School Festival

I was helping a student after school last week (being the end of the year, school ends after lunch), when an announcement by the Principal came on the intercom. The student looked very excited and told me that there would be a festival at 2 o'clock with music and traditional dancing. She asked if I wanted to go with her, so we headed up to the auditorium on the 5th floor at about ten to 2.

It was a bit of a surprise walking in, because teachers were handed big brown envelops on the way in, and there wasn't another student in sight. I figured this was because most of them had gone home at 1 anyway. At 2 the principal was introduced and he walked up to the podium.

My student didn't translate too much for me as he was speaking, but what she did tell me was that he made a joke about underwear, remarked that only female teachers were in attendance (about 20-25 of us, but no men), and explained that children should spend more time at the library.

At 2:20, the two of us were starting to get a little stir crazy. This was quite a long introduction for a festival. Several of the teachers were reading a packet of paper that was in their brown envelop. At 2:30 my student looked a little crestfallen and told me that she hoped the dancing would start soon, because she had to leave at 3. At 2:55 she hopped out of her chair and left. At 3 the principal ended his speech, and I thought surely the festival would be starting, so I stuck around. Mrs. Shim, who came in after me and sat behind me sat next to me and asked how I knew about this. I told her my student told me about the festival.

The vice principal now took the podium, and Mrs. Shim pulled out a 16-slide PowerPoint printout from her brown packet. I sat through another Korean speech until 3:40, of which the only translation I got from Mrs. Shim was that walking is good fro your health.

As the vice principal left the podium, Mrs. Shim informed me there would be a student performance, and although she was going to leave, would I like to stay? I can't help but wonder what she thought I was doing there if not to watch a performance. Indeed, I stayed.

This is how I saw it, keeping in mind that I haven't yet seen a mask dance before this or had their meanings explained to me.

(The pictures are from my cell phone, so they aren't perfect)

A line of students enter with drums and gongs, playing in the traditional Samulnori style. They stand in the back for the duration of the performance as the musical accompaniment to each dance. Behind them enter another line of students, all in the dress and character persona's from the Hahoe mask dances so famous to Andong. After a group dance, they all leave, with only the Butcher character remaining for his (although a 6th grade girl was behind his mask) dance.

Enter the bull (controlled by two very coordinated students in its body). It charges the Butcher, who finally fells the beast with his stone axe after several blows to the head. After a song to accompany the sharpening of his dagger, he plunges it repeatedly into the bull, and pulls from it a heart and a pair of giant testicles that the Butcher holds up with a mighty proclamation to the audience.

Amazing.

After the Butcher's exit, the Widow enters and dances, then falls upon her knees and sends up a very haunting cry. After this, she stands up and starts taking a collection of money from the audience. With a handful of won, her dance becomes a bit more lively and she shuffles away.

The rest come out soon after, and their dances were a bit more difficult to interpret. The Servant and the Fool first have a bit of a scuffle do to the laziness of the later, and then the Monk, Scholar, Aristocrat, Flirtatious, and soon after, the Butcher, follow them on in a group dance with several changes of pairings.

It ends when the Aristocrat and (I think) the Scholar get into an argument over the possession of the bull testicles that leads up to a tug of war. The Widow finally takes charge of resolution, holding them up and shaking them in the faces of the two who have taken separate sides of the floor, and then ends up keeping them herself.

After one final group dance and a short Samulnori performance, the students all come out and take their masks off for a bow. All but one is a girl. I'm glad that I stayed, because I haven't had the chance to see student work outside of English class first hand until then. Elementary school performances are certainly very different back home, where about this time we'd be putting on Christmas recitals.

Autumn Out with My School

Every Wednesday, all of the students leave school after lunch, so usually the staff all gathers to play volleyball or another game similar to dodge ball (my inability to play well at both led my injured pride tochallenge some of the teachers to a footrace instead, then trip and roll in the dirt and gravel while I was in the lead 5 feet from the finish. Now I try and stick to hitting people with volleyballs). Last week, I was informed that instead of volleyball, we would go hiking. There's a hill right behind our school that I haven't tried yet and often hear people talking about, so I assumed that we would head up there during the regular 2 hours we would spend on volleyball.

I was surprised, then, when I was ushered into Taebun's car. When I asked where we were going, he didn't know. Neither did Mrs. Im when she got in, or the new 5th grade gym teacher. This is how plans usually play out, so I've found it's always easiest to go with it.

Therefore, when we stopped at a rest area after a half hour of driving, I was open for anything. This same rest area was the home of a trained duck (painted with sparkly red paint to set it apart from the common duck), which would jump (without flapping his wings) to catch bits of vegetables.

The next stop was to see Banghojeong, an old lecture hall built and named for the pen name of Jo Jun-do (but don't ask me who that is, other than a scholar of some note) on the rocks overlooking a lovely shallow river. The pavilions contain Jo Jun-do's works, as well as many poems by scholars. It's now accessible by a modern bridge, which I found to to be more aesthetic than eyesore; simple fluid lines in an unoffending white.

The location was inspiring, between water and rock. It was surrounded in yellow- little flowers and trees that I was informed are famously called gold trees- money trees. I stuffed some of the fallen leaves in my pockets, just in case.

Our next stop was a white stone beach, in a narrow long river valley between two hills.

The stones looked almost malleable, with as many soft soft curving dents as there were jagged edges. I didn't catch the name of the place, only that it's famous for photographing nude models.

We continued our journey through the land of apple trees. We were pretty close to the town of Cheongsong, which like Andong is famous in the country for its apples. In the summer, all of these trees had little bags tied on the branches to protect every fruit, but now they were hanging in bunches almost too heavy for the branches.

When we made our third stop, I was beginning to wonder if our hiking trip was going to involve any hiking. We arrived at Yongdamsa temple, and were greeted very enthusiastically by a male and female pair of Jindos (Korea's signature breed).

The male, after happily licking our principal, vice principal, and several of the teachers in turn (A remarkable attention to the hierarchy!), went running around our fifteen or so cars marking the tires with his urine. But not to worry, after all, this particular Jindo was a Buddhist (as evident by his Buddhist-marked doghouse).

The temple was quite small, built during the Silla dynasty (and rebuilt in the Joseon), smaller than the other grand temple's I've been to, with only a few buildings. But it is still functioning, like all other temples, and was so quiet in a little clearing beside a forest and a mountain. It was a nice change to see a humble temple.

Our final stop did involve hiking a small path down a slight mountainside, to see a small waterfall pouring into cavern visible at just the right angle between two rocks.

This trickled down to pool into a small pond in the nearby clearing beside the mountain, and turning my back to the waterfall, the contrasting openness was the most beautiful view of the day.

We didn't go anywhere extravagant, and made a lot of little stops which at first seemed to me a bit oddly chosen. However, that meant I saw several places that I couldn't take a bus or my bike to- places I wouldn't even know how to ask for. Surrounded by the colors of autumn, they had an out-of-the-way kind of charm and beauty. I can see the large mountains and cultural sites easily enough on my own, but these little trips are just another reason to be grateful for my school.

Chung Yang San Mountain

Last Wednesday, all of the teachers left school after lunch to drive about an hour north to Chung Yang San Mountain. I'm never sure what they do with the children on these days, or how the system works. Quite often the kids leave after lunch, actually, but I never can figure out why. This time I was told about the trip on the day before, so I dressed appropriately for hiking. Although I do have spare clothes tucked away in the bottom drawer of my desk, in case of surprise midday trips or for if one of the teachers asks me to play tennis after school.

It's actually quite common for the teachers to wear jeans to school here, mostly the women, and our footwear is irrelevant because we have our indoor shoes. This is very nice for when you're playing with kids all day.

It was a long winding drive to the mountain, and I nodded off twice during the first half because of the swaying and the soothing Korean conversation in our car pool of 5 (me, Mrs. Shim and Im, Taebun, and Mr. Park the 6th grade PE teacher). I caught myself before I drooled on Mrs. Shim's shoulder.

We arrived to the distant echo of chanting monks, and I was informed that there would be two parts to this hike. The first would be to a temple, and the second would be to the "sky bridge" by following a path leading up beyond the temple. That part would be optional. I said I would be going.

The first part of the hike was very peaceful. Because Koreans hike so frequently, there was a narrow but well-worn path leading up a shallow incline, which was frequently intersected by a tangle of roots or the assistance of large rocks to act as stairs.

Midway to the temple, Mrs. Shim pointed out a house just off the path with little bells of good fortune lined above the front door. She explained that when the owner is home, he will offer tea and a place to rest for visitors to the temple. .

The entire hike was only about twenty minutes. Our arrival at the temple was met with breathtaking views of the mountains beyond. The location is very tranquil, because there isn't a single trace of industry wherever you look.

After about fifteen minutes of mingling with the staff, Mrs. Shim took off up the path leading further up the mountain to see the bridge. I had to shed my immobilizing sense of awe that left me staring off into the valley. Taebun said that although he had never seen the sky bridge, he didn't want to attempt the climb and would rather stay behind. After all, it was a hot day and he was already tired from the previous climb. I called him a wuss (and would explain to him what that meant the next day-he was amused), and began the climb after Mrs. Shim.

This was no regular climb. The mountain deliberately mislead me on the hike to the temple. what was once about a 10-20% incline became a 70-80% incline straight up, with no hope for a brief encounter with level ground.

After five minutes, I heard the ragged breathless huffing of something behind me. Taebun had decided to catch up with us.

On occasion, the climb would get steeper. Sometimes there were planks of wood laid out as stairs.

Other times just tumbled rocks in precarious stacks.

After maybe twenty minutes, rope appeared to one side, wound and tied around trees like something out of the Swiss Family Robinson to assist the weary climber from falling backward.

Mrs. Shim held the lead for the entire forty minutes it took us to climb. She kept insisting that the mountain was "very small" and "very easy." In fact, just last weekend she had made the same hike with her husband and daughter who is in the 4th grade. I had to explain that I was only hanging so far behind her because I didn't want Taebun to feel embarrassed always bringing up the back of the line. The best part was that they actually believed me.

In our last 500m (there was finally a sign!), the ground leveled. But then as if for some cruel joke, we arrived at a tall set of stairs headed down, only to head back up again.

And then finally, just beyond the double peaks of the stairs, the sky bridge!

My first thought when I stepped onto this thing, suspended between two mountain peaks, is that my mother would have a heart attack if she were here. although it's made of hard steel, it's constructed in such a way that it bows down and shifts and sways as if you were walking across a rope bridge. And below? Well, it's just better to look out into the beyond.

On the other side, we met up with another group of teachers who made it there before us. They all pointed to my face and said "hah hah! very red!" but I made it! Mr. Park proved that not everyone is afraid of falling off of the bridge. Again. Mother. Heart attack.

I had a good...well, three minutes before it was announced to be time to go back down and meet up again with the rest of the school at the temple. On the hike back down, I made a joke that I am a very clumsy sort of person, and I that I might trip and roll all the way to the bottom. They didn't understand the meaning of the word trip, except that it's also like "vacation", and then didn't understand my description of the word ("Your foot hits something and you fall forward" and then "you don't always fall to the ground. It's an almost-fall") so on the 70-80% decline I had to try and demonstrate tripping on things. I emerged blessedly unscathed, and we developed the phrase "I tripped on my trip down the mountain."

Back at the temple, my legs were shaking with unbalance and strain, so we decided the best thing to do was to go get tea at a little shop on the grounds. Fermented alcoholic tea made of pine needles.

It did nothing to improve my balance, and we still had the twenty minute hike back to the car.

The reason for the fast pace was that we were all meeting up for some bi bim bap at a local cafeteria surrounded by lucky guardian wooden ducks (they say "cafeteria" when they describe these places to me, but as far as can tell they are like a traditional-style restaurant that specializes in one type of food, plus soup and side dishes. I've only been to these places twice, and both times it's been for bi bim bap). Bi bim bap is like my own personal Korean food blessing. It's rice and various plants and vegetables that you mix all together with some chili paste, completely vegetarian (though there are some variations that you can order with beef) so I don't have to wonder what certain meats are. It's also eaten with a spoon, which is nice.

It's nice to have these outings with my school. As busy as I sometimes feel, marked also with the occasional doubt that I'm not doing enough, it's great to be reminded that, hey, we're all just having a good time. We can organize 50 teachers in the middle of the day and all have a good time at a few days notice. We run like a well oiled machine. A Machine that can teach for 4 straight hours and then climb mountains.