Bridge Update

Like it or not, it is time for a bridge update. After spending a week or so tearing up the dirt along the riverbank they started to put in some supports to hold the dirt so it stays where it is. I assume that this is the point where the new bridge will begin. As it looks now the new bridge will have to be almost twice as long if they want it to span the gap that they have opened up.

The supports are a piece of work, I am no metal worker but once again it looks like they are using pieces that have been used before. Nevertheless it is fascinating and frankly, a little bit distracting. What they are doing is lifting up twenty foot sections of metal by crane, linking them together and vibrating/slamming them until they are level with the ground. Since the school is right beside it I notice my kids attention span drop when ever they start a new piece of metal.

Here are a few pictures of it:

Homemade Mandu

I made mandu or Korean dumplings, for the first time the other day. While they were most certainly edible, they weren't good enough to keep me from buying them pre-made as that is much faster, cheaper and easier. 

Card From a Student

I got a card from a student the other day, which was a nice surprise. But as he handed it to me he said, "I'm sorry" which very much confused me.

His teacher later told me, that he had told his mom, that during a gym class that I taught, he had told me to go back to my country. I can only assume that his mom was not as shocked as my mom would have been seeing that I only got a card.

That aside neither of us remembered hearing him say it and the student has a history of telling his mom things that didn't actually happen so chances are it didn't. It's a winner of a card none the less.

Geoje-Busan Link Bridge

I finally was with in eyesight of the Geoje-Busan Link Bridge before they turned the lights out for the night. As it turns out it looks much better with the lights on. Here is a picture of it.

I will try to get one from closer one of these days, if it doesn't get to cold.

Man On a Wire

Man on a wire, pulling a wire.

Korean Safety Regulations

There have been many times since coming to Korea I question the way that things are done in Korea. As a foreigner this is a natural response to all the things invading the senses that are different from what I am used to. In this questioning I am not saying that the things that I question are being done wrong I am just saying that I am not used to it.

Korean safety regulations are something that I question almost on a daily basis. Many of the things that I have seen being done at various work sites I have encountered have caused me to ask my self "In what third world country would this be ok?"

Here is something I came across the other day. On the one side you have Kitty PC Zone filled with little kids playing computer games with out any adult supervision. While it is my opinion that there are better things to be using your time for, I certainly do not question the place of internet cafes in Korea.

But rotate 180 degrees and a potentially interesting senario is revealed. Not five meters the the internet cafe filled with unattended kids is door leading to a construction site. This in itself is not a big deal except that this is all on the sixth floor. Through the door is a narrow plank leading to the adjacent building with only flimsy caution tape to break your fall should you lose your balance.

Will it take one curious child to change Korean safety regulations? Only time will tell...

Scrap Metal

About a month ago now some workers started building a structure over a creek I cross on my way to work, that looked to be a bridge right beside a structure that already was a bridge.

It was puzzling at first because it just seemed like they were going to a lot of work to strategically place a bunch of scrap metal. But I didn't have to wait long, with in a week of anchoring what I now know are the support beams the bridge was finished, walking path and all. Like a large highly organized pile of scrap metal, all of it neatly fitted together and properly engineered(I think) to look like a bridge.

Shortly after the "new" bridge was up they set to work tearing down the old bridge. I heard them working all morning and I really wanted to see it so in the name of learning, I took my class along to watch. No pictures of the time unfortunately.

They made quick work of it. This is how it looks now:

Fog

I woke up this morning to fog so thick that I had to take a picture of it.

Corean Combine

For those interested I went back in the evening to take a few pictures of the combine.

Harvest Time

I have never worked on a farm, I have never lived on a farm, yet farming is something that fascinates me. I find the art of providing food through working the ground very admirable. Thankfully I have been able to experience bits and pieces of what it is like to be a farmer. Growing up, my uncle would spend time with me on the farm, patiently allowing me to follow him and watch him. I would learn in this way until his three wheeler needed some attention, at which point I would make sure that it was working alright by racing it around the yard.

One of my favorite times on the farm was harvest time. It is a time where everything that you have done over the past year comes together. All the planning, all the hours on a tractor, all the hours fixing the tractor, all the seed and fertilizer, all the time spent waiting; all the work comes together when the field turns a golden hue.

To farmers this golden hue means that it is time to pull on the combines and prepare for endless hours of riding up and down the fields. To me as a kid it meant that I would get to eat pizza from a restaurant, drink all the soda I wanted and I wouldn't even have to wait an hour before going swimming in pools of grain. It was a glorious time.

I am reminded of this as I ride past fields of rice that, to my surprise, have turned that familiar golden hue. Having seen how harvesting works in Canada I was curious to see how they harvest rice here in Korea. I was fortunate enough to see a field being harvested the other day as I was out riding, so I stopped to have a look.

I parked the bike and walked over to where one of the harvesters was resting and said hello. She said hello and a whole lot more that I did not understand but she was smiling so I took that as a welcome to sit down. She seemed a little bit curious as to why a foreigner would want to watch but I assume she thought I was harmless as she didn't raise a fuss. I took it in for the better part of an hour until the combine stopped working and it was time to move on.

The fields here are unbelievably small compared to back home but their combines are built to match. Here are a few pictures taken by my phone from where I was sitting at watching:

Outburst

There is no way to break this lightly so I will just come out and say it, "My nephew is a chubster." I know it may seem a little unprovoked but it needs to be said. Some of you might be wondering, "Why does it need to be said? What is the cause of this outburst? What did he ever do to you? After all he is only a few days old."

If that is what you thought, you picked up on something important, the fact that he is only a few hours old. This is my way of discreetly announcing that "I am an uncle". If you're like me, when most people say this to me, my first though is, "Who cares?" but this case is different because the person who is saying it is me. As a result, I care.

I know you will probably be lining up to congratulate me and that is very nice of you. But I will tell you right now that I had very little, if anything, to do with it.

This is an almost direct quote from the biological father, "Caleb Henry Vrolijk was born at 11:40AM on October 3, 2011.  He's a big baby(think fat basketball player) at 21" tall and weighing in at a whopping 9lbs. 7oz!"


They even let me hold him regardless of the distance(thanks to my school for the ink). Let me tell you "soft as a baby's bottom" could just as well be "soft as a sheet of 20 lb card stock."

Congrats to you, brother and sister, may he bring you as much joy as you brought your parents...

The Rest

In this post I will wrap up the tale of my parents travels. I guess it is about time, they have only been gone for over two weeks already. After we returned from China we celebrated my birthday and had a few more days to explore and relax before it was off to Seoul to catch their flight.

We took the bus in Friday afternoon in order to be ready for a tour of the DMZ the next morning. The DMZ or De-Militarized Zone is an area 2 km wide between North and South Korea that, aside from a few watch towers, has been de-militarized.

I had registered for "the best" tour so that we would be able to see all the sights but that meant that we had to be at the office by 7:30. We did our best but due to some faulty map reading on my part we got off one subway stop to far. After not seeing any of the landmarks and with time getting short I frantically looked through the past three weeks of history on my phone trying every number that I did not recognize. As a result of, what I can only attribute to an act of God, we were on the bus 5 minutes later.

The first stop took us to the Joint Security Area or JSA, this is the only place on the Korean border that you can actually cross in to North Korea(From what I know). We switched buses and picked up a tour guide from the U.S. Army and continued and this is where I will switch to pictures.

JSA facing North Korea, look at all the people on the balcony.

Officially in North Korea.

North Korea man

North Korean Village

Bridge of No Return

Site of the ax murder

The train station between Seoul and Pyeongyang

Next stop Pyeongyang

We also stopped at the third tunnel but I didn't take any pictures. The third tunnel is around 60 km from Seoul and capable of bring 30,000 troops through an hour. 

All in all the tour was alright, while most of the information was fascinating, I had read it before coming on the tour. If I had to do it again or was asked for advice about it I would say just visit the Joint Security Area. In going to the JSA you also see across to North Korea, Bridge of No Return, the ax murder site and along with the sites there are stories and a good tour guide to go with it. The other sites, while interesting, seemed very commercialized, just a place to take a picture and buy a souvenir. 

While there was a lot of talk about reuniting the country, the feeling I got on the tour was that they had a good thing going and the reunification would just get in the way of their profit.

After the tour we met up with my cousin who just arrived to teach in Korea 3 week prior. We had a lovely time catching up and chatting about his first impressions of Korea. Rather than treat my parents to an authentic Korean meal for their last dinner in the country they treated me. We ate at, what could be one of the best restaurants in Korea, Outback Steakhouse. 

Sunday we went to Yoido Full Gospel Church, which is rumoured to have one of the biggest congregations in the world. Went back to the hotel for lunch and walked to the airport shuttle bus stop just around the corner. We said our good-byes some what prematurely I thought as we would have a bit of a wait for the bus. As I was thinking that a taxi sped up and offered to take them to the airport for the same price as the bus, deal. Annyeong-hi Kaseyo!

China: The Last

After our tour we went in search of food and came across a group of people dancing. They were in uniform and seemed as though this was, perhaps, part of their job. What the picture does not show is me on the far left joining in to learn some new moves to impress the ladies but I have to admit that after a full day it was somewhat half hearted.

Tuesday was our last day in China and so having done a little bit of reading I requested that we go to Hongqiao Market also known as the Pearl Market. My parents were a little hesitant to spend our last morning in China in a market but they reluctantly came along saying that they needed the walk.

We got there and my father set a one and a half hour time limit. Before we came to China I had decided that I wanted a watch and not just any watch a Mont Blanc Timewalker Chronograph Automatic. So I set about looking for one, testing depth of the price waters when I found a booth that had one. Walking from stall to stall, "My friend, my friend" they would say, "Have we met?" I would ask. To them it was all a game, what a game it was, they were good at it and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So much so that I ended up using the full hour and a half in this manner. But when we met up, instead of the expected, "We need to leave right away" both my father and mother agreed that we did not need to leave quite yet. "We just need to pick up a few more things was the reply." That suited me fine.

When it finally did come time to leave I had a new watch around my wrist and my father and mother both had a bag or two of stuff. The whole walk back to the hotel we compared our deals and swapped stories of how great our experiences had been. A good time was had all around but now it was time to get to the airport.

The airport in Beijing has a shuttle that runs off of the subway which makes it very easy to get to. In our case, we caught the bus from just down the road from our hotel and rode it to the subway. We then rode the subway till the transfer station to the shuttle, quick, cheap and easy.

Apart from a short delay on the runway, our flight was smooth and as comfortable as anyone can get in economy. We arrived in Busan just after 9:00 pm and took an incredibly fast taxi to the bus station only to find that the last bus to Geoje left at 9:00. No problem as there were many motels right beside the bus station. Motel SS was kind enough to offer us a room for the whole night and after a short sleep we caught an early bus back to Geoje.