Folk Village

Hi all,

We visited the Korean folk village, of which Jennifer has some great pictures and videos on her blog, here. For the sake of convenience, I've linked to the pictures on Facebook.

It was neat to see an older side of Korea. While we don't know for sure if this is how things would have looked back then, it was still cool. Korea has, for certain, changed a great deal in the last few hundred years. Heck, even in the last 10 years it's changed a lot.

We spent Saturday with Derek, a fellow teacher in Korea, and fellow gamer. We relaxed, rolled some multi-sided dice, and had a thoroughly good time.

We then toodled off to the Folk Village on Sunday (my kids made me giggle today, by mispronouncing folk... five guesses on what they called it by accident). There's traditional dances (as best as we can tell, that's how they looked), see-saw acrobatics, horsemanship, and a tightrope walker, who was rather amusing, if not bilingual.

It was great, and the only downside was a rather oddball recreation of a marriage, that had two elderly folks re-enacting their wedding for their 60th anniversary. It was sweet, sure, but we felt awful for these two older individuals having to go through a rather grueling performance at their age.

Nice museums, lots of animals, and cool shows. In short, it's quite worth checking out.

Speaking of change: Former President Noh (mispelled rather badly as Roh in English) committed suicide on Saturday. There's been a media furore over this here, since he was one of the folks who helped end the dictatorship in South Korea, and was the subject of a major corruption investigation. He became president after promising to root that out. Unfortunately, the investigation seriously tarnished, or threatened to tarnish, his reputation, and while I don't know that the police have come to a final conclusion, one suspects that he committed suicide to avoid further shame.

It is deeply tragic, however, whenever anyone takes their own life, and I hope he finds peace in whatever awaits us after death.

He, and others like him, helped change South Korea into what it is today.


Best regards,

Chris

Busy Busy Busy

Hi all,

A quiet but busy weekend this time around. Jen and I went over to a friends' house to play a game or two and relax on Saturday, then aborted our trip to the Suwon Cultural Festival when we both woke up with caffeine headaches and the realization that we needed to get some work done.

I'm taking a class with Ontesol (www.ontesol.ca) to get my certificate for when I go back home. As I've probably mentioned before, here, I want to be able to teach ESL when I return to Canada--I've found I enjoy it a great deal, and that I'd like to continue to pursue this as a career in my home country. 

So I slogged away at that for a few hours, and got my assignments done. Then sat around and watched some TV on the Internet, and brushed up on the news. It was, in short a happy afternoon. We got some pizza, and went out to enjoy a blustery but sunny afternoon dinner.

It's nice, this time of year, in Korea. We've got sun, but we've yet to have the pleasure of wading through the monsoons, and while it can get hot, it's not yet so bad that we are forced to stay indoors and turn on the Air Con. I'm going to start planning some ventures to Hwaseong and the Suwon palace, as well as to Seoul to see the sights, and since Jen and I are keeping an eye on our budget (we came here to save money, after all), we're looking at Korean destinations for the remainder of our time here.

We have one vacation planned to Tokyo for a few days, simply to see the biggest megacity this side of the Pacific, but beyond that, we plan on getting out to Korean Folk Village, to Everland, Busan, Jeju-Do, and for me, Hae-in-sa, site of some of the oldest Buddhist scriptures in Korea. 

We also started a weekday Kindergarten class this week on Thursdays and Fridays at school. Guess who got the first two?

It's good to have the same kids in these classes, and to teach them at a more convenient time. The other teachers seem to have been a little surprised at how much I run around with them, but then, if I don't, they'll go to sleep!

It's been a good week, and I'm feeling rather zen about everything--we've got three months left, and I'm becoming more and more actively aware of what I'm doing, trying to preserve the memories for the rest of my life so that, when I return to Canada, I can tell the story of my time here in Korea. 

I hope it's been fun for ya'll, as it has been for me.

Best regards,

Chris