Today is our show day for our annual talent show. Unlike last year, when my coworker Ken was the mastermind behind making it successful, this year (since Ken has left Karma) I’ve had to be more managerial and I’m not very happy with the result. I wasn’t preemptive enough with various issues and concerns – I’m worried about the timing, which is important because of the bus-shuttle schedule for the students. And I didn’t memorize my MC lines well, either. I think my students are better-prepared than I am.
Ah well.
Here is a bucolic, summery picture I took walking to work the other day. A bicycle parked in front of a senior citizens’ center in Hugok, with some flowers climbing behind.
[daily log: walking, 7 km]
Category: My Photos
Caveat: One Mountain
The place I live is called Ilsan. That’s not actually the name of the city – the city is officially called Goyang, but Goyang is more like a consolidated city-county, in US terms, as there are several urban clusters with intervening agricultural land within its boundaries.
There are two city districts (boroughs), West Ilsan (Ilsan-seo-gu) and East Ilsan (Ilsan-dong-gu) which together form the area informally known as Ilsan. The name Ilsan, itself, comes from the train station, I suspect, which is on the main northwest Gyeongui line (Gyeongui means “Capital-to-Sinuiju”, Sinuiju being the city in the northwestern corner of North Korea – so this was the main rail line between Seoul and the Chinese border, prior to Korean partition in 1945).
I remember actually spending time at the Ilsan train station in 1991, when I was garrisoned a few stops northwest of Ilsan at Camp Edwards, in the US Army. At that time, Ilsan was a village-like entity surrounding a single-room wooden structure that was labeled as Ilsan train station.
Now, of course, “Ilsan” has half a million residents – it is one of Korea’s most successful “new cities” (신도시 or planned cities).
I’m writing about this because there seems to be some doubt as to where the name “Ilsan” comes from, even among Koreans. “Il” just means “one,” so the name of the city is “One Mountain.” But there is no mountain nearby called “Ilsan” – and most of Ilsan is pretty flat, actually, although just to the north there are some ridges and peaks in the area called Jungsan and Gobong, and within Ilsan there is a very low hill called Jeongbalsan, where I walk frequently, and on the northeast flank of Jeongbalsan is the Cancer Center.
Both Gobong and Jeongbalsan seem like candidates for the “One Mountain” of the name, but I have decided that seems implausible. Neither of them are positioned quite right, relative to the train station that originally bore the name.
On the other hand, a much more distant mountain, called Simhaksan, seems a likely candidate. On Saturday, on the pedestrian footbridge next to my work, which is a few blocks from Ilsan train station, I snapped this picture.
Looking northwest along Ilsan Road, it shows clearly the single, noticeable peak of Simhaksan in the somewhat hazy distance, about 10 km down the road. I [broken link! FIXME] once went up Simhaksan, from whence you can see North Korea easily – basically it is the only mountain between Ilsan and North Korea, in that particular direction.
That’s definitely One Mountain, I thought.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Karmic Spring
It is spring, I guess. I took this picture from the pedestrian footbridge crossing 일산로 (Ilsan Road) as I was arriving at work. That’s work: “카르마어(학원)” = “Karma Language (Academy)” – the last word obscured by blossoms.
I didn’t have a lot to do today, what I did do was a bit stressful. I’m not happy with my Alpha class. I need to rethink strategies.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Spring smog over Hugok
Walking to work, the haze was terrible. Here is a view up 강선로 (gangseon-ro) heading toward Hugok neighborhood, where my work is.
This is why I hate Spring in Korea. The smog is partly natural (the Gobi Desert dust – 황사), but I suspect also partly due to the fact that we are 300 km east of Beijing, and Spring breezes prevail from the west (while in other seasons they tend to come from other directions).
Anyway, I'm sick and grumpy.
I want to sleep.
[daily log: walking, 6km]
Caveat: Pumpkin Porridge on a Sunday
I've developed a bit of a tradition (I don't always follow it, but a couple times a month) of spending my Sundays doodling my imaginary maps and architecture schemes, listening to strange music, and buying and eating take-out pumpkin porridge (단호박죽).
So that's what I did with my Sunday.
What I'm listening to right now.
[UPDATE 20180330: Video embed changed due to link-rot. The new embedded video is a different remix of the same song, and not the one in my mp3 collection. It's similar enough, but the lyrics might not match…]
Absurd Minds, "Herzlos."
Lyrics.
Unwahr ist, was nicht meinem Wahren entspricht.
Unwahr nenn ich alles, was das Wahre verbirgt
Und unwirklich, begrenzt oder einengend ist,
was Täuschung und Wahn, was vergänglich ist.
Unwahr ist Begrenzung durch Zeit und Raum.
Unwahr – die Tränen in meinem Traum.
Was unwahr ist, das BIN ICH nicht.
Denn ICH BIN das Wahre, denn ICH BIN das Ich.
So bist du also wieder einmal hier. Und dennoch hälst du an deinem Unglauben fest.
Es ist der eine, starre, unveränderbare Glaube der Welt,
dass alle Dinge in ihr geboren werden, nur um wieder zu sterben.
Und doch ist dieses Leben ein Spiel,
aber du bist zu den Glauben gekommen, dass es die einzige Wirklichkeit ist.
Die einzige Wirklichkeit jedoch, die es gab und je geben wird ist das Leben.
Meißel nun in alle Grabsteine: Hier ruht niemand.
(… herzlos.)
Das verstehst du nicht, denn du bist mein Traum, der zu mir spricht.
(Du bist herzlos.)
Was willst du von mir? Denkst du immer noch ich bin außerhalb von dir?
Das freie Denken kann nicht durch irgendwelche Grenzen gebunden werden.
Die wahre Bewegung, die allen zugrunde liegt, ist die Bewegung des Denkens.
Und die Wahrheit selbst ist Bewegung und kann niemals zum Stillstand,
zum aufhören des Suchens führen.
Deshalb liegt der wahre und wirkliche Fortschritt des Denkens
nur im umfassendsten Streben nach Erkenntnis,
die überhaupt nicht die Möglichkeit des Stillstands
in irgendwelchen Formen der Erkenntnis anerkennt.
Meißel nun in alle Grabsteine: Hier ruht niemand.
(… herzlos.)
[daily log: walking, 1km ; falling down, 1 m]
Caveat: Another fine threemonthly visit to room 12
I came to the hospital to get my heavy metals injection and check up.
Caveat: The Machines Have Arrived
As I was leaving for work today, I happened to walk past an open closet area near the lobby of my apartment building, and my eyes were drawn by a bunch of blinking lights – like Christmas tree lights. I thought, "why are they keeping a Christmas tree lit up in that storage room, but then I realized it was a bunch of blinking ethernet connectors. This, apparently, was my building's "switch room." I had a momentary thought, as I realized the vast majority of apartment buildings in Korea must have something like this, and the vast majority of Koreans live in apartment buildings. That's a lot of internet infrastructure. Staggering, even.
Meanwhile, a woman got attacked by a robotic vacuum cleaner. Actually, I suspect there may be some missing information, and, this being South Korea, I suspect that missing information involves alcohol.
The machines have arrived.
I had a long day at work.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: There will be words and fault lines to fill the hours of the days
Walking to work in the falling snow, I saw a sign that announced that Goyangites (is that what people who live in Goyang can be called?) should clean the snow. I was struck by the fact that I just kind of “read” the sign without really working at sorting it out, just overlooking the words I didn’t know. That felt like a kind of banal linguistic milestone. This picture utterly fails to show the sign – I thought it would when I took it, but I was wrong. It shows the snow, though.
What I’m listening to right now.
Son Volt, “Dust of Daylight.”
Lyrics.
Hand in hand there are angels that are holding warning signs
Show you the way like teachers and prophets of doom
Everyone has their idols, there will always be a story to tell
The search goes on, a balance in the final say
When you’re lost in folly, out of luck in the worst way
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
The dust of daylight holds you down and makes you wait
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
There will be words and fault lines to fill the hours of the days
There are ways to buy trouble but a bail bondsman finds friends in jail
Time to leave now, time to pack up all that you’re leaving
Your contest’s here but you’ll be judged just the same
When you’re lost in folly, out of luck in the worst way
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
The dust of daylight holds you down and makes you wait
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Korea Like Clockwork
Korea’s weather is often predictable by the calendar. Like clockwork. December first: first snow… the view out my window just now.
Caveat: Slowly into Autumn
Walking to work the other day, the colors on the trees seemed striking. The photo failed to really capture it.
What I'm listening to right now.
Bob Dylan, "Idiot Wind."
[Update 2018-03-13: video link replaced due to link-rot on previous link]
Fall is Bob Dylan season, since the 1980s.
Lyrics.
Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky
People see me all the time and they just can’t remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me better than that
Sweet lady
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven’t known peace and quiet for so long I can’t remember what it’s like
There’s a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin’ out of a boxcar door
You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars
After losin’ every battle
I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin’ me see stars
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies
One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes
Blood on your saddle
Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart
Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom
I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can’t remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes
don’t look into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the
building burned
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the
springtime turned
Slowly into Autumn
Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin’ I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory
And all your ragin’ glory
I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me
You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above
And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We’re idiots, babe
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Mysterious Man
My student Jack did a poor job at homework, once again. I was berating him, mildly, in the typical way expected of teachers in Korea: "Why are you like that, Jack? These other students do well."
He shook his head, as if with world-weary sadness. "I am a mysterious man," he answered, and paused, looking up at me earnestly. Then he added, "… to myself." The joke was impressive for its timing, but more so when keeping in mind he is non-native-speaking 12 year old.
Unrelatedly, the fall is most definitely here. The trees are changing in the pedestrian plazas on the path to work.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Sedes koreanis
Today was a holiday, but naesin is over so I have to work tomorrow. I walked a long route up to Gobong, and ended up in a very rural area behind the hill (the north side of it) that I had never seen before. There were some farms.
In the forest, I also saw the ubiquitous Korean fauna, Sedes koreanis.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;][daily log: walking, 10 km]
Caveat: rain water is feeled kindly
I might as well do another test of this posting-via-email problem. This is the trashcan nearest my desk at work. I just recently happened to notice that it features profoundly fractured English. It is so truly horrible that it becomes a kind of poetry.
The rain day is a beautiful.
Rain water is feeled kindly.
The umbrella is
unfolded toward sky.
If it is stopped,
rainbow will raise out of cloud.
[daily log: walking 5 km]
Caveat: Lego Monkey Got Lego Banana
I have a largish lego alligator at work. I have blogged about it before. Today I was at the Homeplus store and I saw a similarly-scaled lego monkey. Now, my regular plastic alligators have an ongoing relationship with my stuffed monkeys (this makes for engaging EFL conversation with 10 year olds, trust me). So, the idea of getting a companion legomonkey for my legogator was impossible to resist. I bought and assembled the lego monkey. He was furnished with a legotoucan and a legobanana. Go figure.
Caveat: Tromp
I went on a walk today, but rather than tromp around my haunts in Ilsan I took the subway to Seoul and spent money at a bookstore too. I bought a fat history book about postwar Korea to maybe read.
Downtown Seoul was crowded, some kind of special event, I’m not sure what. I took a picture that showed the old-new contrast well I think.
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]
Caveat: Already Afalling
Yesterday when I met Peter to go to that movie, we walked around afterward, some, with an intention to go up Namsan, but we missed the uphill path somehow. Anyway, I was struck noticing there were already yellow leaves on some trees.
Today I did not do hardly anything. I tried to study Korean but got frustrated and discouraged.
[daily log: walking, not really]
Caveat: A Proliferation of Plants
A while back I wrote about how I had bought some dirt (potting soil) because my gift plant from when I was in the hospital last year looked like it needed some new digs. I said that having bought more dirt than I needed for that plant might impell me to buy another plant. It did. I bought two more, but then I felt I needed more dirt, so I bought some. Once again having left over dirt, I bought more plants. This is what one calls a feedback loop. So far, the plants seem to be surviving.
[daily log: walking, 2 km]
Caveat: Even Rainbowier Than Before
Heh.
Caveat: rainbow at dusk
The view from my window.
I tried to take a picture with my phone. It is almost invisible, but you can just make it out, right above the juncture of the two buildings, looking southeast from my apartment window. Well, if you cannot see it, take my word. . . there was a rainbow.
The skies are often interesting in high summer, here.
Caveat: 굽은 나무가 선산을 지킨다
This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.
굽은 나무가 선산을 지킨다
gup·eun na·mu·ga seon·san·eul ji·kin·da
be-crooked-PASTPART tree-SUBJ ancestors-grave-OBJ guard-PRES
A crooked tree guards the ancestors’ grave.
Even a tree that is crooked has a job to do – it bends near the ancestors’ grave and protects it. Something viewed as useless turns out to have a use after all. (Image: a bent tree found online, guarding someone’s ancestors’ graves).
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Mouse Torture
I have a stuffed toy mouse whose name is “Lunch” – because his job is to be eaten by the Alligator (who in his current incarnation is named “David”).
Lunch sometimes comes to my elementary classes because the kids like to play with him. Yesterday, my Betelgeuse반 kids (first and second graders) started torturing Lunch. The placed him on the floor under the end of a chair-leg. I caught them and took a picture with my phone. They were proud of their mistreatment of the mouse – as kids can be cruel.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Half The Man
I weighed myself this morning and the number was 69 kg. That’s 152 pounds. I have not weighed this little since my early 20’s.
As I’ve commented before, as a person with a history of both anorexia and obesity (at different times), I cannot deny that I probably have somewhat chosen to go ahead and just let this eating problem turn into a permanent weight loss program. Still… I think there is coming a time when I will have to confront this situation more rationally.
I joked with someone last week that eating, nowadays, is a chore on par with cleaning my toilet. To test this, later this morning after eating a breakfast of ramen noodles (with half the spice removed to make it more bland), I knelt down and cleaned my toilet right then, thinking of this comment specifically.
Sure enough, the toilet was less unpleasant.
So there you have it.
The Jains of India have a tradition called santhara. It is a sort of slow-motion suicide-by-self-starvation – sometimes drawn out up to 12 years. The practice is in line with other ascetic practices of the Jains, whose historical predecessors were likely the ascetics referenced by Gautama Siddhartha when it is said he tried asceticism and failed it, before he ennunciated his “middle path” which became Buddhism. This type of asceticism has a sort of fatal appeal to me, and I feel as if my post-cancer-imposed eating regimen is evolving into a kind of unintentional santhara.
In any event, my peak weight of about 265 pounds isn’t quite cut in half literally, but I’m feeling that way. Half the man I used to be…
For reference, here are two interesting pictures from my archive. One picture is from near my peak weight, from February, 2005, with my friend Bob (he’s on the left) in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The second picture is from 1986, when I was 21, near my current weight, I think (or a little less even, maybe 140 pounds). It is a scan of a picture (it was in poor condition, so sorry for the poor scan) that was taken near La Libertad, El Salvador, in September, 1986.
Caveat: My favorite tree
They are not native to Ilsan, but they are planted everywhere: Chinese "dawn redwoods." They create their own little eco-niche wherever they cluster. They are both exotic yet familiar to me, given my own upbringing amid the the redwoods of northern California. At left is a picture taken along a path to and from work among the high-rise apartment blocks.
[daily log: walking, 3km]
Caveat: Remains of Spring
I had been thinking, some days ago, how dry this spring seemed to me. Promptly, it began to rain later that day, and we have been having this sort of on-and-off drizzle ever since. Very Humboldty.
I was at the hospital for a portion of the morning. I didn't get a diagnosis – I have to go back and see the diagnostician tomorrow – they were not as efficient with their scheduling as they normally are, and there was some conflict between scheduling the scans and reviewing the results. So I'll get to see Dr Jo tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, I get to experience suspense.
Oh, and teach 6 classes today. Really… the most exhausting part of the scans is that I have to fast (not eat) for the half-day beforehand, which leaves me feeling ennervated. The contrast medium injection is uncomfortable and a little bit freaky as you experience it entering your system, but I'm pretty used to it and I can recover quickly from that particular aspect.
I slept extra hours over the weekend so that I would have some reserve of energy to plow into a full-time week of work (first full week back to the full-time schedule with the end of the middle-school 내신 [exam prep]) front-ended by this hospital visit, but I felt really tired anyway. Oh well.
Walking from the hospital to work today, straight from my appointments, I saw a tree that had discarded the vast majority of its blossoms due to the rain, I guess. These are the remains of spring. The picture doesn't really capture it very effectively – it's washed out and blandish.
[daily log: walking, 7 km]
Caveat: Same Scene Different Season
This isn't a very good picture. I'm posting it mostly because I took a picture of exactly the same thing last fall with fall-colored leaves, and again in the winter with snow (I'm too lazy to search for where these were posted, at the moment, but they were posted to this here blog thingy).
So this is the spring version of these weird kimchi-pots sculptures next to Balsan Middle School (발산중학교 – which is attended by many of the students that I teach). I walk past this almost every day.
My mini-vacation-like-experience for April has ended – I'm back to my massive teaching load, on the special post-exam-prep teaching schedule with middle-schoolers at the moment. I worked today and have decided to avoid the internet this weekend. So after this post I'm off until Monday. I'll let you know how that goes.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Caveat: Decorative Excesses
On Thursday I had to run out of my Newton2-반 classroom for a few minutes to fetch some materials from the staff room, and when I returned I found the whiteboard thoroughly decorated. I took a picture of the three girls guilty of decorative excess. I really like that class. They are smart, engaged, spirited, and interested.
Note that some of the drawings are by me – I decorate the board as a class progresses. But others are imitations (some quite good) of my “style.” And all the names and hearts are, of course, solely the work of the girls in question.
Meanwhile, spring has sprung. Sproing.
I guess the trees, too, have their own version of decorative excess. I took this picture walking to work this morning. It was a blustery, windy but clearly springlike day.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Including the Kitchen Sink
I like to vary my path walking to and from work. Today I passed through a small fragment of a park-like area that adjoins the block of apartments directly south of my work – near the back entrance of Munhwa elementary school – and there is a an old man there that keeps one of the ubiquitous "recyclying carts." He's very neat and organized. There was no one to be seen nearby, but he had strapped a kitchen sink to his cart. It made me think of the English aphorism about the kitchen sink.
Now I've seen everything – including the kitchen sink.
Here, at right, are some blind alligators I drew for my debate 특강.
When I got home this afternoon, I crashed, and slept. I hate that I do that on Saturdays, as it always discombobulates my schedule, since afternoons are my normal working time. I can't help it – I was (and remain) exhausted. I put in my longest week (in number of hours, number of classes, amount of stress) of any week since my hospital stay last summer.
I will sleep a lot.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: Gathering Procrastination
After all that snow falling yesterday, when I looked out my window at dawn this morning I saw only a little snow.
I did very little today. I didn't correct those things for work, either. Now I will have a stressful day tomorrow getting caught up.
[daily log: walking, 1.5 km]
Caveat: Farewell 2.0
Two months ago I bid [broken link! FIXME] farewell to my friend Peter, who was returning to the US. I perhaps neglected to mention in this here blog thingy that Peter came back to Korea, around 3 weeks later, because he just couldn't resist enrolling in an intensive Korean language class for January. So he was here through January, but I didn't see him much because, of course, an intensive Korean language is intense, and he didn't have much free time. And I was working.
Yesterday, therefore, I bid farewell to him once again. This time, he may be away longer – but who knows.
We had lunch at a Japanese place in Sinchon. I was brave and had tonkatsu, and it went OK. Here is a picture, although I feel I look weird in this picture – my face and neck look swollen.
After lunch I was heading home on the subway but decided on the spur of the moment to stop at the bookstore at Gwanghwamun, having not been there in a long time. I bought some Korean poetry in translation and yet another "teach yourself Korean" book for my neverending collection. Walking out of the bookstore I was struck by the contrast of the statue of Admiral Lee and the highrises and crane behind him, so I took a picture (right).
Today is Seollal – Lunar New Year. Everything will be closed, and many Koreans have gone to greet the new year with their ancestors.
[daily log (11 pm): daily nothing]
caveat: summertime flashback
at hospital for scheduled ct scan etc. checking to see if the telomeres are behaving. my hand: replumbed, after 3 months respite, for contrast media. see you later.
Caveat: Reunion
Ken and I had a sort of reunion luncheon earlier today with some of our former students. It was fun for me because three of the eight students had actually been my students way back in 2009 when I taught at LBridge.
The girl crouched down low to the right of Ken is [broken link! FIXME] Christina, who was a great student from LBridge. And on the far right are [broken link! FIXME] Shaina and Jenny. They are all starting high school (10th grade) this year – next month. It's at moments like that when I realize how long I've been here.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Caveat: 먹기는 아귀같이 먹고 일은 장승같이 한다
This is an aphorism from my aphorism book.
먹기는 아귀같이 먹고 일은 장승같이 한다
meok·gi·neun a·gwi·kat·i meok·go il·eun jang·seung·kat·i han·da
eat-CONCESSV starving-ghost-like eat-CONJ work-SUBJ devil-post-like do-PRES
[He] eats like a starving ghost but works like a devil post.
The starving ghost here is probably those of the Buddhist cosmology, although I’ve developed the impression that there was a pre-Buddhist tradition of starving ghosts in Korea that adapted itself to the Buddhist concept (and vice versa, syncretistically). The “devil post” is the thing called 장승 [jang-seung], the pre-Buddhist shamanistic totems Koreans place outside of villages to ward off bad spirits.
The concept is a man who eats voraciously but works lazily – because clearly a starving ghost eats a great deal, but a devil post doesn’t do much but just stand there and look scary, in the off chance an evil spirit happens along that needs to be scared off.
I know a lot of people like this.
Here is a picture of some hard-working jangseung that I took in 2010.
[daily log (11 pm): walking, 6 km]
Caveat: Year of the Blue Horse
I went walking around Seoul today with my friend Mary, who was visiting up from Daegu where she's been living.
We went to a neighborhood I'd never visited before, east-northeast of downtown, near the Seoul National University Medical Center and various universities, including the ancient Sungkyunkwan U and Korean Catholic U. There is a park called Naksan on a small mountain by the same name, where a fragment of the old Seoul city wall still exists (or rather, has been restored). Near that park there is a neighborhood called Ihwa (not sure if the name is historically related to the eponymous university spelled Ewha now located on the west side near Yonsei), and in that neighborhood is a thing called the mural park. There are murals on many of the neighborhood's modest homes' walls. So we walked around the hilly area taking pictures, went to the top the mountain, and descended into the more gentrified and bohemian area near the medical center and the Catholic U.
It was a not-quite-freezing but extremely windy day. Here are a few pictures from the murals and the old city wall – I might post more later. First of all: me as [broken link! FIXME] 좀비천사.
One street we went up does a loop-the-loop on itself, climbing the hillside amid dense low-rise housing.
We saw a bucket-list wall.
The north side of the mountain had snow and a nice view of Bukhansan.
We happened to notice an interesting house with a wall around it and a plaque indicated that it was Syngman Rhee's (이승만 = postwar South Korea's first president) private residence in Seoul, and still occupied by descendants. We were trying to take pictures but the area normally open to the public was closed due to the holiday, and so I was holding my phone over the fence taking a picture.
Here are the pictures I took.
An elderly woman nearby gestured us over, and in the first moment I thought she'd tell us not to be taking pictures.
Instead, she invited us up to her rooftop, through her house, to take pictures from there. We did. Then she offered us persimmon-ginger tea. Then she offered us cakes and snacks and coffee and we talked for a long time, reminiscing about her career as a college lecturer and high school principal. It was impressive, and we mostly held our own with my bad Korean and her very rusty English. She was very kind.
Here she is showing us her roof.
Here is a picture taken from there.
Here is her foyer – it was a very posh, western-style residence, to be expected across the street from the historic Rhee family compound.
The calligraphy says "樂琴書" (낙금서 = [the] joy [of] harp [and] calligraphy – I guess).
The title for this post comes from the woman's insistence that this New Year's Day wasn't just the beginning of the Year of the Horse (which is clearly established) but specifically a Year of the Blue Horse – something I'll have to research further.
We stayed over an hour, and finally we left, walked some more, and then my energy gave out on Mary and we headed back to a subway station.
I'm feeling like I have cold symptoms, coming on. Or something. But it was an interesting and pleasant day.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]