An English teacher's blog about his travels and his digital art.

Tag: church

Jongpo Ocean Park and Bizarre Architecture

Jongpo Ocean Park is still being built, but much of the walkway along the harbor is complete. It’s quite popular with locals; you can see families having picnics, children playing or rollerblading, older folks sitting on the benches enjoying the warm sun, and fishermen trying for the catch of the day. Being close to the ocean, though, there’s usually a gusty wind to dampen the early spring warmth.

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Here are a couple of shots of the walkway, looking toward the mountains and back toward the bridge. There are lights inside the obelisk-like structures (they remind me of whale bones), so this area is probably lit up splendidly at night. I’ll have to come here some Friday or Saturday evening when the weather is warmer.

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Ok, now it’s time to make the trek to the odd building I pointed out in a previous post. I walked around in the general area where it’s located, but, first, I spotted a church across the street. Since I take quite a few photos of Buddhist temples, I might as well give equal time to Christian churches (I’d do mosques, too, if we had any here). This one looked interesting enough to include. There’s even a driving range directly next door, the green screening of the range practically touching the church. No need to feel guilty while you’re trying out that new graphite driver–just pop over to services, then back to the range later.

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Then, looking back across the street, I caught sight of my original quarry. It’s another church! 😯 Not just any old boring church, but one of the most bizarre-looking I’ve ever seen.

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I walked over to it and took a few more photos from close up. What the heck is it supposed to represent? What’s the theme? To me, it kind of looks like a boat, if not a spaceship, with the porthole style windows. Is that supposed to be a stylized hand holding the cross? Give me your ideas. What do YOU think it’s supposed to look like or represent? By the way, I asked someone in my office to translate the Korean writing, and it’s a Reformed Presbyterian church.

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That was the end of my somewhat long walk. I was pooped and took a bus back to the university. In the same general area of Yeosu, there is a large Buddhist temple that I want to explore someday. Hopefully, then, I’ll have more of this area of Yeosu later.

Boats and Churches

Hmmm, boats . . . do I mean arks? No, not really. I was just going through some of my older photos, kind of cleaning the cobwebs out of the attic, so to speak, and came across a few shots of some boats I took. First up is one taken at the Tall Ship Festival that was held way back in May. Here’s an article about the festival, which was held in conjunction with the annual Turtle Ship Festival. I wrote about the turtle ship as part of my Field Trip post of November 7th this year.

This is a lineup of some of the ships, including a modern-day Korean naval vessel, taking part in the festival. The two tall ships, the Pallada and the Nadezhda, if I’m not mistaken, are from Russia.

Ships_in_line

Here’s a replica of a turtle ship, also displayed at the festival. It features armor plating and sturdy wooden planking, and, to deter enemies from boarding, sharp metal spikes studded the deck. By all accounts, they were very effective in staving off Japanese invasion fleets in the late 16th century, though there weren’t many of them, according to this Wikipedia article.

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Hiding in there somewhere is the Korean training tall ship, the Koreana. Here’s a photo of it at the Soho Yacht Marina, a photo I played around with in Photoshop to give it a somewhat antique look.

Koreana_Antique

Also in the marina area is an interesting Korean church. There is no shortage of unusual, strange and downright bizarre Christian churches in Korea. I could probably publish a coffee table book of them. (Hmmm, there’s an idea.) Are these churches established in existing buildings or are they built from scratch? I imagine it’s a bit of both. The first shot below is a church near the Sindeok Beach area. To me, it resembles the prow of a ship (the ark?). What do you think?

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Now, here’s the one that’s not too far from the marina. If the church above resembles a ship, what does this one resemble? What’s its theme or motif? Let me know what you think. Leave a comment below, if you’d like.

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[NOTE: Added these photos and one more of me (as if anyone would care except my mother :-)) to the Yeosu Photos section in the Photo Gallery.]

A Few More Photos

I’ve been walking quite a bit on weekends around the city and have taken some more photos, a few of which are shown below for your perusal. The nights have become rather chilly, but daytime is still pleasantly mild. Early morning jogging requires at least half an hour before I can work up a sweat. Winter is just around the corner, but luckily, this area receives no snow, I’m told.

Here’s a photo of a church just outside of campus, nestled in the trees below a mountain. As far as I can tell, Korea’s Christian population is split between Catholics and Evangelicals, and, of course, there are the occasional Mormon missionaries bicycling around town. Hopefully, I’ll get to some of the Buddhist temples soon.

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Here’s a shot of some of the fall foliage spicing up the campus. This was taken just up the hill from the dormitory where I live.

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I hiked down to one of the harbors a few weekends ago and caught these scenes. The first one is of the famous Dolsan bridge, leading to the island of Dolsan. There are many nighttime photos of it, when it’s structure is highlighted by multi-colored lighting. That’s one of my assignments–getting some night shots of the area. That might have to wait until the weather gets warm again.

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This is a view of the harbor looking away from the bridge.

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Though there doesn’t seem to be much cargo ship traffic in this section of Yeosu, there is plenty of activity, including tour boats, ferries, fishing boats and this ship-building yard.

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Nai tells me that Laos is getting hit hard by the weather systems that have {{link http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36293520081103 inundated Vietnam}}, with heavy rains and thunderstorms dominating their weather the last several days. I doubt, however, it is enough to cause the Mekong to flood again. More later.

Long Time

Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Like I said, I had some very limited connectivity here at the apartment, but, lo and behold, I turned on the computer yesterday and found that a full-blown wireless network had been installed. So, I can’t use the excuse that I don’t have good Internet access. Of course, when I move back to the baseball campus, I’ll be connected all the time.

I’ve also been busy doing research for a few workshops that I’ve had to conduct before going back to Boca Chica, the last of which I’ll do this coming Tuesday. I did a couple of workshops at UASD about alternative methods of assessing students, and the upcoming one is at Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE), a workshop for teacher-trainees which will cover teaching English to young learners.

This Monday is a holiday, Duarte (or Patriot’s) Day, celebrating the birthday of the founder of the country. The actual day is January 26th, so we’ve got a nice, long weekend. Last night quite a few fireworks were set off, and around 11 p.m. I could hear people singing and banging on drums somewhere down the street.

I finally made it to the Colonial Zone and did a bit of walking around this very historic area, which features numerous old buildings. Below is the Catedral Primada de America, the oldest operating church in the western hemisphere, being used as a house of worship for about 450 years. That’s a statue of Columbus in the foreground. Watch out for the large flock of pigeons which hangs out here.

Catedral_Primada

Ok, kid, don’t mess with the pigeons.

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Oh, oh. You were warned!

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More later.

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