so the other weekend annie, andrew, seamus and i heading heading off from gangneong to samcheuck to see a famous korean park. the legend goes that there was this virgin who was engaged to a fisher man. but the night they were to marry he did not come back because of a storm so unstable she threw herself into the sea. the fishing village soon discovered that she was cursing the village and therefore they did what anyone would do. they erected sulptures of giant penises to appease her. of course why didn't i think of that. so now we have this park...this penis park. the whole park is full of penises. broonze, wood, stone. there are penis chairs and penis canons and yes even a 12 foot broonze penis. and the crazy thing about this is that family comes from all over korea to visit. there are pictures of children taking in front of the statues. it's insainity. only in korea.

I know I know I've been horrible and haven't written anything in...well since vietnam. So I guess you can see by my writing a new message that I didn't die coming back from Vietnam or anything of that sort.

Right now I'm back at school in my second week since classes started. Things look pretty much the same as last semester with the same crazy boys and not so helpful co-teachers but what can you do.

Just before classes started again seamus and I went to the DMZ. We figured we were in the area so why not. It's as everyone has described it as and as everyone would think it to be: a piece of land with some barb wire. But even though it wasn't the most exciting attraction it was pretty cool to see. Once. We even got spoiled by some Koreans. After taking a local bus for about an hour we got to the ticket booth only to find out that there wasn't a shuttle bus to the site like we had previously been informed. We were gonna turn back when this Korean couple (who spoke no English) told us we could come with them. They were so sweet. Not only did they drive us up there in their car but they gave us money for the viewers, took pics for us, and drove us all the way back to sokcho. Gotta love the Korean hospitality.

Last weekend I again went up to sokcho. Friday night was jean's birthday party so we all went over to her place and created mii characters, pigged out on food and played wii. Then Frankie and I caught a bus (both for gangneong and then I left her with annie to head on to sokcho) Arriving in sokcho that night was mostly hanging out with friends (the bus was late so I didn't get in till about 11:30). Saturday was the KOTESOL meeting and then everyone went out for lunch and drinks. The next morning seamus, annie and I were gonna go hiking but well...we got lazy so we ordered pizza and went for a walk on the beach. It was a nice relaxing weekend.

Frankie, kim and I are looking into starting some marital arts soon. We might start gumdo (sword fighting). There are 2 places here and now we just need to bribe jean to come translate for us as we look to see if one of them is where we want to go. Kim and I have also started doing some yoga in the mornings so it looks like it's gonna be an active semester which is great cause I'm feeling so lazy being trapped inside by the cold all winter.