Sledding!

A few weeks ago our school took all of the soon-to-be-graduated eight year olds out for a fun-filled Friday. We left our school at 10 am and arrived at the sledding hill an hour later. I don't know exactly where it was, but figure it was somewhere on the northeastern side of Seoul.

We got there and went inside a large building adjacent to the hill where the kids put their bags. We attended a shadow puppet, bubble, and laser show for the first hour and then ate lunch. Following lunch the real fun began.

Above is a picture of the path you climbed up to get to the top. I was impressed that our school was having these young kids (most of which are six or seven in American age) going down such a long hill. The snow was really more like ice and you really got going fast on intertubes.

Below is a picture of some of the kids just leaving the top. I was a little scared at first since I got moving so fast and I wasn't sure how well I would stop at the bottom. They set up a large inflatable pillow that would catch you if you couldn't slow down. The school always has a photographer they hire for all the important events. It's the same guy and of course he came along and actually went down on the sled with his expensive camera. You can guess what happened... He plowed into the pillow-thing at the bottom which tumbled him backwards onto his camera. A large portion of the camera came off. He freaked out and fortunately his camera was okay as the piece just snapped back on.


Sledding was a little frustrating. The guys at the time (Korean 20 somethings) started picking on our kids and saying they were too small even though many had spent over an hour on the slope. I got mad and yelled at them in Korean about the situation and they explained that they had a couple of kids not in our school get hurt and that they didn't want to have more kids get hurt as more adults had arrived on the hill. Only one of our students was at the top of the hill when I yelled in Korean at the guys (thus breaking my no Korean in front of the kids vow). He was so excited and surprised and immediately exclaimed that I was speaking Korean. No other kids where up there and I told him to keep in quiet. He hasn't spoken a word of Korean to me since, proving my point that even if Koreans know a white foreigner speaks Korean, they'll still speak English to them.


Snack time! Mmmm... I had a lot of fun. I got food from around 20-25 kids as I had no snack and they were more than willing to share some of their ample supply. These two boys are fun, but difficult in different ways. The one on the left has really improved his English over the past six months and it is so exciting to watch him go from no English to speaking in broken sentences. His name is Kevin and he reminds me of a teddy bear. The one on the right on the other hand... well, let's just say that his Hello Kitty lunch box sums up his personality. Both were a bit hard to have focus in class as Kevin would like to play hide and seek in the middle of class and the other (David) would like to draw bunnies with giant, shinny eyes all over his papers... Any way, the snack experience was a success and resulted in me discovering previously unknown delicious Korean snack foods.


Now this is Mina. She is so wonderful! Not once has she misbehaved or distracted others. I've never seen anything like it. The only problem she has is that English doesn't come very naturally to her with the exception of songs (and boy can she sing). She had some pronunciation problems, but I think that that is just because she lost all four of her front teeth at the same time, resulting in her inability to make f,v, th, and a variety of other sounds that require your front teeth. I took this picture of her because she was one of the kids that had a ball sledding and probably went up and down the big hill 30 or more times. She had her hood on the whole time and as you can see she was sweating like crazy (no, her head didn't get wet from the snow/ice!).

Just one more picture of the decent. One of the funny things that you can see in this picture is that in addition to the big pillow-barrier-catcher thing is that they had three guys at the bottom trying to prevent everyone from running into each other. I should have taken some videos of it because it was quite entertaining!

A visit to the toy museum on the most heavily fortified border in the world

The day before Christmas Eve our school went out to a toy museum located right on the border with North Korea. I was so shocked about how close we were! Literally right on the border! Any way, I'll write about that a little later. Now about the museum...

This picture pretty much sums up the atmosphere that came from the kids knowing geographically where the museum was. They were pretty tense about any signs of aggression from the north which were quickly addressed with swift action and intimidation.


The kids love the museum. It was a lot of fun for us to and it had a coffee shop that made the best hot chocolate we've ever tasted ANYWHERE!

Lots of legos. These ones I thought were pretty cool and I guess I would think they were even cooler if I liked legos.


Now this kid on the floor is something else. He's around six years old and has perfect pronunciation. One of the cutest kids ever. He liked the floor.


I admired the fine decorations of the bus we traveled to the museum in. I don't think the kids appreciated it as much as me.


So here's a picture of THE fence that separates the two countries. In this location the actual geopolitical border is the body of water in the distance and the land on the other side is North Korea. At this location when it is quiet you can hear announcements on loud speakers from the north to its citizens and military. I've never seen so much razor wire in my life! Too bad it was so hazy. We could still see buildings in North Korea which was pretty cool.

Snow, snow, and more snow!

We haven't updated the blog for sometime because of problems with our camera. With those resolved, here is a peek into some of the significant events during the break.

We went to several museums. One of which was the War Museum that was quite breathtaking. Outside the museum on the grounds we looked at all the rockets, planes, tanks, and artillery used during the Korean War.

Jenna was most excited about this one. Check out all the snow! People say it was the biggest snowfall in Korea in perhaps 100 years. Nearly a month later there are still a few piles left which have even survived a couple days of cold rain.




For Christmas we decided to celebrate by getting a cake! We got it from our local bakery just a minute or two away from our apartment. It was decorated quite nicely and tasted like many of the Korean cakes...much less sweet than our American counterparts... Oh, and Santa isn't a part of the cake and is instead a decoration on our refrigerator. The Christmas Tree looks a little more excited than I was, but believe me I was plenty excited about our Christmas Cake.



So it snowed on Christmas Day and we went out to the park near our house. It only snowed like half a centimeter but a pair of Korean teenage girls were able to make two miniature snowmen. Notice how Korean snowman only have one ball for the body and one for the head, unlike their three-ball American cousins. I guess it's like one and two hump camels.


I love the arms! I'm not sure what that yellowish-brown thing is on the one on the right's head. We approached the snowmen right after the girls finished making them. They were in the middle of jumping up and down and giggling wildly about how cute these two were. You get an idea of the size from the wood panels of the bench they're on.

Here is Matt enjoying the snow. It doesn't usually snow like this in Korea often.


Here's our refrigerator. Jenna decorated it to give our room a festive feel. The decorations were made in our school with the kids as we talked about Christmas.

Hiking and Fall Colors

So we haven't written anything for a while... There has not been anything too amazing to report about. Everyday we just work in the daytime and come home and relax until we go to bed. We got ourselves in a good routine and eat a lot of delicious food...

Something we have done lately is hiking. We did three hikes over the past few weeks. The first one to report on happened near where we live. We went on a bus over to an area we had never gone to before and went hiking up one of the ridges to Bukhan San (북한산). I didn't know exactly where I was going and I think Jenna figured that out quickly. We eventually found a trail though.

As you can see it began up a pretty steep hillside. A little creepy... It reminded me of that staircase that Sam and Frodo climbed in the Return of the King. Parts of the stairs were carved into the granite hillside.

After ascending to the ridge line, we hiked up the ridge.



We got to the top after going up some pretty steep rock outcroppings. We saw a guy walk by us up this trail that did it all barefooted!

Here's the top. The city in the distance is about one-tenth of the city of Seoul.



And the journey back down...

Hike Two

Our second hike to report on occurred the day before Ch'useok (추석), or Korean Thanksgiving. We went to an old area of mine when I served as a missionary in the Korea Seoul West Mission called Geumch'eon (금천). There is a mountain I would hike at on my preparation days as a missionary that I enjoyed a lot. It was one of my favorite mountains I hiked in Korea as a missionary. We also met a coworker of ours named Mihye (미혜) who lives nearby this mountain.

At the bottom there is a Buddhist temple. Here's a picture of us next to one of the buildings where you can see a tree with its leaves changing color.


We climbed the mountain pretty quickly. You take a bus half way up the mountain until the apartment buildings stop and then hike up the rest of the way.

Here's Jenna proud of her hiking achievement.


A view of where the apartments meet the forested hillside.


Here's Mihye with Jenna atop the mountain with Seoul in the background. It was a bit smoggy that day...


We got the great idea to do this as well.



I don't know who the guy is in the picture, but I wanted to get a picture of what the top of the mountain looked like with Seoul in the background. This is still one of my favorite places in Korea...


After the hike we went to go get some food in the area. We then went to Mokdong for a movie and had burgers afterward with American friends.

Hike Three

Our most recent hike was last Saturday. It rained very heavily the night before and it was cold and clear the following day. We went over by Dobong San (도봉산) and hiked up one of the ridges. The beginning of the hike was kind of up and down, and the trees were pretty green still.


After hiking up the ridge a ways, we came across countless graves. These graves are maintained by the families of those who died that are buried up here. Most of these graves are pretty old. They are very distinct due to the mound that rests on top of the coffin. The picture below could quite be the best photograph I've ever taken...


A bit of a view...


Here's Jenna. Doesn't she look happy?


Here's me, equally as happy to be up here.


Here's a view of the northernmost tip of Seoul

This is Bukhan San off in the distance...one of the largest mountains in the area. The first hike we did was up one of the ridges about half way up the main mountain.

Now this mountain is Dobong San. We tried climbing to the top of it on our first hike in Korea...the one where we were pressed upon by the masses... No crowds on this side of the mountain that day.

Pretty, pretty, pretty...


The fall colors are starting to get more brilliant. Fall is the best season in Korea.

The not so mysterious happenings of Jenna and Matt Martinich

Well it has been a while, but there has not been too much of interest to report until recently. Matt and I are working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day for a total of 40 hours a week. That's pretty good if you ask me. It is our first official full time jobs and I think we have acclimated well. It really is much better than being in school and working. I have so much free time now I hardly know what to do with myself. I have been reading, writing in my journal, playing video games, and working on my cross-stitch. Matt has been researching church growth statistics as usual and he never gets bored or tired of it, so this he does every day in the evening when we get off work. The days go by without anything devastating going on. We are still alive and in one piece. North Korea has not attacked and we have not been run down by a crazy motorcyclist driving on the side walk, although there have been many close calls as to the latter. We go out to eat every evening, as our kitchen isn't much good for cooking as we have two burners, but only one pot will fit on our stove at a time, so we can't make much besides soup, or whatever we can fit in one pot. Doesn't matter anyway, the only things I know how to cook with over here are the eggs and the ramen.

We were able to go out and about a little bit about a week ago. We went to a large park nearby that consisted of several steep hills that Matt was trying to convince me were mountains. (I think he just really wanted to hike a mountain, but I refused to go back to the one we went to earlier as there were just too many people for comfort.) Here are a few pictures of our adventures there:

This last picture I like to call: "Well, you hiked to the top of the mountain and your reward is a lovely view of an apartment complex!"

We didn't do much else on the day we went to this park as Matt had to go to Inchon to teach English to a Korean family he knew in America.

Matt and I have been figuring out new challenges with how to deal with the children when they are not paying attention. I am trying to incorporate more games and physical activities into my lessons as they do not do very well sitting in one place for any length of time. They are more interested in the games anyway, but the activities can be difficult. Having them stand up is always a gamble. Sometimes they will really be into the activity, and sometimes having them stand up makes them go crazy and they begin running around the classroom. It's days like those that makes you feel like going crazy yourself because nothing gets done.

This last Saturday, we were able to visit Changdeokgung palace. It has been around for a few centuries and about 35% of it is the original buildings. The Japanese destroyed most of it during the Japanese colonization period. It begins with a bridge that separates the "outside" from the "inside" and is complete with a moat.

Once inside the palace there are three walkways. The middle one is slightly elevated and only the King and Queen can walk down the middle pathway, everyone else had to walk down the two sides.

After traveling a little ways we came to the audience hall where the King would have audiences with the people. There were also what I call "tombstone looking things" that are actually rank place markers. They alternated military, politician, military, politician. The highest ranking military officer was closest to the King followed by the highest ranking politician, and then went on down the line.

Inside the building you see above is the throne room. Interestingly enough there are large round light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Matt and I thought that they were installed recently but surprisingly enough, the last King of Korea had them installed about 1908 and it is an interesting mixture of Westernization/modernization and the old traditional Korean life.

Along the way we saw several different buildings that were all extravagantly painted and decorated. They include the church, the King's quarters and the Queen's quarters.

This is a picture of where the King would cross over from his quarters into the Queen's quarters.

This is the Queen's bed frame, it extends further off to the left as I didn't get a good picture of it. The mattress is currently being "refurbished" and will be added to the display once it is finished.

Lastly we went to the Secret Garden where only a select few were allowed to go. Anyone wishing to go there had to ask the King's permission. It was my favorite place in the whole tour. It is a large place as we only were able to see 30% of the garden on our tour and there is a special "secret garden" tour that you can schedule and you will be able to see another 50% of the garden. Matt and I are thinking of doing that some day before we leave. There are some rather muddy ponds where the king would go fishing and boating. But mostly it is peaceful, beautiful, and smells really good. It makes you forget you are smack dab in the middle of the second most populated city in the world!

By the way, the middle picture of the tree, that tree is the oldest tree in the garden and it is 1,000 years old. The only branch still alive is the middle one.

Well, that is all the news. We will update again when some more exciting things happen!