I Dream of Seoul

I recently entered a photo essay competition being held by the Seoul City Council and was awarded an honourable mention (and a rather nice cash prize!) This was my entry, although I must give credit to Luke for the photos, he is quite the photographer! 

My first trip to Seoul was on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon and I was headed for the Namdaemun markets. Upon arriving in Seoul, I was struck by its beauty-even despite the weather. The streets were clean and wide and there was a sense of excitement about the place, which I couldn’t wait to be a part of. Seoul is the kind of place that you could explore for years on end and never exhaust its secrets. It is forever presenting you with new and wonderful things to see and do, it constantly beckons to the adventurer within us all saying, “come, play with me, I promise you won’t be disappointed….”

On that very first day in Namdaemun, the city of Seoul swept me off my feet-it was love at first sight. I found myself being carried along by the flow of the crowd as the ever-moving sea of umbrellas bobbed through, up, down and all around the maze of the markets, I was a part of all the hustle and bustle and I loved it. The perfect opportunity for a photograph presented itself and click a moment was forever frozen in time, in a picture that begs to be looked at over and over again, to be explored just like the city that created it.

Subsequent adventures into Seoul have deepened my affection for it. It has slowly revealed some of its many secrets to me and I have looked upon each and every one of them as a treasure to be remembered for years to come. The discovery of a new area, the changing of the seasons, a walk through the city at twilight; each aspect has its own unique appeal and its own beauty.

One particular twilight jaunt along Cheonggyecheon stays fixed in my mind however. It was during spring, a beautiful time to be in Seoul, and the young and the old alike were out enjoying the lovely weather. I was crossing a road on my journey when I was suddenly struck by the remarkable beauty of the lights of the city and the superb colour of the sky.

An endlessly moving, vibrant and energetic cityscape, Seoul proves that urban scenes can be beautiful in their own right. Seoul is a mix of old, traditional influences and fresh, modern ones, casually blended in a manner that is effortlessly charming and carefree. Sometimes I feel that someone with great flair must have done a considerable amount of planning to have put Seoul together the way that it is. Perhaps this is true to some extent but I think what really gives the city its appeal is the organic quality it has. It has evolved and grown into a city that truly represents the people that inhabit it. The city of Seoul, like the folk who live, work and play there, is modern, fashionable and stylish, and also deeply respectful of traditions, customs and culture.

I’ve never been to a place with such historical depth before and this was ever more apparent to me on a visit to Changdeokgung. I had heard that the autumn leaves in the Secret Garden were magnificent so I booked a place on a tour of the garden in November.

The garden was an absolute delight. The colours of the autumn leaves were a real treat in all their glorious shades of red, yellow and orange and as I wandered amongst the trees I couldn’t help but wonder what some of them would have to say if they could talk. As the tour passed one particular tree this thought seemed especially significant, the tree, we were informed, was over 700 years old. I daresay that tree would have a many a story to tell about the city of Seoul!

Although it’s safe to assume that I won’t live to be 700, I know for sure that Seoul will stay with me for the rest of my days. I will continue to explore Seoul in photographs and memories no matter where my travels take me and in the meantime, I’m happy to say that Seoul and I have many more adventures planned together yet. 

I don't understand...

Luke and I don't have a television here and in all honesty, I don't think we're missing much. The snippets we've seen have been frankly quite strange and language barriers aside, I just cannot work out what is going on most of the time.

One show stays permanently in my mind and although I don't know what it is called or why on earth people would want to watch it, I will explain my memory of it to you here.

Luke and I had been for a weekend away in the mountains and we were on our way home. We were stuck in dreadful traffic on a bus that was taking forever and with nothing else to do, our eyes strayed to the television. The show appeared to be about people on the subway. There were three people (let's call them hosts) watching the cctv footage of passengers on a subway and while I couldn't see anything of real interest in the behaviour of the passengers, these people had a lot to say about it. I was already confused and thinking I must be missing the point of the show when it got even stranger. Every now and then, for no reason that we could determine, one of the three hosts would stand up, bend over and be smacked on the behind with a rolled up newspaper by a mysterious man wearing a trench coat, sunglasses and a hat. It was truly bizarre. Then it turned out that the hosts were actually on the same train as the people they were observing. They walked out into the carriage and acted as though they were fully expecting a heroes welcome. Well, they didn't get it. People looked at them quite blankly and appeared almost as confused as we were. I'm glad we weren't the only ones! This made me wonder, did anybody get the point of this show? Or was it as strange to Koreans as it was to us? I guess we'll never know....

So, we've gone nearly a year without a television and we've missed it for sure but given what's on here, it hasn't been that hard. I'm sure Australian T.V. would probably look strange to a Korean person but surely they'd be able to make a little more sense out of it than we've been able to make here, right?? Please tell me Australian T.V. hasn't gone the way of cctv footage of sleeping train passengers.... if it has, I might not invest in a television when I get home!

Lucy

SNOW

This is my first time overseas and, as I have also never been skiing or really seen proper snow (I did see snow at the top of Mount Wellington in Tasmania, but as I was riding a mountain bike through it, it wasn't a very comfortable experience) it's fair to say I was more than a bit excited when it snowed here last Sunday.

Luke and I were out for a slow Sunday. Luke had been sick all week and it was his first time out of the house in about 4 days. We were well rugged up and planned on spending a cozy time in a cafe with a nice chai latte and a pile of Christmas cards for folks back home. It was already a lovely winter's day plan and then along came the snow! We were sitting by the window, writing Christmas cards and we looked out and noticed that it was snowing-how exciting! Well, it snowed and snowed and got heavier and heavier and before long, the streets were blanketed in white and the world was a winter wonderland.... just beautiful! This is what winter in the northern hemisphere is all about!

Unfortunately, we were without our camera so we'll have to wait until next time before we can take some pictures. We did however, have an impromptu snow-fight (Luke has far better aim than I do, I'll have to work on that!) and I'm sure we'll build a snow-man at some point too.

We've got our fingers crossed for a white Christmas but really, I think I'll be excited by snow no matter when it decides to fall!

Lucy

Summer Camp: An Exercise in Biting off More Than I Can Chew

There's no such thing as an extended period of time off without strings attached in Korea. Teachers here are forever writing reports and undergoing training to justify their holidays, the Department of Education here seems to take the view that it would be outrageous for their workers to have some time to simply relax. Good lord! If they had time to relax they might be happier at work.... and we couldn't have that, we just couldn't! So, when summer "holidays" rolled around, I wasn't surprised to discover that I would be working more weeks than I would have off. I was to conduct a three week English Camp before I could have two weeks off. And I was lucky to get two weeks off! In fact I had to write a report to satisfy the (useless) Department of Education, because I was technically only supposed to have one (totally reasonable given 20-something week long semesters.... NOT!)

I knew summer camp wasn't going to be easy, afterall, the kids wouldn't want to be there and neither would I, so I set about planning some fun things to make it a little less painful for them and for me. The first week went well with activities such as building houses out of newspaper, having a water fight and even learning the chicken dance. Of course there were problems, like the children completely misunderstanding that they needed LOTS of newspaper in order to construct a house that they could fit inside (one child brought one newspaper and then said to me "teacher, we build one house with one newspaper, right?") and the discovery that there was only one working tap outside because school turns the others off during the holidays (this made the water fight interesting). Still, I made it through the first week and I was feeling pretty good about it all. I was only two weeks away from holidays and three weeks away from our first visitors from home! It was an exciting time!

For the next two weeks of summer camp, I had my advanced class. I already knew these kids as I had been teaching them for most of the semester before. I also knew that their English was quite good and therefore thought they could handle a few slightly more elaborate activities. For the most part I was right about this, but I will never, ever be attempting papier mache with 20 children again....

I came up with the idea for making papier mache hot air balloons long before summer camp and I was convinced it would run smoothly. I was determined to have it all organised in a way that would make it impossible for it to go too wrong. The first stumbling block was the fact that I couldn't track down the proper glue. I solved this problem by deciding to make the glue out of flour and water, easy fixed, or so I thought... Day one of the papier mache project arrived and I hadn't made time during the week to lug home enough flour (mainly because it was stinking hot and I didn't fancy dragging that many kilos of flour home in it) so I arrived at school, put my things down and dashed out to find flour. Unfortunately, the nearest supermarket didn't open until 10am and with my class starting at 9:30am, that posed a problem. Luckily, I was saved by several convenience stores and after I had purchased all the flour they had in stock, I was feeling back on track again. The day got underway and the kids made a foul mess (as I knew they would) but they had fun so it was a success. The balloons were placed on a table covered in newspaper to dry over the weekend and once the kids had cleaned up (sort of) they went home. Then I looked at the floor. There were drips of glue mixture EVERYWHERE. It took me a good hour and a half to scratch the dried glue off the floor and let's just say I wasn't so pleased with my "great idea" once I'd finished.

Monday rolled around and the kids were to paint and decorate their balloons, it was supposed to be a fun, easy day. As I approached my classroom on Monday morning however, the smell that greeted me told me I was in for a nasty surprise. I walked in to find that 17 out of 20 balloons had gone mouldy.... very mouldy! The stench was awful! I flung the windows open and turned on the fans as I thought about what on earth I was going to do. I called the teacher I was working with for summer camp, Anna, and told her what was wrong. We decided to save the three non-mouldy balloons and have the students work in teams to decorate them. It was the best we could do. The kids arrived and we explained the situation. We set them to work and bless them, they really made the most of what was very nearly, a complete disaster. But, I was in for one more surprise. The day was nearly over when it became apparent that the kids were somehow of the belief that the balloons could fly! Oh dear, I think I destroyed a few dreams when I told them that they had not in fact made real hot air balloons! Still, the decorated balloons looked good and they're actually still on display in my classroom.

Now, with winter camp fast approaching (I only have to do two weeks of it this time) I'm taking the time to reflect on what I learned from summer camp and, well, I'll be keeping it simple this time, that's for sure! Nevertheless, I'm sure there will still be some stories to tell...

Lucy