Happy Birthday Buddha! Seoul's Lotus Lantern Festival

We spent both days this weekend in Insadong, which is definitely my favorite neighborhood in Seoul. It's the most traditional tourist area of Seoul and it features many buddhist temple cuisine restaurants and buddhist handicraft shops, so naturally it is home to Seoul's annual Lotus Lantern Festival. It is the largest cultural festival in Seoul each year, and it celebrates the birthday of Buddha. Only about a quarter of Koreans are buddhists, but the festival is a good representation of general Korean cultural, so many non-buddhists (like us!) attend the festival as well. On Saturday, we stopped in Namdaemun Market first to check out the famous "eyewear street," which supposedly offers great glasses with prescriptions for as low as $30 each. We didn't quite find glasses that cheap, but I picked out a cool pair of prescription sunglasses. We walked up towards Insadong through Myeongdong and past Cheonggyecheon stream. The stream has a long history in Seoul, but it was reconstructed in the past decade or so. It runs through most of central Seoul, and it is really beautiful in spring time. After our detour at the stream, we headed over to Insadong, which was a little more crowded than usual because of the festival. We did some more gift shopping there and then had dinner at a Korean vegetarian restaurant "Sosim". We walked around some more shops in the large, winding walkway that is Ssamzie Market. On the second level of the market, we caught a great view of the Lotus Lantern Festival's opening parade going down Insadong's main street. The parade featured giant hand-painted paper lanterns in the shape of animals, people, flowers, etc. Later in the evening we went to see the incredible ceiling of paper lanterns above Jogyesa Temple in Insadong. On the street outside the temple there was a stage with cultural performances as well.

On Sunday we headed out to Seoul in the afternoon for the second day of the festival. This time, the neighborhood was crowded with Koreans, foreigners (including lots of ex-pat English teachers like us!), and buddhist tourists from all over the world. The street in front of Jogyesa Temple was a sea of tents offering tastes of food from around the world and chances to take part in buddhist handicrafts. The tents kept us busy for a few hours and by the end of the festival we had a big bag of handmade gifts and other things to take home. We learned to make origami-style paper lotus lanterns, made our own natural soap, made a traditional buddhist ink drawing, and made a lotus candle. We also sampled various soy-based foods, lotus nut cookies, and a delicious Nepalese dish of curried vegetables and fried rice flour rings. We stopped for dinner at a vegan Korean restaurant in Insadong called "Oh Sae Gye Hyang." We had sweet and spicy chili mushroom rolls and really tasty dwinjang jiggae with radish leaves (a stew made with fermented soybean paste). After dinner we made our way over to Jogno street to see the parade, which is the festival's main attraction. The parade featured many of the same performers and paper lanterns as the night before, but it had even more new things to see. It lasted over two hours! At the end of the parade, we went to Cheonggyecheon to see the stream at night before heading home.

Dancing the Night Away at the Seoul World DJ Festival & Strolling Through Seoul Forest

We finally finished administering the Level-Up exams to our students on Friday. Now they have to wait a week or so to find out if they moved up to the next level for the summer term. Wednesday was Children's Day, a national holiday celebrating - you guessed it - children! Danny was lucky enough to have off from work, so he went out for galbi and some drinks with his coworkers Tuesday night. On Tuesday night I went to a pork galbi place with some of my coworkers, but since I'm not eating meat, I ate two delicious bowlfuls of dwinjang jiggae (a spicy soup made with fermented soybean paste, tofu, and veggies). I wasn't lucky enough to have off from work on Children's Day, but my school decided to move our usual afternoon class to 10am-1pm. So I went into work for only 3 hours, and had the rest of the gorgeous sunny day to myself. Danny and I went to see an FC Seoul game at World Cup Stadium with his coworker. On Children's Day, every kid has off from school (except my poor students who came in 10am-1pm to take the Level-Up test!). Parents usually take their kids somewhere special for the holiday, so World Cup Stadium was packed. Well FC Seoul definitely pleased its thousands of young fans with a win of 3-0. After the game, Danny and I went to Petra, our favorite middle eastern restaurant in Itaewon. We wrapped up the night with some gift shopping in Insadong and sticky delicious Turkish ice cream (if someone knows where to buy this in America please let me know!).

On Saturday, we headed to Han River Park's Nanji area near World Cup Stadium for the Seoul World DJ Festival. I think this was the 4th year of the annual event, but it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year. This year the festival was a marathon of music from 2pm Saturday to 6am Sunday. Danny and I walked through the Mapo-gu Agrictultural & Marine Products Market on our way to the festival site. We then followed the festival music through Hanuel ("peace") Park to Han River Park. We met up with Danny's college buddy Lee, and got into the festival around 4pm. Luckily we didn't bring lots of food, because they confiscated everyone's food and drinks before entering. Fortunately, the food and drinks inside the festival grounds were way cheaper than they would be at a public event in America. The festival was set up with 4 different stage areas and various food, drink, promotional, and arts & crafts tents surrounding each stage area. The four stages were basically divided by genre: hip-hop, pop/rock, techno, and reggae. There were other performances going on simultaneously near the tents, such as drumming, Brazilian music & dancing, juggling, Samurai swordsmen, fire dancers, and belly dancers. My favorite area was the "Innertrip" stage area that features the reggae stage and most of these alternative performances. We also met up with Danny's other college friends Cormick and Christian throughout the night, and we danced from stage to stage until we were exhausted. After being at the event for nearly 8 hours and freezing from the riverside breeze, we took a taxi home.

On Sunday, the gorgeous sunshine woke us up early again and beckoned for us to come outside and enjoy the weather. We took the subway an hour away across the city to Seoul Forest. It is not really a forest, but just a huge park with various areas for recreation and relaxation. There were so many scenic picnic areas, fountains, sculptures, playgrounds, athletic courts, gardens, and eco-parks. We first had a mini "picnic" of oranges, granola bars, and cherry tomatoes along a pretty lake. Then we walked around the park for about 3 hours. After we headed to Itaewon for dinner in hopes of trying a Bulgarian restaurant that's supposed to be really authentic, fresh, and delicious! Unfortunately, the restaurant is super popular, and we couldn't get a table. So we ate at a Moroccan restaurant called Marrakech Nights. We had a buffet of salad, hummus, pita bread, cous cous, rice, and various tagines. It was delicious, but I'm still determined to go back and try the Bulgarian place. It claims to be the only Bulgarian restaurant on the entire Asian continent, and it's one ethnic cuisine I haven't tried yet!

Out and About...Enjoying the Wonderful Weekend Weather!

Last weekend we has just gotten back from Everland Saturday night, and we were exhausted. Sunday is usually our day for staying in and relaxing, but the weather was just too nice to be inside. We went to nearby Ilsan for the Goyang International Flower Show. Ilsan Lake Park has a permanent exhibit center on premises that is just for the annual flower show. Goyang city, where we live, is internationally recognized for its flower production, especially its roses. Like most other events we've been in Korea, the Goyang show had impressive displays of flowers in every shape and color. The indoor portion featured local and international merchants advertising different flower products and flower art. My favorite was the "pressed flower art" competition exhibition. When I first approached the area, I thought I was looking at beautiful paintings on display. But, looking more closely, I realized that the "paint" was really made of delicately arranged pressed flowers, plants, fruit, and vegetables. The artists used pressed flowers to decorate everything from furniture to jewelry and clothing. After images of flowers were burned into our eyes, we went to our new favorite vegetarian buffet in northern Ilsan.

We were constantly on the move this past weekend as well. Saturday we went to Gyeonghuigung, which is the 5th of the largest palaces in Seoul that we've been to. Every Wednesday and Saturday there is a free Taekwondo exhibition on the palace grounds. The exhibition featured the internationally recognized "Korea Tigers," a large group of mostly university students (including 3 girls!) The show was arranged so that it told a story and presented Korean culture. Taekwondo is really graceful and it's almost like a dance, so it fit perfectly with the music. After the show we explored the palace grounds a bit, but Gyeonghuigung is the smallest of the 5 palaces, so it didn't take us long. We walked over towards Gwanghwamun Square after in hopes of spotting Cheongwadae, which is known as the "blue house" and is the president's residence. On our way, we came across a street stand selling "hotteok", which is a type of pancake made with a filling of hot gooey honey, cinnamon, and black sesame seeds. We've never tasted it before even though it's one of the most famous street foods in Seoul. Ours had green tea in the pancake batter, and it was amazing! With our bellies satified, we walked over to Gwanghwamun. While admiring the new flowerbed there, we were stopped by some English speaking Koreans that were about our age. They asked us to take a picture with them, and afterwards they were nice enough to take down our email address to send us the photos. From Gwanghwamun, we spotted the famous blue roof of Cheongwadae, so we walked in the direction of Gyeongbokgung. On the palace grounds, we were directed to a road that would lead us to Cheongwadae. When we got to the Cheongwadae "photo zone," we learned that we couldn't actually go on the grounds, but we could only take photos from a distance. There are special tours of the blue house available, but you have to register nearly 6 months in advance! Next, we walked over to Samcheongdong, which is a cute neighborhood full of cafes, restaurants, galleries, and artsy shops. It seems to be the more fashionable and less touristy version of Insadong. We did some gift shopping in cute stores selling handmade items, and then came across a gorgeous park on the north end of the neighborhood. We finally made our way back south to Insadong for some more shopping and dinner at our favorite vegetarian buffet.

On Sunday, we took the subway all the way across the city to eastern Seoul for Chungdahm's Spring Picnic in Tteoksam Resort Park. English teachers from dozens of Chungdahm branches in the Seoul metro area were at the picnic. The picnic naturally featured some American style picnic food, like burgers, hotdogs, Taco Bell, fruit and veggie salads, and cookies. There were also recreational activities like ultimate frisbee, dodgeball, balloon toss, kite flying, and rock climbing. Danny and I had the highest score in balloon toss, but that was probably because we used a really tiny balloon that didn't break as easily. I wanted to try the rock climbing wall, but there was a long line. We wandered to the other side of the riverside park, where there were those swan peddle boats for rent. We peddled around the designated area in the Han River, and caught some views of Olympic Stadium and Namsan. After the picnic we headed over to nearby Children's Grand Park. This park was just down the block from the CDI training center that we were trained at in August. We had no idea back then that there was such a huge beautiful park nearby. Children's Grand Park was originally designed to celebrate children, and it includes an amusement park, zoo, playgrounds, botanical garden, ecological park, theaters, and more. Just like its name suggests, it was packed with children and it was definitely grand. It was probably the most beautiful park I've ever been in. We tried out the barefoot park, which is supposed to massage and strengthen your foot muscles (just what I need!). We also walked quickly through the zoo, botanical garden, and ecological park. As the sun set, we made our way over to Achasan vegetarian buffet for dinner. This buffet had a lot of dishes to choose from, but they featured too many mock meats and white bread. I prefer the more vegetable and whole grain based veggie buffets. But, Achasan's mock meats were tasty and could easily pass for real meat!

This Wednesday is Children's Day, which is a national holiday. Children usually have off from school, so Danny also has off from work. I still have to work, but my school is having a 10am-1pm class instead of 4pm-7pm. So I am able to go to an FC Seoul soccer game with Danny! Then on the Saturday coming up, we are going to try to go to the Seoul World DJ Festival. It is an annual 12-hour show outdoors along the Han River that features international DJ's and dancing all day and night long. So I'll keep you updated!

February Holidays: Valentine's Day, Lunar New Year, and my 23rd Birthday!

Another 3 weeks have passed since I've blogged, but nothing too exciting has happened. For Valentine's Day, I put together a big box with chocolate and other snacks for Danny. I might have mentioned before, but Valentine's Day in Korea is only for girls to give their boyfriends chocolate. On March 14, the guys reciprocate for "White Day." So I will wait until White Day to get my gift! Valentine's Day this year happened to fall on the Lunar New Year. Most of us in America know this as the Chinese New Year. It is the biggest holiday in Korea, and most businesses close down Saturday-Monday. Koreans traditionally spend the holiday visiting family in the country or in smaller cities outside Seoul. They eat a special soup on New Year's day that is believed to make every person age one year. Danny and I did not eat the soup, so I guess we stayed the same age. Families also play traditional games together and children are given pouches with money. Some of my students told me that they even wore the traditional hanbok dress to do a special bow to their elders. Since most restaurants were closed on the holiday, Danny and I had our Valentine's Day dinner at a chain buffet restaurant called VIPS. It's actually a steakhouse with a "salad bar" buffet option, and it's quite pricey for a chain restaurant. Danny was lucky enough to have off from work the day after New Year's, but I had to work (and naturally most of my students did not show up that day!) Danny was kind enough to clean the whole apartment on his day off....that's better than any Valentine's Day gift for me! My mom sent me some American Valentine's Day supplies to put together little gifts for my students. I gave each student one of those little cartoon character Valentine cards and a heart-shaped lollipop in a little gift bag with hearts on it. They loved them, because Koreans don't exchange cards with friends on Valentine's Day.

This weekend was my 23rd birthday, which makes me 24 in Korean years. One of my students was thoughtful enough to give me a hand lotion set for my birthday, and another student felt bad that she didn't have a gift and offered me her used pencil! One of my Korean desk teachers knows that I love Hello Kitty and she surprised me with a bag of Hello Kitty goodies on my desk. On Friday night we went back to VIPS restaurant for dinner with Danny's coworkers. Two of his Korean teachers and one of his American teachers are leaving next Friday, so we went out for an early goodbye celebration. After we stopped at a bar, batting cages, and finally spent nearly 3 hours at a norebang (private karaoke room). I sang so much that I nearly lost my voice afterwards. To finish the night, we went to a DVD-bang (private room for watching DVD's with friends) to play Nintendo Wii. I only wish we could have so much cheap entertainment available in New York!

On Sunday we went to Sanchon, a buddhist temple style vegetarian restaurant in Insadong. The food is served in the traditional Korean style, and we sat on the ondol heated floor. A traditional dance and music performance accompanies the dinner. The price is a bit steep at Sanchon, but it was my birthday gift!

It's been a long winter...spring where are you??

Wow so I realized I haven't blogged in over 3 weeks. Sorry to keep you all waiting! First of all, my school's Winter Intensives are finally over! It was only 9 days of 10am-1pm classes spread out over 5 weeks, but waking up early was killing me. Plus, the 16 kids in my classes started out cute and quiet and then got crazy! I guess it was because they were on winter vacation from school. When the morning class was over, I had a 3 hour break for lunch and lesson prepping until my regular classes started. So some days I was at work for over 13 hours! Over the past 2 months I have also been having the same foot problems that I had last spring. The problems seemed to start the week after the race that I won in Seoul. I've been seeing a nerve doctor who specializes in feet near my school to treat my feet. In Korea they don't have podiatrists, so you go to a bone, muscle, or nerve doctor for musculoskeletal problems. I've seen the doctor 4 times so far for "prolotherapy" injections, which are quite painful. He said my issues stem from a combination of genetic structural problems, overuse, bad shoes, and the way I walk. So I have been wearing sneakers and leopard-print Crocs to work every day.

Ok on a lighter note, let's talk about the fun things that have happened since I blogged last. I think about 3 weeks ago Danny and I checked out Insadong in Seoul. Insadong is a touristy neighborhood, but it is famous for traditional Korean buildings, food, and handicrafts. I walked around the area for a few hours while Danny was at school on a Saturday making up his snow day. I loved Insadong, and I want to go back to walk around its art galleries and shops in warmer weather. When I met up with Danny, we had a great Korean vegetarian meal at this cute restaurant called Sosim. It was actually a pescatarian meal because we had a small serving of perfectly grilled fish. Afterwards we went to see the popular Korean dance musical Sachoom. The title translates as "Dance When You're in Love" (yea I don't see how a two-syllable word means all of that either). There wasn't really much dialogue, but there was some narration displayed on a screen (that was unfortunately only translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Cambodian!?) Luckily the dancing was awesome, so there wasn't much need to understand the narration. After the show we went to one of the most popular traditional teahouses in Insadong. I ordered persimmon tea and they accidentally gave me flavorless green tea. So I took Danny's "five-taste tea" by accident thinking it was the persimmon tea, and he drank the green tea thinking it was what he ordered. I was wondering why my tea was a delicious blend of sweet, spicy, sour, bitter, and hmm I can't think of the fifth taste....

The following weekend we went to Dongdaemun Market, a huge area in Seoul famous for its fashion shops. Dongdaemun is made up dozens of massive shopping malls, buildings filled with tightly packed shops, underground shops, and open-air shops. We went in search of hiking gear for our upcoming trip to the Taebaek mountains with Adventure Korea. And we were also hoping to find some nice coats, because Koreans wear the most beautiful coats and they are fairly inexpensive (most of them have animal fur trim though...eeek!) Well Dongdaemun is in fact renowned for its fashion shops, so we were not lucky in the hiking department. We didn't find the perfect coats we imagined either. We finally found Danny a nice wool scarf though. And for me...I sadly came home empty-handed. I just got frustrated because the clothes are mostly one-size-fits-all and my arms and torso are apparently too long for them. And Korean shops usually have annoying overbearing owners and no fitting rooms. Boo. The only plus of the night was the amazing meal we had at a vegan Korean buffet before our shopping trip. It cost under $10 and was in Insadong, so I will definitely return more often.

So this past weekend was pretty eventful. Danny and I signed up for a trip to the Taebaek Snow Festival with Adventure Korea. AK is a well-known tour group among the English teacher and expat community in Korea. About $80 covered the tour bus, accommodation, meals, festival entrance fee, and tour guides. The only thing we had to buy were snow cleats (spikes to wear over your shoes) for our hike in the mountains. We had to wake up crazy early at 6am to get across Seoul to the bus station on Saturday though. About 30-40 people went on the trip, and almost all were English teachers from the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and South Africa. It was cool to meet other people and hear about their experiences in Korea. The bus trip to Gangwon province east of Seoul took about 4 hours. We slept most of the time and enjoyed the mountain scenery. We first stopped at Yongyeon, one of the largest caves in Korea. We had to wear helmets to protect our heads from the narrow parts of the cave. The cave was huge and the walkways inside covered about 1km. We saw the usual natural formations like stalactites and stalagmites, but nice color-changing light fountains were also installed. Thank god for the helmets, because my skull would have been beat up pretty badly. After we rode several minutes to the snow festival site in Taebaek city. The area we stayed in was more like a very small mountain village though. We were given 3 hours to explore the festival, so we bundled up as much as possible and headed out into the below 30 degree weather. The festival mostly featured snow and ice sculptures, and there was also sledding and a performance stage. Unfortunately we couldn't find the sledding and we did watch about 5 minutes of cute kids dancing on stage. We rushed through the sculpture area to take photos because we were freezing. We stopped to warm up with a delicious hot roasted sweet potato and headed back out to the festival area. So many families and hikers came out for the weekend (probably from Seoul) to enjoy the festival, so it was quite crowded. Once we couldn't take the cold any longer we popped in the coal museum nearby. The first floor featured rocks, minerals, and fossils, which were actually neat. We met up with our group around dinner time to head to our accommodations. We stayed in a hostel/empty youth camp building right on the festival grounds. I've never stayed in a hostel, so it was kind of cool to share a room with 5 other people. Danny and I stayed in a room with a German couple who was working for the German embassy in Seoul and 2 female English teachers. We slept Korean-style on mats on the heated "ondol" floor. We had dinner first in the basement on the building and it was actually delicious, mostly vegetarian Korean food. We didn't want to head to the room at 6pm, so we braved the cold in search of a bar or someplace to hang out with other roommates. We couldn't really find anything so we stopped in a convenience store to pick up some snacks and drinks and headed back to our room for card games and talking. We went to sleep at almost 2am and had to wake up at 7am or our hike up Mount Taebaek. To most people's dismay, we had PB&J for breakfast, but of course I was thrilled about having peanut butter! I had 2 whole sandwiches to give me energy for our 8km hike up one of Korea's tallest mountains. I have only been hiking once before (a relaxed 9 mile hike in Pennsylvania's Appalachian Trail with my cross-country team), but I don't think Danny ever hiked before. I wore about every layer I had brought with me (3 pairs of pants, 5 shirts, a jacket, 2 socks, 2 hats, and 2 gloves!) Thank god we bought the snow cleats, because we would have slid down the mountain in only our running sneakers. So the entire hike up to the 1,560m peak (almost 1 mile high) and back down took about 3 hours. The way up was so steep and snowy, but Danny and I were actually up front near our tour guides. With all the layers we were actually sweating. Within the first 1km my camera battery stopped functioning because of the cold, so luckily Danny's worked. As we neared the top, trees became sparse and the sky was so gray and it got colder and windy. We visited two shrines at the peak, where we made a wish and prayed to get down the mountain as soon as possible because it was freeeezing!! The trip down was also very steep, so we were grateful for the hand ropes on either side of the trail. Strangely, the trip down featured blue skies, no wind, no snow, and greener trees. We ended the hike back at the festival site and went back to our hostel for another good Korean vegetarian meal. The bus ride home took even longer because so many people were driving back to Seoul after a weekend in Gangwon province at ski resorts and snow festivals.

I am thrilled because my crazy intensive class is finally over and I got my new iPod Touch in the mail from my mom! My students are so jealous because it costs so much more in Korea. It's basically like a mini computer...you can surf the web, Skype, read books, watch movies and TV, oh and of course listen to music.!