Hwaseong Fortress

Last weekend we went to Suwon to see Korea's most celebrated fortress, Hwaseong. It was a three hour train ride from Daegu on the slow train—there was no KTX route available. When we got there, we were surprised to see a pretty large city. There was a model of the fortress in the train station. It's really a long wall that encircles the center of the city. It was King Jeonjo's construction; he planned to move the capital from Seoul to Suwon following the Japanese invasion of Korea (I suppose I should say a Japanese invasion of Korea; there were several throughout history). As you can see, Jeonjo's plans were never brought to fruition. Nonetheless, there is an impressive structure at Suwon that attracts plenty of tourists, though it is mainly reconstructed after being demolished during the Korean War.

We started out at Hwaseong Haengung, which was the palace. It looked very similar to all of the other palaces we have seen, and we breezed through until we came to the tableaux. Several rooms were set up to look like they had during the Jeoson Dynasty, complete with mannequins going through the motions of daily life. This was a nice touch, bringing the history to life. We also saw an interactive display of rice chests. King Jeonjo's grandfather knew his son Sado was crazy and unfit to rule, so he locked the guy in a rice chest for days, where he died. Along with this story, there were rice chests lining the walls, and visitors were encouraged to get into the rice chests to experience Sado's fear. We passed.

The wall was up a mountain, to Bobby's chagrin. We walked along the wall and saw various guard posts, a pavilion, and a giant bell that you could ring for 1,000 won. Korean men lined up to ring the bell.

When we bought our tickets back home, there was a KTX route.  Go figure!

The wooden rice chest experience

can't remember...possibly an official studying?

a eunuch

a maid

Bobby's favorite weapon: the Hwa-cha.  Put a bunch of rockets in the holes, aim, fire!

neat looking lampposts

a supply gate in the wall

the giant bell

me at the overlook

the pavilion on the overlook

a lower part of the wall.  It was Sunday, so there were tons of Koreans strolling around.

the South Gate

There are no recliners in Korea

I will often hear someone complain about a lack of services in Korea. When Americans complain that there are no groceries on Mondays, there's no clothing for 2 year olds, or there are no pediatric dentists, it sounds ridiculous to me. There are four million people living in this city, and somehow they eat, get dental care, and clothe their children even when they don't have access to our on-post services. They don't live in huts and use witch doctors; this is a civilized country with top notch services. I know trying to communicate with sign language and a Korean dictionary can get tiring, but come on. Quit being so xenophobic, I think, and go off base once and awhile! So when Bobby's recliner broke and we were not happy with the single recliner they were selling at the PX, we went down to furniture alley to see what Korea had to offer. Furniture alley, as is typical in Korea, consists of several different furniture stores selling the same chairs and sofas. We discovered very quickly that Korean furniture is not for us. The chairs and sofas are rather hard. They are the kind of furniture you find in a doctor's waiting room, and not at all something I can stretch out on with a book. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since we knew that about Korean beds. Koreans have been sitting on the floor for centuries, so I guess they like their furniture to be hard. There are also absolutely no recliners.

So, ironically, we are finally financially able to replace our beat up, stained old furniture and there are almost no options for us. Bobby got out the electric drill and some coat hangers and patched his chair back together. We will now wait for the PX to bring in a new recliner, one that we will hopefully like. At least we have access to the PX!

Snowy Valentine's Day

This past Valentine's Day was my most memorable. Bobby and I have never really celebrated the holiday, aside from our yearly tradition of buying discounted candy the day afterwards. We didn't even do that this year, since Bobby is trying to lose some weight. (Trying to lose weight is not a phrase loaded with positive reinforcement. I'd say Bobby has lost some weight after some dieting and exercise, but he wants to lose some more).

When I got up that morning and headed for the kitchen, I was completely surprised to see a panorama of snowflakes. Snow was not on the forecast. I am beginning to think that snow is so spontaneous and enigmatic that meteorologists often can't predict it. It's just too damn magical. It snowed through the workday, and I begrudgingly scraped my car to go to a meeting, and again when I left. A lot of Koreans did not go to work, as was evident when we went home early. There were about eight inches of powdery snow on the ground, and Koreans were everywhere trying to scrape it from the roads and sidewalks. Some were using shovels, some just had long boards. There was a festival atmosphere, with some young people taking breaks to slide down the hill on shovels. I guess over here scraping side roads is a neighborhood job. Bobby and I furtively watched from our house, feeling too much like outsiders to join. I eventually took the dog to the mountain, but only after I left Bobby with the camera and ordered him to take some pictures. When I got to our untouched path, I was very sorry I didn't have the camera. Deep, powdery snow in the woods has a beauty that I can't describe. Maya was ecstatic, and bounded through the snow like a maniac, pausing to take mouthfuls of it. I marched along behind, chanting, “whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though, he will not see me stopping here, to watch his woods fill up with snow.” Occasionally I slipped and fell, landing in a deep cushion of snow and laughing.

As a working woman who no longer lives in the south, snow has lost some of the magic it once had. Having to slide to work, trudge through half melted sludge, scrape my windshield, and get my feet wet makes snow my frenenemy. It's good to know that deep, powdery snow still holds the appeal to me that it did in my childhood.

Our friendly neighborhood mountain

Diligently scraping the street and parking lot

My first foray into ebook land

I have been working with books for about ten years now.  When I started, people were screaming about how ebooks were going to make paper books obsolete.  I remember my not-so-tech-savvy manager asking me if I could find textbooks on ipod back when the ipod only played music.  We had dusty ereaders at my old library system that nobody checked out.  For a long time, I felt like people were getting needlessly worked up over technology that was no match for an ink-and-paper book.

Ten years later,  think we have finally reached the tipping point where ebooks will surpass paper books.  Most of my friends have Kindles or Nooks, and they like them as much as their paper counterparts.  My old library system, which is broke but very forward thinking, offers several titles in ebook format, most of which are checked out.  As usual, the Army toddles behind (I think they switched to online catalogs in the late '90's), offering an embarrassingly small package of unpopular ebooks that are incredibly hard to find.

It's going to be hard to get me to convert before libraries start lending ebooks regularly.  It's hard to beat our prices. Today, however, I was faced with an emergency situation.  I have my first book club meeting in less than two weeks, and Amazon has still not delivered the book I ordered three weeks ago.  Expediency demanded that I order an ebook.  Being me, first I checked my old library system (I still have my card number memorized), followed by the Army's paltry selection.  All copies were checked out or not there to begin with.  I am partial to the Nook because you can read library downloads on it, so I downloaded a Nook app to my ipod and tried to buy the ebook.  Barnes and Nobles, may they get what they deserve, does not offer ebooks to anyone with an out-of-US billing address. I finally found success with Amazon, and will begrudgingly read as much of the book as I can manage on my ipod this weekend.  I don't think many people think the ipod is an ideal medium for reading.

I think I'll stick to ink and paper a little while longer.

New Beginnings

This past week, we said goodbye to the year of the metal tiger and hello to the year of the metal rabbit. I confess, I have no idea what the elements mean, but this year we are supposed to relax and focus on family. Last year, I was disappointed that there was no Chinese New Year like fanfare, but this year I noticed that if you pay attention, you can still pick up on the holiday atmosphere. Everything was closed, for starters. The streets were lined with cars, with people walking around in formal or traditional dress every day. Bobby happened upon a huge family gathering at a burial mound and quickly retreated, dog in tow. Maya and I walked through some kind of ceremony the next day (it was at the stream and I didn't notice until Maya was sniffing some ritual object—eek!) We probably would have really seen a festival atmosphere had we ventured to the Home Plus, but we decided to skip out on that.

Americans had Friday off (USFK=lots of holidays). I was supposed to brief my staff on the dangers of driving drunk and heavy lunar new year traffic. I heard a couple of American patrons advising Mr. Pan to stay off the road, apparently oblivious to the fact that he has, in fact, dealt with Lunar New Year every year of his life. Anyways, I don't dream of driving too far on those days, but the traffic isn't really as bad as everyone says it is.

I read that Daegu National Museum had a Lunar New Year demonstration, so we decided to visit on Saturday. We didn't see any rituals, but there were a bunch of traditional Korean games on the grounds with kids playing them. The museum was pretty neat. It was free, for starters, and there was an exhibit with photographs of Seoul during the Japanese invasion. It looks almost agrarian; there were trees and grass! We learned that the stone pagodas we see in temples are supposed to resemble houses, and that Korean women (presumably yangban, or upper class) had “five friends,” which were their embroidery implements. This led Bobby to ask me where my five friends were at regular intervals throughout the weekend.

Tomorrow, I go back to work, but Bobby, whose office is entirely active duty personnel, is off because it's a “training holiday,” which means the soldiers are off. This particular training holiday is for the Superbowl, which airs at 6am here, at which point the on base clubs will be packed to bursting with people drinking beer and eating breakfast.

Daegu National Museum

I think this is a kiln