Shit Morning

Jenny left Korea this morning. She was one of three people I care about in this whole country. Corey is another, he leaves Friday. That leaves Mel.

Jenny's final hours in Korea were an adventure. Last night we stayed up until 2:30 playing cards, drinking wine and talking. This morning Jenny woke us up at 4 saying she needed to go to the ER 'cause she had a urinary tract infection. Why they deemed it necessary to insert a catheter for a UTI is beyond me. It certainly caused Jenny a great deal of pain. She got some pain killers and antibiotics and we headed for the airport a little late for Jenny's flight.

At this point Jenny is feeling a little better and we are nearing the airport. We are our last bit of fun together singing along with The Flaming Lips. Then Pedro (the van) makes a sudden popping noise.
Jenny asks, "What was that?"
Keith (driving) very matter of factly states, "Pedro died."
Mel from the backseat, "what's going on?"
Keith, "We're coasting."
To make a long story short, the timing belt broke a week before we planned to sell the van. Timing belt replacement is expensive, but Jenny made her flight. To complicate matters, I insisted that we hop on the wrong bus and have one of those public transportation nightmares that make living in another country so much fun.

A round trip ticket from Korea to China is even more expensive than a broken timing belt which is absurd because it is only a two hour flight. So, I likely won't be joining Mel on her China trip in early October.

The Beach

Doekjeok-do was amazing! Definitely the nicest beach we have found in Korea. Beautiful white sand backed by a hundred year old pine grove. Great camping and hammock chilling with a store that had lots of cold beer. I read a book, got a sunburn, and went skinny dipping at night. The nocturnal swimming was extra cool because of the bio-luminescence in the ocean that glowed all around while swimming. Now I am relaxed, but back at work.

Tree riding a bicycle in Seoul. 

Pay Day News

Many of my readers are aware that the school where Mel and I work has been experiencing financial difficulties. Earlier this week all the Korean staff was asked to resign or else they would not be paid the two months wages owed them. The Korean staff happily left, got paid, and many now have new jobs. The boss man also announced that the school will be closing at the end of the month leading to speculation that we would be coming home early. This has since changed. We have been paid and are currently planning to arrive home in mid-October as previously planned.

All of this has the end effect of making the school totally chaotic. We kind of need the Korean staff to run the place since we are just teachers and don't speak much Korean. The student/teacher ratio has doubled along with our work load. Certainly, enrollment will drop at the end of the month when parents re-sign their kids and the future of the school remains very uncertain.

At least we got paid and supposedly they paid our apartment rent.

Disaster Avoided

Car buried in flood debris at Jangsudae near Seoraksan. This was our favorite place to climb and camp in all of Korea.

Three weeks ago we had a long weekend and planned to go climbing in Seoraksan. The forecast looked iffy, a bit of rain and a bit of sun. We decided to hold off our decision for heading until Saturday morning. It was raining and we decided not to go. We thought this was the end of the story, but actually it was the beginning of a story we could have been involved in much more directly.

This past weekend we decided to head back to the same climbing area now that the rains are over and the the flood damaged roads have been repaired. We knew that 15 people had died in the area that that there had been some landslides, but we were not prepared for the magnitude of the destruction. Actually, there was no damage until we reached the valley that was our destination. Apparently just this one valley was hit with an extraordinary amount of rain. I figure about a meter of rain in a matter of a couple of hours. The road was simply gone in a dozen places, the whole river was littered with flood debris, houses had boulders on them. It was totally insane. We slept in a parking lot that was little affected near the climbing area and woke in the morning to a clear picture of the destruction. The car in the picture was 50m from where we usually pitch our tent to camp.

We met some climbers that were there the weekend we planned to go. They were stranded in heavy rain because the road was out in both directions and had to hike out over a mountain because the search and rescue folks showed up and said, "You are climbers, take care of yourself." They had come back to get their cars, because the road had just become passable again the day before. They still seemed shaken up about the incident and did remark that some people they had seen didn't make it.