This week...

I haven't updated in a week have I? Well let's get started

Friday I don't remember much but we went on a ridiculous hike that brought us up really high, and then we walked through the forest to get back. As in, we were off trail, going through a forest full of spiky vines and loose rocks and falling trees at a pretty steep angle. Basically my worst nightmare.

Saturday was my birthday! Woo! Somehow I was in the mood for curry at lunch and lo and behold that was what they had. They also gave us ice cream afterwards. I'm sure it was for my birthday :P It was also the last day of tamiflu and quarantine! So we went out to the arboretum, checked out the greenhouse in great detail, looked at the insect museum (Hercules beetles are ginormous and awesome!), and checked out the gift shop, which was less gift shop and more mini convenience store. I got the first of what would become many Lotte ice cream pouches, which is like a frozen milkshake in a pouch for $1.50. Sooo good. We got back to camp and they had a bbq for us which was sweet, and then 70 people sang happy birthday and we all had some delicious vanilla pineapple cake with fruit toppings and stuff. They decided to bring out karaoke and we did that outside for a while, and then I was hit with a wave of horrible homesickness so I sat in my room for about 6 hours and went to sleep. I found out later that karaoke continued late into the night and they had a bonfire and stuff. Whatever.

Sunday I did nothing, maybe read, I don't remember. We were not in quarantine but still stuck in Wando so it was a moot point in some ways. I should've gone out and done stuff but I had personal drama to deal with. OH wait! that night we had a "masquerade ball" that should've just been called "formal dance party." Following sensible advice, I loosened up and danced most of the night with people and had a lot of fun. They had "Wando Superlatives", I won "most likely to have Arirang as their favorite song" because of my arrangement of that. Cool I guess? That was the first I had ever heard of those being called superlatives. OH yeah and also some assholes that got horribly drunk fired off fireworks inside the building right in the hallway with the sleeping rooms at like 2 in the morning and were generally noisy as hell.

Monday we packed and cleaned and hung around. I went on a long walk with my friend Emily and we had a good talk about stuff relating to what happened the day before and that was nice. That night we had a group meeting and discussion over the fireworks debacle from last night and then we realized Sam was still gone on his hike, but he came back after we were just done with the half hour it took to arrange a search party (would've been faster if non-hikers hadn't been trying to organize it, grah).

Tuesday we went to the biggest green tea farm in S. Korea and Sam and I took off from the group pretty quickly and found the actual green tea growing areas, not just the hill they show tourists. On our way we saw some sick black butterfly things and the King of the Forest, a pretty humongous toad that leaped around very lazily. Okay, he was about as big as two fists put together or so, but that's still aweomse. We then went to a chinese buffet for lunch, which was... interesting. The best thing was pumpkin soup, and the one americanized dish, sweet and sour mystery meat (probably pork). A folk village was our next destination, which was kinda cool, but I wasn't in that touristy of a mood and started feeling sick during it anyways. Then we went to a city - Soocheon or somthing like that? It's the third largest in jeollanamdo. We got strips of bacon cuts of meat (high quality, though) and you grill it up at the table, super delicious. Then we got to our hotels that were bordering the red light district, the guys were all in Greece, and the girls were some there and mostly in Lexus, both of which are love hotels. that was weird. Sam, Kyler, jeff, and I all bought matching shirts with the same image but different colors, it's a sick lion going "FSS! Fss! FSS!". Then, the three of us -Jeff found three massage chairs in the store (Tesco) and sat in them for almost 35 minutes or so, which was way more than we should have. Apparently some people tried to use it after us but the lady told them they were broken... oops. We had a delicious feast of chocolate milk and muffins, then decided to try out a pizza place that was 5,000W (~<$5) for a pizza. We got the ~$5.50 bulgogi pizza and that was awesome, but while we were waiting (Emily, Lillian, Megan, and Connie - all fellow Wando camp people - were with us getting a cheese pizza) the owners were trying to tell us something we didn't understand in korean. A businessman was sitting nearby and we tried to see if he spoke english - he did, but very horribly. We decided that they were telling us we couldn't sit and eat and had to leave when the pizza was ready. Then, the businessman decided to buy us all ice cream. I tried valiantly to say no, but people in my group stated caving and ate it in front of him so I had to join in not to look bad >< Luckily the businessman's pizza was ready quickly and he took it and left, and then we all threw out our remaining ice cream. Yeah. What a night!

Yesterday we went to mcdonalds for breakfast :/ then the beach. I somehow fucked up sunscreen and now my face and shoulders are horribly burnt. I was, of course, in the water the whole time. Then we went to a buddhist temple, one of the largest in S. Korea, which had one of three national buddhist treasures there, the remains of the first buddhist korean monk. Pretty neat. I made a wish and put a coin on the statue marking his remains as was the custom. Then I sat and meditated/let my mind wander at the main temple building in front of the buddha statues while everyone else was treating it as a typical tourist trap. I also checked out the museum, where the curator gave us an interesting talk about buddhism and stuff. Sun-sook, who is fluent in Korean (I guess she is korean? she's part of our group) was translating, and it was interesting because she's Muslim and afterwards said she didn't really believe anything she was saying for him. We had a nice talk about religion. Dinner was vegetarian bi bim bap. I'm sick of bi bim bap, seriously. It's good but not that good. the bus ride was then filled with religious talk and that was okay I guess. We got to the Damyang camp and went to bed pretty quickly. Man that room and those beds and the sunburn sucked.

This morning we woke up, had breakfast. finally a place with real korean breakfast! had this delicious chicken and potatoes with my rice. Then we finally got to meet our co-teachers and work on our lesson plans! I really like my co teacher. Her name is Yang Sol. Most Korean people have a two syllable first name so it is very interesting that hers is just Sol... she's 20, a music ed major, and plays cello! She's really awesome but is very shy at English. We're pretty much ready to teach I think, and together we can figure it out despite having basically zero teaching experience between the two of us. She heard my Arirang song and said she wants to perform it at her school's concert this fall, I'm not sure if she was just being nice but that'd be awesome, haha. We split into our camps and had a two and a half hour bus ride back to Wando, so no more Eric, Kyler, Jeff, Sam, or most of my other close friends besides Emily. Oh well. I like the Wando people :) We had a good dinner, something like Chaul gol gi or something like that ?_? it was delicious meat in a spicy sauce, you put it on a lettuce leaf with what the Koreans call cucumber pepper, rice, some bean sauce, and some string bean like stuff. SOoooo delicious. Then Sol and I got our supplies and worked out our lesson plan, but an official told us to bring all our supplies back so we did - we apparently weren't supposed to take stuff? We've kept a few things like food samples and our flashcards in our foods room in hopes of them getting a proper amount of food samples. How is one packet of ramen supposed to last 12 lessons? Guess we'll see tomorrow. Um, we had a lot of meetings, got our camp shirt, and the native english speakers were let loose. I helped You-sun put up some signs, then the Korean head teacher, who is actually an elementary teacher and not just a college student like all the co-teachers are, asked me for help making her English sound more smooth and natural for a couple of speeches she's giving tomorrow at the opening ceremony. She's really nice and looks exactly like I think of when I think of Korean or Japanese elementary school teachers, actually. Hard to explain, maybe a picture will help, but anyways, haha. You-sun and I then went on a little walk and when I came back apparently every other native english teacher was working on our skit for the end of the camp, which is mainly a rendition of the Thriller dance. I picked it up very quickly though, and we hung out and stuff and here I am and now I'm finally done blogging so I can get some sweet sweet sleep.

feeling better

I woke up today and guess what! No nausea! Guess it was just temporary tamiflu-onset side effects, which is fine because we only have two pills left to take - one tonight, and one tomorrow for my birthday!

I'm pretty stoked about birthday in quarantine! Rumors have it that South Korea changed the laws about swine flu quarantine a couple days ago due to it being too widespread in the country (contrary to what we had thought, we aren't at all the first case of it here), so we're pretty much definitely quarantine free in a few days :)

I finished my arrangement of the traditional Korean song "Arirang" Wednesday night after starting it maybe the night before? Anyways, last night I played it for everyone and it was well recieved and that's cool. I've uploaded a "quality" mp3 of it for those who want to hear: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OI3FCW5A
I consider it my finest work compositionally, but it was also the easiest one to write. Maybe those are hand in hand?

no idea what to write next. I finished Xenocide yesterday and Children of the Mind today. By the time I'm back I'll have finished all of the books in the Ender universe, at this rate. The Brothers Karamazov will have to wait until I'm less captivated.

feeling nauseous since I woke up, doctor's coming to check my temperature any minute now. Here's hoping I don't have a fever - if I do, that means I've probably got the swine flu.

EDIT: Only 36.5*, it's probably just tamiflu. that's good I guess.

another day another dollar

dryers are here, they're super fancy and can double as a washer for some reason.
there's a gigantic stockpile of soda and junkfood and a fridge for them too
stuff's going well overall i suppose.

I finally got in with the tae kwan do class and it was pretty alright. I couldn't do yoga due to a hand injury from a fall yesterday. It still hurts and is very annoying.

I've been doing a lot of reading and composing and whatnot, tonight i got a massage from someone and that was awesome, I'll have to start getting those daily.

I guess I'm going to teach a few people how to read music and start some basic music theory stuff, but I want to see if there's a piano or something in this old place that I can use.

That's about all! I'm up too late and need to sleep but the book I'm reading is too engrossing.

summer camp

guess it really is summer camp here, we did archery today for a while and that was sweet. I hit an arrow through the farthest off target that I think nobody else except for the korean workers who obviously had practiced this quite a bit were hitting, so that was awesome.

There are worse things than being quarantined in an old summer camp!

We started our tamiflu regiments today and after five days when we're done with that, those who test negative for h1n1 are free to go and those who test positive are stuck here longer. I'm fairly certain I will not get it because i'm just that awesome, so it'll just be a few more days and then we'll see what exactly happens.

Yay :)

super quarantine

So...
We're quarantined for another week. The three people supposedly infected are in the hospital.

They're bringing in two driers, getting us internet in our rooms (yay!), and we will be receiving at least half of the promised 500,000 won. Those were like my top three concerns really. We can still hike, it's now just like a summer camp.

If the elementary one happens, that's cool, but I'm having fun just hiking and composing music and hanging out all day. Also, if it gets canceled, they're taking us on a tour of Korea, so that might be pretty boss if it isn't rushed.

So all in all, things are well.

We went on a major major hike today. It was a repeat of the first hike, only it wasn't foggy today (The views were INCREDIBLE, the pictures I'll upload later don't do it justice). And we kept going. to this super high thing that had a rope to climb up the almost sheer cliff, but also a path around to get up. I unfortunately had to take the path around. =( Still, we were close to the highest you can get in Wando. Tomorrow Sam is going to keep going up and it is theoretically possible to make it the very very highest peak of the mountain in the middle. I may or may not join, depends on how sore my legs are. On the way back we lost Shannon, but she eventually found her way back on her own, thank goodness. I sorta stepped into a spiky bush and got a few large cuts/scrapes on my leg, but nothing serious. Cool looking though. :P

That's about all there is to say!

OH, at the health check I was composing and my favorite nurse and the overseeing doctor dude both ended up listening to my piece and they both said they liked it, haha.

ALSo I finished Speaker for the Dead the other day and I loved it, one of my favorite books ever.

ALSO ALSO TWO MORE CONFIRMED CASES OF THE SWINE
Poor You-san, she's so nice. =(

swine flu

Well three of us have confirmed cases among us of swine flu. Well, it is being said it's confirmed but there' quite a bit of doubt. Probably the phases of denial or whatever.

So we're sorta quarantined for longer and the middle school camp is practically canceled. There goes teaching Around the World, which is cool cause I didn't really have my heart in that subject?

YES

MY LAPTOP IS BACK!
I DON'T KNOW WHY BUT IT WORKS AGAIN!

WOO!

rainy day games

Yesterday it was kinda rainy and shitty weather, but got better towards the end - I was too engrossed in Speaker for the Dead to go outside. Great book though. By night time I was so full of pent up energy, it was crazy. Haven't really seen myself like that before. Played lots of card games and stuff.

Today it is even rainier and windier, and so the chance of me getting out and doing a hike to use up all my extra energy is very low. Still, I am determined to find something to do. I will move and I will use up my copious amounts of energy. !

yesterday we decided our teaching subjects. For the first camp, the middle school camp, I will be teaching Around the World, which is basically just geography. Then I teach Foods and Restaurants for the elementary school camp. Should be exciting. :D

average day

today we had the usual breakfast (i'm tired of it, but from tomorrow on it'll be Korean only so I will probably grow to miss the weird hot dogs).

At ten we had our activity for the day, which was singing a Korean song. Finally being a music major is paying off, I was sight-reading the music and singing along but very few people could so we had to spend a ton of time learning it by rote. I volunteered to sing it up front later and that was okay I guess. She had us drum out a rythm for about 30000000000 minutes and it was annoying because everyone rushes in a group, a phenomenon that I abhor. Then, she ran out of things to do and asked if anyone wanted to sing a song up front, any song. Nobody volunteered at first so I did "Reflection" from Mulan and got a lot of laughs, it was fun.

Lunch was good, we had the Korean summer dish of a little (whole) chicken stuffed with rice in chicken broth and stuff. Also a little like fried fish dish that didn't taste like fish at all, looked and tasted like flat tofu. It was smothered in this great sauce and sesame seeds and stuff and I got Yu-san's, Ian's, and Eric's after I went back and saw that none were left. Had a great conversation too about stuff.

Then we met with our camp groups and talked about a skit, ours is going to be okay and possibly but it is top secret!

There was a group hike scheduled at 3 and the leaders (Yu-san, Ian, and Ethan) had planned to take us up to the gazebo we went to yesterday, so Sam and I let them stay back and led the group back up there. Took 20 minutes, while it took an hour and a half the round about way we did yesterday >< Then we walked all over the place, and as usual most of the group left and Sam and I with some others just kept on trekking. Checked out this sick arboretum and got a dirnk from the vending machine - MILKIS "New feeling of soda beverage". It's a Korean Calpis knockoff but it is just as good if not better. The rest of the hike was sick, and as usual we made it back in like a half hour despite being gone for way longer. Dinner was good.

We had some karaoke and I sang "I wanna hold your hand" but left after all the other songs I would've sung were by other people and I wanted to leave. It was mainly missouri kids and I feel like they're overall quite a different culture than psu ones, surprise surprise, so it was weird. Plus, karaoke in groups over like 10 or 15 is just too much for me :P

Guess I'll read some more Speaker for the Dead and drift to sleep. Woo.

I really love it here in Wando, it is so peaceful and serene. Most of the places we walk to would be so great to just hang out to. I think I'm going to keep hiking often when I get home.

Super Hike

Today we got our lesson plans and stuff, then a long lecture about Korean culture/history that I mostly slept through. After that all we went off on a hike that I guess is actually the plan for tomjorrow? But Sam and I basically went real fast/ran ahead of the pack and made it to our goal, this observation gazebo thing that nobody else got to see. The views were amazing, but I can't upload photos at the moment due to the lack of my own laptop and possibly laziness. Thank goodness the fog is mostly gone so that we actually could see the amazing view. It was super awesome, haven't gotten such a good and rewarding workout in a long time. Hiking is the bomb.

I'm excited to teach and stuff but this laptop situation really bugs me.

Outside supplies finally came today, I got some chocolate and it tastes like eating hot cocoa, it's pretty boss. I didn't manage to get the Aloe drink I requested for some reason though? Now everyone's up on the roof drinking the copious amounts of alcohol that was brought I guess. I'm happily getting absorbed into a book, however...

I got to talk to So-ryoung on the phone today and hopefully we'll meet up in Seoul on one of our last days here, should be cool. :)

stupid

guess there was a storm last night, my laptop was plugged in and now is dead. great. Hopefully that isn't a sign of things to come.

Picture Time

Here's the Seoul airport. I think they send spaceships from this spot.
on the bus to Wando!The Bus!Here we are at the first rest stop, our helper Yu-sun with the Statue of Liberty shirtI had some dinner and it was bad, but Sam (left) and Eric (right) enjoyed theirs.
The view of the ocean from our place. Fog city.
The great swimming pool in the front, but the point was the pretty jawesome view out there.
The camp, our rooms are behind the scaffolding
The back of the building, looks great huh? With all the fog and the fact that this building seems abandoned in the middle of construction and junk in the back and the fact that we're basically quarantined it feels like a horror movie. Fun though.
Sam is really happy about the stuff in the back.
more stuff
Kyler in his bed cool huh
there's me!
archery range at the camp? cool huh
Here we go on the hike up to the kinda mediocre temple.
rice and stuff
the temple!
the temple dog
some dude with the dog
me! at the temple over fog
Our building, the great castle in the clouds
lunch! not enough meat in the soup but good overall. I actually am liking the kimchi here a lot, which is a surprise cause I really disliked it most of the time in America. It's like it's not jarred here or something!
H1N1 inspection, guess this is going to be a regular thing
She got a stern talking to for some reason...

Looks like I passed! but my temperature was a little high I guess? Hmmmm I feel fine though. Basically we're quarantined for a week and are getting our health checked daily or something? Woooo so much fun.

After the inspection I went to my room, composed for a bit, and fell asleep until someone woke me up for a meeting we had at 3. That took a while but afterwards Eric mentioned that he found an offshoot trail on the way to the temple you can get to by crossing over the stream. This turned into a huge adventure.
Forest was cool
The group, although people slowly started turning back.

foggy fog fog. Was a test shot I guess but that just shows how foggy it was even just above the ground.
woodz
the group some more

crazy mushrooms, wish I had a better picture but there's that orange netting mesh they've grown and the mushroom is on top? I don't understand really.
Great view, except the fog ruins it :P Wonder what it actually looks like. Kyler loved that stick he's got there. This is pretty much the end of the trail we went to, but we found out it could keep going, but too bad we couldn't keep going.... dinner was too soon.



Me! and my water bottle
Sam just chillin
oh yeah! The rest of the group.... So because dinner was so soon and I kinda wanted to run back we (Aly, Shannon, Danika, Kyler, Sam, and I were the only people left at this point) ended up doing just that and got back within a half hour, even though the hike was maybe an hour and half to get to that point.

Drenched with sweat, also sunburn from the morning hike @_@ too lazy to turn it unsideways sorry

Huge ass moth that was near the cafeteria, thanks dude for the hand for size purposes.
Dinner! tonkatsu with gravy and fries and stuff, yum yum yum?
Oh yeah this is my room, and...
bathroom! the whole floor is tile and you just sort of shower next to the sink. it's weird.

Um that's all my photos for now except a few blurry ones that sucked horribly. All in all I've had fun so far, looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully my bug repellent will work better in the future as I got a few bites today :O the sunburn really sucks and I hope I can get sunscreen from people from now on, that damn fog made it seem like the sun doesn't matter. I see it's showing up on my arms now too, argh.
well
I'm pretty exhausted even though it's only 9:40pm, might go to bed soon and read or something.

In Korea

Well the plane ride was long but good. Finished Ender's Shadow on the flight and it is was awesome. Took me a while to figure out that there wer actually some movies that I wanted to see that they had, "Valkyrie", "Push", and "Monsters vs Aliens", but I only had 2 hours left of the flight. I went with "Push" and it was badddddd. oh well. :3

then we got to take a horribly long bus ride all the way down to Wando for quarantine/orientation. We're in like an isolated castle like old summer camp place that's under construction and run down, I've got pics but I'm currently lazy and got lunch in a few - we just got internet.

Went on a hike up to a kinda lame little temple that was grueling in the heat and humidity. Breakfast was decent eggs and hot dogs (lol) and toast and shit. Awww yeah.

I guess I'll post more later when I've got some free time but I'm here and alive. Hurray!
also I'm composing a song for the first time in a while for some reason pretty neat huh

Camp locations have been decided!

I'll be in.... WANDO

I don't know much about Wando except that it is an island and none of the other camps are on islands, so that could potentially be awesome or shitty, as it's also the farthest one away from the major city of the province. Hopefully internet should be okay and everything should be fine.


Other than that, everything else is pretty much ready but I'm very concerned about my checked luggage being over 50 pounds. What a stupid limitation.

Hair cut!

One of the last remaining tasks has been complete....

Before:



After:

Hello!

This is my blog. I'll be updating it more when I actually get to Korea, maybe even with pictures and MAYBE, maybe videos. We'll see.

I'm just about done preparing for Korea, I need to get my hair cut, print some stuff out, buy and wrap some gifts for colleauges and whatnot, and then pack! So I'm pretty set. Coming up with gift ideas is tough as I'm not a gift giver by nature but I'm hoping I can find a made in oregon store that exists and that'll be easy to figure out from there. If anyone has any specific ideas you can comment!