4 months

Well. I've been in Korea for four months. Pretty crazy. This past weekend, Sara Brown and I went south to Daegu. I believe that it is the third largest city in South Korea. I got up early Saturday and hopped on a bus for 40 minutes to get to Suwon. I met SaraBrown in Suwon and we got on a KTX train for 3 hours. There were no seats, but we got standing room in the dining car. About half way through, we were able to sit on a bench. We got to Daegu around 1 and started our Adventure. I should note that when we hang out, it's titled "Adventures from the Annex to Asia".
We wandered around for a while in search of a Herbal Medicine Market. We found it. It was lame. So we decided to get on bus 401 for an hour to Gatbawi. Gatbawi is a tourist town at the bottom of Mt. Palgong.
We started to walk up the mountain via a incredibly steep concrete ramp. It was very very steep. After a bit we made it to a Buddhist temple. But it was a small one. We stopped and took some pictures and looked around. And then we trekked on. But this time, we went up through the woods and rocks instead of the ramp. It was hard going sometimes, but it was really fun. It was a beautiful day, the first nice nice nice weekend of the year. It was warm and sunny. I even got burn/beginning of a tan. Heyoo!! Anyway, we were going up a rocky trail and got to a peak. We could still see things that were higher than us, but we were at the top of a peak. And there was a temple. So we checked it out. It was pretty cool and there were a lot of statues of Buddha. Made me feel real ignorant about the religion, so maybe I'll start doing some research. Maybe. Anyway, it was cool. But we could see up to a giant temple where there was chanting. We also saw a sign that said it was .5 km to the next peak. So we went up. Again. Through the woods, rocks, and mud. There was a point that we were using a rope to get up the rocks. We made it. We were sweaty and tired, but we made it. It was cool. There were a lot of people doing the buddhist bows and a giant statue of him. We walked around, checked things out, and then went down some stairs. We thought we were on side that was heading towards Daegu. Whoops.
We went down and realized that we were NOT on the same side of the Mountain that we started on. We didn't really know what to do, so we got on a bus with the plan of getting to a town and going from there. The bus driver started yelling at us, and we didn't know what to do. We were tired, dirty, and getting scared. The driver was yelling and an old man in the back of the bus said that he could speak English and would help us. He said that the driver was scared because we were foreign and he really wanted to know where we were getting off. I said "we have no idea, but we want to end up in Daegu and we came on bus 401 and have no idea where we are." They sorted it out and told us what bus we needed to get on after they told us where to get off. So we made it. Whew.
We then went to a Love Motel, got a room, took a shower, and felt much better about life. Love Motels? They're all over Korea. You can rent them hourly or for the night. Some are real sketch but they're cheap. The one we stayed in was clean and comfortable and 50,000 won. About 40-45 dollars. Sweet. Next we got some dinner and wandered around the bar area. It was really fun even though we didn't meet any new people. It was really fun to hang out with Sara. We got up at 10 Sunday and walked around Deagu more. We found a Market that had vegetables and clothes and shoes and stuff. And we had lunch and got back on the train. We still had standing room only tickets, but we both sat on the floor and read books that we bought in the station. As of that trip I am now reading Love in the Time of Cholera. I think I like it, but it's not really an easy read.Blue skies. Mountains. Buddha. Temple.
A lion. Me. A mountain. A temple. A beautiful day.
SaraBrown and a whole lot of Buddhas. Great day.

Look! We did some new things in Korea! Made it to a temple! Heyoo.

I went to a Cherry Blossom Festival last weekend. We'll get to that in the next post. This one is longer than I was planning on. I love you. I miss you. Hope you're enjoying spring. I'll be home in 10 months!

Busted

• I sold my bike. I feel much better. After I got someone to agree to buy it, I got a little nervous that I would regret it. But when I was riding it into Suji I realized how stressful it is for me to deal with a bike. There are too many people, they yell at you in Korean, and it hurts my butt.
• SaraBrown came to Suji last weekend. We went to Wooster together. From the Annex to Asia. That should be the title of our movie. I took her to the Underground. Had to. It was destiny.
  
• At Korean class last night, we had a teacher who is Korean but grew up in North Carolina (I believe). He spent summers in Korea with family, has done lots of random stuff, fully believes that the world is ending in 2012, is married, and currently works at a school owned by his Aunt as a translator. He's a pretty goofy dude, but he's very nice. Anyway, we were working on some review and were talking about how to order orange juice. Whether it was necessary to say cup or bottle. I decided that I should ask the following. "Let's say you wanted a juice box. How would you ask that?" He looked at me, cracked up, and said "Got to love the midwest. Bax" and laughed. BUSTED.
• School was a bummer today. We were supposed to have a field trip tomorrow to look at trees or something. It got delayed to next week, MAYBE. It's not really a bummer because I really wanted to go see trees, its a bummer because I wanted a break. The schedule is getting old. I still really like it, I'm just ready to change it up. So that happened. Then we found out that the week we have off in summer is July 28th-August 8th. What's sad about that? Look at a calendar. We have W,Th,F,S,Su, M, T. So still 5 school days off, but only one weekend. Stupid for many reasons. 1. It means we have two short weeks and everyone knows that short weeks at school are not productive. 2. Instead of having 9 days off (two weekends) we only have 7, which is less than 9. 3. I cannot believe that Koreans, who are incredibly family oriented, are ok with this schedule. Why wouldn't you want 9 days? LAME.
• You're still invited.
  
• We had to do status reports this week. I had to do Robot, my 7year old homeroom, and Apple. Apple are the 5 year olds that I read to for 40 minutes once a week. The Apple kids don't have English names and don't speak, so I don't know who they are. They each got 3 sentences about their attitude. The Robot kids each got a page. I wonder if I'll get in trouble for that. But I don't know how else to deal with it. These reports are sort of silly. here's why. 1. I write weekly updates to Robot parents. It felt a little repetitive. 2. We are told to be honest. But they don't mean that. They mean you should say "Your child does not sit still, cannot spell his name, and might be dyslexic" like this "Your child has a lot of energy, expresses creative ideas, and is still struggling with letter recognition."
  
• It's fine. I actually don't mind these reports. I think finding out about the canceled trip and the silly vacation days got to me.
• The weather was really nice Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Like warm enough to not need a jacket and sunny. Tuesday it started out sunny and when we looked outside at 3 it was snowing and cold. Silly.
• I finally got internet banking set up. I think I can only do if from one computer. Luckily I chose one at school. But now I get a better exchange rate when I transfer money home.
• It's cool to see money in my bank accounts. It's a happy feeling. Although it is a bummer to lose a chunk each month to student loans.
  
• Sunny and DaHee, the Underground owners are getting married this weekend. I'm invited. I think I'll go. The next post will be about that.
  
• Sunday is Cheney's 19th birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHENEMAN!!
• Love you. Miss you. Think about you often.
  
• I really appreciate the updates that you send me. Please continue.
  

Knitting with chopsticks

Yo! So I've figured out what is the most frustrating part of living in Korea for me. You know how I read everything? All the time? Signs, posters, notes, books, etc. When I see it, I read it. And that's how I know where I am and what kind of things are going on. Well. Here, I can read nothing. That's not true. Theoretically, I can READ stuff. I just have no idea what it means. I feel like I lost a sense. I can't get a grasp on location, I can't remember where I've been, I can't figure out what's going. It's a weird thing for me. And now that I've noticed it, it's all I think about. Ugh.

Last weekend I finally made it up to Seoul. We went to an art museum and a palace. We then had dinner and started drinking. I went up with some friends fro Suji and met up with SaraBrown. Sara and I lived in the Annex together freshman year at Wooster. That was very fun. Here's the tricky part. The buses and trains stop running around 11 pm, so if you stay out past then, you either pay quite a bit for a taxi home or you stay out all night until the subway starts running again. Sometime after 6am I believe. We did that. It was very fun. I don't think I could do it weekly, but I enjoyed myself.

The weather is starting to get nice. Finally. It's going to start getting harder and harder to be inside all day. But I guess that's life now. Sweet.

It still blows my mind how fast time is moving. I'm about to go to sleep, wake up and do the second Friday of April. Unreal. I wonder if time goes this fast because I'm in Korea, because I have a job, or because I'm an adult. That's scary.

One thing that I've noticed about Koreans is that they run a lot. Not like go out for a jog. Like "I have to go from this room to that room, so I'm going to run". So you see business dudes running around and the Korean teachers I work with shuffle run all over the school. Why have I noticed this? 1. Because I don't go that fast. Ever. 2. One of the biggest challenges that we have is to try to make the kids not run, since they fall alot. Personally, I think this is so hard because as a culture they just run from A to B.

At the end of May we have a 3 day weekend for Buddha's Birthday. I was going to go on a 3 day hike in North Korea, but we found out today that trips have been temporarily canceled. So now we're trying to decide what would be cool. Beaches have been the main stream of thought. But it has got me thinking about what to do with my week off in the summer and what to do when my year is up in March. I have the first week of August off, so you should come visit me then. If noone comes, I think I'll go somewhere awesome. And I've been thinking about some traveling after my year is up. It's exciting to think about going to some more places.

Hope you're doing well.