Ian's Teacher Retreat: Feb 14-15, 2013

Hello everyone! I just wanted to write a short entry of some recent Korea updates (this is Ian writing by the way, I just haven’t gotten around to making myself an admin on this yet). Last week I went on a two-day teachers retreat as a sort of beginning-of-the-new-school-year party. We went to Byeonsanbando National Park, which is about four hours south of Incheon (although I didn’t know any of this until we arrived). After arriving we went for lunch in a small town near the entrance to the park (again… I had no idea where I was at this time). The lunch was a little strange and aspects of it were not exactly edible but it was a really interesting experience nonetheless! Included in the spread were various kinds of fish, octopus, and crab that you basically ate right out of the shell. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea and I think this is when I realized what kind of food I draw the line at, but it was really cool to see some more authentic Korean seafood that is more difficult to find in the city. After lunch we drove to a Buddhist temple in the national park. This was probably one of my favourite parts of the retreat. The temple grounds were beautiful and it was really cool to see all of the Buddhist monks walking around. While I was there I mentioned to another teacher that I wanted to do an overnight temple stay at one point, which resulted in other teachers running around and gathering information for me so that I could sign up right away.

After the temple we drove to another spot within the national park. Here (from what I gathered) we saw the set of a Korean TV drama that was filmed a few years ago. The drama must have been trying to depict life in Korea around 500 years ago because the other teachers kept telling me: “village… setting 500 years.”

We stayed at the village for about 20 minutes and then went on to our hotel (I couldn’t help but notice this happen everywhere we went – anytime we were at a sightseeing stop we would stay for a really short amount of time until it appeared that the principal was getting bored).

From there we went to our hotel to get checked in for the night. Near the hotel we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant. I can’t remember the Korean name of the food we had but the other teachers just kept calling it “sliced fish” in English. It was basically like sushi: simply raw fish over rice dipped in soy and wasabi sauce. It was really good though and it was followed by lots of white wine. After dinner we moved over to a karaoke bar. It was really entertaining to watch some extremely inebriated teachers trying to sing English songs. I even “volunteered” (really I had no choice) to go up and sing Dancing Queen for everyone, which, as you can imagine, was really embarrassing; but I’m sure it was fun for them to watch. We went to bed pretty late and slept on the hard wood floor of our hotel room (a Korean tradition that I still haven’t completely gotten used to).

The next day we went on a short hike in the morning along some cliffs by the ocean when it was at low tide. After the hike we had a light lunch and went to another “Korean drama shooting location.” This time it was a set of a castle that had been built for a different Korean historical drama but it was also really cool to see.

All in all it was a really cool experience and it was fun to see my co-workers in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Nadia and I just got back from Thailand on Saturday, but the photos from that trip will be up shortly!

- Ian

Byeonsanbando Buddhist Temple

Byeonsanbando Buddhist Temple

Not really sure what this was but they kept talking about it! It was difficult to understand what they meant when I asked them. Possibly a part of the original temple built there over 600 years ago?

Byeonsanbando Buddhist Temple

Some Korean teachers. The one on the far left is one of my co-teachers.

The sign said this was a beacon, but I think that was a mistranslation. It seemed more like something for some sort of fire ritual.

Sunset at the first set of a Korean historical drama.

One of the main replica gates built for the Korean drama.

The dinner. As you can imagine I found it difficult to know how to actually go about eating some of the food. The white wine served in shot glasses is also a little odd. They kept taking shots while I sipped it.

The sliced fish is beside the cucumber. It was my favourite part.

Courtesy of my co-teacher Lee Wonsoon. 

Norebang mayhem.