Time has flown by here in Seoul; next week I'm 25% finished my second year here. Most of my time has been spent working, parent/teacher meetings were especially time consuming. I have tremendous admiration for the teachers at my old school who had to deal with parents every month; six hours every three months was enough for me. Apart from that work is going quite well. One book I'm teaching is "The Roots of Rock & Roll". For these classes I've been bringing my laptop in and playing some music; Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Chuck Berry to name a few. In the lecture that mentioned both Pat Boone and 'protest music' I naturally played Dylan over Boone.
Other than work I have been out and about the last few weekends. Three weeks ago Bora and I went to Namsan, which literally translated means 'South Mountain', however these days it finds itself in the middle of Seoul. Centuries ago it was a watchtower, attempting to protect Seoul from invaders. Nowadays it's a nice spot for a view of downtown Seoul... if the smog isn't at its usual level. Bora and I took a cable car to the top, which consisted of me looking at everything and her shutting her eyes in terror; it was fun. The view from the top was decent, but unspectacular. We walked down the mountain, and that was quite nice. Anytime you can see trees and hear birds in Seoul is cause for celebration in my books.
Two weekends ago was 'Children's Day'; an excuse for parents to buy/do whatever their kids want. Bora and I tried to think of somewhere that wouldn't be popular on such a day. We decided on Myeongdong, a shopping district in central Seoul. District doesn't quite do it justice; picture everyone in your high school... stuffed in a single locker, and you'll grasp what Myeongdong is like. We chose very wisely, this was the third time I'd been there, and easily the least crowded. Bora did some shopping, and I tagged along to watch to Myeongdong human zoo.
Last weekend was a rainy one, so Bora and I went underwater. By that I mean to one of the biggest aquariums on Asia, at one of the biggest malls in Asia: COEX. It was expensive, about $17.50CDN, and they had some interesting things... but it wasn't worth it overall. One thing that was worth it was the turtles; I have never seen such large turtles in my life. I've been to fair variety of zoos, aquariums, etc. in North America, Australia, and Asia; and the turtles were the stars here. They also had a Eurasian Beaver that was going crazy trying to get into the neighboring enclosure with a Siamese Crocodile; I almost freed it in a patriotic fervor, but thought better of it.
After the aquarium we were naturally craving seafood, so we picked up our friend Peter and hit a delicious shellfish restaurant here in Guro. Following that we met up with Bora's sister and went to a bar for beers and fishcakes. All in all, a great night.
No exciting plans for the future, just working. You may have noticed the lack of pictures with this posting, my camera had been loaned to Bora's sister for a tip to Japan. I have it back now, but it's just not the same: a new one may be in order. I think I'll probably pick up a Nikon D40 shortly, body and lens should only set me back $450 here. So hopefully the quality of photography on this blog will go up shortly.
