The explosion of a small city

...and Milyang has gone crazy. It's festival time and, suddenly, the city is full of people and the streets are lined with a wide variety of vendors, from people selling corn on the cob and steamed crab out the back of a truck to others selling things that can't readily be identified (in fact, there was on stall selling something that Laura and I couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be eaten or hung up for decoration). This usually quiet little city is now loud and boisterous, with music groups and fireworks at night, with cultural events both new and old, and with food, food, everywhere. I've walked through the thick of it a few times now, but haven't spent any real time exploring it. Luckily, it only started last night. Tomorrow, Saturday, a group of us foreigners will descend upon this seething throng of festivities and partake in all its glory.

In other news, my school has both a new director and a new Korean teacher. The director, Bryan, has, in just two short weeks, made things far more organized and easy to deal with. I feel far more comfortable bringing things up with him than I did with the owner. So, now, I'm hoping things will shape up financially there. I'm waiting on my next few pay periods to see if things have truly turned around. If, as usual, I get some of my pay on pay day and the rest a week later, then I will know that things still have a long way to go. Bryan claims that he can boost our enrollment from 20 students to 100 students in one month. We'll see. As for the Korean teacher, her name is Ellen (or Song Min-jeong). She teaches at Click school as well (the other school owned by Mr. Chang, across the street from ELC), and she's been around ELC for a month or so now but took over for Cathy this week after Cathy quit to prepare for graduate school. She's easy to work with, very friendly and the kids seem to like her. I'll miss working with Cathy, though. She was all of the above, as well.

Other than that, my past two weeks in Milyang haven't been much of anything. However, the weekends have been really good. Two weeks ago, Laura and I went to Jinju, a city about 3 times the size of Milyang and about 2 hours away by train. It's a really nice place and easily the cleanest Korean city we've seen yet. We saw some great temples, rode in some duck paddle boats (Ori boat, as the Koreans say), saw the end of a wedding between a Korean woman and a foreign man (they were wearing Korean traditional clothing, which was neat to see), enoyed the nature and the city itself and all in all had a great day. Last weekend we went to Haeundae beach in Busan and met up with Mark and Dave for some Indian food and beer on Saturday night. A good time was had by all. On the next day, Laura and I wandered about the beach. Laura got some great pictures, and yet another great day was enjoyed.

This weekend, it is definitely all about the festival. I'll be sure to update on that once it's done. The festival actually lasts a full week, but it's likely that we won't be much involved outside of the weekend.

And now, the news that is most exciting and important to me...

I got accepted to SFU. I'm quite thrilled about that. Anthropology department, here I come! The one thing tempering the excitement right now is the paper hoops they're making Laura jump through to get in. We're pretty certain she's basically been accepted, but they want her to get her past institutions to send in detailed descriptions of all her courses, presumably for transfer credit consideration, but they won't offer her admittance until those are in. It's a pain, for sure, but it's all in the works now and we'll know soon enough.

We're slowly getting things set up for our return to Canada, of which we are getting more and more excited about. We've been thinking of things we need to get here and send home, places we want to see here before we go, and all of that. As well, we've been looking into apartments and thinking about employment upon our return. It's going to be a rather busy 3 months or so, followed by another really busy month at home. It should be rather interesting. I've made my arrangements with my school to stay the extra two months, and they are starting to process the extension on my work visa. I had to sign a second contract, but they are well aware that I will be leaving after two months of it. I've put the idea in their heads as well that Laura and I would be truly happy if we could somehow end up on the same flight together. We'll see if that pans out. It would require the two schools, competitors in a tight market, to work together in setting that up. Despite that, I feel pretty confident about it.

Anyway, I think that catches us up.

Guy