"Where in the World"

'Piggy Piggy'

According to the Chinese calendar we are entering the year of the pig, which is the 12th animal to appear on the zodiac calendar. But this is not just the year of the pig, but also the year of the chonghae, which means red pig. This occurs about every 60 years. But what is more interesting is that this coincides with the Chinese Year of the 'Golden pig'. This only happens every 600 years and is believed to have steam from fortunetellers and rumours spread throughout China and Korea.  

Since it began living as a domestic animal in Korea some 2,000 years ago, pigs have brought a lot of myths and superstitions closely associated with wealth, good luck and sometimes a mythical supernatural power in sacrificial rituals. For example they are very fertile animals, giving birth to 6 to 12 piglets on average, and grow faster than any other animal. For that reason, a shop owner may hang a picture on his wall of a pig feeding a lot of piglets, symbolizing fertility and abundance. (Korea Times)

For these reasons and many more pigs are seen as a lucky symbol throughout Asia and have been for many centuries.

This is supposed to be a lucky year for most people, but it is supposed to be particularly lucky if you are born in it. Any child born in this year is supposed to live a happy and wealthy life. According to the BBC website there is expected to be a baby boom, as it is one of the most auspicious years for having children. The hospitals maternity wards should be getting ready for an onslaught, as the wedding chapels did in 2006. 

 
Some rather tacky looking money boxes

Around our area many of the shops began to start selling pig merchandise and souvenirs. Everything from beautiful woodcarvings of pigs, to golden plastic money boxes. Maybe the idea of the pig being lucky in the money department steamed the idea of the 'piggy bank'. Who knows, but lets hope it's true about this year being a lucky one.  

Escaping to Shanghai

In this backward country you either having to be at deaths door or at work. Little colds, food poisoning and even pneumonia just doesn't cut it. So when mum and me were at the travel agent and realised that it would be cheaper and we'd have more time away if I pulled a sicky from work, I got rather nervous. Normally as probably a lot of you know I don't have a problem with this. But it does make it a little harder if every time your sick your boss wants to take you to the doctor, so he can shove needles in your ass. Plus he knows where I live.

Just so none of you think I'm exaggerating ill tell you about the time Jenna was chucking up in the school bathroom (lovely) and although she only had 25 min of her shift left to work, he was very reluctant to let her go home. Saying "I've got to think of my school". If he needs to think about his school maybe he should get some Korean teachers than can actually speak English. Anyway getting a bit side tracked. Now I knew that if I were to phone in he would try and convince me to come in that afternoon, or take me to the doctors. Here's where mummy's can be very handy.

Our second problem was that due to our flight being at 10.15 and having to be at the airport earlier to book in, I had to ring him from the airport. Problem, the airport announcements can be heard everywhere, I'm guessing that’s the point. So we spent ages looking for somewhere to ring him without giving the game away.

We eventually found the airport hotel and managed to get lost down its corridors enough so that if he heard them he would think they were the radio or TV. He was not a happy bunny but I would like to say at this point that I do have 4 sick days written into my contract, so he kind of asked for it. Anyway mum held her ground when he asked to speak to me claiming I was in bed. When I was actually cringing round the corner when all these French people came out of their hotel room. That would be hard to explain. Eventually she got him off the phone to which I quickly turned off so he couldn't ring back and went and got on the plane.

At around lunch time we got to Shanghai and it was lovely the sun was actually out. We stayed in a great hotel and spent the first day wandering the streets, trying random food and shopping. Mum even managed to find this little hut where this man repaired her heels as she'd only bought one pair with her. This is mainly my fault as most of her suitcase was filled with my stuff

 
Mum in the slippers the man  provided so she wouldn't get cold feet

Whilst walking round the area near our hotel we both realised how different each street we walked down was. One minute you would be in the slums of Shanghai and then you would come across a ten story shopping mall and fancy hotels. They are expanding so quickly that a lot of old China is being ripped down and literally disappearing. There is definite wealth gap, however Shanghai's skyscrapers and modern lifestyle seem to show the future of Shanghai and indeed its recent economic development.

 
The old Shanghai over shadowed by the new one 

That night we escaped the cold by darting into a nearby shopping center that we happened to be passing. It was huge it had about 12 floors and the roof had water constantly running across it like a big waterfall. We spent ages looking at the strange fashions and restaurants until we found the food court, which was also very large. I think we walked round it twice looking at all the lovely looking food before we decided on Japanese, with a western touch. It had a huge hot plate table where the chef cooked our dinner and then dropped it onto our plate. We had fried cabbage, some sort of peppered beef and udon (noodles). 

It was delicious here’s a clip: http://www.mediamax.com/katrinaleanne/Hosted/Chef.MPG

 
Our chef for the evening

Then we headed back to the hotel for an early night as we'd been awake since about 6am that morning and it had been a long day.

Ice Fishing Festival

It was a very early start this weekend, my alarm clock was set for 5am! We met the bus at 7pm at the Honguk University pick up and convinced the driver to wait another 15 min till Emily arrived. We were heading to Inje Ice fishing festival which is held ever winter in Korea. 

The Inje Ice-fishing Festival, designated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as a representative festival of Korea, is one of the largest wintertime events in Korea, drawing 700,000 visitors every year. Soyang Lake of nam-myeon of Inje is Korea's largest clean lake where the clear valley water of Seorak Mountain Rangers, Naerin River and Backdam Temple meets together and makes an unimaginable ice surface. As part of the festival, the river ice is broken to reveal clean waters flowing through a beautiful landscape, offering to both adults and children the pleasures of fishing. In addition to ice fishing, festival-goers will enjoy a variety of hands-on events and games. 

So this weekend we went to this went to an ice fishing festival that happens once a year in Hwacheon in Gangwon-do. We had an early start again, I think i got up about 5am and it was definitley a struggle. After getting to the bus stop and asking the driver very nicely to wait 10 min because Emily's train was running late we set off.

When we got to the destination there were thousands of people there all with their fishing rods down a hole. So once we'd got our rodes (that looked more like a twisted hamburger flipper with a badmington handle) we went to join the crowds. Each group was given a large metal thing to hack at the ice to make a hole, but me, Jenna and Em found an abandoned one and claimed that (were not really ones for hard work).

Now as you can see from the photo's ive posted it looks like we managed to catch three fishes, this I have to admit was a bit of a set up. One of the tour guides came over and asked if he could take some pictures of us for the website. Now not ones to shy away from a camera we said hell yeah, hence why we got the fish to pose with. After we'd got our fish we promptly gave on up on trying catch one and decided it would be more fun to play with the fish we'd been given and name them. We got to christen one each Sarah, Becky for the little one and Laura Jenna's friend from home.  

When belly's began to rumble we went over to the barbeque area where they wrapped Sarah, Becky and Laura in foil and stuck them on the barbe. For anyone that doesn't know I hate fish and although I tried it, it hasn't converted me into a fish eater.

After this we wandered round the different tents and found one that dressed you up in a Hanbok (the traditional Korean dress) check out the photo's, we look pretty stupid.

About two o'clock we met to do some bare hands fishing, well when we signed up for this at the begining of the trip we thought we'd just be trying to catch fish with our hands through a hole in the ice. Boy were we wrong. We got given shorts and t-shirt to change into and told to be prepared to get wet. They had cut this huge hole in the ce that looked like a large pond, with loads of trout in. The idea was to jump in and catch as many fish as you could within 5 mins. Emily didn't join us as it probably wasn't a good idea after being so sick so me and Jenna doned our lovely orange shirts and basketball shorts and stood on the edge of this pond, crapping ourselves.

 
On the edge, freezing our butts off

Three, two, one the gong sounded and everyone jumped in and it was absolutly freezing. I had my hands on a couple of fish but didn't manage to catch one, the water was so dirty you couldn't see anything. The river bed was covered in tiny little pebbles which at first walking around on them hurt, but after about 30 seconds your feet were so numb you couldn't feel a thing. When the gong sounded again I realised Jenna had long gone and I ended up being the last one in the pool.

 
                                              I'm still smiling

Luckily the small changing room we crowded into had under floor heating. At least we got a souviner, we were allowed to keep our lovely bright orange t-shirts. After a small stop over in a food tent for the last of our pack lunch and a hot drink we headed back to the bus and started the long journey home.   

Mt Takao

Day two and we set off to Mt. Takao, which is a mountain in the city of Hachioji, an hour outside of Tokyo. It stands at 599 meters tall and luckily for us there was a cable car that delivered you half way up. On the mountain there is a Buddhist temple called Takaosan Yakuōin Yūkiji, which is a working temple and whilst we were there we could hear gongs sounding and chanting from somewhere within. There were many temples and shrines each with their own offering of incence, flowers and prayers.

 

We started by catching the mountain train to Takaosan station at the sight seeing level. Where you could venture on a series of walks all over the mountain. That ranged from lovely paved paths to narrow nature trails.

Considered a sacred mountain, Takaosan has been a center of mountain worship for more than 1000 years. The attractive temple Yakuoin stands near the mountain's top. Visitors pray there to Shinto-Buddhist mountain gods (tengu) for good fortune. Statues of the gods, one with a long nose and one with a crow beak, can be found at the temple and all over the mountain.  

Because of the time of year we were there, there were many places where you could make offerings for good luck, health and happiness in the coming year. We found one where you could write on a white stone and throw it into a bucket. On many of the stones were wishes and prayers in many different languages.

 
Kat, Em, Jenna 2006

Eventually we decided to follow directions on our hand drawn map to try and reach the top of the mountain. Easier said than done. At each crossroad we came to we could never find anything that came close to looking like the map. So we decided to just keep going up because in theory we would get there eventually.

Which we did but it did take us a lot longer than we thought, which did include a few rest stops along the way. Once we'd actually got to the top, taken a few pictures and gazed at the extensive landscape, which apparently on a good day you can see Mt. Fuji. Unfortunatly we couldn't and we soon realised that the train down probably stopped running fairly shortly and none of us fancied walking all the way back down the mountain. After a reasonably fast walk back down we made it back to the train with time to spare.

That night we found ourselves a lovely little resteraunt in the basement of a high rise building. It served snacky foods that I can only describe as a Japenese/ Western style Tapas. We had slices of steak, camenbert and blueberry, chicken sticks, mandoo and pizza with palma ham. It was delicious!  

 

Were going to Japan

An early start on the 28th, we were up at about 5.30am, I am definitly not a morning person and neither is Jenna but we were excited. After packing a few last minute essentials we got in a taxi and headed to the airport. Are flight left at 9.30am and on top of having to be there two hours early we also had to get our re-entry visas. This part went pretty smoothly as there wasn't a massive que and we didn't get charged at all, bonus. However Emily was running late and we began to panic she wasn't going to make it on time. Luckily we had picked up a ticket for her before so when she arrived her number was called straight away.

After we had checked our luggage in and had discussed how on earth we were going to fit all our stuff into our bags when we leave, seeing as we managed to fill them for less than a week away. We boarded the plane and set off. An hour into the flight we recieved our meals which I know is sad by I actually quite like plane food. However this was probably the worst one I ever had. I think it was supposed to be breakfast, it contained some meaty sausage thing, battered fish, rice, an egg/tofu thing and a raddish. Emily and I picked at it, while Jenna was asleep and decided we would wait and try some proper Japenese food.

We arrived at the hostel about 3pm, to find that it was closed and that we wouldn't be able to check in until 4pm. So off we went to try and find some food, little did we know this would be a lot harder than we thought. After trawling the streets asking randomers (when I say asking I really mean playing sharards with complete strangers). Everything looked closed it was like when a cowboy rides into town and the streets are empty. When I asked one woman to help us, I suddenly found this guy in my face with a microphone and the rest of his camera crew in tow. Wonder if we ended up some documentary? 

Eventually we found this quant little place that was minute we crambed ourselves in with all our luggage and once we'd all sat down, we simply orderd three of what the guy next to us was having. It turned out to be very nice, it was a noodle soup with vegtables on top, but it was a huge and not one of us managed to finish it.

 
                                                     Our cosy little Japanese resteraunt

 

 
                                                         Ramen, Japense Noodle Soup

At around 4pm we headed back to the hostel where we were checked in by a vending machine, no im not joking. We had to pay this machine for how ever many nights we wanted to stay and recieved a ticket. I went first and had no real problems, just took a while to feed in the notes. Emily's turn came and I dont know how she managed it but the machine spat out all her money in coins, which she had to re-feed into it.

Once we'd settled into our room which was really nice but extremely warm we changed and headed out into the streets of Tokyo. Now we were all expecting Japan to be expensive but the subway prices were very similar to London so it wasn't too much of a shock. We arrived at Tokyo Tower which looks rather like an orange Eifel Tower.

                                        Tokyo Tower 2006

It stands at 333m, with a 360 degree observation platform at 250m. It had an amazing view at night with the lights of Tokyo making it look like a theme park. Apparently during the day you can see as far as Mt. Fuji. It even had a section of glass floor which you can stand on. It was extremely scratched but you could see through it enough to see the floor.  

 

It had been a long day so we headed home for bed pretty early ready for a fun packed week in Tokyo! 

Christmas Day

The lead up to Christmas has been quite uneventful and although I appreciate Christmas not being shoved in my face mid October, but I do miss everywhere being decorated with tinsel, Santa Clauses and trees. A couple of weeks ago things did start popping up outside Paris Bagetter and Baskin Robbins which did get me in the Christmas spirit. It was all our first Christmas away from home, family and friends and although we are all somewhere in our twenties were still big kids at heart. Because of this factor we decided to make it as traditional as we could. So thanks to some home made snowflakes (inspired by one of Jenna's kindergarton lessons) and a display of our cards the flat looked pretty good.

Jenna and I had been to the grey market the weekend before to get all the things you just can't buy in Korea to make Christmas dinner like stuffing and gravy. No I hate gravy which was a good thing because the Americans just can't make it comes out all yellow and runny, aparently they call bread sauce gravy, weirdo's.

Now we don't have an oven and neither does Emily or in fact most of the people we know. Koreans do all their cooking on hobs which is a problem when you want to a cook a roast chicken. Luckily for us we have a local chicken man who parks up at the bottom of our road. It did however take a while for us to ask him whether he would be there Christmas day. After using basic, basic Korean "yogi (here) Christmas day, 25th" we walked away feeling pretty confident that it was a yes.

Chrisrtmas day arrived and due to have an early start and late night Christmas eve Emily and I didn't crawl out of bed till 11.30am. Very unchristmassy of us. Jenna had been up cooked herself breakfast and sat waiting for us to emerge. After a quick outing to the pc room to do a few christmas emails we came back and opened our presents. Jenna was surrounded by packages most of them turning out to be chocolate which she was very happy with. Emily got some oats which doesn't sound very exciting but as far as I know you can't get them over here (found them in the grey market). When I lived with Emily thats all she ate for breakfast.

 
                         Emily and her Quackers

 
                    Jenna unwrapping her Take That cd

As for me, I got a lovely feather pillow (which you also can't get over here) from my mum. Thanks mum. After presents we set about making Christmas dinner with our fingers crossed that it would actually turn out ok. After a few hours of cooking and my first attempt of making mauld wine, which actually tasted pretty good we sat down to a feast.

After dinner in traditional christmas style we sat around and watched a dvd (Ice age 2), drank and ate chocies, to full to move. Thanks to Jenna's sister we even got to play 'tell me', we had a really great day are looking forward to going to Japan.

Watch this space!

 

Christmas Eve

On Christmas eve we decided to go snowboarding, we had originally planned to go for the whole weekend but all the resort hotels were fully booked. Koreans dont really celebrate Chritmas so for them it's just a long weekend which would explain why it was so busy. We had an early start on Sunday, about 6.30 am this was so that we could get into to Seoul to catch the resort bus. The resort we went to is called Bears Town, which is mainly a begginers resort. This was perfect for us as none of us had been in a long time and we had a virgin snowboarder in tow, Sam.
Once we got there we got sorted with the rental gear, blunt boards and smelly boots all wishing we had our own kit with us.

First we took Sam to this small slope (when I say slope I really mean a little patch of snow that kids sledge on) but it was a great place to strap Sam in for the first time. After a few wobbles he was off and we were all really impressed with him, he'd managed to show up all our first attempt on a board. So seeing as Sam was so confident and talent we decided to take him up on a proper slope.

Video of Sam's first run http://www.mediamax.com/katrinaleanne/Hosted/MOV01965.MPG

 
                                        The beginers slope

Now when we were queing we realised that no one was strapped into their board. For anyone that doesn't board your supposed to strap your front foot into the board so that when you get off the chair lift at the other end you can glide off smoothly. Well that is the myth I don't recall seeing any of gliding at any point just trying to maneuver ourselves out of the way of the other one, with unlady like effort. So we follow the trend and carry our boards on. When we get to the top, we lift the bar up and then the Korean lifty starts yelling at us. Luckily for us one of the few words he knew in English was run! Other wise we would of been hit from behind with the swinging chair lift, which is very painful as I found out a bit later.
Emily and I were a bit nervous not only because it had been a while since we'd been boarding but we have also had a few falls the last couple of times weve been. Jenna sets off first and we take it slow and steady behind her, with Sam still in figuring out mode behind us. After a few more runs confidence grew and we headed up to the black slope. A black slope is supposed to be quite difficult but this resort didn't have any red runs so we agreed this would probably be a red slope if you were in Europe. As I was saying earlier chair lifts do hurt, I found this out whilst getting off the lift with Emily. We raise the bar preparing to get off and the next minute I find Emily lying at my feet with no where to go and a Korean man yelling run. I couldn't really do anything and before I knew it I had been hit in the backside by the chair lift, nearly collapsed over Emily who was in a heap tangled in her board and all we could do was laugh.

The slope was nice but a bit to small for us and although it was too warm for real snow to settle it was a nice soft landing thanks to the fake snow. One last thing I have to coment on before finishing this post is that since weve been here we have noticed that young Korean couples often wear the same outfits, jackets, hats etc. But nothing could have prepared us for the slopes of Korea, they had eveything matching, hats, jackets, whole ski suits even boards and it wasn't just a few there were hundreds of them.

 
                                The three us doing the Korean victory sign

We all had a really good day and once we'd taken some Chritmas photo's in the snow and listened to Christmas music sang in Korean it really did feel like the holiday season.     

The Paper Museum

The paper museum had been opened in 2004 and although are guide book had implied that the building was actually made out of paper (which I can hear you saying how stupid we must have been) but in our defense parts of it are made out of paper. It is completely environmentally friendly it is constructed of thick paper tubes and old steel containers, with no cement.

                                                  Inside the Paper Museum

Papertainer (which means paper and container) opened to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Design House, a well-known publishing company in Korea located in Olympic Park.

The container part of the gallery that held all the marketing displays was really good, in each container, an artist has created an image of each particular brand, some were easier to figure out than others. There were however interactive rooms that produced lights in darkend rooms, and enough mirrors to make you stand there for ten minutes deciding which is your better side and do I really look like this from behind. A lot of them were hands on displays but a couple weren't which I found after I'd ripped this plastic ball of its velcro. No harm done though and no one noticed luckily. It had 30 brands altogether including Samsung Anycall, Nike Korea, Bean Pole and Home Plus (a Korean version of Tesco and I think one owns the other as they have the same classic red and blue design). 

  
         The Home Plus Display

The Paper Gallery features an exhibition called ‘Spotlight on 30 Women,’ which sheds new light on historical and legendary Korean female figures including Empress Myeongseong, Yu Gwan-Sun, Hwang Jin-I, and Na Hye-seok. Featuring images, photos and paintings, the exhibition aims for a visual portrayal of famous female figures and an interpretation that differs from male-centric historical accounts. Thirty participating artists include well-known names such as Nancy Lang, Kim Jung-man, and Jung Kuho.

This exhibition was really well done and we spent ages in there taking photo's sneakily when the curator wasn't looking.

 
                Lady with flower                              The Pretzel of peace

 
                                        This was one of our favourites

 

Olympic Park

It was two weeks before Christmas and were were thoroughly fed up of Christmas shopping. I haven't actually managed to do very much of the tourist bit so we opted for a whole weekend of it. On Saturday 9th December we went to Olympic Park situated in Seoul near Dongdaemun. It took a fair while to get there on the subway but we found it ok and we entered the park through the grand entrance of the Peace Gate.

"This Gate was built to celebrate the triumphant Seoul Olympics, which showed the strength, power and growth of Korea to the whole world. The eaves-shaped roof, eaves, portraits of four Korean gods and 3 representative colors - white, blue, and red - express Korean sentiments and traditions. The four Korean gods of the right and left side of the Gate were inspired from Janggunchong's murals of Goguryeo Dynasty and they are believed to rule the four cardinal points - north, south, east and west - for heavenly peace. By symbolizing traditional Korean peace philosophy, it also illustrates hopes for world peace."

 
A rather wet looking picture of the Peace Gate, the grand entrance of Olympic Park.

The Peace Gate was beautiful and the main causeway leading up to the gate had hundreds of pillars topped with sculpted heads. Some were painted and some had faded badely from the seasons but most of them were extremely ugly. The Christmas trees were beautifully lit up at night and I promise pictures will be added a soon as I can upload them.

"Olympic Park preserves the spirit of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. The stadiums, arranged in a fan-shaped pattern around the park, were the main stages for the sports events. With extensive grassy fields, sculpture gardens, walking paths, and rest areas, the park is open all day as a multi-purpose area for leisure, sports, and cultural activities. Over 200 sculptures made by 155 world-renowned artists are scattered around the park. The main attractions of the park include the World Peace Gate, "Rendezvous in Seoul," and the "Wall of Glory" along with various other items in the Seoul Olympic Museum which will remain as a great legacy to the Korean descendants and competitors."

Under the peace gate sits the Olympic flame, burning vividly above the Seoul Peace Declaration.

                                Emily and I warming our freezing hands

Due to it being nearly Christmas an ice skating rink had been set up with hundreds of kids in pink and white skates. We vowed we would do the museum first and then if there was time hit the rink. So we wandered through the park and contemplated riding one or those four seater buggy's with pedals because the grounds were so extensive but after the museums there wasn't enough time left.

Luckily for us we had plenty of time but after I saw a girl with blood all over her white and pink skate I was some what put off. We bumped into this really sweet Korean man that had his grand children with him. He helped us get the right size skates and then paid for the locker because we didn't have enough change (Koreans get very offended if you refuse something that is offered to you). He also took these lovely photo's of us.

                                                  2012 Olympics here we come

 
                                         It had been a few years

Snacks

One of the things I have noticed most about Korean children is the things they love to eat. I understand that this is what they have been brought up on and therefore know nothing else but it makes you think about the kids back home and how fussy weve all become. Including me as my mum would say.

I have been meaning to blog this for a while but have never had the opportunity until i walked into my first lesson on a wednesday. This is my Basic Fantasy class of Jennifer's of all boys, 9 of them and one of them arrived late. He walked in with three massive crap legs, one hanging out the side of his mouth like a lollipop. I couldn't believe it I was stood teaching a lesson and three of them were quite happily sucking on the end of a crab leg. Non the wiser that if they had done that back home all the kids in class would of screamed with digust and you would of probably been labelled the class weirdo.

So i spent the whole lesson taking pictures of them and trying not to wretch, here's the result.

      
Sonny with his crab leg  
              

  
Tom with his crab leg
                   

 
The whole fishy smelling class