Jeollanam-do Part 2: Daewonsa and Tibetan Museum

Small chipmunk on one of hundreds of red-capped Buddha statues at Daewonsa Temple.
People who've never been to Korea ask me if it is a nice place to visit. I have a hard time answering. Korea is full of history and beauty and charmingly delightful people--all things that should make it an ideal place for the adventure tourist. However, I tend to say that it is an awesome place to live and a good place to visit if you know people there, but that it's probably not the greatest place in the world to just travel around with a backpack for a few weeks. Although lovely and relatively unknown to the backpackers of the world, Korea remains a country that is a touch overcrowded (though not with tourists and lacks the tourist infrastructure of other Asian countries which can be both refreshing and frustrating for the lone traveler). What's more though is that Koreans have limited self-appreciation of the kind of cultural sites that appeal to such foreign tourists. One is more likely to be directed to a plastic reconstructed "historical village theme park" by the locals than to the preserved ruins of the actual former kingdom a few kilometers down the road; to gaudy and badly-run festivals and tourist villages than to local markets and active village communities that show the true daily life of rural Korea. Until the Korean tourist department realizes the general dislike Western travelers have for such falsified experiences (the worst I've personally seen was a museum in Jeju of preserved insects set up in carefully done dioramas that depicted scenes from Hollywood movies with not one bit of English information about the local insects of Korea. I still have nightmares about praying mantis ET), the country will be obscured and overshadowed by its Far East neighbors who have figured out how to get our tourist dollars.

Fishing Dragon. Temple detail at Daewonsa.
So even as relatively under traveled and undiscovered to the Western travel world as Korea is, it's not often that I feel like I've stumbled upon hidden travel gems here. One such time was our trip last year to the small island near Geoje-do of Somaemul-do. Certainly without the benefit of my own transportation, my travels are often limited to where the bus goes (which in Korea, luckily, is almost everywhere!). However, very far from the beaten path--off a poorly marked "scenic highway" and well outside any real city's limits--lies Daewonsa and the connected Tibet Museum.

More temple detail. Notice the tiny, individual artwork on each supporting beam as well as the roof artwork that runs along the wall panel. This is not the typical level of detail in Korean temples.
Rather understated for something so unequivocally lovely, Daewonsa features natural and cultivated beauty (indeed I saw more wildlife in a temple than I've ever seen before) and temples of extraordinary detail, very well maintained. The atmosphere is unusually mysterious and reflective (although this could be because we arrived at the start of the temple-stay silence period, but I think it's also the design and intention).

A preserved example of intricate Tibetan sand art housed in the museum.
It's also notable because one of the leading monks has a fascination with Tibet and the Buddhism of Tibet and has collected so many varied and eclectic artifacts and information from that country that it is now housed in a separate, lovely, three-floor structure devoted to informing Koreans about the country and culture. Especially strange is the basement "death experience" where you learn about Tibetan Buddhists' understanding about death and you can go through a zen-like exercise where you "die" to come to an understanding yourself. Min Gi was too afraid. I was about to do it, when a family with two young children wandered in. Somehow dying in front of children who were shyly saying "hello" and staring at me seemed a bit too awkward, so I ultimately declined.


Overall the temple is well worth the long trip out there. If we'd had the time, I would like to have done the temple stay, but we were unprepared for the meditation and silent reflection and fasting that they had on the schedule. So we continued on to Gwangju for dinner.

See more from our Jeollanam-do trip:

Jeollanam-do

Jeollanam-do Part 1: Boseong Green Tea Fields

Min Gi and I hiking up the mountain of green tea bushes in Boseong
Min Gi and I ventured out to Jeollanam-do for the first weekend in May with the promise of a green tea festival in Boseong and some other interesting tourist stops. While we had originally planned to spend a full two days exploring the province, Min Gi's back spasmed overnight (the one that landed him in the hospital two days later), so we came home early on Sunday.

Green Tea Ice Cream: True Love.
First stop: Boseong Tea Festival (interesting although somewhat disappointing for a Korean festival--the "performances" were mostly karaoke by local people and the demonstrations other than the sorting tea leaf one--which was too expensive at 10,000won, though it did include the tea you sorted as a parting gift--were rather lackluster and too crowded) and the nearby tea fields on a large plantation (much less disappointing and the snack shop offered green tea ice cream, among other goodies).

The cedar trees on the plantation were striking and lovely.
Although I'll write next time about Part 2: Daewonsa and the Tibetan Museum, you can check out the full album from our trip here:

Jeollanam-do

Suwon Fortress (화성) -- UNESCO World Heritage

The wall meanders through the city for 5.7km, with several gates visible along the way.
Near the center of Suwon, a satellite city on the Seoul subway line known for some excellent colleges, is one of Korea's World Heritage sites. Built in the late 1700s, the fortress at Suwon, Hwaseong (화성), is one of the most modern celebrated accomplishments of the Joseon dynasty. Including this trip, I have now been to six of Korea's nine sites, including both of Gyeongju's sites on the list--Bulguksa and Seokguram (together they count as one site) and the historic areas and Namsan (together)--Jongmyo and Changdeokgung (somehow I never did blog about this one) in Seoul, and Haeinsa.

The first part of the trip was a bit of a steep hike up a small mountain.
On the way to our visa interview at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Min Gi and I decided to check it out.

The signal beacon--for communication about attacks and location of the city.

Water passing through what I thought was the prettiest of the gates, Hwahongmun.
As you can see, the weather was perfect for the hike around the outside. We got some really stunning views of Suwon city, watched Korean children and Taiwanese tourists learn Korean archery, and engaged in general silliness, as you can see:

Bad idea, hon.
Check out the complete album for more:

Suwon Fortress (화성) -- UNESCO World Heritage

Spicy Black Bean Soup

Chock full of veggies! (The color comes from the tomatoes, unlike most soups in Korea where the red is from the spicy pepper flakes/paste.)
I had some black beans from cooking burritos in the past, but as I'm leaving in 2 months and don't plan to go to Costco to get other ingredients I need for burritos (like tortillas and salsa), I decided to find some other black bean recipes and try them out. This is the second time I've made this heavenly soup. It is one of the most delicious, healthy, filling, and just plain awesome things I've ever cooked in my life. It has a hearty Western-style soup flavor, all with ingredients relatively easy to find in Korea.

I was inspired by two recipes on the web: mainly, I adapted Vegan Black Bean Soup from AllRecipes, but I also borrowed some ideas from Black Beans and Rice at Casual Kitchen, one of my favorite food blogs for all kind of reasons.

A couple notes first: I don't track amounts very strictly when I cook. I have a good sense of how some flavors balance each other, but I often add a LOT more garlic and spices as I go to alter the flavor. The instructions here correlate to what I used this time, but you can use more or less or change some veggies and spices to suit your own tastes.

Everything but the beans...wow!
Ingredients:

About 1.5 cups dried black beans, soaked overnight, drained, and then cooked with just a bit of olive oil and salt added halfway through cooking (if you have never cooked dry beans before, this is kind of tricky... do some reading on the internet)
1.5 onions, roughly chopped
1 carrot, sliced
3 large stalks celery, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
1 can of corn
4 large tomatoes (chop two and a half, preserving as much of the juice as you can and blend the remaining 1.5)
4 tbsp olive oil
about 1/2 cup red pepper flakes (this is a sub for chili powder using Korean 고추가루)
2 tbsp cumin (I found this at a "global market" in Korea)
3 spicy green peppers
4ish tbsp crushed/smashed garlic
pinch of black pepper powder

So... once you've prepped all your beans and veggies (this takes awhile) you can begin:
1. Heat a large soup pan over low heat and add the olive oil, onions, carrot, celery, bell pepper, and garlic. Sautee for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the beans and the corn and about 2 cups of water. Stir well. Add all of the spices. Cook for about 5 more minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes (chopped and blended) and the spicy green peppers. (While #1&2 are happening is usually when I chop the tomatoes, so they'll go in not all at the same time--like 1/2 a tomato at a time).
4. Cook for 20-30 minutes on low heat.
Tip: Taste at about 10 or 15 and add more spices as you like.

This yielded about 12 bowls of soup for us (which we will go through in like 3 days... seriously it's that good). Be warned that eating two bowls in the same meal is painfully filling.

Serve with rice and enjoy!!!

P.S. Bonus ingredient: A Min Gi to remark how amazing a cook you are and do all the dishes when you're done. I highly recommend this. ;-)

Immigration Update

You can read about our immigration journey thus far here and here.

Min Gi just called me from Seoul where he turned in the blue form and my dad's I-864 (the Affidavit of Support) form, W-2s and tax papers for the last three years along with a birth certificate and passport copy for proof of dad's U.S. citizenship (I didn't go with him this time). The ladies at the embassy said that barring anything crazy, Min Gi should get the visa some time next week.

With less than two months until my departure date and less than three months until his, this is a big relief. When the papers arrive, we will bust open the nice Australian bottle of wine we got as a wedding present from Sarah. An occasion well worth the celebrating.

Break Time!

Min Gi likes to watch TV. I prefer to read or mess around (even occasionally write) on the computer. Sometimes in the evening, we will spend a few hours each doing our own thing--him in the living room, me in the bedroom.

Well... every 30 minutes or so, Min Gi will pop into the bedroom and shout "Break Time!"

Apparently break time means dancing for 2-5 minutes. Or attacking the kitties together. Or kissing.

Being married rocks.

Hey, everybody: BREAK TIME!

Lying

Well, blog. I have to apologize. I've been seriously neglecting you. And worse, my lovely, captive readers (perhaps not so captive these days) have been left in the dark. And you deserve an explanation. A good one.

But here's the thing blog, I can't give it to you. I'm still in Korea, loving Min Gi (marriage is pretty damn awesome), having wonderful mini-adventures (most recently a picnic outing with the in-laws to a little town called Gachang, full of Dae Gaya historical stuff), but I just can't blog about it. I have something huge weighing on my mind that for privacy reasons, I cannot blog about. Well, at least not fully. I have hinted about it before, but coming full out and discussing the inner workings of my neuroses would cause a lot of unnecessary pain to people I love. And so half-blogging about this, and blogging about other things that are rather trivial to me at this point in my life feels like lying.

Unfortunately, not blogging about it (or at least not writing about it) seems to be increasing my depression and causing regular meltdowns (most recently an hour spent on the phone with my mother crying about stupid stuff). This has become unacceptable. So I've decided that I need to write. I will not be writing here about this stuff, but I believe that by writing about it privately, I will release the crap that's been keeping me from writing about anything else and be able to return to updating you about the details of saying goodbye to my home for the last three years and moving a new family to America in the middle of a recession.

Sorry I cannot be more honest with you, blog and blog readers. But at least now I'm being honest with myself. I hope it helps me get my voice back.

What You Missed in May

As I said in my last post, I've been failing to blog much this month. I've been on two road trips with Min Gi, which I plan to post about each separately over the next couple days, but also other stuff's been going on while I was preparing all these papers and dealing with Min Gi's injured back...

--After a night in the hospital, Min Gi took about two weeks to recover. This was the hardest part of our married life to date (although not nearly so trying as my two-week long hospitalization and several month recovery of last year). It's harder on us if Min Gi is sick because he is the natural extrovert. Usually he deals with this by going out with his friends a couple nights a week, but during this time he was pretty confined to the house with me (introverted me who works at an extrovert's job and needs my downtime) as his only social outlet. Also, paying for the hospital bill made us deal with the fact that we haven't yet fully combined our resources (we're kind of waiting until the U.S. to do this for several reasons) which made us have our first two money fights--ew! Thankfully, we've figured out that we were fighting mostly because each of us thought the other needed money and we were worried because we each only have enough for ourselves until America. However, as he now fondly declares, his "back is back!"

Look--I'm a real 아줌마 now--I've made cucumber kimchi (오이 소박이)!
--I continue learning new Korean recipes. And now, I've made my first kimchi! I followed this recipe, mostly (I like fresher kimchi, so I only let it sit out for two hours and I used 4 large cucumbers cut into quarters, instead of 10 small pickling ones), with some help from online youtube videos.

--We took the cats to the vet for their rabies vaccine as part of the preparation for their journey to America. Saja was fine, but Princess took quite ill from the stress and the shot and threw up for three hours, even some blood during the last bit. We were very worried, but she turned out just fine.

Cousin waves from Gomo's headquarters in Sangju
--It's election season. Everywhere we look, there are women dancing on cars with loudspeakers blaring the virtues of their particular candidate. Min Gi and I took a trip to visit Gomo, who is running for office in the small town of Sangju, to offer our support.

--All the stress from stuff this month has made me go WAAAAY off my health goals, but I'm finding my way back. My new thing is being a vegan every other day. So far, I like it.

--Julian, who took our wedding photos at the temple, sent us his photos from the wedding and the party that followed. Check out the album, if you like:

Wedding Ceremony & Party at Asurajang (Julian)

Immigration Saga Part 2 (Or... Why I Haven't Been Blogging)

Min Gi's interview for a CR-1 at the U.S. embassy in Seoul was on Thursday, May 27 at 8 a.m. I posted about our first round of filing (the I-130 form) a couple months ago. Since then, we've been gathering documents like some long drawn-out scavenger hunt. When I had the final packet assembled and ready to go before our trip up to Seoul, I felt like I did when I'd completed my final paper for grad school last year. It was almost as much work!

To sum up: Interview: Pass; Documents: One Fail. We were blue-paper-ed. I'll explain it all below. Generally, it's a good outcome, but we have to re-file the erroneous document, which means one more trip to Seoul for Min Gi.

What happened: We arrived at about 7:40 and sat on the chairs outside the embassy. However, at about 8:10 we realized they were for non-immigrant visa applicants, so we went into the building.

They did a document intake and told us to wait (the document intake lady was not so nice, but the interviewer was very nice). We were called up again, they took Min Gi's fingerprints (no ink!). They sent us to the cashier to pay ($400-- or 480,000 won that day, you do need exact change if using won). We waited for the interviewer to call us up. We got to watch other couples/families interview at the glass window.

Although the consular interview is designed to be done by just the applying immigrant spouse (because the U.S. citizen or permanent resident already lives in the U.S.), you can do it together if you plan to travel at a later date, you just need to prove future domicile instead of current, which is a bit tricky. Our interview itself was three questions long and the interviewer cut Min Gi off in the middle of answering the question about what he would do in the U.S. saying she wasn't "going to pry any further into our personal lives." We were out of the building by 10:15 a.m.

We followed the checklist provided by the embassy, which included the following documents (with copies of everything because otherwise they might keep the originals):

--Min Gi's passport (valid for at least 8 months)
--two recent passport-style photos
--a receipt for delivery of the visa and passport (you pay cash on delivery; the forms are available at the embassy)
--another set of identification papers (Certificate of Kinship, Certificate of Marriage, and Certificate of Personal Records and photocopies and translations) for Min Gi
--A medical test (this test is very specific and only 4-5 hospitals in Korea are able to perform it; however, the instructions are pretty clear--don't forget your passport and passport photos and $150, though or you'll have to make more trips than you want to; oh yeah, and this is the exception to the copies--DO NOT OPEN THIS ENVELOPE!!!)
--A Criminal History Record for Min Gi from Korea (if you've lived in other countries, you need those records, too) and a translation with a signed statement from the translator
--An Affidavit of Support (Form I-864) filled out by me along with IRS transcripts of my income taxes for the last 3 years and proof of my citizenship (passport and birth certificate), hopefully proving I can support Min Gi financially in the U.S. However, the U.S. gov't does not count my foreign income. This is nice for saving money on taxes, but it means I have essentially earned $0 since August 2007. The gov't does not cotton to poor folk joining them (the Statue of Liberty--she's a-lying). Therefore my dad agreed to help me out--this is where we made a mistake!!!
--Proof of Domicile in the U.S. To prove I was moving to the U.S., I included my contract showing the end date in August, a document I signed for work announcing my intention not to renew, my one-way plane ticket, some e-mail receipts for counties where I've submitted job apps as well as correspondence with another job opportunity I'm pursuing, a letter from my mom saying that we will live with them until we can move into our own place and that my belongings in the U.S. are currently stored there, my Maryland state driver's license showing my parents' address, and highlighting the IRS transcripts had been received at that same address. The interviewer complimented me on this stuff, so I think it would be a good model to follow.
--Because I need a joint sponsor (my dad), I had to write a letter explaining why (in case my $0 income was not obvious evidence enough)
--Joint Sponsor's Affidavit of Support. Here is where we made the mistake. I assumed that since I'd had to go through all of those hoops above to PROVE that I'd be living with my parents that dad should fill out the form I-864 A for an adult member of my household. However, they wanted him to fill out form I-864 (as if he were an Independent Joint Sponsor). We also submitted proof of his citizen status (a copy of his passport) and the last three years' IRS transcripts. We have to submit the correct form in order for the visa process to finish. We were given a blue paper listing the document to submit and told that we can show up any Wednesday 8:30-10, sans appointment.

I also had a stack of proofs that we're a real couple prepared. The interviewer didn't even glance at them. There was a lot of wasted energy! (I do recommend you do this as if they are suspicious of your relationship, they could ask you for documentation. We didn't see it happen to anyone, though.)

Lessons Learned:
--Have anyone helping you out fill out both possible forms in case you assume the wrong one--GRR!
--Over-prepare, but don't stress. If you're missing something it's not that hard to fix (being blue-paper-ed is not the end of the world). You don't have to interview again or anything, just visit the embassy on a Wednesday morning.
--VERY IMPORTANT: You must enter the U.S. within six months of the MEDICAL TEST. I thought (because it says so on the embassy site) that you have six months from the visa approval date. As a result Min Gi has to travel before September 11 and will miss Chuseok this year. This is very annoying. However, we now have bought his plane ticket (September 9) which is a load off my mind.

P.S. Thanks Dad for running around and re-doing your part. You've been awesome!

P.P.S. Thanks Kristin who put us up in Seoul the night before. I hope this helps you not get blue-paper-ed.

Calling All Teacher Dorks.

Since I will be leaving the country in less than three months, my school is looking to replace me. It's a great place to work with amazing students and co-teachers, although a lot more demanding (both intellectually and in terms of work load) so we're looking for someone who really enjoys teaching. Actually my job is one of the reasons I'm most reluctant to leave Korea.

It's through EPIK, so it's on the EPIK pay scale. Since we have two teachers at the school, the school would prefer a female candidate (the other teacher is William who is signing on again). Feel free to contact me with questions and for more info.