Well, I have completely forgotten the password to my Flickr account, and Yahoo! help is a maze like a snake eating its tail when it comes to its help (really, that's exactly what it's like), so I'm gonna put up a bunch of pictures here. But my iPhoto thinks all of my pictures are from 1973 (I truly am cursed when it comes to technology), so these aren't really in any particular order....but they're all from the past few months. And I will caption them VERY informatively, so this whole post will be VERY interesting, I'm sure.


This is a picture of my goshiwon, the place I lived in Seoul over winter break that was so small that I could reach out and touch the walls on either side of me. This is before I moved in, so it's looking barren and desolate rather than about to burst from a single suitcase-full of belongings.


Candy maker in Seoul. This is actually pretty amazing. He starts out with a big gob of sticky, glutinous goo, and folds and stretches it over and over until he ends up with thousands of fine, delicate strands, counting aloud as he goes. Too bad the candy is seriously nauseating.


Susie eating crab at the most delicious Korean barbecue restaurant in Seoul...it's one of many side dishes, and it really is just a dish full of soft crab doused in red pepper sauce. You're supposed to eat the whole thing, shell and all.


Winter in Seoul is frigid, but one of the perks is that they set up an ice skating rink outside the Plaza Hotel in Seoul.


Skating with one of the recently graduated third graders, Corina, making an appearance in this photo as an indistinct white blur as she tries to get out of the picture.


One weekend we went and saw NANTA! in Seoul. It's a non-verbal performance involving a bunch of irrepressible cooks who constantly break out into mad drumming, using pots, pans, brooms, whatever they can find!!! They had a fabulous multilingual slide show running before the show, with commands like "Cheer! Cheer louder! Stamp your feet!" followed by a slide telling us "Good job." I think I might adopt the slide show technique for my classroom, and cut out active teaching altogether. "Speak some English!....Good job." If I leave the room, I won't even know when they're not doing it. By far the best slide, though, was the one requesting, "If you are still in the bathroom, please return to your seat immediately." Anyway, Korean performances tend to be very big on audience participation, and this time Jen got called up to the stage to taste the food, and then get married. We saw her new husband after the show and he graced us with an acknowledging grunt. I predict a happy future.


I wasn't kidding when I said I wore a face mask while I was sick. Here I am in a Caribou Coffee, right out there in public. Shocking, really.


Unicyclers populate the Olympic Park in Seoul. (Not pictured: the giant "Helpy Christmas" sign. Haha.)


Rainy day in Seoul. This is Myeong-dong, or downtown, a popular shopping district.


Back in Jeonju, getting Korean cooking lessons from Minjin. This is pa-jeon, or onion pancake. My students often refer to this as "Korean pizza" despite the total lack of dough, tomato sauce and cheese and the prominance of squid and green onions. Anyway, it's delicious...


At the strawberry festival in Nonsan. Jen, Colleen and I managed to put away this entire crate inside of 15 minutes, while watching a group of thirty or so Nonsan ajummas performing onstage, shaking fans and their booty in a very disturbing way that I will NOT memorialize with a posted photo.


Making jam at the strawberry festival.


Temple in Nonsan. The cherry blossoms were blooming that weekend.


This must have been from this winter, when pears were in season. GIANT pears. Not that you can really see, but we're in a very austere, white-papered room...one of the guest rooms at the Buddhist temple where Nika lived last year.


Colleen was a swimmer in college, and she's been itching to go to the Olympic pool in Seoul since she arrived last year, so a few weeks ago we donned our caps and goggles and took the plunge. Actually, when I say "our" caps and goggles I really mean "Colleen's" caps and goggles. This is a girl who brings her swimsuit everywhere, including hiking in central Korea in the depths of winter. I, meanwhile, I am ashamed to admit, had to cobble together a swimsuit out of underwear and a camisole. Honestly, pathetic.


Jen wanted to hike Geumosan, so I went back for a visit to Gumi in March. Here we are with Sunny (Gumi High School nurse)'s kids in front of a ceremonial stack of rocks intended to celebrate the modernity of the new millennium. Hm....cool, very. Modern, no. (By the way, I am NOT flashing the peace sign... it's a two. Jen's got a one. 21. For the 21st century. I don't think it really worked.)


View down to the shore from Sunrise Peak on Jeju Island.


Same place, up close. They bring the seafood in and cut it up for you to order right there. Maybe the freshest seafood it is possible to eat.


Still on Jeju...we saw a mandarin duck! How many pictures is it possible to take of a duck? Apparently, a lot of pictures. I'm pretty sure this one is wild, too, not installed by the proprietors of the park. According to Wikipedia, the southern tip of Korea (where Jeju is located) is prime mandarin duck territory.


Fishing boats, fisherman, and lots of flags in the Seogwipo harbor in Jeju.


We're in the middle of election season in Jeonju (again....actually, I think every season is election season). This candidate shaved his head to show his...dedication? Actually, I'm not sure why he shaved his head, and no one I asked was able to give me a very assured answer. Not merely to get the attention of the voting public, though, surely...



I finally hiked to the top of Moaksan, the mountain that looms over Jeonju to the south. I went with the female trainer from my gym. Hm, I often get self-conscious hiking with people who are more athletic than I am (i.e. everyone), but I've never been hiking before with someone who knows the exact composition of my body fat. This picture looks a bit smoggy...I think this might have been one of the days that the Korean peninsula was awash in Yellow Dust, that odious duststorm that periodically blows down from China and sends Koreans rummaging for their face masks.


A night on the town in Jeonju with Yu-Gyeong. Sometimes the cuteness is just overwhelming.


Hanok Village in Jeonju. According to Min, Hanok Village is the largest grouping of traditional homes in South Korea. Korea has changed pretty drastically over the course of the last two generations, and Min said that a lot of older Koreans come to Hanok Village just to relax, since it's one of the few places that's anything like the Korea they grew up in.


This semester one of my resolutions was to study Korean more consistently. Toward this end, I found a language partner at Jeonju University, which is about a 30-second bike ride from school. So now every week I meet Min-jae and her boyfriend, both of whom are English education majors, and try to speak Korean and ask I'm sure very dunderheaded questions out of my "elementary" Korean book.


My flower arranging teacher. She's so hip.


Kim Yong-nam, the geology teacher at school, cutting up a persimmon.


Sports day again. The students cheer at the top of their lungs, which is apparently too loud for my coteacher.

Outside between badminton matches, learning the proper way to put the tips of my fingers together and be cute in a picture.


More students...


With one of my favorite of the new first graders, Yae-seul, at school. One of the perks of working at a private school is that the school grounds are just gorgeous. These azaleas are everywhere, and we're actually sitting on the edge of a pond stocked with koi, while Yae-seul's friend takes our picture from the little wooden footbridge. I suppose everything evens out in the end...

Pretty much self-explanatory. This is the school career counselor at the school picnic, held at the Jeonju Zoo the day after sports day.

Bon and Han-byeol at the zoo. The hand is supposed to make them look like they have a "small face."


This weekend....back to Songgwangsa Temple! This was perhaps my favorite among the temples that I visited last year. This year, Colleen, Jen and Jen's mom and sister and I first went to Seonnamsa Temple, then hiked over the ridge to Songgwangsa, where we stayed the night as part of the templestay program. In the evening we ate dinner with the monks, and attended evening prayers in the main Buddha hall. (Monks' chanting really is incredibly to listen to. There are no pauses or even melodic changes to distinguish the various phrases, so it flows in one, long, ever-changing line.) We also had tea with one of the monks, giving me a chance to practice my Korean skills. I caught about 4 words, three of them "eat." I think that would give me a score of .00002% on the listening exam. The next morning we got up at 3 am (!!!) to go to morning prayers. Morning prayers were a lot like evening prayers, with the addition of 108 bows. Bows involved laying your forehead on the floor in front of you and lifting your hands next to your head, before sitting back up on your heels and rocking up to standing position. This is really, really difficult to do 108 times. Actually, I think I was walking funny all day at school today because of the effect it had on my quads. Following prayers, we had meditation and a sort of master class on bowing with another of the monks. He was not impressed with our technique. Breakfast was just before six, and afterward we were treated to a tour of the temple by yet another monk.


At Seonamsa, showering Colleen with cherry blossom petals...


We stopped in the mountains on our way from the first to the second temple. After we ate, they brought us a steaming bowl of nurungi, which is basically water mixed with burnt rice. This is the big pot outdoors where they keep the nurungi brewing.


In our special issue templestay vests.


The lanterns at Songgwansa hung in honor of Buddha's birthday, which is coming up in about a week.

The lanterns at lit up at night.


One of my favorite things about Korea: ondol. Traditionally, ondol heating worked by diverting the woodsmoke from the kitchen to ducts beneath the the floor. While the heating no longer comes from woodsmoke, most Korean homes are still heated through the floor, including the building we stayed in at the temple. It was surprisingly cold this weekend, and in cold weather there's nothing like coming in from outside and laying down on a hot floor. You actually feel like you might melt.


My favorite ticket window in all of Korea.