It snowed today and thus the pictures. It's almost Christmas. Which means this week Ill be dressing up as Santa Claus to deliver some presents to kids from the school. It should be fun. I'm not sure if Ill get pictures of that or not. But it should produce a good story. I just got a chair along with my bookshelve I've told some of you about. I wanted to show a picture here. The ugly picture is my street, but I was impressed by the size of the snowflakes. It will be a different Christmas. One thing I do miss from home are the lights. Theres not much in the way of Christmas lights in the city. So I'm going to a city in the south for Christmas weekend. But Ill be home for Christmas. The teachers will have a dinner together. Ill miss home. Mom's cookies will bring me closer. I hope you all have a good week, Christmas and New Years. I only have Christmas off, but then I have the next week off, so I plan to get up north to the DMZ and some mountains along the border. Enjoy the holidays.

A Wedding and A Hike

Yesterday, I went to my first Korean wedding. One of the teachers I used to work with got married to a Korean girl. It was a lot of fun. I was laughing most of the service because of the informal style. There was a sort of MC who always said what was coming next. After a long bit of Korean he would break and say stuff like, "Ok, just say yes." A few of my kids were there running up and down the aisles hitting me. There was a lot of clapping. You could tell there wasn't a rehearsal as we understand it. But it was a lot of fun.

Then today I got inspired and went for a hike. I decided to climb to the top of our local mountain. I got off to a late start, leaving my apartment at 1:30. I got there around 2:15 and marched my way to the top. It's just under 4,000 feet so its a sufficient climb. I got to the top and took the can of tuna I had made it into a sandwich. It was nice and cold and beautiful as the pictures might tell. I'm up in the white that you can see far away in the first picture. Then I marched down at times running, to make sure I caught the bus home before they stopped running. I stopped for a bit to sit in the woods. I had to take the time to hear one of my favorite sounds...nothing. It was good and dark before I reached the bottom. Now I'm tired and will probably be walking like a duck tomorrow, but I like ducks.