...by blowing up a nuke.
Surely everybody has been paying attention to the news over the last few days. It's been a bad 5 days for South Korea, and for the whole world really, so I figured I'd give you some news from the front lines.
First of all, don't worry at all about North Korea. Nobody is in the least bit worried. Their country is a joke, and nobody is scared of them at all, just really annoyed. Life is carrying on here like nothing has happened. Some people in Seoul are protesting by burning NoKo flags and such, but that's about it. To be honest, they care a lot more about the fact that their former president committed suicide. They're actually really torn up about it. One of my drinking buddy co-workers didn't come out with the rest of the teaching staff on Monday because he said he was really sad and in no mood for a celebration (the celebration was for sports day, which our school had on Monday).
In addition, NoKo's nukes are not even as powerful as the ones dropped on Japan during WWII. In other words, they are more than 60 years behind the times. And their delivery systems are unreliable.
With this newest round of testing, NoKo has pissed off all of the few friends they had, namely China. China is really getting mad at Kim Jong Il for being stupid, and they are becoming less and less likely to protect North Korea from the UN security council.
All in all, I'm not real sure what's going to come of all this, but I'm not worried at all. NoKo knows that if it so much as looks at South Korea funny, the U.S. and Japan will squash it like a bug, so I'm sure they have no intention of causing trouble. Most likely they are just going to head back to the six party talks and demand more things in exchange for dismantling their nuke program, and all this will happen again in a year or two.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Grad School
Well, after carefully considering all of my options, I have officially decided to accept admission to the University of Chicago. If it were simply a matter of the quality of the program, I wouldn't have hesitated, but the cost of attendance at Chicago is so astronomical that I really had to consider if it was worth it. Luckily, U of C got me in touch with a current graduate student in the same program that I will be entering, and she must have answered over 20 of my questions. It really made me feel comfortable about my decision. All in all, the combination of quality, employment opportunities after graduation, location and campus made this a fairly easy decision for me. In addition, U of C has a cooperative program with Yonsei University here in Korea (Seoul), which would give me an opportunity to possibly return to Korea a couple years down the road as a student. Obviously I have not even thought about whether or not I would do this, but it's nice to have the option.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Updates
Well I know I don't post on my blog that much these days but that's really because there's not much for me to talk about. I'm in my fourth week of the new semester, and work is going very well, much better than last semester. That's actually saying a lot since last semester was already pretty good.
Last semester, my problems stemmed from the horrors of my first-graders; but now they are second-graders, and the problem classes have been broken up and reformed. They are much better behaved now, and I'm even starting to like many of them! My new first-graders are angels - I love them to death! They are nice and funny and smart and adorable.
On top of an easier teaching job, I also have 4 co-workers (none of them English teachers) who I go out with regularly after work. We usually go out maybe once per week. They are a lot of fun, and although their English level is extremely low, I still enjoy going out with them. I call each of them 형 - older brother. They're all around 30 years old.
I got a part-time job teaching a conversation class with elementary school English teachers. They seem nice and their English levels are all pretty high.
My laptop has been broken for over a month now. I gave it to my school last week to fix but it won't be fixed for maybe another week. It was really broken.
I guess the most significant news would be my adventures in grad school. I applied to 5 schools, and so far I am 3-1-1 (yes-no-pending). I am in the process of making a decision but I am heavily leaning towards going to the University of Chicago. The only problem is the cost...without any financial aid of any kind, I could expect to spend $100,000-110,000 for a 2 year program. Ridiculous. I am also considering American University, which is in Washington D.C., but I am not sure I'm going to be able to pass up the opportunity to go to a school like UChicago.
Overall, life is very good these days and I am very happy. I hope this note finds all of you equally well-off.
Last semester, my problems stemmed from the horrors of my first-graders; but now they are second-graders, and the problem classes have been broken up and reformed. They are much better behaved now, and I'm even starting to like many of them! My new first-graders are angels - I love them to death! They are nice and funny and smart and adorable.
On top of an easier teaching job, I also have 4 co-workers (none of them English teachers) who I go out with regularly after work. We usually go out maybe once per week. They are a lot of fun, and although their English level is extremely low, I still enjoy going out with them. I call each of them 형 - older brother. They're all around 30 years old.
I got a part-time job teaching a conversation class with elementary school English teachers. They seem nice and their English levels are all pretty high.
My laptop has been broken for over a month now. I gave it to my school last week to fix but it won't be fixed for maybe another week. It was really broken.
I guess the most significant news would be my adventures in grad school. I applied to 5 schools, and so far I am 3-1-1 (yes-no-pending). I am in the process of making a decision but I am heavily leaning towards going to the University of Chicago. The only problem is the cost...without any financial aid of any kind, I could expect to spend $100,000-110,000 for a 2 year program. Ridiculous. I am also considering American University, which is in Washington D.C., but I am not sure I'm going to be able to pass up the opportunity to go to a school like UChicago.
Overall, life is very good these days and I am very happy. I hope this note finds all of you equally well-off.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Pictures
Okay pictures are up. I have posted links to pictures within each blog section which should correspond to what is being talked about in each section. Bangkok pictures are being developed right now, so hopefully they will be up for you to view tomorrow.
A note about pictures: I have set it up so that the links will open (in a new window) the pictures in a slide-show format. The downside to this is that the pictures are a little small. If you want to see any of the pictures in their large, high quality size, you can select the "main" button at the top right of the slide show page. This will take you to the main page of the album where you can select pictures individually to view in their high quality formats.
Enjoy
A note about pictures: I have set it up so that the links will open (in a new window) the pictures in a slide-show format. The downside to this is that the pictures are a little small. If you want to see any of the pictures in their large, high quality size, you can select the "main" button at the top right of the slide show page. This will take you to the main page of the album where you can select pictures individually to view in their high quality formats.
Enjoy
Saturday, February 28, 2009
My Southeast Asia Adventure - Introduction
Some of you have been complaining that I don't update my blog enough. Well, you all are going to be sorry you complained, because the following is what can only be described as the most obnoxiously detailed description of a mere 9-day journey. If I were to print it out and bind it into a book, one would probably be able to kill a horse with it. So I hope you have about an hour to kill reading this, not to mention a hot cup of coffee sitting next to you. I will do my best to tell you which pictures correspond to their respective blog entries. Enjoy.
The Journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap
The first leg of our journey begins upon arriving in Bangkok around 2AM Saturday morning. Bangkok's main airport is really top-notch: it was built fairly recently to accommodate the booming tourism industry and unlike certain airports (like Detroit metro for example) its layout actually makes sense. Plus, it's architecture is just plain cool to look at.
After passing through immigration, we hitched a taxi over to Hua Lampong Train Station, a facility which is really a blemish on the rest of the city of Bangkok. It's run-down and full of beggars and otherwise poor people waiting for a cheap train to wherever life takes them. The trains themselves are extremely basic: wooden benches and windows that (thankfully) slide open with no regard for safety. The train leaves at 6AM, so the girls grabbed a couple hours of sleep while I stood guard over the backpacks. At 6AM the train arrived, and we were off on our 6 hour ride to Aranyaprathet, a small town on the border between Thailand and Cambodia.
Aranyaprathet is a lawless territory. It is one of the shadiest places I have ever, and (most likely) will ever, visit. The journey we were undertaking is not uncommon, so many tuk-tuk drivers were waiting for us at the train stop. For future reference, a tuk-tuk is like a motorcycle that has been retrofitted to serve as a taxi. They are extremely popular in Thailand and Cambodia, and other places too I'm sure. Anyways, the driver takes us to a tour agency not far from the station. They tell us that they can get us a Cambodian visa for 1200 Baht, which took me by surprise because A) tour agencies can't issue visas and B) I have only heard of people getting them either online through the Cambodian government or at the border. Additionally, that was an exorbitant price to pay for the visa.
So I call the guy on this saying that random tour agencies aren't legally authorized to issue visas, ESPECIALLY when the tour agency isn't even located in the country that it is issuing a visa for! The man gets a little pissed that I called shenanigans, and he angrily takes away the forms we had been filling out. He piles us into the back of a tuk-tuk and we are driven about 10 feet to the building next door.
Lo-and-behold, this building is the Cambodian consulate, which we couldn't see before due to a strategically placed wall covered in fauna. Here, they only charge 1000 baht, and being the consulate, they are indeed authorized to issue visas.
It turns out that the "tour company" was just a bunch of guys dressed in nice clothes scamming people out of an extra 200 baht. They would have the people fill out the necessary forms, and then take their passports and 1200 baht to the consulate next door and purchase the visas for 1000 baht. Now 200 baht is only about 6 dollars, but in Thailand and Cambodia it goes a long way. So we successfully avoid this scam and move on to the border crossing. The border is really shady as well, but it's easy to avoid the shade and remain where the light is if you just don't talk to anybody who isn't a westerner. Our border crossing went fairly smoothly, and we eventually hitched a taxi to Siem Reap, the town just outside of Angkor Wat park.
The road from the border town of Poiphet to Siem Reap is very very bad, in that it is largely unpaved and very bumpy. The reason is because there is only one airline that flies a route between Siem Reap and Bangkok: Bangkok Air. They have been bribing the Cambodian government for years to keep the road unpaved to discourage anybody from taking the land route to Siem Reap. Then they charge huge amounts of money for their tickets. Most flights cost us around $60 or $70 USdollars, but this one cost us about $175. But we were unwilling to waste an entire day taking the exhausting land route back the other way, so we took the hit and flew back to Bangkok a couple days after arriving.
Pictures
(Be sure to read any comments in the pictures so you know what is going on.)
More Pictures
After passing through immigration, we hitched a taxi over to Hua Lampong Train Station, a facility which is really a blemish on the rest of the city of Bangkok. It's run-down and full of beggars and otherwise poor people waiting for a cheap train to wherever life takes them. The trains themselves are extremely basic: wooden benches and windows that (thankfully) slide open with no regard for safety. The train leaves at 6AM, so the girls grabbed a couple hours of sleep while I stood guard over the backpacks. At 6AM the train arrived, and we were off on our 6 hour ride to Aranyaprathet, a small town on the border between Thailand and Cambodia.
Aranyaprathet is a lawless territory. It is one of the shadiest places I have ever, and (most likely) will ever, visit. The journey we were undertaking is not uncommon, so many tuk-tuk drivers were waiting for us at the train stop. For future reference, a tuk-tuk is like a motorcycle that has been retrofitted to serve as a taxi. They are extremely popular in Thailand and Cambodia, and other places too I'm sure. Anyways, the driver takes us to a tour agency not far from the station. They tell us that they can get us a Cambodian visa for 1200 Baht, which took me by surprise because A) tour agencies can't issue visas and B) I have only heard of people getting them either online through the Cambodian government or at the border. Additionally, that was an exorbitant price to pay for the visa.
So I call the guy on this saying that random tour agencies aren't legally authorized to issue visas, ESPECIALLY when the tour agency isn't even located in the country that it is issuing a visa for! The man gets a little pissed that I called shenanigans, and he angrily takes away the forms we had been filling out. He piles us into the back of a tuk-tuk and we are driven about 10 feet to the building next door.
Lo-and-behold, this building is the Cambodian consulate, which we couldn't see before due to a strategically placed wall covered in fauna. Here, they only charge 1000 baht, and being the consulate, they are indeed authorized to issue visas.
It turns out that the "tour company" was just a bunch of guys dressed in nice clothes scamming people out of an extra 200 baht. They would have the people fill out the necessary forms, and then take their passports and 1200 baht to the consulate next door and purchase the visas for 1000 baht. Now 200 baht is only about 6 dollars, but in Thailand and Cambodia it goes a long way. So we successfully avoid this scam and move on to the border crossing. The border is really shady as well, but it's easy to avoid the shade and remain where the light is if you just don't talk to anybody who isn't a westerner. Our border crossing went fairly smoothly, and we eventually hitched a taxi to Siem Reap, the town just outside of Angkor Wat park.
The road from the border town of Poiphet to Siem Reap is very very bad, in that it is largely unpaved and very bumpy. The reason is because there is only one airline that flies a route between Siem Reap and Bangkok: Bangkok Air. They have been bribing the Cambodian government for years to keep the road unpaved to discourage anybody from taking the land route to Siem Reap. Then they charge huge amounts of money for their tickets. Most flights cost us around $60 or $70 USdollars, but this one cost us about $175. But we were unwilling to waste an entire day taking the exhausting land route back the other way, so we took the hit and flew back to Bangkok a couple days after arriving.
Pictures
(Be sure to read any comments in the pictures so you know what is going on.)
More Pictures
Angkor Wat
The entire reason for us going to Cambodia was to see Angkor Wat, a series of temples (around 40 I think) ranging in size from small to huge. And I have to say, everything we endured on the way to and from Cambodia was completely worth it. Angkor Wat is simply amazing. We left for the temples around 5:15AM so that we could catch the sunrise over the main temple. Unfortunately, I was not able to get any good pictures of the sunrise itself, but I got some really great shots of all the temples we went to.
The amount of people who were there before sunrise was staggering. But despite the all the people who came to visit, the place didn't lose its authenticity. And by that I mean that it didn't feel like some inane gimmick whose sole purpose was to draw in money. The temples were very tranquil, very surreal. I did my best to capture this in some of my pictures, but I still don't think anything but one's own eyes will ever do it justice.
Pictures
More Pics
More Pics
We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. He picked us up in the morning and chauffeured us around to all the temples. He was a really nice guy named Tana, and he charged a reasonable rate. He was very friendly and very professional, always exactly where he said he was going to be and always on time. We spent a little less than 20 dollars per person for a full day of him taking us around to places as well as a ride to the airport the next day.
Our flight left around 5PM so we had some time to kill. We walked around Siem Reap for awhile, and lounged by our hotel's pool for a couple hours. I was in the pool while the girls were off doing god knows what when I heard the two kids who were also in the pool talking French. I was intrigued because they were very dark skinned and almost looked Mexican, and French people very rarely appear this way. So I started talking to them and it turns out that they were actually half Canadian, half Cambodian. Their mother was a Cambodian woman who fled the country during the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. She fled to Canada, ended up in Quebec, learned French and married a Quebecois man. They were visiting the woman's family, and it was her first time back in her home country in almost 30 years. She didn't speak any English, but she was obviously a very nice woman and clearly had very mixed emotions about being back. To use her exact words: "Je me sens perdu" - I feel lost. I was very happy to have met them.
Pictures of Siem Reap
(This album is half Siem Reap, half Phuket. Pay attention to comments for which is which.)
The amount of people who were there before sunrise was staggering. But despite the all the people who came to visit, the place didn't lose its authenticity. And by that I mean that it didn't feel like some inane gimmick whose sole purpose was to draw in money. The temples were very tranquil, very surreal. I did my best to capture this in some of my pictures, but I still don't think anything but one's own eyes will ever do it justice.
Pictures
More Pics
More Pics
We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. He picked us up in the morning and chauffeured us around to all the temples. He was a really nice guy named Tana, and he charged a reasonable rate. He was very friendly and very professional, always exactly where he said he was going to be and always on time. We spent a little less than 20 dollars per person for a full day of him taking us around to places as well as a ride to the airport the next day.
Our flight left around 5PM so we had some time to kill. We walked around Siem Reap for awhile, and lounged by our hotel's pool for a couple hours. I was in the pool while the girls were off doing god knows what when I heard the two kids who were also in the pool talking French. I was intrigued because they were very dark skinned and almost looked Mexican, and French people very rarely appear this way. So I started talking to them and it turns out that they were actually half Canadian, half Cambodian. Their mother was a Cambodian woman who fled the country during the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. She fled to Canada, ended up in Quebec, learned French and married a Quebecois man. They were visiting the woman's family, and it was her first time back in her home country in almost 30 years. She didn't speak any English, but she was obviously a very nice woman and clearly had very mixed emotions about being back. To use her exact words: "Je me sens perdu" - I feel lost. I was very happy to have met them.
Pictures of Siem Reap
(This album is half Siem Reap, half Phuket. Pay attention to comments for which is which.)
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