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I’m still quite busy with work. Although the new semester’s class workload seems to have settled down, I was offered a project, which I’ve been working on the last several days. I’ve been proofreading a rather long paper written in English by a couple of Chinese students here at the university, a paper about three early-20th century Chinese and Korean writers. I finally finished that today, though I may have to make a few other revisions to it.
The next few days I’ll be working on meeting the new requirements for English teachers to keep their visas (or in applying for new visas). Before, U.S. citizens used to be able to get a notarized criminal background check (cbc) from our home states. The law was changed a while back, so that now we have to get an FBI national cbc. Even though I’ve not been back to the ‘States since I arrived in Yeosu, I still have to get the FBI check. This involves getting a set of fingerprints, which I can do here, and sending those in with an application form to the FBI. They then send it back, at which time someone (the teacher, friends, or relatives) have to hand carry it to a State Department or Justice Department entity to get it notarized. Quite a process and one which I can’t easily do. Luckily, there are a few businesses that will do all the legwork in the U.S.; I’ll be using one of those.
The whole process takes anywhere from 3 to 4 months, and, since I’ll need the paperwork by the middle of August, I’d better complete my end of the procedure this week. I also need to have my diplomas from the University of Montana notarized. Luckily, the U of M offers this service, so I have to contact them for that stage of the process.
I also have to prepare my IRS tax form and send that in soon. Whew! I’m still fairly busy. Although rain is in the forecast for this coming weekend, I’m going to try to get down to the Expo site and shoot some photos of the ongoing progress.
The upshot is “Hang in there” while waiting for more posts on the blog. I’ll get ‘em going sooner or later.
Well, we’re still a few weeks short of the official beginning of Spring, but the weather lately has been Spring-like. So, despite the possibility that I’m jinxing things, I’ve changed the header photos that appear at the top of the blog. I’ve put up the spring and summer photos that I took here in Yeosu and in Morocco several years ago. Here’s hoping that the cold weather and frigid winds are finished for the season.
Also, regular readers of the blog have probably noticed that my previous relatively frenetic posting has reverted back to my habit of several days between posts. No, I haven’t gotten lazy! It’s just that the Spring semester has started and I’ve been quite busy of late. In addition, one of our new teachers had visa problems and he had to make a visa run to Japan for several days. Some of the other teachers, including yours truly, volunteered to cover his classes until he returns, so that’s added to the workload and lack of time. Hopefully, I’ll be posting more often beginning soon. So, please be patient and I’ll have more later.
Well, it’s back to work after the nice vacation. Unfortunately, I’m up to my eyeballs with classes and lesson planning for the next few weeks. After next week, my schedule becomes much more manageable, but until then I’ll probably post only on the weekend. I hope to get a few photos up of my trip to Thailand and Laos, so stay tuned for that. For now, though, I’ve gotta get ready for my early morning classes. More later.
It’s the end of the fall semester, so, as usual, I’ve been busy with final assessments, grading, paperwork, meetings and other duties. But soon, however, I’ll be vacationing in Laos (mainly) to visit with my friend Nai and his family. Korea’s weather is starting to turn wintry cold, so spending some time in a more tropical clime is very appealing, of course.
I’m not going for a long time–just a bit more than a few weeks. My Air China flight to Bangkok leaves next Monday around noon, and I’ll be back in Yeosu on January 5th. I got a pretty good price on the flight about a month and a half ago, but that price came with some long layover times in Beijing, five or so hours going and more than seven hours coming back. Going to Bangkok will be the worst leg of the trip. I’ll be leaving Yeosu on the 11 p.m. bus to Incheon Airport, which arrives around 4:30 in the morning. Since my flight doesn’t take off until around noon, I’ll have a long wait. Incheon, however, is one of the top rated airports in the world, so I don’t mind hanging around there for that amount of time. Then, I go to Beijing and have a wait of about 5 hours until I go to Bangkok. I don’t arrive in the “City of Angels” until around midnight. From there, I’ll take a taxi to my hotel, probably not getting to sleep until 2 a.m. A long day, indeed.
After goofing around in Bangkok for an all-too-short while, I’ll take the overnight train to Nongkhai on the evening of the 21st, arriving there the next day around 8:30 in the morning. I’ll spend a few days in Nongkhai with Nai, then we’ll cross the Friendship Bridge into Laos, and . . . hmmm, not really sure. We might head up to Vang Vieng or Luang Prabang, or we might decide to stay at his family residence for Christmas and New Year. Christmas in a Buddhist, Communist country–an interesting place to spend the holidays, to say the least.
Finally, after whatever adventures and strange situations that occur in Laos, I’ll take the train back to Bangkok and take a flight back to Incheon on the 4th of January, including another long layover in Beijing. Such is the cost of cheap airline tickets.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep you posted about the trip, so stay tuned for more later.
Once every semester, our special English class (Vision English) students and teachers go on a field trip to various attractions around Yeosu. (Here’s a previous post about the field trip.) We were supposed to take the trip today, but it was postponed until next Saturday because rain was in the forecast; we were told of the postponement a few nights ago.
Everyone was disappointed, because we, the students and teachers, had been working all week on oral presentations that the students have to give at each site. Not that the work was wasted, but everyone was rarin’ to go.
As soon as I found out about the change of plans, I looked at the Korean Meteorological website. Sure enough, they were predicting from one to two inches of rain on Saturday. In the back of my mind, I wondered how accurate the prediction was, since the KMA seems, more often than not, to be unerringly inaccurate with their forecasts. I also noticed that they were calling for an 80-90% chance of rain in the early hours of the morning, with a smaller and smaller chance of rain as the day progressed, finally petering out around noon. In the back of my mind, I thought that we could probably have the field trip after all.
Sure enough, we got just over an inch and a half between midnight and 6 a.m., when it stopped raining. It’s now right around 10 a.m, the time when the field trip would have begun. Guess what? We’ve got beautiful blue skies and lots of sunshine, with absolutely no rain in sight. It figures. Hopefully, there’s no rain in the forecast next Saturday.
Here are a few more photos from my recent trip to Laos and Thailand. This is one of my favorite views of Bangkok, looking into the Silom area and taken from the statue of King Rama VI in Lumphini Park. I probably should have tried to take a panoramic shot to give a better sense of the beautiful skyline that surrounds the park, but this small sample will have to suffice for now. Maybe next time.
After a few days in Bangkok, it was on to Phuket and Patong Beach. We spent a week there, lazing away the days on the beach while getting a sunburn and enjoying the nightlife. I’m always tempted to try the para gliding offered at the beach, but the price seems too steep (about $20) for the short ride (about 2 1/2 minutes). It’s kind of fun, though, to watch people taking off and landing.
The beach is usually crowded, but it’s not too bad to sit under an umbrella and read a book or “people watch.” You can’t see the lifeguard station in this shot, but at least one or two people had to be rescued every day due to the strong undercurrent in this area. The guards kept warning people out of the restricted area, but there were always a few people who ignored the warnings or accidentally strayed into the red zone. Fortunately, no one drowned.
Near day’s end.
Ok, that wraps up my vacation shots. I’ll try to get some Yeosu photos up soon, although this week sees the beginning of a 3-week kids’ camp and next week marks the start of a week long camp for children of faculty members, so I’ll be quite a bit busier than I have been.
I arrived back in Yeosu yesterday afternoon, tired after a nice vacation, but ready to settle back into the daily routine of work, which begins again tomorrow. The flight back from Bangkok took off in a steady rain at 11:20 Friday night, and landed in a very dense fog at Incheon airport around 6:30 Saturday morning. I hopped on the bus to Yeosu, via Gwangju, at 8 and got back to my apartment at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. I can never sleep on airplanes or buses, so, like I said, I was pretty tired and, to some extent, still am. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation. 
I’ve got some photos that I’ll post soon, and I’ll start processing some of them this afternoon while I’m peeling off skin from my legs that got sunburned on Patong Beach on Phuket Island. Though it’s rainy season in that part of the world, there was still plenty of sunshine. I’ll try to give a full trip report with the photos, so I better get started on that, and, as always, more later.
No, I haven’t forgotten about posting or been too lazy to do so, but we’re beginning the final part of the spring semester, which means assessments and lots of paperwork. I’ll try to get something posted soon, but I’m making no guarantees. I’ve got lots of photos just begging to be put here, so I hope to get some up before I leave for Thailand and Laos on June 11th. Stay tuned.
It’s that time of the semester again, when the Intensive English students and teachers go on a field trip to tour some of the attractions in Yeosu as part of the English course. We’ve had two of these events in the past, about which I’ve written here (in 2009) and here (in 2010). Both of the previous trips were taken in the fall, but because of the revamped Intensive program, we’re taking trips in both the spring and fall this year.
The fall trip should present no weather problems, but late May is starting to get close to the rainy season. It’s been rainy and misty all day today (Friday) and the forecast is calling for showers tomorrow, with heavier rainfall after 6 p.m. We should be finished with the trip by then, but KMA forecasts have proven to be wrong in the past. Hopefully, we won’t get soaked.
Of course, I’ll try to get some good photos and get them posted here in a timely fashion.  (Rolling eyes, looking at watch, waiting . . . waiting) More later–eventually.
It’s kind of holiday “season” here in Yeosu. From May 5th through June 9th, there are four holidays, all of them on weekdays, so no work on those days. Unfortunately, we have to make up the classes that we miss because of those days off, a demand by the university that irks me to no end, as I’ve mentioned before. Some of the new teachers this semester said that it’s the first education institution that they’ve worked at in Korea that demands that holiday classes be made up. Our contracts state that we get all national and university holidays off, but that’s a bit of a half-truth if we have to do the classes at another time. It’s kind of like your boss telling you “No, you don’t have to work on Thanksgiving Day, but you have to come in on Sunday to make up for it.” Sheesh. Not much I can do about it though–grin and bear it.
May 5th was Children’s Day, today is the celebration of Buddha’s Birthday, and June 6th is Memorial Day. In addition, June 9th is the Founding Day of the university, so classes are also called off for that event. Buddha’s Birthday is celebrated on the 10th in many East Asian countries and it’s celebrated on the 17th in some others, to coincide with the full moon.
For the last two or three weeks, all of the temples here have been gaily decorated with colorful paper lanterns. If you didn’t know where the temples were located, you’d know their presence by the lanterns.
It’s been overcast and a bit rainy today, but between the sprinkles, I took a short walk down the road below the dormitories to a small temple, about 15 minutes away. I assumed there would be some events and ceremonies going on, and there were. Lots of people were present in the main temple–gentlemen dressed in suits and sporting flowers in their lapels, ladies wearing their finery and suited ushers showing people in. I would like to have shot some photos of the temple, but it would have been totally inappropriate for me to try to do so. Therefore, I contented myself with taking a few shots of the small grounds outside the temple.
There either was already or there was going to be a parade, and this dragon float looked ready to roll.
He had a friend to accompany him, in the form of this tiger.
Here’s a shot of the outside of the main temple, where the ceremony was being held. I could hear the chanting of the monks and the clanging of gongs, and I really wanted to go in. Not this time, though.
The paper lanterns are quite beautiful and I love the details on some of them. Here are four for your viewing pleasure.
I was also out and about on Children’s Day and got a number of photos of the Turtle Ship Festival that is always held at the same time. I’ll put some of those up in the next post. More later.
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