The Travel Blog

We are currently in Kuala Lumpur, just shy of one week into our trip and having a great time!

Here is the link to our travel blog for the trip:

Travelpod

Enjoy!

-Warren

Everything ends eventually...

I am writing this from a free Internet cafe in the Busan Airport. Our flight to Beijing begins boarding in about 15 minutes. After that flight, and a hour layover in Beijing, we will be on a 6 hour flight to Singapore. A few hours later, our friend Jamie will arrive there.

And that will be the beginning of our 5 week trip!

We will have a travel blog for the trip over at Travelpod.comm and when its up and running I will post the link here.

Although we return to Korea for 2 days before flying back to the USA on February 28, this is more or less the end of our time in Korea. Its hard to be nostalgic now, with this trip looming over our heads, but I will miss this place, and the friends that I've made here.

Well, that's all for now... be sure to check back in a few days for the link to our NEW blog! We are gonna update this one often, I promise! Its a new year, new president - things can change.

Peace and Love
-Warren

School Field Trip

Today I went along on a school field trip. This was not the first time I've been on a day trip with my school - there's been about 3 this year. This one was probably to celebrate completing the school inspection yesterday, which has had teachers scrambling to get everything from paperwork to the physical appearance of the school in tip-top shape.
Today I went with the third-grade students and teachers to Geumjeong Mountain. I caught a ride with some other teachers up to a small village where we met up with the other teachers and students. From there it was about an hour's hike up to the North Gate of the fortress with was restored 20 or 30 years ago, along with a section of the original fortress wall.
The Gate:



After lunch we hiked back down again. I spent most of my time just hanging out and trying to take pictures of my students. This can be challenging because most students hate having their pictures taken. If they do tolerate a picture, they'll try to hide their faces. This doesn't apply to everyone, though - I have a few celebrities who will pose at a second's notice.







The 3rd grade teachers enjoying their lunch:



And yours truly:



Since we finished "work" early, I took advantage of the free time by visiting the post office to mail our Absentee Ballots!

Gwangalli Fireworks Festival!

Yesterday I went to Gwangalli Fireworks Festival!
It was amazing!

Unfortunately, Sarah had to stay home because she was sick...

The first fireworks show was back in 2005, when the APEC summit was held in Busan. To celebrate being chosen as the host city, Busan put on a huge fireworks show at Gwangalli beach. Gwangalli beach one of many beaches in Busan, unique because Gwangan bridge runs from left to right in front of it. Its very scenic at night time, because the bridge is always lit up nicely. Anyway, the fireworks were such a hit that the Mayor decided to make it an annual thing - this was the 4th one.

Our friends Eun-chan (the animation teacher at my school) and his girlfriend Ji-un invited us to go. They had been to the festival once before and told us that we would have to arrive very early because the beach becomes so crowded. How early? We got to the beach a little before 3 for the 8 o clock show! We found amusing ways to pass the time and in retrospect I wish I had taken photos every once in a while of the beach filling up with people - it would have made an interesting time-lapse. And fill up, it did - it was packed. The final estimate was 1.1 million people...

The show itself was worth the wait... over 40 minutes long and just awesome. Fireworks were launched from 3 barges and the bridge itself. There were big fireworks, small fireworks, high fireworks and low fireworks. There were tugboats with pyrotechnics and big remote-control airplanes with pyrotechnics. They had everything... and all set to music! I guess you just had to be there, but in case you weren't - here's some pictures:

The hazards of dating someone younger than you...

One day last week, after just locking up the English classroom following another riveting lunch-time discussion, I noticed two female students sulking down the hall way towards me. They greeted me much less enthusiastically than normal, so I tried to find out what the problem was:

-----
Me: You look sad

Student: Yes

Me: Why?

Student: oh... my boyfriend...break. (puts her hands together than pulls them quickly apart)

Me: Oh, I'm sorry. Was he from our school?

Student: Yes, he is grade 2 student (She is a 3rd grade student)
I'm 15, he is 14.

Me: Oh?

Student: Yes, (points to her face) face - handsome, but (points to her head)
brain - bad.

Me: Oh, I see...

-----

For my next lesson - perhaps a lecture on the importance of finding a boyfriend who is both handsome and has a "good brain"?

A busy week!

We just finished a very busy week, with no less than 4 festivals!

As Sarah mentioned in the last post, we went on a trip last Friday and Saturday - it was fun, but... we missed the start of the 13th annual Pusan International Film Festival!
Luckily this past week was also midterms at our middle schools. Mine were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Sarah's were Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. On exam days the students have 3 exams and then go home early at noon and the teachers call leave by 1 or 1:30. By getting out early we were able to buy tickets and beat the rush of people still at work. On Monday we saw The Good, The Bad, The Weird - a big-budget Korean movie that was non-stop action. As you may have guessed from its name its a Western-style movie that takes places in Manchuria in the 1930s. The action scenes were great and the chase scene towards the end was completely ridiculous and over the top - but awesome. On Tuesday I saw a Polish movie called "Scratch" (Rysa) which was definitely the kind of movie I would expect at a film festival. It was a kind of psychological thriller about an older married couple in present day Poland who lives become altered when the husband is accused of being a former agent of the previous communist regime. It left me wondering about several unanswered questions by the end - but that's part of what made it a good movie.

On Wednesday, we both got out of school early and went with two teachers from Sarah's school to the Jinju Lantern Festival, which is held for a week every October. Jinju is a small city about 2 hours west of Busan. In 1592 during the Japanese invasion of Korea, General Kim Si-min and the garrison of Jinju fortress were attacked by a large group of soldiers. The siege lasted several days and at night Kim Si-min sent burning rafts down the river as a signal to other Korean soldiers and civilians that the fortress had not fallen. This is why the festival today is celebrated by putting decorative lanterns afloat in the river.
We arrived around 4 o clock and had plenty of time to check out the fortress and learn first hand how it was defended:





We then enjoyed a dinner of "Jinju bibimbap", which is pretty much the same as regular bibimbap, except with strips of raw beef instead of egg! We then got to wander alongside the river and check out all the cool lanterns. The lanterns come in all different shapes and sizes, along both sides of the river, floating in the river itself:






Just today, we stopped by two more festivals, here in Busan. The first was the "Global Gathering" which was more or less just Busan residents from different countries offering traditional food and information about their respective homes. We sampled several culinary delights from Russia, Poland, Nepal, Mongolia, Turkey the Philippines and Peru.... mmmmm. In addition to making us miss non-Korean food more than ever, it also got us excited about traveling again - we can't wait until this March!
Our last stop for the Day was the Jagalchi festival. Held at Jagalchi Market - which is always fun to visit - the festival consisted primarily of a lot of people eating fish while listening to other festival-goers sing karaoke (presumably all fish or sea related tunes - but I can't confirm that). There was also a giant tub where some lucky people from the audience tried to catch fish for the amusement of others and a free meal:



In addition to these various festivals and whatnot, our cats have been keeping us busy as always. Aona was spayed on Monday and had to spent the night at the vet. After a checkup on Thursday revealed that she had been picking at her stitches, we had to subject her to the supreme humiliation of wearing a cone on her head:



And our little kitten is demanding as always. and of course still cute...



And I almost forgot! The Jinju bibimbap wasn't the only raw meat I had this week. To celebrate the end of exams our department went to a raw fish restaurant. This was my third time eating raw fish and I have to say, it grows on me a little each time. I also had the chance to try raw octopus tentacles (which looks something like this) You might think that its not very appetizing, but when it was placed in front of me I immediately snatched a piece of the plate and shoved it in my mouth. Maybe something about seeing your food squirming around activates some primal predator-instinct? It tasted just as raw and salty as the rest of the sea-life on the table so I had some more. not bad....

Making our way into Autumn...

So I finally decided to take over from Warren and make a little update of my own. He gave a really nice description of our big Japan trip which basically marked our 6 month halfway point. Since then our lives have been much improved.
June and July were pretty rough-We were both feeling frustrations with our schools, swing dancing was more stressful than fun, the kittens had becomes a major time consuming chore, and the weather was dismally hot. To sum it up, Korea was not making us happy and we were both very homesick.
But by the end of August things started looking up. It was really hard to say goodbye to our 5 kittens, but we were proud knowing we saved them and they now have good homes. It was also sooooo much easier in terms of housework. We pretty much quit swing- a necessary but sad decision, as it means an end to our Friday night outings with Koreans. But we were just not enjoying the dancing for various reasons. Maybe we will go back to it, but for right now we are not. our obnoxious worthless private tutoring phone calls ended, thank God, so that is a relief. And not any less important, the weather became tolerable again. One life lesson for me-don't live in a city in the summer, especially in a hot place like Busan. Actually maybe my life lesson is don't live in a city, period.
Anyway, September has been pretty relaxing and fun. Warren wrote about his visit to a tiny ex pat flying club that first weekend. Since I was not interested, and something I have been obsessed with lately is stray animals in Korea (I spend a lot of time on Animal Rescue Korea's website) I went to a dog shelter instead. So we took a high speed train to Daejeon and went our separate ways.
I spent the day with a group of about 5 other really nice foreigners. We took a taxi out into the middle of nowhere-just a bunch of agricultural fields. A long driveway took us to a tiny house and a greenhouse-full of barking dogs. One Korean woman was living in this space, taking care of about 60 dogs-most of them small dogs, but there was about 12 big Jindos-a Korean breed which looks similar to a husky. The place was pretty shabby, but it worked as a place for the dogs to live. In fact, this woman used to have about 150 dogs in this area-but since she was told that she needed to move off the land, some very devoted foreigners have worked very hard to get the word out and get some dogs adopted. So the dogs that are left are kind of the bottom of the barrel. Most of them had some behavioral issues-they were very afraid of us. So we spent most of the time trying to walk them or just spending time showing them some love. It was heartbreaking in a way, but I got a lot of joy and satisfaction spending time with animals and wandering the countryside. I just wish the place was a little closer, so I could go more regularly. Although many of the dogs seemed hopeless, I met some little gems among them, and I wished with all my heart I could find them a new home. Unfortunately we couldn't possibly handle another animal, especially now.

About 3 weeks ago, during the major Korean holiday Chuseok, which is essentially the same as our Thanksgiving, we found ourselves with two new additions to the family. One of my students had discovered an abandoned week old kitten, and after a few days of caring for it, incorrectly, her mother told her she needed to get rid of it. So she went to her resident cat lady-me. What could I do???? Next thing I knew I had a cardboard box with a shrieking orange baby cat inside. I went to the vet and she/he was looked over and fed with a tiny baby bottle. And then I bought my own formula and was on my way. So for a week, every four hours I bottle-fed my little charge.
But Warren and I had coincidentally decided around the same time we were going to bite the bullet and rescue another little orange destitute living around the dumpster in front of our apartment. This little guy was about 5-6 weeks old, and had been abandoned by his mom a little too early. After an embarrassing morning chasing him in front of the locals, we finally caught the guy, suffering only a few painful scratches, and carried our prisoner in a sack back upstairs. We let out the small wild thing on our balcony and with much spitting and hissing he retreated behind our washing machine and refused to come out. The next 24 hours we questioned our decision to bring a feral animal into our home. But we watched him through the glass-he scarfed his food and snuggled up in his cardboard box home and just looked so weary and worn out, we knew we did the right thing. And very soon, with a little Warren charm, he started coming around to us. Warren gave him some pets and at first he stiffened and then suddenly he was in our laps, and purring. He was all skin and bones, and he had diarrhea, so we nursed him back to health for a week and brought him to our vet, who sees us constantly now, and got his ear mites and parasites taken care of. When he was finally healthy we let him into our apartment. And it was amazing to see him become a lovely little house cat. He was very well behaved, always using the litter box and never yowling for attention. His play could be a little rough-the poor boy had no siblings to wrestle, but he made up for it by snuggling often. Just an awesome little cat. We named him Raptor. And a week or so later, we got him adopted! I took some really nice pictures and put up a heart-wrenching story and I had to turn people down! Everyone wanted him. So he went to a really nice couple living in Busan, and Warren and I were so proud of him and ourselves!


On the other hand, our adult cat, Aona, has been in heat, or something. She is a complete wreck, yowling all night long. She stopped using her litter box, and she is just making life hard in general.

And our little wee one, after a few weeks of pretty good eating, peeing, pooping and sleeping, started to get diarrhea a few days ago. He (its been confirmed we have another boy, so the name is shortened from Autumn Rose to just Autumn) spent a few nights at the vet while we went on a little field trip, and the vet couldn't explain it. So he just gets treated with medicine and hopefully it will go away, but its not a guarantee he's going to make it. In all other ways he is thriving though, especially playing, so I am pretty hopeful.


Our field trip was a two day trip we took with about 30 other English teachers from Busan. It was pretty bizarre, and I was somewhat disappointed. We went to a strange place that even now is difficult to explain-something between a science facility, New Age retreat, health and fitness club, Korean Nationalism center and religious cult for followers of something called "Dahn Hak". Read about the founder and his vision here. I cant explain it much more than that. We spent the day listening to people describe "Brain respiration" and we used a computer that showed us our Auras, and we went to a big celebration for the Korean holiday-foundation day. The people of this group believed that the legend of foundation day-a bearded god falls out of the sky, offers humanity to a bear and a tiger if they live in a cave and eat garlic for 100 days, the tiger fails and the bear succeeds, the bear is turned into a beautiful woman who weds the bearded god and thats the start of the Korean race - is completely true. The group even successfully lobbied the Korean governemnt to have this story changed from "myth" to "fact" in history textbooks. We then spent a couple hours doing martial arts that focused on our inner energy, and then we made lanterns and floated them into the sky. The last part was pretty fun...
The next day was only slightly better. We went to the place I really wanted to go to, Gyeongu, which is supposed to be the best preserved historical place in Korea. But because it was a holiday weekend every place was beyond packed, and we even missed some of the sights because we had so many deadlines to meet. We saw some cool things but overall it was a bust-most of our time we were on a bus, so we are resolved to do it again on our own soon.
Next week is midterms, so its looking to be yet another easy week for us at our jobs. So far second semester has been a breeze. There are no more days off through October and November, so reality is going to set in soon for us I think.
sadly I have been sick for a week and a half-I had a cold and fever last weekend and have spent the past several days dealing with a leftover chronic dry cough. So I'm not sleeping very well and probably annoying everyone around me. But luckily Warren is a deep sleeper, and he has been good to me in my whiny state.
The leaves are just starting to change colors, so we are super excited about getting out and seeing the fall foliage. Our plans for our big spring trip are underway, and we are throwing around ideas everyday about what to do when we are finished with Asia. Or goals include but are not limited to: spending a lot of time with family and friends, living somewhere with a lot of access to nature/probably not a city, Exploring our interests further-Warren wants to fly again, and I want to work with kids and teaching possibilities, as well as look into grad school. More traveling ideas exist, but we are not sure when and how we want to do that. Let us know if you have any awesome ideas.
We love and miss everyone and we hope you are enjoying the harvest season. Eat lots of delicious pies and jump in some leaves and admire some pumpkins for us!