moved out and moving on

On Sunday William and I moved the rest of our stuff from our Anjeong-ri apartment to a friend's apartment in Pyeongtaek. I will leave on Thursday for my trip, then will stay here with Adrie before coming home on 1 Sept. William will stay here only until he leaves for home on Saturday. Right now we have the place to ourselves because Adrie is in Thailand, where I will eventually meet up with her. It's a good thing too because the apartment is too small to fit three people comfortably.

There's no doubt that we've been spoiled by our apartment this past year! I'm guessing it was 3 times the size of this place, which is maybe around 300 sq. ft or a little more. This is likely what our apartment would have been like if we'd accepted one through my school instead of taking the housing allowance. We're both happy we had the apartment we did, and the location around the rice paddies was much prettier than the city surroundings here. The upside here is that we're closer to the bus terminal to leave for the airport.

Can't wait!! Only 28 days, 1 hour, 35 minutes, 18 seconds (Dad sent me a countdown clock) left to go until my flight home begins :)

acupuncture

William and I just tried acupuncture a couple of hours ago. We've been wanting to try it for awhile since we're in a country that has practiced it for centuries, but I didn't know where to go. Then, when I went to the hospital for swimmer's ear last week, I saw an acupuncture sign so I asked about it. We didn't have to make an appointment so we went today after my last summer camp class. For the two of us it was an incredibly cheap 30,000 won (~$24). One thing I am going to miss when I leave is the health care, it's been fantastic! Way better than home.

My 10 needles (above).

William had 11 needles in the photo above, though you can only see 10 here. Also, his were arranged differently than mine. Not sure if it's a male/female thing or if there was something else that made the difference. The needles stayed in for 15 minutes under a red heat lamp, during which time it hurt quite a bit to move.

When we walked into the acupuncture area we smelled marijuana, or so we thought. There were a lot of older patients around so we thought maybe it was for their pain relief, or maybe even cancer patients, but we were wrong. Initially, when they asked if we wanted the "hot treatment" we thought we might be smoking the pot, so William declined since he can be drug tested at any time. I figured why not, I'm in a hospital, so I got the hot treatment. The translator called it Moxa, which actually isn't pot at all now that I've looked it up, but it sure smelled the same. It turned out to be the little burning, sticky disks on my back in the picture above, which were left on until they felt hot to my skin. When we realized we wouldn't be smoking anything William chose to get the hot treatment also.

It was recommended that we get acupuncture ever other day if we want. So we may go back again before we leave.

pesticides

The pesticide truck came around again tonight so after running around the apartment closing windows and waiting for the fumes to dissipate some, I went outside and finally got some pictures.

miscellaneous Korean-ness

As we count down our short time left in Korea, here are some unexpected things William and I have seen or experienced during the past year (in no particular order):

• Road construction equipment with no safety barriers. Example: one day at school one of the high school girls walked right underneath a bulldozer arm that was moving a large pine tree. The bulldozer operator just paused until she was through, then kept working. Wish I'd had my camera out for that one!

• I've seen parents driving with their infants sitting in their laps.

• Children as young as 5 or 6 can often be seen riding the buses alone, or with friends or siblings of similar age.

• Young children not in car seats, or without even a seat belt on. Case in point: on my bike ride home today I pulled up behind a small hatchback at a light. A little boy was kneeling in the backseat watching me. He smiled and waved, and was a cutie, but his mother didn't seem to have an issue with him being up and about.

• 4-way yellow lights: not that this is a big issue since most people pay no attention to red lights anyway.

• It's ok to pass through a red light as long as you put on your blinkers or pull over to the far right as you go through.

• It's also ok to pull over into the opposing lane of traffic to go through a red light if you get stuck behind one of the few people who actually chooses to stop at a red light.

• Pesticide machine: during warm-weather months a truck drives around with what looks like a fog machine attached to the back. Every time he comes by we race around shutting all the windows, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see inside our apartment because the smoke and pesticides are so thick! I wish I knew what it actually is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's DDT.

• Pedestrians typically have no idea whether cars are coming as they start to cross the street. It apparently never crosses their minds to look both ways. I guess they assume the cars will slow down or stop, which is what usually happens. It truly is amazing that we haven't seen more accidents!

• Children play on busy, busy main streets. Just yesterday we saw a young boy pull out from behind a blind corner on his bike right into a busy 4-way intersection. Again, amazing that everyone avoided hitting him.

• We saw a truck driving backwards on a busy main road, and not just for a few seconds to turn around. He drove backwards for at least 300 meters (several blocks at ~35 mph).

• On most mornings there are dozens of students serving punishment as I am arriving at school. They've barely been there, what could they possibly have done to be in trouble already?! Punishment often consist of standing on all 4's with their butts up in the air, or being hit with a stick (yes, the students do get hit quite a lot here).

Mount Seorak

William and I went to Seoraksan National Park over the weekend in the northeastern part of the country. We ran/hiked, and climbed the ladder up into the cave pictured below, but this first picture isn't mine, it's from Wikipedia. We were there on a rainy and foggy day so we couldn't tell that it looked like this at all. None of my pictures have any views like this, but I think I still got some nice ones. While climbing it was obviously steep and we could tell there was a big drop below us (it was more than a little scary), but we didn't know how much of the mountain was actually hidden from view. I wasn't a big fan of the see-through, wet, and slippery, metal steps, but I liked looking out into the fog because it seemed as if we were standing at the edge of the earth. It was also nice that hardly anyone else was there, so we nearly had the place to ourselves. I would not have wanted to be on those steps with 100 other people!On Sunday we rode our bikes into the mountains then back down to the beach. We stood in the Pacific Ocean, but it was too cold to swim, so we've now been in the Pacific on an eastern and a western coast. As always, I collected a couple of shells from the beach.I also climbed up to a lighthouse tower and got some views of the ocean, city, and mountains, while William stayed down below relaxing by the water (and watching our bikes).One more thing checked off our list that we both wanted to do before coming home.

I don't wanna'...

...live in the land of spiders anymore!

I found this guy in the bathroom early this morning, not far from where my feet had been moments earlier! Keep in mind this is only a 16 oz peanut butter jar that he's in. Every time I think about how close he was I shiver.

dragonflies

I don't think I've ever seen so many dragonflies at one time. It rained hard for most of the weekend, and now that it has stopped the dragonflies are everywhere. I just wish the pictures had turned out better.