Jay and I spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with his boss and his wife and a friend from work.  We drove south and west of Incheon, along the coast to a peninsula, actually an island separated from the mainland by a bridge, to a small fishing village called Anmyeondo.  Dave, Jay’s boss had rented a suite in a cottage-like pension.  It was beautiful and spacious.  The first night we spent on the beach, walking way out because the tide was out.  The moon was full and bright orange.  The next day we visited the harbor and the huge fish market and had a seafood feast for lunch.  We had bought groceries and barbecued both nights on the deck outside our suite.  We also went to a go-cart place where all but I had a wild time.  Jay’s crazy colleague from Chicago took a corner at full throttle and flew off the track into the field.  Fortunately she was fine, but she gave us all a scare, especially the guy who ran the place.  We followed this with a quieter venue, chosen with me in mind, a tulip festival.  It was well worth the trip.

Before the girls get home, I’m going to go for a walk past the community gardens that fill every spare patch of earth around the mountain and then up the mountain.  I’m going to take the girls to dinner if they want to go because Jay and May both work late today.  

Min-Hee, May, Jin-Hee and Jay in the subway going to Children's Day at the stadium

The same gang with the Irish friend Nathalie and her baby, unfortunately hidden behind a toy, at the stadium

The well dressed Go-Cart manager with Laurie, Dave and Jay

Jay on the track

The fishing port on the West Sea

Some of the thousands of fish for sale

Laurie, Dave, Jo and Jay at the tulip festival

Posing in the rapeseed, or as it's now known, canola.  This wonderful plant lined the roads in the area where we were and gave off a delicate scent that permeated the air we drove through

The Wednesday market as seen from Jay's balcony

Pottery birds on bamboo poles in an area near Jay's apartment at the base of the mountain, where the community gardens are.  They are part of a much larger display that surrounds a pottery studio.