Last Day at School

Ok, so here I am dusting this thing off for possibly one last post. It's hard to know how to finish these things, last posts and such. But I guess I just wanted this to serve more as a marker than a post. A statement to the time-stamping powers that be that here I am, Sean Stanhill, posting from school on my last day, August 25, 2014 (KST). Four years after I started.
Saying goodbye is hardest when said to the students, especially when they surprise me with a visit to my desk between classes!

Cherry Blossoms and Flowers, pt. 2

Some more pics of flowers from around the 'hood.

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Cherry Blossoms Around My Neighborhood, Sunrise

Didn't even know there was a 7:00am on Saturday mornings! Here are some of the blossoms around my neighborhood, before they disappear until next spring :)

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정월대보름 - First Full Moon of the Lunar New Year

February 24th marked 정월대보름 (Jeong-wal Dae Bo-reum), the first full moon of the lunar new year. Koreans celebrate this holiday from the biggest cities to the smallest hamlets. People gather together, usually by a riverside, to tie their wishes for the new year onto an effigy. Writing and tying the wishes happen around five o'clock, before the sun starts to set. As people line up to write out their hopes for the new year, musicians perform, people eat street food and children fly kites. As the sun begins to set, people gather around the effigy, hoping for a good spot to watch as the straw is lit from all sides by people in traditional Korean dress, called hanbok (like a Korean kimono).

Hayoung and I went to the one in Andong. Fortunately, the site of the celebration was just about a 25 minute walk from the apartment. We arrived in time to write our wishes to paper and tie them to the effigy. We then walked around admiring the kites people were flying around the site. They say that the first person to see the first full moon of the lunar new year will have good luck for the reminder of that year.

After the effigy is lit, people light candles inside paper lanters to send off into the sky, again, taking their wishes on the lanters' journey.

The ceremony itself was a sight to behold, a thing of great beauty and destruction, noise and music. Hayoung wanted to be close to the fire while I opted for a nearby hillside for a better angle (I was shooting f/40). As usual, I find myself at a loss for words and find that my pictures may tell a better story than I am able to conjure with description alone. Here are some of my pictures from the event. Click on the pictures for a bigger view. Use the left and right arrow keys to move to the next picture. Press Esc when finished.

The whole ritual felt very pagan. Below is a video I took on my phone (sorry about the poor quality) of traditional music being played next to the pyre as it spat burning debris into the air on the cool, crisp early spring evening.

As a side note, I thought it interesting and worth mentioning, though probably not significant, that the event landed on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Purim is homophonic to the Korean holiday Bo-reum (when pronounced by a Korean). Both Koreans and Jews follow the lunar calendar. If that weren't enough, there is an interest in Judaism here that is hard to figure. For example, I saw the book at right in a book store here in Andong. It literally translates to "Talmud Humor" (as stated at the top of the book). Indeed, after asking Hayoung, she said she was familiar with and had parts of the Talmud though she never brought it up; she said she didn't realize it was a Jewish script. This book is proof that people here have enough of a basic understanding of the Talmud to understand humor around it. Now these are either really interesting conincedences or Koreans just may be one of the lost tribes of Israel. As I have said before, Koreans and Jews share a lot in cultural similarity. These are uneducated musings but significant enough that I thought they were worth mentioning. After all, some scholars believe the Khmer of Cambodia/Vietnam to be one of the lost tribes. In that respect, it doesn't seem so outlandish.

Back from the dead - I can breathe!

For the longest time, my whole life as a matter of fact, I have found it difficult to breathe. I don't have a respiratory problem nor do I suffer a psychosomatic malady. My nose, more specifically my septum, was a twisted as the gnarled roots of Old Man Willow. After some consultations with the top-rated ENT doctor in Andong and a couple noggin x-rays to boot, I was scheduled for surgery January 9th, 2013, days after I came back from my vacation in Minnesota.

Hayoung had to work, it being a Wednesday and all, so one of my best friends, Zach MacDonald, accompanied me to the hospital. I'm so glad he was there. We sat there for about three hours while we waited for the surgery room to be ready. While we waited, we played Ticket to Ride on me and Hayoung's iPads and we talked. I had a lot to talk about, I guess. God, I was so nervous. There is hardly any English spoken at the Andong hospital. There wasn't a single person who could string two sentences of English together. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not going to go to a foreign country, to a hospital there and demand that they speak my language and how dare they fail their end of some kind of linguistic agreement of which they failed to uphold on their end yada, yada, yada. The truth is, they have no obligation to speak English. I am the visitor in their country. I was grateful to any of the staff whom attempted communication with me. But that was the source of my uneasiness. Up to this point, throughout the consultations, etc., I still had never spoken to my doctor. Hayoung, bless her heart, translated for me. But still, feeling like I was unable to communicate with anyone around me, sparing Zach, and have them breaking my nose, digging around in my skull and whatnot, I was scared to death. I just kept telling myself to have courage. And I think I did just fine. 

After a while, they had me dress in my surgery outfit, which I totally rocked.

At this point, Hayoung was able to join us, right before they wheeled me into the operating room. They rolled me into the O.R. The man whom I assumed was the anesthesiologist smiled at me and connected a giant syringe to my I.V. tube. He smiled at me and I thought, "there is no backing out from here" as he emptied his concoction into my veins. I don't remember putting my head back down on the operating table. 

After cutting me up for about an hour and a half, they wheeled me out to be with Hayoung, Zach and Hayoung's friend, So-Young and her son. Never wasting a photo opportunity, Hayoung posed in front of my unconscious body. 

They all spent the early evening with me at the hospital and I fell asleep promptly after their visit. I had plastic splints along either side of my septum and cotton packing stuffed all the way into what I only assume to be my sinuses.

If it weren't for the angels in white who brought me the happy juice in the form of buttocks shots, this would have been excruciatingly painful. I spent 48 hours in the hospital, in the care of people whom I could not communicate with though they took the best care of me.

Hayoung spent the second night in the hospital with me even though she had work the next morning and my buddy Ryan came in to see me hours before his trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. The last few hours in the hospital, the doctor took the cotton packing out of my face. This was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt and I have had to stick a Q-tip into my own urethra (mandatory chlamydia test for Peace Corps) . It was over soon enough.

I was prescribed a myriad of pills to take while I recuperated at home, watching zombie and old science fiction flicks. I was also told to head back to the hospital the following Wednesday (one week after my surgery) to get the plastic splints taken out.

Well, I'm still taking the pills and yesterday I finally had the splints taken out. While that was painful in its own right (the splints were sewn together through the bottom of my septum), it was nowhere near as painful as removing the cotton packing. Anyway, after the doctor removed the plastic splints, I could breathe, not only for the first time in a week but like, I could really breathe, like I never had before in my life! Both nostrils were operational and I could smell the hospital. I still have to wait for the inflammation and swelling to go down (they also removed a lot of excess skin within my nostrils) but even now as I type this one week after my surgery, I can breathe better now than I ever had before, even when assisted by Allegra and decongestants.
Last night I fell asleep easier than I think I ever had before.

On a very optimistic note, I did a little calculating. I quit smoking just over 5 months ago. That's been a battle in and of itself but this little statistic made me feel like I had not only won the battle but had won the war! Check this out; I saved USD$362.83 since I quite. And that, my friends, is literally $20 shy of how much the surgery had cost. Indeed, by not smoking for the last 5 months, I paid for my surgery and hospital stay. I feel like a mensch, a well oxygenated mensch.

All Sorts

My band had another performance yesterday. The Andong Volunteer Association (AVA) held another event of carnival games, a bake sale and live music (my band, The Band From Out Of Town) to raise money and awareness for a local orphanage. The AVA is a great organization and one in which I plan to participate when I move to Andong next month. The organization is composed of foreign English teachers and Koreans who meet and act in their free time to do charitable volunteer work, such as organizing activities and game days at the orphanage, picking up trash along the river and the like. SO that was really fun last night. Jonno, Ryan and I played guitar for a solid four hours. The music drew many people to the event and we helped entertain the volunteers as well. I love playing at their events because of the energy. Most of the volunteers have heard us play quite a few times and now sing along with some of the songs. It's a great time.
Foreigners get a bad wrap in the media most of the time.

We are depicted as unreliable alcoholics who prey on innocent Korean women on MBC (Korea's equivalent of FOX News). To a small degree, this image has merit and is shared by foreign English teachers and US soldiers stationed in Korea alike, mostly in cities like Seoul, Daegu or Busan. However, participating in the AVA improves our image.

About two weeks ago, some of the foreigners in Yecheon were given the opportunity to shoot some arrows at a nearby archery field. Yecheon has actually produced an Olympic medalist and she was shooting right next to us for a while.

Yecheon is famous for archery, hence why our bridge is shaped like two lit bows and arrows, as you an see. I suppose these are the kinds of events I never really think to put up on my blog but would be the kinds of stories people would find interesting.

In another thrilling episode in my pursuit to gross out my family with exotic foods, I ate 되지 막창, pig intestines, with Zach and my coteacher, Mr. Do. I emailed the picture to my dad to which he replied, "what's it stuffed with?". To his dismay, they were au naturale. They were quite good. As we sat there eating, I tout about the meta nature of ingesting an animal's intestines with my own. How much further up the food chain can a species get?

This last week, students prepared for final exams, scheduled for next week, which means I have been deskwarming, sitting in the office eight hours a day doing nothing. One might think that this sounds like a dream job but it gets really monotonous. But it beats the hell out of a cubicle job wherein I wouldn't be able to get up and walk around at least. While I have be deskwarming, I have watched a few movies, started editing my novel I write last November and read the first book of Game of Thrones. When my novel is finished, I plan on self-publishing it to the Amazon Kindle store, Barnes & Noble Nook store and the Apple iBooks store for about $3. However, I will offer a PDF format of the novel on my blog for free. Boom.

In other news, my plans to go to Jeju island for summer vacation were cancelled due to extenuating circumstances and I will remain in Yecheon for the duration of my vacation. I'm okay with this for a few reasons. First, I will be able to save money. Secondly, I have had plenty of opportunity to travel with my last three vacations (Philippines, winter 2010, Jeju, summer 2011, China, winter 2012). Thirdly, my brother and a Peace Corps friend are coming in late July and will be able to spend part of my vacation with them!

Another year, another dollar

Well, it looks like I haven't blogged in quite some time. Most recently, I have signed a new contract and will be staying in Korea another year though this time around I'll be in the nearby city of 안동 (Andong). This new city is only about 35 minutes away from where I currently live. But it seems so much further when I have to go to justify her and cheese. Indeed, I'll be living about a 10 minute walk from what is equivalent to a Walmart. This and the fact that there is a bowling alley and two movie theaters make this city a very different experience of what I have here in Yecheon or what I had in the Peace Corps, in the Philippines. My new contract will start August 26 so wish me luck with the move!
In other news, I'm still playing music pretty regularly with my band. We have a performance at a bar this coming Saturday in the city I'm moving to. I have also been working with my friend Zach creating some music with the aliases of MC Vicious Delicious and DJ Grandalf. As much as I've been practicing guitar and fingerpicking in particular, I've been working DJ skills in a range of genres. We're now working on a song called "The Coffee Song" and the music uses only percussion and mouth noises.
Here is our most recent finished track, called "Pork Attack (Samgyeupsal Song)". I made all the music with original samples and Zach wrote all the lyrics. I actually made the beat. By recording cooking pork at my house :-)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7xAYxhyJzo?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Working on music has kept me very busy. It's something I've never really had in my life and something I am immensely enjoying. I have never had a band that has stuck around this long and I'm getting a lot out of it.
I have also been very involved in photography. The DSLR that I bought after Colin visited me last August is probably one of the best purchases I've ever made. The camera has given me plenty of excuses to go on walks I never would've gone before and see my town here in ways that I never looked at it before. Above are some pictures that I took while on a mountain hike to catch the sunset here in my town about a week ago.

I'm still enjoying the hell out my iPad. As a matter of fact, I wrote this whole post using voice dictation :-)