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?