Pictures

As you already know, I am not much of a picture person. However, having recently been gifted pictures of some different places here in Daegu, I thought I'd pass them along to give you (Mom) some sort of visual reference.

The most picturesque photo I've seen of downtown Daegu - truly Luke is a wizard with a camera.

Downtown Daegu at night. This is about 7-10 minutes from where I live (walking).
A picture of the bridge across the river Sincheon that is nearest to our house. You can't tell in the photo, but the lights across the bridge actually shift colors in a continuous spectrum. It's pretty.

Munyang

These are Molly and me at Sky Tower one night we went there to sit at the rotating restaurant and watch the sun set. It was beautiful.

Just me at the beach . . . apparently it's really dirty and all of our (Me, Jesse & Molly's) students were really appalled that we'd waded in. :c/ Live and learn. It was such a good day though, I'd do it again in a heartbeat!

Heinsa

Mrs. Kim took all of us teachers to Heinsa (a temple about 45 minutes from Daegu) and let us walk around. This temple stores a set of wooden prints for the Buddhist scriptures. Once a year people go to the temple and perform a ceremony where they carry each of the thousands of wooden slats on their heads around the temple grounds for hours to dry them out. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, the bus driver wouldn't let us walk . . . I'm not sure why. (?)

추석

This last weekend I had my second-to-last three-day weekend in Korea! On Friday Molly and Jesse and I went to 포항 (Pohang) and laid on the beach all day. I am excited to report that my legs have tanned imperceptibly, an unprecedented event in my life. The rest of the weekend was full of long walks culminating in a huge container of ice cream split by Miss Molly and myself on Sunday evening.

This weekend was the biggest Korean holiday (추석/Chuseok). Koreans get together, eat lots of food, go and visit all their ancestors' graves and tell family histories. Mrs. Kim made us japchae and lots of other good things I don't know the names of to take home on Thursday night after work, so we all had quite a treat.

Other that that I've been having class with my friend 임연정 (Eim, Eyun-jung) pretty much every day, working on college interview skills (which has been awesome) and am starting to think about how I need to pack for my trip home. Happily for me Maija and Terry have decided to drive down to Arizona, so I'll just fly straight to El Paso, TX to be with Heather and then catch up with them for the ride back to Portland. Wow, that sounds like a plan. It's amazing to be close enough that I can really plan it, but I'm SO excited to eat Mexican food!!!!!! And I'll be in the best possible place for it!!!!!!!! *Sigh* now I'll never be able to go to bed . . . I'll have to go check out my new book.

Shadows on the pavement

Luke and I went on the last of our many Korean walks last month. Now he is back in the US harvesting sugar beets. One night just before he left we went out to Munyang and watched the stars come out. We walked out to a little pond and saw a few lightning bugs and then sat down in a clearing and tried to count how many different types of insects we could distinguish from their noises - Munyang is peaceful, but certainly not quiet, at night. (c:

Another thing I'm sure y'all will be interested in is that I got to go to dinner at my friend 현지's (Hyun-ji/Karen) house. It was . . . amazing. Her family was . . . wonderful. Her mom even told me how to make Bulgogi (which is very delicious). If I can get a recipe for japchae and mandu I think I'll be pretty much set as far as Korean food goes. They do have this really spicy soup with tofu that I like, but my stomach is less enthusiastic about the heat. *Sigh* That's life.

Oh, and I read Tuck Everlasting with a student last week, and I found a quote that was kind of where I am: "Things had happened to her that were hers alone, and had nothing to do with them. It was the first time. And no amount of telling about it could help them understand or share what she felt. It was satisfying and lonely, both at once."

I love you guys.