ECC Christmas party

Christmas is an odd time in Korea. Kids don't usually get gifts, though our kindergarten students did in an odd fashion. Their parents sent in wrapped gifts, which were handed out by us at the party, but which they didn't open until they got home. The idea that good children are rewarded and bad students are chastised by Santa was lost due to Johnny the terror getting by far the largest gift of any of the students. If only they opened the gifts at school they probably would have seen that Ashley (the best student in Johnny's class) got something valuable in the small package, but unopened the comparison was unfortunate.

Earlier I had watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas with four different sets of students (admittedly some the day before with the MWF afternoon kids) and was still loving every minute of it. I think I'm going seriously soft since I actually choked up at more than one showing of it, and I don't think I ever had before. During the party I wore my super soft penguin hat (complete with stubby tail) that came with the icecream cake that Will had bought earlier to reward some good students. (At this point you may be remembering that Will also made some students tacos. Yes, he is more generous that I am.) After lunch we sang carols, which they had been practicing for a while.

At the end of the kindergarten party Mark, who teaches at public schools in the mornings and hence is the one foreign teacher that most of the kindergarteners don't know, came out as Santa and handed out presents. The three to six year olds patiently sat with their presents and waited to take them home, and by 'patiently' I mean that they actually didn't open them, which is loads more patient than I was at that age.

In the afternoon we had the students sing Christmas carols and fill in blanks in the lyrics sheets as dictation practice. My supervisor made some of the blanks far too hard, especially the Mirah Carey song 'All I want for Christmas is You,' where there were more blanks than words. We took pity on them and just started watching Christmas related movie clips and eventually the Grinch yet again. We had a lot of trouble holding their attention since they had no nostalgia or joy associated with the songs as we do, or even any familiarity with them, and they just wanted their three day weekend to start.

I didn't really do much for Christmas. Will and I considered climbing the Expo Park tower that is begging to be buildered, but while we were scouting the area a security guard materialized out of nowhere just to tell us not to ride our bikes in the park, so we scratched that idea. Alanna joined us to watch Terry Gilliam's latest, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. We all called our families the next day because we live in the future.

Seoul music and gate

Alanna and I went up to Seoul for a weekend to see some of her friends from Canada, one of which now teaches there and another--Neal Conway, the guy who gave the concert in Mad and Jeff's apartment--who was visiting. Before meeting up with the others we stopped by Dongdaemoon, the great East Gate. Sadly, Namdaemoon, the great South gate and national treasure number one, was destroyed by arson shortly before I arrived in the country. I'm not sure why the East gate is so far below the departed South gate in terms of ranking. Perhaps it was more recently restored or is smaller or something. It did look nice lit up at night, and I liked seeing the city wall continue on up the hill.

We dropped our bags off at the friend's apartment and met her pet rabbit, then ate out at a place that served entire plates what Will and I call beef bacon. After that we went to see a show of a bunch of musicians that the rest of the group knew from Newfoundland, Canada. It was pretty entertaining at times, though I lacked wakefulness and energy to dance, much less to live off every note like the four super enthused Koreans in the front row. Most of the rest of the audience was foreign. Neal had complained earlier that in Korea he ended up playing for nearly all foreigners, whereas in China he had been able to give shows for the locals and get to know them a bit.

The next day we went out for brunch, and I really enjoyed the architecture of the subway stop where we got off to eat. The grand open subterranean space was capped with a glass dome and as divided by a V of escalators. After brunch we headed back to Daejeon.

Doppelganger

One night in Daejeon several of us got together to wish Scott (who I mostly know from Korean class) a merry farewell by playing boardgames. I was at the table playing Simpsons Clue, while a wild game of Bonanza occupied most of the rest of our group.

On the way to the games cafe we ran into some other foreigners that I knew, which is hardly surprising given that the foreigner bar that they frequent was just down the road. The odd thing was that with them was someone else named Landon. He is only the third or fourth Landon I've ever met. I would have bet a fair bit that I was the only Landon in Korea, much less the only one living in Daejeon. It was decidedly odd.

Jeju Island Day 4: The Return

In the morning I took the bus out to the airport and had one last glimpse of Halla mountain out the plane window as I returned to the mainland.

Jeju Island Day 3 Part 3: An Elusive Crater

I then headed towards Sangumburi crater. I had hoped to stop by one of the folk villages as well, but realized that I wouldn't have time due to infrequent buses and fading daylight. I barely even made it to the crater since the bus transfer occurred in a town that did not have any signs concerning said transfer (not even in Korean), which is odd since there are hardly any bus routes on the whole island and it is a tourist area. I asked directions and was sent in a vague direction, then asked some high school girls who told me the wrong thing and I missed the bus by seconds. The girls felt bad (especially since I was visibly frustrated at having to wait for an hour, wasting precious sunlight) and decided to wait with me to make up for it. They showed me pictures of their boyfriends and asked me why I wasn't married. Eventually they went off to meet up with other friends and I was able to read my book in peace. When I finally got out to the crater it was minutes before the closing time listed in the Lonely Planet, and the attendants said that it was already closed. I gave them a pleading look. I was desperate to see this place and was regretting going to the lower priority waterfalls first because of the description of Sangumburi crater in the Lonely Planet, which says that the 100 meter deep crater was "a perfect spot for a bungy jump." The attendants took pity on me and let me run up to the edge to find that it was not the sheer pit that the guidebook described, but was rather a gradual bowl, typical of any crater. I think that the Lonely Planet made a cut and paste typo or said the bungy jump thing without ever having seen the place since the idea was absurd. I was a bit disappointed, though it was a scenic spot. On the way out I noticed that the bathrooms had pictures of lego people in knock kneed distress on them. It certainly got the message across without the need for words far better than the universal symbols for men's and women's rooms. I watched the sun set over the odd rock pile pillars in the parking lot and was a bit worried that the bus would not be able to see me in the dark as I waited for what felt like a very long time. I did eventually catch the bus to Jeju City, where I got a hotel room near the bus mall and went across the street to eat a nice meal of pheasant, a local delicacy. It was served by having it cooked on the table, as per usual Korean form, though on a portable gas stove instead of one built into the table. It was fairly good, though I felt like I spent more time picking out bones than actually eating.

Jeju Island Day 3 Part 2: Waterfalls

I caught a bus back to Seogwipo to see the waterfall I had failed to see the night before. It was a bit of a walk from the bus station to the trail head, then a mile up a steep ravine to the falls. The pokpo itself was impressively loud and rather pretty, emptying into a large pond and with jungle in the background. I then backtracked to the trailhead and headed out to Jeongbang falls on the other end of the city, which is supposed to be the only falls in Asia that fall directly into the sea. It seemed to me that the falls fell about twenty yards short of that claim, but were nice nonetheless (perhaps on especially high tides the claim is a bit more accurate). I then hurried back to the bus station.

Jeju Island Day 3 Part 1: Summiting Halla Mountain

I awoke well before dawn the next day to catch a bus to the trailhead of Halla Mountain. In the dark bus station I met two American Mormon missionaries, who were nice enough to not discuss religion at all and we had a pleasant chat about living in Korea. Once we arrived at the trail (about 6:30) I took off at a brisk clip. A man from the bus tried to keep up with me for a while and we had a nice chat, but then he told me to keep going on my own. I saw very few others on the rest of the way up. As the sun began to rise I saw the flaming orb through the trees and began to see the leafy underbrush surrounding me. I also saw a single metal track paralleling the path for a while, which I later saw was for a sled that brought supplies up to the shelter two thirds of the way up. There were also signs saying that one had to be past that shelter by a certain time of day or one would not be permitted to climb higher. Later the path began to have lava rock stairs, and bit past that the stairs started to be covered in ice and snow, and so I couldn't help thinking of it as the path of Fire and Ice (nerd alert!). I kept my speed up and reached the shelter, where I stopped for water, layering, and to eat a couple Mandarin oranges. Higher up the trees became sparser and I could see the peak rising above me. There was frost on all of the trees and in whorling patterns on the wooden steps near the top. I finished the 9.6 km ascent in almost exactly three hours and I think I was the first person to the summit that day, though just barely as a man nearly passed me at the end. At 1,950 meters, Hallasan is the tallest mountain in South Korea, but it is far enough South that even in December it was quite warm at the summit, that is until I stood near the crater edge and was chilled to the bone by the violent wind. A couple inches of ice were caked to the wooden rails and sign posts. The view of the crater was spectacular, though the crater lake was shrunken and frozen and generally not as impressive as it would be in a wetter season. After a half hour break, sharing gummy bears and mandarins with the several others who joined me (including the guy I started the hike with), I started jogging back down. The frost had already melted from the path and trees in the short time I was at the top now that the sun was out in full force (it being ten a.m.). I made good time until I ran into the hordes of Koreans hiking up the trail. Seriously, there were hundreds of people, and they were completely oblivious to the idea that someone might be coming down the mountain and so took up the entire path. I still managed to make it down in just over two hours, meaning that I had a lot of the day left, which was a bonus since I had planned to spend the whole day doing this hike. Thus I had time for several more adventures, to be detailed shortly.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 6: Hexagonal Rock Formations

The sun was below the horizon but there was a little light remaining when I arrived at the Jusangjeolli hexagonal rock formations. I saw one section of the basalt towers down by a beach, then jogged up to the rest of the formations. When I went to pay I was informed that the area was closed, so I walked a bit away and jumped a low stone fence to enter the viewing area. In the twilight I saw waves crash against and over the basalt columns. As I left I bought a bag full of mandarin oranges for under a dollar. Citrus is plentiful on Jeju and the island is famous for its special breed of orange and for the orange candies, which our students are always kind enough to give to us when they come back from a trip to Jeju.

In the darkness I caught one final bus to Seogwipo, Jeju's second largest town. After booking a room in the backpacker's hostel and getting some dinner, I tried to make my way to a waterfall there which was supposed to be lit up, but I ended up on a path over the falls and so only heard the falls. Exhausted from my long day of racing the sun, I gave up on the falls and went to sleep.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 5: Nymph Baths and Waterfalls

Another bus ride later I arrived in Jungmun to see Cheonjeyeon Pokpo, a three tiered waterfall. None of the falls were particularly voluminous or tall, but they were all pretty, especially with the semi-tropical flora surrounding them. Over the gorge stretched a giant arched Bridge of the Seven Nymphs, with the nymphs pictured in white on the red girders. The nymphs served the Emperor of Heaven when he slid down moonbeams to bathe in the pools of the three part falls, which he deemed beautiful enough to serve even him. I followed the path along to each of the pools and crossed the bridge and back, then (after one false start) found my way down to the town and around a large convention center to the coast to see the rock formations there.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 4: Dragon Head Peninsula Rock Formations

Across from the temple and grotto was a replica of the ship of Hendrick Hamel (1630-1692), a Dutch sailor who was one of the survivors of a shipwreck on Jeju as the boat was headed to Japan. The survivors were marched to Seoul to see and then serve the king, and none of them were permitted to leave the Hermit Kingdom. He lived in Korea for thirteen years before escaping to Japan with seven other crewmates, and he was the first Westerner to write about Korea. Simon Winchester, who I've mentioned before, planned his walk across Korea as a journey following in Hamel's footsteps. The replica ship was amusing, filled with life-sized crew members, except in the bottom of the three floors, which was a display about a Dutch football coach who lead a Korean team to victory. Apparently the ship was really a monument to all things Dutch-Korean. Near the ship were some Jeju horses and some lava rocks with tubes the width of my arm in them, through which I could look back up at the temple.

After taking my picture with the statue of Hamel, I walked along Yongmeori, the Dragon Head coast, which was riddled with wavy holes and twisted into arches and odd shapes. Ajimas (old women) sold live sea life for consumption. The walk finished by going through a natural arch and up some stone steps. On the peninsula there was also an old smoke signal mound, which was used to broadcast messages across the island. One wonders if the volcanic nature of the island ever interfered with the messages...

Pictures for this section start here.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 3: Cliffside Temple and Grotto

I traveled by bus along the Southern shore of Jeju to a giant volcanic outcropping, upon which lies a Buddhist temple and from there a path up to Sanganggulsa grotto. The path was lined with interestingly pocked rock formations, thought the cave grotto itself didn't look like much. The area did have great views of the ocean as well, including my next stop across the street, Yongmeori, or Dragon Head coast.

Photos start here.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 2: Lava Caves and Hedge Maze

The next stop was a series of lava tubes, which were actually back towards Jeju City but I wasn't able to get to them the day before due to lack of daylight. First was Gimnyeongsagul, or Snake Cave, which is technically closed, but there was a well worn path around the edge of the chainlink fence, and even Lonely Planet says to ignore the closure. It is a double decker lava tube with a layer of stone between the two tubes stacked on top of each other. I only walked into the entrance since I somehow went on the trip without a flashlight, but it was cool to wander into this overgrown entrance down worn stone steps into an open cave with no one around and obvious signs of disuse. I then went on a couple kilometers down the tree lined road to Gimnyeong hedge maze, which was created by an immigrant from Washington state and is full of symbolism about Jeju, starting with its shape being like the shape of the island. Surprisingly it was actually a challenge, unlike most mazes. It ended with a raised platform from which you could look over what you had navigated through, and where you could ring a bell to tell everyone of your accomplishment. You could also help (or 'help') those below with shouted directions. Right next to the maze was Manjanggul cave, the longest system of lave tubes in the world totaling 13.4 kilometers. I only walked the open part, one kilometer of it and back. The tube itself was about twenty feet tall, though it was also doubled at some points and so twice that height. There were also areas where the roof had partially caved in that were huge chambers. There were occasional odd formations such as ridges along the walls and dripping stone of solidified magma, but the really impressive element was the sheer tunnel itself. It was a half circle of open space with the other half filled by a floor composed of a river of stone frozen in place. Sometimes rocks fell from the ceiling and drifted along the lava. One such drifting rock is said to look like a turtle, or perhaps like the island of Jeju itself, and was eerily pretty in any case. The path through the tunnel ended at the world's largest known lava column, where the lava solidified as it fell from one layer of the tube to another.

Jeju Island Day 2 Part 1: Sunrise Peak

I woke up at 5 am to climb Sunrise Peak in time for the sunrise. It turns out that I could have slept in much later, but I'm glad I did it the way I did since I had the mountain to myself for an hour before the hordes of Koreans ascended to also experience the sun rising from the water. Apparently it is something every Korean should do at some point. As the light seeped into the sky I saw the extent of the crater before me. When it was fully light the Jurassic Park soundtrack went through my head as I surveyed the jungle covered craggy rock formations of the crater. I stood for about an hour looking out over the town and at the sun breaking through the clouds like spotlights on the ocean. Sadly the same clouds prevented a good view of the sunrise itself, but I enjoyed the experience nonetheless. I hiked back down and was able to now see the rock pillars that had merely been shadowy forms on my way up in the dark. At the bottom was a cove with a series of huts for the traditional female divers of Jeju who until fairly recently would dive down to catch or collect sea animals to be eaten. The tradition is now dying out and I certainly didn't see any divers. I should say that it was quite warm on the island my whole trip despite it being December. As I was leaving the area I saw that Fortress Mountain is a good name for the peak. It is the solid core of a volcano, the rest of which has eroded away, leaving sharp cliff walls coming straight down from the crater's edge in most places. It would be unassailable as a fortress, though I don't think it was ever actually used for that purpose. I didn't really get a full sense of Seongsan Ilchulbong until I saw a picture of it from above, like this one that I stole from a Korean Heritage website:


My photos start here:

Jeju Island Day 1: Mythic Origins

Jeju Island is a volcanic vacation destination, and the largest island owned by South Korea. I had had earlier plans to visit Jeju in the fall, but since we lost a three day weekend due to Swine flu. Rather, we got that three day weekend a week early and there was not enough time to alter plans to get there and the ferry and plane schedules were too inconvenient (in my opinion. The other foreigners in my office all went). Alanna had already been to Jeju and had a different schedule so I went alone to the traditional honeymoon destination (Hana went for her honeymoon during the week we had all originally planned to go). My school had a random Thursday off work and so I took the Friday off (with docked pay, of course) and made a full weekend of it. I flew out Thursday morning and had a bit of an adventure just getting out of town. I took the subway as close as I could and then took a cab to the bus station that I needed to go to the airport. I was in the front seat of the cab, which was really cramped, and when I pulled my wallet out to pay I ended up spilling all of my cards all over the place, but in and out of of the vehicle. I don't think the cabbie did anything to cause this, especially when I noticed as I put the money in his hand that said hand had only a thumb and no other fingers. I found most of my cards on the street, but my Korean debit card must have fallen into the cab. Thankfully I had pulled out lots of cash for the trip, so I called my supervisor to cancel the card and all was fine (actually, my supervisor's number in my phone was wrong, so I also had to wake up Courtney to ask for the number. Nothing is simple). After that the buses and plane ride were uneventful, though once in Jeju I ended up getting on the bus going the wrong way from the airport and had to loop back around to get to Jeju City. I guess what I'm saying is that the trip was an exercise in my ability to not get frustrated or stressed about things going wrong, which I did moderately well.

In Jeju city I walked out to Samseonghyeol shrine built in 1526 and dedicated to the brothers Go, Bu, and Yang, the mythic founders of the Tamna kingdom. The shrine is centered around three holes in the ground where the brothers are said to have sprung fully formed from the earth as the island's first people. They then climbed Hallasan, the tallest mountain in South Korea that forms the bulk of Jeju Island, and fired arrows out in different directions to choose who would rule which third of the island. They later met and married three princesses who came by boat to the island with livestock, and they populated the island. Jeju has a different and younger culture than the rest of Korea and was a late addition to the kingdom. One element of Jeju culture is the creation of a bunch of three to five foot tall lava rock carvings of men called harubang. Outside the shrine were a few of the original 250yr old harubang.


After going to the shrine I went out for Mexican food since Jeju is one of the very few places in Korea that one can get decent (or any, really) food with cilantro in it, other than when Will gave me a couple of the tacos he made for his students as a reward for good behavior and since they had no idea what tacos were. I wandered around the city and saw some interesting (if not necessarily good) architecture, especially the bright orange and blue city hall. I was also amused by the signs at major sections that read "We love having you here" in several languages. They were obviously meant to welcome tourists, but on some the paint had run a bit, suggestive of scripts in horror movies and completely changing the tone (in my head, anyway) to that of the twins in The Shining as they say "Come play with us for ever and ever and ever."

I had hoped to see a bit more, but the sun was going down. The whole Jeju trip felt like a giant race against the sun. I took a bus to Seongsan Ilchulbong, which translates as 'fortress mountain village,' at the base of the aptly named fortress mountain, also nicknamed sunrise mountain since it is on the East coast. I wandered around the place a bit and had some delicious fried chicken covered in sweet spicy sauce, a Korean fast food-ish delicacy which I will miss. I stayed in a tiny minbak (private house hotel) for 15000 won, or aproximately $12. Check out the pictures to see what a typical minbak room looks like in its minuscule entirety.

Suspense and Relief

We awoke in the morning to find that our hotel room window looked right out onto the peaks of Wolchusan, Korea's smallest but by no means least interesting National Park. We walked by a busload of middle-aged Koreans doing calisthenics and stretches in unison and went out to a sculpture garden at the base of the trail, which had a couple interesting pieces. Then we went up, enjoying the crisp but not overly cold air, the leafless trees, the craggy mountains and the beautiful clear sky. The trail was crowded the whole way; it seems we weren't the only ones who thought that December was a perfectly reasonable time of year to go hiking, though we made bets about how many other foreigners we would see that numbered in the single digits. We saw that Wolchusan is another place where shamanism is not permitted, among other rules. The Park's most notable feature is probably the giant 52m long orange suspension bridge that takes hikers over a particularly steep gully. The picture of that bridge in the Lonely Planet: Korea was one of the things that made me most excited about going, so it was good to finally see it. The bridge now strikes me as unnecessary, but was kind of fun anyway.

Later on the trail we took a side path down to an eight meter tall seated Buddha relief. Sadly, Alanna fell on the steep unstable path down and bashed her elbow against the rock, making the rest of the trip considerably less pleasant for her. We backtracked up the steep path and continued along. At the other end of the mountain trail was a very new but intriguingly (and brightly) decorated temple. Look in the pictures for the semi-anthropomorphic rabbits using a mortar and pestle, women looking at the demon faces that they see in their mirrors, and the sign bordered by dragons and elephants.

Impossibly balanced rock pinacles at Horse Ear Mountain

One weekend in December, Will Alanna and I set out to see some of Korea's parks. Actually, Will and Alanna had both seen them before, but wanted to see them in winter and show them to me, so it worked out. First was Maison Provincial Park, a tiny area packed with lots of wonders. The park's name means 'horse ear mountain' since the odd rock formations look like pointed ears. The rock is odd and would seem out of place anywhere, and especially rising from the plains the way it does with nothing around it. The rock itself is pockmarked. We walked up a snow-dusted slippery trail of wooden steps to the pass between the ears, and tried to go higher but the path was closed off by people with more sense than us when it comes to judging what is reasonable to climb in winter. There was a small temple on the way down, Unsusa, which had a shrine to Dangun, the mythical founder of Korea, and which let you ring the giant bell, which Will promptly did. A bit further down the valley was Tapsa, another Buddhist temple but one that is truly unique. There are Buddha statues in the alcoves of the rock overlooking dozens of balanced stone towers. A Buddhist hermit named Yi Gap Yong (1860-1957) spent much of his life creating stone pinnacles that somehow survive despite being made 50 years ago without any mortar. Once Alanna's hands were frozen from taking her mittens off to take pictures, we continued our walk down past another newer temple, whose golden roof looked interesting from a distance but gaudy up close, and on to a restaurant that served delicious wild black boar black pig. We got a bus onward to the base of Wolchusan National Park, where we got a room and slept on mats on the floor in preparation for the next day's hike.

Laundry room explosion

December got off to a great start with my washing machine vomiting up masses of unidentified debris. I've mentioned before that Korea does not have the best plumbing, and all foreign teachers have stories of their laundry room or shower drain backing up and flooding. This was a bit more though. I came home one day to find piles of sand, shell, seaweed, and I don't want to know what all else plastered across the room, even on the ceiling and inside the washing machine. The floor was covered with a couple inches of gunk. I told my boss, who asked if I would clean it up, but in the end my landlady took care of it and the room ended up cleaner than it had ever been during my stay.

Stone Temple Carvers

The day after going to the Gwangju National Cemetery I went to the nearby Unjusa temple. Legend says that originally the temple had 1000 stone Buddhas, 1000 pagodas, now 23 pagodas and 100s of Buddhas. Two angels (for lack of a better term) descended from heaven and carved all of them in a single night. The last two Buddhas, which are by far the largest, are lying down because the angels didn't have time to have them stand before the sun rose. The other explanation of the temple is that it was a school for stonemasons. There is certainly a lot of variation and experimentation in the styles, sizes, and shapes of the carvings. I spent hours wandering through the trails lined with Buddha statues and walking up hills to see the many pagodas rising from the mist.

Gwangju National Cemetary

Gwangju is a vital city in the recent history of Korea and is basically the Tienanmen Square of South Korea. It was the site of an event that has been called the Gwangju Communist Uprising, the Gwangju Massacre and is now known as the Gwangju Democritization Movement. The very quick and rough version is that in May of 1980 Gwangju students staged massive protests of the military dictatorship that had taken control of the country. The government responded brutally, killing several of the protesters, and in response there was an uprising and the people took over the city. The government sent in the army, which quickly ended the uprising, killing at least 15 civilians and wounding another 4,000.

Appropriately, when I arrived in Gwangju there was a protest, though I don't know what it was about. I took the 518 (i.e. May 18th) bus to the cemetery outside of town. The cemetery has changed considerably since Simon Winchester was there in the mid 80s. As described in his book, Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles, Winchester walked the length of Korea, from the Southernmost tip to the DMZ, and when he visited the cemetery in Gwangju then, the civilians who died in the incident were buried in a back corner of the cemetery and Winchester was thought to be a communist sympathizer for wanting to see their graves. From 1994 to 1997, when South Korea had a democratic government, a new National Cemetery was built to honor those who are now known as martyrs for democracy, and this is what I visited.

There was a giant monolithic sculpture, which is actually pretty standard for the National Cemeteries, though the rest of them are for those who died in wars. There was also a building in the shape of a giant dolmen (a traditional stone tomb) that enshrined the pictures of the known deceased. On the other end of the grounds was a museum documenting the event, with such relics as bloodstained rocks and Korean flags from the demonstrations. It was a somber place, occasionally made lighter by the cartoonish zodiac animals on the pillars and the room in the museum that was a reconstruction of a typical shop at the time, complete with vintage Star Wars posters. The grounds also contained statues, reliefs, and other works representing the event, as well as the ideals of democracy that the people were fighting for.

The age of AB+

In Korean popular culture (and apparently in Japan as well) blood types are seen in much the same was as astrological signs are seen in Western popular culture. Your blood type is thought to be an indicator of personality and interpersonal compatibility. At least, unlike astrology, there is a connection to the person and their horoscope indicator.

My bloodtype is A+, so as an A:

Best traits	Earnest, creative, sensible
Worst traits	Fastidious, overearnest

I'll let you all judge how accurately that describes me...

This has been your random bit of Korean trivia of the month.

Pepero day

11/11 looks like sticks, so November eleventh has become a consumer holiday where one buys chocolate covered cookie sticks, the brand name of which is Pepero. Several of my students gave me pepero over the course of the day and most were disappointed that the teachers weren't handing out the cookies to all of them.