Summer is knocking on our doorsteps here in Korea. We´ve had weather in the mid to high 80´s everyday this week. I´m definitely not complaining.
Last week was a tough one, but it ended with a successful Open Class which I was extremely relieved to have finished. Friday night was spent celebrating in Gangnam for Chris´birthday.
Logically, the next Saturday was spent nursing a hangover, followed by a date with Rachel to go see Star Trek. Which, was totally awesome. I loved it.
Sunday morning I got up at the crack of dawn (5:30) to go on an all day DMZ tour with Nate.
We had a lot of fun goofing around and the tour was interesting. I liked hearing about the history from the tour guide quite a bit.
The DMZ itself is this whole strange thing. It even has a slogan….Nature, Culture and Peace, or something like that. They seem to be promoting the area as a future site representing peace between the two countries and want to develop it as some type of wildlife preserve that will be great…in the future sometime. I didn´t really get it.
Instead of being this hardcore experience, it ended up being a pretty relaxed day. We went through the 2d and 3rd tunnels, which were built in the 50s between North Korea and Seoul so that North korea could attempt underground attacks. We watched some weird videos with strange sound tracks. Generally, I thought the day was a bit long and wanted to see some scarier things (You know….at least one North Korea fleeing through the forest…kidding…) but it was worth the trip. They did have binoculars where you could look at a North Korean town, but there wasn´t much to see.
I looked particularly nerdy on this day. Not sure what was happening there.
So, here I am enjoying a day off…on a Thursday! Crazy, huh? It´s Memorial Day and we get a day off which feels surreal. But man is it needed….
June should be a good month. Soon I´ll get paid and then I will be booking my flights around SE Asia and finally my flight back home to Seattle. Crazy stuff. We are also planning to go to Sokcho at the end of the month for a few days. I´m currently spending any free time (and its not much) trying to prep materials for Grad Schools apps and also planning my future trips (Tokyo, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia) which is exciting. I´ve found two M.Ed programs, one in Seattle and one in Austin that seem like they would be a good fit for me and I frequently have restless nights trying to decide which option would be best. I´ll probably have to wait until I come home to make that decision. Any and all opinions welcome on that front.
Bibimbazzled 