back from cambodia

I'm back from Cambodia, here are some snippets from my amazing, yet depressing trip:

I'll put up more info in the future. But now it's time to rest, recuperate and prepare to start classes again.

to do list

Today is the last day before I take off to Cambodia, so I've been spending it knocking everything off my to do list.
Pay bills, clean apartment, take out recycling, stock up on Abby supplies, eat/compost what will go bad in the fridge, field student grade complaints, and pack.

Eating what will go bad resulted in broccoli, lentil curry.

And at about the time I was making this, disaster struck. I had submitted grades and an office worker put them online for me, as everything is in Korean so I couldn't do it myself. Unfortunately a mistake was made, that mistake being that everyone got two grades lower than they should have. A+ turned into C+, while a B+ turned into a D+. Naturally, this caused a flood of panicking emails into my inbox. I made a call into the office and was told what happened, they were trying to fix it, and just tell the students to please wait. Awesome. Things have quieted down so I'm hoping everything is resolved and I won't have to deal with another flood of complaints. At least until after I get back, if at all.

 Abby hanging out in her third favourite sleeping spot, unfazed by everything as usual.

And a shot of some pretty fantastic 부추전 buchujeon (Asian chives pancake) and makeolli from earlier on in the week.

a+

It's finals week. Only two more classes to go and then it's over. I pretty much only go in to school to view final presentations and then boot it back home to finish grading and submit grades. Mainly so I don't get caught by students wanting to complain about their grades not being good enough. And not being good enough generally means not being an A+.

The not so subtle cover of two students' dialogue that they handed in. I submitted some grades yesterday and have yet to get any emails so I'm holding out hope I'm making it through the week unscathed.

I also loaded up on chocolate, strawberry, banana and green tea soy milk to help ease the grading pain.

As I was exiting my apartment I noticed this hideous couch lurking to the right. Looks like there's going to be a new teacher at my university. That's the same ugly style couch that used to be in my apartment. I wonder who the lucky person is. I hope they got an air conditioner, now isn't really a good time to arrive to an apartment without one.

bruised by the mountains

Another road trip around the mountains.

 The most beautiful parts of this area are outside or on the edge of Chungju city.

 Chungju lake.

 The major undertaking of the day was climbing the fortress wall up the mountain, in flip flops of course.

 Resting on the plains along the lake.

 Nice little dock that would've been cool to hang out on, if there was some way to get to it...

 Bibimbap and dongdongju at a roadside restaurant.

 And back in Chungju, a crane stalking minnows in the river that goes through the city.

 Bibimguksu, cold noodles with spicy pepper paste, with the most sesame seeds I've ever gotten on anything ever. My favourite summer food.

 홍초 hongcho, vinegreat vinegar drink. It's not as sour as normal vinegar and pretty awesome for adding to drinks.

And my battered and bruised leg from clambering up the fortress wall. A painful memento from a weekend of mountains. But in good news, I only have two days of school this week (for exams) and once I finish marking and submit my grades I'll be heading off to Cambodia! I applied for an e-visa and already received it. They said it would only take three days or less. I applied for it on Friday, and assumed they didn't count the weekend. But obviously they do, as I received it today, a Sunday. Now I'm all set.

수안보 suanbo 미륵리사지 mireukrisaji and 송계계곡 songgye valley loop tour

 I've been to Suanbo plenty of times, and Mireukrisaji once before, but I had never visited Songgye valley. Looking at a map, it seemed like the best way to go was doing a loop around through Suanbo. I followed 3 into Suanbo and onto the 597, which took me out to Mireuksaji when it started to rain.

 Hoping it would let up, I decided to stop at a restaurant and get 산채비빔밥 sanchaebibimbap, mountain vegetable bibimbap. The rain didn't let up, but it did slow down a bit and I decided it was fine to keep going.

 I made a short visit back to the stone Buddha and then headed off towards Songgae valley.

 And pretty quickly I was at the valley in all of its rocky glory. There were a lot of camping spots along the way, but it didn't seem too busy today, probably because of the weather.

But the best part was when I stumbled across Chungcheongbuk-do monument no. 35: Deokju mountain fortress. It was absolutely stunning in person. I had to walk through a field of flowers/weeds to get a picture as the mountains faded off into the distance. It felt like the set for a fairy tale.

The wall disappearing into the mountains. According to the signage it played an important part in the resistance against the Mongolian invasion in the Goryeo dynasty (1200s) and the Japanese invasion in 1592, in case you're interested in history at all.

 Another fortress on the way to Deokju temple.

A man praying to Buddha at the temple site. 

And then it was time to head back. I continued on 597 until it dropped me off on 36 and then I headed back to Chungju. Which has absolutely beautiful views of the mountains, rivers and lake along the way. 36 follows the edge of Chungju lake going between Chungju and Danyang.

Mountains and more mountains.

And some animals at a stop along the way back, fenced in outside a restaurant. So I've got a good idea what will happen to them in the future.

lunch, scooter training and dinner

Today was a pretty nice day, aside from the fact that I didn't have any classes but I still went into school to get work done. Next week, I give exams and then I'm finished and get a brief vacation. So recently my time has been spent marking, figuring out grades and getting everything prepped so that I just have to lock in final exam scores, submit grades and peace on out to a fantastic vacation.

 I finally stopped by the train cafe when it was open and stopped in to get a frilly drink and do some writing. I was the only one there aside from two other men. It took quite a bit of time for the server to prepare my peppermint cocktail, but it seemed like the perfect atmosphere to get some work done.

Something I really like about Korea, buttons at tables. Servers don't check on you to see if you need anything. When you want something, you just press a button and they show up. Genius.

And today was an action packed day of a relaxing lunch with some good students, 물냉면cold noodles for me, which I didn't take a picture of. Then it was on to scooter training with friends by the stadium! Well, not training for me, for someone heading off to Thailand, I was just giving some tips. Scooters are super easy to learn how to drive. After some wobbly time spent on an incredibly generous guy's scooter, we went to dinner, 보리밥 boribap at the market, one of my favourite Korean foods.

 Basically you get a bowl of rice and barley and you just add in whatever you like that's sitting on the table!

 We passed by the opening of a chicken restaurant and this is how you do an opening in Korea. Guy on stilts with balloons, big dancing balloon man, arch of balloons and a female dancer. Basically, lots of balloons and a female thrown in for sex appeal.

And a creepy clown at a bike shop for good measure.

To end with a less creepy picture, Abby hanging out in my newly blind covered windows with my tomato plant sprouting to new lengths at the side. I can't wait until I finally have tomatoes.

i'm a cookie in korea

It's final exam time and the pressure is on, which essentially means more stamped excuse notes for absences. And yeah, just as I expected that one student shamelessly went for the menstruation form trifecta. You're only allowed to use your period as an excuse to not attend class three times in one semester and she sure made good use of that. Sigh. I've gotten a lot of them, but only one student was brash enough to go for more than one.

And it's also reached fantastically hot temperatures here. It's summer. I do not enjoy summer. To be all stereotypical, I'm Canadian, I don't do heat. I love the cold (as long as it doesn't involve snow), but I can't deal with humidity. And either can Abby. She's a big fluffy cat that gets matted fur when it's too humid. But in my time in Korea, I've dealt with the heat a lot more than she has. I always leave the ac on (if it's too hot out) so my apartment stays at a comfortable temperature for her. But while she's enjoyed the cool temperatures, I've gone into my old middle school where, if we were even allowed to turn the ac on, the lowest we were allowed was 28 :/ .  And only for a few hours. :/ . Schools get money if they scrimp on ac, so if you teach at that kind of school, get used to teaching and desk warming while sweating it out. At least university is different, we (me and the students) get to control the ac. But still, I hate summer.

And to balance out the disappointment:

Bibimguksu, my favourite summer food. I like making it at home so I can make it into a happy face by using a whole boiled egg for the eyes.

Margaret cookies. Ok, so they're not the most delicious cookies, actually I don't like them that much, they're kinda dry. But I am thankful that, if my name had to mean anything at all in Korea, at least it means something kinda decent. Like old fashioned cookies? I don't know, it could be worse. I'm so famous in Korea!

Well, there are some ways  to keep cool, but being in Chungbuk, the only landlocked province in all of Korea, there doesn't seem to be a lot of places to go swimming. Lots of slightly unpleasant looking river areas to hang out at though. So as long as you just want to dip your feet in, it works.

But they're all packed, even the rocky beach by the waterfall. It's time to check out the valleys and find an ideal swimming spot.

팥빙수 patbingsu and stew 찌개

Now that it's nice and hot out, I'm incredibly thankful I have an air conditioner and decided today to give patbingsu another go. I don't really like it that much. Usually it brings back bad memories of my old middle school's lunches. Every time patbingsu was served, it meant we were having seafood salad sandwiches. And for me, that meant I would be having a stale bun, radish chunks and patbingsu. Not the most enjoyable lunch.

And here it is in all of its take away glory. Sweet beans on top of canned and jellied fruit, on top of shaved ice and frozen strawberry milk. This is a much more appetizing version compared to what my old school cafeteria produced. They liked to serve it in a frozen, mini, strawberry milk box, topped with jellied fruit, cornflakes and powder. Even though it's a much more appealing version than what I'm used to, I still didn't manage to finish it. I like frozen red bean bars on their own, but the patbingsu combination of ingredients just doesn't work for me.

 And because I know I won't feel like eating it for awhile since summer is here, I decided to make chunggookjang, fermented bean soup. I used a nice Korean bowl that is used to both cook and serve the soup in. Makes for less dishes used and keeps the soup boiling hot.

And then kimchi jjigae, with lots of tofu. Normally I don't go for this in restaurants because it always comes with meat, nor do I usually make it at home because: 1) I don't really like soup. 2) Chunggookjang and dwaenjang jjigae win out on the rare occasion I feel like soup/stew. But I had some kimchi going sour and that's when it's time to make kimchi jjigae.

음성큰바위얼굴 조각공원 eumseong large face sculpture park

I was looking at places close to Chungju that I might like to visit and looked Eumseong way. I checked out what attractions it had and noticed some hot springs, which I'm not overly interested in. It seems like every city around here has hot springs, Suanbo, Moongyeong, northern Chungju... But something did catch my interest and that was the large face sculpture park.

Seeing that yesterday was memorial day and I didn't have classes, it was the perfect time for a trip. I managed to convince one person to join me and we were off to the park. It's located in 생극면 Saeng-geuk, which is a part of 음성군 Eumseong. The park itself is about 3km outside of Saeng-geuk, so it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The park also happens to share its space with a mental hospital, which made it seem even odder. 


Admission was 6,000 won and we were given an English and Korean booklet with info on the park. It started in 1991 and was worked on by about 400 sculptors over 14 years to create 3,000 sculptures. The park is pretty massive. 

The first thing I noticed were the complimentary umbrellas, not that it was raining, just to shield yourself from the sun.

I was pretty amused by the queen's face. She looked like she was forcing herself to smile at something she was completely disgusted by, but secretly enjoyed, all while having to sneeze. No better way to be immortalized. 

We happened to notice pretty quickly that some, ok most, of the sculptures were a bit wonky, out of proportion, and a bit cartoonish. Sometimes the gender was also a bit ambiguous, sometimes I could tell exactly who people were supposed to be, but often I had to read the descriptions to figure it out. It's definitely a park that emphasizes quantity over quality.

Audrey Hepburn

Che Guevara, with his eyes closed.

Hitler and friends in the political leaders section. There was also a section for Buddha, dinosaurs, writers...

 The description that accompanied an octopus sculpture. Slightly confusing.

The area is huge, and there are tonnes of sculptures all placed closely together, so it's a pretty overwhelming experience. A lot of time, work and money obviously went into making the park. It's just unfortunate how wonky some of the sculptures came out and a little strange that they chose to build the park around a mental hospital. In the end, totally worth the trip.

미타사 mita temple

I found the other 성충문구 big stationary store downtown. It was closed, forever. And then minutes later my bike chain broke and fell off. Luckily there was a bike store close by and 5 minutes and 15,000 won later, I had a new bike chain. First time that's ever happened.
Then I stopped for bibimbap. And it came with beef, which doesn't happen often. So I got to scoop that out before enjoying. It wasn't looking like a good day.

I decided to take a trip west of Chungju, since I always seem to go north, east, or south. I went Eumseong way on 36 and noticed a sign for a temple. My first thought was to just keep going, until I saw the giant gold Buddha peeking out from the hills.

 Then I knew I had to stop.

 He was surrounded by tons of little Buddhas.

And big markers were out front. It was a Buddhist cemetery.

The view down from the big gold Buddha. It's impossible not to see from the highway and definitely worth stopping by for a visit and it wasn't very busy, I think there were a total of four other people there when I visited. But then this area generally never seems busy.