Greetings All! Other than another big bike ride yesterday (I don't know that I'll bore you with all the details because they're starting to fit a pattern of wending one's way according to a route mostly planned in advance with the aid of Google maps which immediately becomes obsolete as soon as I realize I don't know where I am and can't tell how to get to where I'm trying to go) I've mostly been just working and relaxing and going to dinner with colleagues (Koreans are apparently big on team dinners so they pay for us to go out together in different combinations but I think I'm through all of them now until at least next term).
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| Science Department dinner last Friday eve at a buffet call Q'oo Q'oo. All you can eat (in 90 minutes)! I think I made about 5-6 trips (I lost count but wanted to try everything once and some things more than that!). |
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| My science dept. comrades from L. to R.: John, Soo Min, John Talbot (dept. head), Chris, and Jason. Jason teaches grades 5-6-7 in the room right next to mine and the other 4 teach HS and AP Chem, Bio, and Physics. |
Riding a bike is different than walking for a couple reasons: I can go further (and get lost more easily) and I don't tend to take as many pictures because I'd have to stop (usually) for that, which I'm loath to do - often even to look at my map - when I've got my momentum and I'm trying to get somewhere.
My ostensible purpose yesterday was to visit two museums in the area to scout them out in advance as possible destinations for class field trips at some point. First I went to the Geomdam Prehistory Museum which has a lot of artifacts and informational displays about the inhabitants of this area from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze ages as well as the Age of the Three Kingdoms, whenever that was. Apparently they found a bunch of stuff as they were developing this area. I couldn't understand any of the information because it was all in Korean but I'm thinking of maybe taking my environmental science HS students there sometime.
That was up north (on the other side) of the big E/W running canal I rode along a couple weeks back so it was my first time across the canal. I was thinking as I rode that Korea (at least the parts I've seen most) are kind of like a cross between Costa Rica and New York. It's heavily urbanized and parts are extremely modern (giant luxury apartment high-rises and major department stores and commercial strips and giant factories) but other parts right next door are rather more haphazard and non-standard, such as people selling fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk, and lack of sidewalks, and little 1-acre or less farms just off the road. There are lots of questionable smells too, only some of which seem possible to attribute to industry. And as soon as you're off a major thoroughfare there's trash just dumped anywhere and everywhere. The Koreans seem to have a real issue with trash and don't seem to have figured out how to deal with it yet. Other 'non-standard' aspects I've observed are things I'd come to take for granted in the U.S. like accessibility for those with disabilities and safety issues like railings and not putting a pole right in the middle of the bike path where someone might run into it. So for all it's modernity there are still certain signs that they're not that far removed from their less developed recent history.
After the Prehistory Museum I came back south toward the canal and crossed the canal near "Sometimes Falls" which wasn't running at that point. I noticed on the map that there's a trail near there so it might be nice to go back for a hike again sometime but I had another destination in mind yesterday so I didn't pursue it then.
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| Crossing the canal from north (on my right) to south and looking back at Sometimes Falls, which yesterday was "Not This Time" falls. Below is the bike/walking path I'd been on a few weeks ago. |
My next destination was the Children's Science Museum in Byeongbang-dong which is just on the other side of a couple of Mountains (hills by CO standards) due east of here about 10 km (6-ish miles) as the crow flies (although I'm certainly no crow). I'm thinking of taking my 8th grade science students there but when I visited and saw the mayhem of all the kids running around and started to think about my kids running amok there I started to have second thoughts. I would need to structure it somehow and probably get some chaperoning help if I wanted to take all 24 of my 8th graders at once.
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| One of several pictures I took of exhibits at the Children's Science Museum to document science principles we are (or will be) studying so that I can plan out an agenda of things I want students to look for and check off so they're not just running around throwing balls at each other. This particular display demonstrate's Bernoulli's principle by blowing a jet of air between two suspended balls when the button is pushed. The balls then swing toward each other demonstrating that the pressure is lower in parts of the 'fluid' where the particles are moving faster. We'll be getting into pressure and density next term in middle school. I haven't actually taught that stuff before - it wasn't part of the curriculum in my HS physics classes so I'm looking forward to refreshing my memory (but I think I just did). |
Having achieved my objectives for the day I was ready to return home and needed to decide if I would retrace my steps (which I always hate to do) or try to go full-circle around (or through) the mountains. Looking at the map I saw that the most direct route back involved a road which went between the mountains (hills) and included a tunnel portion (I've learned to zoom in on the map to see where the tunnels are because they don't show up when you're looking at a small scale). So I assumed I couldn't go that way. But I was game to try the slightly longer route around the south side of the hills even though some of those streets looked pretty major and I haven't learned how to tell from the maps if they're going to have a sidewalk alongside them for bikes or pedestrians and I don't like to ride on the side of a busy highway (and have usually avoided it).
I was employing enhanced technology on this trip, though, as I'd figured out that I could call up the Google map on my phone before I left, back at home where I have the internet connection, and zoom in and scroll all around the area I thought I might be traveling through and then even when I was away from my connection the phone would still have all that data and I could go back and look at it. So that all worked great except that I couldn't always tell where I was on the map. But still it was better than nothing since when I did get to a known landmark I was back in business.
But then I hit another snag. Sometimes when I wake my phone up to take a picture I get an error message saying "cannot connect to the camera" which is annoying because the only way I've found to overcome that is to turn the phone all the way off then turn it on again and wait for it to reboot which takes awhile. So that happened to me yesterday while I was taking pictures in the Children's Science Museum and I rebooted my phone and then when I was ready to plot my return trip I realized that by rebooting my phone I'd lost all my map info which had been stored in the memory! D'oh! So at that point I was resigned to retracing my steps (mostly) and reducing the chance that I'd get lost on the return trip since Eric and I had plans to order Chinese takeout together that evening.
It was about 2:00 in the afternoon at that point and I hadn't had anything to eat since my morning oatmeal so I had a (double) burger at a Lotteria (equivalent to McDonald's or Burger King) so I wouldn't be hungry on the return trip and starving when I got home and then eat something later and spoil my Chinese takeout dinner then I got ready to ride home. The area I was in was quite quaint, though, with a lot of the road-side vendors and lots of pedestrians and bicyclists and scooters and traffic and off the main drag there were some smaller streets and one was even choked with pedestrians and covered over with shade-cloth and filled with street-fare kind of like a Middle-Easter souk or something. I didn't actually go down there because I was on my bike and there was plenty else to see. I was kind of thinking it would be nice to have a beer (or two) before I headed back, though, so when I spotted a little chicken and beer place I decided to stop there. I've learned that you're not really supposed to get just the beer at these places (you're supposed to order food with it, but the bars don't open until much later, like 6 or 7 in the evening) but I didn't really want chicken so when I saw they had some fish on the menu I decided to get the fried pollack. The proprietors were very nice to me and set up a table for me outside when I asked if I could sit on the porch so I sat there and had a couple beers and ate my fried pollack which the cook had to show me how to eat (you have to rip the heads off and throw those away, then split the body open and scoop out some black guts near the neck area along with all the backbone and rib bones, then break off the tail too and what you're left with is a little skinny section of meat around the body area that you can dip in the hot sauce or the mayonnaise (if you want some calories with your meal). But that was okay because I'd just had a double burger and I was there for the beer mostly anyway - and the sitting and relaxing.
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| Having a nice sit in the partial sun (not too hot) at the chicken and beer place. |
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| Pollack with (I think) sweet potato fries and peanuts and dried banana chips. |
Back at the museum I'd noticed I had a couple new email messages on my phone (work related). But I wondered how that could be if I had no internet connection. I'm still confused about how these things work here because I believe I can still always send and receive texts on my phone, but when I try to Google something (including maps) I have to have an internet connection. But I have noticed that sometimes when I don't think I've had an internet connection I can still get emails. So how does that work? I haven't figured it out yet but I thought I'd try an experiment and send Eric an email from the Chicken/Beer place and see if/when he got it. But while I was doing that I noticed that I actually had internet connectivity at this place. That's the first time I've noticed I had it away from my room. So then I was back in business with Google maps and I was able to replot my course home the longer and newer way, which I proceeded to do, filled with renewed confidence. In the picture below (which is of a sign I came across later) you can see where I was starting at that point which is about the lower right corner of the map where the winding road (not the hiking trail, which this map is mostly designed to show) comes out of the mountains and connects to the urban area. And where I needed to go was the far side of all that green stuff. But there's a tunnel on the road that goes right through the middle so I suspected I wouldn't be able to go that way (which I later found out was incorrect) and would have to go around it all to the left and then back up north again (we're looking west) to get home. I had some concerns about some major-looking sections of road at the far left edge of the map there and certainly didn't want to get that far and find out I couldn't go that way after all and have to come all the way back and THEN retrace my steps from this point but I was prepared to give it a try and decided to skirt the edge of the hills as much as possible to see if I could go on that road in the middle or not.
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| The map I found when I was at the "You are Here" point marked by the red rectangle. Its main purpose is to show all the hiking trails in this set of hills. There's an observation tower at the highest point (also marked with a red dot) at about 400 meters (1300 feet or so) and I'd like to go back and hike there some day but yesterday was a super-hazy day and you couldn't see anything so I want to wait for a nice clear day for that trip. Cheongna (my town) and home (my destination) are on the far side of those hills at this point. (This view looking west. You can even see the E/W running canal where I'd come from, just barely, in the upper right corner of the picture) |
At this point I was on a nice wide sidewalk with bikes and pedestrians and looking at the map I could see that it was part of a whole trail system throughout the area which I hadn't been aware of. Furthermore I saw that it extended through the middle section between the two hills where I wanted to go and crossed from one side of the road that went that way over the top of the tunnel I was concerned about. So I felt like I could get through the middle of these mountains and not have to go all the way around to the left where I was worried about getting stuck in congested traffic conditions. So I took the picture and headed off! It was a festive afternoon with lots of people on the street and a live band playing outdoors just inside the park area at one point and then just after you see the trail turn from red to yellow above and make a sharp jog to the right (which I'd forgotten about) I went off into the area where there's a little red-roofed section which turns out to be a catholic convent of some kind (according to the sign I passed as I headed down the driveway wondering where the trail had gone). Stopping to check my picture of the map above I suspected (though never sure) I was below where I needed to be and was considering how to get there (not wanting to go back, of course) when I noticed this spider! I have a fascination with the spiders here and at last I have an excellent picture of one that I suspect I should be able to identify them from. Man am I glad I didn't blunder into this web!
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| Spider! |
At this point I decided it would be a good time to retrace my steps (rolls?) and try to pick up the path again where I'd lost it, so that's what I did. Problem was it was no longer a bike path but a full-blown hiking trail complete with boulders and fallen trees, etc... But in usual fashion I decided to continue on in the hopes that things would get better even though at that point I had to carry Blackie. But it was mostly uphill and I was getting quite hot and out of breath. At one point I passed a guy who was adjusting something about his shoe so when I started to despair about being on the right path I waited for him to catch up and I showed him my map and pointed to the trail where it crossed over the tunnel and did my best "am I on going the right way to get here?" sign language and at first it seemed like he was saying I was on the wrong path but then he seemed to say I could still get there from there and motioned me to follow him, which I did. It was only a short way further before I found another sign and I suspected that I should be able to make a turn to the left and go down the hill and get where I wanted to go and my friend was waiting just a little ahead and when I caught up to him he pointed down that trail and indicated I should go that way and by then I could actually see my destination. So I made it. Once I was finally on top of the tunnel I could see the nice wide sidewalk running along both sides of the road beneath me and I realized I didn't have to take the trail at all, I could have just stayed on the road in this case. So now I know.
So down the hill I went and back home with no significant further adventures. Chinese delivery with Eric was a learning experience as well. I'd heard that when they deliver here they deliver with "real" plates and bowls (did I mention that last week?) and that's what they did. Eric, who has some functional, but apparently not that functional, Korean ordered for us and I was impressed to hear him speaking on the phone until the order showed up and we had twice as much of everything as we'd wanted, for a total bill of around $90. Needless to say we've got lots of leftovers. But we were sitting on his couch (he removed some of his standard furniture so he could fit a couch in his room and he bought a projector so he can project his computer screen on the wall opposite the couch and sit on the couch with his wireless keyboard and work or watch videos -- pretty slick!) eating and watching 30 Rock when the place called back and said they were there to pick up the dishes so we had to jump up and scoop stuff into containers for leftovers and try to gather their dishes together and then went out to meet the delivery guy at the guard shack and pay him and return the dishes. Then we returned to finish dinner and while we were doing that I noticed one of the restaurants plates we'd overlooked on the floor. Then later when I'd returned across the hall to my room Eric knocked and offered me the leftover kimchi, which I accepted. And as he gave it to me he asked "so where'd you get that bowl?" meaning the small side-dish bowl the kimchi was in. It was also the restaurant's bowl, so we thought that was pretty funny. Then when I woke up this morning I realized that the bowl I'd taken over to Eric's for eating was missing and realized we must have accidentally returned my cereal-sized bowl and kept one of their plates and their kimchi bowl. I think the Chinese carboard containers are a better plan for take-out. Why don't they do that here? Maybe it comes back to their issues with trash.
Speaking of food here's a picture of some leafy green stuff (not really spinach, not really lettuce) that I was adding to my black beans and chicken stew mixture last weekend, just because if I don't work in my food commentary a little at a time I'll never get it documented.
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| And here's my creation simmering on the stove. I like cooking! It makes the place feel homey. Unfortunately I didn't really do any cooking this weekend because of the science dept. dinner Friday and the Chinese takeout last night. Tonight I had some of my leftovers of this stuff (above) I made last weekend. I did get to make another omelet this morning though, which I enjoy. So my weekend breakfasts (no breakfast during work week: just coffee) are one oatmeal (with dried cranberries and/or raisins and frozen blueberries) and one omelet (current preference is onion, spinach, and pepper jack cheese with sliced cherry tomatoes on top) for variety. |
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| Mmmmmm, now that's good eatin'! |
Well, I didn't think I had much to say tonight but I guess I did after all. This is your intrepid correspondent signing off and wishing you well. -- Chris
