Waygooks Wandering

This past weekend, I spent some time visiting more of the stamp locations. I now only have one more spot in the English stamp book, and I'm at 18/30 in the Korean book.

On Saturday, Gianni and I checked out the two spots I

The artist studios

still had to visit in the downtown section of the Korean book:
Hyanggyo Confucian Academy and the Art Factory. The places themselves were a bit outside downtown, so we did a lot of walking that day. The Confucian Academy has been rebuilt a few times as well as moved from one location to another. It now stands on the exact location where it was first built in 1398. It was burned down in an invasion by the Japanese in 1592. It went back and forth between two locations for a while but was moved back to it's original location in 1932. It is an extremely old and important place. Confucianism, for those of you who do not know, is not a religion. Confucianism is a set of philosophical beliefs that many Asian culture believed should be used to create a better society. Rulers used Confucian principles to govern, and family members followed Confucian ideals to create better family life. This is an academy where students learn these Confucian beliefs. Unfortunately, Gianni and I went to the academy when there was a traditional wedding happening! Because it's such an old place, weddings are really popular there I guess. In one respect, it was cool. We saw the bride in her beautiful dress and face ornaments. She even had a box for her to be carried down the aisle by four men! What a classy entrance! On the other hand, we were both extremely uncomfortable because everyone there for the wedding was dressed nicely, and we really weren't. I basically just rushed around taking pictures and ran out of there. We walked downtown from

Daegu Art Museum

there, and I gathered pictures for my newest blog post for colorful daegu about bingsu places down there. After that, we walked a bit more to get to Daegu Art Factory. We had no idea what we were in for there, but it turned out to be a really awesome place. I guess Daegu is a really important place in Korea for art and culture, which is interesting considering Daegu is also the most conservative city in Korea. The Art Factory has 5 floors. On the third floor, there was a kids room and an information room about art in Daegu. The second floor was an art book shop. The two top floors are the most interesting. They are the studios for various artists. I'm not sure how they get a spot, but each room is a different studio. You get to see the artists as

Dancing and Art Performance

they create new works, and it is a really cool way to be able to see tons of different kinds of artists all in one space. In addition to getting to see some really cool, new art, they also hold performances in some of the spaces on those floors. While we were there, we heard an explanation of the paintings and works by a group of artists. It was all in Korea, so we couldn't understand, but the guy doing the explanation also performed a really great song he had written in Korean. He befriended us and talked to us for a little while. Apparently, his song was about getting over his mother's death. We were also lucky to get to see a really cool artist's performance. He painted as dancers danced to music. The small paintings he did were projected the wall in the back of the room. It was really cool. It was a really awesome experience, and it seems like the work and performances at the Art Factory are constantly rotating, so it's definitely a place to visit often



On Sunday, Gianni was too tired to indulge my whims, so he stayed home and relaxed. I was a woman on a mission. I went alone to the National Museum and the Art Museum, which are both pretty far away from our apartment. I went to the National Museum first. I got my stamp at the info desk and started to ask a question in English, and I was immediately directed to a woman at another info desk. The woman at the desk was Mrs. Park, and she and I became fast friends. She helped me buy tickets to the LIFE exhibit that is being held at the National Museum at the moment, and then basically walked me through it, discussing Korean and American life and politics. She kept asking me if I knew the famous people in the photographs, and I told her what I knew about

a very intricate design on a bride's gown

the history of certain time periods. She was a lovely woman, and I'm really glad to have met her. She, apparently, does tours around the city and works at other info booths in other parts of Daegu. She kept remarking about how I have "a great spirit." The LIFE exhibit was spectacular. I've seen so many of those famous pictures from history classes through the years, and getting to hear about them and see them in person was wonderful. So much of life and history encapsulated in three rooms. It was almost overwhelming. After the LIFE exhibit, Mrs. Park went back to man her station, and I went looking around the permanent section of the museum that you don't pay to see. The museum itself is not that impressive. It is comprised of three rooms: ancient history of Daegu, Medieval history of Daegu (and the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism in society), and textile history. As someone who is very interested in history, I did find these sections interesting, but I think I would have been a bit disappointed if that was all I had seen.

Here's a bit of history for you guys:
Daegu was developed as an administrative center for Korea because of it's convenient placement in the peninsula. In 1601, a government office was established to administer to the province. Daegu became an independent province in 1981. Archeologists have found remnants of Buddhism in the province dating back as far as 57 BCE. The Confucians scholars had more influence in the Gyeongsang-do province, which Daegu had been a part of, than in other provinces in Korea. This might be part of the reason Daegu is among the most conservative cities in the country even today. It was actually interesting to get to learn a bit about Confucianism after we visited a Confucian academy the day before. Seowon is the name for Confucian Academy in Korean. At Seowon, they are supposed to educate young Confucian students and honor great Confucian scholars in seasonal ceremonies. During the Joseon Dynasty, Confucianism truly flourished in Korea. In terms of textiles, the color of one's clothing was an indication of statues. During the Joseon period, a system of colors to correspond with principles of yin and yang and the five elements. These principles are all used in oriental medicine still today. The five colors are red, yellow, blue, white, and black. Hanbok, traditional Korean dress, was also developed during the Joseon Dynasty. The wedding ceremony was once seen as the most important ceremony in a person's life. It was so important, in fact, that commoners were even allowed to wear the royal style of dress to mark the occasion. The groom typically wore blue and the bride wore a red dress to symbolize the principles of yin and yang.

After I was done at the museum, I went and ate my the sandwich I had brought along with Mrs. Park, and she gave me some coffee. She was so surprised I was doing the stamp book and really impressed with home much I had finished. We talked for a while before I finally excused myself to get to the art museum.


Gianni and I went to the art museum before, and the view was even more stunning that I remembered. It's built on a hill, and you can see layers and layers of mountains. I say layers because there are mountains close to the museum as well as those far away, so it really is a lovely spot for a museum. I found the exhibits the first time we went more interesting than this time. The last time we visited was for an exhibit by a Japanese woman. She had created fabulous and interactive installations that let viewers into her brain, in a way. She is a woman in her 80's who has suffered from mental problems throughout her life, which she encapsulates in her art. You could really see it in all of her work, so she really made me feel what it was like to be her. The exhibits in the museum,

The really cool communication project

abstracts

and the featured artists, change quite frequently. There are only ever about 4 exhibits on display at one time, and the main one is always on the first floor of the museum. The artist on display this time was Zhang Xiao Gang. He did a lot of his work during the 1990's, which was during the Tiananmen Square protests. His work is about his opinions of modern China. He paints a lot of pictures of faces with oversized featured and blank expressions. There were other artists on display on the upper floor. One was a really cool communications project. They had two people holding the same pen answer questions like their age, gender, job, etc. Both had to fight the other's force on the pen to write their own answer. It was really cool to try to make out both of the works in the pictures. Another large room featured sections by 4 artists, each with a pretty different style. I really enjoyed the colored in some of the abstract paintings by one of the artists.

I only spent about a half hour at the art museum, actually. Then it was time to head home because I was beat!

This past weekend, we went to Daegu Food Expo over at EXCO, a big conference center near Costco. We went with our friends Matthew, Maria, Sian, Thomas, Kat, and Alec. I registered early, so we got in for free. It was a relief because, even though I registered, I didn't know it had really gone through. The EXPO has various sections, but the best part was the tasting. At the back of one hall, there were samples of all kinds of Korean food and drinks. The EXPO was also selling restaurant appliances and things of that nature. There were a few places to buy food. One was an "international" section. It was only about 6 booths with what Korea thinks is food from those countries. The American booth had lemonade and coconuts to drink from. It kind of bothers me that Koreans who organize these big events don't just do a quick google search for "what is ______ food?" They put it the smallest amount of effort possible to figure out what food, especially western food, is. They had decent sections from Japan and China, but most of the other ones made no sense to me. The other section where you could purchase food was a bunch of booths for 

all the teas at the Food Expo

restaurants in Daegu. Daegu does have a nice array of all kinds of 

Cupcakes made to look like ice cream!

food. There were also experience areas where you could make different foods, but those cost extra. We tried to decorate cupcakes, but it was full. Our friend, Kat, stuffed a sausage though. When you first entered the room, there were displays of all kinds of food and teas. The food was from restaurants in Daegu and was all plastic wrapped. It was just to look at and drool over :) There were some really impressive creations made of sugar and cakes though. The tea booth reminded me of a witches cabin. There were different herbs and teas in all kinds of glass jars. It was really beautiful.

Last Wednesday was election day in Korea, and Friday was memorial day. All the schools had Wednesday and Friday off, but some schools also gave Thursday off as well. I had Thursday off, but Gianni didn't. One of my coteacher asked me to go to a movie with her on Thursday, which was really nice. It's funny because I never really think that my coteachers want to hang out with me in a social way, so I'm always surprised when they ask me to do something. We say the new Tom Cruise movie called Edge of Tomorrow and went to a traditional Korean restaurant beforehand. It was a really nice afternoon, even though it was raining a bit. The movie was better than I expected it to be. Tom Cruise hasn't been making good movies for a while, but this one had a really cool story, and I like the lead actress in it also. After the movie, Mi-Sook helped me figure out where to get one of the stamps for my book. I have been hiking at Apsan twice now, and that's one of the locations, but I never can never go during the day, when the stamp booth is actually open, so I had to cheat a little on this stamp. I thought Thursday would be a perfect day to get it, and it's on my way home from downtown. Mi-Sook told me what to say to the taxi driver, and he got me to where I needed to be. I'm glad I asked her about it though because I never would have found this place on my own. I got the stamp in what looked like an office building at the base of the mountain, but the building was at another entrance to some of the other hiking trails, and I had never been there before. The hike I've done both times has been the steep one of the observatory, and it's around the other side of the mountain. This hiking trail entrance was in a really nice, forested area, and the trails looked like they'd be more of an enjoyable hike than the one I've done before. I'll have to go back.

Cliff Side by the Rice terraces

Gianni and I have been attending a lot of the tours and events hosted by Enjoy Korea, one of the many tour companies for foreigners in Korea. We went to Jindo and Jinhae already, and, this past long weekend, we took a trip with them to Namhae Island. Namhae is a big island on the southern coast of Korea in the East China Sea. There's a bridge that connects it to the mainland, so we didn't have to take a ferry or anything like that. This is our second island trip, and I though Namhae was more beautiful than Seonyudo. We went to Seonyudo when the weather was still a bit chilly, and it was really great

Rice growing in the terraces

getting to bike around the island, but Seonyudo had a lot of trash around. Namhae was pretty clean (at

 least the beach we stayed near was), and there were tons of rice paddies and fields for farming. It's about three hours outside of Daegu, although it took us longer to get there due to the holiday traffic. Gianni and I brought bagels for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and ground beef for burgers for one night's dinner. I think we were pretty well-prepared. I didn't even get too badly burned! Before checking in to our pension, we stopped at a small village on the island called Darengi Village. It's a really beautiful location on a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. Rice terraces are built into the cliff side, so we got a better understanding for how rice is grown. It's a really beautiful place, but the cliff is really steep, and it was very hot that day. I could never live on that cliff, but there were houses and

Sangju Beach

everything. I'm always astonished by the way that some people live here. I often feel like I'm transported back to the Korea from 70 years ago when I get out of the big cities. We spent a few hours at the rice terraces before heading to the pension that was located 5 minutes walk away from Sangju Beach. There was a camping option on this trip, but we opted for the pension. The pension was the best one I've stayed at in Korea so far. It was really clean and new-looking. We still had to sleep on the floor, but the sleeping mats were really comfortable. The pension even had a pool table and meeting room inside, and

BBQ with friends

barbecues and picnic tables for rent outside. They also had a few cats roaming around, and one cat had recently had a litter of kittens, so we got to play with them! We shared a room with our friends Marie, Ben, Sian, and Colette. Our room had a bedroom (no bed) and a main living space with a kitchen, TV, and porch. There were a few restaurants in the area, but also some convenience stores. It was really lovely and comfortable. The rest of the day we could do whatever we wanted, so most people decided to get some lunch and head down to the beach. Some people from our group, as well as a lot of Koreans, were camping out down by the beach. The Koreans definitely know how to camp. They come prepared! Although some people were definitely not "roughing it." We saw one family with a projector screen and TV playing! The tents were all really close to one another, packed in. It's really different than what camping is like at home, and another reminder that personal space is not a thing here. I collected sea

memorial day fireworks

 shells (found some nice pink ones with spotted patterns), and we hung out with our friends for a bit before dinner. We all decided to do some grilling on the first night, so we rented a barbecue from the pension. After dinner, we headed back to the beach and hung out there watching people shoot off fireworks. On Memorial Day in Korea, a lot of the major city have sirens that go off to signify a moment of silence. On the island though, the Koreans that were camping by the beach used fireworks to mark the occasion instead. They sell all kinds of fireworks at the convenience store, and they are really fun to play with.

On the next day, there were a few options. It's nice that we weren't forced to do anything that we didn't want to. It made the weekend more relaxing. We decided to get up early for a visit to a nearby temple, Boriam Temple. To get to the temple, we took our bus to the base of a mountain where we then got a shuttle bus up the mountain a bit. From there, it's still a 15 minute walk up the mountain to get to the temple. The hike wasn't quite as steep as Apsan is, so we handled it alright. Unfortunately, it was really foggy that morning, so we couldn't see anything when we actually got the temple. It would have been a beautiful view, I'm sure. The temple itself was built into the mountain, and when we arrived, there was some sort of service happening and a monk was chanting. It was interesting to listen to. We took some nice pictures and headed back down to get on the bus. At the base of the mountain, Gianni and I bought some fried seaweed snacks. They are basically seaweed chips, and they were so tasty! The bus went back to the hostel to pick up those who didn't want to go to the temple. The second stop was either another beach, Songjeong Beach, or German Village. German Village was built by a few Koreans who moved to Germany for a bit and really enjoyed living there.

The boys made a sandcastle

 when they came back to Korea, they built homes in the German-style, but they didn't expect it to be a tourist destination. It turned into one, and they sell German beers and some food. There's also an American Village on the island that was built because the German one got popular. We drove past it on the bus. It has a statue of liberty and everything! It
looked hilarious, actually. We decided not to go to the German Village because there isn't a whole lot to do there. Instead, we relaxed on the beach. The boys built a sand castle with the sand castle toy set Jake bought. I

Songjeong Beach

 forgot my book, unfortunately, but Gianni and I took a nice walk along the beach. The water was kind of cold, but not as cold as in Maine in the summer. I was a chicken though and didn't really swim. We were supposed to stay on the beach until sunset, but people were ready to go back to the pension early. Stacey Kim, the woman who runs the tour company, is really flexible with plans and very accommodating, so we took the bus back early. Songjeong Beach wasn't as nice as the beach we were staying near. There was a lot of trash along it. We got dinner with our friends at a barbecue restaurant near the pension and headed back to the pension. We meant to get up and go for a walk on the beach, but it had been a late night and an early morning, so we all ended up hanging out in the room and watching James Bond movies on TV before going to bed early. I had a headache too, so I wasn't really in the mood for going out.

kayaking champs

The last day of our trip was a bit more active. We got up semi-early to check out of the hostel. We were part of the second bus, so we had a few hours to wait after checking out before going kayaking. While the first bus was kayaking, we loaded our things on to the bus and played UNO for a bit. I don't think it's very easy for foreigners to arrange boating activities, like kayaking, on their own. This dock was kind of randomly placed with not much else in the area. We got our snorkel and flippers and hopped in our two-person kayaks. The kayaks were a little strange because there wasn't really a hole. you just sit on top of it in the seats. I think Gianni and I impressed some of our friends with our kayaking abilities--that's what a summer spent at Charles River Kayaking Camp does! The first part of the kayak was kind of lame. We were in a bay area, and it wasn't the nicest of spots. But when we got out to the nearby island, it got better. It wasn't a long kayak, but it was fun. We kayaked all around this rocky island that had a lot of inlets and cave-type things. We went into crack/cave in the island that was only wide

The cave we went into

enough to fit two boats. You couldn't even turn around inside it. It wasn't very long, but it was pretty cool. We stopped on a little, rocky beach on the island to try out our snorkels. Gianni couldn't get used to his, and the water was freezing. It was a chilly day already, so neither of us felt too much like swimming. Our friends tried for a little while, and they said they saw some cool things out by the rocks, but I didn't want to go without Gianni. Also, they said they saw a jelly fish, which made them turn around, and I didn't feel like encountering one of those by accident. We decided to get back in the kayak and keep paddling instead. When it was time to head back, we got together with our friends and went in together. The people who run the kayak rental were great because they even have showers you can use! We all rinsed off in the showers and got changed out of our bathing suits. Gianni and I ate our lunch, and the bus headed back to the pension to pick up the first bus of people and then go back to Daegu. We didn't run into too much traffic on the way home, which was great.

 It was both an active and relaxing long weekend, and it was much needed! We had a great time, and we can't wait for our next trip with Enjoy
Korea to a mud festival in July!