Week 7: National Institute of Ecology : 7/8-7/14
The weather has been increasingly humid as July rolled around, that awesome sticky-muggy feeling is in full effect. I could go without that for sure, considering we have to huddle around small fans in our house to keep cool! Yeah the weather isn't ideal but, eh I can't complain too much it's bearable. It definitely makes field work a hot mess though as we have to trek up hills in dense vegetated forest in long clothing. The frogs have become exceedingly difficult to search out and collect. We've widened our search zone to at least 8 separate forests around the house. They've proven to be excellent at remaining hidden at all hours of the day and night. It is frustrating to search for HOURS and maybe find a single frog or none at all. I've been doing data analysis of the frogs that we've caught over June alone - it's insane to think that we've nearly caught 700 frogs!
Before I forget to write about it, I want to throw in my experiences with the local farmers around where we live. We so far have had nothing but generosity from these people that we can't really speak to or hardly interact with. These are simple gestures but regardless, it's the consideration and thoughtfulness that's remarkable to me. We've been given GIANT vegetables like zucchinis & tomatoes, mashed potatoes and dumplings in a dish, and were even offered by some to pick from their gardens what we like. The English speaking ability is poor so there are few if any words exchanged, but a nod and a smiling thank you (com-som-need-ah, in Korean) does the job. Another woman surprised me with a decent amount of fluency which I later found out is the mother of a student that we work with, she was very pleasant and talked with us for a short while. She invited us to her home which apparently has a museum in it? Stay tuned on that..might have to see what that's all about. This same lady also surprised us the Thursday before we left for an event we were leaving for with a platter of delicious food. She came to our door and delivered an entire meal: A plate of sandwiches with vegetables, egg, and other deliciousness; and a plate of circular potato hashbrown-things, also delicious - she even included a container of ketchup and mustard. She explained that it was all organic and from her garden, everything on the plate she grew and prepared fresh herself - pretty cool. Her Korean name is difficult to pronounce and knowing that foreigners typically have trouble remembering or pronouncing them she said she also had an American name - Madeline! What a nice lady, we plan on making her a nice American meal and delivering it to her soon. It's apparently also traditional to return the dishware they delivered with another meal.
With field work being done with for the week we had a new agenda for the rest of the weekend: the National Institute of Ecology (NIE) in Seonchon, South Korea. The institute is about 5 hours south of where we are located in Paju. None of us had any real idea what the institute consisted of or what we would even be doing when we got there, that would all be a surprise apparently. What I did know was that we would be helping conduct a summer weekend camp for young Korean kids and their families at the institute. We met the girls at the University in Seoul at around 8am, which means we had to leave our Paju house to take the bus at around 5:30am. Jun-Young our graduate adviser drove 4 hours from there to the NIE and we arrived around noon on Friday.
The first thing we did was eat a meal with our Korean professor, Dr. Jang and his family at a nearby restauraunt. We had a delicious meal of a cooked clam pasta with various side dishes. Many of the restaurants we eat at are interactive, by that I mean you cook your own food yourself. They bring out a large pot of a handful of ingredients - in this case it was a soup pot with vegetables and a boatload of clams and place it on a cooker in the middle of your table. You turn the cooker on and once it boils you add the noodles until everything is done at which point everyone digs in. You also take your shoes off at many places which makes the meal almost feel like I'm at home, at least until I realize the meal is on the ground again haha.
I'm surprised I haven't mentioned the Korean Jindo dog yet, because 1. I love dogs and 2. Jindo dogs are everywhere. They're known to be very loyal dogs and there are MANY near our Paju home, both strays as well as pets. This little Jindo pup was outside the restaurant - this puppy was so happy it was so damn cute. I'd take one home if I could...........stay tuned. |
After lunch we went to settle into our housing unit back at the NIE. By far the nicest place I've stayed in since arriving here - the interior was modern and had a sharp design that I digged. Wood floors, double bathroom, large living and bedroom, a balcony, remote controlled dropdown-shades, flat screen television, and my personal favorite: AIR CONDITIONING. An innovation I had never seen before also fascinated me - the room key is placed into a key-holder on the wall when you enter the room. When the key is in the holder, it signals the room to turn the electricity on and when it's removed from the holder everything shuts off. I don't know, I thought it was cool ha. I would be okay if we stayed here for the remainder of my stay here in Korea, that place was nice. It's still a novelty to me when I enter places and there is no furniture too, just an almost empty room. The beds are mats folded up in the closet, I don't mind those at all though they're kind of comfy actually.
We then met up with some of the NIE counselors and took a tour of the place. The institute is huge and full of interesting attractions like an extremely cool playground (of course we played) and beautiful scenery, but what was most impressive was the main attraction, the ECORIUM. The ECORIUM is a newly developed complex filled with 5 separate ecological biomes or 'habitats'. Basically there are 5 massive enclosed rooms that hold a completely different set of plants, animals, and overall climate within each one. They have polar, temperate, mediterranean, tropical, and desert biomes each exclusively unique. The biomes were all connected but separated, so you'd walk from one biome to the next back-to-back, it was cool to go from a dry desert to a frigid polar climate. The whole purpose of the institute is for research purposes and awareness to the public of the importance of the various environments that exist in the world. SO many pictures, I'll throw up a bunch.
At this point we're pretty exhausted but the night is only getting started. Us Americans typically don't know what's fully going on next because most of the time they're speaking in Korean and we just go with the flow haha. We were shuttled off to dinner and since room became an issue, we were all split up into separate cars - I was in the car with 4 random Korean people I'd never met, haha but they were counselors for this summer camp and were nice. They couldn't believe how young I was and the girls refused to tell me their age out of embarrassment! Also, the girl driving assured me that she was terrible at driving and to make sure I buckled up, haha...uh what??? Not proficient English speakers, again, but we did get some points across such as one girl who told me to "hang on" (referring to the driver's great ability behind an automobile) and another guy explaining to me that he loves MLB, since I was American. They were a good time, had some laughs. I made it to the restaurant alive, the story continues... |
The restaurant was packed and our group took up nearly 4 tables of an already packed place. It was small and the heat from all of the burners cooking beef made the place steamy. Yes, I said beef - we were having a feast of beef steaks and other side dishes. This isn't cheap in Korea, and I later found out the bill was around $300.00 USD! Don't worry, my meals are paid for by my hosts :). Anyways, the meal itself was fantastic and again we grilled it right in front of us - the raw meat was brought to the table and we cooked it on a stone hotplate in the center of the table. Once cooked, you can eat it many ways - a common way is by wrapping it in a lettuce leaf and garnishing it with various side dishes, yum. I also tried one of the side dishes I had never seen before: liver. Not cooked liver, raw. I tried so hard to find something good about it, but it's literally one of the worst things I've ever eaten haha. Disclaimer: disgusting liver description next sentence---it had the color of a dark red like blood, and was cut into many small bite size pieces. It was difficult to grab with chopsticks which is always a decent indicator it might be foul tasting, haha I put that warning aside though and I put it in my mouth. The texture was like a rotting piece of jelly-like meat, kind of like the fatty part of a steak that you have to chew for ages just to swallow. The taste was bitter and gamy, not my thing. One guy at the table ate what looked like the entire platter of it, he was a champion. The rest of the meal was scrumptious. For some reason Koreans don't drink nearly any water during meals it's one of my only dislikes because I'm over here thirsty as hell and this small baby cup they give you won't keep me quenched. However, they do enjoy other liquids at the table that are just as quenching - alcohol. We all had shots of Soju throughout the meal and it was phenomenal, who needs water right?
I thought the night might end after this meal, nope. We were told the after party was at 10:30PM in one of the counselors rooms with BEER AND CHICKEN. Yes, I said beer and chicken. Didn't we just have dinner..haha. Anyways all of the counselors and students like us went into one of the housing units, into one of their empty rooms and sat in a circle on the ground. There was indeed beer and chicken, scattered everywhere for anyone to have. There was also makgeolli (my favorite: rice wine) and soju. Everyone stood up and introduced themselves, most of the introductions were in Korean so I still didn't really know anyone after haha, but that's okay. The night gets hazier from there on out as we drank and drank and...drank. Koreans love to drink, this is a fact. The other thing is, if you finish your drink you're almost immediately refilled because that's just courtesy. You also never refill your own cup, because that's rude - you always refill someone else. We played a handful of drinking games which were a riot. Not sure what time we went to bed, but it was late!
The following morning I wasn't too hungover surprisingly. Speeding up a bit cause this is getting lengthy, we went to the ECORIUM at around 1:00PM to setup our station. Alright so, like I said there is a camp of kids (ages middle school to elementary) and their families coming today - around 21 groups of 250+ people. They're coming to be educated by the counselors and explore the institute. We were apparently American counselors for the weekend also and now have a station where each of these groups will be coming to. What are we doing? You ever heard of that game 21 questions? If you haven't basically the rules are simple: one person has a subject (like: a dog, or the ocean) and the other people get to ask up to 21-yes or no questions to try and figure out the subject. So, the little Korean kids would come up to our station and randomly pick a piece of paper with an animal written on it from a box. They would then give it to one of us Americans and try to ask us questions to figure out what animal was written on the card. Here's the twist, they'd have to ask in ENGLISH. It was a lot of fun and the kids seemed to really be enjoying it. Some of them were great at English, I was shocked - while some others would say nothing and look terrified, staring blankly at you! haha! Four hours of these little munchkins was draining, but it was fun interacting with them - I had a great time. Some were very eager to speak English it was pretty cute.
The excitement didn't end their however! We quickly ate dinner took a short rest and then did the final hurrah. We waited until it was dark out and all of the kids+families gathered together in their groups to be led into the forest to catch insects. Who would be leading these groups into the woods to catch insects? Why me of course! I found this out about 5 minutes beforehand, haha. So I took about 6 Korean parents and their wild little children into the forest on a scavenger hunt for insects. I had to just wing the whole thing, I think the parents thought that I was some sort of expert or something because they kept asking questions. The problem was A. I was not an expert and B. I could barely understand them. The kids though didn't care what was going on and just followed me into the forest wildly swinging their insect nets and decked out in all sorts of gear, ready to snag anything that moved. We found some cool stuff actually, like some praying mantises and it was cool to see the kids so thrilled about finding it. They would capture it and put it into their little bug jar for later inspection...haha it was funny. One little kid even said "ok teacher" which was pretty cute, after I told him to listen for some of the grasshoppers. I eventually led them out of the thicket and they showed me everything they had caught with such enthusiasm it was great. After they had investigated their findings they went off to bed and the night was finally at a tiring end, but nonetheless worthwhile. We returned to our room to relax but low-and-behold some random lady delivered us beer and chicken to our door, haha - a decent end to the night, thanks random lady.
The following morning we left around noon which was sad because I loved our room haha. I had an appetizing meal at our rest stop though, it was called Shrimp Udon and it's my new favorite soup ever. I'll end the weekend on that note so I'm getting kind of sleepy myself and if you made it this far I'm sure you are too ;). Here are a few extra pictures from the week! Enjoy:
The following morning we left around noon which was sad because I loved our room haha. I had an appetizing meal at our rest stop though, it was called Shrimp Udon and it's my new favorite soup ever. I'll end the weekend on that note so I'm getting kind of sleepy myself and if you made it this far I'm sure you are too ;). Here are a few extra pictures from the week! Enjoy: