Any city whose name doubles as a verb must be cool. Here are some pictures from the past couple of days: 
Chairman Mao buttons for sale in the Dongtai Lu market.
After dinner drinks on the patio at Sasha's.
Rooftops near the Yuyuan Bazaar.
Bridge over a canal in Suzhou, the Venice of the East.
Baskets for sale at a market.
Since the wedding we have had a blast! Yesterday Ronnie's translator and his family took us to dinner at a very nice restaurant. Some of the highlights were the shark-fin soup and watching Mel tear into some of the smallest crabs I have ever eaten. Today we headed about an hour and a half away to Yixing (Navigate to "Teapot Info" for a little reading) which is basically the epicenter of traditional Chinese teapots. I think we saw upwards of 200,000 teapots today. We somehow managed to come home with only a couple. Tonight for dinner we just had to go back for some more street food. We are taking the train to Shanghai in the morning
Mel and Ronnie picking their kebabs from the greatest street vendor this side of Thailand.
Brian Vogt took this shot of Dana and I running Double Drop on the Truss section of the White Salmon in March '05.
Today we went to a Chinese wedding. It was interesting, there were fireworks inside, a smoke machine, bubbles, snow, dry ice, confetti and a soundtrack by Queen. The highlight was getting in a minor fender bender on the way there. Later in the day, Mel and I got foot massages right down the street from the apartment. Our masseurs were two twenty year old kids that had great smiles and were super eager to try out their English. I think they had as much fun as we did and they made us promise to come back tomorrow for the full body experience. For dinner we ate street vendor style from a cart with more vegetables on skewers than I have ever seen. You choose your skewers and they put them of the BBQ. Between four of us we ate about sixty skewers of garlic, 3 kinds of mushrooms, eggplant, green beans, potatoes, huge Anaheim peppers, cauliflower, shrimp, pork and chicken and we didn't even put a dent in their selection. Total cost for the meal including two pitchers of beer was equivalent to seven dollars.
Mel and I made it to China without any trouble, exept that I showed up at the airport and they told me my ticket was cancelled. We got that worked out and the rest was easy. Melanie's dad met us at the airport with his driver and now we are hanging out drinking beer at his really nice apartment.
Graham - That chess move was totally unexpected and really put an end to my master plan!
Right after I bought my plane ticket to China, Epark announced that the school is closing effective today (Friday). Today is my last day of work at this shady, sheisty, terrible, horrible, no-good hogwan. I would be really excited, except we have no idea when or if we will be paid for our services. Tomorrow we are going to China and we will try to get our money when we return to Korea the week after next. In the mean time, we are just going to celebrate the completion of a year in Korea and have a great time in China. I will miss Korea, but definitely not Epark.
NO MORE Epark!
We now have less than three weeks left in Korea! I am so excited to be heading home. In the mean time I thought it could be nice to take a trip to China. I leave on Saturday for 10 days around the Shanghai area with Mel.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ok, So the last couple of weeks have been really wet. We can't get to our favorite climbing area this weekend because everything is flooded. Some areas got 2 ft. of rain in 1 day! This is not the nice rain like Oregon. This is the sticky hot tropical rain. At least it is supposed to be clear this weekend. Back to Insu-bong
I am also really upset that Korean TV does not show the tour. I want to SEE Landis kick ass, not just read about it and watch little half hour blips in Chinese via the internet at 3am two days after the stage. The biggest bonk followed by the biggest comeback perhaps in the whole history of cycling. Simply amazing! A lot can happen in the next two days, but I predict (after predicting then not predicting) that Landis will wear yellow in Paris. That man has mojo, serious motivation and a giant motor.
Also, stoked on ski season. Tentatively, Mel and I are leaning toward Kicking Horse in Golden, BC. It has 4,000+ ft. of vert. (4th only to Jackson, Big Sky, and Whistler) and 4000+ acres of awesome terrain. Plus, weekday passes are around $300US. Think Jackson when they first put in the tram! Mel is stoked on her new tele set up, K2 Schi Devil w/ G3 Targa Roxi and I am excited for my new Garmont EnerG. Finally the 4 buckle tele boot I have been waiting for.
So, yesterday was payday, but we didn't get paid. We are in a pickle. They say we will get paid on Friday and we have no choice but to believe them. We could not show up, but then we will never get paid because they will go bankrupt.
On a more positive note: I rescued a giant dragonfly on the bus yesterday. It was freaking everyone out and people were trying to kill it. I caught the dragonfly and it sat on my hand while I opened the window.
Also: Went climbing on Sunday. Got midway through the 4th pitch of Chiounard A, just above the 10a crux, and it started raining. Neither Corey or I had a rain jacket and we were sloppy wet by the time we got back to the car an hour later. I was bummed to have not finished the climb, but excited to have led the 10a move on gear. Indian dinner tasted really good.
Rick (from Oregon) Belayed by Corey 'Bro' on the Chiounard B (5.8 200m) at Insu-bong.
Oh yeah, bong means rock. 
