My River

Cheonan, South Korea.

On the way to My River.

There is a small river near my apartment that I've walked along several times in the past year. For the purposes of this blog post, I will lovingly refer to it as My River since I don't know the name for it. Korea really loves their rivers. From the Han River in Seoul to the cherry-blossomy banks of the itsy-bitsy river in itsy-bitsy Haemi, most cities have really nice paved walkways running along their rivers, and they are usually filled with runners, walkers, and bikers. My River is no exception.

Walking along it isn't a bad way to spend an evening. There are cosmos flowers which will be great once they actually bloom. I've had random run-ins with friends, students, and coteachers there. One time, my girlfriend and I stood and watched fish swim upstream for at least 20 minutes, jumping small concrete barriers and swimming their little hearts out. We're great cheerleaders.

The cheerleading grounds.

So My River is wonderful for health-nuts and fish-watchers. Photographers, on the other hand, or at least amateur ones like myself, won't find much excitement there. There was a sudden boom of yellow blossoms one time and that was wonderful, but it's usually just a fishy, sometimes garbagy river on one side of the path, with towering apartments on the other side. If you cross My River and climb the ten easy steps up the opposite bank, you're usually met with a vista of muddy, marshy farmland. In the background, more apartments.

There aso this small orchard, growing whatever those green things are. Thoughts? 

And here you can kind of see some of the apartment buildings.

About a month ago, I visited yet again. Crossed My River and climbed up the bank...and there were these amazing rice fields! Spring has come, and the rice fields are here. Be still, my heart, and know that everything is now going to be okay!

I hadn't been in a while, so I was really excited when I saw this scene before me.

The muddy, marshy crap I expected had become filled with water and green, green, green rice was already shooting up. The background of apartments became beautiful reflections and the soft sunset light made everything glow.

One of the small canals branching off My River.

The grassy-looking patches are actually the rice starters.

Each section of rice paddy is split by these narrow earthen walkways.

 

Spotted this little guy on my way home.

Naturally, I have visited many more times now to watch the rice's progress. What looked like little patches of grass floating in the water on my first visit were split up and spread out in wobbly rows on the next, and a week later, those little tufts had grown quite a bit. I spend my time walking between the fields, looking at the little bugs and super scary creatures in the water, and watching the sunlight fade away.

I hope you like those apartments... 

These are the trays that the rice chutes start growing on. Once they grow to a certain point, they spread them out.

I see egrets here a lot, but these looks more like duck footprints.

One of the hoses used to feed water from the river to the fields.

Thanks for checking out what my city has to offer. I hope you enjoyed the photos! 

Up next, I want to get back to my winter vacation photos, which means beaches and temples. Stay tuned.

Not a Long Weekend, part 2

May 25th, 2014. Geojedo, South Korea. For part 1, click here!

Around 4:50am, towards the end of a tossing-and-turning kind of night, my alarm went off and I set out alone for a sunrise visit to a windmill. This windmill is on a hill overlooking the port where we boarded the ferry the day before. The windmill wasn't moving that early in the morning, but I actually had the place to myself for all of 20 minutes. There were two downsides. First and foremost, it was a little after 5am, which is a ridiculous time to be concious. Second and not really a huge deal, it was overcast, so I wasn't met with the tickle-me-pink colors. It was more of a diffused, rare rays of light kind of morning, but it was absolutely worth it. It was quiet and peaceful until the busloads of Koreans showed up, and I had a bunch of daylight ahead of me.

I found a couple of these guys just lazing about.

The harbor we left from for Oedo Island the day before. This was taken from the path leading to the windmill.

Do you see it?

Yay, ocean!

Two and half hours later, I got back to the pension, showered, briefly passed out, breakfasted, and then we all set out for....the windmill! It was much more crowded, but we had a great time filming clips of ourselves dancing and singing to the Happy song by Pharrell for a Fulbright project. There was lots of flailing, arm-waving, lip-syncing, off-beat clapping, and smiling.

Flowers because they're pretty.

We finished our trip with a trip to Jisimdo, a smaller island off the east coast of Geojedo Island. After an uneventful and seagull-less ferry ride, we arrived on the much more normal, nature-y island and walked around for about two more hours. Instead of royal gardens and who-ville bushes, we were surrounded by familiar trees and even some bamboo. We mainly stuck to the perimeter of the island, checking out different views of the ocean and the rocky coast, and then cut across the center to head back to the pier.

They had the whole cast of The LIttle Mermaid painted here. Seems like something they would have at Oedo Island instead, but we didn't mind.

We found a bunch of these guys hanging over the path...and a few on our clothes.

Falling!

We ferried back and split up to taxi to the necessary bus terminals. Our goodbyes were brief, made while hiding under umbrellas, and I was on a bus within the hour. Kindle on and snack in hand, I was one happy guy.

Not a Long Weekend, part 1

May 23-25, 2014. Busan and Geojedo, South Korea

Between the time I left school on Friday and my arrival back in Cheonan on Sunday night, I rode one train, four taxis, five buses, and two ferries. My total travel time was....a lot. I was going to wait for an extended weekend to visit one of the islands in the southeast, but I jumped at the invitation to join 6 fellow Fulbrighters on their 2-day-weekend island adventure. It was a pretty cool group of people that I don't normally get to see, and I had no plans.

The fountain at Dadaepo Beach (left), and a view of Busan from Amy's apartment (right).

Southern Busan is where my weekend began, at a new park next to Dadaepo Beach, where I took in an epic fountain show and then joined Amy and Anna for dinner. Crashed at Amy's place, and the three of us bussed our way to Geojedo, where we met up with the rest of the crew (save Andrew C. who had a heck of time getting there). We arrived at our penion (가시버시펜션) after a beautiful, 40-minute taxi ride (buses aren't very frequent or easy to navigate there).

We had a great view of this island from our pension, and continued to have amazing views of it on our walk to the harbor.

We settled in and then floated away on a ferry ride. Oedo Island (pronounced "way-doe") was our destination, and what a strange destination it was, with its extremely well-manicured gardens/trees/landscaping and sometimes creepy statues. We had about 2 hours to walk around and photograph everything and everyone, so I'll let the photos and captions do their thing.

The port at Oedo Island.

These guys surrounded the ferry in hopes of snack-throwing children. They weren't disappointed.

This is a popular shot of Oedo. The colonnade/garden/sculpture setup is beautiful, but very strange to see in Korea.

Fruit-bearing, toga-wearing ladies one minute, creepy, tiny elves the next.

Did I mention that there are some spectacular views from this island?

Anna, Rachel, and Amy (and the Orange Ajumma), doing what they do. They don't mess around.

The hedge-lined path cutting down diagonally is called the "Stairway to Heaven." Really. Also, take note of the rows of shruberry trimmed to look like stone walls.

We grilled pork bits with mushrooms and garlic for dinner, which we ate outside on the screened-in patio. Andrew C. arrived in the middle of the meal, and an hour later, we sprung a surprise birthday cake on Anna, ate chicken, and finished the night with Cards Against Humanity.

What a good-looking group of people! We've got Andrew, Amy, Birthday Girl Anna, Rachel, Carly, Yours Truly, and Andrew C. And birthday cake.

No worries, I won't end this blog post with poopy diapers. But really, check out Cards Against Humanity.
It's open source, so print it out and play with your friends (most definitely not with your parents). 

This is the harbor where we boarded the ferry to Oedo Island, and a preview for part 2 of this blog post: