Something Wonderful Every Week

Here is a new blog, a weekly photo journal for the year 2011:

http://somethingwonderfuleveryweek.blogspot.com/

We invite our friends, fellow travelers, and photographers to submit 1 photo to "Something Wonderful" every week by Sunday at noon. Photos will then be grouped according to location and published on our website by Monday or Tuesday of the following week. We ask that if you join this blog community, you consistently submit 1 photo EVERY WEEK for the year 2011.

An important caveat is that photos should be taken and submitted in "REAL TIME," which is to say that each photo you submit should be taken at some point during that same week. For instance, all photos submitted the second week of January should actually be taken within the second week of January 2011. This allows viewers to see what different people in different places in the world are doing at roughly the same time.

Any photo can be "wonderful" -- a photo of you, your friends, your cat, a good meal , a famous landscape, or something close to home. Even if it seems ordinary to you, someone across the world might see it and be amazed. Your everyday life, whether or not you know it, is wonderful.

You, the photographer, retain the copyright of any photo you take.

Please submit 1 photo by Sunday at noon, EVERY WEEK, to our e-mail address:
wonderfulphoto@yahoo.com

The e-mail should include your name, city, country, and a brief description of the item/people in the photo, as well as an attachment with the photo (JPEG preferred).

Korean Mask Dancing and the Traditional Ways

OUTSKIRTS OF ANDONG


{Lindyhoppers at Dosan Seowon}

Hey, that isn't traditional dancing! Or rather, it is traditional dancing, but it's traditional American dancing. My friends and I (all lindy hoppers) pose in the American "swing out" at Dosan Seowon (도산서원), a Confucian academy, before we reach the reach the autumn maskdancing festivals being held at Hahoe and Andong.


{Dosan Seowon, circa 1574}


{Just a Social Butterfly}



Hahoe and Andong are noted for their hand-carved wooden masks. The regional woodcarving artistry extends to tall wooden figures with carved faces, such as the one pictured above. They are about the size of small lamp posts.

HAHOE VILLAGE



Hahoe Village overlooks Nakdong River, which borders much of its perimeters. The word "hahoe" means "laughed at by waters."



I'm just bluffing. It actually means "surrounded by waters."



Some of the villages in Hahoe live in huts thatched with straw; others live in wooden hanoks with curved tile roofs. The countryside is surrounded by fresh air and the environ is surrounded not only by mountains by also by wildflowers and crops of growing food.



I could wile away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain
And my head I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin'
If I only had a brain

We see a traditional maskdancing performance in Hahoe. The setting is brilliant ~ an outdoor stage set under tall, ancient pines. Craggy cliffs rise dramatically in the background.



Some foreign visitors don't enjoy the maskdancing. It's all in Korean, and neither my friends nor myself can follow the plot. I love it, though. Most days in Korea, I can't understand most of what's being said ~ so it's just like that, only with bright costumes, music, and candy.



Hahoe Village one of the loveliest places I've visited in Korea, and it is considered by most people to be the most authentic of the Korean folk villages. Sure, electric wiring runs through many of the houses and Hahoe has some tourists, but nonetheless, it is a place where real people live, farm, and raise their families. The government supplements the locals' income to insure they preserve the old ways.


{Walking Through the Village}


{600-Year-Old Tree}

An ancient Zelkova tree has an enormous trunk and many sprawling branches and roots. For over 600 years, it has stood as a guardian to the villagers of Hahoe Village.


{Tying Wish to a 600-Year-Old-Tree}

This ancient tree is perfect for providing shade (in the summer!) and fulfilling wishes (year round!).




{Traditionally Confused}

If you visit the Korean countryside, you, too, will most likely want to find traditional Korean lodgings. To determine the authenticity of a place it should: 1. provide all bedding as thin mats on the floor; 2. the people-to-bathroom ratio should be roughly 60 people for every 1 bathroom. This rustic lifestyle gives outsiders the chance to experience the purity of country living. Why be cooped up the entire morning while readying for the day when you can brush your teeth in the fresh outdoors with a garden hose serving as both sink and shower? Queue up early, though, as there will even be a line for this.


{Hahoe Traditional Fireworks}

For a traditional firework display, ropes are strung across the river and then set on fire. Groups of people sometimes yell things in Korean, and shortly thereafter, a large object is set on fire on and tossed over the mountain. It's dark and confusing, unclear as to what's being tossed off the mountain, too ~ unwanted pianos, sacrifical virgins? I didn't understand it, didn't even understand that it WAS the actual fireworks festival until I asked someone when the fireworks would start.

After returning home, I did research on the web about it (and by "research" I really mean snooping through another traveler's Facebook comments about the festival). Here's what I learned: The blurry shape beneath the ropes is a boat containing poets. Whenever they finish writing a poem, everyone yells "drop the fire" and then a burning pine is tossed from the mountaintop. I'm a very slow writer, myself. If I were on the boat, fireworks would only occur every other week or so.

ANDONG CITY



Andong has a bigger maskdancing festival, with an interesting variety of shows, but it's a modern city, large and charmless compared to Hahoe.



The inside stage at Andong, which must be entered by walking through the mouth of a giant mask, features a variety of performances from dancers across the world.


{"Buy a Pretty Flower" Korean Maskdance}


{Chinese Magician Maskdance}



{Traditional Korean Maskdance}


{Thai Dancers "Cock Fight"}

Our Wall Is Greater Than Yours

Through Korea's turbulent and sometimes violent history, many of its ancient relics were destroyed, which is perhaps the reason why national pride for their surviving landmarks is so great. Take, for instance, Hwaseong Fortress, which encloses the old part of the city of Suwon. It was built in 1794 and has been kept in excellent condition for the past couple centuries. In 1997, it was designated a UNESCO world heritage site.


The fortress's origins stem from a rather seedy history, a real-life K-drama. King Jeongjo built the fortress both with the intentions to move Korea's capital from Seoul to Suwon, and also to honor his father, Prince Sado. Prince Sado, despite the filial affection he inspired, was what would most likely be diagnosed nowadays as "pyschotic" and went on the occasional murderous rampage against his servants and royal staff. As a result, Prince Sado was eventually murdered by his father, King Yeongjo, by being locked inside a rice chest for 8 days until he eventually suffocated or, ironically, starved. This is only tangential to the building of the fortress, but nonetheless is far more interesting material than you find in most history books.



One of my expat friends lived in Suwon during her first year in Korea, her apartment and school being just a stone's throw from Hwaseong Fortress. One day, as she and her Korean co-teachers were passing it, they asked for her impressions.

"Oh, I think it's lovely," she answered honestly.

"Do you think it's better than the Great Wall of China?" they pressed. "We know the Great Wall is supposed to be special, but some people say that our wall is quite nicer; it's better preserved than the wall in China. What do you think?"

"Ummm, well, yes?" my friend answered, or something equally dubious and polite.

While it certainly can't boast the colossal size or venerable age of China's Great Wall, the lovely Hwaseong Fortress, even with the purple prose overtones of its origins, remains a point of pride among the Korean people.

"Behind the Eight Ball" and Other Synonyms for Unlucky

"I love you," said the Korean woman solemnly, but while swaying slightly, as she tipped her green glass bottle of soju above an empty plastic bowl. When presented with the offering, I smiled, bowed, and attempted to drink the soju quickly enough to preserve what few of my tastebuds remained after a year in Korea of consuming red-chili-based spices and alcohol strong enough to remove varnish. Soju is certainly not my favourite beverage of choice, but I take pretty much any food or drink that's offered to me, which in the past has included kimchi, gimbap, tteok, odeng, candy, hot chestnuts, a raw chestnut with a live worm in it, and probably other stuff I can't remember. I don't always like what I'm given, but I am always appreciative of the kindness that prompted the gift.

The woman filled the bowl with more soju and handed it next to Josh.

"I love you," Josh told her, dutifully echoing her proclamation. Alice silently gulped down the painfully raw alcohol when her turn came and made a face. None of us was quite certain about the social protocol for such a situation.


(lanterns floating on the Namgang River)

We were at Jinju, at the Lantern Festival, which was packed with Korean revelers. Our tiny group consisted of three Americans living in various areas of the country (me = Seoul, Alice = Busan, Josh = country village nearish Gwangju) and after we had assembled in Jinju we went to an outdoor booth to get food. Foreigners apparently being a somewhat unique phenomenon in Jinju, our table had a rotating variety of Koreans pull up a chair and join us briefly to speak the few mutual words we could share (simple English, simple Korean), offer some of their food and drink, or -- for at least one man -- just to stare in a not unfriendly manner.

Josh and I had arrived in Jinju, located at the southern tip of South Korea, at roughly the same time, and had decided beforehand to wait for each other in the bus terminal. This predestined meet-up had been -- I pause a moment in writing this to find the appropriate word in the online thesaurus -- calamitous, cursed, dire, disastrous, hapless, ill-fated, ill-starred, inauspicious, and unsuccessful. In short, we could not find each other when we first arrived.

I jumped off the bus and looked around the station. It was small. Tiny. Looking around both the outside and inside of station, I knew that Josh was not there. I still did not have a working phone, but I found a payphone booth just outside the station. "Where are you?" I asked Josh. "I'm just outside the bus station." "I'm standing just outside the bus station, too." Small pause. "Does Jinju have two bus stations?"

It did, and we had ended up at opposite ends of town.

I quickly tried to think of a way we could meet. "There are festival ladies in front of the bus station here. They can't speak English, but they have maps of the town."

"Yeah, they're at my station, too," Josh replied.

"Great," I said. "Get the map with the photo of bibimbap on the cover. That's the map I have. We'll just have to open it and figure out a new meeting place."

I opened my map to study the locations listed therein. I tilted my head. I squinted my eyes. I crinkled my nose. No, none of those thing better enabled me to read Hangul. But wait! There were numbers by many of the mysterious places listed. We just needed to settle on a number.

"What about site 156?" I asked. "It's near the festival and not too far from my bus stop. I still don't see your bus stop on the map. Or maybe site 166 since that one looks big?"

"How will we know what the site actually is?" Josh asked.

"Well, we'll have to ask people and figure it out on the way." I said, talking quickly since the payphone was beginning to make gurgling noises and I was running out of change to feed it. "Site 156 sounds good to me."

"Ok," Josh replied. "I'll meet you at site 166."

"See you soon," I replied, an optimistic lie.

Reading over the dialogue, it's obvious what went wrong. At the time, however, we both marched away from our respective bus stops in complete faith that we would soon meet.

For the first order of business, we both needed to locate our current positions on the map. (I did this by going up to some Korean women and asking "yogeyo [here]?" and pointing to different probable locations on my map. Josh later reported that he asked some Korean women, "Where am I? Where am I?," to which they justifiably looked confused.) Although I managed to discover my general location on the map, I still wasn't sure which direction I was facing, so I approached a college-aged man (college-age = most likely to speak English) who was waiting in line to buy tickets and asked him for directions. He promptly left the line and walked me most of the way to the site. "Um, don't you need to buy your bus ticket?" I asked. "Yes," he said and continued to walk with me. That's the thing about Korea. When people here show kindness to strangers, they are so kind. Shortly before reaching the site, it began raining, so my new friend popped me into a taxi and then returned to the bus station.

I got to site 156 and found it to be a seafood restaurant. The rain, which had started out as a glimmering drizzle, had at this point reached a build-your-ark-now level of heaviness. I did not want to eat in the restaurant since I knew Josh would be there soon, but at the same time, I wasn't a huge fan of standing in a deluge. I ducked under the awnings at the front of the restaurant, hoping to take shelter unnoticed there, but the restaurant owners saw me and waved me in. Even though I wasn't a customer, they were delighted to see me.

I was settled on a little wooden bench and someone handed me a steaming cup of hazlenut coffee. A small crowd perched around me. The women took multiple photos of me and repeatedly told me I was pretty. So much attention might lead to vanity, except that by pretty they really just mean "different." Still, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside (though maybe that was just the coffee) and I basked in their praise. A woman rolled open the lattice-work doors to a private room and beckoned one of the customers dining there. He was one of their regular customers and the only one who had visited the U.S.! So he gamely left his meal and chatted with me, acting also as an interpreter for the curious crowd.

I was asked my name, country of origin, age, job, marital status (good news: the only English-speaking Korean in Jinju is also single!), and blood type. After questioning why I was there and who I was waiting for, the crowd then became very concerned with helping me locate my friend. Someone handed me a phone and I used it to call Josh, after which two of the men posted themselves by the door. When Josh finally did arrive, they called out to him by name.


(This is not Josh. This is just a gratuitous lantern photo.)

After finally finding each other, Josh and I easily found the festival, squelched our way through muddy paths lined with food stalls and cartoon sock vendors, and took photos of the hundred or so lanterns lit upon the river. Alice found us in a makeshift teashop along the river, where we were sipping jujube tea and waiting for Josh to dry out. Later that night, we ate and drank in the good company mentioned at the beginning of this story.


(This is Josh. And tea.)

Everything went smoothly until it was time for us to sleep. Every place was full, even the seediest love hotels. After wandering the dark backstreets for an hour or so, we gave up on finding proper bedding and crashed on a jimjilbang (bath house) floor. Alice and I had a restless night’s sleep, due to the fact that we were sleeping head to toe with about a kerbillion Koreans in the jimjilbang’s special heated pine room. (The pine effectively blocked all nasal passages.) Josh also had a restless night’s sleep, due to a rather cuddly man lying next to him and Josh’s inclination to not be cuddled by a strange man. (They hadn’t even exchanged business cards beforehand!) In the morning when we woke, we saw that every inch of floor space in the jimjilbang was full of Jinju lantern revelers; even the stairwell and elevator hummed faintly with the snore of heavy sleep.

I feel like there should be some sort of moral to this story, but there isn’t really, except . . . solid travel plans make for a comfortable experience but a dull story; you, too, should travel haphazardly in a land where you can barely communicate. And as a vintage tribute to the writer I used to be, this is the way I signed off my papers in 2nd grade:

The Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very End.

Having My Sushi and Eating Spaghetti, Too

It's hard to flirt with a waiter while dining alone at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Cute Waiter: You're pretty.
Me (coyly): Thank you. Umm, I don't really know how to say this, but . . . can you bring me another plate?
Cute Waiter: Another plate?
Me (looking fixedly at the floor): Thanks.
[The Cute Waiter begins to leave.]
Me: Oh, wait. I forgot to tell you something.
Waiter: Yes?
Me: I might also need a bowl for dessert.*

Really, I should never be allowed in buffet-style restaurants for the same reason that I should never be allowed to play putt-putt golf or become involved in a game of musical chairs. Those situations trigger my usually latent competitive streak and at such times I really, really want to win. You can't even imagine the amount of "reallys" I would have to pile into that sentence to modify how intent I become on winning. To me, the phrase "all you can eat" is a challenge, the words dyslexically transforming into a taunting "How much can you eat?" The diner stacking up the largest pile of empty plates wins.


(Last time I played musical chairs. . .)

The Cute Waiter, noticing the big gulps with which I consume my meal (or maybe he just has a prediliction for girls with a hearty appetite), brings over a plate of something. Just for me. Special. I didn't order it.

"Spaghetti!" he proclaims. "It is very delicious."

"Mmmm, yeah," I return with as much possible fake happiness as I can muster. Tomatoes are my least favorite food in the world and spaghetti, covered in their blood red sauce, seems just like a first cousin to them. Out of the food I dislike most in the world, spaghetti has to hit the top ten list. But my personal rule for eating anything given to me trumps my dislike. Besides that, it's free, and I do love the free.


(I also become competitive during events involving dancing, drinking, and/or Omar.)

After the Cute Waiter leaves, I poke the pile of spaghetti tentatively with my chopsticks. It is delicately coated in thin fish flakes, the type that visibly quiver while resting atop hot food items, leading me to believe, the first time I saw them, that the food was still alive. It's not. But a certain "Fear Factor" stigmata remains attached, in my mind at least, to the fish flakes.

I begin awkwardly gathering the spahetti strands into my chopsticks. They're thicker than normal spahetti pasta -- udon! I quickly verify as I take a bite. The bright red sauce that I was dreading turns out to be a type of hot sauce. There's probably tomato in there, too, but what with the intensity of the hot sauce and the little specks of chili freckling the strands, my taste buds have been bequeathed with a certain amount of numbness and can process little more than HOT. What's more is that the quivering fish flakes, which I still taste faintly, add a subtle tang to the whole thing. Tiny, surprise octopus tentacles make their way into my chopsticks as I continue to eat my spaghetti. The Cute Waiter was right: This is delicious spaghetti! Or delicious something. It definitely looks like spaghetti, especially if you take off your glasses and kinda squint your eyes at it.


(Photo of Sushi and Delicious Something)

Now divested of spaghetti obligations (I ate half and arranged the rest into a smallish-looking pile on my plate), it is time to take a new plate to the buffet and select my main course of sushi. There is a wide variety of sushi and thankfully the large number of patrons eating here ensure that it is fresh, not like the less popular sushi restaurant down the street where the chefs use spray bottles to squirt water on the dry, wilting sushi being presented in order to make it look more palatable, or maybe just to clean off the dust that has accumulated there.

I get orangey-pink salmon, eel in a sweet brown glaze, salty yellow fish roe that crunches when my teeth bite into it, fake crab which is rosy and bland except for the bitter mote of green wasabi used to adhere it to the rice ball, and several other fish I can't identify. I also get two pieces of egg sushi, which is a way of cheating at sushi, but it also tastes like the best omelet in the world which makes the cheating seem not so bad. And fries. They have thick-cut, seasoned fries in a hotplate, which make a satisfying, if unconventional, accompaniment to the sushi. Side soups include miso, mushroom, and soba noodles. I only get the first type of soup. Even a girl with high eating ambitions can't manage everything. Besides, I notice a dessert bar which offers, among other treats, patbingsu (red beans and ice), pastel balls of tteok filled with red bean sauce, and a sugar-coated dry ramen and chocolate mix. Who's up for thirds? Oh, waiter . . .

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*Dialogue may be exaggerated, ala A Million Little Pieces memoir style.

The Worst Movie Review Ever: Eat, Pray, Love

This is the worst movie review you will ever read of Eat Pray Love. Let me clarify: It is definitely not the worst movie you will ever see (unless your viewing selection is dedicated entirely to Masterpiece Theatre and PBS marathons, in which case you are probably too smart to be reading my blog anyways. Seriously. If you're one of those people, stop reading my blog and invest the next 10 minutes in doing something more worthy of your talents, such as learning how to play the cello or mastering a fifth language. Thank you. Now, back to the normal people, the plebeians, or "pleebs" as I like to call us.); however, this actual review of the movie will likely be the worst you'll ever read, since I'm not even going to pretend to stay focused on the actual plot or the acting, and if the convoluted syntax of this sentence hasn't already convinced you how rambling this review aspires to be, then nothing will.

Eat Pray Love features a divorced American woman in search of herself as she travels the beautiful and exotic locales of Italy, India, and Indonesia to indulge in both the sensual pleasures of the body and the spiritual release of the mind. I went to see the movie with two of my girlfriends since I figured we could all identify with the main character, though as it turned out none of us had been divorced, or even the first step -- married, or practiced spiritual meditations, unless occasionally falling asleep in church counts. Nor had any of us been to India or Indonesia, though I had been to Italy twice and Ashley had once been to Iraq, and that also starts with an "I."


(As you can see by the two photos above, Julia Roberts and I do, however, bear a striking resemblance in regards to our physical appearances.)

Ok, so down to the nitty gritty. The movie's plot can be summarized through the following abridged and somewhat altered dialogue. You should imagine the following being said in a high-pitched, squealy voice (not that Julia Roberts actually uses such a voice; it's just more fun to imagine it that way). “Ohhh, I've found a handsome man who's madly in love with me! Whatever shall I do? I think I'll dump him.” And repeat. In fact, this is the entire action sequence of the movie, just Elizabeth Gilbert -- via Julia Roberts -- dumping men and then professing guilt for breaking their hearts. Her soulful whines about how to get rid of her latest handsome man acquisition kinda made me want to slap her, even though, as my friend Katie pointed out, the men were very likely not as handsome in real life.


Movie Theatre Snack ~ Winning Combo
"Hey, you've got your squid in my peanut butter!"
"Your peanut butter is on my squid!"

The real interesting twist in the movie, from my viewpoint, was when it ended. My friends Katie and Ashley, as well as myself, were ushered out a side door of the viewing room and into a bare steel stairwell, which had a very different atmosphere from the clean, well-lit movie postered elevator we had ascended to reach the appropriate viewing room. Since we were now at the top floor of the movie house, we naturally began to descend the stairs. Down, down, down we went until we reached the basement doors, which were locked and bolted shut by a steel bar. Up, up, up we backtracked, trying to find a way out of the movie house. We glanced out of an overlook onto the vending area where we'd bought our popcorn and squid snacks just a few hours earlier. The place was void of people and lights, eerie in its shadowy desertion. By this point, we had picked up about three or four disoriented Koreans who had also become lost in the movie theatre and then all of us began wandering up and down the stairs. Finally, one guy decided to go into an unlit viewing room. Like little lemmings, we all followed. The room was cast in velvety black, except for a few pinpricks of emergency lights from the floor, and it would have been dead silent were it not for my voiced suggestions that this was now the perfect setting for a horror movie. After going through the empty viewing room and out another hallway, we finally reached an outside door. This one, too, was locked, but in a more simple manner, and one of the Korean theatre-goers just reached up to the top of the door and released the spring lock. We all passed through and back onto the street, successful at last in leaving the Hotel California of movie theatres.

Lost Girl of the Week

Several years ago, while I was still in the states daydreaming about my future, I followed a small number of narrative travel blogs, including the Lost Girls World. At the time I started reading it, the blog focused solely on the adventures of three New York women and their world travels. It feels strange, but good, to now be profiled on their website. It's like looking out from the opposite side of the mirror.

http://www.lostgirlsworld.com/2010/10/lost-girl-of-the-week-melanie-ehler/

(You know the drill. Copy and paste the URL since I can't hyperlink.)