Martial Arts

Below are a couple images from Hong's Martial Art Academy. Hong used to be our landlord, but recently sold the building to a new owner, but he's still one of our students' father. I ran into him last weekend and he showed me his academy, full of extremely sharp swords, and a bunch of bamboo practice swords. I can't remember the exact name of the style of fighting now, so that's why I'm just referring to it as a martial art. It's like Taekwondo, with swords. Hong even demonstrated slicing newspaper several times with one of his swords. He said that he can cut through full phone-books.

We have worms

Thankfully the worms are not in our body, but sadly enough they are in our plants... :( Oscar and Clarisse. Oscar was our first 5,000 won plant ($4.47) and Clarisse was our second. You can thank Amanda for their awesome names. Oscar had been doing so well after we first added him to our family, that we decided to get beautiful Clarisse, with her white flowers and all. Unfortunately, they have both been dying over the past week or so. Earlier tonight we found tiny worms in Clarisse, which we think are also poisoning Oscar. So, after dinner at about 9:30, armed with a spoon and a flashlight built into my pocket knife, we set out to re-pot our two plants with some fresh soil. We couldn't find any of the good black stuff, so we just used what was in the ground across the street, which is more of a brown dirt than black soil. Hopefully it does the trick and Oscar and Clarisse survive!

Hiking on an Island

Amanda and I celebrated our 2-year anniversary last Sunday (March 13) and spent the day hiking around the perimeter of Jeo-do Island, south of Masan (about a 1 hour drive from Jinyeong). It was beautiful! The weather was perfect with temps about 60 and not a cloud in the sky. We were accompanied by Kang and Choi and their kids, as well as Choi's parents, who, at about 60 years old were hiking better than any of us! Even as they pass the age of AARP membership they are more fit than I could ever imagine.

The water around the island was nearly crystal clear. We walked paths that Kang guessed had been recently created. These paths are quite narrow, are often obstructed by rocks and boulders, and many times require a great deal of vertical climbing ability on man-made steps made simply of small logs in the dirt. It was great :)

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Old man manually rowing a small blue boat.

Refreshingly clean water in a small bay.

View of the nearby mountains.

View of the mountains, water and lumbering ships.

Kang leading our pack as we trail behind other hikers.

Amanda and I standing in the freezing salt water.

Ms. Photographer unwillingly posing on a rock.

Kang and Choi posing on the beach.

Meeting the locals

Last Sunday I spent a few hours meandering through the old city taking photos, which can be seen in this set. As I stood on the old pedestrian bridge that crosses the now-closed railroad tracks I was passed by 3 teenage kids that excitedly said things like "Hello!" "Hi" and "You are so great!" as they walked by. All of this was nothing new, however, because we are commonly greeted by locals as if we were stars. It can be flattering at times, but sometimes it would just be nice to be able to walk around an not feel like a complete foreigner. Anyway, these 3 boys kept walking and I kept taking photos of the landscape, but once they  reached the other end of the bridge, they must have mustered up enough courage and decided to come back and ask me to take a photo of them. So I said sure, but I will need to back up a little because I have a zoom lens on my camera. They didn't quite understand and looked nervous as I started walking away from them, but were reassured when I turned around and said ok, 1, 2, 3! I showed them the photo and again they said "Oh you are so great!" "You are so good!" And they also gave me an awkward half-hug. They asked where I was from, and new of Minnesota; why I was in Jinyeong; how old I am, etc. They were so eager to ask me questions. I asked where they were going and they told me church, and pointed to the steeple in the distance. At this point it seemed as though they would have stayed and continued asking me questions for for another 30 minutes until service started so I simply said, "Ok, thank you, see you!"