1. Peni

0^C
Bitter wind, but bright blue skies.

The temperature has dropped dramatically since I last wrote, back in Autumn. Nowadays its not uncommon for the mercury to go below zero.. in fact last Tuesday it was down to -11^C as I was walking to the but stop. November’s rains are also living up to their ‘not-so-pleasant’ reputation. We had the first snowfall (what’s known as 첫눈) of the season on November 2nd. In the middle of class all the students were let out to play and sing and dance! Some ran around like ADHD kids on Speed, while others just danced around in the snow, a group of them decided to catch some in a blanket, and still there were others who just stood there looking up with their mouths open.




Last weekend, the weekend of the 14th/15th Brett decided to come over to Sangdong to check out how I live. After staying for five minutes we, Brett, Cassie, and I decided to head over to Taebaek for lunch. It was freezing cold, by that I mean that any water on the road was frozen; and so we decided to go check out a casino nearby. We started by changing 10,000won into High1 Chips and then we hit the roulette tables. We stayed there for an hour or so and Brett made a profit of 50,000won and I made a profit of 7,000won. Here’s a picture of us running to the hotel/casino.. it was soooo cold!!

The next few photos are of what’s been happening over the past few weeks. Here are a few from the road between Yeongwol and Sangdong.

Mousi/Mousa, remember that little stream you dipped your feet into and all the little fish swam around your feet? Well here it is now..

Oh and I was walking home and there was an old lady near my apartment and she was burying a vat of kimchi.. I’ve never seen it buried before so I went over to inspect. She got up, smiled, went to her place and brought out a huge lunchbox of fresh unfermented kimchi! Now I’m not a Kimchi hater (like some others I know), but living here for this long has developed my taste-buds so that I can differentiate between good and bad kimchi. Unfermented, fresh, home-made kimchi ROCKS.. and this was no different!

So this weekend just passed, we went to check out a county called Samcheok, marking off number 12/18 on my “See every county in my province” list. On the way there Cassie and I found a huge museum. We stopped and took a few pictures but nothing really interested us enough to go inside.

This is a little coastal town that I've forgotten the name of.. it was a beautifully quaint little place..

Samcheok’s a cute little town by the sea, it’s just south of Donghae (where we went with the caravans), and is much like all the other coastal towns we’ve been to; heaps of raw fish places, heaps of seafood places, and the unmistakable smell of drying squid. But Samcheok had something that I’d never seen before.. a special kind of park that roused my curiosity. But first, I better…

WARNING: The following images may offend some people. If they do.. go away. Oh and they’re probably not safe for work either.. you might get some weird looks!

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See, Koreans think of sexuality differently than we do. It’s a natural way of life here, and everyone knows about it and talks about it. There’s nothing erotic about it nor is it a taboo subject.