Gwangju, Korea- A geography lesson

I have been here almost two weeks and have been buried by teaching. Yesterday afternoon I decided to abandon my computer and head out and experience some geography of the area. I wanted to learn to use the local transportation and asked one of my students to be my guide. She was great and we had a fun afternoon.

Gwangju is located in the southern area of Korea. It is the sixth largest city in South Korea and has a population of about 1.5 million people. Thus, it is a very large urban area with a well developed public transportation system. They have one subway line and buses that cover all areas of the city. The buses are air conditioned...which was a good thing because the weather here is very, very HOT! It was in the mid 90's yesterday. The buses have GPS system built into them and each bus stop has an electronic sign that lists all the buses that stop there and the waiting time for the next bus. It was pretty neat!


I have been able to figure out public transportation systems in cities all over the world, but this one might get the best of me. Although the system is very modern--English is almost non-existent. The subways use some English, but the buses which I need to use only have their bus route maps in Korean. Imagine seeing this as the name of a bus stop: 한국어/조선말 The Koreans use an alphabet called Hangul. Hangul is a phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks. This would be ok if the bus route maps and the city maps were one and the same. But they are not.....and for the life of me, I cannot look at the list of "stops" in Hangal on the bus route list and compare it to the map to see where the buses go. I am a bit frustrated, but probably will get brave and just head out some day to see if I can go somewhere and find my way home.......

The City is very modern--yet like most large urban areas, has vestiges of the older, crowded and to me, more interesting areas. We first visited Shitty Hall....Koreans cannot pronounce C very well, so City Hall ends up being Shitty Hall.

Most people live in HUGE blocks of apartment buildings. They are all over the landscape--in every direction you look. Most Koreans own their apartments and don't rent. This was common in Vietnam also. People want to put their money into something tangible and owning a "home" is important to them. I do see older style homes in some of the outlying neighborhoods, but most of these are being removed and replaced by the ubiquitous high rise apartment buildings.


There is also an older "shitty center" that was the site of a major political uprising in Korea in the 1980's. I will write more about this later.... but this is what the old town area looks like.


I visited a traditional Korean Market and it reminded me of the markets in Vietnam. Lots of beautiful vegetables, fish, meat and assorted items I couldn't identify. The Korean people are a bit more "laid back" from the Vietnamese. You can walk around and look, touch and smell and not be accosted by someone to buy..buy...buy. I like this aspect of Korean society. I also like the fact that everything is marked with the price and Koreans DO NOT negotiate. In Vietnam you cannot do anything without arguing over price. It really wore me down and sometimes I just didn't look, buy or even smile at people because it would start a bidding war.

The produce is beautiful as some of these pictures show!
These were interesting beans.....

And this is garlic...each large "bunch" was 7,000 won or about $6 US.

The animals and other things--both alive and dead were also in abundance. This first picture is of roasted silk worms. People were buying them like crazy.





And lastly they had these cute little kittens that are not being sold for pets. They were right next to the ducks and rabbits. I asked my student if people ate cats and I never really got a straight answer--which means yes!


I left at 2pm on this exploration and returned home at 8pm. I was trashed by both the heat and the amount of walking we did. I also had a sore throat and my nose was totally stopped up. I took a sinus pill and slept like a log last night. In the morning my head was not stopped up and my throat was better. I am wondering if my nose and throat problems are caused by air pollution. It doesn't seem that bad...but I still wonder. I will be in Beijing next, so I probably will have a good chance to see if this is the case......