My Chuseok holiday is half over. Christa and I went to Ulleungdo on Saturday morning and got back last night. It was an early start because we had to get to Donghae by 9:00am and pick up our ferry tickets...a whopping 42,500 won each way! The ferry ride was long and cramped and neither of us moved from our seats for the whole 3 hour journey. Pulling into Dodong-ri (the main city on the tiny island located some 200km off South Korea's East coast)kind of reminded me of the first time you see the island in Jurassic Park, huge basalt cliffs rise up on either side of a narrow inlet, visible only when approached from head on. The island was beautiful, the water was clear and the air was clean.

We met a Korean man who spoke excellent English at the Tourist Information Booth, Mr. Lim. He was really nice and out of the goodness of his heart, took us around the island over the next couple days. We managed to see and do pretty much everything one can do on Ulleungdo, save for hiking the highest mountain. We even fished, I caught three!! We also met a few interesting characters, including a very drunk and slightly depressed Korean, English high school teacher who dished out some very personal details about his life. I'll give all the details with my photos in a couple of weeks.

I'm going to be busy with photos soon, I've got a good 115 or so to post, from Chuncheon, Seoul and Ulleungdo.

Now it's Tuesday afternoon and I'm enjoying these days off. I won't be back to work until Thursday, when the nine hour days of hell will start again. Seven weeks to go...

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Soju and Vomit

...and how lovely it is, that as I walked to school this evening, I came upon a drunken ajummah, fingers down her throat, heaving and spewing all over the playground where I take my kids to play (if they're good)...it's things like this that make me love this country...this and, well, of course the obvious cause of her maladie, soju...

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Kim Jong-Illishness in Seoul

I went to Seoul last weekend. I have been planning this trip ever since I first arrived here 11 months ago. I called it my "Seoul Sights" trip. I was planning on seeing everything worth seeing in Seoul (that I hadn't already seen) in two days. (Could I use the verb "see" even more...just wait?). I managed to see about 90% of everthing that I considered worth seeing.

Saturday day, started off with a DMZ and Third Infiltration Tunnel tour, which included Imgingak Park, Dorasan Station and Observatory and the Freedom Bridge. From there I went to Gyeongbokgung, Cheongwadae (The Blue House), Jogyesa Buddhist Temple and ended up staying in Insadong. Sunday, I headed to Seodaemun Prison History Hall, Dongnip Park, Yeouido Island and the KLI 63 Building then The National War Memorial Museum and ended up in Itaewon.

I didn't manage to see Seoul's French District because it's impossible to find. It was the fifth time that I went looking for it and spent about an hour walking around Gangnam-gu. Raphaelle managed to find it by accident, and I have no idea how. No Korean that I talked to, at least, seemed to even know it exists...I also didn't get to see COEX or the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Park because I was just too exhausted on Sunday evening.

I did meet a bunch of really interesting characters during the trip, one of which was my tour guide for the DMZ trip. The other consisted of a drunken troupe of artists staying at my hotel in Insadong, a New Yorker lost in the subway and a Bangladeshi man on Yeouido Island. I'll tell you all more when I get my photos up in about a month.

I do have to say something about my tour guide. A very strange lady, who spoke excellent English. She kept on asking everyone to take photo's in front of the land mine warning signs..."Would you like me to take your photo in front of the skull and cross bones Land Mine warning signs with your thumb up....c'mon, it'll be fun?"

She also had this to say on the ride back to Seoul: "If you would like you can take a power nap, have you heard of a power nap? It's American. American's love the word power. They name everything after power: power ties, power lunches and now,even, power naps! I'll let you get back to your power nap now..." She was a weirdo.

She told us some interesting facts about the "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-Il:
He loves three W's:
1. Women
2. Wine
3. Weapons of Mass Destruction

And he hates only one W:
---> George W. Bush

Kim Jong-Il gave up smoking a little while again and said that there are three "fools" in the world:
1. People who smoke
2. People who don't appreciate music
3. People who don't know anything about the internet or computers

Anyways, here's some more interesting facts on Kim Jong-Il:
- He has a 10,000-bottle wine cellar
- He likes blonde western women
- He collects Mazda RX-7 sports cars
- He stages all-night banquets at which attendance and heavy drinking is compulsory for high officials
- He has a troupe of strippers for his personal entertainment
- He once sent his wife and children on a secret trip to Tokyo Disneyland.
- He owns a collection of some 20,000 video tapes of his favorite movies
- In 1978, he ordered the kidnapping of Choe Eun-hee, a South Korean actress, and her ex-husband Shin Sang-ok, a South Korean director, to improve North Korean films. They escaped in 1988, bringing along information about Kim and his propaganda programs
- He is believed to have a genius-level IQ of 150 or 160
- He is a "computer wizard" who surfs the Internet, is fascinated with new technologies and is determined to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry
- He has a profound fear of flying, and has always travelled by private train when going on state visits to Russia and China.
- He wears 10cm (four-inch) lifts and platform shoes, apparently to disguise his shortness (he is 158cm or five feet two inches tall). He also coiffes his hair up an extra inch for the same reason.

Either way, he's quite a character...


The Dear Leader...

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Seoul Saving

I've been spending a lot of time stressing about doing my report cards for this month. I didn't do them last month and wasn't going to do them this one either, but I just felt bad. That's what my director has done to me, she makes me feel bad about not spending almost 6 hours of my free time unpaid every month writing stupid report cards. This is on top of the 45-hour work week I already pull at this hagwon. I went back and forth about doing them for a long time and finally decided it would be best to get them out of the way. I'm going to try and hold off now for the next set, until just before I leave, do a half-ass job and get the hell out of here...

Emily is gone now...thankfully. We really didn't get along, I don't really know why, honestly. I'm not even going to go into what I thought her problems were here...but if you get on a plane, you've got some of it...
The new teacher arrived last Sunday morning after a couple of delayed flights from Bangkok due to food poisoning on her end. I took her around Gangneung, as much as you can do at 5pm on a Sunday evening, and went downtown for dakkgalbi, soju and beers at Family Mart. It's been a much more relaxed workplace now that I can actually talk to my coworker...it's been hard for me to adjust, suddenly my breaks seem so much shorter with all the talking that's going on...

I'm heading to Seoul tonight, for my last big trip there...I think. I've made reservations with a tour company to go and see the DMZ and 3rd Tunnel. I'm really excited, I haven't been to Seoul in two or three months and won't be back again until I leave this country on November 26th. I'm also going to try and visit all the palaces and museums and sights that I hadn't been able to fit into any earlier trips...Sheena, the new teacher, is coming along too for her first trip to Seoul. I'll be doing double duty, explaining the intricacies of the Seoul Subway system, cheap yeogwans, how to avoid Itaewon at all costs, bibimbap in the morning and the wonder that is Insadong, as well as trying to get the most out of Seoul for myself too...

Well, back to another day in hell...the children are arriving on the bus, I can hear the screams down the hall...

Here we go again...

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IE User.exe Error

Forty-five mintues into the creation of my Montreal-2003 pictures page, this stupid PC Bang computer had an error and all was lost...long time before I'll get on that again...serenity now...I guess I should've used that Save command once or twice...

The Grudge

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I never friggen get a chance to write on here anymore. I have stuff to talk about, just not the time to spew it out.
I'm sorry...
Anyways, something big is happening tomorrow of which I'll have a helluva lot to say...

I'm still alive...but just barely...

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