Ready for winter, I hope.

Winter is coming to a place near you if you are in a place like Vernon.  There was frost on the grass this morning when I left the house to meet Lusia for a swim at the rec. centre.  I was happy to spend the first 20 minutes in the sauna.  That’s what I really go for.  Then I swim a bit and have a steam bath.  Lusia and I turn the shower room into a jimhillbong scrub house, rubbing our skin with rough gloves and then we go for a good strong coffee.  Not a bad way to spend a chilly fall morning. 

I’m almost ready for winter, big winter quilt on the bed, warm winter clothes in the cupboard and the yard weeded and fertilized.  I have appointments for winter tune ups of the furnace, fireplace and car as well as a doctor’s appointment for me, so by the end of next week I will be ready to take off again at a moment’s notice. Mom and dad sounded desperate last Monday when we talked on the phone but by Thursday after mom’s doctors’ appointments they were relieved and in better spirits.  I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

I missed the salmon run on the Adams River when I first got to Vernon.  It’s a four-year cycle, so this year was another big run.  I went with Mo and her friends to catch one of the last days.  It was impressive, but as many of the fish had already finished their mating and died, the shore was littered with what was left of them, almost as numerous as leaves and they stank.  The Sunday hike in Kal Park was the last one of the season; we saw snow on the distant hills.  We have a last Ramble tomorrow and bike ride on Thursday. The next outing will be to Sovereign Lake or Silver Star to ski.  On Sat. we “fall back”, so I will be rising at 6am to Skype with Jay on Monday.  The seasons turn.

Happy Hallowe’en. 

Jay and me posing as hollow-cheeked celebs

Salmon mating on the Adams River

An enthusiastic biologist explaining salmon anatomy

Wandering over the grassy hills of Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

I’m back to Vernon and the VOC.  At least I’m here in body but my heart is still in Incheon and heaven knows where my head is.  In spite of trying to impose a regular routine on myself, I’m still getting up before 6:00am and feeling muzzy most of the day.  Today I will go on the VOC ramble at 10:00am and see if I can walk the crazies out.  Before leaving for Korea, I programmed the VCR to record the Ken Burns series on three members of the Roosevelt family, Teddy, Eleanor and Franklin.  It was so long that it filled the system, so I have had to watch it right away, which hasn’t been difficult as I am too spaced out to do much more.  The first programs are mostly about Teddy, an asthmatic, hyperactive, depressive complex character.  His father imbued him with a belief in the necessity and virtue of an active life.   Teddy himself once commented,  “Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.”  As my cares are minor compared to his, I shouldn’t need a horse to outpace them, a brisk hike with friends should do. 

I spent my last week in Korea going to a market in Seoul to buy small gifts for friends, visiting the Blue Ocean jimjillbong for the last time, doing my slow yoga in the mornings while Jay and May did their much more strenuous routines, eating May’s tasty, healthy Filipino lunches, watching at least one episode a night of  “Game of Thrones” with Jay, riding the bike around Song do and returning to Bukhansan National Park on the outskirts of Seoul for one last hike.  The latter turned out to be an over ten-hour excursion, extreme BMW (bus, metro, walk).  I left Jay’s just after 9:00am, spent 1hr. 38min. on the subway (according to the subway app. Jay downloaded for me), took a bus for about forty minutes and finally walked into the park.  I had to walk through the high-end, Whistler-like village at the base of the hill and up a paved road to the parking lot before I was faced with the choice of trails.  When I stood at that point on my first visit to Korea I chose a rather long hike past some temples to a palace, but this time I decided to at least begin on the steeper trail to a summit.  It was under 5km. long but mostly uphill.  The path was well worked through rocks that at times were arranged almost like steps.  There were brilliant red maples at some points and the weather was perfect.  Of course there were other people, but not too many.  I kept urging myself to continue by thinking that I only had to go as far as I wanted to, but as always happens, I got used to going up after about 10 min. and never really contemplated not getting to the top.  I kept a slow and steady pace, let some gung ho young men run past me and  settled in behind a Korean man of about my age for a while.  We shared smiles but very few words.  Near the top it got a bit challenging because the rock face was quite steep, flat and worn smooth by so many hikers’ boots passing over it.  But there were some grooves chipped into it and wire ropes to cling to.  From the top, the view of Seoul below was magnificent. 

I finished Alice Munro’s Dear Life in Korea.  Her mastery of language and perception of people and life is a wonder to me.  I found these stories to be her most complex studies of the human condition so far.  I puzzled over them, but one thing is clear, her wording is spare and masterfully apt.  The title comes up at the very end, and as usual she takes an expression that is so common it’s clichéd and makes it explode with significance. 

Perhaps that daughter, grown and distant, was the one she

was looking for in the baby carriage.  Just after my mother

had grabbed me up, as she said, for dear life.

I have used that expression, ‘for dear life’ a million times without thinking about it.  We run for dear life and hold on for dear life, but never before had I realized its possibilities for interpretation.  Life is ‘dear’, much loved and costly and mostly beyond our control.  We reach for and hold on to what we can, and it’s only the effort that counts because we rarely know what the right thing is.  She ends the book with the words:

                        We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven, or that we

                        will never forgive ourselves.  But we do- we do it all the time

And now I will spend the last year alone in this house in Vernon before Jay and his family join me and we see what the future holds and continue to learn by going where we have to go. 

A portion of a temple at Bukhansan

Part of the path up the hill at Bukhansan

Two of the peaks at Bukhansan, the near one is the one you hike and the far one is for climbers

Me at the top, with part of Seoul in the background

Happy Thanksgiving

Even May has to agree that the weather in Incheon this past week was good, warm and dry with some wind but not too much.  I would say it was perfect, but she won’t go that far; she really likes heat.  It continues to be fine today, but I am taking a break from outdoor activity.

Last Tuesday I finally took the Seoul City Bus Tour.  I enjoyed it except for the 15 minutes when the bus I was on had some problem with the intercom system that meant we were subjected to a buzz that at times intensified to earsplitting.  Fortunately, you can get off at any of the many viewing spots and pick up another bus every 30 minutes.  Needless to say that bus emptied at the next one, the War Museum.  I spent quite a bit of time there.  The grounds were huge and full of statues and old war machines.  Half the school children in Seoul were on class outings, screaming and climbing on them when I was there.  It was fun to watch them playing on the remnants of killer weapons.  The inside of the museum presented a history of Korea’s struggles to remain a united and isolated peninsula.  The other stop that I spent a lot of time at was Changgyeonggung (‘gung’ means palace) and Jongmyo Shrine.  The area is vast.  The palace is similar to many that we saw last year in Beijing, not that the Koreans would appreciate my saying that.  The palace and shrine date back to 1392, which was the beginning of the Joseon Dynasty.  That dynasty continued in Korea until the Japanese annexation in 1910.   Of course much has been burned and restored in the interim.  Wooden palaces are firetraps, but the Korean system of floor heating seems to have amplified the problem in that country.  After sitting on a bus in the belly of Seoul, I was happy to wander around the peaceful palace gardens for a long time.  On Tuesday I left Jay’s house early so that I could take the Subway to Seoul, which takes about one and a half hours on average, and visit two more palaces.  I went first to Changdeokgung a World Heritage site because I wanted to catch the English guided tour of the gardens at 11:30am.  Our guide was a beautifully costumed, quiet spoken, young Korean woman who was non-the-less insistent about the length of time we could tarry in any one spot.  She pointed out huge ancient mulberry and juniper trees and told us about the Joseon emperors and empresses’ interest in sericulture and the planting of rice.  It sounded a bit like Marie Antoinette’s playing milkmaid beyond the formal gardens of Versailles, but I was really impressed by the trees and gardens as a whole.  I wandered around the palace by myself later.  Next I went to Gyeongbokgung, which is the most touristy of all the palaces in Seoul.  It was very grand but crowded.  The Folk Museum in the same area had fewer people and was more interesting to me because some of the exhibits connected with things I have seen in travels around Korea.  There were many examples and explanations of the Shamanistic carved wooden totems and birds that have always intrigued me. Also, one aspect of Choi Jeong-Hwa’s art, his stacking of things, makes much more sense to me now that I have seen how foods are stacked for special celebrations such as 60^th birthday parties.  I appreciate more now his combining of past and present, nature and man-made, etc.

Jay didn’t have to teach on Thursday, so he and I took the subway into Seoul and rented bikes to ride along the Hangang River.  He was not the only person enjoying a day off on the river.  The bike paths were crowded, but it was a beautiful day.  There are no hills to climb, but Jay rode quickly at times and there was a bit of wind in one direction, so I was ready to rest by the end of the ride.  We sat by the river to have a drink and watch the kites flying high over our heads.  Friday was a quiet day.  The girls were also off school, so we rode bikes and went to the park.  We were thinking of playing badminton but the wind was so strong that it was impossible to control the bird. 

Saturday was our family trip to Muuido Island.  May’s brother and family were supposed to join us but the baby was sick so her two friends visiting from the Philippines came along.  The first surprise of the day was the length of the ferry ride.  We had to take the subway to Incheon International Airport (approx. 80 min.) where we caught a bus (approx. 20 min.) to the ferry and there discovered that we could practically swim to the island.  The ferry was loaded with cars and people to make the 15 min. crossing.  We got off and were met by the woman who runs the pension where we stayed.  She drove us there and our holiday began.  After unpacking, we decided to walk to the nearest beach.  What luck.  We were later told that this was one of two extreme tide periods in the year. We went to the beach at exactly the right time.  It was a short walk there and then we walked along the shore.  May and her friends did not consider swimming; Jay and I had thought about it but not worn our bathing suits, neither had the girls.  As we got warmer, we wanted to swim but the girls were hesitant.  Finally, we all held hands and went screaming into the water wearing our shorts and t-shirts.  It wasn’t cold, so we swam around for quite a while.  It’s lucky we did because on Sunday we had a lazy morning and by the time we were outside, the tide was also out and there was no hope of swimming until late afternoon by which time we would be on the ferry. We had a great barbeque on Saturday evening.  After, when it was dark, we could see and hear a huge fireworks display that was going on back home across the water in Song-do.  Jin Hee then wished she were there.  When it was finished, we decided to walk down to the little village by the ferry dock.  Jay bought some fireworks, which we lit on the vast expanse of beach.  The tide had gone way out after having flooded the main road to such an extent earlier that people with reservations at our pension were unable to drive there from the ferry dock.  Jin Hee and I had fun holding the long fireworks as sparks shot forth in bursts that didn’t go as high as the ones in Song-do but were impressive because they were close and we felt the blast and could point it anywhere.

The month is going by quickly.  

The Statue of Brothers (one a S. Korean officer and the other a N. Korean soldier) meeting on the battlefield, symbolizing the hope for reunification, the closing of the crack in the dome.

A view in the garden of Changgyeonggung

Two shots of furniture being moved into the top floor of the apartment building where Jay lives, no carrying heavy loads to and from elevators.

The moving truck

A lotus pond in the garden of Changdeokgung.  The guide told us that "they" say the lotus flower is the symbol of a true gentleman; it is pure white even if it blooms in a muddy pond.  

A view of roof lines at Gyeongbokgung

A stone arch in the subway station that is a copy on the one I saw in Gyeongbokgung

The inscription on the plaque beside the arch above.  I took a picture because of the English wording which struck me as funny because it made me think of mom and dad who would wish if that's the case that they had passed through the gate a few years ago because they have said a few times lately that they have been old for a long time and would not like to be old forever.

You will have to click on this to read it.  It gave me pause.  It was written on the wall in the part of the Museum of Korean Folklore that dealt with the celebration of the 60th birthday.

Jay carrying our bikes up the stairway of the bridge we had to cross to get to the place we were going along the Han River

May and her friends on the ferry to Muuido Island

Jay with two mermaids in the West Sea off Muuido Island

Our pension, at the top right, at sunset, with the tide in

Our pension at low tide the next morning about 10:00am

More Korea

I started today, Monday, October 6, 2014, at 8:00am by calling mom and dad on Skype.  Mom had just returned from a walk, which she found cold, and dad was getting up from a late afternoon nap.  After our chat, they were going to share a Presbyterian beer before going to Sunday dinner.  The time difference still overwhelms me.

It’s 7:00pm now, and I’m alone in the house.  It’s dark already.  The temperature at night has been dropping to around 8c.  May is complaining about the cold and getting out the winter clothes.  She and Jay are teaching at the moment, and the girls are at dance class.  When they return I hope they will perform for us.  They’re crazy dancers.

I was back to urban biking again last week.  I went to Jay’s old neighborhood twice, once alone and once with him.  It’s not a long bike ride, but when we’re there we climb the hill.  That’s also not a long hike, but there are parts that get me panting.  Jay knows a different route to another ‘summit’ than the one I usually go to.  I prefer his, but when I’m alone, I stick to the straight path because I can get lost after one wrong turn.  Another day I went on the subway to Gyeyang Station where I rented a bike to ride along the Ara Waterway.   I chose the more expensive, $15.00/day bike because it had gears.  Of course, I didn’t need them.  This path like the one along the Han River is almost totally flat; if there’s a wind it’s a bit of a push, but there was no wind.  I pretty well followed the whole thing, to the point where you get a look at the West Sea.  The most fun was along a less well-tended branch of the canal that took me through flourishing gardens and past fishermen, some of whom  seemed to be going for crabs using traps that looked like vegetable steamers with a small fish in each.  There were fish jumping quite high out of the water and planes flying really low overhead, going to Gimpo Airport.

On Thursday I went to a jimjillbong, as usual, but this time to a different one, the Dragon Hill Spa near Yongsan Station in Seoul.  It was designed on a grander scale than the one I usually go to in Incheon, but its glamour has faded slightly and like most aging things, it looks better after dark.  It did have something the Blue Ocean doesn’t, an outdoor, rooftop area with 3 different hot tubs.  Even here; however, there had been more pools but 2 of them were empty and worn looking.  I had a good time there though because it was pouring rain and I love to be in a hot rub with rain or snow falling on my head.  I spent a total of about 5 hours in the spa, slowly finding my way to every hot and cold spot, which is some feat without my glasses on.  I think that’s the reason I don’t have many inhibitions about being naked in a jimjillbong.  As I can hardly see the other women, I feel invisible myself.  Before going into the mixed area, I put my glasses on and the shorts and t-shirt they give as you enter.  For the first time, I ate the traditional jimjillbong snack, cold, sweet rice water and different colored hardboiled eggs.  I bought the ‘set’, which consists of 3 different eggs, one black, one dark shiny brown and one that looked like a plain brown egg.  The whites of all 3 were beige and the yolks were rather flat, but otherwise I was at a loss to distinguish among them.  I do not have the most delicate palate.

Jay and May didn’t have school on Friday, so we went to Seoul to meet Frank, Jay’s high school friend whom I see every visit, and May’s brother, his wife and the baby, Woo Jin.  The weather was perfect.  We walked along the Cheonggyecheon Stream in the centre of Seoul.  It had been a stream that was covered by a highway in the post- Korean War reconstruction period.  It was returned to a waterway at great expense starting in 2003.  The whole thing was and remains a source of controversy, but to an outsider it is a very pleasant, cool place to spend an hour or two walking in the greenery and watching fish, away from the traffic and noise of Seoul.  There were a lot of locals enjoying it too.  We also ate and spent a lot of time in a market area.  As we headed back to the Seoul City Hall subway station, it was dark.  The huge area in front of city hall was lighted and full of action.  We were just in time to watch an Australian acrobatic troupe called Gravity and other Myths (GOM).  Their show is called “A Simple Space”, which describes it well.  They are amazing acrobats, each of whom has been in the circus world all their lives. They are incredibly athletic and supple.  Their act involves minimal props and no glitz, just a drummer who perfectly compliments their moves.  They don’t try to disguise the fact that what they are doing is inconceivably difficult.  It’s their imaginative working of the moves that is spellbinding.     

A pottery place in Jay's old neighborhood that specializes in clay birds.  This strange looking one is perched on a car rearview mirror so that when you look in the mirror at the right angle, you see the bird's house.

The bright lights and bamboo path leading to the Dragon Hill Spa at night as I left it.

The sign at the popular bindaetteok restaurant where we had lunch in the market in Seoul.  Bindaetteok are pancakes made with mung beans, eggs, green onion, kimchi and pepper. 

The lady making the bindaetteok on the street in front of the restaurant and Jay's back as he pays the bill.

Jay and Frank behind a motorcycle in Seoul

A part of the Berlin wall in the heart of Seoul

GOM in front of Seoul City Hall

Jay and JinHee working on their act, inspired by GOM

The pagoda at the top of the hike in Incheon

A view of Incheon from the top.