Cows are Bigger than Old Volcanoes

I'll try to keep the most recent happenings short and sweet, and start with the most recent off-duty event: a long weekend on Jeju Island, in Korea.

On the ferry to Udo Island, just off the east coast of Jeju-do.  In the background is an expired volcanic mountain, currently a UNESCO heritage site.

Like our January trip to Shanghai, this was another last-minute group trip, 4 days long and under 2 hours away.  I didn't know much about Jeju-do (Jeju Island) before we left.  I knew that it's just off the southern coast of mainland Korea, and that it's a common destination for vacationers and honeymooners.  It also hosted 3 games of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which has been called a failure because it brought in far fewer tourist dollars than expected.  The 2009 ASEAN conference is currently happening where the World Cup happened years ago.  I also knew that nearly all Korean students I've taught who have been anywhere outside of Seoul, have made their way to Jeju.  Doing this trip would make us ultra-cool with students, which is, of course, why we do everything.

Kidding aside, travelling to Jeju is the Korean equivalent of going up north for the weekend - but in a plane, rather than in a car.  Sidewalks felt empty; taxis were less expensive; locals paid attention to the big foreigner crowd; and the oranges - oh, the oranges! - were fantastic.  Locally-grown stuff I was even allowed to take with me on the plane.  After living in the middle of Seoul for so long, knowing that it takes more than a little while to drive produce from the countryside into Gangnam, I'm tired of throwing out rotting veg only a few days after purchase.  Jeju - oh, Jeju! - actually had farmland for oranges, peanuts and goodness knows what else.  *Sigh* It made me miss being home for a bit.

We arrived at about 10pm on Wednesday night, and after about 10 minutes of looking for a hof (Korean-style pub) with empty seats, Jon, Jay, Richard and I happened upon basement-level screen golf.  Now, I'd never heard of this thing before, but maybe some of you golfers have given it a try during the off-season.  Imagine: a large room dominated by a massive projection screen stretched floor to vaulted ceiling and about 20+ feet wide; a rubber tee mounted on a moving platform to mimic a real course; and a system of lasers and sensors that accurately reflected how terrible our golfing skills are.  Jon aside, of course.

Great fun.  We lasted until about 3am - 4 hours for a foursome to complete 9 holes.  Don't even ask about the score ...

L to R: Jay, Jon and Richard sitting on the fence singing their usual song: "So, where should we go next?"

Day 2: Off to Udo Island.  Thats right - Cow Island.  Only 4km from the mainland, I'm surprised it has its own name, and that those in Seoul know what and where it is.  I was even more surprised after we rented a 4-wheeler and toured around the island.  Many little convenience shops, lots of tour groups of hagimas (middle-aged women noted for wearing visors and having sharp elbows), lots of local peanuts and seaweed snack, and only a handful of small homes.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Udo is the diving women who practice off its southern coast.  If it wasn't for dozens of pairs of legs waving from the sea, we would have missed them. I even initially mistook them for someone flailing their arms in the water, needing help.  We stopped for a few to watch them dive.  I believe these women have turned seaweed picking into an endurance sport.  Sporting retro snorkeling masks and wetsuits, they submerge and resurface hundreds of times per day.  Rumor has it that some are able to stay underwater - unaided by SCUBA gear - for two minutes or more.  Their technique is unusual - their breath sounds as if its come from a whale's spout and they often talk to one another with this bird-like whistle that, Jon told me, apparently helps them improve their lung capacity further.  And I thought these women were just a myth ...

The trip to Udo was ... short, to say the least.  After a few hours, we caught the last ferry back to Jeju along with many day laborers who must have picked peanuts, many in matching pink bonnets and all of them very tiny (some elderly in Korea suffered from malnourishment earlier in their lives).  Then, off to a UNESCO heritage site - an expired volcano.

The rest of the trip was ... food- and drink-oriented.  When David, Yuri, Brian and Joo-Yeon arrived, we ate local Jeju specialties - black pig with hair in the fat; local oranges and orange chocolate; and late-night McDonald's.  Half our party of 8 tried horse, which looked mighty lean next to pork.  I didn't try it.  I wouldn't have been able to withstand the questions from two horsey families upon our return to Canada; nor could I have looked at the beautiful horse paintings this restaurant had mounted on the wall.  Only in Korea will smiling cartoon animals encourage you to eat them...

Let's give this another go ...

It's been too long.

I'll be posting about a few things today or this coming week on:

1) Our trip to SE Asia - Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, then Vietnam again - for those who didn't hear all the details or want a few photos,

2) Our thoughts on Korea after a month away and that good ol' home stretch feeling,

3) Pagoda getting physical on the Hangang (very physical for some, far less physical for the managers),

4) Making, unmaking and remaking decisions for where to live upon our return to Canada,

5) Why this blog promotes Korea better than the Korean government,

6) And all the other little stuff that doesn't fit there; Beano in the oven, daring 5-year-old bikers, and a trip to Korea's tropical (yes, tropical) south.

Until then: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to Judy, Pauline, Margaret, Alison, Sallianne, Sally and Betty, and Happy PRE-Mother's Day to Maria!

New Year's (Take Two) and Other Surprises

Well, I was hoping to split this into a few posts and make it look as though I had posted our events in a timely manner.  Instead, I've pretended to do so in two bursts of posting.  This is the second burst (for the first, see the two previous posts, below). Please forgive me if I am repeating myself a little.

Since New Year's, we've had a few interesting events.  I've been given a few more advanced classes (Pschool Intensive Program, or PIP classes) teaching reading and writing in addition to speaking and listening.  This means that I'm with the same group of students for either two or three hours each day of the week, and have actually begun to feel like a teacher.  At first, I felt torn in many different directions and spread a bit thin, covering three or four different activities in an hour rather than presenting one long activity like in the conversation classes (Speaking, Listening and Expression, or SLE classes).  Now, the SLE classes seem slow and monotonous in comparison.

While I was adjusting to these new classes, we got a piece of ... interesting news.  While we were at work, a pipe burst in the apartment above us, causing water to stream down our walls and onto my laptop.  Jon discovered this in the afternoon when he finished work (one of his classes was cancelled so he formally finishes work at 3pm).  I got the call at work at about 4.  My computer was fried, about one or two months after buying it.  And yes, because I made some stupidly impulsive decisions, it was already the second laptop I had bought since I arrived in Korea.

To make a long story short, we were moved back into our old studio for five days while they re-wallpapered our current place and fixed the flooring.  Keedo had been sent to a dog hotel overnight to make this move easier and to test out a place we've had in mind for him during our upcoming holidays.  During his overnight stay, the trainers noticed a bit of blood around his mouth, took him to our vet and found that he needed a tooth removed. Lets call this surgery number one.  Jon then took him back to the vet for a follow-up visit and the vet suggested that the other K-9 also be removed.  Surgery number two.  Keedo came home to a different apartment feeling drugged, woozy and a little bit abandoned.  All of this on the day before and during Jon's birthday.

Jon's birthday!

January 14 is his date, and it was celebrated with lots of food gifts and 'Happy Birthday' serenades from his students (especially the girls ;) ) and a pre-wrapped corporate gift from The School.  Turns out it was a ladies' perfume set - whoops!  For dinner, we went to a traditional Korean restaurant nearby with our close friends David and Richard (others were still working through dinner) and had some makkoli (Korean rice wine) and padjeon (a giant Korean pancake mixed with vegetables and slices of octopus - deelish!).  Then we all hurried off to bed to ready up for a big Thursday ... we'll continue to celebrate Jon's birthday this coming weekend.

A few days after Jon's big day, we moved back into our apartment to find they'd just cranked up the heat to dry the floorboards (heat comes through the floor in most Korean homes - AC from the ceiling.  Heat rises and cool air falls, right?  It just makes so much sense ...).  I got a new laptop identical to my old one within three days.  Keedo got new toys from the dog hotel and Jon got ... a year wiser.

So now it's the night of Friday the 22nd and we're resting up for the last day of a 14-day working streak.  We're a little pooped and would probably be grumpy, too, if it wasn't for our weekend plans.  We're going to Shanghai for the lunar new year.

It's been in the works for about a month now.  We got a great deal on the plane ticket, have our visas ready and secured travel insurance long ago.  We invited some friends to go with us, so there will be seven of us in all.  Jon got in touch with an old coworker, Ken, from the university he worked at in China to help us find a place to stay, and the plan is to meet up with Ken and take it from there.

We're pretty excited!  We'll be back on the evening of the 27th (and start work early on the 28th) so will have photos and stories to share in the near future.

Oh - one last thing.  For the first (real) time and maybe the last, it snowed!!!

Hello 2009!

Turns out that Christmas was such a hit we were nominated to host New Year's, too!  I immediately promised myself that I would not get too Martha Stewart-y (years of Marilyn Dennis on CityLine after school has taken its expensive, time-consuming toll already).  No new decorations, no new foods (we still had unused food and leftovers from Christmas); only a place to hang out on another day off.

I had to work until 10pm that night, the final day of classes, so Jon took care of the setup.  I had thought that, being New Year's and all, I might have no students show up for class - especially the later ones - and might get to leave early.  I had forgotten that Education is the biggest religion in Korea.  I had full classes during the day, and regular classes until my last class at 8pm.

One student, a young and exceptionally cheery woman named Song (her Korean first name was similar to Seong Yu) arrived in class early and eager to chat with her classmates ... who, it turned out, felt they had better things to do on New Year's Eve than brave the partying crowds to get to a sterile classroom to talk for a few hours.  Uncomfortable as she was being the only student in the class, we went out for a bite to eat nearby (any new setting that gives us something to talk about is always, always welcome).  We filled the two hours by sharing travel, family and relationship stories (the big 3, again, aside from school), and parted ways, she, glad to have finished class and ready for a night out, and me, desperate to get home to friends who had been there for hours, chatting away without the pressure of filling the airtime with (sometimes hollow) questions.

Little did I know that it would be the night of North Korean soju and rounds of drinking games.

This stuff is more potent than the Southern stuff - 6% more potent, in fact, and still much easier to drink than its Russian cousin, Vodka.  And within about an hour and two or three drinking games, it had turned both Richard and David into happy, hatted men.

Richard didn't know his hat was pink for about two hours ... by the time he realized, he had gone outside to smoke about six times and been given strange looks by many Koreans who knew a little more than he did about his topper.

A few more joined us than had at Christmas; Rob Davis from Vancouver and his Korean girlfriend, Cecil (who has offered to teach me Korean), David's girlfriend Yuri, and Richard's soon-to-be-girlfriend, Christina/Hazel (she renamed herself before entering our place, leaving Richard confused for weeks).  All this meant that seating was on the floor with Keedo.

This is, one could say, a 'talking picture'.  Apologies that the photos are not so stellar this time around: better photos are on their way in future posts!

Lucky for a few of the drinkers we know, we got a holiday on New Year's Day.  Then, the real work began - January, I've been told, is the busiest month of the year at The School.  After working two weeks of ten to twelve hour days, I believe it.  More about January to come!

I'm Dreaming of a White ...

Christmas has come and gone.  Apart from our little Christmas party (complete with turkey, ham and mashed) it wasn't much of an event here.  And no, there was no snow on the ground, but we'd had some brief flurries earlier in the week.

Most Koreans get one day off (which meant that's all we got, too) and then come back to work without much fanfare.  It's not even really common to spend time with family on Christmas; rather, it's considered a 'couples holiday'.  

Most unusually, the streets are hopping on Christmas Eve, with every cafe in sight selling sweet potato cakes (they look like birthday cakes, but are less sweet) as fast as they can.  Paris Croissant, our favourite French-style cafe/pastry shop, ignored its usually cool image, and was selling stacks of boxed cakes outside the building, a sales gimmick that I'd consider a desperate measure if it wasn't for the big crowds pushing to buy as fast as possible.  Wild.

We had Keedo opening gifts from Canada (thank you!!!!) with us on the 25th, too!

He got booties to match a coat that had been sent to us earlier on.  This coat is miles more acceptable than the imitation brand goods sold on the street around our place: 'Ralph Lauren' doggy parkas, fuzzy pink cable knit doggy sweaters, 'Burberry' print doggy trench coats, or the worst of all: that I see dogs wearing this stuff.  I couldn't be happier that Keedo's coat is hunter green.  He, of course, is paralyzed whenever it's put on him, and can't walk on our slippery wooden floors with the booties on.  Which he's embarrassed about, of course.  The gear is great for the outdoors, though!

So, on the 25th, we just sat around all day and chatted, lamented that we had only one day off, took a few cheap shots at one another and had a few drinks.  And we killed seven hours doing it.

From left: Maria Kelley, me, Richard King and Jon in our living room.

David Hollinger, left, is from Boston; Richard is from England; Jon at centre, Patrick Kelley (married to Maria) is from Oregon, and Chris Burkhard, who recently left for more ESL training in London, England, grew up in Detroit.

Like good employees, we disbanded at about 9pm, hit they hay shortly thereafter and were at work early the next morning, our Christmas celebrations already behind us. New Years', however, was right around the corner.

Hiking Gwanaksan

Well, the changing seasons won't let me lie. We hiked this mountain ages ago ... the first weekend in October after The School's fire, actually, when the weather still called for tank tops. It's since gotten much colder, and the tanks have been covered by tshirts, dress shirts and coats. Scarves, too. Korea's long, humid summer was gorgeous (in retrospect) and we celebrated it accordingly: an invigorating walk up a mountain. Now, it wasn't much of a real hike until the mountain became a bit more steep near its top, and the hike itself was rather short, but it was a climax to the weekend in more way than one.

Jon and I went with two coworkers - Jay and Rob - to the mountain at the southern edge of the city, to Gwacheon. By subway. The 40-minute trip included one transfer during which a middle-aged Korean man yelled at myself and Jay (who's proudly Indian-Canadian, Ottawa-based). His comments were in Korean, so we didn't understand a word, but his finger wagging and spitting spoke clearly enough for us to understand. One of the hundred-something Koreans making the same transfer seemed just as surprised as we were to hear such comments. After staring each other down (confusion from our end, anger from the spitter) as we walked down the stairs, we parted ways with the overtly racist Korean man and looked forward to our weekend excercise!

A gorgeous day for a hike - I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

The hike was pretty monotonous until we came across a natural spring and took our first break. We could actually drink from this spring, and ladles had been provided to access the drinking water from a crevice in the rocks.

A little further up, we came upon Gwanaksan's main attraction: a sizeable temple housing hundreds, possibly thousands, of small buddhas. All were painted gold. And if you take a close look at the photo, you can see ingenious use of space: buddhas tucked in at the side of the rafters of the structure.

Although many hikers stopped at this point, we continued to even more spectacular views - Seoul on both sides of the mountain, a tiny temple on a dangerous precipice just shy of the mountain's 625m peak, and (how wonderful) an army base at the peak of the mountain. Beside the ramen noodle vendor and beer-selling drink stand. Ahh, the athletics of our feat!

A generous hiker cutting up an Asian Pear for our foursome ... although our thanks wasn't constrained by the language barrier, we weren't able to strike up a full conversation with her. So we'll pass on her generosity to our students ...

It took us about ... 30 minutes to descend the mountain and a few hours to get back to Gangnam for beer and fried chicken with some of the other teachers. We then went for a session of Dr. Fish ... but I'll save that story for another day. Let's just say that a hungry fish is a useful fish.

Alive and Kickin'

We've just finished another month of classes (3 down, 9 left) and another 3-day weekend. We've been busy, too, so it's time for an update.

Jon ran in a 10k race on Sunday - first race in years! - with some of our coworkers. Did marvelously. Ran it in under 40 minutes - can you believe it? The field was capped at an enormous 10,000 runners, walkers and joggers, from kids about 10 years old and upwards. The field had a small majority of men, according to the race results page, outnumbering women by 500. Jon, of course, ranked in the top two percent, only one second behind the man in 60th place. He ran it so fast that I missed his finish entirely and have no pictures to show. Will keep searching online for professional photos that I can post instead.

He had taken the place of Richard King, our coworker, neighbour and furniture hunter extraordinaire, who didn't know he'd been signed up for the race until he received his race package - race tee, timing chip, etc. Jon and I had missed the signup because we had expected to be out of the country during a 5-day holiday (this is the one that was shortened after the fire - construction on the blasted 7th floor continues). So Jon was able to take Richard's place and I went along for the ride. The 7am Sunday ride.

To view captions of this slideshow, hover your mouse over the bottom of the image and then click the word bubble at the bottom left of its window.

The race took place outside of the city, at a rowing club without enough parking (but of course). We arrived at the less than ten minutes before the race began, drove past the noisy, crowded starting line and away, away into the depths of the club to find a parking spot. Jon and the the other racers from the School got a nice warmup jogging to the start line and they sqeezed into the side of the throng of red-shirted racers only 30 seconds or so before the race began. Close call!

Trying to take a picture of Jon during the race, I jogged to the first curve of the course about 400m from the starting line. Weighed down by one gym bag on each shoulder, a jacket and water bottle in one hand and the camera and its case in the other, I was too slow to beat Jon or any other teacher to it. I must have spent about 15 minutes standing at the curb, watching all the runners (I wouldn't call all of them athletes, especially after the first few hundred competitors had passed), absolutely mesmerized by all the red Adidas shirts that had been included in the race package. Snapping out of it, I moved to the finish line to catch them at their best/worst ... and ran into the same problem. I must have seen over 5,000 finishers cross the line ... eyes peeled, darting from one racer to the next ... I must have blinked - slowly. Actually, I missed everyone from The School, so I must have had my eyes closed or lost in a daydream.

The School provided all with a nutritious post-race meal: deep-fried Chinese food and beer. At 10am. A glorious finish and home for a rest!

We finished the day the same way we had started it: near the water. The day of the race was also the day of Seoul's International Fireworks Festival, which is held on the Hangang (Also known as the Han river; 'gang' is Korean for 'river'). Actually an international fireworks competition, this Festival offered 30-minute-long explosive perfomances to the hundreds of thousands of spectators crowded on blankets and newspaper at the river's edge. Throngs of people swarmed the path from subway station to park, stopping traffic and taking over roadways. But the crowds didn't start there: as soon as we'd gotten on the subway we realized that it was going to be incredibly busy. I imagine it was similar to Tokyo's subway traffic: Ali, care to comment?

Once we arrived at the park, the crowds weren't much better. Chris, a coworker from Detroit, led our way through the crowds while the fireworks boomed.

Even though the subway was a sardine tin of spectators, most families, it seemed, had come early and prepared. Blankets, cardboard and newspaper had been spread on the ground creating a semblance of personal space in the crowd of over 100,000. It made no difference. Latecomers like us wove their way between the patches, migrating towards the best view of the fireworks, the edge of the river. It was worth the extra wait to get there.

(What was NOT worth it: the two hour walk away from the park in search of a way home! They had closed the subway station for safety reasons, the buses jam-packed and taxis all taken. Ah, if only I'd listened to my students, who warned me about the difficult trip home and who had mentioned that it was likely the reason they wouldn't attend the festival.)

A Day With The (one and only) Ansan Man

Thanks to a certain four-legged little guy, Jon got an early morning start in Gangnam this past Saturday, the first day of Korea's Thanksgiving, which is called Chuseok.  At about 6am, he had the wits about him to bring a camera on his walk, tracing our usual route to the gym.

We usually pass through or pass by a few small, manicured parks.  The first is a wide path flanked by benches (and midday nappers) and a large gazebo sheltering more benches sits in an alcove dug into the hill, above.  Below is the second park, a larger, multi-tiered do, with a dirt badminton court (no net), steel exercise equipment, more gazebos and benches.  This second park is quite busy on weekends because the National Tae Kwon Do Association, which holds weekly demonstrations, is about 50m up the street.

Back home after the walk, Keedo guards my lazy bum.  Please excuse the mess.  One hour later we were en route to Ansan, nearly as far as you can get from Seoul's core while still using the subway system, to visit our friend, the Ansan Man.

Oh, Ken - I mean Ansan Man - did you actually play guitar in university?  Or is this one of those 'I'm-a-foreigner-and-nobody-can-tell-me-what-I-can-and-can't-do' moments?  I kid, I kid ... your solo was most impressive.

We left Keedo at Ken's place for lunch, after taking him on the subway for the first time.  A real faux-pas, my students told me, unless you take him in a carrier.  We just kept him in our lap and enjoyed the smiles we got from other passengers on the train.

This Praying Mantis, about 10cm or 4 inches long, had somehow gotten its wings stuck to the lid of a squid-holding fishtank.  We unstuck it gently, so as not to damage its wings, and then high tailed it out of its reach.

An afternoon walk to one of Ansan's giant reservoirs-come-community parks yielded more friends and onlookers.  We've normally kept Keedo away from strangers, in case he gets a little nippy, but Jon was (obviously) careful for both dog and girl in this case.  Some older men on the subway and elsewhere love the dog, but don't know how to greet him, sticking their hand in Keedo's face and expecting him to like it.  But maybe I'm just protective.  Sallianne: are we overreacting a tad?

You wouldn't believe the relief a bit of greenery gave me.  The hustle and bustle of life in Seoul had been quietly getting to me over the past week and our trip to Ansan was relaxing on a scale comparable to driving up to the Muskokas from, say, Georgetown.  We even got to see sunflowers!!!  And they weren't in a pot!!!

We headed back home to Gangnam later that evening.  Jon is to be credited for another nice sunset photo (just imagine the concrete jungle in the foreground doesn't exist) taken from our apartment.  More pictures and updates to come, of course!

 

Note: Ken is also posting highlights of his year-long teaching venture in a blog.  Click on the link to the right of this post, titled 'Ansan Man' to check it out.

Happy (belated) Re-Birthday, Korea!

This post has been on the back burner for a bit too long - Korea's Independence Day actually took place on Friday August 15. Apologies for my tardiness!

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Korea must be one of the few countries where Independence Day is not celebrated with fireworks and parades, with flag-wavers and patriots, or with more drinking than a normal Friday. No, in Korea, Independence Day is simply celebrated in one meaningful way - a statutory holiday during which only the poor retail workers among us have to man the busy shops.

Instead of joining the throngs of shoppers, we celebrated our own day off with a trip to a historical site, Gyeongbokgung, with one of Jon's students, Daeshin. Gyeongbokgung is the main palace of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-August 1910) and its entrance gate, Gwangwhwamun Gate, is to be the departure point for the upcoming Nike Human Race we wanted to join.

We began our little sightseeing trip with a walk down the Cheonggyecheon Stream in the centre of Jongro district, a few minutes' drive north of the Hangan River and the location of Seoul's City Hall. Although initially dredged during the Joseon Dynasty, the area became a shantytown and the stream became polluted. In the 1960s and 70s, the slum was cleared and the stream paved over to make way for an elevated expressway - after all, an emergent economic power couldn't have shanties in the centre of its city now, could it? The pollution that had been invited by this expressway was later cause for the road's destruction, and the Stream was restored in 2005, including a history of the Joseon Dynasty that lines the stream like a miles-long tapestry in tile.

Daeshin and myself in front of a history of the Joseon Dynasty explained on tile.

After passing children swimming in the stream (contrary to a Korean by-law, Daeshin informed us) and a small art exhibition under a bridge (what a creative use of space!), we exited the stream for Gyeongbokgung palace. During the short 20-minute walk to the site, we passed many dozens of caged buses preparing for Seoul's weekly candlelight vigil against Korea's president and his policies on American beef, and hundreds of young Korean police officers sitting on the sidewalk in parallel lines, waiting in the light rain for their cue to enter City Hall Square. We've since seen these same buses in Gangnam, waiting for similar protests to get out of hand (but I've yet to see a person detained in one of the buses).

The Gwanghwamun Gate is currently under construction, covered by scaffolding that is covered by painted plywood and massive inflated Roses of Sharon. Absolutely hideous, especially against the beautiful backdrop of mountains behind the palace and the Blue House - Korea's version of the White House, as Daeshin put it.

After taking advantage of free admission (yipee!!) we walked into a snapshot of Korean history (plus tourists). Geunjeongjeon, the throne hall, was at the forefront of the rest of the palace grounds. We were so wowed that we nearly blocked the entrance so Jon could take pictures like this one, below.

The white-shuttered doors provided a view of the raised throne and various royal artifacts. Entry was prohibited here like in Gyeonghoeru, below, a banquet hall also labelled National Treasure No.244. (In other news National Treasure No. 1, the oldest wooden structure in Seoul, caught fire in early February.)

The remainder of our visit was far less photographed; a quick tour through the National Folk Museum within the palace grounds, then a quick taxi ride with Daeshin and a friend of his we met on our way out of the palace, Joon, to Myeongdong - a fashion district - for some dinner. Although there was a famous jiggae (stew) restaurant in Meyongdong that Daeshin wanted to show us, neither he nor Joon remembered where it was. This is something we've learned to expect in Korea, because there is such a plethora of shops, restaurants, bus stops, and unofficial spellings that no single person can know it all. This one is a city of landmarks.

We settled on a second-floor restaurant with a wonderful dish of nangmeyon noodles and boneless chicken in a spicy, watery chili broth. Daeshin asked us over and over if we were having fun, and telling us that he felt so happy and proud to show us a little bit of Korea. Before August 15, he'd not been to Gwanghwamun either - much like many Ontarians have never been to Queen's Park, or even to the ROM.

We parted at the Subway for a cheap but long ride home. Jon was nearly sick from exhaustion (Keedo had given a string of early wake-up calls the preceeding week) and when we got home we both crashed after a long week. Most weekends have been approached in a similar vein - see Korea when we can, but prioritize rest on our days off!

Jon has since met up with Daeshin for lunch to thank him again and catch up on changes in his life before he goes to study in the US.