The Rain In Spain Falls Mostly On Korea

The semester is beginning to wind down here in Korea, though I'm still thinking of it North American terms and want to call it the year. Summer vacation begins in less than a month, and though the kids don't actually graduate and move up a grade until February, it's starting to get that end-of-year feeling. Already English classes are being canceled for exams and to make time for other more important work (I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic there or not), and I'm finding it more and more common where I'll get prepped for a class, have all my materials ready and then have no one show up. Well, I do appreciate the free time, so I might as well take advantage of it somehow.

This past weekend was Canada Day, and despite being thousands of miles away, many of us here in Korea did manage to put together a small celebration. A dozen or so of us went to a small island called Shinji which has one of the larger and nicer beaches in the province. We camped out there for the night, and enjoyed relatively good weather for the day, and had a great time having some drinks, swimming and sitting around the camp fire. I was feeling pretty exhausted from moving into the new house (I'll get to that after), and since most of us got there around two in the afternoon, everything was pretty much shut down by midnight (at which time it actually became Canada Day, rather than the day we spent partying). It was probably a good thing we turned in early though, since the weather took a dramatic turn for the worse once we had everything tucked away.

First the wind came, blowing over a few of the tents we had set up and snapping one of the poles used to hold up the tarps we had placed in case of rain. For at least an hour the wind came, blowing so loud you could hardly speak to each other. Then, there was the brief calm, lasting about 10 minutes and giving a few people the sense that things were over - until the rain began. I was asleep for large portions of it, but the rain probably lasted an hour as well, and was accompanied by a biblical serving of thunder and lightning. Things were getting so bad some people were now sleeping in the public washroom, and Shannon and I were more than tempted to go as well. Our tent however stayed dry and lightning free, however one struck down so close to our campsite my ears were ringing.

The next day our campsite was a mess. One of the motorbikes had collapsed in a mud puddle, wrecking the clutch. Tents had been blown over and/or flooded. Someone lost there shoe in a mud hole trying to reach the bathroom, and never was able to dig it out again. It was quite a mess. The bad weather continued all next day, and one of the girls whose bike was still working the next day tried to drive home and skidded out and ended up quite bruised up, though she didn't need to go to the hospital. The rest of us, having gotten little to no sleep that night, woke up at 5:30 once the weather eased up and caught the 6:30 bus home. Once home, I slept soundly for 6 hours.

And where did I sleep, you may ask? Why, in the brand new apartment that Shannon and I just moved into. It's actually fairly old, but it's nice, hardly more than half the size of our last place, and in a nice location. The size of it isn't actually so bad, it's just that there's zero storage space and the kitchen has no counters at all to work with. We now use our kitchen table as counter space, and have become permanent living room sofa eaters. Last night we finally got it all unpacked, took out all the trash, and now have a comfortably clean living space, right next to a gym, swimming pool and some great little fruit markets.

My bike got stolen over the weekend. So now I've had my wallet, iPod and bike all nabbed from me. While I got the first two back, I don't even want to bother trying to find the bike. It was a used $50 piece of moderate junk, and my teachers already think I have a problem keeping my things from being taken, why make it worse. Still, until I get a new one, getting around won't be as fun.

Anyway, I'm out for now. Thanks for reading!