My New Home: Hanseo University

I write this now as my latest period of unemployment is coming to an end. I will soon be starting a new position as "English Professor" at Hanseo Univeristy. I use quotes because it doesn't seen really appropriate to call me a professor.

But, it is a really nice job to have. I signed my contract recently for 30 million a year. Thats right, 30 million, no need to ask what currency that is in. That salary is for two semesters of teaching 8 or 9 90 minute lectures plus four office hours per week. Plus, I get one day off per week for "research," and months of vacation per year.

One thing I love about this job is the location of the university. Hanseo University can be translated as "Korea West" University, and it is nestled nicely in the middle of some mountains in the Western part of Korea. It's not really located in a city, but a nearby town called Haemi is about 5km away; and Seosan (my previous city) is about a 20 minute drive from the campus. It seems to be a great location if you really love hiking, though not such a great location if you like partying.

I'll get to some pictures, anyway:

the gate to Hanseo campus

A nice mountain next to the campus area

this is the view from the top of the mountain in the previous picture

the architecture building, where my office will be located

a pagoda housing a bell located at the top of the campus

a sculpture garden

a nice woman playing cello, in the woods

a horse

The campus is really littered with sculptures. I heard that all of the sculptures located on campus are by former students, thought I haven't confirmed it. There are a few really nice ones, but there are a LOT there that range from mediocre to eyesore territory. Oh well.

I hoped you like the tour of campus, I'll take more pictures as spring comes and keep everyone updated!

The Great Korean Road Trip of 2012: Part 3

And now the grand conclusion of my Chinese New Year road trip around Korea. Well, it's not really that grand because we just kind of screwed around and drove around in some mountains for the rest of the time. Here it is, anyway...

After leaving the crazy crab vilage, we continued North. We wanted to make it to a Northern city, and found one called Samcheok right around the time we got sick of driving. We spent the rest of that night looking for a chicken barbecue place, but didn't find one. Instead, we had some pork barbecue and some whisky. We also got the bright idea to ask people "how does a cat speak" in Korean. The joke for the rest of the night was to ask this, and it actually worked. The best moment was when we were in a bar. The three of us had a rock scissor paper contest to find out which one of us would have to approach a table of 7 Korean girls and ask them the question. I eventually lost, but it worked out well. All 7 girls laughed and meowed. Some of them made a little cat scratch motion with their hands.

After getting some rest, we were on the road again. We were driving out of town, and near the edge we found a nice place to stop near bridge. This allowed for some planking:

And there was this great little bay. We ventured down and had to cross trough this bamboo forest to get to the rock ledges in the picture below:

The bamboo forest:

After setting out again, we found ourselves in some pretty serious mountain country. We found this city called Taebaek, which was a small Korean city, but spread through some mountains. It was actually a really great drive, and for me it was a highlight of the trip.

We made a stop at a little convenience store at the top of a mountain. Here is the view of the mountain road:

The place had these nice little outdoor rooms, which I assume were for drinking in the Summer time:

Driving out on the mountain roads, I developed my skill for taking photos through the windshield while driving. Here's one picture:

At one stop, these little dogs came and started barking at us. I got a good look at this one little dog who had a face that looked like a horror movie monster. Does anyone know what kind of dog this is?

Another driving shot of this rock tunnel we drove through:

We made one last stop before heading to Seoul, near this altitude sign:

I don't have any pictures from our night out near Seoul. We had a nice time hanging out near Nick Slater's school in Yongin. That was our last night before the other guys would have to work, so we left Nick in Yongin and headed back to the Seosan area. Here we are driving into the sunset:

All in all, it was a great trip and we covered a lot of Korea. Tracing it back full circle, the trip looked like this:

We didn't make it as far North as I would have liked, but we definitely had a great time. I guess a Northern trip can be saved for a later blog post...

The Great Korean Road Trip of 2012: Part 2

Hello, and welcome again to the Great Korean Road Trip of 2012. We left off with leaving Mokpo, picking up some strawberries, and heading to Busan. Let's continue there, shall we.

We arrived in Busan at around 9 p.m., with not much for maps and a slight idea where we wanted to go. We entered the city from the West side, and needed to head all the way to the South East side, where the beaches are. This took around an hour and a half due to getting lost a few times. But we arrived to find this at Gangwali Beach, so it was OK:

Bridge at Gangwali Beach

Unfortunately, the restaurant I wanted to go to was closed by that time, and the other good looking ones were closed. We settled on some crappy night club type thing that served us some poorly cooked pizza and some overbreaded chicken. We ate it.

The area of Gangwali seemed a bit dead, so we meandered over to the more famous beach, called Haeundae. I don't have any nighttime photos of the place, but we had a good time there. The one photo I do have is from the enchanting fake window plastered to the wall in the hallway of our hotel:

We got some good rest that night, and woke eariler the next day to get some decent brunch and look around. This time, the restaurant I wanted, Breeze Burns Burger, was open. They had the best chicken wings there that I have had in a long time, and excellent hamburgers, too. Along the way I found this place:

"Someone should go to prison for letting me drink this!"

We loitered around Haeundae Beach for a while, knowing that we would have to spend a long time in the car that afternoon. Here are a few photos from our time there:

"No smoking!"

Haeundae Beach

Some crazy patriotic Korean kite flying man

We cruised out of town that afternoon, without even stopping at a gas station before leaving. There was about an eigth of a tank left, so I figured we could make some time before filling up again. I was wrong. That was a huge mistake. Somehow we ended up on a highway that was a huge black hole for LPG (propane) stations. We had to finally stop in a city called Ulsan and ask directions to the nearest station, with gas lights blinking and the needle at rock bottom. Finally, we found one, what a sweet relief:

the sleek Kia Carens, strawberries on the dash

On the side of the road in Ulsan was this crazy giant temple structure, so I pulled over. I never truly found out what it is because I never asked, but I gathered that it was some kind of Buddhism school where young monks are raised. It was a nice place to stop for a few minutes anyway:

From there, we set on the road again due North. We wanted to make it most of the way to North Korea by nightfall, but we weren't so lucky. We started looking for potential stops for the night, and ended up in this crazy crab city. We didn't stop, but they made it completely obvious that you can't escape eating seafood and crabs while there. Much of the architecture was crab-based; restaurants, bridges, bus stops. Driving by the restaurants resulted in people yelling at us to park and get some crabs. We somehow resisted.

There was a nice stopping place near the city, with a temple set up on a hill. We were attracted by the multi colored lights:

It turned out to be a fake tree

The temple, decorated for a New Year celebration

We made another pit stop at a convenience store to look for some snacks and beverages. Timmy found a hat:

I found a nice sandwich with pictures of pomegranites and beans on the packaging. The best I could tell is that it was sweet red beans and pumpkin inside. Surprisingly, it didn't taste that bad:

I later found out that city was called Yeongdeok (pronounced like 'young duck'), the crab capitol of Korea. Pretty much every city in Korea is the capitol for something, like how Seosan is the garlic capitol. Yeongdeok just took it way too far.

It was freezing cold there, so we couldn't do much walking around. We got back in the car and headed North once more...

To recap the trip so far: we started in Seosan, headed South to Mokpo, East to Busan, North to Ulsan and Yeongdeok. That path is about half way around the country. Nice!

Tune in next time for the conclusion of the trip!

The Great Korean Road Trip 2012: Part 1

Hi everyone. I'm proud to announce my return to blogging...at least for a while. I'm currently jobless and living in Korea, at least until my university job starts at the end of February. Because of this, I plan to work through some of my back-logged blogs and get them up.

This post is the start of my road trip that I took over the Chinese New Year vacation, which gave us Monday and Tuesday of last week off. The Friday that the road trip was starting was also my move out date from my apartment, so it also marked the date that I became homeless and jobless. Homeless, except for my girlfriend's apartment which is currently vacant while she visits her family in China. Anyway, on Friday I moved all of my stuff out of my apartment, loaded it into the car, loaded it into my girlfriend's apartment, dropped the dog off at the vet, prepared some documents for my new job, sent them, and I was ready to go.

We set out with no real itinerary. All we had before leaving was an idea to search for some of the excitement and uniqueness to be found in the hidden corners of Korea. See, all cities of Korea are basically the same. It's high-rise apartments surrounded by the same convenience stores, shops, and restaurants everywhere. My goal was to see if there is anything different out there.

It began on Friday night at around 10:00, when my friend Nick Slater arrived in Seosan, my city. He brought with him a present, a tool we could find valuable later on down the road:

The Road Toilet

I'll kill the suspense now, and say that none of us used one in the car. It was a nice thought, though. Once Slater arrived, we jumped in my sleek Kia Carens liquid propane gas running micro-van and went to pick up my other friend, Timmy. He lives in a small neighboring town called Daesan. I didn't realized it, but it's about 25 minutes away going North on our local peninsula. So we had to backtrack after picking him up, and finally headed South.

The highway we took, interchange 15 took us to the Southwest corner of Korea, and we arrived in Mokpo at 3:00 a.m. Mokpo is a prominent seaport in Korea. They offer ferries going to many of the small islands off the coast, so it seemed like a promising destination:

Road Trip Map

After arriving in an area with a few convenience stores and motels, we settled in at a 7-11 for a few beers. We drank outside the store in freezing temperatures, and a 40 something Korean man stopped by. He joined us for a few drinks, speaking only Korean and eventually offering us processed cheese singles as a snack. We couldn't understand most of what he said. I tried to ask him what we could do to have fun in Mokpo in broken Korean, and as far as I could tell he said the best way is to drink with your friends. Mission accomplished?

We crashed in a charming love motel room. We were a few floors up, but luckily the room had the "simplicity descending life line". It looked to be slightly tangled and out of order, but I'm sure it would work in a fire related emergency.

"simplicity descending life line"

That wasn't even the best, or funniest part of the room. When one goes to the use the bathroom sink to brush one's teeth, there is a tendency to get one's feet soaked. Why? Some genious plumber didn't quite connect the drain pipe, or line them up for that matter:

nice plumbing

We fell asleep quickly, and didn't wake up until 1:30 the next day, Saturday. Since all of the ferries leave earlier than that, we were forced to get a quick lunch and then look around for other tourist attractions.

There was a nice group of museum type buildings built along a highway on the coast. We stopped by the Mokpo Natural History Museum because of some nice animal statues:

Mokpo Natural History Museum

There were actually some pretty cool fake animals out on the lawn. I liked this 'artsy' photo I took from inside a fake dinosaur skeleton's mouth:

Mokpo Dinosaur Mouth

Looking at the signs, there were many hilarious misspellings, which I love so much. There was one where the museum was called the "Nateral History Museum," and my favorite:

"Where is the lacal history building?"

Here is me next to one of my favorites, the Gorilla:

And the three of us riding a tiger, as photographed by a nice Korean man who had his kids with him at the Museum:

Since the Natural History Museum cost money, we stopped across the street at the Mokpo Maritime Museum. This one had some nice boats out on the front lawn. There was a really great shrimping boat, and a few boats used by people to sneak into Korea. The people smuggling boat from China was all decrepit, but the one from Vietnam was in top shape:

Vietnamese People Smuggling Boat

We also checked out the children's exhibit, where you can drive boat simulators and make nice pictures of fish. Another exibit we saw was about a shipwreck that happened near Mokpo.

Satisfied with the boating exhibits, we set out on the road again towards Busan. We took smaller highways for a while. While being much slower, they do offer advantages such as ladies selling strawberries on the side of the road:

Road Side Strawberry Lady

I actually found the idea of her job to be quite terrifying. There were all of these stands by the side of the highway, but not really adequate room to slow down and stop. People are whizzing by the whole time at around 60 mph. Fortunately, the strawberries were amazing.

More next time from Busan!

The Korea Files: FREEDOM

So I know it has been really slow with posts on here! I have a few things to post about, but lately I have been very short on free time. I blame most of it on the fact that I have been locked in a school for 9 hours a day.

That is until today. Earlier this week I informed my boss that I found a new job, and that February 17th would be my last day. She wasn't completely with that plan, and she told me she would release me from the contract when a new teacher arrives. I think that she was informed she wouldn't get a new teacher soon enough, and she informed me today that it is my last day at the school. I would pay back the plane ticket with whats due on my current salary, pay my bills, and move out by tomorrow. So I said sweet, this is the best news I have heard in a long time.

I am finally moving to greener pastures. At least they appear to be greener pastures, because you can never know for sure. But my old job was 45 hours a week being paid for 30, piles and piles of work, and almost constant nagging from a woman with the most ear shredding, shrill voice I have ever heard.

And the new pasture, Hanseo Univeristy. It's located about 20 minutes driving from my current city, surrounded by mountains. The job includes teaching 9 to 10 90 minute classes per week, and one extra day off per week for "research." I would say that is an improvement, but considering my last job, it's not even in the same galaxy. Not even the same universe. Not even the same multiverse. Wait, that doesn't really make sense. Anyway, my new job starts on February 20th, so I have a little bit of time off.

Since I don't like to put up posts without pictures, here is a picture of my newest interest, origami. I have almost perfected the crane, so I have been challenging myself by making them smaller and smaller.