DAY 4 (July 14 2010): Visiting the Grand Father's Park & the Park Building Site

Today was significant just for the fact that it did not rain! Although the sun was being quite shy all day, it was refreshing to walk and feel the air without drops of water drenching everything we wore.

To kick off our day, we visited the Dol Har Bang (Grand Father’s Park). This park showed how stones or rocks are integrated in the people’s lives in Jeju. Some stones are carved as people (with the head taking the 2/5 of the entire body), and some are shaped as birds (because the volcano eruption resembles birds to Jeju people).

What stroke me the most was each stone object was made by amateurs, not by professionals. Thus they had some sort of “gentle” or “naïve” feelings to my eyes. Moreover, grass and mold grow all over the stones over time, hence making the artificially created stones almost a part of the nature. After the tour, we saw a demonstration of how to ‘cut’ the stone.




















Having the tour






Stones shaped as birds








"Indigenization"














Then we visited ARA Development Co., Ltd., which is a multinational company based in Jeju with specialization in construction, engineering and landscape. There were a ton of stones and rocks to be made into construction materials, and huge saws to cut the stones with. The manager of this company was kind enough to offer us stone-scraps for free to use to build the park.




The pile of stones behind the group is what the manager offered to give us for free. Thank you!












For lunch, we ate pork and rice, wrapped in roman lettuce. But as in any other meals in South Korea, we had a series of small dishes such as Kimchi and Tofu.






We had two kinds of Kimchi, regular Kimchi and fried Kimchi.














After lunch we visited the park site for the first time when it was not raining! It looked quite different without tears from heaven. We had a tour of the historical background of Jeju and the particular location in which the park will be built, and frankly it was quite heavy. Jeju had experienced brutal wars and occupations, and a dozen of bunkers created by the Imperial Japanese Army still remained in the farmland. Seeing this sight reinforced the significance of building the peace park in this area as it will stand right next to the tragic “residue” from the past Jeju history.

Then we drew sketches of the site, as well as the statues and impressions of the Grand Father’s Park from our memory.







This is the site where the park will be built.







Sketching...










For dinner, we ate Shabu Shabu. We dumped vegetables, pork, shrimp, and later noodies into bowling broth, and ate them like there was no tomorrow. There were quite a few bottles of Soju on the table, and let’s just say it was the best meal we ever had in South Korea so far.





Basically you put everything in that boiling pot of broth and stir and pick to eat.







Kanpai!



Tomo