Clueless in Korea: Hell of a couple of weeks...

So, for those of you who has missed my posts check out loverofsoju.blogspot.com for Carl's more avid updates (specifically Mudung Mountain!)

These past 3 weeks have been awwwwwful crazy! We have reached a point in our transition where we are settling down and getting used to Korea. It's no longer odd to get waved at by random little kids, or for the old lady at the convenient mart to tell me I have pretty eyes, or for random old ladies to point at my belly say "cutee-ah", and the sheer fright of riding in a bus or taxi has subsided. It's gotten easier to converse with the kids and the phrase TIK (This is Korea!) has taken on a whole new meaning to us. Now, I am at a crossroads where the novelty of being in a new country has worn off and the realization that being a foreigner that will never blend in has consumed me. My sense of adventure and awestruck has diminished and it saddens me that I'm starting to get into a routine... BUT these are all things that can be turned around!!!

So, here are some pictures from the past several weeks

Love at the top

Yoga: Breath deep into the soul

Mudung mountain is 1187m tall. We reached a peak at 490m, but holy crap that was high enough! We now know why the Korean's take hiking so seriously! It took 2 hours to go up, 1 hour to go down, and 4 liters of water to keep us going! I didn't think we would reach the top, but when we finally did I'm not ashamed to say that I cried. The view was breathtaking. Even living in West Virginia, I have never seen mountains so beautiful before. As I sat on the end of the rock gazing at the magnificence before me, I saw how small I really am living in a world so huge. As silly as this sounds, I don't think I truly grasped before this moment how BIG this world really is.

Before

Outside of our little Gwangju English Village lies a farming community. For the past several weeks we've been watching the adjumma's and emu's hard at work. One day the fields were muddy and empty, the next week they were covered with plastic wrap, the next week they were flooded with water, until low and behold....

Distributing the rice to be farmed

Lowland rice requires rice to be grown in flooded plains called paddies so its roots could be able to make use of the nutrient content from the water it was planted in. Paddy rice farmers usually plant the seeds first in little seedbeds (above) and transfer them into flooded fields which were already plowed. The rice is the fed through this "needler" machine and planted at spaced interval in already flooded areas.

The needler machine!

awesomeness!

At Gwangju English Village we see different kids everyday. We work more like a camp program where kids come for the day and go to our different booths. We have the following booths: Furniture Shop, Art Gallery, Fire Station, Police Station, Hamburger Shop, Supermarket, Casino, Clinic, Hairshop, Costume Shop, Book Shop, Sports Center, Post Office, Bank, and Airport. Every month we do seasonal booths as well. Here are some photos taken while "working"