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Thursday, October 06, 2005

Last weekend

So this post is about last weekend, and since this weekend is rapidly approaching, we thought we'd post now, so we didn't get too far behind.

The delay is mostly because we had to wait until we resized and uploaded the pictures we're about to share with you lovely people.

Anyway, moving on. Friday night was pretty routine. We went out with the other foreigners for a few drinks and had a fair bit of fun.

Saturday was when the adventures really started. Due to whatever holiday caused it to be a long weekend, there was a big to do at the park near our place. We went for a bit of a walk to see what was going on, and there was a stage set up and a bunch of seats on the lawn. The first act was unusual in that I have never seen 75-100 people entertained by small children skipping rope to English songs for at least half an hour. After returning from our walk to find these small children STILL skipping, we noticed that the next act involved these adorable children practicing sword form on the the grass nearby before their big performance started.

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About 10 minutes later, the skippers left and the tiny swordsmen stepped on the stage. They had a much shorter performance than the skippers, but were quite good, managing to stay mostly together throughout their demonstration:

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Once the tiny ones were finished, there was a group of adults who were demonstrating next. That was super cool. Almost all of their forms demonstrations ended with them slicing to bits either a bamboo stick about 3-4 inches thick, or a 6-10 inch-thick bundle of straw, with their various weapons. They also had a pair of archers who would stand with their backs to the target (in this case a picture of a tiger's head) and then spin around together and fire, never missing, which was important.

This guy:
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...who doesn't necessarily seem all that impressive in this picture, was actually able, as a part of his form, stab his katana right through the centre of the bamboo staff with one hand, which is much more difficult than it might seem to some of you. Really impressive.

These guys were also really quite impressive. Big long-staff battle axe things (anyone out there help me out with the correct name for this weapon?) and much jumping around and spinning before finally slicing to bits their own hunk of straw. Quite neat. The guy on the end must have been super-important or something cause he had to cut three clumps, instead of just one.

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So, after the stabbing coolness had ended the music volume increased and it was difficult to hear ourselves think even in our apartment as the music was so loud.

Why stay in Cheongju and suffer from very bad English music when you can take a bus to Seoul to eat dinner?
And in half an hour we were on our way in exceptionally comfortable, pseudo-airline seats as
shown below:

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One of the first things that we noticed as we entered the Seoul subway system was a rather large warning sign above a glass cabinet-type thing.
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In case you can't quite make out the creepiness of it all, it's a sign giving instructions on how to use the emergency gas masks that they have generously supplied. Observe a close-up:
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I'm not sure what's creepier, the fact that they have complimentary gas masks in the subway stations, or the fact that there were only about 30 of them. I'll let you be the judge.

Upon arriving in Itaewon - the Island of English in the heart of Korea - we promptly found an Indian restaurant and proceeded to devour an incredibly delicious dinner of various curries, butter chicken, nan bread, rice and the best gulab jamin (Indian desserts) that have ever been tasted, anywhere. Thoroughly stuffed (this particular restaurant was an all-you-can eat buffet for around $12), we decided to go for a walk around town to give ourselves time to feel a little less huge before hopping back on a bus to come home.

As we were walking down the main street (just as a quick reminder, Itaewon is in Seoul - a city of over 11 million people) we hear some English folks calling after us. We didn't turn around, cause they weren't clearly talking to us. Until, that is, they yelled "Trent University!" which made us spin around quite instantly. The girls that were calling we had never met, but the guy looked vaguely familiar. Turns out that Ryan had an English class with him in 3rd year at Trent. The three of them were up visiting a friend of theirs that lived in Seoul, a guy named Simon that was at our TESL course in Peterborough, and who we knew from Trent as well. Very weird. We didn't even know that he was living in Seoul.

Such a small world. We ended up spending time hanging out with them which was tonnes of unexpected fun. Unfortunately, another unforeseen event was that of the subway and bus station closing for the night around 12:00. When we realized this at 2:00 am in the morning we decided to get a hotel room. Unfortunately the area that we were in at the time had hotels where rooms ran between 300 000 to 200 000 won. As the bus station opened at 6:00 the next morning we decided that our best option was to dance the night away in Itaewon as all the bars are open until around 4:00 and then a few stay open until 5:30. At 5:30 we waited for the subway to open with several other individuals, most of whom looked as though they had been out all night too.

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After arriving back in Cheoungju we crashed for a few hours and then ran to the church retreat for the Sunday Monday. We stayed in a beautiful smaller country church that was overlooked by mountains.

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The food they served was fantastic which was such a relief. We didn't get to do as much hiking as we would have liked but we have a few pictures.

The first is a tomb - they bury their dead sitting up into the side of the mountains like this:
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This one was taken from the side of a mountain as we climbed up it. On the other side of the valley there was a ginseng field being overlooked by a hillside cemetery featuring more of the peculiar burial mounds. These ones had headstones, though.

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Well, that was last weekend. There will be another post coming fairly soon, as we've accumulated several pictures and stories, but we don't want to bog down this post with anything else. So keep your eyes peeled.

bye!

7 Comments:

At 1:46 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

nice to hear from you guys again! Sounds like another crazy adventure for you guys this past weekend. Those gas masks are indeed quite creepy, especially the fact that there are like 30 of them and I am sure like 30 000 ppl. on the subway that would require them in an emergency. Anyhow, take care and be safe. Love Veronica

 
At 3:59 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

That seems like a crazy week. Not much to repot here, Ryan Beth Popham says hi and Sarah Keefer rocks, she is an awesome prof. Nothing else, have a good one, wicked cool you got to hang out with Trenters.

Stevo

 
At 1:40 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

we are so excited for you guys. this is so important to you for your own development as individuals and as a couple. What a formative experience this early in your marriage!! you'll look back on this year for the rest of your lives.

we can't wait to get over there with you (more about that in a private email - it's been booked!!) - also an update on my situation.

rayn - no chacnes of getting into soem martial arts while there or is it pretty closed to non-Asians?

take care- we love you

dad

 
At 9:09 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Guys! Sounds like you're having an amazing time. I'm jealous of the yummy indian restaurant!!! I'm in Peterborough for a month now doing my practice teaching at Adam Scott. It's so nice to be home! Nothing else is very exciting here...except that we're having 15 people for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night, you should see the Turkey! Anyway, I look forward to keep hearing about your amazing time away! Miss you lots!!!
Love,
Becky

 
At 10:46 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why has no one commented on the all night dance-a-thon? That's what I would like to know.

 
At 9:42 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

You asked about the name of those long battle-ax-like things

I did some looking and they are called "battle-axes". Go figure.


Axe and Battle Axe

The axe is one of the earliest production tools. In the Stone Age, primitive man fixed edged stone on a wooden handle for cutting. In the Shang Dynasty, there were battle axes used for the guarding of the Gods or as implements of punishment.

The axe and battle axe belong to the same family, the difference being that the cutting edge of the axe is narrower than that of the battle axe. The cutting part of the battle axe is broad and arc-shaped and looks like a crescent. In the Qin and Han dynasties, the axe was the main weapon. The axe mentioned in the General Outlines of Wushu has a one sided-edge with a long handle. Its names include mountain cutting, still swallow and invincible. There was also the Emei axe with a head of about 30 cm long and an edge about 15 cm wide, and a one-meter-long handle, and the phoenix-head axe has a head of about 28 cm long and a handle of 80 cm.

The short handled axe belongs to the twin weapons. Because it looks like a slab, it was named the double-slab axe. Playing the double-slab axe requires boldness and bravery. The playing techniques, similar to those of the long-handled spear, include chopping, cutting, hugging, wiping, floating and slicing. In addition, it could be used for hooking and hanging as there is a hook on the back and pricks on the end. The single play routines include swinging chopping while turning the body and leaping, straight swinging on foot, wiping on horse. The routines of the long-handled axe, twin axes and mandarin-duck battle axes with one in each hand are still maintained in today's Wushu.

So there.

 
At 4:37 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello you two. Wonderful pictures and very neat eperiences. Would love to hear more of your in-class stuff. Are you getting to know your students? How old are they? Do they respond well to you or is it difficult? And is there any inter-personal stuff like outings, social things like games etc. - thinking of the track meets and such in our schools. Any interest in art?
We are visiting at your parents' place right now, probably heading home tomorrow, Wednesday.
Speaking of travel (were we?) Les and Lois left last week to get back to their work. They flew together to Frankfurt, then Lois continued to Kiev and their lovely apartment that they waited for two years to have completed, while Les continued to Kazahkstan for one of their schools, had 30 hours of flying that trip!!! Too bad our family never gets to go anywhere.
Take care of yourselves. Love Mama/Papa

 

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