i can't believe it's april

sorry for the long absence from my blog. school has been hectic, and my life has been...some sort of warped korean drama. aside from that...life has been ok. i just went on a trip to visit the East Sea (or as most of you know it as the Sea of Japan). we went to a park/museum in Samcheok that was a place where all the statues were phallic objects. and by phallic objects i mean they were statues of penises. apparently barren women go there to touch a penis and they will become fertile. that's the story. it's an old folk story, apparently there was a woman who waited for her lover but the sea washed her away. they dedicate each phallic statue to her to help the fishing haul for the year. Samcheok is a fishing city. It's very rural and country like, but it is also where they filmed the lighthouse scene from one of my favorite korean dramas (Resurrection). it was cool cause once i saw the lighthouse i'm like omg that's it! I have many many pictures to post. many are too explicit but they're just phallic symbols right? not like they're the real thing.

so i also managed to kill the battery in my macbook. now i'm just on the ac adaptor. it's ok though cause i have a spare battery that i bought before i left because i knew that i would kill it before my time in korea was finished. so anyway...our new teacher came to school and is starting his first week of observation. i taped my first speech class speeches a couple of weeks ago, and i have a class that is speeding through beginner one and they're ready to start their book. it's very fun to watch these kids develop and start to pick up your sounds. my korean is getting better as well. slowly day by day, my guitar and my drums (only a little bit) is getting better. considering i started at nothing for the drums, i think i've done an ok job of learning syncopation, shake rhythm, high hat open, etc... as for guitar, i completed my first song, solo and all for "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi. it was quite cool, today i get to play it with live drums and i get to learn the song on drums too. why that song? because it's really easy. the song i'm currently working on is "1985" by Bowling for Soup.

when i was in Samcheok i had my first raw fish experience, the fish there were really fresh so nothing tastes really fishy. and as promised i have pictures from that too. this is going to be a long post, maybe i have to divide it into two posts but here goes part one.

my new friends wonhyup (his nickname is N.E. stands for No English) and his girlfriend jinhee.
raw seafood
veggies and sauce that we eat with it.
jinhee back at the motel, with more fresh seafood "anju" which means drinking food
john, my guitar instructor and my english student
bags and bags of seafood and sauce.
look at the size of that crazy shrimp!
close up of the massive amount of seafood
that's the granddaddy shrimp
there's about 12 chopsticks, 3 soju bottle caps, and 2 dozen toothpicks in there. looks like a birdnest no?
as you can tell soju was our water that night. we were playing drinking games. heh...
people are hilarious when they're drunk
"i'm not drunk...really i'm not..."
she's eating some sort of disgusting tentacle
our side dishes at breakfast
this restaurant is literally someone's house, and they cooked in their kitchen for us and slept in the other room with the tv on while we ate.
a rainy day in the streets of samcheok
close to the lighthouse
lighthouse 1
lighthouse 2
i was climbing on the jacks and i decided to take a picture
wonhyup's dad's fishing boat
this is penis park
they're larger than life
i thought it was a strange form of art
this one actually moves up and down
yes those statues are standing their holding their erect penises
this is the museum portion of it
a miniature of my friend's dad's boat
almost looks like a magazine ad for modern style. hahaha
end of part 1. will finish later