June 29, 2012

SALT... AND SALT.




The island of Jeungdo is home to Korea's largest sun-dried salt fields - Taepyeong Salt Farm. Something over 15,000 tons of salt is produced here each year. It was also Korea's first "slow city," a title that has increased funds and sparked tourism enough that a bridge was built to connect the island to the mainland in 2007. It's still vastly underdeveloped and with only 2,000 residents, free of mass consumerism and flashy lights.

Originally salt production on Jeungdo was instated to boost the local economy after the Korean War. Sun-dried salt is known for being very clean, and as many Koreans told me, much tastier than the cheap stuff from China. It's made by evaporating sea water with wind and sunshine until the salt crystallizes. It's then pushed into a pyramid with the tool you see above and then extracted to.. ya know.. be sold and consumed.

Besides salt, the island is also known for uncovering Chinese artifacts that apparently fell off a boat some 700 years ago. In 1975, a fisherman stumbled upon this celadon pottery in the oceans off the island and over the next eight years, an evacuation project was led to recover 30,000 pieces. PRETTY NUTS.



I continually worry that some billionaire will discover some of Korea's pristine islands and start building high rises and billion dollar hotels.  Of course I'm being dramatic, but the countryside in this country, while perhaps quite humble, is often terribly breathtaking. Until then, I'll enjoy my perma-vacation status in the Land of the Morning Calm.
 
Jeungdo // Photo by Carl Cunningham
 




June 21, 2012

SUNDAY FUNDAY

Besides typing away on a smartphone that's smarter than Steve Jobs' and Albert Einstein's petri dish child, or perhaps driving a KIA, it doesn't get a whole hell of a lot more Korean than this:

Hiking to a destination on the side of a mountain where you sit crossed-legged on a raised platform with your shoes off, eating jeon (fried pancake), kimchi and other assorted banchan (side dishes), all the while downing more than a handful of bottles of makgeoli from a bowl and embracing one magnificent view.


June 20, 2012

BIGEUMDO

6:00 am //
 arrive at U-Square Bus Terminal

7:30 am //
 arrive in Mokpo, a port city on Korea's southwest coast

7:36 am /
 take a taxi to Mokpo's ferry station

7:50 am //
 take a ferry to Bigeumdo

8:50 am //
 arrive in Bigeumdo

8:51 am //
 ask ourselves why we're the only ones who got off the ferry

8:52 am //
 look at map

8:53 am //
 look around for a taxi. there are no taxis. there are no people.

8:54 am //
 i use my excellent charades skills to ask a nice gentleman to call us a taxi.
lots of Korean I don't understand... audi? (where)
heart-uh beach-ee. (the beaches proper name is Hanuneom)

8:58 am //
 a minivan taxi arrives and we pile in



9:12 am //
 taxi driver takes us to get our first view at the heart-uh beach-ee. we squeal. taxi driver motions for us to all get out of the car. he's very enthusiastic. he's done this before. smile.



9:17 am //
 we pile back in the car. taxi drives keeps driving. he keeps smiling. we decide to roll with the punches. we end up on a two hour tour of the island. we see four or five beaches. we see salt farms. we see cattle. we see old ladies farming, their bodies permanently hunched from long hours in the fields. and we eventually let him know we want to go back to the heart-uh beach-ee.

11: 20 am //
 we unpack our sack lunches, relax and proceed to comment at least 300 times that we are on a heart-uh shaped beach-ee in Korea.


4:20 pm //
 we rinse the sand from our bodies with a bit of salt water. the taxi driver arrives and is ready to take us back to the ferry terminal. we go home. we are happy.

This place was serene, breathtaking and peaceful. We saw a grand total of four other people during the five hours we spent on the beach. Low mountains provided spectacular views. There was nothing of consumer interest in walking distance. There wasn't even a small mart with water. Had we wanted to stay over night, we would have needed to camp and carry everything in.

And again I say, ohhhhh Korea.










June 14, 2012

HOME.

How do I fight bouts of homesickness?

I've been doused with a need to explore that I know must fulfill, but I assure you that I'm still human. There are some days I yearn to crawl to my parent's house after a rough week, curl up on the couch, and feel encompassed by the love only the ones who created you can provide. I miss laughing with my friends, telling old jokes and sitting on porches. I miss the Brass Ring. I miss Mass Ave. I miss the Blue Ride Parkway.

Sometimes I stare at pictures of stinky cheese and prosciutto and raw honey on Pinterest until I am literally in tears.

I see my friends graduating and getting engaged and making plans and I know that I'm all the way over here, distant from their decisions and reunions.

And then I remind myself how blessed I am to have people who love me even though I leave, people who support me in my truest form, people who support my faithfulness to my truest desires.

I get to take. Take, take, take. And I get to live rest-assured that when I return, the ones who are important will still be around. This is a gift. This is a blessing. This is imperative for all the logical parts of my brain to even consider spending so much time away.

I get lonely but I know it's temporary. I open my inbox and I have handfuls of emails I have not replied to, all tiny portals of love that I am so happy to receive. I open my Facebook and see photos of my recent adventures "liked." I have text messages and video messages flooding my telephone. These give strength to my backbone.

It would be easy to let me go. It would be easy to recognize that I do not give with the same vastness that I receive.

All of this is how I slaughter homesickness. Sure, many lonely crevices are filled with I stumble upon a new location. I can supplement with new experiences and terrain and culture. But the things that collectively are my home cannot be learned or sought. They just, well... they just are.

Thanks for supporting me as I putter around never never land. Thanks for trusting me when I say "I don't know." Thanks for holding your breath, and deferring your responsible questions as I learn to be open and trust my instincts. Thanks for listening to my first-world problem bantering about whether I should go to Indonesia or Thailand or Cambodia for my summer vacation because gosh, life is full of such hard decisions, isn't it, Mara?

Mostly, thanks for giving me a whole lot of stuff to miss.

My life is excellent and I am a lucky woman surrounded by a bunch of gems. Trust me when I say I can feel it. And trust me when I say thank you.

SEORAKSAN NATIONAL PARK MAY 27, 2012





June 10, 2012

PROGRESS.


I've been creating - forcing it out in whatever awkward, lucid form that it takes. The process of releasing energy into tangible objects is foreign, and I paddle through the waters rather slowly. I'm pushing, pushing and trying not to critique. It's interesting how cliche everything I know feels, how everything is bogged by familiarity. It's all too familiar, but why push through into arenas that aren't mine? I'll create the things I know to be true, things that are mere extensions instead of fabrications influenced by reflection and expectation. Then there is no separation - there is not me and it. It's all the same, and therefore I free myself from affliction and judgement knowing I stay true to my mind, my soul, regardless of what it looks like vulnerable and exposed on two dimensional objects.

Most of these creations have ended up in the trash, but some have ended up in my inhabitants. I've taken my time decorating this apartment. I've collected things kind of randomly. I have enjoyed the process: the random clarity of influence that can only come on a summer's eve, a split second decision to adhere a random piece of cardboard to the wall, or a weekend hauled up in my apartment writing and painting and doodling and making a damn mess.   It's ironic to take such a long time completing a space that will be destroyed in a matter of months, but the impermanence of it all is inspiring. Let it out when it's there. Create to destroy.











Here's also a video of my apartment that I took in November.