Not much has been happening lately in Seoul. I'm in a basic school routine... Class, sleep, procrastinate, eat, sleep, homework, TV, homework, sleep, class... Not very interesting. But some small things to report on.

First, I visited a large Catholic church nearby. It was pretty much your basic cathedral with high arched ceilings and pretty stained glass. But the main door startled me. Usually, there's nothing to remind me that I'm in Korea as opposed to a Korean neighborhood in the US but then something jumps out. Look closely at the door and you'll see traditional Korean noble dress. I was surprised.



Also, I visited a board game room the other day. Korea has a whole room culture. It's starts with basic PC room(internet cafe/ arcade) or Singing Room (Karaoke) and then onto weirder things like sitting rooms (you pay for a nice place to sit) or board game rooms (you pay an hourly rate to play some of hundreds of board games. To work there you have to be able to explain the rules to all the game) Below we're playing a simple children's game that we all were terrible at.

And the last big change. I've started a volunteer position. (Couldn't stay away from kids for long) I now go each week to a poorer elementary school and with three others teach basic English to 1st through 3rd graders by playing traditional Korean games with them.
There are 35 students and this week we learned shapes. They now know the word triangle. (circle, square and parallelogram were lost to them) Aren't they cute?And of course I'm having fun too.

School Begins!

Right, so this week I started class. And because Dad requested pictures of campus so I'm taking you on a tour of my daily life.

So, for some reason this semester I decided to try my hand at morning classes. (It's been a week and I'm already regretting that) But I wake up every morning at 8am and walk to school. In front of campus if a huge intersection (and the only place on earth where I always obey traffic laws, sorry mom) But at every hour hundreds of students wait and crosse on en masse weaving between backed up traffic.

The walk from the main gate up to campus. The mountain in the background is part of campus. K, First stop. The theology building (it even looks like a church, not the rose window). Where I have Psychology of Happiness (my professor actually was one of the first to start this field) and History of Christian Education (a feminist critique on the Bible and Christianity in Korea) This class seems interesting but unfortunately may be taught partially in Korean. So, it could be tough.



K, my favorite statue on campus. I don't know what it actually is but it looks like the Death Star.
The building in the middle is the Law School where I'm taking International Law. Yay! It looks to be my favorite class but also promises to be really tough.
And finally one of Yonsei's most famous buildings and a film site for many Korean movies. The school was founded by American missionaires which explains why parts of campus highly resemble somewhere like Georgetown or Harvard. (Ivy covered brick buildings)
And before coming home I'm also taking Modern Korean History, Taekwondo and Swimming. This is my little alley way. It starts between the 7eleven and the Krispy Kreme and ends in a very big church.
My room is the first set of four windows on the left. I love my room, especially now that spring is coming and I can leave the windows open.
When I first was looking for rooms I found this place because of the plants in front. Seoul doesn't have much greenery. So, I came but the woman who runs this place wasn't home for two days. But I held out and from what I've gathered I've got one of the best places in the area.
So, yup, that's my life.

Young In University

On Wednesday and Thursday I went to visit a place I'd heard about since I started Taekwondo nearly 7 years ago. Young In University is a school well known for it's skills in teaching Korean martial arts as well as is where all of my Taekwondo instructors and interns studied. So it's pretty much a pilgrimage site for anyone from White Tiger visiting Korea. I luckily know several students in Korea who are either studying now or graduated from Young In, so I got a personal tour and several lessons from people who do martial arts professionally. (In Korea you're able to major in Taekwondo, Judo...) Anyway, it was amazing.

This is the main building. About five stories tall with two gyms to each floor that were bigger than any I've ever seen before.

The taekwondo gym. Isn't it beautiful?
One of the people I know at the school is on the demonstration team that travels internationally showing off highly trained skills. They practice for about 5-7 hours a few times a week. I got to join the morning part of one of the practices and learned alot. (In real life he jumps off a persons folded arms to do a back flip to hit the two paddles and lands. It's actually a boardbreaking skill) And finally a short clip of a short demonstration they did. This is called Taekwondo Areobics. The music is current Korean pop songs and the moves that are obviously not fighting moves are dance motions that go along with the songs. OK!

Goodbye to China and Hello to Korea

I'm sorry it took so long to post. I don't even have an excuse. I'm just that lazy. But school will start soon so I should be a bit more timely in my updates.

I returned to Beijing at the end of my China trip to meet up with Ki Sung and show him around. (he's never really traveled before) so I won't post pictures of things you've already seen but I did see some new stuff. For instance I went back to the Summer Palace. But in winter the large lake freezes over so that you can walk across it. I've never walked on a frozen lake before so I was really excited about this.


And there was a whole section of the park I missed before with some interesting architecture.
And of course pictures of the Great Wall. There are four major sections of it surrounding Beijing and this is the most popular and safest part at Badaling. But it is crowded, even on a cold day in January.
Luckily this section is so long that most of the crowds turn back so that the real experience of the Great Wall can be had if you're willing to hike.
And I do mean hike. This part is so steep. They just built the wall following the contours of the land. Parts were so steep that it was safer to sit on my butt and slide down the wall rather than risk falling or putting alot of stress on my knees.
And we visited yet another large Buddha. (I think China has a fetish for them) This one is the world's largest Buddha carved from one piece of Balsa wood.

And the my new favorite food. Peking Duck! all I can say is that it's delicious and everyone should try it. But now I'm back in South Korea waiting for the semester to start. Everything is pretty much the same but my living situation has drastically improved. From the dirty, noisy dorm last semester I have moved into what is known as a hasukjib or boarding house. About the same price as student housing in the US I get my own little room on the fourth floor of a building in the middle of Sincheon (the neighborhood next to Yonsei) So here it is.

My own TV and refrigerator.
My bed


and my little bistro setup. This is my favorite part. I have a large set of windows with a little table in front of them where I eat and work on my computer.
What makes a hasukjib different from other living arrangements is there are two meals served a day (breakfast and dinner) by the ajuma, the woman who owns the building. Many older, single women in Korea make a living this way by renting out rooms to students and cooking them dinner everynight. The food price is included in the rent so it is important to not only look for a nice room but make sure the owner is a good cook. Mine is.

I went to Chengdu, home of the panda breeding reserve. So, as a few of you know I really like Pandas (asked for a Panda for Christmas when I was little) they're my favorite animal so I've been planning to come to China and see the pandas for years now. and I finally did so now you will all be subjected to the my love for these creatures and only a handful of the dozens of photos I took.

After they ate they were really playful. I was surprised to find out that they are vicious (they are wild bears) their manager is still a bit afraid of them.
Actually they're really good climbers.

Teenagers (3-4 years) So, lazy and greedy. Adult (5-6 years) Tired and slow.
Baby (less than a year) The size of my teddy bear.
Adult pandas (5-6 years) They have an pseudo thumb (so six fingers) that helps them grip the bamboo. and yes they ate all of that.
Also, there were red pandas. They aren't really pandas, more like raccoons, but still eat bamboo and are just as cuddly.
I got to hold one for 50 quai (about $9) Holding a panda cub would have cost 1000quai ($150) and sitting next to an adult would have been 400quai ($60) (And believe me I was tempted)



And of course some videos of the cuteness.






O.k besides the pandas there is one other important thing to see in Chengdu. Here's a teaser.
The Great Buddha of Leshan. 1,200+ years old and 71 meters tall. Supposedly the biggest Buddha in the world. Literally carved out of a cliff face by a several generations of monks with too much time on their hands.
You could walk down the cliff face to the bottom of the Buddha which was interesting because the cliff was covered with carvings of arhats and Buddhas and guardians all with an Indian feel to them because they're so old. In side one of the temples on the Cliff I stumbled upon some monks saying prayers so you can hear some of the Tibetan prayers.


Mom asked for "real" pictures and here's one. Everyone over the again of 40 plays Mahjong or Go or some other card game in large packs outside restaurants or beside the rivers every afternoon.
Went to a temple in Chengdu call the Green Ram temple. Nothing really distinctive about it except for the large bronze statues of Rams outside the main shrine and people rub for good luck.
All right so I never really explained train station and I wish I had a video of this. People get to the train station about two hours early just to find a place to sit. and then they usually take up three seats sleeping while their kids climb over other people and chairs. Then about thirty minutes before the train departs an announcement is made and everyone rushes to stand in line and push forward towards a closed gate. At the gate their is usually a guard with a gun or baton to control potential rioting. Then everyone pushes and gets as close to the person in front of them as possible for the next thirty minutes even though seats are assigned, the gate is not opening anytime soon and there is plenty of time to leisurely board the train. Finally boarding starts, the gates open and people trip over themselves and their bags to get on the train. I usually just wait in my seat until all this is over and then stroll onboard. Craziness.
I'm now in Beijing, my last stop, revisiting some places from this summer and I'll return to Korea in 3 days. China's been fun. If anything new happens in Beijing I'll post some pictures.

Shangri-la?

A few years ago the Chinese government renamed the city of Zhongdian on the Tibetan border Shangrila in order to increase tourism. It didn't really work as most westerners are disgusted at such an obvious ploy but I went anyway. I found a town where everyone looks like they must be at least over 100 years old and beautiful Tibetan architecture and culture without having to spend hundreds on a permit to Lhasa.

Coming into town we drove on the edge of a cliff through many snow covered peaks and passed several mounds like the one seen here. It's used for prayer but I couldn't get any information beyond that. (This is where speaking the language of the country you're in comes in handy)



The first thing I did (and also the only but we'll get to that later) was visit the Songzalin Monastery. Note how the houses still come right up to the walls of the monastery. It was also fairly dirty inside and there were still places women weren't allowed to enter. All signs that Shangri-la hasn't become the tourist theme park it was supposed to be. (lucky for me)
I really like Tibetan architecture. (that what this style is) Like the Naxi and Bai houses they painted the outside. Especially the windows are accented with pretty borders and pictures. Also, look at the sky! It's so blue and no haze. At 4000meters I think the air is too thin to really hold anything. Here I got a nice tan from the increased intensity of the sun's rays but I also had a slight headache, my only symptom of altitude sickness besides a general weakness.
I wasn't supposed to take this photo but I did. This is the inside of the main temple. Can you spot the monk praying? Fun story about Tibetan prayers. Tibet has its own language (a kind of flowing script) and when they pray they chant in their language while thumbing prayer beads (think rosary) and rocking or swaying. The first time I saw someone praying I had walked into a shop and the man behind the counter was praying. I thought he was mentally disturbed and that I should leave before I put it together. Tibetan sounds nothing like Mandarin.
Just a beauty shot.
And another monk.
Did I mention that Shangri-la really is a paradise.
A bit of the old city where I stayed. New parts were built to accomadate tourists but most of those buildings are empty.
Oh, and because they still subsist on farming there are animals roaming the streets and countryside. The most famous is the yak. Used for meat and milk.
There are also pigs (they remind me of javelinas) These pigs are skittish of people but roam the city streets. I guess they belong to somebody?
And the Mastiff originates from this area. This one is a stray who came and sat next to me when I was eating. I named him Harrison. (For some reason he looks like Harrison Ford to me, does anyone else see it?)
Again not sure what this is. I accidentally walked into a festival/dance thing. But here is some of Tibets traditional/festive dress. I like the fur hat. I realized that I never explained why I came to the South of China though. So, something like 90% of China is the Han etnicity but the other 10% is made up of about 80 different minority groups all living in southern China. Each with their own languages, dress and culture. The Bai and Naxi are actually matrilineal groups with some interesting marrige practices, so I'm told. The problem is the Chinese government keeps turning the settlements into tourist areas and relocating Han into the area to keep the authority. So I haven't taken many pictures of the minorities in the area because often times they're fake. But these women (and men) look and speak Tibetan so I feel that they're real. I haven't posted a video in a while. But here is one of the dancing and singing/chanting.



Ok, so I mentioned that traveling during the new year's holiday is hard but I never really had a problem until leaving Shangri-la. I left earlier than I wanted because the bus I wanted only left on somedays so I jumped on one at 5:00pm on Friday evening. It was a sleeper bus (seen below). About 10 beds deep and two beds high, none of them big enough to accomodate a real person comfortably. Being white I got the biggest at the front but my feet hung off the end another 3 inches still. And they're hard. And of course it's a bus on Chinese roads so it bounced and swayed for 10 hours. Needless to say I didn't sleep much.

Now my plan was to go to an industrial city called Panzhihua and take the train that connected to my next destination Chengdu. For some reason the bus stopped at an outlying town instead of the actual city, so at 5:00am I was forced to take a taxi to the train station. About 80 quai (don't convert it, just know that that's alot for a taxi ride in China) I get to the train station and find out the train I want doesn't leave until 3:30pm and the hotel where I had planned to sleep was closed. So I camped out at the train station for 9 hours. I ended up paying a shop 10quai to let me use their power outlet and watched every movie I have saved on my harddrive. But misfortune continues because when I got on the train I found that I had a hard seat (meaning sitting up) next to a mother and child with no sense of personal space. The train filled up with people litterally filling the aisles and people spitting and babies pooping on the floor (diapers don't exist in China) And I come to find out that it's a 15 hour train ride to my destination. But luckily, about 6 hours in, a conductor comes by and rescues me by asking me to upgrade to a sleeper bed (which were available) for the sake of space. This is the way the Chinese usually travel but I for one could never do it. I arrived in Chengdu at 6:00am and slept until 2:00pm.