My First Vlog in Korea

I haven't made a vlog in a couple of years--mostly because of time, also because as much as I like the process of video editing, I don't really think of myself as a very interesting person.  Haha.  However, when a group of my friends decided to create vlogs to update each other about "where we are now" I thought I would join in on the project.  I was in luck this past weekend because I was borrowing a camera to take pictures of one of our sporting events at the school and had time to record a video before returning it.

I struggled a bit with the lighting and had to re-record when, in my first round of editing, I found that everything was really bright and washed out.  I had more success the 2nd time and so here it is: a quick snapshot of my life on Jeju thus far broken into 3 main ideas.



If you liked this video and think I should try to do more vlog-type things, please let me know and I will make more of an effort! Huzzah!

Love and Hugs.

Foreigner Musings: Thoughts from China

While I have now been living in Korea for nearly 7 months, I have never really felt my "foreigner-ness" as much as when I was in Liu Zhou, China.  Here in Korea, my work environment is pretty much an English bubble and there are a lot supports when I go out and about on errands from bilingual friends, to signs, to the ever present wifi/data on my phone.  Even when I first arrived in Korea, I could at least sound out store names because the Korean alphabet is so straight forward.  The Chinese characters are currently beyond my ability and with everything closed up tight for the Spring Festival, I had no idea what anything was supposed to be.

My friends took me to this lovely park that was in the middle of the Liu Zhou.

Liu Zhou, while quite large at 3 million people, is not a tourist destination.  Other than my friends, I think we only saw one other westerner the whole week.  I also quickly learned some of the biggest pet peeves for my two western friends.  While one has only recently moved to China, the other has been there a number of years and relayed that these annoyances never go away.  In the short time that I was there, I quickly saw what they meant.  And while I was amused, I realized that after months and years, it could get more... annoying. Haha.

It was a beautiful day to walk around the park.  We went to the two pagodas seen in this picture.

If it was only the staring, I think they wouldn't have mentioned it.  I occasionally get stared at in Korea but I don't always realize.  Once I was out with one of my Korean students and she straight up asked me what it feels like to be stared at all the time after we had walked down one street.  I hadn't noticed at all.  And so, in China, too, they stare.  We three westerners are obvious.  As much as I try and blend in, but I just don't. Ha!  Like I said, if it was just staring, that would be okay, but...

#1 - You are Caucasian so you must speak English so I will speak to you in English right now even though I'm just walking past you and we've never met and I will never see you again and I can only say one word:

HELLO.

While we were walking around town or around some of the parks, people would, upon seeing us, yell "Hello/Hi" and then grin.  That's it.  Depending on the age, they might run away or giggle or smile shyly, too.  A couple times though, we were walking down the sidewalk and people on motorcycles would just yell it out as they rode by.  It's one thing to want to practice your English, but another thing to yell at random strangers.  And while I speak English, I didn't like how they assumed that because I'm white I speak English.  There are a lot of other languages I might speak instead.  My friends said that sometimes they replied in Mandarin, much to the surprise of the "offenders."

A lovely bridge and some paddle boats available for rent.

#2 - Because you are Caucasian I want to take your picture--I might ask if I can think of the English words but if I can't I'm just going to point my camera at you and take one anyway.

I don't really understand why people want pictures of random strangers, but then again I need to remember that I grew up in a multicultural environment.  My elementary school classes had people from all sorts of countries and I was accustomed to seeing Chinese, Korean, Caribbean, African, Middle Eastern and so on.  I don't fully understand the novelty of seeing someone who looks so different from you because I grew up with it. Still, having people sneakily--and then some not so sneakily--take your picture while you are walking around a park is a little weird.  I wonder what they will do with the photos and what they will say to their friends...

My friends.  The park entrance is hidden off to the right.

All in all though, it was a lot fun. While I definitely felt the cultural differences more because of the language barrier, I greatly enjoyed exploring the city and the surrounding nature.  I am forever humbled by how vast and amazing the world is--in natural scenery, societal structure, and language development.

In another park a couple days later, we found this statue of a young woman riding a carp to heaven.

Me, taken from the top of the small mountain featured in the above picture.

Until next time,

Love and Hugs.

Welcome to China.

Distant thunder awakens me from a heavy slumber. Did it start raining?  Better question: is it morning yet?  I hope not.  With great effort, I open eyelids sanded shut.  Darkness.  Blast.  I roll over and shut my eyes.  More sleep please.  I've had a long day of travelling from Seoul, through Shanghai to Guilin and then at last to Liu Zhou, and for now I wish to be dead to the world...

Again I am awakened by a loud noise.  Is that a train I hear? Cracking and clunking down the line?  I don't remember seeing tracks near here... but then again I arrived in the middle of the night.  I emerge from the covers and pry open an eye.  White light shines through the translucent windows and I surrender to wakefulness.  A smile tugs at my cracked lips as I rub the sleep from my eyes.  It's a new day and I have arrived in China.  A trip to see a friend; a trip to visit a country; an adventure waiting to begin.

View from the top of one of the mountains.  Taken a couple days after I arrived.

To say my expectations shattered upon my exploration of the city would be inaccurate.  Mostly because, like with most of my adventures, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.  All my life, China has been the strange and very distant place.  Sure, everything is made in China, but the country itself seemed enshrouded in thick cloth like a lady covered by a veil.  Just what lies hidden beneath the fabric?

One of the main roads as seen from atop a small mountain.

A look down a smaller street.

I head out into the city streets, excited to see and learn something new.  The main roads are wide and often chaotic. Cars, motorbikes and people all seem to follow a complicated dance.  It's a wonder to me that no one gets injured, and yet it also seems to work.  The side streets, too, are their own poetry.  Some weaving like zigzags between houses, while others march straight around the apartment-like buildings.

As I walk to market, I pass patches of red... dust?  Flower petals?  I bend low and examine the strange clumps of paper.  Looking down one of the narrow streets, I can see large patches of red every few feet.

Shots fire from somewhere between the buildings and I jump back in alarm.  The sound echoes through the narrow valleys, the tall buildings acting as an amp both magnifying and distorting the sound waves until it sounds like waves crashing... or thunder rolling and even a train clunking...

Do these shots meaning gun fire?  No one else appears alarmed...

I take another step down the street beneath red lanterns when a whine breaks the silence followed by a couple more shots.  I turn the corner to see lights popping and sparking in the air.  A few feet away, children crouch and cover their ears, their faces alive with glee.

Click.

Piles of fire cracker remains was everywhere.

Ah.  Never gun fire.  Not even a train or thunder in the early morning.

Fire crackers and fireworks.  Anytime, anywhere.  All week long.

Welcome to the Spring Festival and the Lunar New Year.

Love and Hugs.

The life cycle of a snowman

Jeju's blizzard of 2016, the worst snow storm to hit the island in over 3 decades, disappeared nearly as fast as it came.

For three days, we had nothing but snow.  The sky would clear briefly, creating the illusion of the end, and then the wind struck again, and the white screen blocked out everything. The following two images were taken 6 minutes apart on January 24th.  The cycle repeated many times all afternoon.

The snow coming down with a fury of flurries! Haha.

And then it almost looked clear.

Many of the students were beyond excited and for some, it was their first time seeing so much snow in one place.  Despite coming from Canada, it had been a few years since I had been surrounded by so much packing snow.  The last couple of years had been so cold that it was more an icy powder than the desired sticky snow.  Naturally, I did what made the most sense:

Snowman by me (January 25th, 2016).

I made a snowman.  When the snow was still thick the following day, I decided to make another:

My "snowfairy" since I gave it wings.  (January 26th, 2016).

The weather was already getting warm again the morning of the 26th, and sadly my first snowman did not fare well through the night.  It seems he had a bit too much to drink and lost his eyes.

My student's (left) and my snowman (right) had a rough night.

All three after a couple repairs.

And by the following day, all three snowmen had had enough...

All snowmen are down and beyond help (January 27, 2016).

Just like that, the blizzard's power was gone.  Today, the 28th of January, it is 10°C and it has rained all day.  The snow storm already seems like a distant memory with small piles of snow remaining.

How could the storm that stranded thousands in Jeju fade out so soon?  How could the cold be gone so fast?

and...

Should I pity the life of a snowman?

Love and Hugs

My weekend in Bu---Jeju.

This past weekend I had planned to at last visit the city of Busan (부산).  While not as big as Seoul, I have heard that Busan is a fun place to visit and I was really excited.  Plans were made for both accommodations and some meetups and I was ready to hit the ground running.

Alas, my plans were not meant to happen.  Saturday morning, as I was ready to go, Jeju was hit (and is still being hit as I write this) with the worst snow storm that it's seen in more than (some say) 38 years.  I was told that Jeju never gets much snow and that the snow is mostly on the top of Halla.  Well, not this year.

As we waited at the bus stop at 10 Saturday morning, we were already in a winter wonderland.

The adventure began at the bus stop.  I feel like a lot of adventures begin at bus stops, and in this way, ours was no different.  I was with my friends Audrey and Jenny who were also heading to the airport.  Their flights were for Seoul while mine was for Busan.  Even though there was already a lot of snow, we were excited and optimistic.  I had heard that the snow was worse where we lived and thought that it would be okay in the city and at the airport.  My biggest concern at this point in my journey was weather or not I'd miss my flight (pun intended).  The bus had trouble getting to the city and what is normally a 40 minute bus ride to the airport ended up being 1.5 hours.

Maybe I should have missed my flight.

I raced through the airport.  It was 11:45 and my plane, scheduled for 11:30, had been pushed back to 12:10.  The lady at the desk looked at my information and quickly handed me my boarding pass saying, "학생 (haksaeg; student) run!" I made it to my gate just as they were boarding.  I really hoped that the bus ride was the worst of it.

No.

When it became clear that the flight was being delayed longer, I settled into wait.  The snow kept blowing out across the tarmac, stopping for brief periods of 20-30 mins before swooping in like a fire blanket: thick and smothering.

I'm glad I didn't work for the airport today...

It was kinda of weird seeing palm trees with snow.

In the end, I boarded a plane for a 5.5h flight from Jeju to Jeju.  Around 17h00 they told us that our flight was cancelled and we started rolling back to the airport to deplane.  My first deplaning.  ㅎㅎㅎ.  Well, since my flight was cancelled, I needed to cancel my return flight scheduled for Monday and so I then headed to the Air Busan service desk. As all flights were cancelled at this point, Audrey and Jenny were in their own lines and we agreed to meet up afterward.

By 19h15 we were finally all done.  And now came the hardest question: what next?  With the weather so bad, no taxis were heading back our way and we weren't really sure about the bus either.  That meant staying in Jeju for the night.  But how did we leave the airport and where did we go?  While we were all starving (we hadn't eaten since breakfast), all we wanted was a roof over our heads.

The line in 7/11 was so long I could only
find these at a vending machine.

Luckily, Jenny's mom has connections and after a few calls we found a place to crash.  But still: How did we get there?

Supposedly there was a shuttle bus, so we waited.  By 21h00 it was clear that it wasn't just running late and so we decided to try the taxi stand.  Unfortunately, the taxi stand was in the wind and the taxis weren't coming often enough and the cold soon chased us back to the airport.  We had tried calling a taxi earlier but the companies were so busy it was hard getting through.  (And by we, I really mean Jenny since she speaks fluent Korean).  But we were desperate enough to try again and thankfully we got lucky.

22h00 we were at last made it out of the airport and to a safe haven at 코스트웨이 (Coast Way), a pension run by Jenny's mom's friend.  She was super nice and even made us dinner for which we were so grateful!

Blurry but happy faces at surviving our day at the airport.

The worst of our adventure was over, and thankfully we were able to laugh and joke about it as we went.  We all agreed that had we been alone, we probably would have been miserable, but together we managed to stay somewhat optimistic.

Heading to the bus stop.  Jenny didn't realize I was taking a picture.  Oops.  Haha.

Simply stunning view of the sea this morning from the bus stop.  We could see the waves crashing into the shore with a chilling violence.  Still, the majesty is breathtaking.

Sunday morning, we managed to catch a bus to the terminal and then the bus back home.  While the roads were still bad and it took longer than we hoped to get back home, we made it.  By 15h30.  Just like that, our weekend was pretty much gone.

This quote was on the wall at the pension and I felt like it spoke a lot into our situation:

"Lost wealth can be regained, but lost time never."

We were able to get a refund for our flights, but our time was lost. However, I think that despite our circumstances, we were still able to laugh a lot and have fun. It certainly was an interesting adventure.