The Hiatus.

Well my dear friends, I have returned to my blog. I feel almost bad when I realize that I have left many of you hanging about my life. Well the time has come fore me to resume my duties. The appropriate question to ask at this point would probably be, "Will just what have you done these past three weeks?" Well, I've been working a lot. Ok, so maybe that is an insane oversimplification but in reality it is what I've done primarily the past three weeks.

The primary means of work that I've been engaged in during the past two weeks was an epic, yet exhausting Winter English Camp. This camp, was far more fun, and far more work then I ever expected. It was definitely worth the time and effort I had to put into it. It was also probably worth the new pair of glasses it cost me, to go along with the sprained ankle and black eye. Those two stories do fall under the realm of embarrassing and I know that I cannot get away without telling them.

The sprained ankle story is quite simple really. I was being a gentlemen, albeit a little drunk gentlemen and walking one of my co-teachers back from a camp dinner to her apartment. On my way back to the camp festivities I was walking down a dark road here in Seosan and thought the pavement was about six inches higher then it truly was. Needless to say I rolled my ankle pretty good, and well more or less sprained the thing. It got all nice and swollen and I had a few spots that turned the color of purple on me. Fun Fun huh.

Now the black eye, that story is far more hilarious, and happened a simple twelve hours after trying to break my ankle while walking. Our camp went to this local sledding place on a field trip. Now I had managed to avoid going down the ice hill for most the time we were there, but the kids, and my fellow co-teachers *coughs* Brenden, David, and Henry decided that we must go down the hill. This turned out to be a bad idea for me. The retaining wall was a mere 100 feet past the base of a hill that was pure ice, not snow. Needless to say when a guy my size gets going down this thing he gets some major momentum by the time he finds the bottom of the hill. What made the speed even worse was that I was going to hit the padded retaining wall shoulder first. Now this wall had some nice padding, if you are an 80 pound kid. When you weigh 245 and are hurtling sideways at this thing, you start to consider your options. My options were to hit the wall and screw up my back, or bail. I chose to bail. As I bailed, Brenden tells this story far better, I hit the ice pretty hard with my head. According to the eye witness reports apparently I rolled three times, nearly took out one of the workers there, and then got run over by David. During this process I managed to bend my glasses and knock out a lens. I put the lens back in but could not get the bend out of the frame. Hello new glasses.

The camp was a success though, even with lots of confusion and tireless hours. I did fulfill one of my goals during my camp. I ate live wriggling octopus. It was pretty good. Very chewy, but pretty good. Now that I've scratched that weird food off my list I can move onto the dog meat. Old Yeller here I come, anybody have any BBQ sauce? I just started my Winter camp at my school, and I'm doing a butt kicking job at teaching phonics to six students. Boo to the Yah!

In other news, the Lunar New Year has come and gone in Korea. Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday of the year in Korea, and I must say that we partied like it. The weekend started off great with me meeting a new friend named Jin Sook. She is 27 and a English teacher at a hagwon here in Seosan. We met last Saturday at one of my favorite bars. Thankfully I did meet her on Saturday, because on Monday I really needed her help.

As Drew and I are wandering into downtown for our festivities to begin, I stopped by one of the local ATM's to get out the cash I will need for the night. Well, as soon as I put my card in the machine, the machine cycles off, and then re-starts. It doesn't give me my card back. My recruiter, Ryan, was busy with a family dinner and could not get away for at least and hour. Much to my surprise, Jin Sook messages me asking what I'm up to. Completely embarrassed, I tell her that I am camped outside and ATM to make sure that my card doesn't get spit out by the machine. She volunteers to come to the ATM and helps me contact security to get my card back. What I found really funny, was that when I tried calling on the help phone inside the ATM, nobody would answer. Yet, as soon as she dialed, someone picked up and they sent someone over. Damn my lack of Korean camoflauge. Well, after all that fun/freaking out about my ATM card, we met up with my friends and partied until 8 in the morning.

Soalal, or Lunar New Years was a pretty epic party, and if I am here for it again I'm quite sure it will be fun. Other then that it's been life at the grindstone. Working for the man just to get my money. Well, can you really call it a grindstone if I really love the job? Next stop in my journey, San Diego surprising enough. John Malkin is getting married and my ass is going to spend 36 hours travelling to make sure that I see it. I can't wait man. I will be in San Diego for a few days, and if you want to see me, you're going to have to get in line. I'm going to be really busy, I'm thinking we might have to just have a get together on Friday or Saturday night so that everyone can have access to the man. I will hopefully see some of you, if not all of you during my stay in SD.

Here is a list of the photos and what they are:

1. camp students doing morning exercises
2. camp dinner
3. the hill of pain
4. the aftermath
5. me eating live octopus
6. Julie being MC Julie, my favorite bartender in Seosan.