Jeju Island: The Hawaii of Korea

This past weekend I was able to travel all expenses paid to Jeju Island for a Fulbright Conference. Although Jeju is a volcanic island like Hawaii and is slightly warmer than the rest of Korea, comparing it to Hawaii may be a little bit of false advertising. That being said I did love Jeju and really enjoyed my time there. The island is famous for three things- wind, rocks and women. Luckily, on my tour of the island I saw all three! Fulbright was kind enough to organize a one-day tour of the island for everyone on Sunday, the one day we didn't have conference obligations.

On the tour we went to the island's biggest attractions. We first visited Jusanjolli, which is a cliff that overlooks beautiful volcanic rocks. The rocks here display columnar jointing and look like a series of hexagonal columns placed side by side. It was really beautiful and allowed me to nerd out a bit since I studied Volcanology for an entire semester. This was also the first time we were really exposed to Jeju's infamous wind. The wind was whipping so even though it was significantly warmer than Hwacheon, it didn't feel warmer at all!

Next, we drove to Songeup Folk Village. It was neat to walk around but at this point in my grant year I'm a little folk-villaged out. The stop did give me a chance to buy chocolate though. Jeju is really famous for its green tea, orange, cactus and halabong chocolate so I bought some for my co-teachers, family and friends. My co-teachers really appreciated the chocolate when I brought it to our Tuesday meeting. 

The other English teacher at my school

We then traversed Sunrise Peak after a delicious kimbap lunch. The peak overlooks Sangumburi Crater which you can see in the picture above. The hike was really nice after sitting on the bus for a while. One of the downsides of the tour was that it involved a lot of driving. The peak was also right next to Pyeoseon Beach where I was able to see the famous female divers. The women that Jeju is famous for are actually female free divers. They dive without any oxygen tanks and collect sea cucumbers, kelp, oysters, mussels, octopus and anything else that's edible and lives on the sea floor. I was even able to see one of them catch an octopus! It was really neat because many of the women are very old and yet they are an extremely important part of the island economy. 

The women divers

 Our second to last stop was Seopjikoji, which is a field of rapeseed flowers next to a beautiful cliff. There was also a lighthouse that we were able to walk to. The wind was still whipping, which made it very cold but the field of yellow flowers was beautiful and there were even horses roaming in it! Our last stop was Cheongjiyeon Waterfall. The waterfall finally afforded us some much needed shelter from the wind and I think we all were relieved to finally feel warm.

Aside from the sight-seeing I spent a lot of time learning from my fellow ETAs. Most of the workshops of the conference were led by other teachers and I was really impressed by the quality of the workshops. It reminded me just how talented the Fulbright community in Korea truly is. One of the talks was actually on Korean Students Speak, which is a Tumblr site one of the second year ETAs created last year. Since Korean schools don't really offer many outlets for creativity or self-expression Jenny created an English lesson that allowed her students to share any message they wanted with the world. The lesson was then repeated in numerous ETA's classrooms all over the country and the Tumblr gained popularity. It was even written about on Buzz Feed this week, although I also encourage you to check out the Tumblr itself.

At the conference we also had a chance to hear from the numerous Fulbright Junior Researchers. Their talks were really great and the topics ranged from North Korean Defector issues to Korea's Suicide epidemic to Korean food's ability to combat obesity. I was very impressed by the research and it was also really nice to be intellectually challenged and engaged. I've been missing the constant intellectual stimulation that college provides.

The conference in Jeju did a great job restoring my excitement about teaching and living in Korea. After nearly 9 months here it's sometimes hard to feel the same satisfaction that came so easily when I first started my journey in Korea. Yet, the conference made me excited to try new strategies in my classroom and inspired me to make the most of my last few months on the peninsula. I can only hope this surge in energy carries me through to July...