Travel Memories Tuesday: Uijeongbu Snow

I still remeber the first time it snowed when we lived in South Korea - basically because I went crazy with excitement. Then I slipped over, but that's ok because it was snowing!

It does snow in some parts of New Zealand - but I have never lived anywhere that gets regular snow. In fact, before I went to Korea I would say I had seen snow maybe four times. So to see REAL snow that lasted for days was incredible. It felt like winter did in movies and on TV.

I took the above picture in the city we lived - Uijeongbu and it doesn't look like much right? Just a car driving down the street. But it just seemed more exciting because of the snow, everything is more exciting with snow! 

It's the rainy season

The rainy season that all my Korean co-workers talk about so much has finally arrived. It rained for about 24 hours and we have had another shower and by the look of the very dark sky outside I think it will rain again before the night is over.

All this is a little depressing and completely ruined our plans to visit Gangwha Island this weekend.

So instead of seeing dolmen's and observatories and other interesting things I ended up crafting and reading most of the weekend. Which isn't a bad way to spend the weekend but it isn't what I had in mind!

Here's the cross-stitch I'm currently working on, I bought the pattern from a seller called Pop Soup on Esty who sells all kinds of retro and kitsch patterns. This design will be a pin up sailor girl when I'm done.Rich and I also did some shopping in the Uijeongbu underground mall yesterday as we really needed to get out of the house and we wouldn't get wet shopping in the mall. The underground mall is unlike a mall in New Zealand or other western countries.

It's basically a collection of very small stall holders with tiny shops - it's more like a market than a mall and it's like a rabit warren to navigate! Rich is able to navigate it well but he is basically like a human GPS, I have no sense of direction and always end up lost!

On Saturday we did find a new "handmade" shop. It's a bead shop where the woman makes jewellery out of crystal bead sculptures. These are pretty popular here in Korea, I have seen simmilar things in New Zealand but nothing quite as amazing as what you can find here.

I decided to buy these little chick earrings as I love these quirky earrings and they were just too cute not to have!I would love to learn how to make some of this stuff! One of my students has given me a handmade cellphone charm of a witch made in this style. She told me her aunty helped her to make it. I guess there are classes around that teach you how to make these cute beaded creatures but it's hard to find them when you don't speak Korean.

Also I finally bought some new sunglasses! I have needed new ones for a while but I haven't been able to find ones I like. I usually like really dark sunnies as I wear contacts and bright sun really hurts my eyes.

It seems that sunglasses in Korea aren't as dark as the ones we get back in New Zealand but I really needed new ones so I bought these. Excuse the self portrait photo!

Just another summer day in Uijeongbu

Yesterday, Rich and I went for a walk around the "new town" in Uijeongbu. It was a beautiful day but at the moment the days do tend to get a little bit too hot. It's often 30 degree's during the day which I'm really not used to after living in Wellington for four years.

In the new town in Uijeongbu there are a lot of pet shops, pets here in Korea are a lot more exotic than back in New Zealand. You can have all kinds of pets - squirrels, hamsters, gerbils, hedgehogs, sugar gliders and the list goes on and on. Here's a few photo's I took outside some of the petshops in town. I really want one of these bunnies!


While we were out we decided to get some shaved ice or "Popping Su". Now it's summer it seems everywhere sells popping su from the ice cream shops to the bakeries and even KFC and Lotteria (a Korean fast food place simmilar to McDonalds) .Popping Su would have to be one of my favourite things about the Korean summer - it's shaved ice with fruit, ice cream cereal, red beans and it is kind of milky. It's really refreshing without being heavy like ice cream can be. We bought ours from a popular bakery chain called Paris Baguette but you can really get them everywhere!

This is what I do at work....

Here's a few photo's of me teaching, along with my lovely co-teacher Jiyoun, in my classroom during an open class (that's when other teachers or parents actually come and watch you teach - pressure!).

The pictures aren't perfect because they aren't posed or anything, they were just taking by another teacher clicking away on his camera furiously to record our class.

If you look at the second picture you can see a whole row of teachers standing in the back of the room watching us!

Pimp my scooter

Something else to add to my list of things you will NEVER see in New Zealand is this pimped out scooter we saw in Uijeongbu yesterday.

In Uijeongbu, scooters really are a law onto themselves, they drive everywhere and toot at you when you are in THEIR way on the footpath!

However, this scooter makes everything better! It's decorated with broken CD's and all kinds of other stuff. It's awesome.

Uijeongbu Music Theatre Festival

Last Sunday was a really beautiful day and in the morning Rich and I visited the Uijeongbu Music Theatre Festival which was being held at the Uijeongbu Arts Centre which is literally down the road from us.

The festival had a lot of events but we were going to see Les Gaspard, which turned out to kind of like a puppetshow with lifesize puppets.


There were also lots of cool craft stalls there for kids, I was very tempted to paint a Hello Kitty t-shirt - but I don't really wear white. It did look like a lot of fun though!

Seodaemum Prison & Inwangsan Shaminist Hillside Walk

Recently, it was Children's Day in Korea which is a public holiday for parents to spend the day with their kids. It also means that teachers have the day off work!

It took us a while to decide what to do on our day off, as many places would be packed with children - I don't mind being around kids but I already spend my week with more than three hundred ten year olds.

We decided on a couple of destinations which we thought would be relatively free of little kids.

The first was Seodaemun Prison History Hall, this was a prison was used during the Japanese occupation of Korea which lasted 35 years.

The prison was used to hold people who were fighting for independence from the Japanese. The prison was a very humbling place, the prisoners that were held there (both men and women) were subjected to horrific forms of torture. There have been models set up to show some of the forms of torture that were used - it's a really intense place.

However, just when things were getting a little too heavy the tension was broken by a group of very old Korean women that all looked about four foot tall. We were the only westerners at the prison at that time and I don't think these women were used to seeing western people - especially people as tall as Rich!

They were so astounded by us - I think we were unlike anything they had ever seen before. They kept looking up at Rich and touching us to make sure we were in fact real.





The most unsettling place in the whole prison was the execution building, as you would expect, this is the area where the Korean prisoners were hung. Korea is a country that has been subject to a lot of warfare, in fact I live in Uijeongbu, the city (at that time a villiage) where M*A*S*H is set. But this execution building is the only place I've ever visited that made me feel uneasy.

There is a poplar tree both inside and outside the grounds of the execution building. The poplar tree inside the wall is known as the wailing poplar tree. This is due to the fact that it hasn't grown much - it is said that this is due to the unsettled spirits of the Korean martyr's.

After spending some time in the prison we walked through the memorial park next to the prison.

After lunch we took a walk to Seoul's most famous shaminist shrine at Inwangsan. This walk was really amazing - it's not a difficult walk and along the way we saw Buddist temple's complete with lantern's for Buddha's birthday. The walk also gave us an amazing view of the old city wall and the city of Seoul.