Plans and Plans

I have a holiday this week. I have mentioned it before, how my hogwan gives us a week off when the middle school students have exams. Thats how I went to Thailand. This time I am nearing the end of my first year here in Korea, so I am being a bit more careful with my money. So instead of a big expensive trip I am going to go on a four day visit (Thursday to Sunday) to Seoul. I have passed through Seoul a couple of times, but never visited the city properly. Its one of the great cities in Asia. The greater metropolitan area of Seoul has almost 24,000,000 people. Making it the second largest in the world, after Tokyo. Besides and incredible population, Seoul has a lot of historical sites of significance. I'm not going to go over them now. I leave on my trip tomorrow and I will take plenty of pics of the sites I visit and will make other posts about them. My mate Dave is going to head up Friday night to meet me and we will go out to the party district for "club night," the last Friday of the month. I imagine it will be pretty fun :)
As I mentioned I am nearing the end of my first year. So I have started to consider my plans for next year. Actually, I have been considering them for a while, but I am not acting on them. I am going to start actively looking for a University job in Pusan for next year. The Uni jobs have several advantages, but the main ones are less hours for close to the same pay (maybe 20 hours of classes a week) and two month long paid vacations a year. I requested a reference letter from my current job, and was given an excellent one by Sarah, the VP at our branch. The letter mentioned that I was the best reviewed (they get teacher feedback from the students at the end of each term) foreign teacher at Namcheon, and that they would happily rehire me. I am putting together a full resume package with degrees, transcripts, reference letters, resume etc... which I will take to most of the major universities in Busan. I don't really know what my chances are, but my fingers are crossed. I have been both lucky and happy at my current hogwan, and we get more vacation time than any other hogwan I know of. But working at a Uni would still be preferable.
If everything works out as planned I will finish my current contract on July 24th. I will then take a week to 10 days for a motorcycle trip all around Korea with Dave. After which I will hopefully have about 3 weeks to come back to N. America and visit family before my next contract starts. Its difficult to say at this point how all of this will turn out, but I am thinking positively.
The motorcycle trip is actually one of the things I am most excited about. Dave finishes his contract a little before me and then he goes back to New York to attend Brooklyn Law School. So this is a one time chance to take a real motorcycle adventure around Korea with someone who is both good friends and partially speaks the language. Dave bought a motorcycle about a month ago (and I have been teaching him to ride) for the express purpose of taking this trip. So, I am going to make damn sure that this part of my plans goes ahead.

A walk up Jangsan

Last weekend my friend John invited me to go hike on Jangsan mountain. We met up at my apartment in Namcheon dong and drove to Jangsan dong, where we parked and proceeded up the mountain.



I've never been a huge outdoors person. But lately I seem to be doing a lot of outdoor activities. Jangsan Mt. is the second highest peak in Busan (maybe 1km above sea level). It's not a huge mountain, but it does offer some good panoramas.



The walk took us about 4 hours, although that did include a stop for lunch. Like any hike in Korea we had to share the trail with a fair number of people. In the picture above you can see some Taekwondo students who were hiking up the trail as a class activity. It was very cute and somewhat funny to see all these little 8-12 year olds dressed up in their combat gear straining up the trail.



I went on the hike with John and his friend, Jong Hak. Both of them are smokers so they found the hike more arduous than me. Its been a long time since I felt that I was reasonably fit. But I have managed to maintained a gym regimen since a couple months after I came to Korea. I have put on a good amount of muscle and really improved my cardio. I guess I realized how much I have improved my fitness when I witnessed my friends wheezing up the trail. I used to be the one who found themselves out of breath, so it was a nice feeling. That's John standing next to me in the picture below.



The trail progressed in a couple stages, which offered different views of the city. Toronto is a great city in many ways, but when I lived there I always hated how flat it was. Growing up in Hobart, where nothing is flat, gives you an appreciation for a city laid out on the hillside. Busan is sandwiched between the ocean and the mountains and Jangsan is the best place to observe exactly how the city is shaped.



The picture above shows the eastern area of the city. Although you can't really see it, the city is curving around the famous Haeundae beach.



The picture above continues the show the eastern area of the city a little further south. If you click on the picture for a larger view then you can see Gwangali beach and the Gwangan Bridge. My apartment is located in the area between where the upper part of the bridge joins the land, and the beach. Unfortunately, the day we hiked the air was a little hazy, so the pictures of the city aren't as clear as I would like.



This picture shows the area of the city west and inland of Gwangali beach, towards the center of the city. I like this picture because it really shows how the hills dominate the landscape of Busan. I always find it interesting how in a land so starved of land, the Koreans are still so adverse to building on hillsides and mountains. Koreans traditionally buried their dead in the hills. Many families still own plots on hillsides around the city they live in. On any mountain hike in Korea you are likely to walk past marked or unmarked mounds where someone is buried.



On the way down the mountain we stopped at a... well restaurant would be too fancy a word... lets call it an eating establishment; for some much needed food. It doesn't look like much and the food was very simple, but it was quite good and it really hit the spot.



The meal consisted of real Korean staples. A plate of Dubu (tofu), a plate of the ubiquitous Kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage) and Pajun which is a a sort of pancake made of mostly green onion and egg, with some squid and other vegetables thrown in.



It was about 19 degrees on the day we hiked and spring had been around long enough that everything was beginning to bloom.



Part of what made the hike so great was that this was the first time I had gotten out and really taken advantage of the spring weather. I have the weather from Busan, Toronto, Hobart and Halifax on my Google homepage and I have to laugh when at the beginning of April, Busan was having days close to the 20's and Halifax and Toronto were still getting snow.



We finished our hike sitting at the edge of a reservoir, under blossoming cherry trees, drinking coffee in the sun. We had started early enough that it was only 3:30 by the time we finished and I still had a nice afternoon ahead of me. I finished the day with a visit to a Jimjilbang (bathhouse/sauna) and a late meal of Samgyupsal (Korean pork BBQ); with some other friends, Dave and Jong Wook.

Skiing in Korea

A while back I went skiing at Muju, the most popular ski resort in the southern part of S. Korea. A friend of mine, Murray, sets up a trip every year. I met Murray and the other skiers at 5am to get the bus to the ski slopes. I haven't been fortunate enough to experience great Canadian skiing since I was a small child. So I really enjoyed myself. It wasn't an amazing resort, but it was definitely superior to the skiing I have done in Ontario and Nova Scotia and Tasmania. We got to the slopes at about 9am and we skied until about 5pm.
The lower slopes were a bit crowded, but once I got my board legs back I headed to the upper slopes, which were both more challenging and less crowded. I spent about half my time skiing with some of Murray's students (Murray has been here for about 4 years and does only private lessons) which was nice. He brought 6-7 of his kids with him, which was really nice. They were really cool kids and it's nice to see some Korean kids doing something other than studying. The rest of the time I skied with western friends. It had actually been two years since my last time on the slopes. Apart from the enjoyment of skiing it was also nice to partake in an activity that seemed so Canadian.