Beavers win College World Series!!!

I can hardly believe that Oregon State won a National Championship for baseball. How exciting is that? I have to go to the PC-Bang and stream ESPN to watch the games. This morning Mel and I were nearly kicked out because I was cheering so loud. It was a really stressful game to watch, and frankly I am a bit surprised that we won. Heck, I was really surprised that we came back and won game two against UNC. And golly, I was even more surprised that we won four straight in the losers bracket to qualify in the first place!

On an unrelated note: The weather here is rainy, but I did get out to climb just a tiny bit last weekend. After staying up until sunrise to watch Korea be eliminated by the Swiss, Corey and I made an evening trip to Insubong and climbed after the crowds thinned out. We did the fun pitches of the Chouinard B route and rapped as the light faded.

Beavers in the College World Series!

Really cool that the Beavs shut out Rice twice to qualify for the College World Series. Way to come out of the losers bracket! This just means that I have one more sporting event to get up and watch early as hell in the morning.

Online Photo Album

I have been debating on starting an online photo album for quite some time. I finally took the plunge.

Check it out....

http://picasaweb.google.com/pearen

40 Hour Birthday

Exciting News! We just got our plane tickets home. I get the wonderful birthday present of arriving home on my birthday. We leave here at 1:50pm Sat., Oct. 14 and arrive in Eugene at exactly the same time!

The New and The Old

I awoke at 5:30 this morning to the sound of thousands of people cheering as Korea scored it's equalizer against France in the world cup. This draw was a big result for Korea and gives them a chance to get into the round of 16. While being rousted from bed at such an early hour was amazing, it was nothing compared to the fanaticism a week ago when Korea beat Togo. They also went nuts when Australia came back spectacularly to beat Japan (they hate Japan). On the American side of the coin, we can make it through the "Group of Death" if we beat Ghana and Italy beats the Czech Republic on Thursday.

This past weekend Mel, Corey "Bro", and I ventured to Seoraksan to hike our new favorite trail and climb at a crag we recently found out about. The hike was great and the new crag is awesome. Best climbing we have found yet in Korea. Two beautiful golden granite walls soaring 2000' out of a steep creek. While climbing we ran into an older Korean who was missing all the toes from his left foot, his two biggest toes from his right, and bits and pieces of his hands. His name is Um Hong Gil. At work today I have been doing a bit of research on this legendary (for a variety of reasons) climber. He is the 9th person to climb all 14, 8,000 meter peaks (this is still disputed due to lack of evidence). It seems that throughout his career an extraordinary number of his climbing partners have died (even for a high altitude climber of his experience) and he may be partially responsible for the rift between the N. American and E. Asian climbing communities. It has been interesting to climb here and view the climbing culture (along with the Japanese) that has such a reputation on the world stage for a lack of safety.

4 Months Left....In two days

We had a rainy weekend here in Seoul. All of our guests have gone home and life is back to the same old routine. We have been eating and drinking really well! We ate great Mexican all week. Graham and Greta brought black beans and we found some cilantro and avocado here. The avocados are more expensive than Alaska, which I did not believe possible. As far as the drinking goes, our numerous guests brought us homebrew beer and Oregon/California wine. Everything has been off-the-chart great. We savored a wonderful bottle of Jaz & Lou's homemade port last night!

Saturday morning we left for climbing, but shortly were sitting in traffic in the pouring rain. Thinking sucky depressed thoughts we turned our attention toward a wild goose chase. When we were at the tea plantation in Boseong with Josh and Ashley we found an incredible tea set for way too much money. On Saturday we hoped to find the creator of the wonderful tea set and a similar set for way cheaper. After an amazingly quick search we found the creator, but no tea sets. Our consolation was an incredible 15 piece bowl set for about $45. The creator is going to call us when he makes more tea sets!

Also, Watch World Cup Football! The rest of the world goes nuts for football and Americans pretend it's called soccer.