The End of the Year

It has been a whole year of blogging for me, sometimes regularly, sometimes not. It was also my first year at it.

The Blog started out as a replacement e-mail to everyone and ended up being, well, the same thing. I sometimes get hits to the Blog from people in other countries and I still have very few people who actually care what I write, but I just don't care any more. I will remove the people I feel have no interest, like I did before, and carry on as if nothing ever happened. If you suddenly stop getting the emails then know it's because I never hear from you.

In this coming year I'll be sending email out only once a week to give a quick update on the posts for that week. I will try to do this every Sunday or Monday.

I initially wanted to include a nice little new year's photograph with this post, but since I don't have any and since I don't feel like using someone else's, you'll just have to live with my best wishes for the new year.

Voorspoedige nuwe jaar en mag julle alles van die beste he.

Up the Dragon Mountain.

After the initial and expected confusion the day before, I was told that all the teachers were going on an outing. At first I was told that it would be a workshop that would be run in Korean, so I decided not to join and rather work on my holiday school work. I suppose the question was then asked why I wasn't not going along and eventually it was explained to me what the real situation was.

This outing was to be the end of year get together thing and, needless to say, I didn't know that it was the end of the year either. As far as I was concerned the year only ended on the 31st. I only found out that I was wrong on Sunday morning though.

Anyway, the plan was to leave school at about 12pm in a bus that would make it's way to Yongmun San, translated, Dragon Mountain. This is an surprisingly mountainous area even considering that we are in Korea. I suppose it is because we were in the most northern part of Gyeonggi-do, bordering the mountainous Gangwon-do. The area is called Yangpyeong.

The road there was filled with really odd sights. Some times it didn't feel like I was in Korea at all. The buildings were of strange design and they were using comparability large amounts of English.

I suppose it is because of the large number of mountains, but there were a lot burial mounts to be seen. The most interesting was a mountain covered with small mounds. It was the closes I had seen to a Western style graveyard in Korea. Al thought I am still not in favour of burial due to it's waste of space, I feel this is much better than the large burial mounds that take up enough space to bury 10 people.

A few days back I saw a picture of a really strange fire escape slide and thought it was a joke. I'm still not sure if it is face a fire escape, but none the less, I saw one and include the picture I found on the net with this post.
(At the time of posting it will not be included because it is on another computer)

When we finally arrived at the mountain I was surprised at the amount of people. The main attraction there is the 1000 odd year old Ginko tree next to a Buddhist monetary. It seems like this is a normal thing for schools to do with their employees. Another school's teacher arrived at the same time as us and made their way up at the same time.

On the way up you can see little piles of stone that people stacked. I'm not sure if it is suppose to mean anything or if it's just the handy work of bored people who want to do the same thing every one else has already done.

A few times we passes these weird white things hanging in the trees. They looked like balls of wax without the pit, but when I touched it felt more like animal fat. It reminded me of the Blair Witch Project.

The weather wasn't all that great and we basically just went up, took a few photographs, me being the designated photographer, and came down.

To finish the day off we went to a restaurant were we got to scarf down all the Galbi we could, if it was Galby, and drink loads of Soju. The usual suspects got drunk as is the "custom" in Korea. I'm serious when I say this about drinking. Getting drunk here is not seen in the same light as in the West. I've hear of more than one women who wants a husband who can handle his drink. I'll do post about that some time, please just remind me.




The all night fishing will have to be in a separate post and it will have to happen some time this coming week, in between the editing and holiday classes.

How to Propose Mariage.

This is one place where you will not see me, ever, I hope. Maybe I'm just not romantic enough or maybe I'm not Korean enough to appreciate it.

In my opinion you should never do something like this in public. On the one side you're putting pressure on the poor girl and on the other side you are setting yourself up for a rejection to be seen by the whole world. There is also the idea that it really doesn't have anything to do with anyone else.

What exactly am I talking about? Just have a look yourself. Maybe you'll like it.