National Cemetery

The Korean National Cemetery is a pretty amazing place! Founded in 1955 and covering around 343 acres of land, there are over 160,000 soliders and patriots buried on the hallowed grounds. I would compare it in some aspects to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C. The weather was pretty nice for still being winter time. The sun was out and shining and I've longed to get back outside and enjoy the fresh air. As I've said before one thing I love about living here is that I can go do a day trip like this for like 5,000 Won. I rode the subway from Cheonan to Dongjak Station for 2,500 Won. The walk from the station over to the cemetery was only about 5 minutes. There are numerous statues around the cemetery honoring different military units and patriots that have fought and died over the years for Korea's independence. The tombs of the late presidents Syngman Rhee and Park Chunghee, as well as the leaders of the Shanghai provisional government and other patriotic leaders are also there. About 104,000 memorial tablets have been enshrined inside a monument to honor the spirits of soldiers whose bodies have not been found.

When the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, a great number of young students from all over the country volunteered to fight. These volunteer student soldiers fought bravely with the army and police, and many of them died a young, but heroic death. However, most of their remains were never found, so there is a monument for the "Unknown Soldiers" too.

It was very touching to go there and think of all the 1000's of Koreans that have died over the years fighting for independence against not only North Korea and Russia, but of course the Japanese. I have been reading a history book about Korea and the relations they had (or were forced to have) with some of the other countries in Asia. It must have been a tremendously difficult time to be alive and always having to fight just to be free.

After touring the grounds, I walked down to the Han River and took some pictures across to the Namsan Tower. Koreans are very active and love to get out and bike, run, and walk...so there is a nice path along the river and there were a lot of people out and about.

I swear I must have walked 4 or 5 miles Saturday...my hips are actually a little sore even today, I guess another sign that I'm getting old! So sad.

Oh yeah...I adjusted the settings on my camera after talking to my friend and for some reason I had the camera set on lower pixels, so I changed that and I think the pictures are much more clear and bright now. I wish I would have had it changed when I went to NZ, but oh well. Hopefully I can catch all the beautiful colors in the spring.

Taejosan Hike

Last Saturday I went for a little hike up Taejosan, it's a small mountain close to Cheonan. It was a beautiful morning, but by afternoon it had cooled off quite a bit and by early evening it was COLD! I put several pictures of a bridge that spans over the road. It's really high and it was kind of windy, so the bridge was moving back and forth and was a little bit scary! HA! There is a small Buddhist temple there...legend has it that a flock of cranes discovered the spot for the temple, so you'll notice above Buddha's head there are a bunch of wooden cranes, I thought they were really cool...I've never seen cranes at a Buddhist temple before. The temple was on the side of the hill and the stairs leading from building to building are really steep. I wish my camera captured color a little better, the colors of those laterns were really amazing especially this time of year.

After we left the temple I saw a little dog that reminded me so much of Chaco...this little dog was so sweet too! HA

I'm also posting a picture with John, he was one of my favorite students he speaks English really well and is a super cool kid. He moved to China over the weekend, so I got a picture with him before he left. I've been here almost 8 months and he's the only kid worthy of taking a picture with! HAHA Just joking...

정월대보름

Hey everyone! I hope that you're having a great week! This past weekend I went to Seoul to Namsangol, which is a traditional village in Seoul. On Monday (Feb 9th) Koreans celebrated 대보름 (Daeboreum or literally "Great Full Moon") which is a holiday that celebrates the first full moon of the new year based off of the lunar calendar. So they had a big celebration over the weekend. It was really cool, I love going to stuff like that.

There was a big "tree" made from a pole in the middle and twelve ropes around it. The ropes are for each of the 12 zodiac signs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Zodiac Here is a link in case you don't know which sign you are and want to look it up. Some pretty interesting stuff, of course not ALL true, but some of mine is (I'm a rabbit or 토끼) Anyway, so people take colored paper and write their wishes for the upcoming year and then tie them on the appropriate rope based on your zodiac sign. Of course being a foreigner, people always love taking pictures of the foreigners at stuff like this, so some guy (I think maybe he was with a newspaper or something, he had a really nice camera) asked my friend and I if he could take some pictures of us tying our paper onto the ropes. I thought that was really funny. They had quite a few different booths set up, some were selling traditional foods, and others were set up for doing stamps and making kites (mainly for the kids). They also had a traditional music performance...these guys are really cool to watch. They have ribbons on their hats and they spin the ribbon around by moving their neck in a circle, and when they start going fast they jump the ribbon, etc. and dance around while playing their particular instrument (most of them are like drums or cymbals). There was also a huge paper flower exhibit. If I understood my friend correctly Buddhists use flowers with their worship and so of course this time of year flowers aren't growing. So they would make these beautiful elaborate flowers out of paper and use them for their worship. Some of these flowers are absolutely amazing and very very detailed. Looking at them from a distance it's hard to tell that they are paper. After we checked out all of the exhibits and ate some good food we went and watched a traditional Korean music performance called 답교놀이 (Dapgyonori). Dapgyonori is one of Korea's traditional performing arts. People in the time of the Goryeo Kingdom would perform this when the moon comes up on the 15th of January (lunar calendar) to see if it would be a bumper year for their crops. It was a really awesome performance, the only problem was that they asked for people please not to take pictures. It was preformed inside and I think they didn't want people's camera flashes going off in the performers faces. So, I didn't get any pictures during the performance, but I did get one afterwards with two of the performers.

Below are two short videos I took, one is sort of like teeter-totter and it was really fun to watch. The woman is wearing the traditional 한복 hanbok clothing. The other is the music performance, sorry there is no sound on my camera, so you can't hear it, but you can watch them!

Hwanseon Cave

This past weekend I had a chance to visit the largest limestone cave in Korea, 환선굴 or Hwanseon Cave in English. I had wanted to go there for a while, I had seen it online and thought it looked pretty cool. The only problem is that it's in Kangwon Do, the province that's furthest north and east in Korea. The cave is only maybe 20 miles from the town of 삼척시or Samcheok which is right on the East Sea. My friend Sam has a car and he wanted to go visit as well, so we talked it over and decided to head out first thing Saturday morning. He picked me up around 8AM and we figured it would be about a 3.5 to 4 hour drive. There is a large highway (I call in the Interstate, even though since there aren't states I guess it can't be an interstate! HA) and we followed it for a few hours up to around Wonju, and then we decided to take the scenic route. On the map it looked a lot shorter cutting through (the interstate went pretty far north and then cut back down to Samcheok and the road we took looked like a straight shot to the back side of the cave) so we took the road. It was really windy, but the mountains were beautiful. When we left Cheonan at 8AM the weather was really nice and the sun was out. Kangwon Do is know for it's mountains and ski areas, so as the day went on the sky got darker and it started to snow. No big deal, since the roads were well maintained and the snow flakes weren't huge. We stopped several times and oooohed and awwwed at all the scenery and took a bunch of pictures. We had a map and as we got closer to the cave it started to snow a LOT more, and the flakes got a lot bigger. Well, as we approached the cave (well, the spot the cave was on the map anyway) we were looking for a little road that I thought would lead to the cave. We looked and the sign said Hwanseon Cave 65 km...so we were a little perplexed. Sam can speak Korean pretty well so we stopped and he asked someone at a little restaurant. Well...we were on the BACK SIDE of the mountain and the entrance was on the front side, so we had to drive all the way around the mountain. The lady told him to take the next little road and so we took a left, but there was a problem...this road was really small and had NOT been plowed or maintained at all. So, we were a little nervous but started down the road. Sam has a little sports car, no chains, no snow tires and we were on top of a mountain basically. As we started down the road we could tell it was going to be an interesting ride...the road was steep and there were plenty of switchbacks as we crept along down this little road. It was about 30-40 km of pretty much mountainous road...we were pretty nervous most of the time, but we finally made it to the main road that took us to the cave. We were pretty relieved. As I said earlier we thought it would be maybe a 3.5 to 4 hour drive, well we arrived at the cave ticket window at just after 3 PM so it had taken us 7 hours! HA! Anyway...we were glad to be there. One thing I love about Korea is that places like museums, parks, etc. are always cheap, and so it was only 4,000 Won, or about $3.25 to get a ticket for the cave. The hike up to the cave was about a kilometer, and it was pretty steep, the snow continued to fall and it was so beautiful. It wasn't really that cold so it was really actually kind of nice and peaceful. We made it up to the cave and I have to say the cave was a LOT bigger than I thought it would be. There was about a 1.5 km walk through the cave, it was really cool...they had a nice metal walkway up and down and all around the cave. I am not geologist to say the least, so I don't really know much about the rocks, etc. inside the cave, but it was really cool nonetheless. There were several places with some little streams running through the cave and I thought those were some of the coolest areas. We didn't know but the cave closed at 5:30...we were walking around and it seemed like all of a sudden we didn't hear or see many people, but I don't think either of us noticed the time. Well...an older gentleman with a flashlight was walking behind us, we just assumed he was another tourist in the cave. Well, we noticed he stayed about 20 feet behind us and just kept walking at the same pace we were...it was a little weird, so finally Sam asked him if it was time to go and he politely said yes, that the cave closed at 5:30. We had to sort of rush the last 15 minutes, but by that time we had seen most of the cave and were content with going. It was really cool as we went to exit the cave it was still snowing and looking out of the cave and down into the snow covered valley below it was really beautiful. We hiked back down and were pretty hungry so we drove to Tonghae, a little town on the East Sea and the name literally means "east sea", and had a delicious supper. We laughed about going back the same way and back up that snow covered mountain, but decided it was a lot wiser to take the interstate back. It snowed a little more, but as we left Kangwon Do and got closer to Seoul the snow stopped and the moon came out. It was a really fun trip!

Super Steelers!

There are only a few things in life that I love more than the Steelers (family, the Lord...ummm, that's about it! HAHA) I actually had a chance to watch the game and I must say of all the Super Bowls I have seen that was as good as any. I actually would have been pulling for the Cardinals if they weren't playing the Steelers. I've been a fan of Warner since he helped me win a fantasy football title with his amazing numbers back in 1999. But, they were playing the Steelers, so there was no love for them this time. Great game though...and of course the Steelers came away with the Lombardi trophy and that's SIX now for those of you counting. So, Dallas...please let Luke know who the real greatest NFL team of all time is, the 49ers can't say much these days. I love my nephew and hate for him to grow up thinking the 49ers are still good, maybe they were when you were a kid, but they aren't now. And for the Broncos (thats Mer and Julie)...well, you can always dust off your VHS tapes and watch Elway win a few back in the 90s. For Becca and the Bungles...well, at least you can say you lost a close game to the 49ers YEARS ago.

Super Super Super Super Super Super Steelers!!