Ginseng Festival and Hiking Trip: Part I

This weekend I went to a Ginseng Festival followed by a day of hiking with Adventure Korea. Basically they're a travel/tour group that has events running every weekend all over Korea. They're very well organized and they have some cool events. I've done a handful of trips with them now including the DMZ and Mud Fest, both of which were right at the top of my list for things to do while in Korea, and both were pretty great. It's nice because usually when I'm off doing something on the weekend I head into Seoul or somewhere that is easily accessible by just jumping on a bus at the local terminal. With Adventure Korea though I've been able to see some areas of the country that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to really navigate myself to and have had a few unique experiences along the way. The owner is a cool guy and the guides are a mix of Koreans and foreigners who volunteer. I can't recommend their trips enough.

So Saturday morning I was up at 5am to get ready and then take the train into the city to catch the tour bus. Except I actually couldn't fall asleep at all (my work schedule is not conducive to such an early wake up call) so I was dragging my feet real bad as we headed out the door. 

We left the city around 8am and had about a 3 and a half hour drive with a rest stop and lunch break thrown in there. Have I mentioned how much I love Korean rest stop food? Because I do. The rest stops here are pretty similar to the ones back home- convenience store, bathrooms, junky souvenir area, couple of fast food joints, etc. However, you're also sure to find a bunch of vendors selling what pretty much amounts to street food. Delicious, amazing street food that is. Bags of football-shaped, custard filled deli manjoo, paper bowls of potato balls, french fries, mini churros, and tasty tasty skewers of chicken. You just have to be careful that you don't lose an eyeball in the crowd with everyone walking around and not paying attention to where they're waving the pointy-end of their stick food but if you make it out alive it's so worth it.

After lunch we arrived at the Punggi Insam (Ginseng) Festival. 

I knew they had a few activities for us lined up but the first one took me by surprise. They whisked us over to this stage area and told us we were going to have a ginseng peeling competition. Uh, it is exactly as exciting as it sounds. They split us into two groups and had us sit on stage and well, peel a ginseng root. Which isn't too easy to do actually. Those roots pretty much look the same when they're all cleaned up, it's not like peeling a potato where the difference is obvious. So I just sat they're awkwardly peeling away and I think I over peeled mine and therefore did not win the giant box of ginseng tea for my efforts. Sadness.

Look at how jazzed this sea of elderly people who were just looking for somewhere to sit down crowd is to be observing such a thrilling event.

Basically it was just an excuse to put a bunch of foreigners on stage and have them make a spectacle of themselves. In that we succeeded admirably. The whole festival was actually like a publicity event or something, photographers and videographers would not leave us alone. I know that foreigners get stared at a lot here and this is especially true when you head out of the main cities and into less foreigner-traveled areas. But it was overkill at the festival and really awkward. They kept swarming us and I kept covering my face (hello, 24 hours with no sleep at that point, the last thing I want is your HD lens picking up how many shades of gray are happening in the dark circles under my eyes) and waving them off but it did nothing. So I started taking pictures back while they were taking pictures of me. Because what else can you do?

Yeah like I couldn't see you creeping from behind that pillar. Nice try. He did pose with the Korean V sign when he saw what I was doing but I was too slow to catch it.

After making fools of ourselves we had some free time to wander the festival. There was a nice turnout and it was pretty big but it was less festival-y than I was expecting. Lots of food tents and such but only a handful of craft booths (what I always troll at festivals) and an overload of identical tents all just selling ginseng roots. There was literally rows and rows of them and people were snapping those things up like crazy. So that was the big draw really. We just walked and took it all in.

There was a small area with apple tents and this little house made of apples. I caught these two old buddies posing for a picture in the apple house, aww. I also got a picture sitting there but I had to wait for the three kids in line in front of me to finish first...

At 2pm we met back at the bus and drove to a ginseng field where the town mayor met us and told us we would be helping to pick some ginseng. I managed to dig up a row of about four roots and then they had all us foreigners pose with our rooty booty for the paparazzi again. I'm pretty sure our fate is to end up on the festival banners for next year.

Then it was back to the festival again to make ginseng wine. It is basically the most simple process ever.

Ginseng Wine Recipe
Step 1: Clean a ginseng root. It is clean when you can no longer see any dirt on it or when the people supervising realize you're the last one doing it and quickly announce it is clean so they can finish and go home.
Step 2: Get a tall plastic bottle with a screw top.
Step 3: Place root inside tall plastic bottle with screw top.
Step 4: Fill tall plastic bottle with soju.
Step 5: Screw on top
Step 6: Let sit for 100 days.

So basically ginseng wine is soju with a root in it? If there were any other way to make soju worse than it already is I think this would be it.

Also, ginseng floating in liquid is scary looking, like some sort of malformed alien fetus. It gives me the creeps. Also also, I am bringing mine home with me so clear a spot in the dining room next to the other wines Mom and Dad. You can put it out on Halloween to scare trick-or-treaters. Or when repair people come to the house. Whichever works.

I'm not entirely sure what criteria of fabulous a ginseng root must meet in order to win a prize because they all looked the same to me but apparently this one was pretty special. 

This weekend was good but wore me out big time so I'll cover day two of the trip in a separate post which I'm hoping to write tomorrow night when I'm off from work early. After I've gone grocery shopping that is. And after I've finished my toilet paper roll bat decorations. And after I've done some more studying for the GRE. And after I finally attempt skillet ginger snap cookies. And after I've bleached my bathroom to hell. All in order of importance of course. Yeah. Another blog tomorrow night.

maybe.

Trivia of the Day: Myeonje Baegab (면제배갑), claimed to be the world's first, was a bullet-proof vest invented in the late 1860s in the Joseon Dynasty, modern day Republic of Korea. During the French Campaign against Korea, 1866, the military of the Joseon Kingdom, at the time using matchlock rifles, experienced the superiority of western rifles. As a result, Heungseon Daewongun, then acting leader of the Joseon Kingdom, ordered the development of bullet-proof armor. Through multiple live fire tests using matchlock rifles Kim Gi-Du and Gang Yun, who were national weapon developers, found that 30 layers of cotton fabric were effective in preventing penetration by rounds fired from a matchlock rifle at around 100 meters. The vests were distributed to soldiers after its creation, and were used in battles fought on Ganghwa Island against United States Navy and Marine forces during the United States expedition to Korea in 1871. Although the vests were effective against bullets, they were susceptible to fire because they were made of cotton. The vests were easily burnt by fragments from cannon fire; US records indicate that some Korean soldiers caught fire after a cannon attack. Also, the vests were too hot to wear in summer.*

*Adding my own note here to say that any article of clothing is too hot to wear during a Korean summer.

Happy Mom's Day

It's Parent's Day here in South Korea today but Mother's Day back home. So Happy Mom's Day to all you ladies out there who raise us kids right and love us no matter what. And especially Happy Mother's Day to my own mom who supported me when I told her I wanted to move across the world and who came to spend some time with me here (something that after six months away from home I really really needed). Hope you enjoyed your day and your trip mom! 

I snapped this at the top of the mountain, the one by my apartment, that we climbed last week. It was pretty hot and bright up there (note the squinting) but we were feeling pretty good after that hike. I'm happy we got this shot together, awkward angle and all :)

If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been

Today marks the seventh week of the winter school term and the start of my eighth week in Korea. It's wild that I've almost been here for two months and that I'm more than halfway through my first term. Things are still going along smoothly and I feel settled here now. So far this is about equal to the longest time I've spent away from home but that was also during college when I was only an hour and a half's drive away. The hardest week I've experienced was Christmas week for obvious reasons but besides that I think I'm doing pretty okay. I wouldn't say I'm homesick really, but rather peoplesick. I'm perfectly content in my new surroundings right now, I just miss the hell out of everyone I left behind.

So it was a wicked nice treat to receive a belated birthday/Christmas care package from home! 

All of my favorite things in one neat little package, glorious. It's expensive to ship things over here but this package was the perfect size for me. The presents were wrapped (Barbie Mulan in Batman paper for my birthday, the HP book in Christmas paper) and my mom also managed to squeeze in the extra towel I'd forgotten to bring along, some facial cleanser I'd requested because I can't find mine here, a bunch of cards, my niece and nephew's new school pictures, and a couple packs of Expo markers since I'd mentioned how bad the ones at school are. Hands down my favorite part was the calendar wall scroll which I was confused over until I saw that it was from the local Chinese buffet place back home and my mom had made sure to tag it as being from my Dad haha. 

I've been keeping myself busy in the chilly weather and trying not to become a hermit though it's difficult when it's so cold out. Two weeks ago I went back to Bupyeong Market on a Wednesday and it was much less crowded than when I'd been on the weekend. I strolled for a while and bought a couple things including a Superman sweatshirt that was only ₩10,000 and is my new favorite comfy item.

I also found a Hallmark-ish type store that had a whole wall of Miyazaki products.

There were some beautiful handcrafted type items that unfortunately were crazy expensive and even the plushies were a lot which is too bad because I'd love a big squashy Totoro.

The best part about this store though was this gem:

Yes, we would all like to know the turemeaning of love. Spelling errors like this are actually pretty common and always hilarious. Apparently one of the other teachers saw a sweatshirt somewhere that says "Boston, Massachubetts". I would buy that in a heartbeat.

Then last week I spent one late morning/early afternoon hiking up the mountain a few blocks from my apartment building with a couple of co-workers. I'm pretty sure it's called Cheongryangsan Mountain and it was a good climb. The paths were still pretty icy and I slipped a bunch but always just managed to keep my butt from hitting the ground which counts for something. There were a lot of steps and thankfully some rope guardrails which pretty much saved me from disaster on the climb down. I'd like to have taken pictures along the way but was more concerned with not wiping out. Here was the view from the top though.

In the distance is Songdo, which is a planned international business district that's supposed to be completed by 2015. The buildings all look futuristicy in the posters and stuff but I haven't actually been over there yet to check it out for myself. One of these days.

See check out that ice! Treacherous!

There are a bunch of paths leading up and down the mountain and I guess some of them lead to temples. I can't wait to hike this in the spring and summer when the ice is gone and the trees are all filled in. I'd imagine the sunset and sunrise are beautiful from up here. It's nice having this so close by!

On Saturday I went with a bunch of people from work into Yongsan for various electronic needs. I didn't need anything particular but wanted to browse the pirated movies section. After looking at cameras and computers in I'Park Mall above the subway station we went outside where there are streets and underground alleys of electronics everywhere. At the DVD booths we flipped through ringed packets of movie covers and whenever you saw a movie you wanted the guy working the booth would come over with a little notebook and mark it down on your own page. I ended up with five DVDs which worked out to ₩10,000 total, an awesome deal. Plus they throw in empty cases and print outs of the cover so you can slide them in yourself to make it look like the real deal. Well, it looks real enough until you notice how pixelated the pictures are and that the cover for Shutter Island is in Korean while the tagline for Jurassic Park is in German. They play crystal clear though so that's all that matters!

Next up was Itaewon and a late lunch at Subway where I got a meatball marinara and oh my god how I've missed meatball subs. It was actually pretty similar to the ones at home though the sauce was a little sweeter and with a little bit more of a kick. So delicious though. I know your favorite version of your favorite food is supposed to be like Great-Grandma's homemade or something but meatball subs from Subway are my favorite. I'm not planning to live off western food in Korea but I'd been craving a sub all week and was psyched I could get one here.

We then went to What the Book? where I scooped up a few more paperbacks to keep me occupied. I think I might be purposely buying only a few at a time so I have an excuse to keep going back. One thing I do miss is not having a bookstore just a hop away. Or at least a bookstore with books in a language I'm able to read.

Yesterday I wanted to do something with my day and spent Saturday night on the search but honestly I was put off by how cold it's been. So instead I slept in wonderfully late and then spent the day reading in bed and watching movies. I do love how walkable this area is and the convenience of the subway but so many of the things I want to do are partially or wholly outside and better suited for warmer weather. I'd say I'm still getting out lots though, at least enough to not feel guilty for having an utterly lazy day once in a while.

I'm not sure if anything is going on for the coming weekend yet but I just discovered the location of the Forever 21 in Myeongdong. Cheap cheap clothes that may actually come in western girl sizes? And today was payday? I see some shopping in my future...

North Korea is Crazy Trivia of the Day: In 1978, actress Choi Eun-hee, recently divorced from Shin Sang-ok, a movie director and producer, was kidnapped from Hong Kong to North Korea. When Shin traveled to Hong Kong to investigate, he was kidnapped as well. The kidnappings were on orders of future leader Kim Jong-il, who wanted to establish a film industry for his country to sway international opinion regarding the views of the Workers' Party of Korea. Kim's plan was to have Shin work as his propagandist and for Choi to be the star.

The North Korean authorities have denied the kidnapping accusations, claiming that they came to the country willingly. Shin and Choi made secret audio tapes of conversations with Kim Jong-il, supporting their story. Shin was put in comfortable accommodations, but, after an escape attempt, was placed in prison. He was brought to Pyongyang in 1983, to learn why he had been brought to North Korea. Choi was also brought to the same dinner party, where she first learned that Shin was also in North Korea. They re-married shortly afterwards, as suggested by Kim Jong-il. 

From 1983 Shin directed seven films with Kim Jong-il acting as an executive producer. The best known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla. In 1986, eight years after the kidnapping, Shin and Choi escaped while in Vienna for a business meeting, before eventually fleeing to the United States, seeking political asylum.