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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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 Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 7:57 pm Post subject: What a beautiful Spring day |
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Blue sky and 20 C here on the southern coast.
A perfect day.
Too bad it's Monday. |
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kiwiduncan
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Hiking for six hours Saturday, biking for 5 hours yesterday. Spring is here in Yeosu. The fields and forests are starting to green up. A bit hazy today looking out the office window. I'd rather be biking. |
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poet13
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
Location: Just over there....throwing lemons.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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| It WAS a beautiful weekend. Spent most of it perched on my bike exploring rice paddies and microvillages. Stopped and watched some people using wattle and daub to rebuild part of a house. They were using a mixture of (sub)soil, cow manure, and straw. Very cool. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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The weekend was nice, but Saturday was breezy and yesterday was a bit hazy.
Today the sky is bluer and the air warmer.
A perfect spring day. The blossoms are wonderful as well. |
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bovinerebel
Joined: 27 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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With a reckless sense of arrogance I ventured out in a short sleeve shirt today . My Korean co workers were much amused . The calendar doesn't indicate that it's appropriate yet .
I can see it on their faces ...."Stupid foreigner".
I'm loving it though . Middle fingers straight up to winters failure once again . |
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kiwiduncan
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:33 pm Post subject: |
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| poet13 wrote: |
| It WAS a beautiful weekend. Spent most of it perched on my bike exploring rice paddies and microvillages. Stopped and watched some people using wattle and daub to rebuild part of a house. They were using a mixture of (sub)soil, cow manure, and straw. Very cool. |
Cool. What part of the country was that in?
I remember this time I was cycling through a really isolated and still relatively well-wooded valley in on a misty Autumn morning. The complete silence was only occasionally shattered by the call of some old owls. Then I started hearing this distant banging of drums and clanging of bells and symbols, quiet at first but louder and louder as I made my way deeper into the valley.
I eventually arrived in this tiny little village where all the houses looked like they were carved from ancient oak trees and solid rock. There were no cars or satellite dishes, no vending machines or love hotels. All the little shop sold was dusty old cans of spam and traditional snack foods that had to be broken with a hammer and soaked in water overnight before they could be eaten.
The noise was coming from a travelling troop of samulnori musicians and country clowns, dancing about with ribbons and drums, banging their clangers in celebration of the birth of the first boy in the village for over 30 years.
It was a bit hard to understand the local dialect of the old village folk, as they'd been pretty much cut off from the outside areas for the last 40 years, but I think they said "oh, what a great omen this is for you to come here on this day, our dear Migookin friend. Little Chulsu has barely taken his first breaths outside of his mother's insides and here you are, our great American brother from across distant seas, oh how we give praise to you for saving us from the red bastards to the north. But now, please, come join us in the blessing of the child and give honour to our ancestors for bringing about this great day, a day could only have come with this correct alignment of the stars and the gracious assent of the spirits that live in the water and the spirits that live in the rocks", or something like that.
So anyway, we all went down to the village spirit guardian totem pole on the edge of the village. They'd dug a small hole at the based of the pole and I was invited to place Chulsu's afterbirth, enclosed in a case made from the finest deer skin, very gently into the hole. Some prayers to the various village spirits were made and then we all went back to the tiny village meeting house where we drank makkolli and ate traditional moon cakes until midday.
Unfortunately, due to having class in the afternoon, I finally had to regretfully say good bye to my hosts and head back into town. The funny thing here was that during the morning my bicycle had fallen into the mud which, as the morning sun warmed the ground, had baked into something like solid rock. It took not just this village's ox, but also the ox from the neighbouring valley to finally free my bicycle from the ground's muddy clutch. It was a rather fortuitous happening however. For decades the people of Croaking Frog ma-ul (village) had been feuding with the people from Standing Rock village in the next valley, but in the process of freeing my bicycle the various villagers all got pissed on rice wine and old animosities were forgotten.
I would post up some pictures from this day, but as soon as I pulled my camera out the old village ladies started shaking their fists and cursing my "evil small soul stealing box". Sorry.
Last edited by kiwiduncan on Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:34 am; edited 1 time in total |
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poet13
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
Location: Just over there....throwing lemons.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:24 am Post subject: |
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| I'm in Kyeong San buk do. |
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kiwiduncan
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:42 am Post subject: |
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| poet13 wrote: |
| I'm in Kyeong San buk do. |
It's cool to hear that some of the tradional building methods are still being maintained in Korea. There are some pretty cool old houses around the Yeosu countryside but most of the old tile-roofed houses are being superceded by the flat roofed concrete structures.
Were the people fixing the house were local farmers? I've seen some magazines and websites about restoring traditional Korean mud houses but all the restorers were architectural historians, academics and so on. |
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poet13
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
Location: Just over there....throwing lemons.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:51 am Post subject: |
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| These were farm people. It looked like an old fashioned barn raising. Maybe 15 houses in the micro-village, and a lot of people pitched in to help. |
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weatherman
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:57 am Post subject: |
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| No flowers as yet here in south half of Gyonggi-do, though on a woodland walk today, did notice that the buds were out on some shrubs and soon to bloom. One even had a bit of pink showing. A some green weeds out on the sunny sides of hills too. |
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