Korean Street Food, Odeng (Eomook) 오뎅 (어묵)

It's starting to cool down here on Jeju, so it's a perfect time to eat some street food to warm up!  Surprisingly, one of my favorites is the fish cakes or Odeng.  I'm not exactly sure how to spell it in English, but I gave it my best.  Most of the time, the Koreans seem to call it odeng but it's actually a Japanese word, and if you don't know much about the history between Korea and Japan, the Koreans don't always think fondly on their neighbors to the east.  So some of the time, they'll call it by the Korean word, eomook. (어묵). You dip it in the side of soy sauce mixed with chili peppers and green onions.  On a really cold day, believe it or not, it's pretty nice to drink the broth for a quick warm-me-up!

Some more from the Chuseok Cruise

Sanbangsan

Sunset

Sanbangsan

Chuseok Full Moon

Jeju Weekly 9/21/12: Twenty's a charm

Here's my newest contribution to the Jeju Weekly: 9/21/12 Twenty's a charm A review of the newest Jeju Olle walking course No. 20

Woljeong Beach

David on 마당 (Garden) 5.10c at Squirrel Cave

David on 마당 (Garden) 5.10c at Squirrel Cave

Fisherman's closet

Hallasan, Post Typhoon Bolaven

Tamna Valley

One of the things I've always wanted to do in Jeju was to see the crater lake filled at the top of Hallasan.  What better chance do I have than immediately after a typhoon!?! Typhoon Bolaven came on a late Monday night and passed through early on Tuesday. I just so happened to have the next Wednesday off from work and packed up my bags for an early morning hike up the mountain.  It turned out to be absolutely amazing to pass by the normally dry riverbeds and hear the sound of running water.

I found some amazing lenticular clouds

Utter Destruction at the Summit

Unfortunately, the top was covered in fog!  I couldn't see anything!!!! My 4:45am wake up wasn't seeming so cool anymore. The last few hundred meters of the hike were utter destruction.  Trees were downed everywhere and over the trail.  At the top it was like the mountain got a haircut.  It seemed like every tree that could be seen was shaved down to about 8 feet.  The guard rails, part of the platform trail, and the hut at the top were all destroyed.

On the bright side, I had an incredible solitary hike up the normally crowded mountain where I didn't see a soul the entire way up and only a couple of friendly groups on the way down.  On the way down however, it was just my luck that after about 30 minutes, the skies cleared just enough to see the top. I was way to exhausted to turn around, and it's a good thing I didn't because the clouds came back right away.  Another typhoon, Tembin came the next day, maybe filled the crater even more, but I couldn't make it to the mountain on the weekend.  There's another typhoon coming this weekend though!!!

Hydrangea

One of the signs of the beginning of summer is when the hydrangeas come in full bloom. It looks like I actually took this picture in July.  You can see them in the gardens and along the roadsides.  I especially like to see them as they line both sides of the hiking trails in deep green, blue and purple.

Sunset from Darangshi Oreum

Went to the oreum the other day, it was a pretty nice sunset

Swing Island's First Concert

Here's my first foray into video making.  Last weekend, was the first concert of the swing dance club that I go to here on Jeju.  They always have a performance at the end of each lesson cycle, a kind of 'graduation performance.' This one was on a much bigger scale though.  Instead of being held at the dance studio, it was held on the big statge the Art and Culture Center.  I was really impressed, everyone did really well, and the turnout was fantastic.  It was a nearly packed house!  I hope you enjoy my first video!

Faces at the Heirloom 5 Market

Chantalle with her pottery

The Heirloom 5 market is a place where the Jeju Foreigner Community comes together and shares, sells, and gives their arts, crafts and homemade baked goods.  This weekend was maybe one of the last as Shay, the founder is leaving soon.  It's really amazing to see the resourcefulness of foreigners here in Korea, living in a foreign country.  Because you can't easily get a lot of the ingredients and equipment that you are used to, people really learn how to make things from scratch.  There was some amazing stuff that I tried including carrot cakes, chili, pulled pork, pottery, music, home-brewed beer, honey, and all sorts of muffins!

I came late, so I didn't get a lot of good pics of the market, but here's some friends

Sarah and Shay

Rachael and Lauren

Brad

We got the girls dancing!

cafe may飛 [카페 메이비] [cafe mayB.]

I've taken a long hiatus from playing music publicly and I've decided that it's time to get back at it.  There's a really wonderful and cute cafe on Lee Jung Seop Street in downtown Seogwipo called Mayb Cafe, run by a beautiful young lady, Hyeyeon. Hyeyeon is a very worldly and friendly person so her cafe is a hit with foreigners.  Her sister runs the Halla Flower Shop right next door and it complements the cafe very well, making it a cozy place to hang out.

Last weekend, Hyeyeon held a summer block party mini-concert at Mayb and I asked to play.  It was a perfect night, the weather was beautiful.  About 8 or 9 musicians played through the evening, mostly duets and solos.  I was really surprised with the Seogwipo music scene!  It's really thriving.  The musical quality was high, and most of the groups played at least one or two originals.

I'm pretty critical about myself, so I'll admit that my rustiness didn't show off my talents and Jeju City musical standards so well but have to say that it was really fun to go on stage. I performed with my friend So Young, who sang very beautifully, even though it was her first time on stage!  We'll perform again on the 15th of July at the Festival at Tapdong. See you there!

Mayb Cafe is located in the middle of Lee Jung Seop Street in Seogwipo.

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cafe may飛 [카페 메이비] [cafe mayB.]

416-2 Seogwidong, Seogwipo, South Korea

070-4143-0639

Sunset from Nokkomae

It was a pretty nice sunset from the top of Nokkomae Oreum tonight

Last week was Memorial Day, June 6th, so I spent the afternoon at Jungmun Beach with my friends.  Jungmun is the main tourist area on the south side.  All the fancy hotels and the International Convention Center are all located in this tourist complex.  Nevertheless, I really enjoy the beach there and think it's one of the best in Jeju.  It's always pretty clean and there's sometimes some surfing.  The swimming is fun and it's surrounded by cliffs.

A big group of my English teacher friends went down to play some beach volleyball, surf, and swim.  It was my first swimming day in the ocean this year, the water is just now getting warm.  The surfing in Jeju is generally not so good, but today the waves were forming some nice barrels.  I got out, but I still can barely catch a wave, let alone stand up.  I just need some time.

The beach was not very crowded, but there were definitely people around

Jung Ah and her Surfboard

Volleyball on the Beach

Emma took me on a Field Trip

Emma and her Hammock

Jeju's Seokgulam Trail

Ryan, my greatest of friends from my first year in Jeju, told me before he left of a mysterious temple in the middle of the wilderness at the top of a long hike.  I wonder if Seokgulam temple is what he was talking about???  

Not to be confused with the extremely famous and impressive Seokguram temple near Gyeongju, the Seokgulam temple in Jeju is it's own little jem.  The trail is relatively a short 1.5km and has been recently improved due to it's location in the now designated World Heritage Site in Hallasan National Park.  Apparently very popular with the locals, especially on Sundays, you might not necessarily hike alone like I did.  The temple was built in 1947 and when I get around to it later this week, I'll try and translate some of the sign for the historical information ;) 

When I got up to the top, I met a wonderful foreigner who is staying at the temple and studying buddhism with the head monk.  She gave me a very nice tour, and explained some of the buddhist symbols and prayer spaces to me.  In the Korean and buddhist traditions, I was offered more fruit than I could handle and had a great conversation.  It turned out that he is from the same small town where my little brother just moved!   What a small world.

The Seokgulam trailhead is located halfway up the driveway to Cheonwangsa Temple off the 1139 on the way to Eorimok.

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Partial Solar Eclipse

This is my second eclipse to see in Jeju.  It's always eerie when the sky gets dark on a bluebird day.  It was only a partial eclipse, but it really did get quite a lot darker. In fact, as I post this, it's still a bit dark! 

On this picture, I especially like the rainbow reflections coming off of the sun.  The reflections show you better how much of the sun was actually covered.  Amazing!

Quiz Night at La Vie

The Losers of La Vie's Quiz Night

La Vie is somewhat of a foreigner institution in the Shin-Jeju area, the western part of Jeju City.  It's run by the ever friendly and wise Young-Suk (pronounced Sook). Every other week, there's a quiz on Friday night at 9:00pm.  The difficulties of the questions changes with the host but the fun stays the same.  I'm not a regular, so I found myself in the midst of an incredibly friendly, albeit unaware about American culture, Japanese team.  Miles's questions seemed equally hard, if not a little nerdier than Matt's but there was good times around.  One of the highlights for me was the scavenger hunt, where a team put a mountain bike on the table for their piece of sports equipment.

I don't blame the Japanese teammates for my lack of ability, but we did have to wear the dunce caps for getting last place.  Better luck next time!

Quiz night is Non-Smoking

Young-Suk and Sam with her hand-knitted sweater

La Vie is located in Shin Jeju close to The Jeju Grand Hotel.  It's behind the new Starbucks and the Milano Hotel.

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Spring Flowers on Hamdeok Beach

The weather has been fantastic lately.  For the second post in a row, the photo was taken about a month ago, so the canola flowers have now come and gone.  They were pretty amazing this year, but I missed most of them to be honest.  Things have been quite busy at school this semester with my studying and teaching, so I haven't gotten to go out as much as usual.  Fortuantely, there's just three more teaching weeks in this semester, and after that, I'll have plenty of extra time.  Also, next week is the Jeju University Festival, so I'll have some time off from teaching but that just means more time studying.  Come June, I'll take some time to go hiking again and maybe get working on my Oreum project at long last.

First Bloom

I took this picture a month ago (April 11).  Spring is in full bloom on Jeju now though.  I'd like to make it up to the mountain on Friday to get some photos of the Azaleas.

Settlers of Catan: An Addiction

Troy, Jung A, Suyeon playing Settlers of Catan at my place

This is our addiction. In the past couple of years, there's been a wave of playing boardgames among my friends.  We started out with simple cardgames like Hearts, and then moved onto other games like Rummikub  and Scrabble.  However, though them all, we can't stop playing Catan.  It's really a bit of an addiction for us...You can't stop playing Catan after just one game.

If you don't know what it is, it's a settling game.  You build settlements on resources and you have to trade those resources for others to build more roads and settlements. Each settlement is a point and each upgrade to a city is a point.  The first to 10 points wins.  The beauty is that the games usually only last about an hour and they're generally pretty close in that everyone seems to have a chance to win every game.  It's not rare to have three of the four players to have a chance of winning on the last turn.  Trading is part of the game and you have to barter, so you can't sit there silently.  It's a very social game and almost never boring.  I suggest it to anyone also who is trying to learn Korean also to play it too, it forces you to speak and can be a fun way to practice using your language.  Some of my friends now use it in their English Teaching classes, too.  They say that their classes have never been better.  They go from building the boards to playing the game.

Unfortunately, in our little circle the girls have been winning pretty consistently the last two sessions.  The boys will get them next time! Even if the games last until 6am!

A room with a view, and a light

Here's a photo of some of my close friends in Korea, Nopy, Seong Hong, and Seobi.  I met them though the Swing Dancing club and they've really been good friends to me, probably more than I deserve!  This is at their office of Nopy's new e-business, Like Jeju.  Nice view, huh? You can see the ocean right beyond those buildings.

Look for them on Facebook: LIKE JEJU

The picture was kind of salvaged from an extremely underexposed photo.  It's encouraging me to buck up the bucks and try out Aperture instead of just simply using iPhoto for my pictures on my new mac.  I'm in desperate need of some photo editing and organizational software.

Cherry Blossoms

Just realized that I didn't post any cherry blossom pictures!  Here's what the cherry blossoms looked like at the bus stop in front of my apartment building.  The cherry blossoms at the entrance of Jeju National University are pretty well known around Jeju as being some of the nicest on the Island.  Not a bad place to live, huh?

Chujado Grave

Barimae Oreum

Eongtto Waterfall

Bee and Flower

Youngjusan Oreum

Won Meul Oreum

Biyangdo

Geumak

Jeju City Panorama