January 24, 2003

• Hi all!

  
  

  Well, another week has come and gone, and I find myself here on a Friday night, typing at a PC Room. Most of the time since my last entry was pretty unremarkable, but Wednesday and Thursday were pretty noteworthy:

  
  

  It snowed!

  
  

  For those new to the site (or with iffy memories, like mine) my not know that I come from the west coast of Newfoundland. During a Corner Brook winter, the snow on the front lawn is 5 or 6 feet (2m) deep, and the snowbanks on the side of the road are 9 feet (3m) or more. It hovers around -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) most of the time, and usually bottoms out around -35C (-31F) on a significant number of occasions. In short, I'm used to a pretty beefy kind of winter.

  
  

  As you may or may not know, I'm currently living in a small town in South Korea. It doesn't snow in this part of the country some years. But it started snowing Wednesday afternoon and kept at it. The result was that by 10pm, there was 4 or 5 inches (15cm) of snow on the ground. It was just gorgeous. Apparently it's the heaviest snowfall in 10 years or something. My wife and I grabbed the camera and the tripod and headed out. We wandered around and shot a full roll of pictures of the neighbourhood, including a retake of the panorama on my pictures page. Nice stuff.

  
  

  As we were taking some pictures of us up in a tree (ah, the joy of having a tripod and a timer), a couple in their early 50s came along, also with a camera and tripod. They were so cute, taking pictures of themselves in from of snowy trees. He spoke fairly good English, so we chatted and took some pictures of the 4 of us. After, even though it was late, we went to their apartment for tea. He's the president of a company which exports bakery machinery to China. It was nice. We excused ourselves just before 2am and dragged ourselves home (after doubling back for some more pictures) to sleep before work.

  
  

  Luckily for us, work was cancelled. I had to go to work to find this out, since they forgot to call me, but still. It's only a 2 1/2 minute walk from the apartment, so not a real hardship. I went home, took a little nap, and then we walked downtown. Crista, you see, had to buy rubber boots. She had to buy rubber boots because she now takes care of a horse. She's always loved horses, and a local kindergarten has one for the students (I know). She went and talked to them, and now she gets to take care of it whenever she wants. To say she's pleased is definitely an understatement. She has a pet horse!

  
  

  Well, that's a somewhat disjointed entry for you. I'm afraid it's still going to be some time before I can post any pictures. However, this PC Room has a scanner, so maybe... I'll probably get the film developed tomorrow, and maybe the Kyongju World one too. That'd be fun. I love getting pictures. It's just kind of time-consuming to scan in several dozen photos, crop and compress them and then post them to the website. I have hours and hours of work to do on the pictures site... Oh well. Suspense can be good

  
  

  So that's that for now. I'm puttering around looking to try a internet phone company. Calling Canada costs me about $1.40/minute, so I've only called my family twice in the three months I've been here. Not good. Dialpad.com offers 3.9 cents/minute, so if the quality is tolerable, I think I'll give it a try. It'll mean calling from computers, and calling from computers will mean calling from public places, but oh well. I'm not going to be saying anything that shouldn't be overheard, and even if I was, nobody here can understand anyway!

  
  

  Anyhow, that really is it for now. Hope you're all well and happy.

  
  

  Take care
  -Justin-

  • 10:19 am
  • 10 Comments