Hello spring!

We had a beautiful weekend here in Korea. Weather was sunny and in the 50's, it might've even reached 60 today!

Started off right with a teacher's dinner Friday night to welcome the new teachers. I counted about 15 new ones. (There are 55 total at our school) This is common, as here in Korea teachers must change schools at least every 4 years. I found out some sad news at the dinner, but my old co-teacher told it to me like it wasn't a big deal: one of the teachers had a miscarriage, and the German teacher had a malignant tumor removed from her thyroid and has to start radiation! I felt so sad about both of these. :-S I found out my new co-teacher has 2 children: a son who is a senior in HS, and a daughter who is a sophomore in HS. I spent the rest of the night watching Law & Order, how I've been wasting my time lately.

Saturday I made banana bread before heading off to Gwangju to spend the day with Anne. We hiked the main mountain there, Mudeungsan (?). It was perfect weather! We did a relatively short route, and only took about 2 hours up and 1 hour down. We were pretty winded on the way up though! It was so wonderful to get outside and enjoy the nice weather and fresh air. Anne and I plan to hike A LOT this semester -- really excited! That night we made tacos at her host family's apartment. Her host mom is such a hover-er!!! She would not leave our side, as if we don't know how to cook. She even tried to put mayonaise on the taco meat! EWW! She always takes note of what foreign foods Anne makes. Once she made spaghetti, and now her host mom has made it for her quite often! We found detailed notes and even a sketch of what we did to make the nachos in a cook book. It's cute how she wants to learn, but also annoying. After making banana shakes, I headed home.
View of Gwangju City from Mudeung Mountain.

Sunday I woke up to another beautiful day! I went for a drive with my host family, starting out at Namwon. We saw a temple, ate lunch, and then my host dad wanted to drive back to Suncheon by going over Jirisan Mtn to enjoy the view. Well, when we got pretty far up, we found out the rest of the road was closed due to snow! I can't believe there is still snow! Anyway, we had to turn around and go back around. Then he decided he wanted to stop in Gurye to see another temple. Well, we got there and the road up to the temple was closed because today was such a busy day to visit, so we didn't go there either. It was basically a lot of driving around, which made me very sleepy! But it was a beautiful day to spend out of the apartment, even if we were in the car for so much.

Namwon. Jun-ho feeding the lion his pencil!?!
Jun-ho feeding the fish. Some of them were huge! There was a sign saying they can live up to 80 years!
Then my host family got in this boat and went 30 feet across this little pond. ok...
Host mom playing traditional Korean games! Get the stick into the vase thingy.

Random note: My host mom told me the other morning on the way to school that the government is encouraging "job sharing" here in Korea. Like in America, many jobs are being lost here in Korea. So, I guess the government is encouraging companies to take a job for one person and split it between 2 and they will share the pay. I really doubt this would work in the US.... Speaking of the US, sounds like things are getting pretty scary over there with another 600,000 jobs lost in Feb! :-S Good luck to all of you job hunting!