광화문 빛너울 -- Gwanghwamun Wavering of Light

The video quality is not too fabulous, but here are three quick clips of a spectacular event at Gyeongbukgung Palace in Seoul! This year featured three short films (~10 min each) by Lyu Jae Ha projected onto Gwanghwamun Gate. This show was the definition of Sunday Funday, and absolutely worth whatever procrastination it came from/caused. Enjoy :)

In the first video you'll see images of the lucky animal figurines that often adorn the roof corners of palaces and temples. 

 I don't know what the second clip is, but it's cool. 

In the third clip, try to spot the twelve 'drummers' standing in front of the gate doors, who represent twelve moons.

Chuseok on Jeju Island

My coworker/partner-in-deceit and I realized last minute that we would be fools to do nothing on the third longest vacation of our contracts, a five-day break (over a weekend) due the Korean harvest festival, Chuseok. As has been the case with every holiday, payday rolled around a little late for proper planning ahead, and James and I found ourselves "stuck" in Korea yet again. So we polled friends for suggestions and began to struggle through the internet-explorer biased, flash-formatted (read: google translate incompatible) world of Korean webspace. 

We completely planned out three or four different trips, first trying to go to the second-largest island of Goje, then to an inland city of Gyeongju, next a beach town called Pohang, and in between all of these we kept trying to finagle our way out to Korea's most popular vacation destination, Jeju Island. Feeling uncertain about all of these options and holding out for our Korean friend to come save the day, we agreed to wait one more day before booking anything. Later that evening, frustrated facebook wanderings led to a gem of a discovery: an expat tour group had a spot remaining on their Chuseok trip to Jeju. Long story long, James and I worried about spending that money for about 24 more hours and then jumped on board. 

I'm not writing this post to tell you about how wonderful Jeju was. Seeing as it's a hot travel spot in Asia, I'm certain there's enough of that on the internet. Instead I'm going to muse a bit about how we got to and got around the island. James and I had intended to go to Jeju when our contract is up mid-October, but ended up traveling down there with When in Korea (WinK), an organization that runs tours in and nearby Korea. So without anymore rambling on my part, I present pros and cons of traveling with a tour company.

Pros

• Jeju turned out to be much larger than we anticipated, so it was awesome to have a private bus to take us between points on our itinerary. Getting around the island via public transportation would have eaten up a decent chunk of our already limited vacation time. Take into account the size of your destination as well as the availability and accessibility (what language is it in??) of local transportation. 

• It's not easy to gauge, but you should try to get a sense for how well your organization knows the attractions. Be sure to do your own research, even if you've already joined a tour group. Know what you want to see, and see how it lines up with the provided itinerary. WinK goes to Jeju nearly every month, so they were spectacularly reliable with choosing what we did, and they were even prepared to explain why they didn't choose other places. Finally, see if there are ways to opt in (or opt out) of specific tours, and combine the guided group with the individual adventurer option. In my case, I did the first tour but opted to hike the volcano, Hallasan, on the second day.

• Along the same lines as the previous point, our tour guides were awesome to hang with and were well informed. They suggested restaurants and activities and assisted with taxi cabs and time management during all of our free time. They were truly wonderful, and also a blast to be with!
• Last, James and I were excited to travel with a large group of waygooks. Although we are often obnoxious, foreigners can't help but love traveling together as we are all in the same boat (figuratively and literally, at times). It's a near-instant camaraderie that makes the whole trip into a big family party.

Cons

• As awesome as it is to travel with a big group of foreigners, the group we were with was very big...nearly 120 people. That's a lot to coordinate, a lot to handle, and the probability of people being inconsiderate or rude or just annoying is higher. You also don't have to hang out with those people. Try to get an idea of how many people you are going with, and use the nature of your trip/destination to at least anticipate what other people will expect from the trip. 

• In another completely contradictory point to the list of pros, having a set itinerary led by trustworthy people is awesome, but it entails inflexibility. You should be polite and respect the established time constraints, even if you really could spend the rest of your life exploring that cave or laying on that beach.

• Finally, the big one for me: when I travel, I like to struggle with figuring out the place for myself. I am a sort of struggling wanderer masochist; I want to take public transportation and cringe at hilarious miscommunications and read the map wrong the first four times. When someone is your guide, there is another degree of separation between you and the place you're exploring. I've tried a few things to overcome this gap. I ask a lot of questions (I try to figure out the answers myself before asking them). I look at a map often and pay attention when we are traveling around somewhere. I don't just stay in one place, but use every free moment to explore my surroundings. Then it's like traveling with parents-they'll bail you out when you're lost and late for the bus. But you will really hate asking them to do it.

Enough about that. Jeju was amazing. Check out my pictures and be jealous!

Volcanoes are cool. Lava is hot.

Natural pool and the gang

On Being a Tour Guide (also known as Caroline's Confrontation with Cluelessness)

People have often reminded me that those who are tucking away a year in Korea still know nothing about Korea. No, not even the small, suburban neighborhood where they reside. With the constant flow of friends departing and n00bs invading, I have caught myself feeling a bit...knowledgeable. But my family came to visit and I quickly became reacquainted with the boundaries of my already quite limited intelligence.

Early in their 14 days' stay I was awarded a dinky Korean flag which served as my Banner of Guidance whilst I led my effectively mute and illiterate family around the streets of Seoul and Busan, the second largest city here. I will say now that my family did a spectacular job deciphering maps and miming their way when I was forced to abandon them in favor of that nuisance called a 'job.' But in my stints as their fearful leader I found myself scrambling, as leaders do,  to meet everyone's needs and desires, frantically waving that little flag whenever I had the slightest indication of a bright idea. Despite my planning and researching and daydreaming and actual experiencing, I was reminded once again that I essentially know nothing about Korea.

This uncertainty was invigorating in its own way. Not that I had been bored, but some of the once new and exciting things had become routine. It was refreshing to feel like I was starting my relationship with Korea all over again. The unbelievable outreach of friends, both Korean and foreigner, who advised, assisted, and accompanied my family proved yet again the amazing community a person can build in a short period of time, particularly in a strange land. My own family provided me with the motivation to seek out experiences I had overlooked in my first exploits in the country. And it should go without saying that tromping about a foreign city with six family members trailing behind like round-eyed ducklings is downright hysterical and was more fun than I could imagine before or explain now. You can be sure that every time I waved my tour-guide flag, I raised my hand up high like an eager student, and beaming at my adventurous and trusting comFAMions.

At the same time, I was proud to prove to my family what I have learned since my arrival back in October. I noticed a sharp spike in my extremely rudimentary Korean during their visit, as I used my entire vocabulary probably every day (Yes, I am a proponent of language immersion). Each time I successfully delivered us to the next destination on our itinerary was a not-so-secret triumph. We discovered new restaurants and tracked down interesting diversions— you certainly learn what you teach. There is also a sort of satisfaction in bringing together two major parts of your life, no matter the place or time. When my family from home met my family in Korea, I felt like I was growing a little garden of ties across oceans, cultures, generations, and most importantly, people.

One of the best things I learned was what makes Korea unique, at least from my tiny perspective on the world. You can't visit the country without experiencing the astonishing combination of traditional and futuristic, natural and engineered. These contradictions are easiest to see in the architecture around Seoul. Check out the photos below, where ancient buildings are framed by the most modern skyscrapers. I don't know much about Korea, but these images represent more than just what I see everyday. They are the struggle for understanding in Korea that I've come to appreciate.

In the end, I can't honestly tell you that I didn't expect this (re)confrontation with cluelessness to happen. Shoot, even if you never leave your hometown, I guarantee you'll be surprised sometime or another. No matter how long anyone stays in one place, perhaps especially a relatively homogeneous and xenophobic place like Korea, one can never truly know everything. A waygook will never be Korean. A foreigner will never be a native. We'll never get all the social queues, the linguistic nuances, the back roads and local hangouts and secret spots for spectacular city scapes. But all this means is that we should never stop trying to know it all.

And I can't publish this post without a shout out to my parents, grandparents, and aunt and uncle for the many gifts they gave me: peanut butter, deodorant, their time and presence, but most of all, that amazing little flag.