Last Couple of Days in Mokpo - Jan-31-2010

Random Korean Cultural Trivia


- The name Korea comes from it's second last dynasty, the Goryeo/Koryo kingdom (918-1392). One of the top universities in the nation, Korea University (고려대학교) is actually written as Goryeo University.

It's my second last day in my hometown Mokpo before I leave for teacher's training in Jochiwon (조치원) in Korea University. I've stayed here for a little two months and a lot of things happened. For one thing my Korean got tons better and I gained about 15 lbs from all the alcohol and good food I've been eating. I've lost roughly 25lbs since then so we can just say I lost 10lbs. =)

I've been hitting the gym 6 days a week and I've climbed like twenty mountains if not more, including the nations second tallest. In the long and short, it's just drink, eat, workout, meet people and sleep lmao.

Since I've been working out like a madman I've made a huge improvement in my strength. My last 'peak strength' was in grade 11 and after like six years I finally got past it. Sadly today was my last day at the gym (which turned out to be much more impressive than I thought). I'm gonna miss the gym owner (관장님), he's a pretty cool guy and gave me a lot of new exercise ideas that I never even imagined. And of course I'll miss all the beautiful young girls keeping their bodies beautiful. LOL. But yea here's a little rundown of my new peak strength.

Barbell Bench Press - 110kg (6x)
Tricep Pulldowns - 130kg (20x)
Seated Rows - 130kg (20x)
Chest Flys - 130kg (20x)
Leg Press - 180kg (8x) damnit.. I used to do 500 lbs back then D=
Dumbell Curls - 25kg per arm (8x)
Lat Pulldown - 100kg (20x)

I forgot the rest but you get the idea.

Anyway, I'll be heading over to Korea University in a couple of days for 3 weeks of teachers training. I'm really looking forward to it and I hope to meet a lot of great people there. Apparently we're staying at the University residence there for two weeks and then splitting off into groups based on provincial placement. I hope they have internet there and preferably a gym where I can still maintain my progress.

When I go to my placement in Wando County, I'm given like 3-4 days to get my apartment and stuff organized, as well as getting an idea of what's where in the city. When I went there last week I went around the harbourfront. All I saw was an endless strip plaza of seafood restaurants, convenience stores and fishing marts. Literally after two miles of walking that's all I ever saw. I walked into what looks like a mini supermarket and they had like nothing.

I haven't been to the main city yet but I'm gonna be scoping for four very important things.
- a gym (with heavy weights and nice looking girls? XD)
- a GOOD supermarket, (one that sells in good variety at good price)
- a convenience store (for snacks, drinks and the like)
- an electronics store (preferably one that sells games and other stuff)

When I move into my apartment in late Feb/early March I'm gonna start cooking again. =D It'll come in a variety, but mostly Korean and Western food, once I run out of those I'll try following other recipes I find online and give it a success/fail rating.

Halla Mountain and Horse Meat - Jan-07-2010

Random Korean Cultural Trivia

Kimbap - "Korean sushi" seaweed wrapped ricerolls that has assorted veggies and meats for stuffings

If you come to Jeju Island, the main attraction is to go up Halla Mountain (한라산). The volcano is Korea's 2nd tallest mountain (after Baekdu in the North) and the South's national natural monument. Apparently it's a rare opportunity to go and not many are able to do it, including the island locals too.

Anyway along the way near the base of the mountain is another of the island's strange mysteries. There's a particular road that goes down into a countryside area. If you put your car in neutral, the car will automatically start moving UP the slope no matter which way you face. It's an unexplained mystery and it's one of the main attractions before you climb up. At the time we tried it there was about 10 cars all doing it.

To begin the climb up you have to drive half way up on this highway that goes up, otherwise it would take you forever. The climb up takes about 3 hours and the climb down takes an hour and half, all in all about 5 hours including a 30 minute break. The climb is divided into two sections, the first half is a forest and the second half is a mountain valley. It was decided that I would be carrying our supplies, about 15 rolls of kimbap and about 5 litres of water plus some other stuff. (Roughly 35lbs in a bag)

Anyway, let me tell you about the path up Halla Mountain. It is the cheapest, most twisted, cruel and most unfair path you can ever walk on. To begin with there was heavy snowfall and strong freezing winds, that alone is a pain in the ass. The first part is the forest section, basically you climb up what is possibly the longest set of stairs in the world through a forest scenery.

Because of the heavy snowfall the staircase isn't a staircase anymore. It's become a slippery ice slope that you have to walk up praying not to slip, fall and slide all the way back down. Oh yeah, the slope you have to walk up is on an 80 degree angle, I'm not kidding the slope is THAT steep. It's not a straight path up either, it's a twisted path which makes moving difficult and there are random points where a fallen tree log obstructs your path.

Halfway up you reach a mid resting point, where you can drink clean mountain water and take a lunch break. A lot of the people brought gas cookers and they use the mountain water to cook ramen noodles. They say that the mountain water makes the noodle soup taste a lot better. By this point my legs are dying and I can barely walk as it is. So to lighten my burden we took a snack break and drank our fill. In the end the bag weighed about 10lbs and my dad carried it for the rest of the journey.

By this point the air really starts to thin out so breathing gets a bit difficult, especially in the cold wind. The second half of the journey is on the mountain slope itself. By this point we're in the clouds so the area is all gray and snowy making it really hard to see where you're going. The path is now guided by these red flag markers. There's also warning signs telling people not go by themselves. About 20 or so meters from the path, there's the edge of the cliff where you'll fall to your death.

This time the steepness is a lot more lenient (probably a 50-60 degree angle). To make up for it, there are random sections of the path where there are sharp bulgy rocks that you have to step on in order to continue. There are also areas where you have to jump down a ledge and climb back up another ledge, all roughly a meter in height. The worst part of the whole thing is probably the snow pitfalls. Since we're so high up, the snow falling is massive and it quickly built up patches of light snow where if you step into one it'll suck your leg in completely. I swear I must've fallen in like 50 times before I reached the summit.

Well finally after 3 sore hours of climbing we reach the summit. There's a rest house that doesn't really serve any purpose. It's just a wooden shack with tables/chairs stuck to the ground. No restaurant or workers, just a small cafeteria and washrooms for people to rest and eat.

Well technically this isn't the summit since there's an extra 2km left, but this is the point where everyone turns back. The path up here was about 5km and the real summit is on the 7km point. I'm gonna call it the summit, I don't care what any of you guys say, you can call it w/e you want but I'm gonna call it the summit. Fuck you. =)

On the way down, it's a lot faster and easier but it's still annoying because of the terrain. The whole time I'm trying not to slip and fall otherwise I'll go sliding and crashing down the mountain. On the forest part we found out that a girl had a wipe out and had to be taken out by a stretcher with ER people.

For dinner we had horse meat at a local bar. It came in a variety of forms: raw, cheese steakburgers, grilled, rib stew and soup. The meat itself was quite good and melts in your mouth every bite. (drool) The amount of protein they say nearly doubles that of beef or chicken. It's also good for your body joints apparently and strengthens your leg muscles. (Most of it comes from horse leg) The restaurant also had a service where it takes you back home for free. o_O What kind of restaurant does that?

Anyway, that's all I gotta say about that. Happy new years!

New Years on Jeju Island - Jan-04-2010

Random Korean Cultural Trivia

Ssireum (씨름) - Korean style wrestling from the Goguryeo kingdom. Two opponents stand in a sandpit with sashes tied to their waists. The competitors would grab each other's sashes by the side hips and would try to take each other to the ground. Methods of winning are done by throws and sweeps using mind games and strength.

For New Years we went to the island province of Jeju. The island is a common tourist destination (mostly for Chinese and Japanese visitors) and is a favourite dating / honeymoon spot. We left at 6am and after a rough, noisy five hour boat ride we docked on the island. The island always looks different wherever you go. The main city looks like Florida where the sun shines and theres palm trees everywhere. Oh yes I forgot to mention, it's ridiculously hot over there even in the winter time. Probably because it's close to the equator but I actually got a mild tan as a result of it. Other parts look like the mainland with it's mountainous range and the coasts are high with strong waves and a strong fishing culture. Since it's a volcanic island, the land isn't very suitable for agriculture so seafood is the main food source.

The culture is much different then the mainland, especially their language. Most dialects I'd understand or at least figure out but over here they sound like gibberish. The island was only a part of Korea for about 1000 years when the Tamna kingdom was officially absorbed, much like Okinawa was to Japan. To serve the high amount of foreign guests most things are written in multiple languages (Japanese, Chinese and English specifically). Most of my time on the island, there was a Japanese tour group of about 20 people touring the island with us. The rest kinda came on their own.

The island is apparently very well known for three things: (1- Rocks) (2 - Wind) (3 - Women)

Rocks
- The island is formed by volcanic eruptions, resulting in tons of volcanic rock. With the exception of road pavements and cement buildings everything on the island is made of volcanic rock. There's so much rock that theres actually a stone monument park. It's common for people to go by the shore side and stack rocks on top of each other making little statues.

Wind (and weather)
- The city is damn windy, aside from the wind itself, the weather is really random. Weather can change in a matter of minutes. When we arrived on the island by boat it was snowing with strong wind, ten minutes later it was drizzling with rain and about 30 minutes later the sun was shining and later in the afternoon it was snowing again.

Women

- The indiginous people had a different social structure. The family system was run on a matriarch system where the matriarch would get most of the income and sort out the stuff of the house. Men apparently just went fishing and doing less important things. I did notice that the women here were particularly more brutish looking with a rougher personality while the men were really small and puny by stature, kinda like the physical appearance is swapped by the gender. Yea.. my eyes were depressed the whole time I was here.

We visited the Jeju Island Folk Village, basically its like a modern made village based on the people their from a few hundred years ago. There was music, folk dancing, restaurants with their unique cuisine.

I had a taste of the village's unique style of rice wine and green onion juhn pancake (해물파전).

For dinner we had Korean sashimi. It's basically raw fish of course but using fish that isn't normally seen in Japanese sashimi. Koreans use (go-doong-uh/고둥어) mackerel and (gal-chi/갈치) cutlassfish. I had a small drinking contest with my uncle and we downed soju and beer bomb mixed drinks. All in all it cost over $100 (100 000 won).. that's a LOT of bottles.




 


The most messed up thing I learned was that there was a way of raising livestock pigs which is quite nasty. The pigs (lit. s**t pigs) were fed s**t because they naturally cleaned it up and they grew on that. As nasty as that sounds it's actually a convenient way to feed them without wasting animal feed. There was a Japanese tour group of about 20 people touring the village with us. When they got to the pig part, I just heard a loud mixture of screaming, disgusted groaning and laughter. Can't really blame them, I feel creeped out as I write this blog. The same pigs are served as food today, but of course they don't raise them the way they did back then.

This rock... as you can probably tell is the shape of a penis. It's like a symbol of good luck, fertility and a healthy child. If a house owned one, it meant that they were planning to have children and that the parents were praying for good fortune.

The rock is not carved by people and is a natural volcanic rock formation.

There's also cultural aspects of the olden days of mainland Korea that was brought over. Probably the most notable one ssireum wrestling. There's also a set of pillars where contests of strength was held. Basically you climb onto the pedestal and try to lift an egg shaped stones. The lighter stones would be about 50lbs and the heaviest weighs about 200lbs. Back then, the young men in the village would show the young women that their strength is much greater than the other men and that they are more suitable husbands. I tried three times to lift the stone and believe me it's a LOT harder than you think. The egg shape makes it awkward to pick up, let alone hold in your arms. I picked it up and held it for about 10 seconds until my arms and back gave out.