Soil

This shows what the soil? is like after one night of rain. This is a road/driveway bulldozed out of the new topsoil just added to a field on the way to school. A night's rain has made it like this. This soil is taken from the 'mountains' that they are demolishing/topping to put the new motor-ways through.In the year we have been here many of the farms around us have been raised up to half a metre or so. My guess is that this stuff is what has been blown over from China in the Spring 'huang-sa' or 'yellow sand' that the Koreans complain about regularly. I suspect ( and would love to really know ) that most of the 'mountains' in this 'montainous' country are merely sand-hills. Certainly several of the ones I've seen being demolished, like the one behind our own apartment building, here, don't seem to have any solid element to them.
I gather that we might be going to a 'pottery village' some time in the future and I am really looking forward to that. It has been there for over a thousand years and is quite famous for a particular tye of glaze made from local materials. I was there earlier but it was raining and people here seem to be rather afraid of the rain and we just stood around under shelter and went home again. 

Hub-cap

This hub-cap has been there longer than we have, and every year, I guess, has red beans planted around it.
Actually, I think the farmers are probably right. They've been farming these fields for around 5000 years and may know more about mulch, compost, fertiliser etc than me. We sneer at the polythene sheeting, school text books, sneakers, bed-coverings etc (as well as the bub-caps, plastic flashings etc from the passing cars) and think that the farmers are really lazy. Recently, though, I was looking at some polystyrene that was further down in the strata and it was showing clear signs of disintegration! Another hub-cap, similarly futher down in the soil, may well be, as well, but there isn't enough of it to see to be sure.
I suspect that in another one or two thousand years the farmers will be nodding wisely to each other and congratulating themselves on the wisdom of their forefathers in not throwing away their natural resources. 

No-eun.

No-eun is the closest suburb of Daejeon to us and where the subway terminal is. It's new, pretty posh and still (relatively) clean. The tree just to the right of centre illustrates part of that problem. When there's a storm, with wind, lots of rubbish blows around, naturally enough, and included in this is a huge amount of plastic sheeting which parcels/building materials etc come wrapped in. Normally it just lies where it was dropped, after its contents were unwrapped, until someone eventually pushes it all into a biggish pile, but when it gets blown around it has to wait until the next time someone does it. In this case there seems to have been a really big bit which has got wrapped around a rather nice tree. It was around five months ago that Phillippa first noticed it.
Around where we live in the country smaller bits of the plastic the farmers use land up in all the trees around but seem to blow away again after a few weeks. 

Donghak-sa

Donghak-sa is a Buddhist temple in a national park not far from us. ["Sa" is Korean for temple]It is a very popular place so the road up to the temple has many restaurants and souvenir shops.

This is a mushroom restaurant. Cute- eh?


The beatifully carved doors of the temple. We went with Colin's class of English teachers. He has them for one afternoon per week.
Over the other side of the hill (colloquially mountain) and in the same national park is another temple called Kap-sa. There is a popular walking track between the two temples and Colin 'did' it last year. It's straight up and down with a lot of steps and his knees have yet to recover. Takes about three and a half hours.

Chinatown, On the Way to School

The entrance to Chinatown in Incheon city. We went there last weekend and wandered around in the rain. Incheon is an island close to the mainland and it's where the main international airport is located.
On the way to school. The paddy fields are being flooded and ploughed ready for planting. This is a particularly clear day - not the norm.
The usual mode of transport for farmers around here.

Strange graphics

There's no accounting for taste we suppose.
 

Da-ae

This is Da-ae. She has been very helpful and kind to us especially with little things like where to buy official rubbish bags. Believe us it's sometimes very hard to find out things like that. She visits us every week. Her grandparents have a farm and she bring us their produce sometimes. She's in her first year at high school and lives in the same apartment complex as us.

New Apartment and Daejeon

This photo of a new apartment complex being built was taken from out of the back window of our apartment.
Our small village has become the centre for the development of a huge new government administrative centre for Korea. A whole new city is to be built nearby so it's natural that there will be private development as well.
A view of a park in Daejeon. Daejeon is a city of about 2 million and the closest suburb to us is a 15 minute bus ride from us. This particular area was developed about 10 years ago as a new administrative center and is where the government complex and city hall are located.
Another view. The area is called Dunsan

Itaewan

Colin took this using the phone - don't think we need to say why. It was taken in a back street in Itaewan. Itaewan is where most foreigners living here congregate and is close to the UN and US bases in Seoul. In the past there has been quite a lot of trouble here. We avoid it as much as possible as we don't like the atmosphere, but it has a very good new and secondhand English bookshop and a shop where we can buy spices and things like chickpeas.





Any comment needed? 

Insadong and National Musuem

Insadong is an area of Seoul which has arts, crafts and antiques for sale. The main street is a mall and is always packed with people. It's popular with tourists and Koreans alike. We stay in a hotel just off the main street which was discovered by a friend and fellow EPIK teacher, Megan. It's cheap, clean and very handy. Not far away is a very good Indian restaurant too!!!!! These lanterns have been put up for Buddha's birthday.
This particular weekend we were in Seoul another good friend and EPIK teacher, Adrienne and we all decided it was about time we visited the National Museum.
This curiosity is a large "jar" coffin.



Love this!

Of Interest??

The whole countryside has a lot of construction going on. This is a large apartment complex, taken as we drove by in a bus. A drawback from not driving here is that we see a lot of possible interest while travelling, but can't usually take a decent photo. This is an exception. Either we're travelling too fast or the windows of the bus are too dirty. Taking photos from the bullet train is impossible because of the speed although the widows are usually pretty clean.


These toilet seats are all the rage here. They have built in seat heating, bidet and blow drier!
This was taken in the hotel we always stay in in Insadong. We have one in the men's and women's toilets at school.








Here are some small palm trees wrapped for the winter. All over Korea you see this in winter. Some of the trees are quite large and they put straw "hats" on them to imitate the shape.
Very cool.

Spring Festival in Seoul

The festival was in Insadong and started of with a concert on a temporary stage and then all the performers plus the "King", "Queen" and their "courtiers" paraded down the street. This group of young male drummers performed with a great deal of energy, gusto and polish. They were accompanied by a man playing a very raucous oboe, which sounds a little "mad".

This is a group of women drummers. This kind of group are always made up of women and they were accompanied by the "mad" oboe (seen on the left) and the two men banging small gongs (in the front). There are other drumming groups made up of men and women. Keumho Middle School has a group and they are very good. We love listening to and watching them perform. They always play with great energy.






We have no idea what "Gimhae for you" means.

Wedding

The principal of Keumho invited us to his youngest daughter's wedding. It was a more or less a typical Korean wedding and held in a wedding hall. We arrived at a multistory building and were greeted by the bride's parents in the foyer. We then went to a card table where we handed over a gift of money to a person sitting there who took our names. We were then conducted to the room in which the ceremony was to be held. This was a catholic wedding and the service was conducted by a priest. It was his first wedding and he had to be reminded to take the vows. A couple of times another person stood up and gave some sort of prayer or sermon delivered in a hellfire and damnation sort of way. All the time people were rushing up to the alter and whispering in the groom's ear or adjusting the bride's dress.




These two were a guard of honour provided by the wedding hall and were dressed like the Andrew Sisters apart from the raised hems. Colin keeps going on about the Cargo Cultists and here is perhaps an example, it certainly immediately took me back to the 1950s.
The bride looked very beautiful and they both looked happy. Here they are watching and listening to a cute pair of seven year olds sing for them, while the dry ice flows. The whole ceremony took about 30 minutes. We then went for the breakfast which was a large restaurant with a smorgasboard shared by all those who used the wedding hall. At the time we were there there were about 4 weddings going on.

Alice, Grace, Michael & Bacchus

Grace with Bacchus the cat. These were all taken in January.












Alice with her dad.
Grace Phillippa






Alice Catherine.




Alice was named Catherine after her maternal grandmother. Alice Catherine is Phillippa's paternal grandmother's name which her parents had no idea about when they decided on it.

Rosa by torchlight

We get lots of photos of Rosa e-mailed to us as well as little video clips and it makes us think that we know her a little. We get quite excited when they arrive. 

What's this?

We have puzzled over the meaning of this road sign for a long time. It's on the way to school and low enough to clock one in the bonce if one is not careful