This is the last post!

Just kidding.
I hope that everyone has enjoyed my blog so far. As we reach the new year I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I sincerly hope that all of you have had a great year and I wish that the next year will be even better for you.

I am heading to the Phillipenes, to the island of Bohol, for the holidays with some friends so will be unable to post on my blog for the next two weeks or so.

Check back after the new year for the pictures of my vacation and more great stories of the fun and joy, ha ha, that is life in Korea!

LeChayim!

Ara

First Snow Sokcho

Sunday was the first snow in Sokcho city! We had a proper blizzard as the wind howled and roared and the wet, heavy snow cascaded down from the heavens!

Pictures-

1. I didnt leave my house at all on Sunday because of the weather, I took this picture from my window.

2. Out side my school on Monday morning

3. I dont know how this one got in there but I think I took it in Sorak-san on Saturday

4. Another picture from outside my school

Christmas with the kids

For our Christmas festivities Kirsty and I decided to bring my oven into work and make ornaments for the kids.

Using flour, salt, and water each group of kids made dough that we rolled out with a wine bottle and then, using cookie cutters, cut into shapes.

These pictures are just a few of the many I took of the kids making ornaments.

Pictures-

1. Su-ji and Hyu-young having a blast

2. Hun-ee, yes that is her name, a little bit angry

3. Some of the boys busy making dough

4. Jin-woo and Hu-jin

5. The same two hamming it up for the camera

Last hike with Karen

On Saturday Karen, Helen, Kirsty, and I went out for the last hike that Karen would ever take in Sorak-san.

We started out early, about nine to head into the park. It was a truley nice day. Cold but not bitter with a light wind blowing. A great day for Karens last hike.

We got to the park about ten and immediatly headed out on to the trail. Karen wanted to make it to the first shelter to take some pictures and head back before dark so we had to move pretty fast.

After leaving Kirsty and Helen to explore one of the temples Karen and I turned on the gas and headed up the trail at a quick pace.

Winding our way through the stunted bamboo, a dull brown colour with the coming of winter, we hardley saw any people. The park was pretty deserted, there were almost no other people on the trial.

As we went higher and higher up the trail we began to meet a few people, all Koreans, coming down from the peaks after spending the night in one of the mountain shelters high up on the ridges.

The people we met were friendlier than at any other time in the park. Every person we met was full of good cheer, wishing us hello, good morning, and telling us to have a nice hike. They were full of gifts too, reaching into their packs to give us oranges and nuts.

As we went up in elevation we began to run into the snow that we could see when we first got into the park. At first we could only see it on the peaks and in the saddles of the higher ridges but then we started to see it more at our level. To begin with it was only patchy sections of snow in the shade, where the sun could not melt it on the warmer days, then, just a few meters farther up, it began to cover teh slopes and the trail began to get a little treacherous as the hard packed snow had been churned to a slushy ice by the many feet that had tramped up and down the trail since the last snow.

As we looked up on the sides of the mountains, we were walking through a narrow river valley, we could see frozen waterfalls everywhere around us.

Sorak-san is made of up of limstone, as are most of the mountains in Korea. Limstone itself is a porous stone that holds water and releases it when it becomes to saturated. Becasue of this the mountains of Sorak-san constantly weep water. All through the summer and spring, water flows from the mountains in a constant stream of waterfalls cascading down the sides of the mountains, now with the coming of winter, all of that water that used to flow freely, unencumbered, down the slopes and cliffs has become frozen into streams of ice.

This was the sight that greeted us everywhere we looked, ribbons, sheets, of ice flowing down the mountainsides.

pictures-

1. The four of us, heading up, from the left, Karen, me, Kirsty, and Helen

2. A frozen waterfall

3, 4, and 5. Sorak-san in winter in all of its glory.

bye bye Karen

A good friend and wonderful teacher, Karen Jury, left today for home after six months here.

A great person and a wonderful teacher who we will all miss.

Karen, I wish you all the best in whatever you do the rest of your life. I know that you will always find happiness wherever you go.

Pictures

1. The last dinner with Karen from top left, Kirsty, then clockwise, Karen, Kelsey, Conner, and Helen.

2. Karen and her ride to Seoul.

Kim Ill Sungs place

There is a lot of history here in Sokcho. A little known fact is that the town I live in is actually above the thirty eighth parallel. The 38th parrallel is actually quite famous as the dividing line between North and South Korea, so in reality, I am actually above it.

After the war, when the cease fire line was drawn, North Korea wanted more territory on the west side of the peninsula and, as a trade off, South Korea was given the land that I know call home, Gangwon-do.

So why the little history lesson?

Because the place where I live is incredibly scenic, and until 1953, part of North Korea, the Great Leader, Kim Ill Sung, the leader of North Korea until his untimely death in 1994, had his summer villa just a few miles north of my apartment and this is where I took these pictures.

The great mans villa is a castle like house high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. It was orignally built by an English missonary in the 1930's and was taken over by the "Kimmer" after the Second World War. While he only visited the home a few dozen times before the Korean War, it is now a monument and museum to the trials and tribulations of the North/South conflict.

Pictures

1. The sign says "On this spot in August of 1948 the leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Ill sat with his brothers"

2. The Great Leaders bedroom and some of his belongings

3. The view from the great mans rooftop terrace twoards the ocean

4. Another view from the same spot looking at the mountains.

5. The picture that accompnies the sign in picture one (this is what the arrow at the bottom of picture one is pointing at.

Temple picutres

These are some pictures I took at a Buddhist academy near my house. The buildings, actually the compound is huge, it seems to have no end. It is not old but it is pretty neat to look at. The most amazing thing about this place was that there was virtually no one there. No monks, no students, nothing, just an empty complex devoted to Buddha.

1. A view of one of the main temple buildings through the trees. Even though it looks old the bottom half of the building, which you cannot see in this picture, is a modern, cement, disgrace.

2. A wall panel on one side of a temple in the complex.

3. I really like this picture. I took it from under a walk way looking at the monks dormitory.

4. The bell that beats with the call to prayer.

5. A small flowering maple, red in the fall sun.