Soap Cake

One of the kids at school has a brother. He had his 1st birthday this week. To celebrate his mom gave all the teachers a huge cake of soap. You can see from the picture that it fills a 9" tile.

As we all know, nothing says "My son is 1." like "I love you!" written on a huge cake of soap...

My Garden: Typhoon Edition

It has been a while since I updated you on my garden and I had better do it now because it may be the last time. For the past few days it has been raining and the word on the street is that a typhoon is passing through. Cool. However this has not gone over as well with my plants, they have been suffering quite a bit in fact as they are in the direct path of falling rain.

You can see from the pictures that they are quite flooded. It only occurred to me a few days in to the typhoon that I could take the plants in to my patio. That is where they are currently and I will do my best to nurse them back to health. You can also see one of my pea plants has a bud that is turning in to a pea pod and that my planters are too small!

Driving All the Way to the Bank

This past week I decided that the time had come to transfer some money back home. The exchange rate was good and I had been here a few months which meant my money was starting to pile up the way it always does. I took Annabelle to work on Tuesday hoping to make a dash to the bank during a spare but the rain showed up and make me think another day might be better.

I waited till Thursday but the wet weather continued so I asked another teacher if I could borrow her car. Sure said she without incurring as to whether or not I possessed the proper legal documents to drive in a foreign country. Thankfully so as I would be unable to fully answer her as I myself do not know.

This was my first time driving in five months let alone in another country. Never the less I made my way out in to the wild lawless jungle other wise known as driving in Korea. It turned out to be pretty alright, just point the car in the direction you desire to go and the road opens up.

I got to the bank and made my way to the special room that they had built for me.

They made me wait, can you believe that?!? I was at first a little upset but upon their return I heard their reason, they had just had a baby. We celebrated with a cigar while my money was being transfered.(What actually happened was that they were in the washroom and instead of cigars we celebrated by charging me tax on money that had already been taxed...)

After that was done I weaved my way to Angel in Us Coffee, to pick up a few smoothies for my co-teachers. Seeing that it was a pretty busy street, I decided to pretend to be Korean and park where ever I wanted to, which just so happened to be in the middle of the road.

After I ordered the smoothies, I ran out to the car, turned it around and parked the same way on the other side of the street. Normally I would feel terrible for doing thing but they literally do this all the time in Korea. If you look closely in the picture you can see that there is a car parked the exact same way right in front of me.

In no time the smoothies were done and I was weaving my way back to the school. No arrests and no deaths in what I would describe as success.

Rice Field Update

After my first post about farming rice in Korea(found here) I meant to keep you updated with pictures so that you could see what happens to a rice field as it "grows up". Unfortunately due to not making it a priority I have neglected that task. A few weeks ago, from the bus, I saw that the field was brown but quickly forgot about going back and taking a picture.

So finally on my way home from Okpo this week I thought of it and stopped by just in time to see the field being flooded. This is the second crop of the season on this piece of land.

From what I can gather of the little I have seen of rice farming, the fields are flooded and then they plant the little stocks of rice in to the soil below the water. Some still do it by hand while others have what sort of looks like a motorized wheel barrow. From what I saw of this field the water had been drained after planting and was now being flooded again. Wait an unknown amount of time, drain, and harvest.

It's that simple... I think.

Real Rock

I have mentioned to you a number of times now that I have started climbing with a couple of others in the area on a weekly. Every Wednesday we make our way to a sport wall in Tongyeong, a 30 minute drive. For the others this is just practice to keep in shape for the weekends when they travel to where ever it is not raining to climb some real rock.

The thought of climbing real rock interested my very much but until this past weekend I had been unable to do so. This past weekend they invited me along(as they have done every weekend) to climb on Geumseong-dong, which on the mountain in the middle of Busan, a city about an hour away depending on how backed up the traffic is.

Geumseong-dong is a neat area of Busan as it is a lush green forest covered mountain that is protected from development. There is a small mountain village, similar to the way it was a hundred years ago, as well as a section of "the great wall of Korea" all in the forested area, all surrounded by Korea's second largest city. All this with only one narrow two lane road snaking through it which makes for some close calls with buses.

By the time we arrived, there was quite a crew already climbing which was neat to see. There were probably about 30-40 people and of them climbers we were the only foreigners, or waygooks as we are referred to by Koreans. The amount of people was not a problem though as there were two different climbing areas with quite a number of climbs at each area. Most of the people were climbing on the upper part so we made our way down to the lower one where there wer only a couple of other people but no one climbing.

We set up, and started our day of climbing. One of the things I really enjoy about climbing is that while it is a very physically challenging time it is also very relaxed. You can set personal goals and work toward accomplishing them at your own pace. While your not climbing you can relax and encourage the others on their climb. I ended up only climbing three different routes all day, (I tried each one a number of times) but I left with sore muscles and the feeling I had accomplished something.

Here are a few pictures of the day.

The only route I cleaned.

Cash Box

Mike's belay glasses allow him to keep his eye's on the climber even though it looks like he is staring at the wall.

Tim top.

Mike almost top.

Can you see the hand holds?

Market Day goes Turtle Boat

For our third field trip of the year we went to HomePlus, the local super store, for something called Market Day. The idea behind Market Day was to educate the students on how to navigate the grocery store using English words and phrases. Those of you who know me, know that I love everything about grocery stores, whether it be bargin hunting or just walking around looking at the packaging. Let me tell you, it is completely different when you are trying to watch and corral little kids.

All things considered it went reasonably alright, and since it didn't take the whole day we made our way to the local Ship Building Museum across the island. It was a nice place that I would need not return to unless traveling through with Annabelle. Out front they had a little park where we ate our lunch. We also ended up find some ants and giving them enough food to keep them through the winter.

After we had finished eating we made our way in to the museum, the one building had this great big play structure that was built to vaguely resemble a ship yard. The kids loved it almost as much as the teachers did. It gave us a bit of a break part of which I used to relieve myself. Upon entering the stall I notice a keypad with buttons beside the seat this made me very curious but I restrained myself until the job was done. To my disappointment the buttons brought no response, or so I though...

As I was exiting the stall there was a mechanical whir and I turned around to see a tube extending in to it's function as a bidet. I dove to the side just in time to miss the surprisingly large fountain. I kid you not it sprayed almost to my eye level, thankfully it was a solid stream and I didn't get myself embarrassingly wet.

After that experience I thought my day would be bland... Little did I know that a brand new turtle boat was being delivered to the docks outside at that very moment. While we were still in the museum one of the employees came and said something to one of the other teachers, I had no idea what he had said but she immediately told everyone to follow her.

Far out in the bay we could see what the "excitement" was all about, a brand new turtle boat was coming in to port and we were the first people to see it. There was a camera crew out and at least 25 other people so I knew it was an important event in the history of Korea. It was actually pretty good, the students got in to it with some yelling and chanting which got every one in the mood.

The excitement continued to build the closer it got. The boat looked fantastic and everything was going well until the person in the turtle boat threw the rope to the tug that was guiding it in to the sea.

The guy had one chance to throw a rope to the dock and save it but he shanked and threw it straight in to the water. As a result they ended up missing the dock.

From here things got really excited which is a little unfortunate as it was also time for us to go home. You can see all the people on the boat wondering what to do next. Had we stayed I might be able to share some Korean sailor talk as there was plenty to go around and tell you how the story ended.

This is how we left it, drifting towards a boat.

The School on the Way

There is this school that is on my way to work, I passed it everyday for the past two months. It is a very small, plain building. Seeing that much of Korea is all about show, I have always wondered how it stays open. I would guess as with any other successful business it would need some exceptional employees, then probably a cutting edge curriculum, magnificent management and last but not least, clear communication.

Something must have gone wrong, this past week I noticed that the doors had been ripped out...

That is the life of a Korean private school.