Goheung Aerospace Festival (GAF)

Happy last weekend of July to everyone. While most people are hiding indoors trying to avoid the sweltering hot weather, Goheung-goonies threw their 10th annual aerospace festival on the island just to the south of well, our island. It was hot and sticky, and mostly outdoors. But it was also plenty of fun, and very Korean. There were yummy food vendors selling rice bowls, a stage set against an enormous rocket ship, misters (you know, those tubes you can hang that will spray mist to keep you cool), booths for the kids, and it was all set on the grounds of the space museum which you may remember from a previous post. Below are a few of the attractions that tickled me the most.

Kpop dance performances by the local high school students! Girls and boys alike took part in a dance competition that included all of the Goheung county schools (not that many) that allowed them to break the standard Korean dress code which frowns on shoulders, cleavage, and midriffs. The popularity of Kpop dancing abroad, the celebration of youth, and national pride, mean that for all of the tradition that is alive and well here, Korean grandmothers are surprisingly comfortable seeing their grandchildren dress scantily (boys and girls alike, remember) to dance on stage. They do dance well though. The synchronization was impressive, and you could see how much practice they had put in.

Then there was the family robot bumper cars. I mean, not actual bumper cars, since you weren't encouraged to run into each other. But, you did have little laser pointers with which to shoot at each other as parents and children co-piloted life size robots that looked a bit like unhooked carnival rides. Local high school boys in yellow shirts monitored the event to make sure no one tipped over.

There were plenty more things to see, but as I mentioned it was incredibly hot, and I was trying desperately not to sunburn, so we checked out the museum quickly before leaving. I've seen it before, and so have you if you saw that week's post, but I sat in my favorite room again for a while. This particular room shows, on dozens of flat-screens in a curved arrangement, beautiful high resolution photos taken from a Korean satellite orbiting earth. Landmarks are pointed out, and time and place are noted in a banner at the bottom.

As we left, we took a quick look at the ocean, and enjoyed the cool breeze that comes off of it before climbing back in a hot car. It was a lovely way to spend a few hours on a warm weekend.

Have a great week, everyone!
-K

Monsoon Season

Hello, all. Katy, here. There's not much new to report this week, except that the heat has taken a break, finally. Korea has weather pretty similar to where I grew up, with hot muggy summers and cold dry winters.

What I mean when I say the heat has taken a break, is more that the monsoons appear to have passed and the humidity is back down to a reasonable 60-something%, rather than that the temperatures have dropped. It's regularly around the mid 30's, which I believe are mid-90's in Fahrenheit. Like I said, though, these temperatures are pretty normal for the south and I'm sitting comfy, so long as I'm not in the direct sun. As for those monsoons though... We have a small river running behind out apartment building on any normal day. Now what I found strange when we moved here was that the river bed was grossly oversized for the amount of water the river carried. It wasn't until a typhoon last year, and the monsoon season this year (our first since arriving), that I understood just why the river needed such a deep bed. The sheer amount of rain that can drop during those weeks was impressive, often thunder-storming at least twice a day for a few hours. I was packing J extra pairs of socks so he could change into dry ones at work, and we busted a couple umbrellas too. Interestingly, I've been told that usually the monsoon season starts earlier, and lasts a little longer. It must be a dry year. I've also been told that this year and last are seeing some impressive rises in the temperatures Koreans are used to. Good to know. Unlike the southern united states, or at least the ones I grew up with, the heat doesn't fade when the sun goes down. It stays hot here overnight, dropping just a few degrees. Nonetheless, this is the time of day that J and I have started taking our hikes and going for runs. At the very least, it rarely rains at night, and the sun isn't beating down.

Students are also out of school finally for summer break, meaning that J has a lot less work to do (though he still goes into school to desk warm). He'll be teaching at two summer camps, while I continue studying for the GRE, and life will resume to it's normal hustle and bustle in about a month. We will be taking a short vacation soon, so look for a heftier post in early August. Until then, that's all I've got for this week.

Hope everyone is staying cool stateside. I hear it's been a warm one out there, too.
-K

Mokpo

Hello! K, here. It's been a very restful weekend here after a rather full week so I'll give you the bullet points you might find interesting.

First of all, we made our first trip to Mokpo, a costal city on the other side of the lower peninsula. It is, interestingly, where J came during his first teaching trip to Korea and is the place that sold him on coming back for a full time teaching position. We were only in town overnight, so it was a brief visit, but the city offered a few restaurants with a genuine western style brunch, so we were happy. The night before that, however, we learned that there is a sizable population of foreigners in Mokpo, so we met up at a western style bar for cocktails. While we often want to experience Korea when we make trips, just as often, we want to go somewhere big enough to offer a little piece of home (English road signs, western food, a friends who you don't have to remember to bow to). We did, of course, have a little fun with the unique  things that the city has to offer, and enjoyed a water show on the ocean with lights and music. They played pop songs, Disney songs, and classics while synchronizing floating water shoots to spray music and light into the air. It was pretty nifty. Fortunately, too, the show happens multiple times a night, rather late, so that the audience can beat the heat. Because, boy has it been hot! It is the rainy season here to boot, so we've got 100% humidity and 30+ degree temperatures daily, and it doesn't cool off but a few degrees at night. Needless to say, we don't go out mid-day if we don't have to. Walking outside honestly feels like walking into the turtle habitat at the zoo. You know, the one where they pump steam into a greenhouse type box to keep those tropical animals happy?

A benefit of the heat, though, is that I've got the urge to make summer-y foods. And since I haven't mastered nengmyeon (Korean ice noodles), that means deviled eggs, salads, and sweet tea when I can get my hands on actual black tea. If you've read previous posts, you might remember that we visited a green tea field and that green tea is a national beverage. Black tea, on the other hand, is almost non-existent in grocery stores. It is easy enough to find in nice coffee shops, but forget stocking it in the home. That being said, I was thrilled to find a grocery store stocking variety packs of Twinnings tea as a sort of "exotic import." So I bought up enough boxes to take the couple black tea bags out of each and make two liters of sweet tea. It was a hit! As we round the corner between our first and second year here, we are in that place where we miss tastes of home like crazy, and aren't close enough to leaving to be savoring the tastes of Korea before we go. As I write these posts I often envy the little things I imagine you all back stateside might be doing as you read along. Munching on a scone, sitting there with family watching the kids grow up, or letting the dog out in the morning.

Enjoy those moments for us till we come home. Have a great week, everyone.
-K

Drum Dance

Hello, everyone! This will be a short post this week, but I hope you'll find it interesting. For the second time since I arrived, I had the pleasure this weekend of hearing traditional Korean drums preformed.

There are many different shapes of these drums, the most common ones I've seen used being the 장고 (jango), a taller, two headed drum with an hourglass shape, and, 북 (buk) a two faced, simpler drum. You'll see both in the video below. These drums are either carried on sashes, or propped on stands depending on whether the performance is stationary, or includes some mobile dance as well. While I have never seen a troupe of these dancers or drummers that is not all-female, I had a hard time finding any evidence of drumming or drum dances being traditionally a women's sport. It is said that the different pitches created by the two heads of the hourglass jango drum, are supposed to complement each other and represent man and woman. Both drums seem to have originated from the Goryeo period of Korean history, and were used in royal ceremonies, court dances, and the like. Performers are always dressed in traditional Korean attire with some sort of headband, and lots of makeup to accentuate the facial features. 

Personally, my favorite part of the dances I have seen is the motion of the women's bodies as the play the drums. It seems they throw their entire weight into the drum, and do so in a synchronized way that is incredible to watch. Even their faces, heavily painted, move together so that at any point in time they look like a flip-book of still paintings. Often there are ribbons attached to the drum sticks to give their movement some color and softness that the rigid drumstick would not have on its own.

Enjoy!

Have a great week, everyone!
-K