100

I'm not sure why people have such a proclivity and fascination with round, precise numbers (especially big ones), but hitting my 100th blog seems to be a event worth noting. This means I've been putting out just over a blog per week for the past 21 months, and keeping up with it has made me pretty proud.

Things here are going pretty great, though I've nearly been hit by more cars than normal these past few weeks. I actually had one guy on a scooter deliberately swerve at me, I suppose since he felt I was walking in his driving space, so I was mildly surprised the other day to find a man sleeping in the middle of the road, one shoe flung to his side, his arms under his head for a pillow. No one seemed to take much notice of him though, and both cars and pedestrians maneuvered there way around his outstretched body with little concern for him.

I ended up taking two days off of work last week due to illness, and even now I'm still suffering from a nagging cough, though otherwise I feel quite good. My coteachers have shown a great amount of concern for me, and while their suggestions on why I might have gotten sick (cold mornings followed by hot afternoons) aren't too helpful, it's nice to know that they want me to get better rather than show up for work regardless of my state of health.

A Case of Spite

Shannon's school held an English competition today, and they had asked me to come and judge it. My school then requested an official document of sorts, something to excuse my absence from school, but by the time Shannon's school sent it to mine, they had decided to hold an English competition of their own on the same day. I suppose my principal didn't feel like being outdone by anyone else, but the thought that went into planning this competition was brutal. While I knew from Shannon that my school would hold a competition today, no one from my school informed me until yesterday at 5pm. Shannon has spent the past week helping students prepare speeches, practice pronounciation, etc. and I have done zilch. Until I was given the list of who was reading this morning, I had no idea which students were competeing or how many there would be. Things went about as well as you could have expected, though I was impressed with a few of the speeches that were written. One was done on the "Mad Cow" situation currently happening:

"The chances of getting mad cow are very small, but if we eat mad cow beef, the chances go up. Koreans have genetics that make them more likely to get mad cow. It could take 10 years for symptoms to show up. In 10 years I'll be 23. Do you really want me to lose all my hopes and dreams for cheap beef and risk getting mad cow?"

It wasn't quite that well written, but you get the idea. For those of you who are unaware, Koreans have been protesting the import of USA beef for stwo months now. Over 12,000 people are gathering almost nightly in Seoul to protest, hundreds of people have been arrested, and nightly the news shoes police beating and water-canoning protestors in the streets. It's quite a big deal, and as I check the Korean Herald, it seems as many as 80,000 people have been gathered to protest importing US beef. Even Mokpo has candlelight vigils these days slamming US beef and the Korean government for allowing it in.

My class just wandered in, so I best get off the computer and begin teaching. I'm going to China this weekend for ultimate, which I'm incredibly excited for. Hopefully I'll have some fun stories, great pictures and interesting things to say on Chinese culture to share next week.