In a standard baby hissy fit, the republican party has decided to disallow Senate hearings. Senate hearings are allowed while the senate is in session due to a generally unanimous agreement that has long bee upstanding. In a hissy fit, the party of hell no has decided that no senate hearings will be held while they feel jilted over the health care bill.
Ironically, one of the meetings they shut down was on North Korean security, which military officials from Korea and Hawaii had flown in for. I’m finding it interesting that the very next day, a matter of possible security happened. Although, now it is being said that the explosion in the South Koran Navy ship was possibly caused by a flock of birds, and not a North Korean missile. Let’s hope the S. Korean navy people who are still missing are found safely, and that the U.S. republican party gets their head out of the asses and learns how to do something constructive, and not just destructive.
Due to some massive staff changed in the last month, we had one of our infamous school parties to say goodbye to some LONG time Korean staff, and welcome new Korean and foreign English teachers. While we were sloppily enjoying the VIP noreabong room singing our hearts out, one of the Korean teachers got a text from her mom that North Korea was attacking South Korea. No need to stop singing, just another day in the life living next door to one of the most childish and insane dictators in the world.
Really, as far as anyone can tell, it is nothing to get worried about. But it does make me wonder how often N. Korea takes pot shots at the other side. Is this a weekly thing that is kept quiet? Has it escalated recently?
Here is a report on yesterday’s events. There is no confirmation that it was an “attack” or that the explosion came from North Korea. A South Korean Navy ship was sunk near Baengnyeong Island.
Excerpt from a documentary on Albright’s negotiations with N. Korea:
On a lighter note, the Onion brings us:
– my mountain song, for your enjoyment.
This weekend I took another trip through Adventure Korea. It was a great time, if a little wet and cold on Saturday. We went to Seoraksan on Sat. and then spent the night at Osaek hot springs, where we didn’t enjoy the sauna as much as we should have given the lengthy night of noreabong.
The visibility was horrible, and the hiking pretty treacherous on Saturday, so I ended up just taking the cable car up the mountain and trying to get a few good shots.
After coming down off the mountain, we warmed up in a cafe with some tea that was the creation of the shop owner. Savory, not sweet, and in wonderful leaf shaped cups on a wooden saucer.
Sunday was gorgeous, if a bit brisk, and we hiked around natural mineral springs. The water here was naturally carbonated, and tasted just like sparkling water you would buy. Fantastic.
So, I ran out of the amazing coffee beans I had from home. New Mexico Pinyon coffee that a true friend sent in a care package, and the Atlantic Roast by Coffee By Design, the micro roasters next to my mom’s house in Maine. I have a morning ritual, that unfortunately doesn’t involve anything good for me or constructive like meditation, exercise, or reading the New York Times. Just hand ground, french-pressed coffee and the distraction of the internet and a book balanced on my lap.
I wasn’t having any luck finding good coffee beans in the Bupyeong area. There are some really clever coffee shops – Grace’s behind Woori bank, and a really cute, rustic hole-in-the-wall place down a side street adjacent to that, but neither of them sell their beans. Why would they when they charge $4,000-7,000 won per cup?
I thoroughly enjoyed Roboseyo’s post on this coffee shop in the Hongdea area and the Kopi Luwak coffee he and a friend purchased there. That would be the coffee beans passed through the digestive system of a Civet, for your enjoyment. The Kaldi Coffee Club was exactly what I needed. A huge selection of beans, ground or whole, a nice atmosphere, and even better, a great Tapas restaurant around the corner where I had an amazing mushroom pasta with a mug of mulled wine.
Bally Peaberry in a pretty cup.
For anyone who cares, I went with the charcoal roasted Bally peaberry. It’s mild enough to drink black. It gives me an excuse to go back to the shop because this is a better afternoon coffee. I’m going to try to find something more robust for the morning hours.
Here are more pics from my temple stay last weekend at Geumsansa Temple, South Korea. I have long neglected the Thursday Thirteen folks. Hope you enjoy.
The ancient Buddhist symbol for the wheel of life.
Filed under: Buddhism, Korea, Travel | Tags: Geumsansa Temple, Temple stay Korea
After nine months, I finally did one of the first things I intended to do in Korea – go on a temple stay. I wasn’t the only one in this boat, several of the folks I talked to on the trip (of 33 people, I think), were doing the same thing. Some were on their way out within the next couple of weeks, and were finally getting around to doing the stay. It is less of a meditation retreat, and more of an introduction to Buddhist temple life turned craft camp. Overall it left me feeling better about being in Korea, was relaxing, and was a great chance to hang out with like-minded foreigners and some cool Korean folks.
For me, the highlight of going to temples is the art. Besides finding it inspiring, it is a relaxing dose of color compared to the concrete jungle with neon signs that is the rest of Korea.
Gemsansa is made up of many buildings holding a different main Bodhisattva, but this one is particularly spectacular. It is three stories high, and on the inside holds a statue that takes up every bit of that three stories. We were allowed to take pictures, which is very rare inside temples.
Temple Housing Maitreya Buddha.
Close up of the artwork on the building.
Our monk host and translator describing how it is unique to Korean temples to use the natural shape of the tree as pillars to the the buildings. He was a wonderful host, extremely open, friendly, and excited to share. He said the first time he was given the temple stay for foreigners as an assignment, but ever since 2004 he’s volunteered to be the person to be in charge of leading them.
The warriors: mean, scary-looking, but ultimately fighting for compassion against the evils of greed, hatred, and ignorance.
Inside. I think it’s hard to tell from the pictures, but keep in mind that these statues are three stories tall.
At the base rubbing the wishing rock and looking up.
After a meditation session, and lengthy Q&A with the monk we settled in for the arts and crafts part of our sleep-over. Some grandmas came in to show us how to make tissue paper lotus lanterns. It was great to see that out of all the people, no two were exactly the same. People came up with some pretty clever designs.
At first the grandmas seemed a little unsettled by our creative license, but they warmed up to it after a while.
I asked the same question that I asked a monk in Yeosu a while back to our monk here and got a completely different answer. “What do you think about the turn in your own culture away from Buddhist principles to completely embracing capitolism to the point of extreme materialism, and a huge focus of physical appearnce and material success?”
Since I’ve come to Korea, I’ve had this question in my mind. Although the people here have every right to develop their culture and society however they want, it has been a personal disappointment to me that a country that used to be Buddhist has become so extremely consumerist. This question had been burning in my mind even more the last couple weeks after a great project I did with some of the students at school. They were asked to create a new superhero, and had to list the three top qualities a hero should have. Almost all the groups put being handsome/beautiful as the top quality because, “No one can trust someone who isn’t beautiful.” This was hugely disheartening to me, especially in light of the western concept of heroes where they are often the underdog and end up having an inner quality that puts them above the rest.
The monk in Yeosu basically said that people are going to do what they are going to do, and that monks live in a realm above that. It almost seemed like he didn’t care. It was an unusual temple were it appeared, to me, that the monk had completely surrounded himself with quite expensive looking material comforts, and although he was kind and informative, he seemed to be the ruler of his domain.
The response I got at Geumsansa was much different. This monk went into a lengthy description of Korean history, and how the materialism we see today is born of a desire to fight their way out of extreme poverty and the devastation left by Japanese occupation and the war. He kind of described it as the natural projection of that success, but that he sincerely hopes that Korea is going to enter a new cultural age. He ended by saying that Korea is going to need a lot of encouragement from foreigners who are interested in actual culture. There are some of us interested in more than just the new cell phone technology.
The next morning we were up at 3am to observe the monks’ daily morning prayers in the main temple hall. It is a gorgeous temple with statues representing several of the main Buddhas – medicine, shakyamuni. I wish I had written down the list when they were doing the tour because I can’t remember them all, and some are specific to Korean Buddhism. One thing I’ve noticed in almost all the Korean temples I’ve visited is a lack of the Taras – the 24 female Buddhas.
Later in the day, our second craft project entailed making our own set of prayer beads. I have several sets from various travels, and the set I use the most was a gift from a guitar player friend in Nashville, but these ones are particularly special, in that I really had to work to earn them. Instead of just stringing the beads, we had to pick a temple to go into (I have to admit to being selfish here – I picked the main hall because it had heaters and it was freezing outside), and then between stringing each bead we had to do a full prostration. The classic 108. I made it, and feel all the better, if sore, for it.
I would highly recommend this temple stay. I’ve heard some of the other’s described as “being a straight jacket for the weekend” or “we were like slave labor for the temple for the weekend.” This temple stay was beautiful, informative, and busy – but with enough time to collect yourself. Everyone on the trip was a good sport as well, which made for a much smoother weekend. I went with Adventure Korea, which is doing the same tour again the end of March.
A heavy military town for both Korean and American troops about a half hour north of Seoul on the Subway, this town was the base of MASH 4077 for folks who watched the show.
Now, it’s a new, active city with both modern shopping and a traditional Korean market surrounded by gorgeous mountains.
The central street has been closed down and turned into a kind of European style shopping street with public art and a nice little “nature” walk complete with mushroom seats.
The street is called Rodeo street, but with this guy holding down the fort at the front, I don’t know if rodeo is the connotation they were really looking for.
Filed under: Korea
I wasn’t going to write about this for privacy reasons, but in light of the insanity and completely unfounded, fabricated gossip, rumors, and bullshit going around on various Korean blogs and places like Dave’s ESL, I feel that I have to make a statement of some sort.
The person being accused of rape and held in Busan is someone that I’ve been good friends with for four years. We knew each other back home from musical ventures and attending Buddhist meditation retreats together. People seem to think they have clear image of who or what this person is, and from the brief, nauseating time I spent reading some of the posts, I can tell you: you don’t.
First of all, he’s not a typical American in any way shape or form. He is someone who spent most of his life being shuffled to different countries under refugee status, and just recently became an American citizen. He’s a little over five feet tall, ninety pounds, and makes a point of finding something genuine to compliment about every new person he meets. The week before he headed to Busan, he spent at my house, and although he was an annoying houseguest at times, I by no means ever felt threatened by him.
He may be guilty, he may deserve to spend time in jail. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, and neither were any of you. That is for an investigation to figure out. I’m not going to recount what he told me on the phone, but I was the one he called when he was arrested, just because I’m the only person he knows in Korea who might have had a lead to a lawyer. I have no idea how accurate his version is, although from a personal character standpoint, I don’t find this person to be even remotely violent, but to me it sounded like a severe breakdown in communication between two people who were really drunk resulting in a “he said/she said” scenario that is every coed’s worst nightmare.
Regardless of whether he is guilty or not, I do believe he deserves to have fair representation and trial, which as a foreigner, it doesn’t look like he is going to get. They scheduled a court date within hours of arresting him for the next morning, with no intention of providing representation or a translator. Luckily, one of the people I contacted had the foresight to contact the embassy who sent a translator to the courthouse. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had anything. As far as I’ve heard from him and another close mutual friend, for the initial court hearing, he didn’t have any professional representation, and wasn’t given time to find any. Since then, I think he’s found someone, at a cost of several thousand dollars. I haven’t been in contact with him for the last week, and don’t know what his status is.
I’m not opening my blog up for public debate. I’m not going to visit, read, or comment on any of the sites discussing this. I will disable comments to my blog if I have to. I wanted to make a statement on behalf of my friend, but I am not interested in having a firestorm on here. I will delete posts that I don’t care for.
Seoul has some great mountains in the distance, and some you can even find to climb. But it doesn’t seem most of my current companions are of the nature adventuring sort.
There is a subway stop that has been curious to me lately. It is in on a peninsula on the edge of a mountain, then the subway goes through the mountain and drops you off on the other side. Because of my crazy work schedule, I didn’t get going early enough to really climb a mountain, but I did wander around what was labeled as an “eco-city.” I’m guessing in the summertime it is a busy, green, place for gardening demonstrations.
I didn’t spend that much time exploring this little village as the sun was going down, but the subway ride to this area was an interesting look at how the edges of Seoul just keep expanding. At the edge of the city there are all these major apartment complexes being built that aren’t quite finished. Entire neighborhoods being built with nothing in them yet. There essentially is no break heading west to Incheon, and I wonder how far East all this development will get. It was nice to be out in an area that was largely agricultural. I had a refreshing, if brief walk around.
On my way back to Seoul I needed to find some food, which is not something I’m particularly good at. I decided to forgo the trusty foreign foods in Itaewon (even though I was craving empanadas), and went to Myeong-dong instead. I wasn’t very successful, but there is a nice ice sculpture outside of Shinsege. On a whim, I texted my one and only true Korean friend regarding a suggestion for where to eat. Joey, who gave himself his English name because he loves the show Friends, and his girlfriend picked me up and treated me for sushi at a new place they like. It was the perfect ending to a rambling day.
Oh yea, and over dinner, I learned that the expression “I can cook a man” means you know how to handle your men. Which came about when they asked me if I cooked any Korean food at home, to which I replied, “I can’t cook.” They thought that was pretty hilarious.
December was a highly discontent month. Holidays celebrated in drunken Korean fashion, and a stunted, disappointing selection of reading.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Interview with Mary Roach on Fora TV.
Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales
Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium
My year in reading:
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November
I was going back over the months because I’m trying to pick the best book I read in the past year for a game I play on bookobsessed. The year definitely started out fantastic when I was unemployed, reading constantly, and waiting to ship out to Korea, since being here my reading time has dwindled, as has my selection. But overall, not so bad.
Ruby Ramblings 