Archiving Korea

So, I find it necessary to rewind and share some photos with you from our last 6 months, and I suppose in turn, stories from our past 6 months here in Korea. Todays rewind/archive is to Nagan traditional village, near Suncheon, about 20 km from here. At the time we went, it was our first trip to Suncheon where some of our friends from the JLP program live (Canadians), Virginia and Steve. However, we didn't visit them at this time. We went instead with our good friend Eric ( Ireally need to find out his Korean name sometime). Eric was living in Suncheon at the time, before he moved up to Gurye (where we are). Since Suncheon is the closest place to see a movie, we went and followed it up with a visit to this folk village the next day. As you will see, we saw fresh faces, knocked a few koreans off a board and took some cheesy couple-in-love shots. All the rage here.



These are called "Chang seung"; they are Korean totem poles that are traditionally placed at the entrance to a village for protection. They are very cool. These ones are still being carved and made. For some finished ones, here is a picture of Bryce last year in Ulsan where we encountered our first Changseungs:

And this year, with Eric, hanging with their homies:


Big happy family....

In this same village, this is the Korean Traditional 'see-saw'. It's called the "Neol-dwi-gi". Yup, thats right - as you can see, its a board on a lump of clay. But, damn, is it fun!

This is when we learned how to use it. As with everything we learn to do in Korea, Bryce and I just jumped right in (pardon the pun), and didn't wait for instructions. Which ended up (as usual), with Bryce with a self-satisfied expression standing triumphantly on his end of the board and me stumbling backwards, and almost falling on my butt. So he moved up the competition....

He then took on Eric, who was more 'balanced' in his competitive skills (again, sorry...). Knowing that this was not quite the way to do this game, Eric played along and got dirty while Bryce knocked him off the Neoldwigi again and again. Until finally a Korean woman and her son came along:

She promptly got on to show Bryce that he was doing it wrong. That this was supposed to be a gentler game, and not a competition to knock the other person on their ass. She showed him how to gently hop and give a bounce to your friend. Bryce loved it, that is until he got too excited. As you can see in this photo, he was getting really into it. The next picture in the series is censored due to Bryce's overzealous Neoldwigi playing and the resulting accident.

But, boy, was it fun!!

Then we wandered around and enjoyed our time. Ready? Token romance shot:

awwww!