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.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

This week was much fuller than I had anticipated it would be.  It’s the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, and there are many things happening in connection with that.  On Monday I went to Seoul Station on the subway to see about the train to the DMZ that I had read about on line.  Once that was figured out, I decided to walk around the area of Seoul Station.  I was barely out of the new building when I was drawn to an old one next door.  It was the central part of the original Seoul Station that was not destroyed in the Korean War.  It has been turned into a cultural centre.  At the moment the entire place is devoted to an exhibition of the works of a Korean artist, Choi. Jeong Hwa. I had never heard of him, but fortunately as I was looking at the first room a woman came over and told me a bit about his art so that I was aware of his working with the past and the present, stacking things in interesting ways and turning found objects in to art.  He sees beauty in almost everything and creates flowers in the most inventive ways out of all sorts of ordinary household articles.  I spent hours going from room to room.

On Tuesday I rode the bike to Central Park to watch the women and men’s triathlon finals.  I spent most of the day going from one part of the route to another, getting quite close to the athletes at times.  What a grind that event is.  This was an official Olympic course and even the swimming portion was longer than I had thought it would be.  I was mostly cheering for the team from the Philippines.  They did quite well in the swimming and biking portions but fell behind in the final running stage.  The Japanese team that I had watched training on the weekend won overall.  The Chinese were next and then Korea.

Jay and I went to the DMZ on Saturday.  I’ve wanted to go there since I first came to Korea but haven’t been able to for various reasons until this trip.  I have to admit that the entire excursion took almost 12 hours, most of which was spent on one kind of transportation or another.  First we had to take the subway for about an hour and a half from Campus Town, where Jay lives, to Seoul Station. Then we caught the train to Dorasan, the last stop before North Korea.  After being shut down for about 7 years, this train was started up again in May of this year.  When I first saw it I thought it must destined for a children’s park because its 3 cars are painted white and covered in pastel drawings of plants and animals, but no, this is the train that conveys you to the scene of so much tension between the two Koreas since 1954.   We were on it for about an hour before we reached Imjingang, the last stop before Dorasan.  Here we were counted and given 2 tags, which we had to wear around our necks for the rest of the trip.  From this station on, I really felt as if we were on a school outing; we were in this colorful conveyance and being counted innumerable times.  We were counted as we got back on to continue to Dorasan.  It wasn’t until we crossed a narrow river that was lined on both sides with razor wire that the idea of visiting the DMZ became a reality.  There’s something solemn about rolls of rusty wire on top of endless lines of tall rusted fences.  We finally detrained at Dorasan and were counted some more, this time by bigger military men in the official black and white South Korean uniforms.  Jay and I ended up touring the Dorasan (Hill 155) area on a bus with a convivial group of middle-aged Koreans who continued munching on chestnuts and drinking the sweet North Korean wine they had bought at the first kiosk they came to in Dorasan in spite of the fact that they had been asked by the bus driver not to drink.  They offered us some, we accepted and the driver gave up.  He made an obvious show of wiping some wine off the floor of the bus at one point, but that was it.  We went to the top of the hill to observe the DMZ through binoculars.  It’s a vast expanse of green and brown with what looks like a small abandoned village and two flags waving in the distance, one for the North and one for the South.  It’s impressive mostly for its silent, emptiness.   Then we watched a loud and rather propagandistic film about the Korean War and the 4 tunnels that the North Koreans built in the decade or so between the late 60s and the early 80s to take soldiers south to attack Seoul.  It ended with an explanation of the attempt presently being made by South Korea to preserve the environment in this area which has had no people living in it for decades.  Finally, we put on hard hats and boarded an open train to descend into the third tunnel.  It was an impressively steep descent.  When we reached the tunnel dug by the North Koreans, we got off the train and walked along it, bent over between the damp granite walls.  Memories of Charles Bronson’s panic when he finally had to escape through the tunnel in the movie ‘The Great Escape’ came back to me.  Being inside such a long, deep passage for any length of time, let alone digging or rather blasting and removing rock to make it is unthinkable to me.  Finally we were back on the warm, sunny surface and returned to our pastel painted train to be left with the carefully orchestrated impression that the South is bending all its efforts toward peace, unity and the preservation of the unique ecosystem that is the DMZ.  The trip was well worth the long time spent on train, bus and subway.  The fact that the latter is mostly deep underground did not escape me, but it’s so huge, well tiled, dry and efficient that I soon ignored it.     

Choi Jeong Hwa's bouquet of cleaning utensils in his exhibition at the old Seoul Station

One of the artist's statements 

One of the corners in the biking segment of the men's triathlon at the Incheon Asian Games

The member of the Japanese team who won the men's triathlon

Jay inside the train to the DMZ, getting help filling out the forms.  Note that as in all Korean conveyances the stewardesses are young, thin and impeccably dressed and coiffed.

The marker at Dora Mountain (Hill 155)  

Me with my tags at the place on the mountain where you could look out over the DMZ

The unity statue at the site of Tunnel 3

Min Hee, Jim Hee and their friend outside the apartment

Incheon again

Bert got me to the plane on time.  All went as planned from there, so I can't complain, but I will.  Air travel in 2014 is fast and amazing in many ways, but you can't honestly call it pleasant, certainly not when you're in Economy class.  I felt blessed when the Air Canada Dehavilland Dash 8 Turboprop that rattled and roared me to Vancouver finally landed with a thud.  We had to pick up our carry-on luggage that had been stored somewhere in the rear of the plane and walk through a light rain to the airport.  The walk was the most pleasant part of the trip.  Then I had to wait just over 4 hours for the Korean Air 777 Jet to whisk me in relative silence, with only a short period of turbulence somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, to Incheon.  I didn't really sleep much on the approximately 11 hour flight, but we had 2 decent meals, the first with a bit of red wine, and I watched 3 movies, 'Belle', 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'The Two Faces of January' in a row.  That's more rapid-fire visual stimulation than I've had in ages.  Since I've been at Jay's I've watched the first of 'The Hunger Games' movies and will probably watch a few more things, so I might catch up on what's happening in the film world; I haven't watched much lately.  

Incheon felt familiar from the moment I entered the airport, even though it’s huge and has more conveyor belts for baggage than the Kelowna airport has flights in a day.  Jay was waiting in the arrival area.  We moved right on out to the subway.  It took about an hour to get to his stop, then a short walk to the apartment and we were home.  It was not quite 4:00 am Saturday Vernon time, but a late Saturday dinnertime ‘chez May’, lentil soup, grilled fish and salad, a light, nourishing meal.  As soon as I had finished eating I was ready to sleep, but first unpacked all my stuff and put it away in the nest that will be mine for a month.  Tired though I was, I took a gravol to ‘make assurance doubly sure.’  I slept in spite of the fact that Jay, May and the girls were far from silent and close to my room watching a horror movie.  The last thing I heard was Min Hee screaming, but I was so nearly gone that it seemed distant and muffled.

Sunday was spent waking slowly, eating, visiting with May’s brother, his wife and their baby and walking in the nearby park.  Today was school and teaching for the others. I went for a long bike ride to reconnect with some of my favorite parts of Song Do.  It was sunny and warm.  The vegetation was dry; the grasses seemed to scrape in the wind and the cosmos were fading.  The brightest flowers were the masses of zinnias that lined one section of road.  I went up and down almost every path in the maze of trails that is Central Park in Song Do.  The whole place was brilliant with banners announcing the 2014 Asian Games which are in Incheon this week and next.  I rested near the stadium and watched the Japanese triathlon team get ready for a practice ride on the bike route.  Their event will be held on Thurs. and Fri., Sept. 25 and 26^th.  I’m going to bike over to watch parts of it.  There was a swimmer also practicing as I watched; I’ve rarely seen such a fast and exuberant front crawl.  The swimming portion is a short up and back, so I hope to see all of it. 

The games and a visit to the jimjillbang should fill this week.  We are thinking of a train ride to the DMZ either this weekend or next and a short holiday somewhere in Korea the following weekend when Jay has 4 days off.      

The last rose I'll see in my yard in Vernon this summer

Jay fooling around with May's brother's crazy extendable 'selfie' arm.  We are in the park near his place.

Another picture in the park, taken with the 'Go Go Gadget Arm.'

The skyline of Song Do behind some of the members of the Japanese triathlon team.

Jay back in Canada

It’s Mon., Sept. 15, 2014.  ISIS has decapitated another man, a British aid worker this time, the Ebola crisis in Africa has now taken more than 2,000 lives, the teachers’ strike in BC continues; although the mediator is back, which bodes well and Jay has returned to Korea.  I used to worry about his living in a hot spot on the planet, but everywhere is so hot now that the earth will soon have to be reclassified as a sun.

The week with Jay was wonderful.  He got a lot done on the immigration front, and we had some good walks, drives, chats and meals.  We worked out plans for their move here, and he replaced the showerhead as well as some difficult-to-get-at light bulbs.  We did some shopping for the house and for May and the girls.  I think that what gave him the greatest kick was driving again.  He’s been over 4 years without a car.  He told me an expression they used to describe their means of transportation when he lived in Montreal.  They took the BMW, which meant Bus, Metro and Walk.  He has the same deluxe system in Incheon, except that he bikes to and from work.

I spent Saturday in a daze, getting the house back to its one-person state, napping and going for a walk to Black Rock, my regular old neighborhood route.  Jay and I had risen at 3:45am to get him to the Kelowna airport by 4:45, so I needed to slowly get back to normal.   Meanwhile, he faced another 5-hour wait in Seattle, which he tried to shorten by getting an earlier flight to Incheon.  He was unsuccessful but messaged me to say that when he finally took off he was in a double seat, so the trip home would be more comfortable.  Whether he was able to sleep or not on the 12-hour passage, I don’t know.

We continue to have glorious fall weather in the Okanagan.  Yesterday I met the VOC gang in the municipal parking lot at 7:30 am to go on a hike to Vidler Ridge, where you get long, blue/green views of the surrounding hills and lakes, extending into the white peaks of the Monashees.  The drive to the trailhead took about 2 hours and the first kilometer or so of hiking was mostly uphill, but the whole trip was well worthwhile.  The Alpine meadows, even without their midsummer wild flowers, were lovely to walk across and the views were long and clear.

I will spend the next few days preparing to go to Korea.  I’m going to stay at Bert and Peg's on Thursday night.  Bert has volunteered, as he always does, thank my lucky stars, to drive me to the Kelowna airport on Friday morning to catch the 8:30 flight to Vancouver.  For once I’m happy that I will be going on Air Canada instead of West Jet because I heard on the news this morning that starting today West Jet is going to charge Economy Class passengers $25.00 to register a bag.  Air Canada will follow suit but not until Nov. 2nd.

Jay in Kal Park with Vernon in the background at the north end of Lake Kalamalka

A view of Lake Okanagan from Mission Hill Winery in West Kelowna.  The two statues are by an Icelandic sculptor, SteinunnThorarinsdottir

A new sign near Black Rock.  I puzzled over it a while and then took a picture because I couldn't understand it.

A view from Vidler Ridge with the snow capped Monashees unclear in the background, unless you click on the picture and make it bigger.  

Saturday, September 6, 2014

It’s gloriously sunny today, but the temperatures are cooling.  I have two laundries on the line and most of the windows open, but my toes are a bit cold in sandals.  Jay arrives from Korea at midnight tonight.  It’s his first trip back to Canada since he left Ottawa at the end of May, 2010.  I’m excited to see him.  I’ve been cooking, baking and cleaning the house in anticipation.  It’s the first time I’ve done any of those things to any extent since before I left for Victoria on June 17, to help mom and dad move.  I eat well, but with little preparation, and one person doesn’t make a house very dirty, at least that’s my excuse.  This morning I decided to go through a drawer full of information about Vernon that I haven’t looked at in ages.  I’m not a leader on most of the hikes and bikes I go on.  I wanted to check a few things before Jay gets here in case we have some time, between preparing immigration papers, opening bank accounts, looking into BC drivers’ licenses and medical cards and shopping, to take some drives and hikes.  In the process, I came across a card that Caroline had sent me last August before I left for Korea.  In it she enclosed a wonderful article that had made her think of me.  It was by a woman who was traveling in a plane full of Ethiopian mothers who work as domestics in Kuwait.  They were going home for their yearly visit with their families.  Just as they were about to land in Addis Ababa, they started ululating for joy.  It gave me goose bumps to read about it again.  In case Jay sees this before he arrives in Kelowna, I promise I won’t ululate as he walks into my sight at the airport.  I will be bursting with joy but silent.  I remember how I caused him to miss a gate when he was a Nancy Greener by doing my version of ululating as he sped down the course past me. 

At the moment I’m reading, The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester.  It’s about the unbelievable erudition and perseverance that went into the compiling of the Oxford English Dictionary.  The number of people who contributed to it and the vastness of their linguistic knowledge are overwhelming just to read about.  It’s not helping me to understand the meaning of much, however.  The BC Government seems to be trying to turn schools in the province into understaffed socializing institutions, Vladimir Putin is seeing how far west he can push into the Ukraine, and ISIS is slaughtering its way through Iraq and Syria.  It almost makes me long for the clarity of the cold war days.  Or is it just that I was younger then and nothing seemed insurmountable.

The rain tree in front of my house exhibiting a rare display of spring flowers and fall seed pods together in September

Mo at Planet Bee on one of her bike trips around the many spots that fascinate her in Vernon

A view from Buchanan Road just outside Vernon

Hiking in Alberta

It’s Wednesday, August 27, 2014, another sunny warm morning in the Okanagan.  The temperature is supposed to go to 30c. again today and then get cooler tomorrow.   Mo who spent most of her life in small towns in Alberta often sings the praises of the weather in this valley.  I am usually less exuberant about it, but after spending last week in Waterton Lakes, Alberta, I’ve joined her chorus.  Waterton Lakes National Park is a wonderful place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  The VOC’s plan for ten days of hiking had to be altered.  As the first two days were the only ones for which rain was not predicted, we did big hikes on each of them.  This took a toll on my feet, but I’m really happy that I did both hikes. 

On the first day we took a boat from the Waterton marina to the trailhead for the Crypt Lake hike.  It’s one of the longest I’ve taken since I was in Lake Louise in my 20s.  Near the top, you climb a short metal ladder, crouch through a tunnel and crawl out onto a narrow path along a steep talus slope.  At this point, there is a cable that has been bolted into rock at many places.  People like me cling to it for what feels like a lifetime in the hope of reaching the easier path that seems to be miles away but isn’t.  The only reason I wasn’t ecstatic to have finished this part was that I knew I would have to do it all again in reverse on the way down.  The rest of the hike was wonderful.  As we soaked our feet in the cool waters of the lake while waiting for the boat to take us back to town, we saw dark clouds approaching over the mountains across from us.  Riding back in the boat, we felt the wind increase and watched as a curtain of rain was drawn across the water toward us.  We got a little wet running for our cars.  What luck!  The next day the same thing happened but with slightly less luck.  We were within site of the cars parked in the campground but still had a short walk to end the hike when the wind really started to whip and the rain to pelt.  We got drenched.  But the hike had been magnificent, one of the best of my life.  It’s called Carthew-Alderson after the names of two of the lakes you see from the top.  The land you hike through and the vistas that you see are worth every bit of effort that you expend to be there.  When we got back to our room at the Crandell Mountain Lodge, we were cold and wet and our feet were sore.  So we changed into warm clothes and soaked our feet in ice water.  I had a big blister on the underside of one toe and another toe that was turning blue and becoming very sore.  Fortunately, one of my roommates, Dianne, was a nurse.  She helped me bandage them.  It rained constantly for the next two days, so we walked around town, shopped, visited the Prince of Wales Hotel and had hot tubs, saunas and steam baths.  Some people stayed on and did a couple of hikes, but Mo, John and I left on Saturday; we drove back to BC and into the sun.

Nobody was able to take the Goat Haunt hike in Glacier National Park, Montana.  I would not have been able to go on it in any case because in packing for the hiking trip I discovered that I couldn’t find my passport.  I spent a long time searching for it but never did find it.  Fortunately I found this out in time to do something about it before leaving for Korea.  As it is, I spent yesterday in Kelowna filling in forms, declaring my old one lost or stolen and applying for a new one.  This process was not without the usual bureaucratic hitches, but I think all went well.  I should be able to pick up my new passport on Sept. 10.  I had to change the name on my passport to Janet Shirley from Jan as the woman in the BC driver’s license office had predicted I would almost four years ago.  What a mess.  I had bought my ticket to Korea in the name of Jan so had to change it there too, at a cost of $200.00.  But all is in order now.  I don’t expect any hitches on my trip, at least in that respect.  I loved the Monty Python skit that included the lines, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”  I think I’ve learned if not to expect it at least to be able to face it a bit better than I used to.  Or have I?????

Now I’m looking forward to Jay’s arrival in two weeks.    

Approaching the ladder and tunnel on the Crypt Lake hike

The highest point on the Carthew-Alderson hike

Maggie, Diane, Jacquey and Jan on the highest point

A view on the Carthew-Alderson hike

Homecoming

Today I was wakened at 6:22am by the friendly sound of ‘Kakao’ emanating from my iPhone.  It was Jay.  We had discussed many things on Monday when we Skyped, so I was not too surprised that his message was about his coming to Vernon.  I was; however, disappointed to read that it would be the week of Oct. 6^th to 13^th.  Oh well.  I was about to reply that I would cancel my trip to Korea and see him then, when there was another ‘Kakao’.  It read, “ Oh Jesus, I meant September.”  Phew!  I was looking forward to what might be my last visit to Korea, and it will still happen.  He phoned me immediately after the mixup, and we worked out the details.  Speedy means of communication have their positive and negative aspects. 

The Okanagan continues to be hot and dry.  I’ve been hiking twice, biking once and swimming a few times but always in the morning before 11:00 or evening after 7:00, aside from hiking up at Sovereign or Silver Star where the altitude makes it a bit cooler.  The night temperatures are in the teens, so the house cools down when I open all the windows.  This morning I went right into the garden after talking with Jay and put in about 3 hours of back breaking labor with shears, trowel and rake, cutting back iris, etc., weeding and cleaning up the parched flower beds.  Today the temperature is supposed to reach 35c., but it’s overcast at the moment and there is smoke in the air so it might not get that hot.  We have an arsonist in the Vernon area who has set several successful fires in the last couple of months, but last night he seems to have reached beyond his grasp.  He tried to burn down 2 of the Tolko yards.  Tolko is the biggest lumber and sawmill operation in the area, so it could have been quite a blaze.  But both were discovered in time.  There was some smoke in the air this morning as I gardened and a helicopter flew in concentric circles overhead most of the time I was working.  It’s nothing compared to what is raging in Gaza, Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine, but it passes for a conflagration in Vernon.