February showers bring March cherry blossoms

It's a rainy, rainy morn in Ulsan today. I love a nice, warm, spring rain. It may just be my imagination but I think I see a hint of green in the grass and on the trees already....and in about a month there should be a spectacular display of cherry blossoms. Yipee, I can't wait!

Last Sunday I had my first visitor, the lovely Miss Laura Fritz! My good friend from UNI, Jon Fritz's, older sis. She is traveling Asia for 4 months so stopped by for a night to check out eastern Korea. She wanted to see Gyeongju, Korea's old capital city, which is just 40 minutes from Ulsan, so me and 3 friends (2 being sk8ters boys) met her at the train station and off to Gyeongju we went. It was a beautiful day to walk through the city parks. One park was entirely tombs of kings and nobles from dynasties long ago (see pic below). The tombs are more like small mountains. The bigger the mound the more important the person. There was one tomb we got to go inside of...super cool!

We kept walking to another park that had a goregous lake. There used to be an impressive palace there where emperors entertained many guests....until the Japanese came in and destoryed it. Unforunately, that seems to be the common theme in most Korean historical sites. "This used to look like this (display model) until the Japanese invaded and burned everything down. Now all that's left is this, that was reconstructed in the 80's or earlier." It's too bad really....

We also had a delightful dinner of bibimbop (vegetables, rice,egg, and pepper paste mixed together in a bowl) and the most side dishes (aka little mysteries) I've seen since I've been in Korea. Tasty! We took the train back to Ulsan and I got to show Laura a little bit of my 'hood, my pad before dozing off to sleep for the night. Monday morning she left to go back to Gyeongju for an arranged temple stay and more exploring there. Safe travels Laura!

Summary: It's nice to have visitors. :)

There have been strange things going on at school lately that I can't really put my finger on to explain...just strange. Random people milling about, the sudden "release" of Mr. Kim, my favorite ELC staff person, rearranging.....perhaps I will blog about this in a future post.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention....I'm sure you all will get a kick out of this. I also managed to lose my keys last Friday night while out for a friend's birthday. No big deal, Kat took my helpless, homeless self in for the night. The next morning as I searched for my keys all the places were closed so I called my director to help me out, thinking he could find someone to unlock my apartment door. He calls my landlord , some lady comes (who doesn't even attempt to speak English to me), has a handful of keys and NONE of them work on my door. Why wouldn't the landlord have a master key for my apartment?! Before I knew it, and maybe with my approval but definitely without my understanding, the lady had called a locksmith who starts hacking away at my door to put in new locks. Blasted! So I had to pay for all new locks when hours later I knew I could have had my keys back. Oh language barriers. Go ahead, laugh all you want....

Anyway, Happy (almost) Valentine's Day!

xoxoxo from Korea

Spring, are you here?

Now I'm not trying to rub it in or anything *nods head* (yes, I am) but I think spring has arrived in Ulsan. Gloriousness! According to Koreans it is still winter but I think they are speaking nonsense. The weather has been rainy and in the 50's for the last 4 days. Granted there may be another cold snap in the future, but I refused to believe this. In my dream utopia world this is exactly how I'd prefer it. A month or so of cold weather with a few snow flurries thrown in there for kicks, and then BOOM as soon as February hits warm-ish weather and pleasant rain showers to gradually bring green life back into the dead vegetation by March.

As for China, there are a number of exciting highlights to mention. To begin, when we (Kristen, Kat, and I) arrive at the Busan airport we find out we are just 3 of nearly 170 people in our tour group. All Westerners and 98% ESL teachers...whoa. Most of us thinking, "Man, this is going to be so strange to be surrounded by so many Westerners for the whole weekend...we're not used to this!" As strange as I thought it might be, it was actually quite entertaining to swap stories and meet some friendly people from other cities throughout South Korea.

Within the first 10 minutes of riding in our tour bus from the airport to our first stop, the Temple of Heaven, our bus driver T-bones a car (neither going very fast), the first of many hilarious/scary bus riding experiences on the trip. China's definitely got Korea beat on the whole crazy drivers thing...and that's saying a lot.

Next, our hotel was a 5, count'em 5 star hotel/resort. It was remarkable...two grand staircases straight out of a movie in the front lobby, a bowling alley, a spa, a cinema, several restaurants, a cafe, and a night club all included in this palace of a place. It was a gem of a place for exploring. My theory is it was built for the Olympic crowd, now sitting empty (like a bunch of other new hotels in Beijing), and was thrilled to have the business of 170 foreigners for 3 nights. And of course we were thrilled to see a bathtub (that, unforunately, we did not have time to take advantage of), an enclosed shower, bathrobs, and huge, comfy beds with gigantic pillows!

Our schedules were packed tight in order to fit everything into 4 days, so each day started with a 6:00 wake-up call. Ugh. But it was worth it. In essentially 3 fulls days (the 4th day was just going to the airport), we saw all the big sites in Beijing: the Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, a jade factory, a pearl shop, an acrobatic show, and spent an afternoon shopping at the Silk Market. We also drove by the Olympic Water Cube and Bird's Nest buildings...very impressive, I must admit.

So we were there the weekend of the Lunar New Year, right? Aka the Chinese New Year. Aka complete and utter fireworks chaos throughout all of China for 3 days straight. It was the most insane thing I've ever witnessed. Jerry, our Chinese tour guide, tells us that the government only permits fireworks in the city of Beijing for these three days. No other time in the year can people shot them off within the city limits. So fireworks were exploding everywhere, and I'm talking everywhere. Alongside the street, in the middle of the street, in parks, amongst apartment complexes, off balconies, in every parking lot available....insanity. And at all times of the day. On the actual night of the new year the ENTIRE horizon was filled with fireworks from 9 pm until 2 am. Too cool.

On our short flight back to Korea all I could think about was that I couldn't wait to have Korean food again for lunch. Now don't get me wrong, I really like Chinese food, but I guess this just goes to prove that I really, really have come to love Korean food.

All in all: it was an amazing trip but I was happy to return to Korea.

In other news, my dearest and most trusted Korean oppa (older brother), Jerome, left for Canada to study English for a whole year on Friday. It was sad to see him go. He will be greatly missed by us all here as he was always so helpful and welcoming. My first Korean friend! I hope and pray he meets a Canadian equivalent that will do the same for him as what he did for me.

Also this past weekend, Kat and I managed to meet our first counter-culture friends...Korean skateboarders! In America you've got your plethora of counter-culture groups...you've got the goths, the punks, the hipsters, the heavy metal-lovers, etc. In Korea, you never see any of that. So to say the least, we l-o-v-e them and had a b-l-a-s-t hanging out with them. Their unique, outgoing, and fun personalities reminded us of our favorite friends from back home. It did our hearts good. I'm positive many hilarious adventures involving them will happen in the future.

It's been exactly 6 months since I left Iowa for Korea.

P.S. Just because I adjust quickly to new places does not mean I don't yearn for mail from home. Just a letter people! (Thanks to those who have sent me mail...I love you guys)