Climbing Dobongsan

This post is a little bit late, but two weekends ago we had quite the climbing experience. We decided to be a little adventurous that Saturday and go on a five hour hike of Dobong Mountain. This is a picture of it, it's pretty high. There are many different trails, some easier than others, but being "typically us" we did not take a map and so ended up on the 'wrong' trail. It wasn't really wrong... we weren't lost... however, we did end up on the mountain climbing trail, instead of easier hiking. We had no climbing gear... gloves, appropriate shoes, rope, etc.. and so it was quite difficult. At one point, we were climbing rock and it was a pretty narrow passage... the foot holds were also pretty far apart, Scott went up ahead of me, and I made it part way up. Unfortunately for me, half way up I realised that I couldn't reach the next foot hold with my short legs and I could not get back down, as I couldn't see the previous ones behind me. In short, I was quite stuck. Neither one of us knew what to do... so I stood, holding myself up for a few minutes, feeling somewhat panicky. Luckily, some experienced Korean hikers came along and saw us and hoisted me up from below... it was humiliating and definitely humbling, but it had to be done. They probably had quite a laugh about it later. Well, the hike was long and difficult, our legs got tired and our hands got scratched up, but the beautiful views were well worth it. If you look at the peaks in the picture, we actually made it to the top of one of those peaks and it was amazing.

Rowing Under Rembrandt's Bridge

Today, in an attempt to brighten my imagination, I looked at a painting by Rembrandt for a while. It was quite good, and worth the time that I spent just staring at it. I spent only about fifteen minutes, which is no great effort of concentration. Even that was a bit difficult, though. My mind kept wandering from thought to thought, and I had to keep bringing it back to the painting. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m sure someone could write a thousand words on this painting, but I’ll write only a few.

The subject of the painting is a small bridge over a small river. The bridge is somewhat in the background, and on the left there is a narrow dirt path leading up to it. I think that there are footprints on the path, but it’s tough to be sure; the picture isn’t the best quality. On the right side of the bridge there are some huts and a grassy expanse. Also, to the right of the bridge, even further in the background, there is a radio tower; no, wait, I think it’s a steeple. Yeah, probably a steeple.

The time is sunset, and only a bit of the painting is bright with the pale gold of the sun. A few tall trees in the middle of the painting are glowing golden green. The whole ground and the sky on the right of the painting are in darkness. In the sky there appears to be storm clouds. The contrast between the right and left parts of the sky is impressive and affecting, and the golden glow in the west makes the rest of the painting seem even darker. In the black clouds, though, there are flecks of gold paint. I’m not sure what this is, but I think maybe these flecks are also in the bright part of the painting but are there harder to see. These flecks of gold paint might be Rembrandt’s device for suffusing the very atmosphere of his paintings with golden light, for his painting “The Philosopher” is bathed in the same light.

In the river there are two rowboats, each with two passengers. I imagined myself in the boat that is passing under the bridge. This painting is beautiful, but I think that if I were in one of the rowboats that Rembrandt was painting, I wouldn’t notice the beauty around me. Being immersed in the beauty, I would have grown accustomed to it and forgotten it, like I forget about the air that I breathe or the wife I live with.

I just took a deep breath and it was sweet, oh so sweet. His beauty is all around you: in your cow patch; in the colossal trees by the old folks home; on the curb outside your house; in the wide expanse of diamond sky above your driveway; in the hills outside your dining room window; in the small patch of backyard where your dogs run around. Take a long look and you’ll see it.

A Korean Language Lesson

This past Saturday we went hiking in Dobongsan. "Dobong" is actually a town, and "san" is Korean for "mountain." To pronounce it like a Korean, pronounce the two o's like "no" and the a like "arm." It's spelled like: 도봉산 That is the first Korean word that I've ever typed. (If it doesn't show up on your computer, won't worry about it). Korean uses a phonetic alphabet, like English. It has fourteen basic consonant sounds and ten basic vowel sounds. The vowels can be combined in different ways, as can the consonants, to make new sounds. Their sentence structure is Japanese, though, which is SOV, that is, Subject-Object-Verb. For instance, they would say, "we the mountain hiked," rather than, "we hiked the mountain."

City Streets at Night

It's been a while. We will post more regularly from henceforth. But here is a problem: what if we're not able to post interesting things more often? Our posts might become so boring that, though we post often, no one will want to read them. Then people would stop visiting here altogether. What's worse, we'll be writing bad posts and no one will be visiting. It would be another matter altogether if we were writing good posts and people weren't visiting; we could take pleasure in our good posts without visitors. But we can't take pleasure in bad posts without visitors. At any rate, onward!

We've written about our Thanksgiving dinner. It was excellent. I found it strange that it took so long to prepare it and such a short time to eat it. All the same, it was delicious. Afterwards, we went for a walk by the river. There is a river by our house and it goes for a long way. The river is in a valley, set apart from the roads that run parallel to it. On the banks of the river there are wide walking paths. Many people go down there to walk, to have family picnics, to bike, to play basketball and more. We walked along these paths for about an hour, and arrived in an area of our province that we had not been to before. By this time is was dark. And being surrounded by the many small shops and restaurants, the small apartments, the large apartment buildings and the churches, each with a burning red cross at the top, gave me a sense of mystery and of joy. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, a sojourner here on this lonely, dark planet, and this whole bit of creation groaning and travailing together with me, hoping for the redemption which is not yet complete.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all in Canada! A little late perhaps, but our internet connection at our apartment has been down for a few days.

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving on Saturday since we did not get Monday off of work of course. I made a big dinner.... cooked a chicken (they do not have turkey over here), I stuffed the chicken with Mom's stuffing recipe... and it was really good, although the stuffing was purple because of the type of bread that we had, it still tasted the same though. We also had sweet bread rolls and various vegetable dishes. I was also able to make some pies. They do not have canned pie filling here, since no one makes pies, so I made pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin for the first time and it worked out well... it tasted like pumpkin pie, so I guess that's a good sign. We also had apple pie... and all of this was made possible by the little oven we recently purchased.

It was fun to have our own little Thanksgiving dinner, but we really missed all of our family being around to eat with and to talk and celebrate with. We hope you all had pleasant Thanksgivings.

Well, as I am at school, and have to teach a class soon, I will make this the last bit of talking I guess.

We miss you all, but are doing well otherwise.

Exhortation, and Some Respond, "Stop Preaching at Us."

The English verb worry comes is a descendant of the Middle English word worien and the Old English word wyrgan, which is similar to the Old High German word wurgen. This Old German word means to strangle. From this we can see some of the connotations our transitive verb to worry. To worry someone is to “subject [them] to persistent or nagging attention or effort,” or “to afflict with mental distress or agitation” (Webster's Online). These senses of worry are closely associated with the words cavil and quibble. We can “strangle” someone by continually nagging them; and in fact nothing makes a person more unbearable than continual reproaches and minor criticisms. Remember that “love covers a multitude of sins” and that it's a glory to pass over a transgression. Unfortunately, cavilers often mistake themselves for cavaliers, doing the nasty but necessary work of perfecting others. They portray themselves as knowing what other people do not know and for some reason cannot see. But again, we need to be careful, for “there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Pro 14:12). This sin is most likely to overtake us in our closest relationships, for instance, with our wives or our children or our brothers and sisters. Against this we must remember to love our neighbors, who are simply the people who live around and with us, as ourselves.

Thank you, I'm Scott Montgomery. Good night.

Koreans and directions... quite the experience

Well, It has been quite the weekend. On Saturday, we went to It'aewon (the American town) it's close to the US army base, so there are a lot of Americans and mostly everyone there speaks at least some English. There are a lot of American/Western restaurants and stores there as well. We decided to be ourselves and go to Swiss Chalet.. because there was one shown on the map. Unfortunately for us, we spent an hour walking around looking for it and could not find it. So, Scott decided to ask for directions. There was a group of construction workers working on a construction project (what else?) Scott pointed at Swiss Chalet on the map and they all gathered around the map, speaking Korean like wild. They then pointed at one of their fellow workers, who put down his tools and motioned for us to follow him, we did of course, thinking he knew where he was going (silly us). We walked around with him for about ten minutes and then he went to his van and motioned for us to get in. This is something we would never do under usual circumstances... but we got into the van. He drove around asking all manner of people for directions and driving around for like 25 minutes (mostly in circles)... suffice it to say, we did not find Swiss Chalet.

We exited the van after quite a time, and rather than keep looking, we went to Outback Steak House, which we could see quite well... it's right on the main road. That was really good, they have superb bread and bloomin' onion.. our meals were delicious as well. It was a nice change from Korean food... which is also delicious, but in a different way.

On Monday, it was a Korean Holiday and our church was having its picnic. It was being held on Namang-Sahsan Mountain (I definately spelled that wrong by the way), which is about a 45-50 minute drive from the church. We were all supposed to meet at the church at 9:30am and then those people with cars would drive the people without cars. Well, we arrived at the church and were placed in a Jeep with David (our driver), he's from New York, Amy from Kentucky and two older Korean ladies that were supposed to be our guides to the mountain... giving David directions the whole time. They gave him directions all right... half an hour in the wrong direction (completely opposite to where we were supposed to go)... it was pretty funny, we arrived quite late. The day was tremendous though. We went hiking in the mountains, it was beautiful and the air was crisp and clean... you have to watch out for the barbed wire in the bushes though. After hiking we had a cookout.. lots of delicious Korean food, and then we played soccer and football. It was pretty fun. We drove home with Pastor Bill and he took us and Amy on to the US army base for dinner. That was cool.. he's one of only two non-Korean, non-army personnel in Korea to have the card that allows him access to the base, so we were pretty lucky. We ate at a Mexican buffet at the Hotel there and ate way too much, but it was awesome.

All in all, it was a great weekend... but we learned that sometimes looking on your own, even when you don't know where your going is often more helpful than asking for directions here. But, it does give you some interesting times.