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A Few More Photos

I’ve been walking quite a bit on weekends around the city and have taken some more photos, a few of which are shown below for your perusal. The nights have become rather chilly, but daytime is still pleasantly mild. Early morning jogging requires at least half an hour before I can work up a sweat. Winter is just around the corner, but luckily, this area receives no snow, I’m told.

Here’s a photo of a church just outside of campus, nestled in the trees below a mountain. As far as I can tell, Korea’s Christian population is split between Catholics and Evangelicals, and, of course, there are the occasional Mormon missionaries bicycling around town. Hopefully, I’ll get to some of the Buddhist temples soon.

Yeosu_Church1

Here’s a shot of some of the fall foliage spicing up the campus. This was taken just up the hill from the dormitory where I live.

Yeosu_Mountain3

I hiked down to one of the harbors a few weekends ago and caught these scenes. The first one is of the famous Dolsan bridge, leading to the island of Dolsan. There are many nighttime photos of it, when it’s structure is highlighted by multi-colored lighting. That’s one of my assignments–getting some night shots of the area. That might have to wait until the weather gets warm again.

Dolsan_Bridge1

This is a view of the harbor looking away from the bridge.

Yeosu_Harbor4

Though there doesn’t seem to be much cargo ship traffic in this section of Yeosu, there is plenty of activity, including tour boats, ferries, fishing boats and this ship-building yard.

Boat_Building1

Nai tells me that Laos is getting hit hard by the weather systems that have {{link http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36293520081103 inundated Vietnam}}, with heavy rains and thunderstorms dominating their weather the last several days. I doubt, however, it is enough to cause the Mekong to flood again. More later.

Related posts:

  1. Jasan Park To continue, somewhat belatedly, from my prior post, I was at the top of the hill where Jasan Park is situated, near Odong Island. Here’s a view of one of...
  2. The Admiral and the Busy Port In a previous post titled Boats and Churches, I made reference to Yeosu’s historic past with a photo of a turtle ship replica. High atop Jasan Park overlooking Odongdo Island...
  3. New Dolsan Bridge and Hamel Light Continuing from the previous post, I walked down out of the park and toward the harbor, to the new Jongpo Ocean Park Walkway, also being built for Expo 2012. At...

Over the Edge of the Cliff

Oops, it’s been another long break between posts, so there are lots of events I could comment on. However, I’ll try to keep from going overboard with the length of this post.

First of all, bye-bye Boston. To paraphrase OGM’s latest comment, “Bring on golf.” (Yeah, yeah, I know–at least you were in the playoffs. Wait ’til next year!) Congrats, though, to the Tampa Bay Rays for a highly improbable season. Naturally, I’ll be rooting for them in the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, since I can’t stand the National League.

The precipitous decline of the won vs. the U.S. dollar seems to reflect the current economic situation in the financial markets. When I signed my contract to work here, the value was about 1030 won to the dollar. Now, it’s plummeted to 1322. (Several days ago it was 1450.) That drop has effectively cut my wages by close to $500 per month. Not good, obviously. I can only hope the bottom of the cliff off which the won has fallen is getting closer. I’ll have to keep my eye on the currency market, because it is very volatile, so that if the won strengthens all of a sudden, I’ll transfer some money back to my stateside account.

In addition, a couple of Nai’s family members have been in the hospital recently. His mother had been ill for a couple of weeks and his sister’s year-old daughter was suffering from chronic diarrhea. I sent him some extra money to help out, but it really cut into my cash reserves. Oh, well, there’s not much I can do about that–I’m certainly not going to let them wither away without trying to help.

The first 7-week session of the semester has seemed to fly by. We’re off until the 27th, so I hope to do some more hiking, and I want to (finally) visit a few of the beaches. Fall is kicking in and the weather is becoming crisp, with most of the trees beginning to show off their fall colors. It’s not as spectacular as New England, for example, but the change is eye-catching nonetheless. Below are some photos I took on a recent hike to one of the higher mountains. The trail-builders didn’t seem to know about switch backs because there were ropes strung up the side of the very steep trail to help folks get to the top. Quite a hike, but worth it.

It was a hazy day, but I did manage to get a few decent shots. Here’s one of nearby mountains from the summit.

Yeosu_Mountain1

Here’s another shot from the summit, looking down toward the university. The brown buildings in the center are some of the university buildings, and the white buildings at the right hand side are the dormitories, one of which I live in.

Yeosu_Skyline11

There are many traditional burial mounds up in the hills, but here is a type I hadn’t seen before–a mausoleum of sorts. It was about 30 minutes into the hike when I spotted it.

Mausoleum1

Related posts:

  1. In Yeosu First, I’ve posted some photos at the bottom of the previous entry, showing some of the flood waters from the Mekong in Laos and Thailand. Scroll down to take a...
  2. Out and About Except for quite a bit of haze, it was a beautiful day in Yeosu, so I took the motorbike out for one of my infrequent rides, another one along the...
  3. This ‘n That Today’s weather in Yeosu felt a lot like early autumn in Montana. The wind was blustery, threatening to strip the trees of their early fall foliage, there was a slight...