Sunday, July 27, 2014

And...we're back

After an unintended hiatus of a couple months we're back to the blogosphere. To account for our absence, we have a whole load of cell phone photos documenting a few of the more fun moments of our summer thus far.

We attended a soccer game at the local stadium with a few friends. The most remarkable part of the experience was not the actual playing, but the fact that an entire section of the stadium was made up of fervent Pohang fans who sang, drummed, and chanted for the duration of the game. Impressive.

Caleb received his first Korean haircut. I was really pushing for the mushroom style from the book we were shown, but he refused.

During the month of June, I filled in for a kindergarten teacher at another school branch. It was exhausting, certainly, but those mischievous little urchins won my heart in the end.  Below are a few of them.
 Picnics in the park. Enough said.


There is a bowling alley a couple blocks from our apartment. Koreans take bowling very seriously and the environment is totally different than those in the U.S. It is a fun, cheap evening though, and one night I miraculously scored 139, about 60 points higher than my usual average. Proof below.

As expected, Korean baseball games also have a different feel than those in America. Attendees are allowed to bring in as much food as they can carry, so we saw people snacking on everything from Krispy Kreme donuts to entire pizzas to ramen noodles. Similar to the soccer game, an entire section of the stadium was comprised of chanting fans that never ceased. In the end, we were disappointed with the quality of baseball playing, (final score: 15-3) but it was fun to experience the American pastime in a new setting.

This photo is entitled, "Caleb the Art Thief."
If you look closely, you can see a painting in his left hand. One of our favorite "games" is to scout the trash people put out on the streets. Our most recent prize is a cheap but sturdily framed Modigliani print. We've both been amazed at how nice it is to have in our space. We're surrounded by rectangular concrete buildings with only occasional exposure to art, and weren't aware of how starved we are for beauty.

Beach afternoon. We don't spend much time on this beach because just out of frame, to the right, is an enormous steel factory jutting into the sea. The threat of pollution is ever-present. But apart from the sand fleas, it did make for a pleasant afternoon.

Over and out.