Gamcheon Culture Village

Greetings!

This was an eventful weekend. Not only did Hannah and I get our fancy, schmancy new winter coats, but we also did something I've been wanting to do for some time: go to the Gamcheon Culture Village (which I call the "Gamcheon Artisan Village").

I will explain: during the Korean war the South Korean and UN troops were losing the battle to the North Korean forces and were ultimately pinned down to one last stronghold: Busan. During this time, many of the refugees were forced into living in makeshift shanty towns in the hillside. These shanties were very small (maybe 10x10 feet), made of cold concrete, and very densely packed into the mountain. One of these impoverished towns was Gamcheon. However, as we all know, the South was able to win a few decisive battles and gain the upper hand. Hence, the refugees were now able to leave the shanty towns and rebuild their countries. Now, up until the 1980's, many people (most being elderly) remained in these shanties to eek out a modest, but impoverished existence. However, efforts were made by artists (and the government) to remodel and refurbish these shanty towns into artistic meccas. And so, whereas few people now live in these homes, many have been transformed into studios and galleries. Even the streets have been made into a bit of a "living museum" with bright colours and tasteful graffiti painting the drab houses. Today, many of these former shanty towns are very popular tourist destinations among foreigners and Koreans alike.

Now, we had a very difficult time trying to find directions to the place. Hannah pointed out to me that I should put the info out there for other struggling waygookin trying to find the place... and so I will comply. We first took the subway (orange line) to Toseong Station (one past Jagalchi) and exited through Exit 6. After exiting, we took our first right up the hill, past the Pusan National University Hospital and climbed for about 2-3 minutes until we reached a bus stop by the hospital entrance.  We took bus #2 (one of the small ones with 12 seats inside) up the hill to the very top and exited to the left side of the street. It is very obvious where the entrance to the village is since there is a sudden abundance of colourful statues and murals on the buildings. Apparently bus #2-2 goes the same way as well. Bear in mind that the bus will take you to the top of the village, if that's any indication of when you should stop. I figure it's about 4-5 stops up from the hospital.

Near the entrance of Gamcheon Village

If you see these creepy Bhudda-faced pigeons greeting you from atop the buildings, you know that you are in the right place.

Seriously... what the hell?! It's the stuff nightmares are made of!

 As you continue walking along the main road, you will come across a large fish on the wall made of smaller, wooden fish...

Your adorable and drop-dead handsome tour guide, at your service, in front of said fish(es).

...and across the street from the head of the fish is a very hidden-away building where you can buy some artworks and maps of the village.

It is in the ground. Seriously. The roof and sign are just a head higher than street level.

Inside, for the price of 1000KRW, you can get a high-quality map of the village. As a bonus, you can do somewhat of a "scavenger hunt" around the village where you visit 8 locations in the village and stamp your map accordingly to indicate that you were at the specified place. If you get them all, you can collect a couple of free post cards, so I have read.

Sadly, your dashing and sexy tour guide did not get all of the stamps. 7/8 is still a fail :(

So, there you have it. Probably the most visual and specific guide to getting to Gamcheon Village you will find written in English on the internet. Actually, I'm pretty certain of this. It is bloody hard to find directions aside from "get a cab and shove your smartphone in his face."

ANYWAY, once you are there and walking about, the place is otherworldly when compared to the chaos of Nampo and the general Busan downtown. For one, it is quiet. For another, it is older than 50 years. For one more, it is positively quirky in sharp contrast to the "same-ness" of all of the identical tombstone-like rows of officetels and apartment buildings throughout the city.

As I previously mentioned, there is a fair amount of tasteful graffiti adorning the walls, which adds to the quirk-factor.

Boys playing hide-and-seek.

A fragmented Korean poem about nostalgia hangs, like a cloud, over the street corner.

Many of the areas are broad enough to fit two cars, but many are quite tight (as in the buildings are literally shoulder-width apart!).

I do not mess around with the word "literal"!

It is very easy to get lost in this city as there are many walkways of various widths to trek across. However, helpfully enough, there are friendly-looking arrows and fish guiding your way along the path. Some examples below:

(Author's note: the fish heads are intended to point in the direction you are meant to go.)

I love this "tree"! I regret not taking my photo beside it.

Some of the former homes have been hollowed out into exhibitions:

The cow-like fuzzy things seem to be from a Dr. Seuss book of some sort in "At Home" house.

Likewise, the "heels-over-head" thing going on at "Peace House" seems like something from a children's book.

Ultimately, we spent about 2 hours wandering the streets of the village. After a while, I became less interested in the art and more interested in the people living here. I think it is very easy to forget (and very seldom discussed) that people do, in fact, live here!

Here, an elderly woman tends to her plants as we pass by.

Drying laundry, oddly enough, was oddly photogenic among the concrete slabs... perhaps because it seemed out-of-place in the "living museum".

Whereas most of the residents ignored us and went about their business, at least one was particularly friendly!

For some reason, the little bugger REALLY liked me and kept sitting by my feet. It would have been too easy to take him home with us!

Little guy jumped right on my lap as I crouched to take a photo!

I definitely recommend going here for an afternoon or (ideally) late-morning excursion.

One last funny thing, while Hannah and I sipped on some rose hip tea at a cafe, our travel companions were pinned down by a TV crew for an impromptu interview!

The fellow in the middle is NOT a 6'4 Korean, but Julian. Poor bugger was there for 10 minutes!

Though it would have made for a very interesting end to an interesting day, I am quite thankful that I was not up there with them at that moment! I HATE cameras!

-Garrett

Fall foliage/More Beomeosa photos

Hello!

Adding on to Hannah's previous post about Beomeosa temple, I'd like to share a fistful of photos I took on our sojourn. I'll do my best to put them in a sensical order.

Firstly, the main gate, dating at about 1,400 years old! (Rebuilt in 1715 or thereabouts following being destroyed by the Japanese during the Hideyoshi invasions).

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!"

Outside the main gate were several of these pillars on the backs of turtles. Apaprently, most of these pillars are burial mounds for important monks that lived at the temple. The turtle on the bottom calls to mind the Hindu idea that the world is a gigantic disk sitting atop the shell of a massive cosmic turtle!

Also outside was a cluster of Japanese maple trees. I'm not sure if they are actually related to our familiar red maples, but they turned the same colours of red, yellow, and orange! It made me feel, if only for a moment, that I was in Canada again!

I miiiiight have snapped off a twig and pressed it in a book. I also might not have!

After entering the south gate, we came across a more recent gate, which used to be a guard post.

 

 Inside this (now closed) gate were four elaborate, gigantic statues of the old temple guards. As you can see, each are different; possibly reflecting their different personalities.

This fellow is grasping a dragon in one hand with the other open.

Unsheathing his sword with an iaido-like form. (Iaido being the Japanese art of unsheathing the sword. It's like "quick-drawing" and, ideally, you can unsheath your sword and cut in one motion.)

A trident in one hand and a pagoda (many-level burial structure) in the other. This guy looks positively devious!

I have named this one "Dillon".

"Check it out, bitches! I am ROCKING this lute!"

For whatever reason, there are many bird heads adorning the newer structures. I am unsure if they are herons or not, but their red crests indicate that they may be stylized chickens! This is even more odd if you consider that the Korean expression for a stupid and senseless person is "chicken-headed".

 Click to enlarge, as with all of the other photos!

A much older, weather-beaten "chicken head" from an older part of the temple.

Whereas Seokbulsa temple had a massive iron bell, Beomeosa had a tremendous drum the size of a van!

I really can't think of a good way to conclude this post, so I will just leave you with some photos showing just how elaborate and detailed much of the structures were. Gargoyles abounded; some recent and some several hundred years old!

 This fearsome fellow guarded the west gate.

And, just to drive the whole "attention-to-detail" point home, I give you an electrical maintenance box complete with a painted clay "roof".

....and, finally, here is a picture of Hannah doing what she does best: being a lovely Hannah!

We hope to revisit Beomeosa in the spring, as Hannah previously wrote. I am also considering doing a temple stay there in the spring for one weekend. I will have to research that more, though. I'll tell you all how that goes.

Beomosa and Thanksgiving and an angry turkey

So, the past week, I (the Hannah half of this blog) have been incredibly broke. I finally bought a new laptop, and there went the last of my monies. As a result, we had to have fun for FREE, or close to free.
We went up to Beomosa Temple. This is the temple everyone tells us is soooo pretty and we simply must see it, blah blah blah. It was definitely pretty, but it didn't live up to the hype for me. I actually liked a smaller temple just up the hill from it, better. I'll let you decide.

 

Well, it's not really fair, because this is the best photo I took and it was at Beomosa. Those little orange looking guys are persimmons, an incredibly popular little fruit over here.

 We also saw some Japanese Maple trees. They were suuuper gorgeous. Apparently, there is also a wisteria reserve on the Beomosa property, and in May the place is just totally filled with flowers. We're definitely going to brave the crowds for that.

To be honest, if you've seen one temple, you've seen just about all of them. They look reeeally similar on the outside. We're pretty sure you can't take pictures of the icons, so we can't show you how awesome the insides were. However, there were some really freaky massive animal-people monster statues.

Boys will be boys

So, this happened last Friday, but I was encouraged to share it with everyone.

I go into the boy's bathroom at school toward the end of lunch hour and I see two boys crowded around one urinal. One was actually using the urinal and the other was not more than 2 inches away talking about something very urgent in a very hushed tone. As soon as they heard the door close behind me they darted their eyes toward me like two gazelles seeing a lion! At this point, I could tell that they were 3rd grade students: a grade I do not teach.

"Oh! Uh, hello, Teacher!", one stammered.
"...Hey, guys.", I laughed.

I walked past them to a bathroom stall and did my thing. While in there, I heard the door open and close again, then silence. I presumed that they had left to do whatever they were plotting.

And so, having finished my "errand", I left the stall only to see the same students still in the bathroom. This time, they had the bathroom door open by just a crack and were anxiously peering out through the slit. Again, the guys were startled when they realized that I was still there! At this point, I was curious. A bullying problem, mayhaps?

"Uh, hi, Teacher!", the first started.
"Hello, again. What are you two doing?"
"Oh, uh, it is LONG story."

"Whatever", I thought to myself. "Okay, guys, could you get out of the way? I need to wash my hands."
"Yes, teacher."

And so, I got past them and to the sole sink in the bathroom and noticed that they were still watching me expectantly. Before I could ask anything else, the first student began:

"We hide here. You, uh, see, girls want us buy them cookie... but we no get... so now they kill us! We hide here."

Now, I could not help myself; I started giggling. "So, if I understand correctly, you are hiding here because you promised some girls that you would buy them cookies..."

"Yes, teacher.", the first one confirmed.

"...but you FORGOT to get them cookies and now they are looking for you."

"Yes, teacher.", the second concurred.

"...and so you are hiding in the boy's bathroom so that they don't come to kill you."

Both students looked down half-bashful-half-ashamed.

"Good luck, guys! Just remember that class begins soon.", I laughed.

"Of course, teacher. Thank you, teacher.", they said bowing in unison.

Not more than 30 seconds after I left the class bell began. Now they had no where to hide. May God have mercy on their souls.

If nothing else, this story taught me that even in a male-dominated society on the other side of the earth, some things remain constant: Hell hath no fury like a woman denied pastry.

-Garrett

This (was) Halloween!

My experience in Korea has taught me something: I am not a compulsive blogger! It has also taught me another thing: ALWAYS bring a camera!

As many of you now know, I now have a shiny new cellphone: the Samsung Galaxy SII. It is a marvel of (now outdated) technology capable of passing many hours in a virtual second! Frankly, it scares the hell out of me! Not only that, but the damn thing is quite a bit bigger than my flip phone (called a "grampa phone" here)!

The point of my phone rant is that I now have a phone with a camera in it FOR THE FIRST TIME EVAR!

The reason why I haven't updated myself in the past two weeks is that I was waiting on some photos from our not-Halloween shindig. Well, I now have some!

On November 2nd Hannah and I went with a couple of friends (Fiona and Julian of Colorado) to a zombie-themed pub crawl. Now, we were under the distinct impression that the zombie crawl was on Saturday and we thought we had time to create our costumes. I was going to go as zombie Abe Lincoln and Hannah as zombie Misty from Pokemon. Well, unfortunately for me I received an email around 2:00PM from Hannah on Friday telling me that the pubcrawl was 7:00 that night! Sadly, I was not honest Abe... I was nothing.

However, as luck would have it, Fiona has experience doing stage makeup and had a good supply of stuff to smear on our faces (Fiona, if you're reading, please forgive the imagery! You have the light touch and care of a butterfly with down feathers for legs.). Between that and some red nail polish applied to my neck by another friend in attendance, I wound up looking like this:

 

So, while I was no Abe Lincoln, I made for a pretty convincing zombie. Hannah's was also very good; however, I was a LITTLE more into the whole spirit of Halloween than she was, I think:

KISS ME!!! RAWR!!!

Now, as many of you know, and as my students DEFINITELY know, Halloween is my FAVOURITE holiday! More than Christmas and even more than my own birthday, so I was thrilled that I was actually able to do something in Korea! So, with makeup on and zombie identities assumed, we lurched toward the first bar.

The zombie walk was composed of three bars: the Thirsty Moose (Canadian and Turkish-themed, if that makes sense), Paco Taco (Mexican) and "The Basement" (standard-issue night club). All three are owned by the same guy, so we basically got three free drinks that night from whichever place we wanted. We were quite saddened by the fact that so many people there did not wear costumes! Even more sad was the fact that the other people that DID bother looked more like The Joker than a cadaver!

The 1960's Cesar Romero version!

Moreover, once the prizes were announced and whatnot, the musician present started playing depressing hipster music. Seriously. Melancholy, brooding music during the most manic night of the year! WTF?! We were basically driven out of the bar by the atmosphere and by the glares of the other patrons as we tried talking to each other, of all things!

So, determined to save Halloween, I dumped a bucket of blood over my head and we walked (I lurched) to the next place: Paco Taco.

**I should mention at this point that, while many Koreans are aware of the West's weird fascination with Halloween, they do not necessarily share it. So, four foreigner zombies lurching about at night (one COVERED in blood) was definitely a strange sight, to be sure. Most gave us a wide berth, but some were clearly amused. "Don't eat me, zombie man!").**

Like this, but more drippy. It was pretty graphic/awesome. To my left, Hannah gasping in amazement at my raw zombie sexiness!

Anyway, at Paco Taco, zombie-Garrett fed upon the flesh... of two beef tacos. Not bad, actually. Nothing compared to what you would get in North America, but, all things considered, not bad. I even ate the tacos half-zombie style and harassed a bartender pretending to shoot me. I didn't bite him, but I did manage to utter an order, "Beeeeerrrr..... *gargle*". I got Moosehead! Really! Moosehead of all things! And guess what: I was thrilled. The first time I EVER ordered my hometown's beer at a bar was in frigging KOREA: the other side of the planet! Weird, right?! Also, they played MUCH better music! We all danced to Thriller to the delight and confusion of all of the Korean bar patrons.

After a couple of hours there we proceeded to The Basement where we started to wane a bit. It was only around 11:30 at this point, but I had three drinks in me and was exhausted from a week of screaming at kids. I woke up, though, when Fiona and I found the free pool table on the main level. Eventually, I was playing against several Korean patrons, winning most and losing some. One guy actually bought me a beer, which I accepted, but later gave to Hannah (I was tired of drinking and would have KILLED for a Coke!). Bear in mind that I was still covered in gore, but had now shed the whole zombie persona. It just wasn't Halloween anymore :(.

After a while, we were all fairly gassed out of the bar from all of the cigarette smoke and went to a less-busy Korean bar called The Beer Garden. The Korean fellow who bought me the beer (and had bought one each for Fiona, Julian, and Hannah) came with us and tried his best to practice his broken English with us. He took a liking to me since I was the only Canadian (apparently, Koreans especially like Canadians since mostly Canadian soldiers fought and died during the Korean War... as opposed to American troops). So, we stayed there until around 2:00AM and headed out. I felt kind of bad for the Korean man since he wanted to break out the soju (NOOOOOOO!, we all protested) and wanted to go for food later, but we were DONE at this point. Hannah and I scored a taxi home from the other side of the city for only 16,000 KRW (about 15$). We then showered as passed out.

I tell ya, after a long night of scaring Koreans shitless and beating them at pool, fewer things feel better than washing all the blood out of your hair!

Aside from that weekend, life has been pretty quiet. I've been obsessing over my work and Minecraft (and my work IN Minecraft!) and Hannah was sick for the whole next week (poor thing got overly-gassed by cigarettes and got an awful respiratory tract infection). I went on a couple more hikes since then and Hannah and I went to an expat poetry/story reading thing last weekend, but aside from that, pretty quiet. Hannah's been very diligently writing a novel in her spare time, but I will leave her to write about that!

Hannah also already wrote about Peppero day in the previous post, so I won't bother about that. I will say, however, that buying all of my co-teachers Peppero was a VERY good move on my part!

This weekend, we hope to hike to the Beomosa temple, try out a gaming room, and get Hannah a new laptop! Let's see how this goes...

-Garrett

Kitties and Cakes and Peppero

Happy Pepero Day!
Pepero day is that special day created by a very large company that makes a chocolatey snack called Pepero. On this day, you buy their product and give it to people you love. If you don't do this, you are a bad person. Garrett and I both opted to give some to our co-teachers, which isn't entirely normal for co-workers, but we're foreigners so it's okay. They really appreciated it. I got a hug!
Today is also the day me and my friends went out for a girls' day. Except one of them cancelled, so it was just me and my one friend. That's okay, because she's the coolest. We had 2 things on our agenda.

One:
KITTY CAFE

This one is right in Haeundae, so we can go there EVERY DAY if we want to! The kitties were also INCREDIBLY cute. The white kitties --->
were so soft they were practically clouds. There were russian blues, and a tabby, and a geriatric cat that kept following my friend around meowing. 

Of course, it was literally only me, my friend, and a 5 year old girl at this place.
The girl seemed pretty sweet, but she was kind of a little jerk. All she wanted was to play with the kitties, even if they were playing with someone else. Every 10 minutes, she would realize that either Fiona or I had convinced a kitty to play with us, and she would run over and shake a toy in its face until it followed her.
That, and one time she realized that I had found the cats' FAVORITE toy. So, obviously, she had to have it. She came over and (very nicely) took it out of my hand and gave me something else.
That girl is going to be a diva when she gets older.






Then, Two:
CAKE CAFE

In Korea, there are places where you can literally pay to decorate a cake. We wanted cupcakes, but, of course, they were out. We bought one white cake for around 15$, and then added whatever we wanted to it. There were sprinkles, sugar letters, numbers, cartoon, figures, flowers and flowers and flowers. There was also fruit and different flavors of icing. I, of course, do not like fruit getting in my dessert, so I stuck to sprinkles and sugary crap.
Fiona and I had already decided we would make pepero day cakes to go along with our Pepero presents for the manly men, so we were very careful not to make it too girly. Mine still ended up very girly, but what do you expect? It's a freaking cafe where you decorate cake.
 
 In the end, it came to around 23$ between the two of us.
Cake Cafes: Fun, Delicious, and really cheap.
Why hasn't American figured out how awesome this is, yet??

So, that is what I did today. Jealous much?  Happy Pepero Day!

Holy Firecrackers, Batman!

Holy firecrackers, Batman! Does Korea EVER love it's festivals!

We're all gunna DIE!

The 2012 Busan Fireworks Festival went on last weekend in the port city on Sunday night. They were originally scehduled for Saturday night but, unfortunately, were cancelled due to rain. I suddenly had a bit of Saint John nostalgia and remembered many a New Year's and Canada Day firework display cancelled due to fog.

Glorious! Simply glorious! It's like a mood ring!

I later found out through a co-teacher that the amount of rain we had (something like 40mm in one day) was a 73-year record! It would figure that it would happen the day of the 1.4 million dollar (USD) fireworks display! We had originally planned to camp out at a seaside park on Saturday, but we are VERY happy that we did not!

So, thankfully we were able to watch the fireworks from a spot relatively close to our apartments: Dongnae. From there we were able to overlook the Gwangali bridge (also known as the "Diamond Bridge") from which many of the fireworks were launched. I've included some videos below that I attempted to take with my camera. I can safely say, following the inspection of these videos, that I do not have much of a future in the field of cinematography.

Fairly early on, there was an impressive volley of fireballs launched from the bridge. The show started strong, I will say that!

A section of the big finale. The artist apologizes for being a generally terrible person.

A legitimately good photo taken by me! See?! The sasquatch DOES exist!

The show went on for a good 50 minutes with all manner of dazzling displays! I can only imagine the scene at Gwangali beach, where many boats all along the bay shot fireworks off into the night, arcing over the water. As this year's theme was "love", there were ample shades of red and heart-shapes hovering momentarily over the city. I have heard rumours that some people camp out on the beach as early as 10 hours before the show, only to be sat on by old women and generally beaten up. I'm unsure if the fireworks would be worth 10 hours of boredom and punishment, but I'm very sure that Hannah and I were wise to approach from the other side of the bay. MUCH smaller crowds at the cost of a less-dramatic viewing angle.

Both Hannah and I are very happy we decided to give the fireworks another go after the cancellation. The night was perfect: clear and windless.

I hope all is well back home! And don't be shy about leaving comments! We LOVE to know if people actually read our banter!

-Garrett

PS: I am ashamed and shocked to mention that, of the 600 students I have, only about 10 saw the fireworks. I am starting to think that by the end of this year I will have seen more of the city than they have their entire lives! Poor buggers probably study all the time :(.