Korea Life Blog - Friday Night

It's almost 2:00 AM. I'm hanging out here at my apartment with Julie. We just got done eating Pelicana fried chicken and now she's watching Resident Evil on the Super Action channel. I took some time to write up the next section of Geoje-do part 6. Hope you enjoy it.


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written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Curtain Call

Well, this is it, the last post on my blog. It's been a lot of fun but it's too much work for little in return. I have decided as well to take it offline tomorrow and it won't be back. Re-read your favorite parts while you can. Thanks for the memories and so long.


-------------------- April Fool's Day

Guess I wasn't fooling anybody anyway, hehehe. Thanks for the outpouring of grief everyone. I feel more and more guilty not updating more often, but I've been addicted to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. The good news is I'm almost through the game and won't be starting a new one any time soon. I get crazy and obsessed with every game, especially RPGs. I wonder how many guys in Korea have lost girlfriends to Diablo 2 and Star Craft. Luckily Julie is somewhat patient...

Speaking of Julie I got her on a joke. Around 4PM I sent her a text message: "Sorry, I can't keep it a secret anymore. I'm gay. I'm sorry to hurt you."

Now I didn't think she would fall for that, but she did. She freaked out, almost crying in front of her Kindergarten kids and calling me up yelling, "WHAT! Why? Why didn't you tell me this before?" It was pretty funny, I thought...yet it's a little worrisome how easily she believed me...I'd better throw away my flowery pink blanket. (The exact link is broken but you can see it somewhere on this page.)


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written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - Cats Update

It's funny how animals, much like humans, pick a spot and settle there. It's been almost a year and all the same cats still live out behind my apartment building. You'd think with all the freedom they have to roam, they'd search out a better spot than this. But for some reason they love this building, this small area. Between me feeding them and the other sources of food such as restaurant garbage, they have plenty to eat and they also have shelter. I guess that's all a cat needs and there's no reason to move on.



Now that the weather is getting warmer, at almost any time I look outside, one or two are hanging out. When I leave here, I will really miss this. Here's the "kitten" now grown up already and I'm pretty sure pregnant. She's got a quirky personality and the cutest meow of the bunch. Whenever she sees me at the window she meows for 5 minutes until I go outside and feed her. She used to run away. Then slowly over the months she got more comfortable and nowadays she rolls all over affectionately, letting me pet her. She used to gobble the food right down as soon as I set it out. Now she seems more interested in getting pet.



Fat Cat. He loves lounging around in the sun. He also loves being pet and rolling all over in the dirt. What a simple life. The oddball is still living with the orange cat family.

Today I felt a little bad. I only had hard dog food to give them. They've grown to accustomed to it but I usually top it off with a can of tuna or some decent leftovers. Without anything else, I fried up a big omelot. I'm not sure how much they liked it. At first they took a few bites and then laid down by my feet. I'm sure it'll be all gone later, though.

I'm surprised my neighbors haven't complained yet. However, everyone besides me goes to work early and comes home late. I'm the only one in the building during the day. The cats are usually quiet and not around later at night so most of my neighbors probably don't even know they exist.


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written by shawn matthews    -|link

Korea Life Blog - A Walk in the Country

Saturday afternoon the spring weather was perfect. Julie and I decided to take a walk through the countryside behind my home. We started by walking up behind the small university and came to the top of the hill overlooking a wide valley. Julie commented about how "messy" Korea is. Down in the valley: miscellaneous factories with bright blue roofs, a couple of old apartment buildings here and there, a restaurant, a small farm, a school. It seems they just pick a spot and build whatever at random without no thought of organization or aesthetics.

For some reason there was a fence around the university preventing people from walking down into the valley. However we found a way over it and headed down the hills through the woods.



We came across this secluded graveyard. A nice place to spend eternity, I guess...if you don't mind the ceaseless rumblings of the many factories down to the left. I wondered how they carry the bodies up here. There's no real path either way and the one that is there comes out into someone's backyard which you have to jump down a bit to get to. The other way leads back to the fenced university or down steeply into a heavily wooded valley. It's hard to imagine a funeral procession anyway you look at it.



While not sure, Julie, smart as she is, surmised this graveyard to be of a wealthy family with each generation buried further down the hill. At the top would be the great, great grandparents, then their children on the next level, etc. I wondered, as smart as I am, if these were all the victims of the hwasung city murders. Let's get out of here! Looking back, maybe we should have just read the tombstones and found out...

We continued down until we came to the road, the only choice we had. We spent the rest of the walk trying not to get hit by cars, breathing in dirt, and looking at endless garbage lining the side of the road.



At first I was excited to see these deer. I hadn't seen one since back in New York. Then the site broke my heart. These deer are being used for their antlers which are ground up and used in some kind of traditional medicine. It's hard to see in the picture but every deer's antlers have been sawed down to small stumps. I imagine the deer just sit here year after year having their antlers removed and making babies. I wanted to run down and cut open the fence. Oh well, I sighed. Such is the cruelty of man. At least they have a little room to run around and enough to eat. They probably wouldn't survive in the countryside around here anyway.



This has to be the most pathetic "supermarket" I have ever seen. Julie and I couldn't stop laughing. I'm not sure if it's open for business but judging from the mop there, someone has been cleaning up recently. Maybe that someone lives here too. What a life!

Later we came to a small lake. I didn't take a picture because it was depressing. It was literally full of garbage. The shore was cluttered with every kind of bottle, can and packaging you can imagine. I reflected on what modernization is doing to our world and how sad it is. We can send high-tech vehicles to Mars, yet we can't make biodegradable containers? Julie said that if she were the earth, she would think humans were cancer and want to kill them all. I agreed the world has too many people, even out here in the country side there were people and cars and garbage everywhere. Everything is dirty wherever you go. I remember sitting on one the beaches in Geoje-do and feeling so sad looking at the mounds of garbage washed in all over the shore.

Why don't we teach kids things like don't litter rather than x-y=28371? Looking around, I got the idea there should be declared "national clean-up day" in Korea in which all classes are cancelled and every student is required to pick up at least one bag worth of garbage from the environment. Of course everyone else would be encouraged as well. I'd love to participate in such an event, wouldn't you?


Eventually we made it to the dubu place we took a taxi to before. Just click on the link; we had exactly the same delicious meal again.


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written by shawn matthews    -|link