"It's their fault...

...If they didn't want us to break anything they shouldn't have given us footballs."

That was spoken by Kevin, one of three Canadians in town visiting my friends Jake and Maren. He had just accidentally thrown the promotional soccer ball that the bar was giving out into a glass pitcher of beer that tipped over and cracked on the table. This happened midway through my comment of "Oh, this isn't going to end well..."

We were told that we'd have to buy the broken pitcher and were all shocked to learn that they are $50 a piece. They were nice enough pitchers, with the name of the bar on them, a heavy silver handle and a cool freshness stopper but they certainly weren't worth fifty bucks. We talked the waiter down to $40 and a free order of nachos. We laughed about it for the rest of the night which ended around 3 after a trip to a karaoke room.

This incident doesn't top last weeks drunken bar-b-que that ended with a trip to the emergency room (A sliced foot and 8 stitches later and Casey's fine...). These are both prelude to our 8-hour bus ride today to Sorak-san, Korea's most popular national park. We're spending the weekend there and it looks like its going to rain the whole time so we'll see what exactly we get up to. Hopefully we'll return with no one injured or anything of value broken.

Kimchi!

Since I got here I have been rather unimpressed with Kimchi, a spicy, pickled cabbage and Korea's prized national dish. Like national dishes around the world, it is heralded as a cure-all. Here, it is believed that Kimchi can cure everything from aging to hangovers to SARS (yeah...). In my limited experience, it hasn't cured shit, and is actually likely to cause heartburn.

While reading the LA Times today, though, I found this story. Supposedly researchers have created a special Kimchi for Korean astronauts that will prevent them from getting constipated while in space. Also: "At the Kimchi Research Institute in Busan, hairless mice fed kimchi were reported to develop fewer wrinkles." Not only was I shocked to discover that Kimchi prevents wrinkles but that there is a Kimchi Research Institute right here in Busan! How I have lived here for 4 months and not visited this monument to science?

New day

I wanted to say thanks to my friends who wrote, concerned that the job situation here was turning sour. It's nearing the 6 month mark, which is when culture shock/boredom starts to make my eyes wander to new countries but the I'm happy to report that things have gotten a lot better in the last two weeks and I'm not planning on going anywhere.

With the "new" teacher leaving after only a day of work, we were left severely short staffed and all of us were given new schedules. I was given the schedule I asked for in the first place, 10 - 6 working with the kindergarten kids. So far I love it. Working with those kids can hardly even be called work. We sing and color and play the whole time. And it's balanced by my afternoon classes with the elementary school kids, where I do actual teaching. The best part: all but one of my high school classes were canceled or given to other teachers. I teach at least 8 classes, sometimes 9 or 10, a day and I have three classes a week that are overtime so I'm earning a bit of extra cash.

Our director has also made a few concessions. She signed a contract addendum that we wanted, clarifiying how much we pay for utilities and finalizing our end dates. It was nothing major but it was nice to be given what we asked for. Also, we've been accomodated on a few tweaks we wanted made to our schedules and classes. In the coolest move though, the director gave us June 4th off. June 5th is a national holliday so that means we get a 4 day weekend. Adam, Michelle and I are planning a trip to Thailand and I think Sarah is going to come along as well. Flights a super cheap and we think we can get away with under $500 for the entire weekend. It's nice to see that overtime money go somewhere cool.

Ok, I gotta run. It's that first beautiful day we've had all week and we're having a BBQ at our "rival" school across the street, followed by a baseball game (the Giants are on a 17 game losing streak...) and then a trip to the college area to drink some more. Talk to you later.

Kyongju (May 5 - 7)

Everyone had May 5th off for Buddah's birthday so some friends and I decided to stay in Kyongju, one of Korea's oldest cities. We stayed in an amazing hostel that had traditional Korean rooms and a huge courtyard. We spent a good deal of time hanging out there, singing songs and eating smores around the campfire. During the day we wandered around the city, toured a temple and a grotto high up in the hills surrounding the city. It was a great trip. Pics:

To celebrate the big guys b-day, the temple was covered in lanterns. Thousands of them. It was really amazing to see.

More lanterns and a big group of people listening to a concert in the courtyard.

Adam, Jake and I attempting to sing.

Betty, a teacher from the school across the street, right after she fell off her bench and nearly into the pond behind her.

Marin's t-shirt, though not true, speaks for itself.