Thursday, December 8, 2016

Namyangju Mailing Address

638 Sungbo Building, 3rd Floor 
Hopyeong-dong, Namyangju-si
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea 12149

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Playing Tour Guide

I'd learned before coming home that a Korean friend of mine, Cathy, was planning a trip to San Francisco with her older sister, nephew and niece at the same time I was flying back.  They'd originally planned on spending a week in the Bay Area and exploring San Francisco, Monterey, Napa, and Yosemite, but they eventually decided to just see SF for Saturday and Sunday and join a package tour for Yosemite, Los Angeles and Las Vegas for the rest of their trip so they wouldn't have to worry about driving.  This also worked for me because I wouldn't have to be their tour guide and driver (when available) for the whole first week after I got home.  Instead, we met at Fisherman's Wharf on Sunday, March 1st around noon.

I hadn't known their plans before I arrived, and it seemed they didn't really either.  They'd originally planned on getting up at 8 am and sightseeing before meeting me, but they wound up waking up very late and had only eaten a very late breakfast/early lunch of clam chowder bread bowls.  They weren't hungry for lunch and I wasn't starving yet, so we stopped at the Musée Mécanique, then walked over to Ghirardelli Square.  We went back to Pier 39 to see the sea lions, but ended up nixing plans to go to the Exploratorium and/or take a ferry under the Golden Gate Bridge due to high prices and not enough time (it was already 3 pm by that point).

We grabbed a light bite to eat at In-N-Out while we decided what to do next.  They'd wanted to see something on Lombard St., so we walked down Stockton and west on Lombard until we climbed to the top of the crookedest street.  We stopped again to get a breather and debate whether they wanted to take a bus to the Bridge or take the cable car to Powell, which would get them very close to their hotel.  They eventually decided to see the Bridge, so we walked another long stretch of Lombard before finding the bus stop we needed (#28).  At that time it was 6 pm and most of the group was running low on energy after the uphill climb, but the kids wanted steak for dinner, so we grabbed another quick bite at a KFC.

Recharged, we hopped on the bus and got to the Golden Gate right at sunset.  It was dark by the time we left, but they weren't finished yet.  They also wanted to see the city at night from Twin Peaks, so we hopped on the #28 again and rode it down to Portola.  I'm hardly an expert on SF buses, and my knowledge of SF's geography has always been spotty at best, so the only thing I had to go on was a tourist map they had gotten from their hotel.  There was almost certainly a much better way to get to Twin Peaks, but this is how we managed it.  We didn't see any bus stops and the map didn't say anything about buses along Portola, so we just walked up it for a good half hour or so in the cold and dark until we finally found a bus stop.  The driver told us where to transfer, and after a long wait we caught another bus that took us to one of the uppermost streets below the peak (but not onto the peak itself).  We eventually found stairs leading up to the top, but it was too dark to really see them (it was nearly 8:30 pm then) and we were too tired to really consider it.  We did get a very nice view from the almost-top, then walked back down to Portola and caught a bus heading to Castro and Market.

There, we waited for the streetcar that would take us up to Powell.  Unfortunately for us, 9 pm was apparently break time for the drivers, as two streetcars pulled up just shy of the stop and didn't move for another fifteen minutes.  Luckily, the first bus we got on (at 5:30 pm) gave us four-hour transfers, so we only paid for Muni once and our transfers were still good at 9:15 pm.  At Powell, we found an inexpensive, self-service-style steakhouse called Tad's Steakhouse ($15 steaks and salmon).  We ordered at the counter and picked up our food when it was ready, and the lack of tipping saved us a little money and trouble.  I got an excellent piece of salmon and the other four shared two steaks and sides; they seemed satisfied and I certainly was, so I recommend the place.

The next day they were joining the package tour to Yosemite for one day, and their bus was leaving from Japantown at 7 am, so we stopped at a Walgreens across the street to get them some food for the day.  After that, I said good night and hopped on BART around 10:45 pm.  I got back home just about at midnight.  It was an exhausting day with way more exercise than I'd planned on, but it was also quite an adventure, and I'm glad I could help show them around!

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Finally Finished with Avalon Bucheon!

On Saturday, 2/28/2015 I finished packing my bags and flew back home to the US.  My past few months there had been incredibly stressful, and I'm very relieved that it's over.  I'm looking forward to getting some much-needed rest and seeing family and friends while I'm home.  I expect to be here a few months while I get new visa documents and find another teaching job in Korea I feel comfortable accepting.  If anyone reading this would like more specific information about my (rather unpleasant) experiences at Avalon Bucheon, feel free to leave me a message and I'll be happy to elaborate.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Mom and Dad in Korea (9/29)

Our plan for Monday was to go to the Gyeongju National Museum, but we realized shortly before we left that the museum was closed on Monday, so we had to put that off until the next day.  We weren't exactly sure what to do instead, so we decided to go to a nearby tourist information center first.  I was also eager to find a phone store that might stock iPhone cables so that we could have internet access again.  The weather forecast was predicting rain and I was the only one with an umbrella, but we figured that we could buy umbrellas if we really needed them.

We'd decided to try to figure out the bus system, so we walked down to the nearest bus stop and waited (and waited, and waited).  After about 15 minutes we noticed that taxis drove along this relatively remote stretch of road, so we just hailed one down instead of taking the bus.  We really lucked out with this driver: not only did he speak surprisingly good English, but he was very helpful and friendly.  We asked him to take us to the information center, and he first took us to a very small booth near the express bus terminal.  When we showed him our map and pointed out the place we wanted, he asked us a couple times why we wanted to go there.  About the time we arrived, he was able to explain that the center was in a small strip mall that no taxis or buses went to.  He agreed to wait while we made a quick trip inside.

We didn't get much information that we didn't already have, but the staff did point out a phone store that might have what I was looking for.  Our driver took us up there, and despite the wait and backtracking the fare was only about $10.  The store turned out to be a bust - the only cable they had didn't work when I plugged it - and the few other possible stores on the block didn't carry anything for Apple products.


The nearest location within walking distance was the Daereungwon Royal Tombs park, which was full of enormous grassy mounds covering the tombs of ancient kings and queens.  (Gyeongju was at one time the capital of the Silla state, one of three kingdoms during the Warring States period and the eventual uniter.)  We had to pay 6,000 won each to enter the park, and I unsuccessfully tried to convince the ticket woman that my parents should get the senior discount; apparently it doesn't apply to foreigners.  One of the tombs, Cheonmachong, had been excavated and opened to the public, though no photography was allowed.  It was named after a famous painting of a cheonma, or eight-legged flying horse (a sort of Korean pegasus).  One of the most impressive things we saw there, actually, was a crew of workers mowing the grass on the mounds.  It took three people to work the mower: one pushing, one pulling forward, and one above them pulling the mower up to keep it from rolling down the hill.  The rest of the park was also quite nice, ending with a winding path through a small forest.


After that, we went looking for Cheomseongdae, the famous observatory that is the oldest surviving observatory in Asia.  It was supposed to be very close, but we couldn't quite figure out where to go from the park.  We asked a woman on the street, who thankfully was able to point us in the right direction.  The observatory was in a big open field that was packed with tourists and students, presumably on a field trip from various nearby schools.



Cheomseongdae was also near a huge field of rape flowers, which we walked through to get back to the road.  It was lunchtime by that point, and it was beginning to look like rain, so we wanted to find a place to eat quickly.  We choose a fairly standard-looking Korean restaurant, which (unfortunately for my dad's poor knees) had the low tables and floor seating that are common in many traditional Korean restaurants.  We ordered bibibap for me and dak galbi (stir-fried chicken) for my parents, but the waitress misunderstood and brought Mom and Dad galbitang instead, which is a soup with beef short ribs.  They still thought their food was good, though they did have some trouble picking up the hot ribs with chopsticks.  They were becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of food served at each meal, and were growing more and more reluctant to eat at traditional restaurants even though they liked the food.


After lunch we went to find Anapji Pond, an artificial pond that was part of an ancient palace complex.  We had to pay to get in here, too, though I forget how much it was.  The surviving pavilions are all quite nice, though the water was an unpleasant algae green.  We did see a lot of koi swimming around in it, though.  We made a brief stop in the gift shop, then headed to a nearby bus stop.  We caught a bus back to the express bus terminal, and I took the bad iPhone cable back to the convenience store I bought it at.  I wasn't able to get a refund, but I was able to exchange it for a different, slightly cheaper one.  It was still a gamble, but I didn't have much choice.

Next, we picked up some food for dinner at the supermarket (some fruit and vegetables that Mom washed and cut up raw, as well as a few other small things) and took a taxi back to the hanok.  The driver started to make the same bad turn that the one the day before had, but we stopped him and made sure he took us up the right road all the way to the door.  I crossed my fingers and plugged in my phone, and wonder of wonders, it started charging!  (Ultimately, I had to go to an Apple store in Seoul a couple weeks after our trip to get an official charging cable because this cable barely worked with my computer, but it worked fine for charging at an outlet.)  This would make Tuesday's traveling somewhat easier, thanks to having internet access again.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Giving Thanks 2014

It's been another good year in Korea, and once again I have a great deal to be thankful for this holiday season.  While I did have to work yesterday, I'll be enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with my coworkers tomorrow night, and next Saturday I'll get to start celebrating Christmas with many of my Korean friends.  I'm thankful that, for the most part, I work with a lot of great people: my fellow foreign teachers, the Korean staff, and a lot of great students.  I'm thankful that I feel like I might have a reason to stay here for another year because I like the people and area so much.  I have a great apartment (probably the nicest I'll ever have), a five-minute commute, and I live in a nice suburban area with easy access to Seoul and all its metropolitan delights.  I'm also thankful that I've had a fairly easy semester, especially since I'm expecting the next semester to be a tough one, maybe the toughest one yet.  I'm still enjoying living overseas in Korea, and I'm still enjoying my chosen profession, which is something not everyone can say.

Even though I won't be able to go home for Christmas this year, I'm immensely thankful that I was able to spend some time with my mom and dad recently.  It wasn't long enough (it never is), but I had a great time showing them around Korea and giving them an idea of why I feel at home here.  (Maybe of one these days I'll actually finish writing about that trip!)  I have a wonderful family, and I've always been incredibly lucky to have them.  I'm also grateful that I have a lot of great friends and a more-or-less drama-free life.

I'm thankful for all the things that are so easy to take for granted: a phone, internet, electricity, running hot and cold water, quality food, (relatively) good health, peace, and so much more.  I'm aware of many (though certainly not all) of the advantages I have as a straight, white, male American, and I'm glad that I live in an era where so many people are fighting for greater equality and I can participate in my own small way.  Finally - though I'm sure there's more I can't think of right now - I'm thankful that I'm aware of how lucky I am.  It's so easy to get bogged down in the regrets of the past, the problems of the moment and the worries about the future, and forget how fortunate we are to be alive in this flawed but miraculous world.  Have a very happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Mom and Dad in Korea (9/28)

On Sunday, 9/28, we ate a quick breakfast and got ready to go exploring.  We weren't sure where to go first, but the caretaker, a very nice man who spoke a tiny bit of English, offered to drive us to the bus terminal.  We were hoping to find some tourist information, but there wasn't anything in the terminal.  (We later found out that there was a small information center just outside the terminal that we had somehow missed.)  I had read that the Gyeongju buses accepted the T-money transportation cards used in Seoul, so we went to a nearby convenience store and got two T-money cards for my parents.  I also picked up a new iPhone charging cable while I was there, though since I wouldn't be able to use it until we got back, I had to conserve my remaining battery carefully.

We finally decided that Bulguksa Temple seemed to be the big tourist draw, so we figured out which bus to take and hopped on.  The trip took about 30 minutes and dropped us off at the bottom of the hill that lead up to the temple.  We made our way up the hill slowly (my dad has bad knees), passing many roadside souvenir stands, and paid a small admission fee (4,000 won each) to enter.


Referring to the picture above, we started at the bottom right corner, walked to the temple complex in the upper left, and eventually made our way out through the gate at the bottom left.  The temple was very large and well-maintained, and enjoyable to explore.  It did have some steep stairs at a few points, which were hard on Mom and Dad.  Some highlights of the temple:






It was around 1 pm by the time we got back to the main road, so we decided to stop for lunch.  I scouted out a restaurant while my parents rested, and was called to by a restaurant owner who promised an English menu.  I checked it out and seemed promising (and I respected her go-getter attitude), so I brought my parents over and we had a good lunch.  We ordered too much food, however - three main dishes and a green onion pancake to share - and at this point my mom and dad started to feel overwhelmed by the amount of food served at Korean restaurants.  The food we ordered, rice for three, all the side dishes...the table was loaded with food, and from an American perspective it felt bad to leave so much behind.

After lunch, we worked out a plan to go to Seokguram Grotto, the site of a famous man-made Buddhist cave shrine.  The grotto is on the mountain overlooking Bulguksa, so we took a bus that goes between Bulguksa and Seokguram, which took about 30 minutes.  We paid another admission fee (4,000 won again) and then discovered that the grotto was not at the parking lot, but rather at the end of a long, winding trail.  Considering the steep drops down the mountain, we were surprised that the trail didn't have any railings, but the path was nice and wide so it didn't feel dangerous.


We had a few disappointments when we arrived, however.  The grotto was at the top of a steep flight of stairs, and after all the day's walking my parents were in no shape to climb them.  They rested at the bottom while I went up, requesting pictures.  Unfortunately, due to the delicate nature of the site, no pictures were allowed.  It was very impressive, I have to say, and they got to see pictures and a video about it later.  When I came back down we walked back to the parking lot and caught the bus down a few minutes later (lucky for us, seeing as how the bus comes once an hour).  We then took a bus back to the bus terminal and spent a little while searching for a supermarket so that we could get stuff for dinner and breakfast.  We had to ask someone at a nearby hotel, but we finally found one.

By that time we were too tired to want to figure out which bus would get us back to the hanok (and besides, we would have to walk up the hill), so we took a taxi.  (As it turned out, a taxi to the hanok was only around 4,000 won, while a bus would have been 1,500 each, so taxis were cheaper and more convenient.)  None of the taxis we took in Gyeongju had any idea where the hanok was, even after showing them the address in Korean, and this driver really made a mess of things.  He followed a sign that lead him to a pair of streets too narrow for him to drive on.  Instead of turning around and finding another way, he told us to get out and walk the rest of the way.  We weren't very far away then, but we had groceries and were tired, so it was tough.

My phone ran out of batteries on the walk up, so the first thing I did was get out my new cable and plug it in.  To my immense frustration, the cable didn't work at all and refused to charge.  We'd found an English tourist map of the city at Bulguksa, so we had some information to go on, but we had to manage the whole next day without internet access, Google maps or translation apps.  In other words, like traveling before smartphones!

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Mom and Dad in Korea (9/26 - 9/27)

My mom and dad are safely back home after a long (9/26 - 10/8) visit to Korea, and I have a four-day weekend, so I finally have the time and energy to write about everything that happened.  It was a wonderful, if exhausting, trip, and I miss them terribly already.  Anyway, on with the story!

Friday, 9/26 and Saturday, 9/27

Mom and Dad flew into Incheon International Airport from San Francisco, a 12-hour flight.  They then took a free shuttle to Hotel Sky in Incheon, the hotel I stayed at for my first weekend in Korea with Baron's English Academy.  I had to teach that night until 10 pm, so I couldn't meet them that night.  I got up as early as I could on Saturday and met them at the hotel around 10 am.  I then showed them around the area I used to live in (Yeongjongdo, the island where the airport is located) and dropped by Baron's English Academy to see how things were there.  Surprisingly (or maybe not, given her normal workload), we ran into Julie Dugger, my previous boss.  We had a good talk for a little while, and she had a few recommendations for us: 1) to catch the KTX to Gyeongju (our next stop) from the airport instead of Seoul Station, 2) try to fit in a day trip to some mountains near Gyeongju that are famous for their fall foliage, and 3) to take the slow train back to Seoul to get a better view of the countryside.  Thanking her for her help, we let her get back to work and checked out of the hotel.

At the airport, we were unfortunately told that the only KTX train for Gyeongju wasn't leaving until almost 5 pm.  We wound up buying tickets for a 2:30 pm train leaving from Seoul Station, and so went there as we had originally planned.  Since we were hungry and we had time before the train left, we grabbed lunch at a Korean restaurant in the station.  Mom and Dad got their first taste of local Korean food: bibimbap for Mom and bulgogi for Dad.  The KTX only took about two hours to get down to Shingyeongju Station, and from there we took a taxi to our hanok, Dobongseodang.


It was a really nice house to stay in, with two bedrooms and a living room in the center.  The complex also had three other houses (though the north house wasn't available for renting) and a separate restroom and shower building.  I highly recommend it for anyone traveling to Gyeongju, and you can get more information at http://www.gjgotaek.kr/english/e_main.html if you're curious.

The main drawback of the place was that it was pretty isolated, more than we'd expected.  It was about 540 meters up a hill from the nearest two-lane road, which was where we could find buses and taxis.  The neighborhood was very nice, with several large gardens and fields and lots of old-fashioned houses, but there wasn't much in the way of food or supplies, and we hadn't really brought anything with us.  The first night I wandered down to the main road trying to find something I could back for dinner, but the two restaurants I found that were open wouldn't let me take anything out.  I found a convenience store with some stuff that would work for breakfast, so I walked back to the hanok to report.

My parents were too tired and not hungry enough to walk down to a restaurant, so I went back by myself.  It was about 7 pm then, and both of the restaurants and a cafe I'd looked at were all closed.  I took a chance and crossed the road to check out a lit sign, which luckily was an open crab restaurant.  The menu was all in Korean with no pictures, so I painstakingly translated everything and settled on some "seasoned crab".  I got a surprise when it arrived because it was raw crab legs covered in gochujang, a spicy fermented pepper paste.  I tried to eat it with my chopsticks and the scissors they provided, but a waitress who spoke a little English said that I should just pick it up and "nom nom nom" (her words).  She got me a big plastic glove and I dug in.  The raw crab was actually very tasty, though it was a lot of work (as crab usually is) and very messy.  They also gave me about ten different kinds of banchan (side dishes), so I got plenty to eat even though I didn't get much out of the crab.

After dinner I bought some breakfast stuff at the convenience store and walked back up to the hanok.  My parents were already asleep, and I got a nasty surprise: I thought I'd pack my iPhone charging cable, but I'd accidentally packed two Kindle charging cables instead.  My phone's battery was down to 40% already, but there was nothing I could do about it that night.  I read for a couple hours after that before going to bed to get ready for sightseeing the next day.