A Bargeful of Pictures, March and April, Gyeong-ju, Cherry Blossoms, Last Day of Classes

I got a 2GB stick for my camera, so now I've been taking billions of pictures.


Here are some last day of class photos. First one is with me and my Korean mother, Sue, who has been in a few of my classes. She's a great lady. Everyday for class she brings me food because she was a teacher once and knows how hungry we get. Here we are at our favorite restaurant, eating ssambap (not shown, but is on video somewhere.) Afterwards we went to coffee, treated by Ji-Young, shown two pictures down.



This was later that night. I met Jong-min and company for a few or four drinks. They thought I was a brave man, but my boss was in the other wing of this bar and I suddenly became paranoid and nervous. I was a disappointment. Anyhow, the blurry guy, Jongmin, helped me set up the trip to Gyeong-ju. Nice guy. Ernest and strange.

Jongmin, Hye-won, and Ju-hyun, my 7 o'clock am 1B class.

The following were my writing classes. No matter how boring it got, they always came. (By the way, the "peace" sign is not a peace sign, it is a "V" for victory. Koreans are quite competitive folk.)



Both want your bucks, but this one's cheaper:

Here's a random assortment of Gyeong-ju pictures. Gyeong-ju is about 5 hours away from Seoul on bus, and a sort of the tourist-must-go of Korea. This was the first real touristing I've done. I went with some Pagoda teachers, Estella from Indiana and a lot of other places, Amy from I forget where, Eric from NY (along with his boyfriend from Kazakstan, Roman,) Steve from South England, along with Estella's student Claire acting as our half-interested guide. (She's the one kissing the golden pig. I have footage of myself kissing the pig. I have to put it into a video.) The first shot is from the night we rented little motorbikes and terrorized the locals with our blind speed. There are few photos from that because it was hard to steer and take photos at the same time.






Steve and I got existential at a coffee bar while the girls were climbing mountains.



Blurry shot of archetypal "Ajumma." Ajumma means middle-aged woman in Korea. They are referred to as "the third sex."

Burial mound:



Oldest astrological observatory in the Far East:








A few of the fellows that greet you at the Bulguksa Buddhist temple (Sir Steve the Knihilist Knight is to be found in the lower right):











Here's downtown Gyeon-Ju. I stayed an extra night while the everyone else went back to Seoul (they aren't on vacation like I am Ha-ha.)



We stayed at an enduring, mustily magnificent relic of the 70's, the Hotel Concorde. I loved this hotel, from the must to the carpet, to the abandoned discotheque to the abandoned singing room, to the abandoned souvenir shops, to the spider-infested scale model of Bulgaksi temple, including its parking lot. I took a lot of video of it, very few pictures. Someday I'll cobble together a video tribute.

Cherry blossoms were out in full.