Daisetsuzan

Fall`s come to Hokkaido. There`s that undercurrent of Fall excitement that only comes when the oppressive Summer humidity finally rolls away like some fat bully finished steam-rolling us all and we can finally breath again. The crispness and the cool and the electric blue sky and the smell of leaves all point to Fall. But we`re discovering that in Hokkaido there are heretofore never experienced Fall happenings that welcome the season. Strange and wonderful things pop up at every turn. Like the happy discovery that there is a national holiday on the Equinox - brilliant. And in the farmer`s market where we always buy our produce the price of fruit has plummeted (pinch me, I`m dreaming!), pumpkins and squashes fill the floor space, and there are beautiful, common vegetables that are uncommonly purple. I`d never seen a purple bell pepper before, but there it was, glowingly eggplant-purple in it`s basket as if nothing was wonderful about it at all. As if bell peppers had always been purple in the Fall. Potatoes too. I had seen purple potatoes, but not this purple. They have the usual purple veggies like cabbage and onions, eggplants. But there`s also purple cauliflower, purple asparagus, purple daikon like radishes and even little purple chili peppers. Our meals have been particularly beautiful recently, and Brian made the prettiest kimchi from the purple radishes.

There`ve also been a few small thanks-giving festivals to welcome the harvest season, and the salmon running season. We went to this little Ainu ceremony by the Toyohira River near our house a couple of weekends ago. To be perfectly honest, it was rather boring, even for culture vultures like us. But the 200 yen massive chunks of delicious grilled salmon were well worth it.

Last week there were two national holidays, one on Monday and one on Thursday, so Brian and I took the Tuesday and Wednesday off for a 6 day vacation to do some hiking. The onset of Fall in Hokaido means the near end of the backpacking season for a warm weather hiker like myself, and we`re not geared out enough to deal with snow and serious cold, both of which Hokkaido certainly gets. So we headed out to Asahikawa planning to do the "Daisetsuzan Grand Traverse" as lined out in the Lonely Planet.

We`d brought all our gear from home, but we still had to outfit a bit. We`d been using the Steripen for water purification in the States, but in Hokkaido there`s a nasty killer called Echinococcus (not bacterial, despite the name). This is a type of tape worm that gets in the water from fox feces, and being a worm/egg/larvae UV light and chemical treatments won`t kill it. So we finally bought a real water filter. Brian`s sleeping bag is only a 35 F bag so he got a liner as well. As we were told by pretty much anyone that we mentioned this trip to, people die in Daisetsuzan all the time, and it`s usually from exposure. No matter the time of year, have surviving hypothermia in mind when packing for this trip. We also bought maps, of course.

Choosing hiking food was a breeze in Japanese supermarkets because there are a lot of dried things available. We got noodles and dried sauce mixes, freeze dried tofu (which rehydrates most deliciously), gorp, oatmeal (with instant custard mix as a calorie booster), ramen, and CalorieMates.

We left Sapporo on a Friday night and took a bus from Sapporo Station to Asahikawa (2 hours, 2,000 Y one way) where we stayed with Megan. The next morning we took a bus from Asahikawa station to Asahidake, but because of bus times the earliest you can get there is around 10:45 - 11 AM and it gets dark around 5:45 in September in Hokkaido, so if we had that to do over again we`d take the bus out to Asahidake the night before and stay there in order to get going earlier. As it was, we were hiking by 11. There`s a gondola that goes half way up Asahidake that saves about an hour and a half (by our pace) hike up rather rotten board walks and poorly graded trails. But the woods and wetland there are beautiful and you won`t otherwise see many trees on this trip as the rest of it is above treeline.

Asahidake is the tallest peak in Hokkaido, and it`s a seriously tough climb. Extremely steep, almost non-existent switchbacks, and loose, shaley footing make the going tough. But the views are gorgeous and the camaraderie of the Japanese hikers is both energising and hilarious. Most are out for a day hike and are surprised to see hikers with large packs and especially foreign ones. Some highlights were an extremely animated woman gesturing to us about how windy and cold it was up top (many people were worried about us being warm enough as we sweated our way up the slope, but we had plenty of layers in our packs), a little boy who saw us, said hello very boldly, and then ran away screaming that we were cute, and a woman who offered to take our picture and then made sure she got one on her camera as well. We were photographed multiple times in fact. A rare breed of wildlife on the slopes of Asahidake were we.

The climb from bottom to top took nearly 5 hours, so we deviated from the L.P. trek and camped at the first campsite so as not to hike the last hour and a half in the dark. I do not recommend any hiking in the dark in Japan. The trails are not well maintained, often extremely narrow, washed out, steep, and overgrown. Especially on that trek many of the trails hug a cliff edge or follow a knife-edge ridge. Our last day we hiked for over an hour IN a river. The trail WAS the river and the river was the trail. I may or may not have cursed Japanese trails a time or two at that point.

Given our first deviation and the forecast for the next few days (freezing temperatures, rain, and then snow with gale force winds) we remade our plans that night. We decided we wouldn`t be ok if we got wet on the rainy, freezing day, had to set up camp that night and then had to hike in freezing, blustering snow the next day. We decided to hike all the northern half of the park and save the southern half for next season. We also decided to finish on the fourth day instead of doing 5 days to avoid the blizzardy conditions. That allowed us this gorgeous day of pack-less hiking in lovely weather. And this fox spotting!



This turned out to be a very wise decision. Though the distances in the LP outlined trek aren`t very long, the going is NOT easy. We`d hiked half of the Appalachian Trail, so we`re not experts or anything but we`ve got some legitimate experience, and I can confidently say that I`ve never seen such tough trails. They`re steep, very overgrown where there`s growth, totally exposed when there`s none, rocky, and not well marked. And the weather is tough. As one man (rather melodramatically) told us, "when things are good in Daisetsuzan, it`s beautiful, when they`re bad, it`s DEADLY!!!!!!!!MUAHHAHAHA!!!". Not to scare anyone off. The place is terribly gorgeous, and once you get past the first couple of huts, solitude abounds. Did I mention the stars? But overnight trips there should be planned with due consideration. Here`s a shot of one of the huts we stayed in - much warmer than our 3 season tent.

The hike was beautiful, and though not exactly what we`d planned, it was a great success. Our last day it was rainy, freezing, and the wind was gusting hard enough that I came close to being pushed down more than a few times. All that made the 2 hour soak in the hot healing onsen waters that much more wonderful. In the evening we hopped the bus back to Asahikawa and from there bussed back to Sapporo again. Then we had two lovely days to clean up our stuff and recover our legs before just a Friday at school.

Friday night we spent with Rob, Brandon, and Tamon at the Liebspiece Beer Club delicious all you can drink beer night. Delicious and hilarious, there`s a Japanese man forever in liderhosen, a group singing of some German prost song, and what must be the best and cheapest beer in Hokkaido. It inspired me to make some spicy mustard on Sunday with the seeds we brought from home.


The weekend was slow and relaxing. Saturday we cruised over to the Autumn Festival in Odori Park to sample some Japanese specialties, like this sea urchin.

Not bad, sort of sweet and fatty and oceany, but that`s probably the last time I`ll buy one of those. It`s better pre-cleaned in my sushi.

Sunday we did some painting and mustard making. And now somehow it`s Thursday again. Tomorrow is my welcome enkai (drinking party) with my base school, so I`m looking forward to being buried in mountains of sushi and welcoming drinks. And Saturday we`re heading to Niseko for a bike ride to raise money for education in Cambodia. Biking, exploring, and helping the kids? What more could you ask for.

Obviously I have lots of time on my hands today. That`s because it`s a holiday for the students, but not for the teachers, so I`m warming my desk. Warming my desk with me is this super awesome robot dinosaur mug filled with strange and not quite wonderful instant/drip coffee.

And the rest of the Daisetsuzan photos.

Out East on the island: Lake Akan

As time goes on in Japan we`re finding ourselves with lots of free time at work. It`s going to take creativity and go-getter-ship to make ourselves feel more useful, but I`ve got a bag of tricks to pull from. Even though the work load is less than challenging, my relationships with my schools are feeling more and more homey and happy.



Outside of school we`ve been dedicating ourselves to acquiring cell phones (we`re so connected now!) and soaking up summer before the half-year long winter sets in. In fact, it`s been feeling like Fall ever since this weekend. I`m tentatively loving it. Fall`s my favorite season, but I`m scared the second I rejoice about it a blizzard will sweep in and crush Fall into Winter.



Last weekend we took an end of Summer trip to explore the Eastern side of Hokkaido at the Eastern Welcome Party for JETs. We rented a van with 5 other Sappsters (all rental negotiations thanks to Crystal) and Brian drove us out to Lake Akan. We had a tough time with the navigation system and a side trip to pick up tents; none of us had ever driven in Japan before so it was a new sort of adventure for everyone, but despite all the obstacles we arrived, still smiling, around 3 AM to the campgrounds.



The next morning June caught us as we were waking up and invited us on a hike to the top of a volcano that overlooks the lake. We`d been eyeing that walk in the Lonely Planet, so we were stoked to have somebody with a better idea of how to make it happen around to make it happen.
We picked up another happy camper in the parking lot and by 9:30 June, Brian, Lechey and I were off.



We got going in the wrong direction at first, but it`s lucky we did because it was a gorgeous little walk with such beautiful things to see, like this scene on the forest floor.



And this place, that translates to "the blue place". Aptly named. The water is that color from the volcanic activity in the area. We encountered multiple signs about the dangers of hiking on an active volcano. And the dangers of bears. Next time I`ll get a shot of the bear signs. They`re really funny - bears with two paws up in full attack-to-obliterate position and massive I`m-gonna-eat-your-face-off, fanged mouths. Every Japanese hiker we passed had a bear bell, though I`m not sure how much bears like the sulfur-fume-coated volcanic peaks where most of the hike took place.

It was a pretty tough hike up the steep sides of the volcano. We did a loop that took us up one side and down the other. It was a relentless climb followed by a relentless descent, but well worth it. The forests were lovely, and once they petered out the views were stunning. It was a perfect day for a hike, even though a typhoon had been on the forecast. In my mind that day marked the beginning of Fall in Hokkaido. But in reality there`s actually a national holiday to mark the Autumnal Equinox (brilliant Japan!), on which I hope to find myself hiking again.



This was our first glimpse of the crater (though we smelt it a long way off).

The loose footing made the climb tougher, but the perfect weather, lovely temperature, and amazing views made it that much more rewarding. The crater was massive on this volcano.

Here`s a little panoramic video to give you a better idea of the views.

At the top we met Alan and Shu, other JETs from Sapporo, who`d climbed up from another route. We had lunch together at the summit before trying to avoid falling off the mountain side together on the somewhat treacherous way down. The hike took most of the day, and at the end we soaked away the stiffness in a beautiful little rustic onsen (public bath with natural hot spring water) at the bottom.

Though Brian and I are used to bath houses from being in Korea, this one had some unexpected surprises. Most notably, the outside portion, which is still separated by sex, was not fully separated. One of the screens that separated the two was missing, or never meant to have been there, but from the angle at which I was heading out it looked as though it were blocked off. So I was quite surprised to walk out, look to my right, and see there a man sitting as nakedly as I was standing. Surprise!

Back at the campground more people had arrived and Simon was cooking up a massive, delicious, falafel filled dinner for everyone. It got nice and chilly, but what with the party and the hot foot onsen we hardly noticed.

Sunday we had just enough time to cruise around the tacky Ainu village before driving back to Sapporo. The Ainus are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, but like most indigenous people whose lands were settled by outsiders... the history is pretty bleak. But in 2008 (yes really, only 2 years ago) they were officially recognized as indigenous people of Japan! Check them out on wikipedia. This town is like Cherokee, NC, but not quite so high a level of touristy development. Close though. Disturbingly close.

We got to see some Ainu carvings and marimo (the ball-shaped algae for which the lake is famous) and then got on our long way back. Here`s Marimokkori, the personified marimo with an erection that is one of Hokkaido`s mascots.

It`s a play on words that combines marimo with mokkori, which according to my dictionary is a

"bulge in a pocket or clothing" or "`tent` an erection makes against pants or bedsheets". Somehow, and blessedly, this is perfectly acceptable as a mascot for the island, which leads to hillarious marimokkori dolls, often with some function to it`s mokkori. For example, on one doll you pull it`s bulge and it vibrates. Another you push it`s bulge and the eyes change from 00 to ><>

I love Japan.

Here are the rest of the photos from the weekend.

The beginning of South East Asia: Myanmar (Burma)

After a tearful goodbye to our home for a year we began an incredible journey around and about South East Asia. We started out where few dare to go in Burma. If you're confused, the militaristic dictatorship there changed the name to Myanmar, but it's often still referred to as Burma so as not to grant any authenticity to the dark and dangerous government currently and illegitimately in power.

We spent 2 weeks in that hot, beautiful place where the going is rough but the people are kind. We visited Yangon, Mandalay, Inle Lake, Kalaw, and Bagan. It was one of the most rewarding parts of our trip, but also the most difficult.


We've got a lot of catching up to do, so it's light on words and heavy on pictures.

A note on ethical travel in Burma:
Amazingly, it's fairly easy to prevent most of your money from going into government hands. If you take privately owned buses, stay in privately owned guest houses, and sneak around the back way to temples with government fees then the only money that you send directly their way is your visa fee, entrance to Bagan and entrance to Inle Lake. We were conflicted whether or not to go, but having been I highly encourage travelers to visit. You'll support the people living off the tourism trade and you'll protect them with your presence. You'll hear people's stories first hand (highly illegal and dangerous for the local telling it, but very common) and see what pictures can't show you. But you should read the pros and cons and decide what you are personally comfortable with. The Burmese themselves say come.

Great Gobi Goodness

After the green and the cold and the waterfalls and the lakes of Central Mongolia, we took a southern turn and headed into the Gobi. We knew we'd arrived when we started seeing camel herds instead of herds of horses.

These bactrian variety are enormous, but seem friendlier than the one humpers.

Though there are roads (dirt) in the Gobi, we didn't tend to stick to them as often there. Looking out from the van the terrain appeared flat and even, but there were many small canyons, ditches and ruts to look out for. But despite the difficulty of the landscape, we only got stuck once.

Brian and Ryan made quick work of that ditch.

As you can see, most of the Gobi is not sandy. It's mostly rocky with small shrubs everywhere, getting browner as you go deeper, but surprisingly green on a good year. But there are sandy areas. After a night of camping near a cave full of crystals we went to Kongoryn Els, or the Singing Sand Dunes. This is the movie version of the Gobi, and it's gorgeous.

A neighboring ger with the dunes.

Ewwww.

We timed our hour and 45 minute climb up those dunes perfectly. It was sunset when we finally made it. We also discovered why the sands are singing. With each 3 ft step up you take, you slide back 2.5 ft and start a sand slide from about 15 ft ahead of you. The shearing of sand on sand makes a deep reverberating hum that sounds like a train coming on the other side. This of course makes for a very difficult climb, but well worth it.

But the best part was coming back down. The sand was so soft and at such a steep angle that you could jump straight out and run down as fast as possible without fear of toppling forward.

The next day we drove to Bayanzag and got there in time for this spectacular Gobi sunset.

The following morning this guy, our wonderful guide, took us on a camel ride and showed us his secret dinosaur head that he found. The area is famous for dinosaur fossils and has yielded a lot of whole skeletons and the ground is littered with fossil flakes. You can tell the difference between a fossil and regular bone or stone by putting them to your tongue - the fossil will stick (albeit usually only on one facet of the surface) but the others won't. The guide is demonstrating with a fleck from the skull he showed us.

This rock formation is condensed sand, not really rock. We rode by it on our camels.

I love my camel.

When we left Bayanzag we went to a town to restock on food and water. There was a family putting up a ger near where we were staying, so we got to help out and see the process. The land in the countryside is all public and families can set up wherever they wish, but in cities the people have to rent a lot. They still live in gers though. We read that 85% of Mongolians live in gers even though only 50% are nomadic. The other 15% live in apartments in the cities.

They're holding up a layer of felt as it gets tied into place.

Next stop was the Painted Desert. The colors were amazing and the whole thing made me want a big bowl of sherbet.

After the Painted Desert we went to Ice Canyon (Yolyn Am) which was gorgeous (oh the puns) but devoid of any and all ice though it wasn't for lack of looking.

And our last night out in the wilderness Ikman, our driver, took us to a beautiful, mountain wrapped campsite where we built our very own poo fire and had one last look at the starscape before our final drive back to UB.

Scenery near our campsite.

A stupa around the mountain were we camped out.

Back in UB we ate delicious Mexican food and praised something for the change-up from mutton meals, we went to a market where we found amazing, weathered old Buddhist relics, and headed to the main temple in town and the Winter Palace of the Bogd Khan, now a museum full of fantastic Buddhist art and a strange emporium of the bizarre gifts the Khan (King) was given during his life.

A stupa at the temple.

One of the halls in the Winter Palace.

African birds that were once a living part of the Khan's zoo. Look at the bill on that one farthest left.

It was wonderful.

It was certainly the most epic trip I've ever done, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who can spare the time to go. The landscapes were breathtaking, but the best part of Mongolia is by far the people and the incredible way of life they've preserved for hundreds, maybe even a thousand years. I think all 4 of us would highly recommend UB Guesthouse (Bobbi even came to the hospital to check on Shannon when she got food poisoning) www.ubguest.com, but if I had it to do over again I would want to spend more nights with families that aren't used to hosting tourists, like we did around the lake.

Brian's working on making videos of all our short videos and Shannon's pictures are coming soon. We're down to 14 more teaching days before then end and life's getting hectic in order to prepare for our upcoming trip and the move home. If you have a job to offer us when we get back, please let us know because we've got 6 months to bum off parents and burn through savings and generally be drains on society until we get one.

Beijing is Peking is Beijing

We're back! Our trips were amazing and now we've only 1 month left in Korea and lots to do before we go, so these posts from our travels are going to be short on words and heavy on pictures.

It's strange to throw Beijing in a trip as an afterthought, but it seems like it's common enough judging by all the travelers we talked to. I wish we'd have had 1 more day there, but we slammed all that we could into the time that we had and it was better than all of us were anticipating. Shannon, Ryan, Brian and I all arrived in the evening on the 8th of August and jumped right into the fun. The first night we went to Tianenmen Square and Wangfujin snack street and the night market there for all the creepy crawlies there are to eat.

Tianenmen Square

Wangfujin Snack Street

The next day we rented bikes and did a bike tour of the city, stopping at all the major and minor sites like the Forbidden City, historic hutongs (alleyways that look like old Peking (which really is Beijing, an older name for it) from Kungfu movies), newer quaint areas, and the Temple of Heaven.

Roofs of the Forbidden City

Shannon and me in the FC

Here are half the photos. Shannon and I both went camera crazy, but she's gone to Australia and all over really for 2 weeks, so rather than wait on her to come back to show pictures, I'll just post her photos later when I get them. She's got all the Temple of Heaven photos too. For now, feast your eyes on these.

On our last day in Beijing it was Ryan's 30th birthday. We did an excursion to the Great Wall that our hostel put on. But most experiences on the Great Wall are filled with shoulder to shoulder tourists and hawkers yanking your arm to get a sale the whole time. Where we went it is technically illegal to go. The land is owned by villagers that live in the nearby valley, and they encourage people to visit, but other sections you must buy a ticket from the government to see. We had to hike up to our section, which is completely unrestored and original, crumbling and lovely. Our guide was a 73 year old woman from the village who does the hike everyday, and it wasn't a cake walk. One guy in our group spoke Mandarin, so he told us how her village took bricks from the wall in the 60s to build the village. Here are too many more of the Wall.

That night we took Ryan out to what we thought would be Shaolin Monks doing their cosmos bending kungfu magic, but it turned out to be a theater full of fat tourists and the performers were certainly not monks. They were wearing makeup and shimmery robes for goodness sake. That was the only fault of the China portion of the trip. And because of it we missed out on one more delicious Chinese meal. The menus are funny in China. Beside the normal fried rice and noodles and tofu and mushrooms and chicken are dishes with donkey, dog, horse, and sea cucumber. Someone should give us a travel show where we eat weird things. We're building an impressive resume.

Mongolia's coming as soon as I can sift through the photos, til then... watch this.
Ryan



Then Brian


Then my turn


And finally, Shannon eats it too.

Seokbulsa and a trip to the Korean dentist

This past weekend was just like old times with all the chingus together again. Everyone had gone their separate ways the week before, and it was our second to last time all together. Friday we met up at David and Duck's with the intention of going to PNU, but we never made it with all of the raconteuring going on.

Some highlights were that David slept in a random tent that he found on Jeju Island because it got cold sleeping in the open outside. Luckily no one was around. And there were some pretty gruesome tales of a tent pisser at the music festival Ryan and Shannon had just come home from, but I've got to leave it at that for diplomacy's sake.

Saturday morning Brian and I headed up the ole mountain again, this time to find Seokbulsa (temple). We'd read about it a long time ago, but never successfully found it. Until Saturday. It was a small temple, but it had amazing details. Here's a picture in one of the temple halls.

The temple was nestled into the jutting rocks on a ridge near the South Gate of Geumjeongsan. It was a short hike, but it was down off one ridge into a valley and straight back up another. Well worth it though.

Saturday Shannon also found out that her closest sibling, her older sister, got engaged! So once again the crowd was together again and Will came too. It was Will's birthday and Shannon's good news day, so we went to lock and lorr bal to cereblate. And of course, there was the obligatory arcade trip. It's hard to believe it was our (2nd to) last time together. We'll do it all again Thursday for Ryan's birthday (he'll turn 30 while we're in China), but after that we may never all be in the same country again. After our big trip Shannon and Ryan will go to Australia and Canada respectively and won't be back in Korea (they've signed on for another year, Ryan's actually taking over at Brian's school) until after David, Duck, Brian, and I all leave for good. Brian and I will still get to see plenty of everyone, but it's the end for the 6 chingus.

Sunday we kind of realized all that must be done before leaving for Beijing and Mongolia, so this week has been busy. Only 3 more days of camp before the adventures begin again. Not that life in Korea isn't adventure in it's own right. Yesterday Brian and I went to the dentist for our yearly checkup and cleaning, thinking that we'd do it while we had great insurance and dental care is cheap in Korea. We looked up the words for checkup and cleaning and that seemed to ring some bells so we sat nervously waiting in what looked like the reception area of a swanky spa. I was worried I'd get knocked out before I could get my point across and wake up with a fresh set of veneers slapped on my teeth. Brian was worried we'd get slapped with some enormous bill for we didn't know what. Luckily those specific fears were unfounded. When the receptionists sat us down it was in an area with small partitions between the dentist chairs so that I could see Brian's feet and hear him clearly but I couldn't see what was going on with his face. No one cleaned us up, no hygienists materialized, but soon the doctor came along.

The poor dentist was baffled. "What's the problem?" he asks. Well, nothing necessarily. He was with Brian first and I could hear all. Brian says something to the effect of check me for cavities and clean my teeth please and seconds later I hear the dentist say he has no cavities. Brian asks how much for cleaning, doctor says maybe 10,000 Won (8 bucks) and Brian again mentions cavities. Now the doctor is plaintive, "No! No cavities!" (you should read this with the very Korean sort of whining trail off). "I will scaling to remove your calculus". Oh, perhaps this is cleaning? We though scaling was Konglish until we talked to Mom and Frank that night who mentioned that scaling is a real English word. So maybe calculus is the right word in that situation too, but I doubt it and also hope not because it's funnier that way. So again about 1 minute goes by and all of a sudden Brian's finished. Next it's my turn and the same thing happens. No tapping on the teeth or scraping while checking for cavities (though he did use a mirror, no gloves though), the scaling was most ungentle and it was a toe-curling minute that he spent scraping my gums to bloody pulps only on my lower front teeth, leaving the rest alone. Then he told me "Now you have no cavities AND no calculus". That's great, I never liked calculus. And nobody likes cavities. The whole thing set us each back 4,500 Won, or around 3.50 USD. Not as thorough, but much much cheaper than US dental care. It seems that the only preventative medicine we practice in the US is for something that would make us uglier if we weren't to do so. Korean dentistry seems to have much more to do with whether or not there's a problem in your mouth than keeping your smile nice. The lady at the counter who checked us in had a dead tooth in her mouth. Unsightly, but maybe not medically a problem to leave that sucker in there?

I told some Korean teachers at my school about the escapades today and they asked how many times Americans go to the dentist a year. I told them once and asked about Koreans. Both women are in their 50s and neither had ever been to a dentist. That explains the dentist's confusion.

This will probably be the last post until early September so the blog will be dormant a while. Check back then for all the sights and sounds of Beijing and Mongolia!

It's a good news Monday

Before this weekend we had a pretty slow week, but it was stressful. Arguably the worst thing about EPIK (English Program In Korea) is the one thing that is not nationally regulated - camps and vacation during breaks. The good news about this being up to the individual schools is that during both breaks we've been allowed much more than our gauranteed 7 days plus weekends of vacation. The bad news is that we never know how much time we'll have or when we'll have it because the schools decide pretty late by someone anxious to buy a plane ticket's standards. This is made additionally stressful by the fact that our co-teachers don't want to force the issue with the principles, so they tell us what they think will happen as if it were what the principle has already set in stone. Example: last week Sun Ja told me on Wednesday that I definitely (go home and buy a plane ticket now definitely) would have only 1 week of camp and could travel the whole month of August. But then Friday she said I only had 7 days of vacation and would have 3 weeks of camp and would have to come to school for 8 hours a day when I didn't have vacation or camp, or any other teachers or students around either. That was devastating, but now it's Monday, and the story is I've got 2 weeks of camp and can travel for 3 weeks in August - a compromise I am more than elated with. Such a good news Monday!

So during that slow, ants in my pants week I experimented with the macro on my camera.
Hooters.

Party time.

These are my Philippines jewels.

But, the stamp pad is my favorite.

Luckily, things picked up on the weekend. Thursday was Soo Jeong's last day of teaching with Brian, so we all went to a Giants' baseball game to say farewell. Much to our surprise we saw David and Duck there too. Though it was a full stadium, two 6 foot foreigners were easy enough to spot in a sea of Koreans. And the Giants won! It was a great game and we had a lot of fun. Observe.

Friday David came down to our side of town. We kicked off with a trip to see the fountains at the park near the apartment. The fountains themselves were nice enough to see, but the best part was all the the kim baps running around in the water.

The little guy in the rain jacket was my favorite. Turns out those things don't work so well when the water is coming from the ground.

Once the fountains finally died out we ventured onward. We found ourselves at a Japanese restaurant for dinner and drinks where I was excited to find out I could recognise some of the hiragana written there. Hiragana is one of the 3 different kinds of Japanese scripts, which I've been studying recently because I had all this nervous energy pent up that I desparately wanted to spend on planning trips but was thwarted by the lack of information about when and how much time I would have for said trips. I had to do something, so I started studying Japanese in case we find ourselves teaching there next year.

After Japanese time we went to Keno Eye for a lively round of darts. And the boys, believing themselves to be beautiful people, wanted to see and be seen. Here they are striking a pose fit for magazines. Check that mustache action.

Saturday was bright and sunny at our apartment, so we pulled ourselves together and struggled over to Haeundae where the weather was very strangey. It was hot and somewhat sunny, but mostly there was a very dense, very local fog that may or may not have been man made.

We found out the next day that it had been nakey time on the beach day, an event sponsored by Busan to increase foreign tourism. I find it doubtful, but within the realm of possibility, that the fog was created to engulf the nudity, which we never saw, so perhaps this scheme was effective.

Saturday night Brian and I took it easy, but we still acompanied David to the convenient store for a sit and some people watching. This plan allowed us to get up early on Sunday and go for a hike. We went out in search of a temple called Seokbulsa, but we did not find it. Instead we found an amazing obstacle course and a ropes course. It was also the first time I'd seen the town within the valley up on Geumjeong Mountain.

We spotted this old couple having a Sunday picnic in their garden. I love this bit of rural Korea in the center of Busan.

We never found what we came for, but what we got was better than what we'd planned on anyway. We found a bee keeper selling honey on the mountain. We even found an explosion of pheasant feather souvenirs on the overgrown trail we bushwhacked.

And now it's good news Monday. I don't have my after school classes this week because Sun Ja has a conference to attend, so I'll have time on my hands to plan our Mongolia trip. I can't wait for two humped camels, fermented mare's milk, and nomad nights in gers. We're going to the Gobi!