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By Marty, August 2, 2010 3:59 pm

With 50 million people in a country the size of Indiana it’s a little crowded. Toss in the fact that 60% of the place is mountainous and the crowding becomes even more severe.

MyeongHee and I had decided earlier in the week that’d go out on Sunday and have a picnic along one of the rivers. We started out early to beat the crowds, but apparently, everyone else had the same time at the same time. We left a little after 9am in search of a spot where we would wade in the cold water coming down the mountain but still find some shade out of the fierce August heat. Our usual spot about 30 minutes out of town was already full. SO was the next spot, and the next and the next. The roads were jammed with people, and sometimes, in typical Korean fashion, the roads were jammed with empty cars, the owners of which didn’t seem to care if they blocked or impeded traffic.

We ended up driving nearly two hours to find a spot that wasn’t overrun with people. But that’s not all bad. We ended up taking some roads we hadn’t travelled and found some interesting sights.

We took this twisting mountainous road which winds up the right side of this lake. While it’s not that far from home as the crow flies, its a long way since we had to drive around several mountains to get there.

This is pretty much what our little corner of Korea looks like once outside the city. There are a lot of mountains and not much else. There aren’t a lot of roads through them, and few, if any, homes tucked into and around them.  That’s always amazed me as I compare them with my memories of Colorado or New Mexico there are homes sprinkled throughout most places. For whatever reason, as crowded as the cities are, Koreans tend the leave the mountains to themselves. Sure, there are the very occasional mountain homes, and of course some Buddhist temples, but the majority of the buildings near the bases of the mountains, along the rivers.  In fact, one can find numerous “pensions” along most of the mountain rivers. Pensions are what we would call a “lodge” or “cabin” but are essentially the same – a rented building for a weekend getaway.

This was our “shady spot” we found. Not even a tree, but a weed that regrows every year and produces enormous leaves.  We picked this place at the base of the dam (visible behind MH)  in the previous two pictures. The water flowing from out of the damn was wonderously cool and refreshing. For our picnic, MyeongHee made samgyeopsal – pork with slices of garlic and red bean paste wrapped in lettuce leaves. Meanwhile, I relaxed in the shade and played with the two dogs while throngs of people played in the water away from us.

Next time, we want to go to “Ice Valley,”  another mountain valley with a cold running stream nearby. This one is famous for it’s summer (not winter) ice forming because of the strange thermodynamics of the rocks and wind.

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By Marty, July 30, 2010 6:12 pm

Nothing like playing in the mud. I haven’t done that since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  Or something like that…

Anyway, there’s an annual festival on the west coast of Korea – the Mud Festival!   The city is just a small thing tucked into a bay that has some serious mud flats. They decided a few years back to capitalize on their geology by making the festival around the mud – some of which is used in making makeup and skins creams.

A group of my friends here all decided to make it a group trip so 22 of us crowded into a small bus for a five hours trip to the west coast. We left at 6:45am and spent the ride drinking and telling off-color jokes.  It rained the whole way there and was still raining when we got to the beach. Not that rain was going to matter – we were planning on playing in the mud, so what’s a little rain? By the time we got settled in our resort, unpacked and headed out to the beach the rain was just a slight drizzle but the air was warm.

Although there were quite a few Koreans there, this is probably a 70% foreigner attended affair. Lots of young people – teachers, engineers and more than few military.  The event had lots of activities including colored mud body painting, mud slides, mud mosh-pits, mud slinging areas and mud slathering areas. We liked the slathering area as it was more of a love-fest, rubbing gooey sticky mud all over each other. It turned into a mud slinging area when the army boys got there and got rowdy.

I had my camera in a ziplock baggie to keep out the rain and the mud – it worked pretty well, but it was cumbersome and a couple of the pictures didn’t turn out well.   I thought about posting them here, but it’s just too easy to post to facebook. I hope this link to my facebook album works for those of you who don’t facebook.

My facebook MudFest photos

Our resort was really nice. It was about a 30 minute walk from the beach but that was fine – everything near the beach is a 24 hour party and those of us who aren’t into that were happy while the others could make a short trip to party ’til they puked. They did and they puked. A lot.  The resort was less than a  year old and still had that new building smell.  We had a hot tub that got some serious use, too.  Although my pictures of the hot tub are fuzzy (probably a good thing) there was a significant amount of nudity.

Across the parking lot, there was a pool for the whole place. Lots of little kids and families. When we got in to play on Sunday morning, the Koreans all moved to one end and left of us to our end. We did a couple of experiments and slowly eased our group off the center and into “their” side, each time crowding them further and further into the shallow end. Whether it was fear or loathing, we weren’t sure. But the Koreans in general could be herded into a rather small area by subtly expanding our little circle. Fun stuff – someone should write a paper on non-verbal communication about it someday.

We headed back around noon on Sunday and by then the rain had finished and Sunday was bright and sunny and humid. Just in time for a hot bus ride home.

It was a much needed getaway from Ulsan. This week, I started a short, two week course at Ulsan University. They have a group of students who are going to spend a semester in Canada so they’re prepping them for living in an English-speaking city with a 4-hour/day intensive speakign and writing class. I’m working 4 hours in the morning and then  another 7.5 in the afternoon/evening at my normal school. For two weeks, I’ll feel like I’m back in the real world again working long hours and having to wake up with an alarm clock. It’s been a few years since I used one – other than vacation buses or planes.   I’d actually like to turn this short time gig into a full time job – and I might have a good shot at it. The head of the English department at Ulsan Univ, a Korean man, studied in the US – at the University of North Texas – same as me. We traded some stories of bars and restaurants in Denton that we’d both been to.  He’s a nice guy and I’m hoping our shared past might help me get into the University. We’ll see.

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By Marty, June 10, 2010 11:53 am

Just a smattering of photos from last week’s Scooter Inferno.

Me and my partner, Sam, with our Grand Prize winnings - a couple of helmets and goggles

The Bonus shot - Dancing Girls. Almost every store grand opening or big sale event has a pair out front

At Tohamsan Garden restaurant deep in the mountains between Ulsan and GyeongJu

At the monument to Canada nuclear engineers near the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant. I think the radiation made me get a little crazy

The Sea Penis. I swear they look just like dicks in their tubs. Pick one up and it will pee

From left, Sam, Nikki, me, Scott, Dee and Wolfie. Two teams working together until the last 15 minutes

Lots more pictures, but some aren’t fit for publication. And here, also is a the video created for the awards banquet.  Check it out.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

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By Marty, June 8, 2010 12:26 pm

This past Saturday was the 2010 Scooter Inferno.  Of course it had changed significantly from the last Inferno – of 2004.  This one allowed bicycles to play in the event. Essentially, it was a timed scavenger hunt, with the goal of taking pictures of your team at each of several scenic, historic or just relevant places around the province. Bicycles being the slowest, got more points per site and more for farther out sites than scooters and motorcycles. Motorcycles, being the fastest, got the least points but were able to get to more sites.  I was in the scooter class and me and my partner, Sam, won the event.

We rode almost 160km in 4 hours, stopping to take pictures at temples, restaurants, ports and statues. Extra points were awarded for photos of traffic accidents, nudity (yes, I bared my ass) and creativity.

The rules were:

1. Do not break any Korean traffic laws. Speed limits and traffic lights must be obeyed. If you are seen in violation of the rules, you will be deducted 10 points for each infraction.
2. Sidewalks are for pedestrians and bicycles. Do not drive on them. It is only acceptable if you are parking.
3. All riders must wear helmets on their bikes. A moving bike with a rider without a helmet (driver or passenger) is immediate team disqualification.
4. This is a fun rally, no tampering or fooling around with other teams bikes.
5. The race begins at 11 am and finishes at 4pm. Camera memory cards must be submitted by 4pm. Every 5 minutes late will be a 15 point deduction.
6. The same number of bikes must begin and end the race. If 3 bikes begin the race, the same 3 bikes must finish the race. If there is a mechanical problem, the bike must at least have been picked up by our emergency truck.
7, All team members, except the photographer, must be in the photo.
8. One ‘team’ camera per team. Please don’t put ‘point photos’ on different cameras.
9. One photo per site.
10. At least one cell phone per bike.

Scoring system

Bicycles:

• Nudity Multiplier: Any photo taken with responsible nudity will give double the regular points. This is a PG event, please nothing disgusting.

And the locations and map:

Teams didn’t get the maps and list of sites until the night before the rally. We had to plan out our list of sites to ride to carefully in order to maximize points and minimize time. With only 4 hours of ride time set aside, hitting all or even most was impossible.

I had helped with the publicity by posting the event on Ulsanonline.com and creating the registration pages, but the real organizers did a great job setting things up. The created T-shirts for the participants, collected cash donations from the motorcycle shops in town and setup a banquet following the race to award prizes (also donated from the motorcycle shops) with all-you-can-drink micro-brew beer and a buffet.

Sam and I stayed with another team for most of the day, as its more fun in groups than not. We only split up in the last few minutes of the race and capitalized on some dancing girl points and a nearby stadium nudity shot (I opened my shirt) to streak ahead and win the event. We pulled into the ending rally point at exactly 4:00pm the cut-off time.

Since the goal was taking pictures of you and your team at each site, the best part was watching the slide show of everyone’s pictures on the big screen at the banquet. There were some very artful pictures, funny pictures and just plain crazy pictures.

Having been here a few years, I had been to most of these places. But not all – there were a few sites that were new. My partner was a relative newcomer to Korea and she was wowed by most since she hadn’t had time to visit many places. Overall, it was a great event to meet new friends and get out and see parts of Korea that otherwise would stay hidden. The weather was awesome, no one had mechanical problems, no injuries (other than a little sunburn) and lots of beer at the end.

I might get some pictures up later, but my partner had the “official” team camera I’ll have to get them from her.

I’m looking forward to next year’s Inferno.

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By Marty, April 17, 2010 10:53 am

Since having bought the scooter, it’s gotten much easier to get up to the mountain to do some rock climbing. I’ve been up there the last several Saturdays and gotten some great climbing in.  I haven’t taken many pictures – seems like I have lots of pictures of people who asses from down below I can no longer recognize.

Getting there, however, is half the fun. In the car, SaTang just sat and watched the world go by, sometimes even sleeping as I drove. No more. Those days are over, baby.  She still likes going to the mountain and running around, chasing ground squirrels, barking at birds and begging for handouts from the Koreans who bring their entire kitchen when they climb.  If you want to get out and play, you’ve gotta make an effort. And she does extremely well sitting on the floorboard of the scooter.

SaTang rides in style up to Munsu Mountain

In case anyone is worried about safety, she’s wearing a harness and is attached to the bike via leash. If she falls off, I can yank her right back on without choking her. No worries about that, as she’s content just to sit between my feet and lean against my calves.

Sparky, one pup we decided to keep is too little (and too jumpy) to go up on Munsu. She’s cute as hell, but so far hasn’t proven quite as smart as her mama. Our climbing areas have a few meters of walking area between the cliff faces and the next drop-off, but I’m afraid she would just be too curious.  We might wait until she’s a little less puppy before taking her out and turning her into a full blown crag dog. In the meanwhile, she goes to MyeongHee’s hairshop where she’s fawned over by MH and her customers.

Sparky, still mostly furball, models her scarf

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By Marty, March 28, 2010 11:36 am

This month I signed a contract for another year here at the school. It will take me through February of 2011.

And I dropped the bomb on MyeongHee.

February 2011 is when her son, DongHyun, will graduate from highschool and either go to college or off to the military. He must go sometime before he’s 28, although most boys do a year or so of university before signing up.

Either way, I decided it would be a good time for a change. I’ll have been teaching at this school for four years straight and another in 2004-05. Five years is about my limit, it seems. But the bigger bomb I dropped is that I want to go back to America. Probably not forever, but longer than the week or so I’ve been able to come back in the previous three years.  Who the hell knows what forever is anyway?  But the longest I’ve ever held a job is seven years and five seems close enough.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I want to be able to experience America again – nothing so dramatic as the old Simon and Garfunkel song. Just the feeling of going outside and speaking English to a neighbor or chatting with the salesclerk in a store. Not that either of those happened very frequently in America, but when I see a Korean just having casual conversation it makes me miss that. One of the TV shows that really gets me is America’s Funniest Home Videos – just goofy stuff -  but seeing the homes, the yards, the kids, the sports… I miss my country and my culture. I’m probably idealizing to a great extent, but the fact remains that I miss my home country and despite my ever increasing Korean-language ability I am still an outsider here.

Of course, the bigger question is what would I do when I got there?  It’s hard to imagine what job I would qualify for after doing nothing more than speaking English for four years. And that’s if there are jobs to be had – given the economy that’s a big-ass what-if.

Other questions involve MyeongHee – she’s not interested in coming to America. She didn’t enjoy it much.  She’d rather stay. And leaving her hairshop would entail a great expense upon reopening should she come back. She’s happy doing one or two weeks visits but no more.

If I do come home, it looks like it might be just an extended month or two rather than years.  All of that is still a year away and a lot can happen between now and then. We’ll have to see how things go here and in the US. Stay tuned. More will be written as it becomes clear to me.