Children's Day, New Discoveries, and My First Chicken

My new favourite day of the year: May 5th - Children's Day.  To have a day designated for the celebration of children - their joy, potential, and personality - what a great idea.  I looked it up on wikipedia, thinking Children's day was only a Korean invention, but it turns out to be a full blown holiday in many countries (not Canada, and not the U.S.  Why not, I wonder).  I'm glad to have the chance to celebrate it here.  To be honest, my celebrations will include shooting my friends in the head with paintballs, which isn't the most innocent of pastimes, but it's good friend bonding, and it's a Children's Day tradition here.
Our school celebrated this morning by going to a nearby playground and playing some games.  It was a beautiful day.

I have to tell you about a recent discovery.  On Saturdays, I have band practice/jam session in the afternoon.  I join a group of friends, all much better musicians, and we play music together.  It's a great chance for me to play my djembe.  We practice in a bar called Live Story in the neighbourhood of Idong, which is on the other side of the city.  I enjoy the the long scoot through the city in the middle of the day.  This past Saturday I gave Jane (who likes cooking and is excited about my oven) a ride to Idong because she needed to go to E-mart.  I usually take the main roads into Idong, but I had seen a back route during an earlier cab ride, so I decided to take this way instead.  And that's when we made the discovery... We turned a corner and right there in front of us was a large, colourful, beautiful building.  It was clearly a temple, but unlike the rebuilt temples that I've visited in the area, this one was about 5 stories high and much newer looking!  I was surprised to see it because I hadn't heard anything about any temples being right in the city.  We didn't stop right away, but on the way back to our side of town, after a great jam session, Jane and I decided to check it out.
  We parked off to the side and walked tentatively through a garden towards the building, not knowing if we were allowed there or not.  Surrounding the temple, on every floor, and hung up in the gardens around, were these very colourful, paper lanterns.  Buddha's Birthday is on Tuesday of next week (another holiday I'm looking forward to celebrating) and I've noticed these lanterns hung up all over the city.  It was gorgeous.  I still couldn't believe we'd stumbled upon such a great place.

  As beautiful as the outside of the temple was, the inside was possibly even more beautiful.  All the walls had paintings on them - all about a part of the Buddha's life (or many lives).

We snuck inside and quietly took a look around until our curiosity got the better of us and we had to ask someone about the building.  A very nice woman answered our questions and proceeded to give us a whole tour of the place.  She told us that it is indeed a Buddhist temple, open at all times, and that we were always welcome to come in.  She showed us two large rooms with Buddhas and told us about them and the symbols surrounding them.  In one of the large rooms a group of older women were sitting off to the side, on the floor.  Our guide showed us that they were making these small flowers out of coloured paper.  But we didn't realize what they were for until later.  After thanking the woman, as we were leaving, we walked by a large shed with the door open a little.  Inside, a couple of women were sticking the small paper flowers onto these large, extravagant parade floats.  And some of the floats were covered in these paper flowers - thousands of them! I can't imagine how much time it must have taken to hand-make each one!



   So that was our discovery.  I think it's awesome that there are places like that in Pohang that are there to be discovered.  I'll go back sometime.

  But Jane and I didn't go straight home.  On the way, we stopped off at Jukto market.  I hadn't been to Jukto in a long time and with my new oven, I needed to buy some food to cook.  So, among other things, I bought a whole chicken for six bucks - my first one.  I brought it home, oiled it down with salt and pepper, stuffed it with onion and garlic, and popped it in the oven.  An hour later, I was chowing down on my first cooked chicken.  I'd never felt more like a carnivore.  I was again reminded by how easy it is to forget where our food comes from - especially when it is prepared for us by others.  But, as I took my chicken out of the oven and started eating it's legs and wings, I couldn't help but realize that not too long ago little Chelsea Chicken was clucking around like all the others, oblivious that soon she'd be my dinner.  Wow, food!

Chelsea

Another cool experience, just a quick one, happened Sunday, after our soccer game.  I was scooting home, P.O.ed because we'd just lost our 6th straight, when I noticed people painting a wall.  Pohang surely isn't the nicest city in the world, but if there are people like these, who take the chance to beautify it, I think it's a pretty cool place to be.

To end, I want to mention an aspect of the English teacher in Korea's experience that became a reality for my coworkers and I just last week - The Midnight Run.  Last week Tuesday was a regular day.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened; all the teachers came to school, all the teachers left school.  But Wednesday morning was different.  Right around the time that the first bell rang, we realized that we were without one of our coworkers - Annalisa wasn't there.  We called to see if she had just overslept, but there was no answer.  Then we noticed that her desk had been cleaned out, and we realized that Annalisa wouldn't be coming back to Poly - that she had probably left sometime the evening before and was long gone by now.
I'm surprised that Annalisa decided to quit her job this way.  She hadn't been here very long, and it was clear that she didn't think too highly of the city or the school.  But to just leave one night must've taken some courage and a small amount of respect for her contract, the directors, and her co-teachers.
But we have a replacement teacher from Poly headquarters who'll be here until they can find a new teacher. His name is Paul and I think he's pretty cool.

Thanks for reading.
Happy Children's Day!
Michael