Found a Mountain

It's beautiful here.

Eight other friends and I traveled north to Serok San (“san” means “mountain”). It was 2am when we arrived at the youth hostel where we DIDN’T have reservations. Oops. We had found the wrong place! Because it was so late, we were tired and figured—since we’d already woken up these owners—we’d stay. I was told to not bring a sleeping bag, so as we drudged ourselves up to the room. I was too tired to care or think about what we were sleeping on. In the rooms, mats and blankets were folded in the corner. If I haven’t mentioned yet, they don’t use bed sheets here—only thin pads over the mattresses and comforters to use as a blanket. The hostel mats are similar, but slightly thicker and made of a material that allows the heat to easily transfer through. Heating is usually from the floor up—if I remember correctly, hot water pipes run along the floor boards. Alas, we crashed there not knowing our bearings, except that we were close to Serok National Park.

In the morning, we woke to see the top of a 24-hour convenient store in front of us and mountains in the distance. The sky was actually blue. Deciding to put off the waterfalls until the afternoon, we began to hike up the mountain. It started easy and shortly turned into a dirty, rocky, shale climb that finished with an 800 vertical stair-stepper that paralleled the boulders along the mountain side. We all clung to the railings, reminding each other to not look down. Reaching the top was quite stunning and worth the trek. We could see mountains beyond mountains that faded into a cloudy haze.

To be sure, there were many sights of Buddha. The drums were playing in the background--what a statue!

The trip ended beautifully and I have to point out something I discovered back in Daejeon. Along the side of the highways, is a line up of exercise equipment. It’s usually about 4-6 machines and last week I actually saw a woman using them. It made for a good chuckle.

Another first hit me lately, too. I can’t be certain it was the pollution, but I got sick. According to the doctor, I had “tonsilitus”. Interestingly, it was the same sickness he told my coworker she had—yet we had two totally different symptoms. Either way, the prescription drugs came in pack of 5.5—that 0.5 is from the pill they broke in half. I was to take one pack 3x/day. (That comes to 17.5 pills a day!!) When walking out, the lady pointed to one of the white pills and said, “antibiotic”. The other white one she said was “Tylenol”. I looked at her blankly, waiting to hear what the other ones were. She remained undisturbed by my confusion as she showed me a calculator with how much I had to pay. They made me so sleepy I actually nodded off in two of my reading classes. Better now, I may have just needed some sleep.

As far as school goes, we administer “MONTHLY TESTS”. Every test has a scan-tron sheet that covers math, grammar, reading, and science. The writing element is graded by the teacher (me) and is based upon a prompt that the POLY Research and Development Team thought of. For my grade ones (1st), they wrote about what they wanted for their birthday. More interestingly, my grade fours (4th) wrote about what they thought was to be the biggest problem currently affecting the world. Most wrote about global warming, the others wrote on war and I got one concerning the topic of poor people. They did not have the best supporting arguments for global warming--I'm sure they have heard about the problem because of the congestion in their country. The second most common answer was war, which always included North Korea as an example. Overall, the best fictional story came from my grade threes (3rd)—who wrote about what they would do if there was an earthquake. One girl said she’d move to another country, taking clothes and money with her. Then, she would have family move there (with their clothes and money). And lastly, she would get her old neighbors to move to this new country (with their clothes and money too, “of course”). These two groups could then marry and then they could have “a whole new Korea”, just in a different place of the world!

On a more serious note, my PAS7s (7th) wrote about criminal punishment. The prompt was something along the lines of, “Is criminal punishment fitting for the crime?” When reading their replies, for the most part, I was really impressed. One student referenced Les Miserables (great book) by using the example of punishment given to the main character, Jean Valjean, who was caught stealing bread to feed his family. She compared an oppositional situation wherein an individual not only violates the law, but also commits the crime with the intention of doing harm to others. These two crimes should be punished different; one indicates that the intention is a crime in and of itself and the other is the action performed. In alignment with her notion, she talked about having a tier-based punish system (she didn't call it that though). So that the criminal will then get charged on 1) the account of the crime and 2) the account of their intention.

Kind of wild, eh? The dilemma with this, however, would be to discern where the line could be drawn: a criminal may attempt to justify a crime or base it upon their account of “intention”.

Enough of that, I was impressed overall. My little Kinders are doing water-color painting, long vowel sounds and they just went on their second field trip to Body World. I can read Korean and I know simple phrases. I’ve officially missed TWO staff meetings—in a row. (oops!) I discovered an Art Supply store where there is a plethora of paint and design materials.

Other updates – If you haven’t noticed, I died my hair. It’s not purple this time.