Yeongtong-dong and Cheongmyeong-san

     Most of the pictures in the next web album are from the hike up the mountain that I took this morning. Cheongmyeong-san {청명산} is a nice, very little mountain. It takes about an hour to climb up, and 45 minutes to come back down.
     About half way up from Yeongtong-dong {영통동} (the neighborhood I live in) you'll come to a leveled off area called Noble County. I've heard that it's a retirement home (silver town) but some of my students have told me about the nice restaurants and swimming there. The whole place is owned by the Samsung Corporation so it could be a combination retirement home/recreation center for Samsung's employees. I took a slight detour on the way down the mountain today to look around the grounds.
     On the edge of Noble County is a little farm. The farm has two tiers for growing their crops. With a county as small, densely populated, and mountainous as Korea you grow what you can, where you can. The farm used to have a giant bird cage filled with parakeets, pheasants, and other noisy little things, but the cage has been mostly dismantled.
     On up the mountain you can find a few little exercise spots. Koreans are crazy for fitness and you can find exercise equipment in almost every park. At the very top of the mountain is a little stone marker and a metal sign letting you know which city is on which side of the mountain.
     I took a picture of my neighborhood on my way home. You can see the paper on the street. Unfortunately littering is a very popular form of advertising in Korea. The towers in the background were not visible from this area when I first moved here in August. Korail is putting in a subway station that will connect to Ori Station {오리역} and I think Suwon Station {수원역}, and the towers are being built to cater to the boom in population and businesses that the new station will bring.
     Finally there are some pictures of the crab tanks next door to my apartment. These tanks are very common in Korea and they are filled with all manner of sea life. I'll probably do a photo essay on these tanks some time soon.

Yeongtong-dong and Cheongmyeong-san

Icheon Redux

     I mentioned in my email about Icheon that I made some movies, but was working on converting/editing them. I couldn't find any decent looking freeware to do the converting/editing. Instead I found a way to post them on line in the full horrible glory, Google Video.
     They are horrible do to my own lacking. My Nikon digital camera has very few movie making options. I have very little experience running a camera (and usually it's a high quality camera on a tripod). A lot of video was shot with me holding the camera over the crowd's heads, and my final excuse is that it was horribly bright outside so I could not really see the LCD.
     Anyways, the background for the movies is, we (Jungwon and I) went to Icheon {이천} on May fifth, two thousand and seven. Icheon has a ceramics festival once every two years, and this happened to be one of the years. To make it even more exciting May fifth is Children's Day in Korea. We stumbled upon a Taekwondo {태권도} performance, and later we came across a group playing traditional Korean drums.

Movie One: Korean Drummers (very loud!):

Movie Two: Taekwondo Demonstration; Board Breaking:

Movie Three: Taekwondo Demonstration; Modern Form:

Bongeunsa

     Bongeunsa {봉은사 } is a Buddhist temple in Seoul. It is just a short walk from CoEx (Samseong Station {삼성역}). The temple was especially busy and decorated when we were there, because this coming Thursday (May twenty-fourth) is the celebration of Buddha's Birthday (Hooray for National Holidays!).
     It was very odd walking around the rustic grounds in Seoul. Everything surrounding the temple is cement, steel, and glass. The trees and gravel walkways were refreshing. Without Jungwon there I would have stumbled into a restricted area that was meant only for the resident monks (the sign was written in Korean). As usually Jungwon took most of the pictures (she's the better photographer). The colorful statues are made of painted paper. I was wondering the whole time "how well will they hold up in the rain?". Probably pretty well since the temples have had paper lanterns strung in the nearby streets for a month. Still, we were lucky that it was a bright and clear day.
     The grounds were crowded and we only went into one building. It had a sort of exhibition of the paper statues and a small display of how they are made. When we were leaving the building the people sitting at the table had me sign and write what I thought into a guest book. They did not let Jungwon sign, it was for foreigners only.
     Another building had some beautifully painted scenes on the side. They depicted a young monk going through all sorts of trials. He did all sorts of things including wrestling a tiger, but the worst had to be the written test. I later discovered that Bongeunsa was the main temple for giving the country's exam for admittance into the monk hood. And as a slight aside, I learned that Bongeunsa is a zen Buddhist temple.
     Finally, you will notice a few swastikas painted on the buildings. This doesn't mean that it is a hideout for nazis. Rather the symbol itself is older than nazism, and has been used to denote temples for many centuries.

Bongeunsa