So I want to provide you with some of the things that happened off camera and that can’t really be said with a picture.

Like: “Oh dear LORD, not more fish head stew”
Although . . . .


That was the first fish head stew and those were pictures.
You see, after a year-and-a-half in Korea I still don’t understand most of what is written on the walls of Korean diners. Most of it just doesn’t show up in my little dictionary.

So there was this dish which, on the next table, looked exactly like tofu and noodle stew.
The tofu was tofu, the noodles were fish brain. Hoorah.
Underneath the tofu and fish brain was an assortment of different organ meat aaaaaaaaaaaand fish heads.

What you see on the side there are different Kimchi side-dishes. You may have heard me bitch about kimchi. Kimchi comes in many different varieties wrt season and the like. I like some of them, but the poster child of kimchi is the napa cabbage Kimchi. After 3 days of getting this with every meal my parents were able to accede that it does indeed suck balls.

The problem with this conclusion was that it came too soon. You see, they reached this conclusion while still in Seoul. In Seoul, non-Korean eateries are quite numerous and one can get away from kimchi if one so desires.

We subsequently left Seoul!

Can you guess where this is going?

I was asked to lead my parents to small villages to get away from the Korean Big city™, meanign generic Korean cities which all kind of look the same anyway. Consequently, we ended up here.

I’ll give you a guess what our options were regarding breakfast.
It involved fish guts. Well, it would likely have been fish guts. It’s not like we checked the 8 seafood restaurants if they offered croissants.

Due to that and the only source of coffee being a vending machine we left for the Gyeongju, referred to as museum without walls here, before 8 in the morning and didn’t stop till we found a place that offered coffee and some things Koreans consider rolls.

In the last few weeks we’ve looked for an apartment, last week we signed a Korean document, which is, in all likelihood, a lease.

Today we moved in.

As promised, the first pictures. I’ll do more when there’s light outside.

When I get a mouse tomorrow and I figure out how to show dimensions I’ll finetune the layout. But for now:

Main room + Kitchen:

Room 1:

Room 2:

Master bedroom:

And some views from the roof terrace which may or may not be ours to use:

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Quote of the day:

I think it’s fair to conclude that a sport store in Korea means either a Golf store or Hiking store

- Raphaëlle

Obviously the counter ran out
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Quote of the day:

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

- Mark Twain

LOTSA SNOW

Oh man, it’s gorgeous outside. Absolutely breathtaking.
Sure, it’s cold. And with the wind the way it tends to be it’s worse than that, fucking freezing comes to mind. But in the right light it’s breathtaking.

And lets face it, what is more fun than snow. I felt like a little schoolboy outside today. And I know that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I was going to school. It all has to do with what I saw and what I felt.

It started fairly tame yesterday with only the white view . . .

Today was worse though . . . snow flying about quite vigorously withe impressive wind speeds

snow was coming into my arboretum as well


Now, considering that has a roof over it I knew outside would be worse


You can even see the snowsweeps on the ice

Not easily deterred it was ON TO SCHOOL
You can tell the snow was having fun by the way it strove to represent a racewheel

and when it stopped trying

School was suffering equal onslaught though



and getting through the untouched snow of the last few meters where noone in their right mind would be (though there were at least 4 other people at school later in the afternoon)

Now follows a slower part of my day. It included noodles, 6 cups of hot cocoa (and a trip to the bathroom to pee)- and can I just say “Thank you for the free cocoa machines” to my school- and 5-6 hours of crunching numbers. So I won’t bore you with that. I certainly didn’t photograph any of it.

On the way back I picked a time with no snow falling to head back. And karma rewarded me with a grand total of 10 snow-free seconds before starting the rain, hail and after 30-or-so seconds: Snow.

The trip back also had me pausing for pictures:

and after a bit more snow tried to force itself through my derailleur

You can see the poor thing being detached. I had to lug the thing back the rest of the way


my own snowangel (though not very visible)


And finally

Eventhough I had nothing to do with that one.

For more pictures go here

Bonus picture:

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Quote of the day:

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottory

- Bill Watterson

That’s that over with. May his noodely appendage forgive my lack of enthusiasm

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Quote of the day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day

More interesting stories, trip descriptions and stuff later