New Year's Weekend Entry 2: Songnisan National Park

On Sunday, Stephanie and I headed out to Songnisan National Park.

Songnisan is a little ways north of Daejeon, and it is quite famous in the summer months. However, in the winter months, it is snowy and quaint. The little town outside the park entrance was sleepy, but full of orange tents that looked as though they would be trinket shops. Inside everyone was doing New Year's rituals. In fact, we wandered into a convenience store for chocolate, and the whole family was seated in front of a table in the back--set up exactly as our party table had been the night before. But the store owner graciously interrupted her discussion and came out into the store to sell us our Ghana bars. And I very poorly said "Happy New Year" in Korean. Haha.

Inside the park there is a famous temple called Beopjusa, 법주사, which, in the winter months, is the real reason why you would visit the park. Hiking is not exactly a possibility, since things are snowy and not exactly ideal. (Unless you're a serious hiker, which Stephanie and I are not.)

Beopjusa is famous for it's 33m bronze Buddha, which stands to the side of the complex, in front of a rising hill. It is quite impressive, and he has a serene--though quite massive--head. In theory, the temple was first established one thousand five hundred years ago, in 553, but since then the temple has changed a lot. However, the paint had aged on many of the buildings, and though it was less of a "pop", it also felt a little bit more realistic than some of the other temples that I've visited.

Around the Buddha there were a number of people praying. Stephanie and I walked in a circle around it, and then we entered the hall at the back of the complex. More people were praying inside, and a nun was preparing the New Year's offering. Since being in Korea, I don't feel as though I've had many authentic tourist experiences... (You know, where you feel like you're 'touring' something that isn't quite so constructed.) But being inside the hall at Beopjusa was definitely an authentic experience. I could feel the silence, and I could feel the solemnness and 'realness' of the people inside. The artwork was amazing, and I stood forever just staring at it. I don't have any photos of the inside, since I thought it would be kind of rude. There were three equally enormous seated Buddhas, all with different hand symbols. They represented the 'Threefold Body of the Buddha'. The center was the Dharma Buddha, that represented the Buddha's truth and teachings, then the one to his left was the 'Reward Buddha', or the representation of attaining enlightenment, and then the third one represented the historical Buddha, the one who actually lived so many years ago.  The English explanation said that the three Buddha's represent mind, virtue, and body. I am a great fan of triads, so... it intrigued me.

Anyway after that the nun offered us some New Year's sugar cookies, which we happily ate. She then broke the silence by dropping a very large candle, and we decided that maybe our gawking wasn't helping her concentrate, so we headed out of the hall. Wandering back through the snowy forest, I watched the black river and the beautifully decorated roofs on the other side. It was a very Asian seen--the kind you see in movies.

Then we ran into this family with an adorable child, an Austrailian brother, and a father who wanted us to come drinking excessive amounts of Makkoli with them, or Korean rice wine. Sadly our bus was leaving soon, so we couldn't do that, but the gesture was one of great hospitality. That seems to happen so much more frequently in the country, or outside the hustle and bustle of working life. When we step out of the position 'English teacher' and become an interesting person on the same road. It feels good to step out of that.

New Year's Weekend Entry 1: Traditional New Year's Party!

Since I didn't make any resolutions for Solar New Year (epic fail), I figured I might as well make some for Lunar New Year, or Seolnal, which was this weekend. One of those resolutions is to be better about blogging, so here we go. We had Monday off, and Stephanie came down to visit Daejeon. Since there isn't really much to do in Daejeon itself, we took some interesting day trips, and hung out with friends here. Some friends of mine put on a Traditional Lunar New Years Party on Saturday night, and then on Sunday we went to Songnisan National Park, and on Monday we visited Buyeo. I figured that I would split it up into three entries since there's just soo much

Seolnal is a big deal in many Korean families, and there are special, traditional things that must be done. My friends at J and J Recruiting put together a big party to introduce us foreigners to some of the customs on the holiday. Certain foods must be made, special Korean pancakes, special fish, and some sweets, and then they are set up in a certain order on a table. Ours looked like this:

There is a formal ritual where food is offered to the ancestors, which we all preformed. Food for the meal is prepared, then we have to bow, pray, and offer our ancestors their 'favorite'. (I picked the apples, because I figured that my ancestors wouldn't really know what to do with all that Korean food.) The ritual is called Sae-be. First, you are given some wine, which you offer to the ancestors. (You use the same glass as the person previous to you, and dump the contents into a communal bowl. I don't know if that was just for convenience or if it is part of the ritual, haha.) Then you hit your chopsticks three times on the table, spin them around the incense three times, and then choose your ancestor's favorite food. Then you bow twice--full, head-to-the-floor bow. Women and men bow just a little bit differently--men with right hands on top and women with left hands on top. I'm assuming that's for the sake of symmetry, since couples bow together. But we all did it by ourselves.

Then everyone bows together, which--to me--looked like sallat prayer at Mosque. I missed that part, since I was chatting with some of the Korean ladies in the back when they were doing it. Even though I didn't participate, though, it looked pretty cool. It feels good to be included in cultural activities, since I feel like that doesn't happen so often here.

After eating, we played some traditional games like the "Four Stick Game", which basically requires that you throw four enormous sticks into the air, and hope that they land face up so that you can move your little pieces on a board. They have five different animals--a dog, a pig, a sheep, and a horse, and a cow. The word for dog in Korean is 개, pronounced "gay". (Or Kay, the sounds run together), so basically we spent about 40 minutes yelling "GAY!" every time somebody rolled a 2. Anyway I super lost and my friends super won, but it was a good time. Then we played Korean hackie sack with funny feathery things, and I was terrible at it. :D

Overall we had a great time and I'm glad my friends did this party. The food was great and we had a lot of fun, even though there weren't a ton of us. I really enjoy their company, so it was a great time.

Welcome to 2010!

Wow. A whole decade. It makes you feel kind of old. I mean, since this is the first time that I've been old enough to remember the turn of the last decade. (And I do remember hoping--just a little--that Y2K would hit and I would suddenly become the heroine of a young adult post-apocalyptic novel.)

I had an excellent New Years, and spent the evening with my friend Maddie and her family, who were very kind and just took me in as a surrogate daughter for the holiday. We went to see "Jump!" a comedy martial arts and acrobat show, which had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. (Partially because it was really good, and partially because the man in front of me had an enormous head.) Seeing stuff like that, even in a comedic way, inspires me to get more flexible and work harder at my Taekwondo--though I did notice that most of their flashy stuff was Kung Fu. It was interesting--they kicked like Taekwondo, but all of their weapons work was very Kung Fu--to the point where I actually started to recognize forms that I'd worked on in high school.

After the show we went to a bar that was VERY Korea (underground, tiny, shoved away in a nitche that could easily have been the size of a bathroom in the States) in the area where the New Years festivities were to take place. There were walls of police, which you don't really see too often in Korea, but I soon realized that they were there not to intimidate us, but to keep us away from the setting up of the stage, where some terribly famous performers were about to engage in K-Pop madness.

The New Years Tradition, as I said before, is the ringing of the Bosingak bell 33 times. The Bosingak Bell is located in Jongno in Seoul, and originally constructed by the Joseon dynasty in 1396 (but has, of course, been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times). These days it is only rung on New Years Eve. When we arrived there were parties of dancers preforming traditional Korean music, and this is the first time I've seen such excitement in Korea. They were dressed up and dancing in a circle, pounding on drums, and it was a great beat. We had to dance a little just to keep warm, but we tried not to make absolute fools out of ourselves (of course.)


Then, the countdown happened, and I believe we skipped about 5 seconds, because the clock and the crowd were not on the same plane of existence. And then the cheers went up, and people started to shoot off fireworks in the crowd. (A totally acceptable past time, it seems, because they were selling fireworks to the average folks, with long tubes that you could point up in the air. Only in Korea would this work, because honestly nobody shot each other with them, or even made any mistakes.) The best thing, though, was the sound of the bell. Things were rather quiet, except for the hissing of the fireworks, and the sound of that enormous bell. It had a rather eerie toll, and so we rung in the New Year with something more solemn. I liked that. It fit Korea well--everything so modern and excited and happy, but the pervasive, comforting sound of this ancient Buddhist bell.


Another thing you might find interesting about the ceremony is the Korea Times report on who was chosen to ring the bell. Sixteen people were chosen, of which there appear to be a few naturalized citizens. Five city officials (including the Mayor) are selected by default, but the populous chooses by survey who the other 11 are. (Though I don't know if it is consistently 16 each year.) Everyone was recognized for service to the poor, or educational prowess, or one Mongolian woman, who was chosen because she recieved a "filial piety award" for serving her sick father in law. Intriguing.


It's nice to see people accepted into Korean society. A lot of foreign teachers complain that they will remain "foreign teachers" forever, and that the Korean world has no place for them, and that this is "the most racist country in the world". After seeing things like this, though, I don't think it's necessarily the "foreign-ness" of us, but our status in a complicated social and economic structure that puts us in the "foreign teacher" box, which may be much more difficult to assimilate than the mere "foreigner" box.


Anyway, I know I promised a post about Jeju, but I am slacking considerably. Maybe tomorrow.