It's the last day of October and here I am sitting at a cafe, celebrating the last day of the workweek, pondering on my list of 'things-to-do' for the long weekend. One of the items on my list is to clean - both my house and my files! It's one of the things that I truly enjoy, things just become clear when you have a clean and organized surrounding; it affects your way of life and the way you treat situations and people around you.
As I started cleaning up my files this afternoon, I found a lot of things placed in my TO BLOG folder and most of these are things that I planned on writing about but have not found the time to or just casually forgot about, until now. So allow me to fulfill this long impending project, one post at a time.
Today, I am taken back to 2016 during my last trip to
Jeju Island, South Korea. If this is not your first time on the blog, you would probably have read about my travels in
South Korea. I still do get emails from readers about the places that I have written about - mostly to get more tips and insights and to be honest, it just makes me feel grateful and happy to be able to share my experience with everyone through this blog.
To continue my South Korea feature, I wish to look back at one of those breezy afternoons spent in Jeju Island with my husband. It was our last day on the island and we decided to visit our friend from middle school, Kyung, who was at that time assigned there to serve his mandatory military service.
One of the places on our list prior to our visit to Kyung would be the
Jeju Glass Museum also known as the Jeju Glass Castle. Located in the Seogwipo area, this charming treasure has been considered as the center for advancement in the history of Korean Glass Art.
Opening its doors to the public in 2008, the Jeju Glass Museum was designed as an experiential theme park showcasing Glass Art and boasts of a beautiful landscape that is divided into different indoor and outdoor exhibition areas. The place also has a glass art exhibition hall, a studio with a kiln, a glass-blowing, and a processing room.
As we visited around 4PM on a weekday, we were surprised to have the place to ourselves. It almost felt like being transported to a movie set, we as the actors visiting an almost enchanted world. That's exactly how I will always describe the whole experience - it was enchanting, a bit eerie, yet you are eventually drawn in to appreciate the beauty of molding and sculpting such fragile material into a beautiful art piece.
Our first stop was at the glass blowing workshop. We saw these huge containers with shards of glass about to be melted for blowing and shaping. It was a bit of a shame that we were not able to see the actual process of melting and blowing but if you would also put this place on your list, it would be best to inquire if you can also book for a tour and workshop to fully enjoy and appreciate the place.
One thing that I loved about this place would be its outdoor installations. It exhibited glass as either a primary or secondary element of the natural surroundings. Portrayed as ice, morning dew, invisible objects, and even ethereal creatures, anyone who would be walking around each installation would definitely stop and create some sort of scenario in their heads, them being the main character along with glass and nature as their backdrop.
Not a fan of unicorns, but definitely a fan of the artist who thought about the process of putting this variation of glass beads to form a massive sculpture.
A bittersweet distortion of perspective. These towering glass obelisks create different scenarios and perspectives of land, air, and natural landscape. Depending on where you stand and how you view what you are seeing, the meaning is created by you as the viewer.
I personally love this particular installation of the blue glass balls placed on the barren ground. It gave another dimension to the flat landscape, almost serving as a reminder that we are all made of small molecular cells, intertwined to act and function together.
The weather and the time really created a beautiful setting for us. As the afternoon sun gently hit the angles of these glass sculptures and as the windy spring air envelop us, I momentarily forgot that I was in a museum and felt like Thumbelina, stuck in a beautiful garden frozen by time.
I honestly don't understand why we were the only ones in this place. It's a bittersweet thought to know and witness that there are people who come and go in this beautiful island and not know of the Glass Museum. If I happen to get another chance to visit Jeju in the future, I would definitely visit this place again at night, so I get to witness its beauty when all the glass installations are lit up. I'm sure it will be another kind of charming, another kind of meaning, another kind of memory.
Looking back at these images, I laugh and smile my heart out at the memory of that sweet and charming afternoon spent with my favorite person who knew me the most. As there is regret that I wrote about this 3 years later, there is also this certain kind of charm and joy in digging through these images and let it take me back to a very special time, place, memory with a very special person.
I definitely encourage you to come and visit this enchanting place! Whether you come alone, with your loved ones, friends or family, I can definitely say that it is worth the time and visit. More than anything, I encourage you to immerse yourself, the landscape, the art and let the whole walking experience be engraved in your memory. Taking photographs is okay, but that definitely comes secondary for the things you will learn and remember from this visit are the things you will tell people about, and that's what makes the experience and memory some kind of charming.
Read more about the Jeju glass museum
HERE or visit their
WEBSITE
Jeju Glass Museum
462 Nokchabunjae-ro, Hangyeong-myeon, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea
Opens Daily: 10:00am - 10:00pm
Average time of visit: 1-2 hours
Directions can be found
here
Have you been to Jeju Island? Let's talk about it!
Happy Heyday!
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