How Tricky

Would you look at this...

Here's a nice sign, in Korean and English, telling you that if you're weary of wandering through mazes the bathrooms and the snack bar are just over there...

But hey, I just came that way a while ago, and you know where that road leads? Straight into a maze! Don't you think that's kind of cruel and sneaky on their part? haha

MIRO Coffee and Snack

Waiting for my lunch at the Maze Park!

Bussing Around

So I set out after breakfast today and found the Jeju City bus terminal. I decided to go to the Maze Park but it's quite a ways away. So I took a beautiful ride on a local bus and got off at my transfer point, a quaint little place up on the northern coast. I found my destination on the time tables and still have over half an hour to kill. I might buy ice cream at the Family Mart; the heat's super intense.

Seeing all the lush, green fields and strangely thin, flat trees against the chalk-scrape of beautiful, deep waters makes me want to write. So many fascinating tales could be set in a place like this.

I kept staring at the rich, dark rocks and wondering why the rocks were different here, blacker and more beautiful. And then I suddenly remembered that Jeju is a volcanic island. Maybe all these rocks had once been lava.

An old man just offered me a piece of gum, and it reminds me that last night a little girl offered me a plate of watermelon her father carved up for their family. And on the ferry yesterday a Korean came and had me join him and his American friend so I wasn't in a solo picnic. People are so kind to me.

익산역

At the Iksan train station:







(Sorry this post is out of order. Can you guess where it goes?)

On the Ferry from Mokpo to Jeju

Goodbye, Mokpo!



Inside, everyone took their shoes off and sat clustered on the floor, just like a giant indoor picnic.



I was on the Car Ferry Rainbow.







It was beautiful.



We passed small islands and lighthouses and fishermen.



We passed another ship run by the folks who run our ferry.



The sun was getting low.





The sunset as we approached Jeju Island was amazing and so gorgeous.

On the KTX

Korea's high speed train:

On the Bus to Iksan

Heat

Lately it's been 87.5° Fahrenheit in my apartment. The humidity's so bad that sometimes drying yourself off with a good towel doesn't even make a difference. I've lasted June and July, but when I come back from my vacation in August, I think it might be time to cave and use the air conditioning...

My First Village Trip

On Saturday I went on a day trip with my church to pass out books with John and Romans in English and Korean. I actually have no idea where all we went, but the villages were somewhere in the mountains a few hours' drive away, and apparently they're near Korea's oldest currently-active Bhuddist seminary. The views there were amazing and the company on the way there and back was great. The small group I was in met a man who was apparently a Catholic and seemed so glad to see us. He welcomed us inside and fed us yellow melon, then sent us off with a bag brimming with yellow melons, peppers, eggplant, and sesame leaves he pulled straight from his garden while we watched.



This tree is over 400 years old. I'm told the locals believe the spirits of their dead go hang out in the tree, and they believe that it protects their village. Interestingly enough, a while ago the tree was dying, so they poured tons of money into saving the tree so it could keep on “saving” them.



For lunch we had MREs, apparently “meals ready-to-eat” made for the U.S. Military. I enjoyed some of their directions' terms.



The rest stop totally made me feel like I had stepped out of the Korea that I've so far known and stumbled across some remote stretch of the Amazon only seen in movies. Clearly, this is not the Amazon (wrong continent, I know!), but it was still a surreal experience for me nonetheless.



Waking up early to go on my only free day of the week was difficult for me, but the trip was lots of fun and I'd like to go again.

Elite

I thought this product's ego was hilarious.

P.S.

저는 예수님의 사랑을 좋아해요.

Hallasan

I have reservations on the scenic island of Jeju for my vacation in (less than) two weeks!  I plan on hiking up this mountain while I'm there and I am so excited.

(I found this photo via Google Search and I think it comes from Jeju Weekly, so here's hoping its originator doesn't mind my using it.)

Famous Kinder Quotes

One of my kindergarten students says the cutest, most hilarious things--but a lot of the cuteness comes from her dire seriousness and the drastic expressions on her face.

The kids here often rat each other out, and because they aren't so hot at English yet, when they want to accuse someone of saying something bad/wrong/in Korean, often they'll say "is" instead of "says," using this construction: "Teacher!  So-and-so is ahjussi!"  (Alerting us to the fact that so-and-so called somebody an old man in Korean, in this case.)

One day this particular student looked at me with her brow furrowed deeply and her eyes all beadified, like she was about to tell me about the most dastardly deed anyone ever could have possibly committed.  And she said, her voice dark, low, and heavy with the gravity of what she was about to say, "Teacher, Dennis is...chopsticks!"

I have no idea why it was a crime for her classmate to say "chopsticks," but I couldn't stop laughing for almost the whole lunch because she said it as if he must be worse than Hitler.

Other famous quotes from the same girl include a sentence she volunteered this week that was shockingly correct grammatically: "My mother is a clock!"  It was far superior to her classmates' all-too-often-used constructions like "I am dragon!" or "Jesse house baby!"...but, having seen her mother regularly for sometime now, I have to say I fail to see the resemblance between her mother and a clock.

Another gem from this student came yesterday when she showed me a red bump on her arm.  The children often like to show off their scars and boo-boos to receive their token air-kiss, but this one didn't look like a cut or scrape to me.  "Did a mosquito bite you?" I asked.

She looked at me, her eyes welling with concern.  "Bee is coming," she said.

For the next few hours during class she would periodically interrupt me to squeeze her arm, look up at me like she were anguished, and say in an anxious tone, "Teacher, bee is coming..."

Yes.  Yes, it is.  And it knows if you've been naughty or nice...so be good for goodness' sake!

More of My Eating Exploits

Today I actually got seconds of my side of cucumber kimchi at lunch. It's crisp, fresh cucumber in some kind of hot red sauce. Looks more than unappealing to the likes of picky eaters like myself, but the cucumber was refreshing and the sauce burned just enough to leave my palate feeling cleansed by fire. I'd definitely recommend it.

And the Waters Will Not Overflow You

There's been flooding in Gunsan.



I was walking home from church today and this is what I saw.







That's the main road I use to get to work, to church, and almost anywhere.

The intersection is right by my apartment, the one all new directions are measured by.





The last picture is from my apartment building on my floor.

Hellooo, monsoon season!

나는 섬

I am an island.

That's the name of this cool coffee shop downtown.

My friend knows the owner, so now I know him a little, too. The atmosphere is chill and the food and drinks are great, but my favorite part of going there is just talking with the owner and his friends. They're really cool and always make me feel at home, despite the language barrier.

Here are some more pictures of the place. (You can tell the guy's an artist, huh?)









And yes, that chandelier is made of jelly shoes, haha.