Jeollabuk-do and a motherlode of television

Well, whether you noticed or not, I took a long break from the blog, but also from most other productive life activities, including running, eating well, being social, answering e-mails and anything else that would have caused me to leave the bed or use my brain and / or body for more than a few minutes at a time. This unpleasant hiatus was a byproduct of the worst flu / cold I can remember catching, but mercifully, the hibernation, hacking, and nose-blowing have ended. Now, two boxes of heavy-duty kleenex and 70+ episodes of Lost later, I’m back to the world of the living, and excited for a relaxing conclusion to the semester and our long-awaited trip to New Zealand.

Our Thanksgiving break trip to Jeollabuk-do, a province in southern Korea, went well. We discovered the Seongnam-si bus terminal, not far from us at all, with departures to just about any in-country destination we could imagine. Thursday morning we bused to Jeonju, the capital of the province, known for its cuisine (including a sickly-sweet warm alcoholic concoction, moju) and restored traditional village. We discovered that traveling off-season in Korea grants empty buses and no crowds, but that for the most part, when tourism is slow, the entire country is under construction. At least, the entire traditional village in Jeonju was. We waded through numerous muddy trenches and narrowly avoided bulldozers, but enjoyed the beautiful hanok houses and museums, and stayed in one of the few traditional hanok inns left in the country. In the inn, we slept Korean-style in a tiny box of a room, on a yo (bedding mat) with a heated ondol floor. In the morning we had a breakfast of many courses that closely resembled the traditional Korean dinners we’ve already experienced: it seems that differentiation between meals is not a characteristic of Korean cuisine. We explored the town and made friends with a tall and very drunken character (pictured on the left) who insisted on comparing his and Chris’s heights at least eight times (Chris was taller by most accounts) and tried to follow us until he was distracted by some cronies. Jeonju has an impressive collection of weird street art, some of which is pictured on the right. The next day, we departed in the morning for Mai-san provincial park, about an hour east of Jeonju.

Mai-san means Horse Ears mountain, and the local peaks, which do look like horse’s ears from certain angles, house Tapsa, a strange Buddhist temple compound where a reclusive monk built 80-something stone pagodas in the early 1900’s. The pagodas are an impressive sight, and we enjoyed some light hiking at the park, although the hike up one of the peaks was, naturally, under construction and inaccessible. We spent the night at a newish motel and discovered that the funny-looking motels that punctuate the Korean countryside, often built to resemble Disneyland castles and decked out in neon, cost 30,000 won (about $30) everywhere in the country: great value for good (though overheated) accommodations.

Our final stop, on Saturday, was Deogyusan National Park, near Muju, a city and ski-resort area in the northeast part of Jeollabuk-do. We wanted to do a loop hike in the park, and then catch an evening bus back to Seoul. Part of the loop was under construction, lending thematic consistency to our mini-vacation, but the weather was crisp and mostly clear, and the hiking was excellent. We did learn not to underestimate the Korean winter: after giggling at the geared-up Koreans on the lower parts of the trail, we ascended into snowy terrain and eventually came to envy the heavy-duty hiking boots and trekking poles everyone else was sporting. We struggled on and did manage to summit Hyangjeokbong, the park’s highest peak and the fourth-tallest mountain in South Korea (1614 meters). The peak was clouded in a heavy, frigid mist, but the sky cleared as we descended, and we had great views and sunshine for our hike back out. Even though the buses back to Seoul were full, we managed to get an earlier bus to another city halfway to Seoul, and from there caught another bus straight to our Seongnam-si bus terminal. We were home by 8:30, in time to get a good night’s sleep and make it to the home of our principal, Rich, to watch college football on Sunday morning. That evening my stomach started to feel strange, and that marked the beginning of my disease as well as my brief but intense romance with all the passengers of Oceanic flight 815.

I took a couple of days off work – this is unspeakably difficult, since we are paid for unused sick days and I am incredibly cheap, but my fever would have prevented me from doing anything but rant unintelligibly in the classroom. Also, I needed to devote my full attention to downloading all three seasons of Lost and gluing myself to my computer until I had watched every last moment of them (see my new best friends in the gratuitous photo on the left). Occasionally I pretended that this activity was culturally motivated, since two of the characters speak Korean in flashbacks, but not even I was truly taken in by this lame pretense of productivity. Since enough of the Internet is already dedicated to reflection about this highly addictive series, it would be self-indulgent for me to clutter up cyberspace with additional praise or musings about the fate of the cast in the remaining seasons, so suffice it to say that I am hopelessly captivated and can’t wait for the new season to begin in February. Fortunately, one episode per week is a manageable commitment, whereas a viewing schedule of 10+ episodes per day can be taxing on even the most admirable marriages and careers.

The last paragraph pretty well sums up my past few weeks, although I did take a break from Lost to visit the local clinic, where a kindly Korean doctor asked me in rough English about my regular stools and advised that I limit exercise, go to bed early, and increase my intake of green tea and garlic (I followed all of his advice, but also increased intake of Thera-Flu and pizza, perhaps to my detriment). We also had our school Christmas party, which was altogether enjoyable, even though it took place on campus and Chris had to miss most of it since I had infected him with my pernicious germs. I was lucky enough to join the right trivia table, and got to be a member of the winning team through no personal merit – I have to say that the trivia victory was infinitely more meaningful than the YBM raffle that earned me the laptop computer that still sits, fate undetermined, in the spare room. Many thanks to Greg and Kate, the trivia masters who spurred our table on to top honors, and to Kristi and Jason, the social committee geniuses who put together these excellent excuses to overindulge in wine and cheese-sticks, although, as Jason has commented on a previous blog entry, our exploits bore him.

This entry is too long, but hey, I took three weeks off – what did you expect? Just wait until the next one, which may well be after winter break and will probably take our Google account to its limit for photography postings. Feliz Navidad (and Feliz Cumpleaños to Chris, even though he has asked that, as a birthday gift, I refrain from acknowledging his personal holiday) until then – I’m off to catch up on my Korean studies and finish the last bit of grading before the final exams come in.