aerial view

This is the view from my veranda looking in ... first the living room to the kitchen and then the bedroom near the front door.  Scroll down for better pics!
This is my living room area.  You can't see the magical orange leather couch that was donated by some friends of mine here in Daejeon.  

Looking to the right out of my veranda.  The massive buildings on the left are government buildings and a nice giant park which they are currently renovating.  

Here is my desk and book cases.  You can just picture me sitting there blogging away to you people can't you?

Here is a good shot from my veranda in my new apartment.  Amazing.  Although if you look directly at the bottom of the picture above you can see a rotting carcass of a construction project that halted due to unknown reasons.  Apparently this little square as been festering for some time.  But you must look beyond the nasty to the pretty city and mountain views past it.  

Here's to the left ... the big building is a mega-church where I go on Sundays.  

no A/C!

so for the most part my move is largely over with ... I now have a much bigger and spacious place closer to the sun ... it's rather strange being in here though, I got used to my cubbie of an apartment all too much over the last 11 months.  

Now I find myself at an ... interesting realization of my personality ... I don't have A/C for at least a few days maybe a week or more and rather than embracing how much of the world lives their daily lives I've been crying like a 27 year old baby.  I laugh at myself but also am rather shocked at my sudden exposure of an addition-like love affair with a simple machine that cools the air.  Did that just rhyme?  Amazing.  So while you fat cats are sitting in your climate controlled rooms enjoying the comfortable balance of your natural body temp to the degree of the room you are in ... I am sweating like a gorilla ... literally like a gorilla people!  And complaining about it too!  

I'll post some pictures in a day or so ... apparently in the move I lost my computer charger so I have to conserve power.  

once again moving ...

here we are once again I find myself moving ... this time not across the Earth but rather down the street and up 14 stories into a much nicer abode for my time in Korea.  I've begun the process of packing up my stuff again ... the term "on the move" would greatly characterize my life since college I would say.

I cannot believe the things I've accumulated over the last 11.5 months ... actually I can.  Now looking at my bags stuffed with various items I realize a great deal of it is sweaters and winter type clothing which I was sorely lacking upon arriving in a place with all 4 season instead of the 1.5 seasons of steamy Florida.  

I will post some pics of the new place once I get settled and having the place looking respectable.  Also the view is rather nice and I'll show you that as well and you'll probably wish you were here.  Muahahaha!

In other news, today I had to journey up to Seoul to get some paper work done to secure my visa and alien card for the next year of stay so I needed to visit the embassy.  The place is a fortress and we only occupied 1/50th of the place for all citizen requests and things of that nature.  Makes me curious I suppose ... lots of mystery and intrigue maybe?  Probably just paperwork and government workers in cubicles playing solitaire.  

Also, I come home in 2 weeks!  Hooray!  Fantastic!  Super-duper!  And other things you can scream.  I'm excited to get a vacation and see my family!  I hope they are excited too!  I'm sure they are, how could they not be? ha!  If you are one of those people, I can't wait to see you!  

Awkward!

So I realized I have not blogged in a while so I'm kicking this one off with a bang!  Sort of ...

Just a funny story really ... 

After a long week of work and long days it is usually beneficial to unwind in someway to relax and get geared up for the weekend to recoup.  You can understand this I'm sure.  

So this Friday specifically I decided to go to the local public bath as it seems to help relax and make you exceedingly tired by sweating and sitting in absurdly hot rooms.  At this point I've worked all day and had a decent workout at taekwondo so I'm ready to get my sweat on and kick back in desert like heat.  As I'm purchasing my pass to go into the bath house I notice my schools assistant director at the counter making the same transaction as I had only minutes before.  Not wanting to be noticed I act like I didn't see him and head straight for the elevator up to the sweat boxes and relative peace and obscurity.  I hop in the elevator wishing these damn doors would close faster when low and behold in walks in Mr. Lee, the school Assistant Director, maybe the equivalent of a Vice Principle back in the States.  Although I'm not 100% sure of what he does to be honest, I don't see him too much and it seems like he's never around the school.  He was the guy who picked me up from the bus on my arrival into Korea smelling a bit like beer.  But I digress ... 

We meet in the elevator of inevitability and I give the standard respectful greeting, "Annyong-haseo."  We exchange a few short phrases both in English and Korean.  In the back of my mind I'm hoping tonight won't be the night I'm hanging out with my school's vice principle naked in a public bath house.  But alas the universe has a way of putting me in strange and awkward places in my life.  I head into the bath house to unwind and of course our paths cross again.  He strolls over to where I am slowly unwinding from my week and strikes up a conversation with me.  Great!  Just GREAT!  Could this be any more awkward?!  Yes it probably could and it does.  The fully extent of the situation is rather removed from me at this point considering it's been some time since this happened but nonetheless the memory of it all is burned into my mind.  There we are the two of us, employer and employee having a normal conversation in public bath house, except we are completely naked.  Nothing great in the topics of various conversations we had except he called me stupid for not having a Korean girlfriend yet.  Then the funniest part of the night ensues.  He exits the pool we are in and signals me to follow, perhaps to another pool or area of the bath house to continue our conversations.  But no ... he challenges me to a push-up contest in the middle of the place.  He probably pushed out about 10 reps, looking back I should have showed him up and sent him to the abyss of failure but I respectfully declined and told him he was stronger than me, all in Korean no less!  Perhaps it was the heat or just being completely naked chatting with my employer but I walked away from that laughing at myself and just the randomness of the situation.  

Only in Korea can this seem to happen.  So ... the next time you are naked just be thankful you aren't sitting next to your boss chatting about the mundane of life in a pool of hot water.    

Also, the pic is of me, clearly, in a biggest port in Korea called Busan.  Lots of fish.  Yummy.

Waste

This picture has nothing to do with what I am blogging about here but I thought it was an interesting shot taken of some Daejeon buildings at night ... very nice indeed.

There is something rather interesting I've noticed during my time over here in Korea about the matter of waste and the disposal thereof.  Now ... Korea in general is a rather small peninsula there is only so much room on this bit of land for everything under the sun that we humans require to live and function in a somewhat proper manner.  And one of those issues is that of what we do with our waste.  When you touch down in the ROK (that's Republic of Korea, duh) you quickly become aware that they seem to recycle and reuse everything.  If you eat at a restaurant or some kind of quick meal establishment, you will see how there are at least 3 or 4 bins to place various objects in.  Once you figure out what is required of each bin you see that everything has it's place.  The paper goes here, the plastic lids there, the food waste over there, the paper cups go in there, and the liquid waste you dump into this little container.  I truly am impressed by this and was personally glad to see they do this in a way of saying that everyone can take a moment to separate your trash for means to recycle.  After all we only have so much land on this little bit of Earth.  

Then the baffling part begins ... often you'll see litter everywhere, in the streets, in your face, everywhere.  At night it has become common to see young men "passing" out flyers for local bars or clubs in the area.  But I'm liberal with the term "passing" here.  In truth they are taking a handful of flyers and dumping them on the streets and on cars parked near-by.  Picture a young guy just aimlessly walking and dumping flyers on the streets as he's walking along.  It's quite a sight to behold really.  I was quite shocked the first time I saw this but have since learned this is rather common.  The contrast is really striking and leaves one with the (?) hanging over your head.  

I have no clear and pointed thing to say at this point.  Simply my pondering of the strange ways that people live ... in one hand there is a great system in place for recycling and reusing and on the other hand just outside in the street there are young people just carelessly "passing" out flyers to anyone who would love to pick up some trash on the street and read about a random place of business.  Strange huh? 

breaking through

This is a recent picture of me breaking two wooden boards during a Taekwondo test ... but don't look at my face it's quite scary to behold.  Plus I'm closing my eyes for some reason.  At this point I am a brown belt which is just one color away from black belt.  I've actually been learning some cool things but apparently you don't learn the really cool stuff until you get into the black belt phase of the training:  things like street fighting and knife fighting and other pummeling acts of violence.  I have to laugh at myself sometimes because I love it but I hate violence just for violence.  This becomes far more apparent when we spar with each other.  We gear up in pads and whatnot to protect our vitals and go at it.  Each time I've engaged in this type of training I always end up laughing or lightly hitting my opponent.  Perhaps it's the light atmosphere of the training or the equal mirth expressed by my opponent ... or maybe I just don't take it serious enough to want to genuinely hurt someone.  Either way it's still a lot of fun ... I supposed I've learned of myself through this that I really do abhor violence that is needless and would rather laugh than to inflict hurt on another.  Man I sound really soft right now ... I would like to say that in the given situation I could hold my own by way of fisticuffs but I have really never had to so something like that so how could I truly know at this point.  May I never have to use what I've learned ... this is what I want to get at.  But I do feel I would like to use my skills on my brother-in-law Chris Rattigan just because I feel it would be fun and give me some laughs.   

I didn't forget about the Blog ...

no ... I didn't forget about my blogging and truly a lack their of.  I'm not trying to save any face here either, I've just been lazy about it.  I'm getting old ... all of 27 now.  This is a current picture of me and my friend Jin Soo on a hike with some friends from church.

Let's see what news ... what news ... so I'm staying for another year.  The powers that be determined I'm a valuable enough asset to keep and to give some nice stipulations on my contract as well.  I'll be back in the States for just under two weeks ... a very, very short time indeed considering I've missed so much with weddings and new additions to my family.  

It's spring time here in Korea and it is just fantastic.  The weather is great and with the occasional shower here and there the temperature and breeze is just right.  The cherry blossoms where beautiful during the early stages of the season.  I never realized how much I love the color of trees and flowers until all is stripped away during the winter months.  It's almost like I completely forgot what plant life looked like.  I think living in Florida really spoils it all considering it's always green there year-round.  

Within the last month or so I've gotten plugged into a young adults group at a large Presbyterian church across the street.  They do have an English ministry there but I wanted to check out the full scope of things and be submerged, at least somewhat, in a Korean cultural experience.  With the exception of the language and various expressions of their faith, much is the same as in the West.  Although here, church seems to be an all day event, you wake up in the morning, attend service, then at a later service serve in someway, then go to a small group, then after the small group have dinner with your small group ... and that's a pretty standard Sunday in many Korean Christian lives.  Me ... I want to get in and get out to some degree haha!  That just shows my seemingly Western standard of things as far as church goes.  But the people I've met there are fantastic individuals and the ones who speak English do what they can to help me muddle through the translation.  With all that being said I've met some really great friends there who don't seem to be just interested in speaking English or talking to a Western guy but who are genuinely interested in me as a person, which is of course great. 

Ok!  Hopefully I can write more soon!  I realize the last time I wrote was almost two months ago!  I'm a terrible blogger.  Peace to you!

John