For those on the other side of the pacific

taken at what I believe is "Dangdae Harbor" near Tamna Castle. Pretty wild day, my fingers went numb taking this picture.

New Name for Everything

(View from my window, New Year's Day.)

Our first session has ended here in Jeju, it was only four days but I was sad to see some of the kids go, but we got 24 more new ones today. I finally got to sleep in this morning, the first time I have slept past 7 in Korea! Which was felt really good. Then we took the campers staying between sessions down to the movie theatre in the superstore Lotte Mart the catch phrase for Lotte Mart is "More Than Life" which is pretty sweet. We saw a very weird film called "The Last Godfather" starring Korean star YoungGu a weird Charlie Chaplin, Mr Bean, Ernest blend who is wildly popular here in Korea. Even though the movie was made for Koreans, it was all in English, really horrible english with minimal plot, but English nonetheless.

The sun has still yet to make an appearance here in Jeju, but tonight I am going to make the trek down past the Korean megachurch to see the ocean. Even though I have been going out in Jeju and seeing various things, I dont have much of a sense of how close or far away things are. I know also that I am very close to Mt. Hallasan, the highest point in Korea but because of cloud cover there has only been one day I was able to see the foothills covered in tangerine farms. Tangerines are very big here, they are not like the Floridian variety I grew up with, these have thicker skins and are much sweeter, none of the citrus tang Americans are used to. Speaking of Americans, since food was scarce after the Korean war Americans imported lots of food which has infused itself into staples that the locals consider their own, including Spam which is popularly used in a soup which translates to "Army Base Soup" a meal that any time I am in a restaurant is recommended to me since I am American. Culinarily speaking, this country is astounding, I knew about kimchi and korean bbq, but the soups and breads have been a wonderful surprise. At every meal in the cafeteria there is the option of a spicy salty soup, which if anyone knows me, what more could I ask for? Hope all is well back in the states.

from coffee tree, Jeju Island

This is how my 2011 began (14 hours before yours!) digging in the snow for a very excited Korean man's cross (we found it grandma). If you had told me last year when I was driving down MacDill Ave singing "Party in the USA" at the top of my lungs with Emily Grim I would be here in exactly a year I would have been speechless, here's to 2011 and more surprises.

Jeju island is rapidly turning into one of the coolest experiences of my life, I am astounded by just how purely different it is here. I had pretty much given up on travelling, since I wasnt seeing much of a difference between LA, Boston, DC or Tampa except a few local eccentricities it seemed corporations and the internet had effectively homogenized the entire world. Right now I am sitting in a cafe, a true mom and pop cafe where the owner is trying to give me lessons in Korean from the counter, and making her daughter sit across from me and practice her english. "Espresso make me sad, to learn to english to be flier" was her last sentence, which I roughly translate to, I dont like working in this cafe, I want to learn english to be a flight attendant. I am getting really good at understanding broken english, especially when the subject of the verb is 'cute boy'. My female students seem almost exclusively interested in the cute older boys in the other camp. The girls bring them water at meals, and carry mirrors to constantly adjust their hair, which most American girls would make a tertiary priority when the wind is howling at 30 miles and hour and the slush is flying up off the ground. These girls are driven, at the tender age of 14.



These are my students on new year's day (forgive the quality, it was shot on my phone) playing a game pretty much like a dice throwing game.

I have to go now and write a 45 question test that my boss didnt tell me about until 30 minutes ago.