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. 
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
