Before I take you on last weekend's dinner trip, though, I want to show you a cool art project one of the students at our school did. I was walking through the library on my way to my classroom one morning when I saw her sitting there with it. They create it by making a drawing, then hammering in little nails at strategic points on the drawing, then wrapping one continuous black thread between the nails. I talked to the art teacher later and she told me they've been working on these all term and it takes many hours, as I can well imagine. The effect is super cool though and the student was nice enough to let me take some pictures (I should have found out her name to give her credit):
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The book is "Spook Country" by William Gibson, Gibson being one of the founders of the Cyber-Punk genre in which Neal Stephenson got his start and which Dave Steffen introduced me to many years ago. Spook Country is the second in a recent trilogy of which I haven't read the first yet but I have the third, "Zero History" ready to go when I finish this one. They're both borrowed from my friend Eric here. I've had to interrupt this one a couple times though to read some Carl Hiaasen books and now a Margaret Atwood which came in in electronic form for me from the Denver Public Library. When you put those on hold you have to drop whatever else you're reading when they show up because they have a limited life span before they get automatically returned for you. |
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| My second dinner that evening was at a sushi place I'd heard about and finally found in a different part of gu (more in the Cheongra-dong area I'm used to going to). The plate shown above was one of two that came with a standard combo order costing about 12,000 Won, or around $10, which seems pretty good to me! I'll go back there again! |
Last week we only had students for 3 of the 5 days. Monday was a PD (professional development) day, also known as an In-Service day, same as we had in DPS. We had meetings and trainings. Friday was Parent-Teacher conferences. We used Google's "You Can Book Me" app which ties in to Google Calendar (this school is a Google Shop if I haven't mentioned that before, and now we're all tasked with getting our Google for Education Level 1 Certification before March something - word to the wise for colleagues who might be applying for overseas - or even domestic - jobs in the future) for parents to sign up between 9 and 4 on Friday. I only had 7 parents sign up to see me in the 15 minute slots, which was fine as I was able to get a lot of work done. Compare that to the ten minute slots we had at DSA where I'd been booked solid for 8 straight hours (6 x 8 = 48 conferences). Much more relaxed here! On Thursday we had an earthquake drill. I think this is new. There were a couple of earthquakes in the south part of the country last month (some around here claimed to have felt them though I didn't). Earthquakes are historically rare in Korea but we're being prepared. I didn't actually have a class during the time of the drill but I decided to participate anyway, partly for fun and partly because I didn't know if I was supposed to. So we were supposed to instruct the kids to get down on hands and knees, cover the back of the head/neck with one arm, crawl under a table or desk, hold on and wait for the 'shaking' to stop (which we supposedly timed at about 2 minutes). After that we all went out and assembled on the soccer field and took attendance etc.. as per a fire drill so the main difference was with an earthquake you don't exit the building immediately. Glad someone is thinking about these things just in case! Teachers were supposed to take a picture of their class under the desks so I took a selfie of myself under one of my lab tables just in case I was asked for it and because I didn't want some Admin walking by and catching me working at my desk during the drill.
Okay, catching up now (almost) to this weekend! I think I've mentioned in the past how I'm somewhat fascinated by the tides and the sea and so far I've been unable to actually reach the water and when I've gotten close to the 'shore' it's been nothing but a kilometer of mud flat between me and the water. So I've kept my eye on the tide tables and we recently had a high tide in the evening around sunset and I'd just heard from a colleague about a restaurant/lounge on the 24th floor of one of those funky architectural buildings I'd photographed on an earlier expedition (walking, that one was, before I'd gotten Blackie) which I didn't know was there and I had a little time on my hands that evening (it was Thursday eve, the night before the P-T conferences, so no classes to prepare for) so I decided to head out on my first trip back there (much quicker by bike!) since my first visit and have a drink in the lounge and read my book and enjoy the sunset and see what the area looked like at high tide rather than low. My planning was perfect in every way except that I'd forgotten my wallet (which I don't usually carry unless I'm going out, and in this case I had lots of other things to organize such as my pumpkin-colored poly-pro hoodie, from Reid, because it's finally getting cool here sometimes, and my bike lights and my book and a water bottle, and my seeing glasses - not my sunglasses - which I haven't used since I got here since I watch t.v. now on my computer at a distance of about a foot where I can easily focus, so I can actually see some detail at a distance, and my biking gloves and my new biking pants-cuffs I bought the other night to keep my long pants from getting caught in the gears - should have brought my little metal clips from home! - which I hadn't needed before because it's always been a warm day when I've been biking and I was alwats wearing shorts previously. Oh, and don't forget my phone/camera to take pictures!) Long story short, again, I had everything I needed for the perfect relaxed evening out except my wallet to buy a drink when I got there. Luckily I had remembered to put two cold cans of Asahi beer (on sale for 9,500 Won for six 350 ml cans at Home Plus) in my backpack so I was able to enjoy those as I took in the sights from the observation deck which you will see below:
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| If you go back to an earlier post you can see a picture of the building I'm at the top of here. It's a weird lopsided looking thing. This is looking west (obviously) at sunset and you can see the bridge to the Incheon airport island at top left and the locks which connect the canal to the sea on the upper right. It was cool to see the ocean water rushing into the canal through the open locks and I enjoyed thinking about how that would replenish the water in the canal (which runs eastward from here, behind me, all the the way to the Han river) so they can use that water to run the locks when the tide is out. |
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| This is a view to the southeast, past my school (which is just behind the still-under-construction highway you see at the top of the picture) and toward downtown Cheongna, also known as Cheongra-dong according to Google maps At the extreme top left of the picture you can see the beginning of the ridge of hills/mountains which continues north (left) from there and separates us from the Seoul area proper except where the canal (now at my back) goes through - past "Sometimes Falls". I went to the top of the highest of those peaks yesterday but that, as they say, is a story for another time. |
