Curtis in Korea

Last weekend I visited my friend Jen in Gumi, which the three ETAs who live in Gumi affectionatley call Gumi Shity. We hiked a mountain and saw the Wolverine movie, which is awesome. Also, according to a facebook quiz, which cannot lie, if I were an X-Men, I would be Wolverine. I think it’s the chest hair.

Two weekends ago I got to hear a poetry reading by Natasha Trethewey at the US embassy in Seoul. She’s a pulitzer prize winning poet from Mississippi. Everyone should check her poetry out. Her book, Native Guard, talks about African American civil war soldiers and growing up bi-racial in Mississippi.

When I got back to the mainland I hiked Wolchusan, a mountain near Mokpo.

I took a ferry from Mokpo to Jeju city, where I met my friend Matt. While on Jeju island I hiked Hallasan, the tallest mountain in South Korea. I think it’s safe to say that I wasn’t prepared for my hike up Hallasan. In Jeju city near the beach it was a cool damp day. At the summet of Hallasan, which is over 6000 feet, it was probably 20 degrees farinhite. While hiking I met a very nice Korean family who share some of their food with me on the hike and then let me ride in their taxi back to Jeju city.

A couple weeks ago a had about twelve straight days off from school because my students were taking midterms and there were some Korean holidays. This gave me to do alot of traveling around Korea.

Mokpo is a city on the south coast of Korea with ferries that go to Jeju island. I had about half a day too spend there, which was about as much time as it takes to do the interesting things that there are in Mokpo. I saw the Korean Naval History Museum and some strangely shaped rocks.

Last weekend I went to Jejudo, a small island off the south west coast of Korea, know for water, rocks and women. Jejudo is where many Korean couples go for their honeymoon. I had traveled to Jejudo last fall for a halloween party. Last weekend I was in Jejudo for Fulbright’s spring ETA conference. We spent several hours in meetings discussing ways to improve the ETA program. We also got to go site seeing at a folk village and Sunrise Peak.

Two weeks ago I went to Busan for a friends birthday party. Busan is a really fun city. While Seoul is nice I like Busan alot more. Compared to the rest of Korea Busan felt much more laid back. It also had a really nice beach.

Several weeks ago I went to a microbrewery in Korea. There beer there was much, much, much, much better then normal Korean beer. While I don’t think it was as good as some of the beer I could get in the states it was still great.

About a month ago a Korean friend of mine took me to an Indian restaraunt in Daejeon. It was awesome. While I really like Korean food, eating it all of the time can get very tiring. Besides Korean food the main option for food is generic American food: hamburgers, pizza, donuts; none of which is as good as it would be in America. There’s very little ethnic food, especially outside of Seoul. So finding an Indian restaraunt, especially a good Indian restaraunt was amazing.

I haven’t posted in a long time because I’ve been keeping busy. About a month ago a had dinner with my host family. Almost the entire dinner consisted of raw beef. The first dish consisted of raw beef mixed with raw egg, soy sauce and sesame oil. Then there were strips of raw beef. There was some marinated beef that got cooked. Followed by more raw beef. As with many dinners that came before it I was encouraged to eat way to much. I expected to get Salmonella, but luckily didn’t.