Well, it appears I've done a horrible job of updating my blog, as expected. Being in Korea has somehow screwed with my grasp of time . . . not that it was a particularly important part of my life before.
Let's see, how can I sum up the past month? I walked a lot, consumed my fair share of Cass and bulgogi, started speaking decent Korean (I actually had an ENTIRE convseration with someone in Korean yesterday!), saw a few mad cow demonstrations, met a couple more groovy foreigners, came up with some awesome lesson plans . . . oh yeah, and I got sick. All of the foreigners I meet here are perpetually sick, and it appears that I can now add my name to the list. Its quite concerning actually. A lot of the blame falls on what is known here as "yellow dust" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dust). Basically it is dust carried to Korea and other parts of Asia from the Mongolian desert. People blame everything on the dust- asthma, colds, headaches, allergies, fatigue, toncilitus, . . . you name it (I should interject here that I have suffered all of the aforementioned ailments in the past two weeks alone). A side note on the last one, toncilitus . . . isn't there a limited number of times you can have tonsilitus before the doc recommends that you have your tonsils removed? Because I *swear* I've had tonsilitus twice a year since I was in high school. But I digress . . .
People are sick. Koreans too, but foreigners more so. And it makes me wonder how large of a role pollution plays in the matter. The province where I live- Gyeonggi-do (and Seoul too for that matter)- is horribly polluted. The smog here surpasses anything I've seen before. . . and the kicker is that the Koreans won't acknowledge it. Admittedly, its hard to decipher how much is from Korea and how much is from China. But regardless, its a BIG problem. And "yellow dust" is a handy little excuse. I could totally go on a rant about the ignorance and naivete of Koreans (the cows aren't crazy, THE KOREANS ARE CRAZY!!), but as I could do the same of Americans, I'll keep my mouth shut . . . for now at least.
In the mean time, check out my Flickr site again. Its http://www.flickr.com/photos/83719566@N00/collections/. I've added a TON of new pictures, including a lot of old ones from Palestine, Utah, etc. There's even a picture of my lovely shaved head . . .
Oh, did you not know about that? :P
Cheers,
Dana
