It hasn’t been real cold here so far. Only a couple of times since January has it dropped below freezing. Still, it’s been cold enough that spring tooks it time in getting here. The last couple of days has been warm and clear and the flora is taking advantage of it. Cherry blossoms are in full bloom and many other trees and plants are blossoming as well.  I think the last time I was here, it was close to the time I was heading back home and I was more concerned with that than experiencing the wonders of spring. I’ve always enjoyed spring and the rebirth of nature from it’s winter sleep. This weekend I hope to get out some and see a little more it. Gyeongju is renowned for its landscaped beauty. A picture of taken in Gyeongju in the fall graces the banner headline of this blog.

If not for the sign attached to the traffic lights informing me I wasn’t allowed to go straight, I most certainly would have. I tell you, the rules we have to put up with here in  Korea are just sometimes too much to bear.

I’ve posted many pictures of climbing at Munsu-san in the past. Take a look at some pictures of the other side of the misty mountain: the temple at Munsu-sa.

I’ve published a gallery of photos of Munsu-sa on my Photos folder

Every neighborhod has one of these. Some old man or woman (I’m not sure which in these photos) comes around with a cart to collect cardboard left at doorsteps of homes and businesses. Koreans generally recycle the hell out of everything. What surprises me, though, is that they’ll come pick this stuff up. I have to haul my own plastic, bottles, cans and glass myself to the nnumerous recycle areas. Moreover, why do they pick it up in such a labor intensive manor by relatively frail folk. Most of them are very old.

I’m guessing that there’s more of a market for cardboard at the recycling collection center and the old ones are just supplmenting their income by taking it directly. It’s always the same kind of cart, never a truck or car. It’s as if there’s some consortium of Cardboard People who all get the tools of the trade from the same place. Sort of a Sam’s Club for box folk.

I don’t make fun of these people. They work hard – for whatever the reason. I just thought it interesting and decided to share with the friends and family who read this blog.

I got an email from my step-niece this weekend. Sam, whom I’ve never met, is a soldier in the middle east somewhere.  Somehow, she’d gotten my email from someone back home who knew I  am in Korea. Apparently, she’d lost her contacts in Korea who were able to send her some of the spicy Ramen noodle soup. I told her I’d send her some and today I shipped out four cases of the stuff to her.  I also sent along a decent pair of stainless steel chopsticks.  It’s cheap stuff, and it costs more to ship than to buy.  I was happy to oblige.

I may be vehemently against the war in there, but I’ve never been anti-troops. Those men and women in the military work hard and do great things.

There’s rarely a need to find a grocery store if you just need some fresh veggies for dinner. It quite common to find old women (an ajumma, pronounced “Ah-zum-MAH”) sitting on a street corner selling them. Sometimes it’s from their own garden, sometimes is from a co-op just so they can round out their offerings.

Since it’s still fairly cold sometimes, they’ll wear a mask like the woman on the right, below. It doubles as a dust protector as in the spring there’s a decent flow of dust that blows in from the Gobi desert in Mongolia.

The ability to sit for hours on a little plastic stool, or worse, on the bare pavement, is a testament to the hardiness of these women.

I’ve seen some of these old women sit for hours on end without making a single won. I really wonder if this is just supplemental income, or this is THE income.

The opposite of Valentines’ Day in Korea, White Day is when boys give gifts to their girlfriends. MyeongHee and I went out and chowed on some tasty seafood last night. The spread before her is typical of most Korean restaurants – one main dish with a couple of million side dishes. That’s a lot of food! We barely put a dent in the Hae Mul Jim, the main course of seafood and veggies.

The day at school was a lot of fun, too. As a male teacher, it’s proper for me to give out candy for White Day to the girls at school, but in the interest of fairness, give it out to all of the kids. I bought a couple of large bags of hard candy and doled it out to each class. Then I spent time teasing the boys about how many girlfriends they have and whether or not they had already kissed them (Ewwww, teacher, NO!)

I have finished rewriting my first novel, Internal Strife. I finished the first draft in June of 2005 and tried valiantly, but unsucessfully to get an agent and publisher for it. No big deal. This is the information age. I spent some additional time honing and polishing the book and want to get some eyeballs front of it.

Very soon I’ll place the novel into my Writing and Prose blog. I’m not really into the money, but giving away several months of hard work for free isn’t something I’m interested in either. I’m working on a method of data protection as well as purchase fulfillment, but I’ll probably put the first chapter or two out there before then as a teaser.

We’ll just see how much interest there is an up-and-coming novelist. Book #2 is already in the works.

Ever since sometime in 2005 I’d come to despise Wal-Mart. Their business practices disgusted me in the way they destroy small towns and family businesses, encouraged their employees to use state medical resources rather than provide decent medical insurance (which means US citizens pay for Wal-Mart employee health care) and treated their Chinese factories like sweat-shops, complete with hamster-size living quarters. I wasn’t dismayed in the least to learn that they’d packed up shop and moved out of Korea. I used to shop there for the western foods I could not get elsewhere in town. But understanding their business model and tactics since then I would refuse to go even if they were still here.

Instead, I went to Daegu in central South Korea where they have a real live honest to goodness Costco with huge amounts of western foods. They don’t have the same horrid business practices as Wal-mart either.

I made the trip to Daegu yesterday and stocked up on all the yummy things a growing boy needs that can’t be found (either easily or cheaply) elsewhere in Korea. I bought oatmeal, granola bars, real cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, beef jerky, V-8 juice, and a pile of other goodies too numerous to mention. Of course, I had to buy in bulk, but that keeps me stocked up on some of these things for months.

I like Korean food and eat it often – at least one of my meals everyday. But sometimes, a man’s just gotta have the kind of stuff that, when consumed and he’s satiated, he can sit back and reminisce about it being “almost” like mom used to make.

I miss you, mom.