Graduation

Saturday was preschool graduation. It was a major event held in Lotte Mart, upstairs in the kids theatre. The classes practiced plays and dances for weeks. The school rented several costumes and the place was packed with parents, some beaming others expressionless. There was mention of all the teachers doing some sort of belly dance. We said no, if not so forcefully then repeatedly in a truly serious tone. I guess it was scrapped. Supposedly last year the foreign teachers had to participate more than we did. Possibly the unforgetable performance of one precluded our participation. "Well, they all did their best . . . my name's Andy. (and said with shoulder pressed forward, scooping fist and flexing bicep) Thank you."

I had one class that graduated, which unfortunately was my favorite. They were sorta behaved (they misbehaved in English) and were a little nuts. Here are a few pictures:

Here is my graduating class dancing:


After another dance. From left to right Jenny (the perfect student) Daniel (could jump off a tall building and be fine; kid's got more energy then most small countries) Grace (sings and dances in just about every class) Jeff (jumps and lands full body to the floor just about every class) and Cherry (prone to cute gibberish)


Sunny Teacher directing her class's Jungle Book play


Jack (Ca)Leo (Shere Khan) and Mike (Baloo) in the Jungle Book


Everybody except Rosaleen dressed well. She wore a casual billious green shirt with what looked like Britney Spears on it. She adamently defended her sartorial choices and even insulted the green shirt Traci was wearing. Afterwards we celebrated by watching the Trailer Park Boys movie, then going to Psycho and staying till they kicked us out at dawn.

Lunar New Year's Day

This weekend was the lunar new year, giving us an extra day to do absolutely nothing. But rather than waste time like most foreigners in this country do when presented with such a large amount of time, I went for a hike and did some exercising.

Hiking up Yuhaksan, Jenny, Will and I came to this place a few minutes above an expensive looking grave.


Wow! It's time to exercise, work out, pump some iron. I immediately got to work on my lunar new year's resolution--becoming Mr Universe and kicking Kevin Costner's ass for making "The Postman" and wasting so many people's time. My companions were not nearly as enthusiastic as I was.




For serious Costnerkicking pecks I did some bench press. I really worked it. You can't ask for a better workout.


Then to better pull him to the ground and make him beg forgiveness for making such a terrible movie, I did some pull ups.





Then for shear power, I did some of these. I learned the technnique from Chuck Norris--I needn't say anymore.






On the way down I saw this and found inspiration in it--it was the setting sun of terriblylongterriblyboringpostapocalypticshitmovies everywhere.

Good Idea!

Hey check out this page:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_re_us/dolphin_defenders

good reading; this was my favorite:

"Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If the animal finds a rogue swimmer, it can clamp the cuff around the person's leg. The individual can then be reeled in for questioning."

That scares the fuck out of me. But how long are these ropes? Do the sea lions carry the length of the rope in its mouth too? Or do they drag that behind them in a specially designed bag? Still scares me. Not gonna go swimming around any navy installations, maybe the army ones will be a little more friendly to rogue skinny dippers. Or maybe I could get some friends and lift myself out of the rogue category.

Random pictures

Random picture of where I work:



Random picture of a place I miss living in:

The Snow Festival

Yes I've been lazy and am still in the midst of the spell. This past weekend I actually left the house with an entourage of waegookins and travelled north to the little town of Taebaek to see an ice festival. From the beginning the trip sucked. We all met at a little intercity bus stand in Gongdan, a neighborhood in Gumi with only banks and factories, a little before 6a. We needed to get to N. Daegu by 7 to catch the first bus for another 3 1/2 hour ride north through the coastal mountains. It was cold and the place was deserted. We waited; the man who worked there showed up and said ah-i-go--the equivilent to 'oh, brother'--at the sight of us. This completely contradicted all hope we got from the solitary Korean man waiting with us. He was supremely early too. We waited an hour, in the cold, and missed the first bus in Daegu. It gave us time for breakfast at least. On the bus sleeping. Off the bus at a rest stop and an unfortunate episode that left me weaker for most of the day. Sleeping, or trying to. The bus winding through the switchbacks, driver accelerating through each turn. Koreans are reading newspapers. The foreigners are sick. First laughing about it, them all are quiet as everyone tries not to vomit. We get off the bus; I sit down by a pile of trash, the first semi-clean place I found, and the Traci tries to figure out another way home. None of us wanted to take the bus again through those turns.

A bus brought us to the festival, past our hotel. We got a taxi back and had to argue our way in because the Irish girls didn't come. The lady was not happy about the decrease from two rooms to one and charged us more for the room we did have.

Walking back, the wind bit us and lashed muddy dirty snow in our faces. Walking backwards proved easier. Lexis gave us and went back with Tibha after 100m to call a cab. We put our thumbs out for anything that passed and a tour groups shuttle bus stopped and picked us up. They asked us where we were from then said to each other " two good countries; ours is a good country too." They refused payment when they dropped us off--in the midst of a shitstorm two strangers brighten things with a trivial kindness.

Seperated from two of our group we had little to do but wait. So we grabbed some beers and huddled in the lee of a small cabin and watched what really appeared to be excrement flying down from the pass above us. They never showed and we went in. The sculptures looked ok in the half light, the flying feces obscuring the melting and blemishes. The highlight was sitting on ice blocks at ice tables in the igloo drinking beers.

The next day in the brilliant sunshine, the sculptures lacked appeal.

The trip back was long, though the tedium was ammeliorated by a cute kid with a plastic sword. He kept stabbing at us, until Traci stole the sword and stabbed him and the other random kids around us. We got the cute one, who sorta became Collins son for a spell, to attack Zach at the other end of the train, though at first he made a mistake and attacked sleeping Tibha.

And the weekend was over. Back to work.