If you're going to travel the entire length of Korea and back in one day, do it to see the Boseong tea fields. 

And what better way to start a journey than eating tarts on a train?  We were riding the KTX which sails along at a mean 305km/hour! 

The view was a patchwork of vibrant, green rice paddies. 

In summer, Korea is astoundingly green--green that will wake you up in the morning.

Rows of rice and the reflection of Nate's book in the window.  He read the entire thing on the 3.5 hour ride from Seoul to Kwangju. 

After a harrowing 1.5 hour bus ride from Kwangju with a kamakaze driver, we arrived at this ramshackle little station in Boseong where we caught another 15 minute kamakaze bus ride to beach-side Yulpo where we stayed overnight.

Here's Nate doing the thinker pose at the station...He's thinking, "what did I get myself into?"

In Yulpo we had dinner at a little samgyeopsal place, and I had green tea, cold noodles (noktcha nangmyeon).  Because this is Korea's tea producing region, you can eat almost anything with green tea added. 

Next we found ourselves a little love motel--actually a cab driver pointed us to the one directly across the street from where we were standing.  It had been unclear to us that this little door, adjacent to a convenience store, with a Maya Angelo quote laminated on it, was the entrance to a love motel! The room was clean. The bed was a little sketchy...

But the quote on the pull down drapes was priceless, and almost made up for our neighbours who partied and yelled and drank and pounded the floor from 11pm to 7am!

But that just meant we were awake at 7am and could see the tea fields in their misty morning calmness.  Our cab driver friend took us to the first of the two main fields of the Daehap Dawon tea farm. 

There's the tea!  And some seed-like fruits.

Here's the driver posing with the seeds.  He insisted that Nate take them as a souvenir.  Nate didn't think Customs would be excited to have these in Canada, so he ditched them later on. 

Then the cab driver dropped us at the largest tea fields just up the road.  The mist was settling over the tops of all the sloping hills.

But we needed some breakfast before the long climb to the top.  The most appetizing thing on the menu was a raw Manila Clam Bibimbap (mixed rice dish), so we split one. 

Nothing like raw clams in spicy sauce to put some hair on your chest! Traditional breakfast in Korea is usually rice and kimchi.

And we swallowed it down with a fair bit of cold, fruity green tea. 

And topped her off with some green tea ice cream!

Then high ho, high ho, up the hill we went. 

We couldn't have had better weather.  The mist was kissing the hills and the air was cool.

And the Nikkons were out in full force.  Scenes from a popular Korean drama were filmed here. 

It was a love story.

And slopping hills are a pretty interesting backdrop. 

This little guy was just plain cute.

And he was pretty cute too.

A nice man took our picture.

And we couldn't resist the irony of drinking coffee in a tea field.

We made it to the top.

 I was a little distracted by all the pretty spider webs covered in dew. 

And then by some pretty flowers.

  

Before we left, we sampled some tea.  There are six grades of noktcha--each picked at a different stage in the growing season and exhibiting a unique flavour profile. 

Up close and personal with the tea.  This is what we came here for. In case you were wondering, we did try gnawing on some fresh leaves--they are bitter!

Warning, if you're not a fan of seafood, you love the movie Finding Nemo or you are turned off by all things gooey, these photos may not be for you!  

Nate and I visited the Sokcho Fish Market on our vacation.  Sokcho is on the east sea and is known for fresh seafood caught early in the morning and then sold and served up the same day.  It's the place to go for hwae (raw fish eaten simply with spicy sauce or rice).  I was wearing flip flops and found that the floor of the market was incredibly slippery.  I skated around knowing that the consequences of falling into someone's display were a little grim.  You too may need to brace yourself.  These next photos are not pretty!

Okay, so these ones weren't bad looking.  They were displayed with rough salt sprinkled over their gills.

This gelatinous monster was less pretty.  Imagine him swimming up to you at the beach! 
One of the most intense jobs in the market was being done by a small woman who was scraping all the gel-like skin off these enormous fish. 

eek!

Fish roe and other innards for sale. 

Octopi caught fresh this morning!  You could also purchase live octopi.  I didn't like watching the live octopi, bundled in yellow nets, sitting in shallow water.  Their breathing seemed very human.  Their bodies rise and fall when they take in water and blow it out again. 

On the right, whole squid. On the left, cleaned squid. 

There were sea snails (whelks?).

Shrimp.

And a variety of tube worm, commonly eaten raw and still squirming. 

There were some beautiful looking crabs. 

And Nate thought these ones looked like fish-eels. 

Some pretty serious butchering.  Behind each stall, a man or woman cleans and guts all the fish purchases.  If you didn't like fish before, these picture will not have helped you! 

Nami is a man-made island that sits in the middle of a lake near Chuncheon. 

Some scenes from famous Korean dramas were filmed on Nami. 

Which is why everyone and their Nikkon is out trying to re-create the scenes.

It's very serious business!

Nami is supposed to be a romantic place. These two took the cue. 

There were rice paddies

And lilypads.

Fields of pansies.

Tall grasses.

Colourful tourists.

Bicycles built for two.

And buggies built for four.

Irises.

And more irises.

Cute critters...Love bugs?

A dad making bubbles for his kids.

A potter making pots to be fired in a wood oven. 

A flying kid.

And a cow that tried to fly?

Make that a zebra-cow!

As if blogging could get anymore self-involved...here's some shameless self promotion. I wrote a little piece for CNN i-reports. If it is deemed "newsie" enough it could be vetted by CNN and posted in other places.  I'm trying to get more published work in case I apply to do my MA in journalism.  So if you wouldn't mind, please click on "Old Seoul." Your hit on the site will make it look more "newsie."  Thanks for your help:)  Old Seoul.

In celebration of the coming of the 'enlightened one,' Buddha's birthday is feted with thousands of lanterns.  Although I don't embrace the spiritual dimensions of the occasion, it was still beautiful and spectacular to witness all the lanterns begin to glow at dusk.  Festivals and lantern parades are held in various locations in Korea (and all over the world), and apparently, people purchase lanterns in exchange for making wishes.  I had the opportunity to hike to a Buddhist temple in the mountains last weekend where the wish making was explained to me.  Some people purchase lanterns that are hung in various places.  Some people buy temple roof tiles and write their wishes on these. Others buy pink, lotus-shaped lanterns that hang inside the temple with wishes suspended on thousands of white papers.  As I couldn't read them, I asked one of the Korean teachers if most of the wishes were about health or finances.  She said no.  Most of them were requests for good SAT scores! 

There are far too many blossom photos to post, but here are a few magnolias and cherry blossoms.  It has been a beautiful spring.

Korea has a tumultuous relationship with cherry trees. 

Japan first introduced cherry blossom watching to Korea during the occupation, and so the trees became a symbol of the forced acculturation of Korea.  A couple of years ago, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese expulsion, Japanese cherry trees, planted on top of sacred sites near Korea's Gyeongbukgung palace, were cut down.

But Korea seems to have made peace with the millions of other cherry trees dotting the country.  Both a native Korean species and the cultivated Japanese species can be seen throughout Korea, and the coming of the blossoms is celebrated with festivals and picnics.  

Last weekend, the weather looked gray.  Weather reports called for a 100% chance of precipitation in Seoul.  But it was our (okay, so Nate was just being really sweet and accompanying me) last chance to see the cherry blossoms that grace the trees at Gyeongbukgung for about two weeks each spring.  With my head filled with romantic notions of delicate pink and white petals floating on spring breezes, we headed for the palace. 

The courtyard in front of the palace was a maze of puddles. 

This woman had the right idea. I wished we were wearing head to toe plastic. The ponchos being peddled, in what seemed like opportunism on the subway, now appeared to be common sense. 

Water, water everywhere. 

Well, I caught a few  blossoms still clinging to the branches, but the most wonderful part of the day was taking in Gyeongbukgung palace in the absence of hoards of tourists. 

People walked around under umbrellas with their arms wrapped around each other in the most endearing way.

The moody day was the perfect atmosphere for touring these palace grounds--a place where the tumultuous history of Korea has played out on the architecture of beautiful buildings.  The original 500 buildings were home to kings and queens during the Joseon Dynasty (construction began in 1396).  The palace was burned during the Japanese invasion (1592-98) and then restored under King Gojong (1865) at great cost to the Korean people.  King Gojong only lived in the palace for 23 years before he fled to Russia when his wife, Queen Min, was murdered by Japanese assassins on the palace grounds.  Queen Min, a controversial figure in Korean history, and a woman who wielded great political power, played a dangerous game of Russian roulette.  She was assassinated (1895) by Japan for aiming to increase diplomatic ties with Russia. She had hoped Russia would help keep Japan out of Korea.  
Later, during the Japanese colonial period, all but ten of the original structures were demolished, but there has been some restoration work in recent years. 

It was moody and beautiful.  Stone and water and mist.  The sound of water dripping off swooping rooves and splashing into ancient stone. 

Last weekend, we had the wonderful opportunity to attend the wedding of Nate's co-worker in Seoul.  Afterward, we spent the afternoon with our friend Kristine and her husband ILwan--who drove us around and dropped us at various places so we could take in the wonders of the beautiful Shilla hotel, Blue River (a lovely, romantic waterway) and some of the one-car-narrow back streets of Samcheong-dong, an up and coming artsy neighbourhood near one of the palaces (Gyeongdukgung).  

ILwan managed to maneouver the car down these extremely narrow streets in Samcheong-dong.  He used to live in this neighbourhood before is became a tourist hot spot.  This street preserves some of the appearance of traditional Korean architecture. 

The doors were fascinating. 

An older man caught me taking pictures of this door closure.  He said it's one of the really old ones and that when he was a child, this is the kind of door closure everyone had.  The loop hooks onto the opposite peg and a bar is dropped through the chain. 

This one is a replica of the old style. 

A convenient place to leave the mail.

The adoornments are fairly striking. 

We've been watching the tsunami coverage, as people the world over have, with horrified awe.  How does daily life continue after a tragedy of this magnitude with the lingering nuclear threat hovering like a poisonous storm cloud? 

How do people view the source of destruction after a tragedy like this?  Can the sight of the ocean ever be beautiful again? 

There's a photo of toddlers in a boat with a woman who looks like their teacher.  She is wearing a uniform similar to the ones Korean teachers wear.  Looking into their distraught and traumatized faces, you  wonder if, and hope that, they will see their parents again. 

Today, a number of my students were worried by a text messaging hoax which stated that radiation from Japan would spread to Korea by 4pm today.  While their fears, in this case, were unfounded, they mirror the fears of the region where people are wondering what the tragedy will mean for them.  It is unclear how the environmental and economic impacts of the disaster in Japan will reverberate in Asia and in the world.  

One six-year old girl said, "Japan is blocking us.  If Japan wasn't there, the tsunami would have hit us." An amazingly astute observation. 

Today, I asked one class to write speeches about how the human eye works.  One of the questions was: if you were blind, what would you miss most about seeing?  The majority of students responded: if I was blind, I would miss seeing the faces of my parents, the faces of my family, the faces of my friends.

Watching the tsunami coverage, I saw a man desperately searching for his wife, trying to pick out her face in crowded rescue shelter. 

So many loved and beautiful faces, never to be seen again.

Just a quick post to update things.  I've recently found a 6 month position at a school here in Chuncheon called Bridgelight.  It's owned by an American/Korean couple and I think it is one of the largest if not the largest private school in Chuncheon so I'm pretty sure it won't close down in the next 6 months. :)  I start in a couple days, I day of meetings and prep and the next, I'm right in the classroom.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.  It's been a bit of a bumpy road the last 3 weeks with the closing of my old school and trying to find a good fit with a new one that would take on a 6 month contract to match the length of Kate's. 

The Korean adventure continues into the 2nd half, the home stretch...

Nathan