Happy Lunar New Year!

I took this picture as I was coming down from hiking the mountain behind our university. Up on top of the mountain, the air was clear but closer to the ground, there was a lot of fog since there is snow on the ground but the air is getting warmer.

Yesterday marked the first day of the new year according to the lunar calendar. Here at UBE, most staff had gone home to spend the new year with their families. This and Chuseok (like Korean Thanksgiving) are the most important holidays of the year for most Koreans. There are usually a lot of traffic jams as people leave the cities to travel back to their hometowns.

Families gather to eat food typically eaten for Sol Nal (New Year), including Ddeokguk (rice cake soup) and have traditional ceremonial rites for their ancestors. Young people also do three bows to their elders who give blessings (spoken and usually in the form of money).

This year is the "Year of the Rabbit" according to the Chinese zodiac. The rabbit is said to signify peace and prosperity. Wishing you all a happy lunar new year with much peace and prosperity!

English Meeting in the Mountains

Last weekend, some of the students from our Brain Education English group at UBE spent the weekend in the mountains.

We met in the town of Mungyeong and from there went to the Mungyeong Saejae Provincial Park and hiked to a cabin in the mountains. That night, we enjoyed good food, music, and conversation with our host, the owner of the cabin (first picture).




The next morning we walked to the nearby falls.




After lunch, we walked to the First Gate and then Second Gates (built after the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592 and 1598), of a mountain pass that had once been the main route for scholars travelling from Busan to Seoul for the public officials exam during the early Joseon Dynasty (in the 1400s). Along the way, we saw rest stops that were used by the officials and one of the filming sites used by the Korean Broadcasting System for historical dramas. We also visited the Mungyeong Saejae museum.


On Saturday night, we visited the home of a well-known potter who makes traditional tea bowls. Each bowl is unique, has a name, and a story. We each chose a bowl, heard the name and story of the bowl and then watched the tea-making ceremony and drank the fresh ground tea, which was similar to green tea. That evening we slept at the sauna at the Mungyeong Hot Springs and in the morning bathed in the hot spring water.

The next morning we had our English meeting about one of the tools used in Brain Education, called PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Action)--a tool that is helpful for planning, evaluating and achieving goals.

For more information about PDCA, click here. Click on the PDCA tag, for a series of articles about PDCA and ideas for applying it to your life.

Many thanks go to fellow students--Hee Jeong Kim and his friend for organizing our accomodations and our weekend activities and the other Hee Jeong Kim and her lovely daughter Kum Kang for participating.