On South Korea

In case you have been in one of the many remote parts of this world lacking the amazing Internet, we have recently returned from a two week jaunt through South Korea.  In preparation for a series of posts covering our experiences there, I will be providing you with some background on South Korea.

From Wikipedia:

South Korea ( listen), officially the Republic of Korea (Korean: 대한민국; Hanja: 大韓民國; Daehan Minguk  listen), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula... It shares land borders with North Korea to the north, and oversea borders with China to the west and Japan to the east. South Korea lies in the north temperate zone with a predominantly mountainous terrain. It comprises an estimated 50 million residents distributed over 99,392 km²(38,375 sq mi).^[6] The capital and largest city is Seoul, with a population of 10 million.

You can see South Korea here, sandwiched between Japan and China.  The latitude of Korea is approximately the same as the southern US states.  Its land area is less than half of the State of Kansas in which I currently am.

Like several countries in this region, Korea's earliest written history starts as early as 2000 BC.  It is difficult to comprehend but like China and Japan, South Korea has a extensive history and several millennium of cultural development which influences its people.  It is also hard to comprehend for Westerners, but Korea's racial diversity is nearly non-existent with most Koreans being highly homogeneous for many generations.

In addition to a long and large ancient history, the Korea of today is heavily influenced by a series of wars and occupations.  Most notably were the Korean War, which resulted in the splitting of the Korean peninsula along the 38th parallel, and the occupation by the Japanese from 1910-1945.  This occupation was accompanied by extreme cultural suppression, to the point of requiring Japanese to be the official language, suppressing Korean completely. 

Suth Korea is a modern country with a high standard of living and individual income.  South Korea ranks 15th worldwide in nominal GDP according to Wikipedia.  Despite the high level of development and presence of western influences South Korea is decidedly non-western.  From where Koreans shop to how they live and eat, shows strong and somewhat striking differences to the various lifestyles we have encountered in our travels.

The next few posts will be devoted to covering the two weeks we spent roaming Korea.  Due to our exclusive use of public transit, we spent more time in the urban environments there.  This should provide a bit of a break from the often rural settings for our travels.  

A Tale of Two Weddings

Re: 10/5/2013-10/19/2013

Prologue

April 2013

Jonathan and I journeyed through Albuquerque, NM, on our way to México and stopped there to visit my recently-relocated cousin. Of course, we talk about future plans and such. Two weeks after we leave, she gets engaged. To be married in October.

June 2013

Jonathan and I flew back from our Central American travels to visit my family for a bit. While there, I talked with my sister about her future plans. Two weeks after we leave, she gets engaged. To be married in October.

Now, I am starting to see a pattern here… We visit someone, they get engaged… They get married in October… Anyone else need me to visit? Lol. Now, I know I didn’t have anything to do with my cousins’, but my sister’s engagement I probably did play a big supporting role, as I mentioned that a year is a long time to wait when you know you are going to marry someone. That got them to thinking and they jumped up their plans from possibly May 2014 to October 2013… Oops… ;)  That said, I was terrifically excited to be at these weddings.

The Main Story

October 2013

Wedding 1

We rolled into Hays, Kansas, from Colorado on Friday, 10/4, and checked into the Ramada, courtesy of my parents. Then we went to the church to help decorate the sanctuary for the blessed event. It took a couple of hours, but we finally got it done, and it looked great.

Suzanna made those ribbons herself.

Unfortunately, when we came back for the rehearsal, a piece or two had already fallen off and had to be repaired. This didn’t bode well for the wedding day, but I figured at least we knew what it needed to look like and we could fix it right before the ceremony, if needed, and it would most likely stay up during the short ceremony. After the quick rehearsal, we got to go to Napoli’s to eat the tasty rehearsal dinner.

The curtain was made of sheets of tablecloth taped around a pvc pipe. The tape would come loose. Suzanna wore a super cute outfit for the rehearsal as well.

All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

Dinner at Napoli’s.

Did I mention I got to be a bridesmaid in this wedding? Somehow, Suzanna wasn’t too embarrassed to have her bohemian nomad of a sister on the stage next to her. She had arranged for anyone who wanted to get their hair done to have an appointment Saturday morning at J Studio in town. I didn’t have an appointment, as I wasn’t sure what anyone could do with my hair. But I showed up anyway with my mother and grandmother to keep them company. They ended up grabbing me first and doing my hair “up” for me. According to all the comments on it later, I have “a lot of hair, much more than I realized.” Pretty much everyone said that, lol.

Before you comment on my clothes, please note that I needed pants because it was a cold, windy day, and I needed a button-up so that I wouldn’t mess up my hair. Those were all I had that fit those categories.

After I got my hair and makeup done, Suzanna called me with a crisis: the decorations had fallen down again and she wanted me to go to the church and fix it with Mitchell and Jeff. So, I got Jonathan to haul me to the church. See, I was Suzanna’s ‘go-fer,’ and Jonathan was mine. Whatever I couldn’t efficiently handle of her requests, I passed onto him. But what else are families for? By the time I had gotten to the church, Mitchell and Jeff had already fixed the biggest of the issues and all I had to do was fine-tune the decorations. We got it looking really good. I have to give it to Jeff; he was really there for Suzanna and Mitchell. He decorated, ran errands, ushered, and did the tear-down. The wedding definitely wouldn’t have gone as smoothly as it had without him around.

No wedding is complete without the flowers…

Next up was pictures. After everyone got dressed and prettied-up, we did as many family pictures and bridal party pictures as we could. We had a lunch break while the couple took pictures offsite, and then bridal party was to join them at another offsite location. We had a groomsman who had another engagement and hadn’t been able to show up yet (or put on his boutonniere). When Jonathan started to run me over to the offsite location, I realized that no one had grabbed his boutonniere, so we went back to grab it. As I was leaving again, I realized that I had forgotten my bouquet as well. Yay for remembering early enough! So for the pictures, everyone had their accessories without further delay. After these pictures, it was pretty much time to get to the church. Poor Suzanna didn’t get to eat lunch until about 3:30pm.

All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

The wedding went really well. The only thing that I noticed that went wrong was that the boutonniere which I pinned onto a groomsman flipped upside down. Apparently you should not have me pin your boutonniere. When my dad gives away his girls, he gives a transferring authority speech that always brings everyone to tears, mostly because he is tearing up himself. I think that was the only point in which there were tears. It was a beautiful wedding. Instead of throwing rice as they ran to their car, we blew bubbles, which looked really cute in the pictures.

My dad also does this thing where he doesn’t want to give up Suzanna’s hand. It gets everyone laughing.
All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

Can you tell she was excited? All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

The reception was held conveniently at the Ramada. They handled everything, including decorations, which was super nice; no cleanup, no cake-cutting, very handy. Suzanna and Mitchell cut cake first (although they didn’t serve it until the end), and it was a tame feeding, no smearing.  They had a very delicious dinner of chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. There were fun speeches, including one from one of Suzanna’s ex-crush, who retold the story of how Suzanna learned that appearances aren’t everything and gave a nod off to Mitchell to take that as he would. Suzanna countered that Mitchell had both looks and personality. My dad’s speech told about when Mitchell asked to marry Suzanna. She had remembered the ordeal Jonathan had to go through after his secret 10-hour drive and prepared Mitchell then took off to go shopping to give him time. Apparently that was all unnecessary, though. He had already passed the test earlier that year when my dad and sister were fighting at lunch at a restaurant. She stormed off, so Mitchell followed her. He shortly came back, ate his meal calmly with my parents, grabbed her meal to-go, and left. They figured anyone who could handle that situation so well was definitely worthy of their daughter.

 All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

 All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

After speeches came the shoe game. If you haven’t heard of that before, the couples sit back-to-back with one shoe from each of them in their hand. Then they are asked questions about the pair of them and they have to raise the appropriate shoe for an answer. For example, “who is the better singer?” elicited Suzanna’s shoe being raised by both of them. Then they raise They actually agreed on pretty much all the questions except the last, who is looking forward to tonight more? They both raised their own shoe. After that, came bouquet and garter toss, followed by the reception line and cake. They had three delicious cake flavors, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.

  Shoe game! All rights reserved shainapearce.com.

For cleanup, I had to get the ton of leftover cake to their house, but fortunately Chuck works well as a catering van as well.

Interval

During the two weeks between the two weddings, we mostly just hung out and prepared for our South Korea trip. We did make a trip to see a friend in the hospital in Tulsa, then went to Shell Knob for a week. Then, we spent a few days in Mountain Home, assisting in winterizing the watercraft there. Finally arriving in Sublette Tuesday before the wedding.

Wedding 2

I had much less involvement in my cousin Kayla’s wedding. My family (who has a restaurant) was handling the catering of the rehearsal dinner as well as the reception dinner. I am pretty good at catering and my favorite part is that I don’t have to assist in the cooking at all.

The rehearsal dinner went fairly smoothly in spite of trying to get out 30 chicken-fried chickens and 30 chicken-fried steaks at the same time. Only snag was that I ran out of prepared cups of ice (my family didn’t tell me how many to expect and I didn’t count the quantity they gave me). But that was quickly remedied.

For the wedding, we started setting up things early, but still weren’t quite finished by the start of the wedding. So we had our helpers finish up the drinks and such while my mom and I went to watch the wedding for a bit. During the rehearsal dinner, Kayla mentioned that she needed someone to man the camera, so I had Jonathan take over that job. He did really well, except that we weren’t there for the rehearsal, so we didn’t know that groom’s party came in from a different door, and we almost missed filming them. The sound tech had to get our attention and point us in the right direction.


After the pastor started in on his message, I stepped out to see how we were doing setting up, thinking the message would take a while. I helped them finish things up and then was going to back to the sanctuary to watch the ending of the wedding, but as I walked through the dinner hall, I saw the groomsmen coming out. Wedding was already over! I ran back to let my family know that it was almost showtime.

The meal was served buffet-style, so things were pretty easy, except for the traffic control. There was only one small door for the entrance and exit for the buffet tables. So, my dad and I patrolled the door. He controlled the flow of traffic from the inside, and I directed traffic from the outside, stopping entering people to let exiters out and keeping those exiting from cutting through the line of traffic to get to their seats. That kept things going pretty smoothly.



We didn’t have to serve dessert or cake. Kayla arranged something interesting for the cake. Each table had its own miniature cake, which the guests had to cut and serve themselves. I had never seen this done before, but I kind of liked it. That way, no one was responsible for cutting the giant wedding cake themselves and their wasn’t a huge line for cake. Then while they ran for their car, we threw wheat and candy sprinkles.

Jonathan photo-bombing this picture. Too bad you can’t see him waving behind her veil.

Federal Fail

Location: Hays, KS

Re: 9/30/2013-10/4/2013

After our travels through California, the plan was to make a beeline to Utah and visit several of the national parks there, including, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, and Arches.

View Larger Map

 

It took us a day and half to get from the Ancient Bristlecone Pines to Zion National Park. We overnighted on BLM ground near Beatty, NV. Apparently the BLM ground there is an effort to manage the conflicts between people and wild burros. Early that morning, I even spotted these wild burros at the nearby pond, getting a drink.

 

I wasn’t able to take a picture, so I stole one from the internet.

 

We arrived at Zion National Park around 3pm, and since we would be pushing the limits to see the national parks and make it on time for the wedding, we decided to go ahead and visit the park and go on a trail, especially since you can only visit the canyon on a free bus that makes stops throughout the canyon. After scoping out our options, we decided to start with the Emerald Pools trail and take the trail that led us to the Grotto, the next bus stop further into the canyon. It was a beautiful hike.

 

Zion Canyon

 

One of the Emerald Pools

 

We found a six-legged tarantula along the way to the Grotto.

 

All in all, it was good hike and visit to the park, except for the fact that I left my fan in the bus and lost it. We bypassed the already-full campgrounds at the park and camped in BLM area along the Smithsonian Scenic Byway. It had quite the view in the morning when we got up.

 

Tuesday morning we decided to go to the end of Zion Canyon and see the hanging gardens and such. But, as we entered the fee area and showed our pass, the attendant said that they were closed today and we couldn’t go into the canyon nor leave our vehicles parked along the road. Confused, we decided to drive on through and move on to our next stop, Bryce Canyon. Along the way, I went to the park’s website to see if they listed the why the park was closed—we couldn’t see any reason why it should be. That is when we learned of the government shutdown. Nps.gov wasn’t even up; it redirected to site that said there was a federal shutdown. I mean, we knew our government had issues, but this was pretty bad. There were tons of people whose once-in-a-lifetime vacations were ruined by this maneuver. Our plans definitely had a wrench tossed into the gears. We weren’t able to visit or stay in a single national park or forest the rest of our trip.  We could only drive near the remaining parks on our list.

 

We did find a trail that wasn’t closed off: the Arches Trail in Lossee Canyon of Dixie National Forest. There was a neat little trail that showcased 15 small arches.

Arch #1.

 

Oh, and there was a stop in Capitol Reef National Park, where we could stop and gaze at Freemont wall carvings from afar.

After Utah, we made a beeline for Hays, Kansas. On the way, though, Chuck started acting up again. In Glenwood Springs, we stopped and picked up a fuel pump to see if that would fix the issue. It didn’t, but at least there wasn’t a high-pitched whine. Then, right before Limon, we decided it was the fuel filter. So Jonathan did emergency surgery and removed the filter to prevent destroying the fuel pump. Then, we picked up another fuel filter in Limon and installed it. After that, we were home free.

Catching Up

I don’t know if you know this about me, but I really am not a fan of writing. And, when I had a chance to not blog for a while, I kinda took advantage of it, and then it got out of control. So I will try to catch you up on the past 2 months of our lives. Is it sad that I am only doing this because Jonathan has been badgering me to blog and I figure it is better than starting job applications?

Reasons and Night Life

Editors Note:Those seeking cool pictures of our roamings should wait for a few more days for their fix.  This post is mostly philosophical in nature.

Wherever we roam, we inevitably encounter fellow travelers.  While we may share the same locale, and often the same nationality as them; our motivations for traveling are usually different.  Many backpackers are simply looking for excitement with a different backdrop.  Often this takes place separate from the local culture. 

Some are looking to meet new people. To gain new experiences, to test themselves. A few are seasoned veterans who simply enjoy having each day greet them with a different face.  An even smaller number fall in love with a country, a people, and become permanent ex-pats.

Still more are seeking a freedom they cannot have or are unwilling to use in their native settings.  Being freed from obligations, expectations, and cultural limitations is an interesting litmus test of a person's basic nature.  When you are accountable to only yourself what are your limits?

An intriguing trend in the budget/ backpacker community is the tendency to use travel as sort of a rolling review of nightlife.  The typical backpacker on this kind of course is checking off landmarks, and canned experiences from social media during the day; and hitting up the "local" (read familiar backpacker) bars and hangouts at night.  Change locations and repeat.  This is most common in big cities with well established routes and infrastructure for budget travelers.  The Internet has made this easier by concentrating information and connecting people.  Thus reducing the difficulty and variety of experiences. 

I have no right to judge, nor its my experience representative, but I feel it is a shame to waste such great opportunities hung over in a dorm, checking off lists on Facebook, and Skyping your friends back home. 

I may be a bit biased as I find most clubs and some bars to be difficult, at best, settings for socialization.  I have also concluded that inebriation is a hindrance.  Being married means I am not hunting for hookups either.

So, why do we travel?  I guess what most people see as reasons to stay home we see as exciting opportunities.  The unknown is still scary, but the reward far outweighs the risk and frustration.

On that note we will be concluding our visit to South Korea shortly.  Be looking out for some cool pictures once we recover from the inevitable jet-lag.

Today in Pictures

Fresh from my thumbs of thunder here's some Koreatastic photo-ness.

A little taste of home.  Straight from Louisiana to my South Korean table.  They really like their spice here.

It is very important to know I am not welcome in their ladies room...

I guess they didn't have the Mexicans to inspire the tortilla chip.

I thought this was an air freshener at first.  I wonder what butter fresh would smell like? Delicious I would bet.

The often-imitated-but-never-duplicated American cheeseburger.  And yes, those are pickled peppers on the side.  Almost everything here is served with a pickled something. Jen loves this.

It is formulated to provide fresh and clean...

A little bit of heaven.  This bottle most likely cost more to import than our meal cost to make.  We decimated that bottle.  

Hefty import tariffs on prepared foods make the only cheap beer the local Cass (its just as bad as Nicaraguan beer).  This Heineken was on sale for 9,000 won (about 9$US).

The fabled empty bus.  Even more rare than a pink unicorn.  We have been lucky to see it once since coming here.  On a related note, Koreans produce no body odor.  Though, they do smell slighty of fermented cabbage (kimchi) and garlic.

What Comes in a Can and Rhymes with Ham?

Sometimes, cultural icons will follow us from one country/culture to another.  Often these stress good things such as ubiquitous public restrooms and free WiFi.  Sometimes they steed from the darker side.  South Korea meet Spam.

Notice the local spam clone Richam.