Songnisan!

Time for a trip

Another weekend, another journey. This time Andrew, Eunah and I headed for Songnisan, a nice quiet mountain village with some lovely mountain scenery, lovely gingko trees and lovely company. While the town itself was pretty sleepy (hard to find anything open past 9) we did get a fair share of Korean style holiday. And a nice walk in the woods.

The symbol of Songnisan is a magnificent (centuries old) tree, which now requires some branch support. Alright enough of the geriatric ginko, on to the mountain.

Golden Buddha

 


Korea sure does love its giant Buddhas. A brisk fall afternoon wandering around this temple complex was a wonderful relief from the complexities of busy bustling smoggy Seoul.

Songnisan Temple

 

As the sun got lower its light caught the colorful lanterns hanging in the courtyard of the monastery. 

Entering the Temple

  

Andrew and Eunah on Buddha's doorstep

Stacked Stones

Outside the gates of the temple we found hundreds of curious little stacks of rocks. Like something out of a Andy Goldsworty installation.

Paintball B-day

Heart fluttering and stomache knot tightening, I sprang from my crouched position behind the giant inflated bloccade. I heard my own voice echoing in my helmet as I fired a blind spray of ammunition in the direction of Eddie, who was blown helplessly on his back screaming, "AAAhhhgggg Hit, Hit!!" Now on any other day, I would consider Eddie a good friend and I wouldn't dream of targeting him with such aggression...but this was our mutual birthday party and lines of war had been drawn.
We decided that the best way to celebrate a couple of coinciding birthdays with our closest friends was by spending an afternoon painfully assaulting each other with paint artillery. I admit I haven't had such a fun birthday since Ronald McDonald came to my 6th b-day celebration...and I assaulted him with french fries.

Eddie and I each got to be team captains and after 8 rounds of elimination and capture the flag games my team came out on top 5 to 3. I owe it to my heroic self-sacrificing. I pushed my team to glorious victory by drawing fire so that my commrades could advance. We spent nearly 3 hours and blew off at least 1,500 paint bullets, at least 5 of which left their mark on my corpus as nice green and purple bruises. Battle wounds we all proudly displayed to our students the next week. "OOOOH Teacher, very ouch. very good"

B-day Battle!

 

Festival in Insadong

With a Monday free, and nowhere to be, a trip to Insadong is a nice diversion...especially if you happen upon a Korean festival.

After breakfast and coffee, my buddy Andrew and I headed off for what we predicted to be a mundane afternoon wandering though the art and music quarter of Seoul. Unbeknownst to us, this particular day our expedition would coincide with a Korean Heritage Festival...all the better to enjoy you, Seoul.

We were first tipped off by the unusually large crowds of families out and about, curious for a Monday. Then from the mass of people emerged a 15 foot squeaking afro-clown. Now I was not aware that afro-clowns were so deeply embedded in the cultural heritage of Korea, but these are the kinds of things you learn living in a foreign country.



Another thing I have picked up here as foreign resident is a particular puerile custom popular among the children. Something I would consider to be the Korean equivalent of the Wedgie. It's called the "dong-jip" and involves folding your hands together gun-style and aim the...uh, barrel directly between the buttock of your victim. On this particular occassion the elavted backside of the stilted afro-clown proved to be a challenging and desirable target. It was only a matter of time before the balloon swords he had fashioned for the children were turned against him. Who's laughing now Squeaky?