More fireworks and riding! Life is good :) ...if you ignore the gigantic bugs

Okay...so I ended up not going to Japan for a few reasons...the weather sucked on and off this weekend in this whole region, it would have cost way too much for less than 48 hours in Japan, and it would have been a lot of travelling and not enough chilling out and exploring...so, on Friday (my school's birthday) I did NOTHING. Well, that's not entirely true. I ate junk food and watched Corner Gas (for those of you not in Canada: it's an awesomely Canadian show about a gas station in the middle of Saskatcheway: the flat province). It's good Canadian humour.

On Saturday, Rachael and I headed to Busan for the final (and biggest) performance of the international fireworks festival. Before hitting up Gwangalli Beach, we bummed around Nampo-dong, the shopping district in Busan. We found a couple of really cool camera shops, one of which had a Leica DSLR on hand. For you photo geeks: it has a medium format sensor. What that means is the sensor has roughly ONE HUNDRED times the surface area of your average point and shoot. It's crazy. It also costs about $35,000. Here it is next to my camera (as silly as it sounds, if I wasn't allowed to sell and had to choose between the two, I'd choose mine).

Near the beach, the crowds were huge despite the weather (pouring rain), but thanks to Rachael and her friends, we managed to snag a spot inside a foreigner bar (massive open windows)...I'm not usually one for hanging around expat watering holes, but I gotta admit, Saturday night was wicked...the view wasn't too shabby either:

The fireworks were about 50 minutes long and they were much different than the competition the week before. Quite honestly, I think I liked the first weekend's show better. This weekend was amazing, the sky was almost constantly filled with fireworks, but there seemed to be much less organization and grace to it than last year. If last week was Pachebel's Canon in D, this weekend was Led Zeppelin cranked to 11. Both great, but definitely different styles.

Yay for colour:

My fave pic from the night:

On the way home, the subways were ridiculously crowded...we were all getting pressed into each other as army guys shoved more and more commuters onto the trains. This guy looked less than pleased:

On Sunday, Rachael ruined my plans to do nothing by tempting me with a ride into the country...reluctantly, I agreed. So, out into the country we went in gorgeous spring weather and started exploring...saw a lot of cool things:

Buddhist temple with a gigantic Buddha statue on the roof:

Cool marsh-type plants in the sun:

Sadly, Rachael's bike got a flat about 25km out and yesterday happened to be pretty much the only day when she didn't bring her patch kit...so we went for a nice long walk to the nearest little village where she caught a bus back home). But we saw a cool little river on the way:

...and the nastiest centipede I've EVER laid eyes on. Not only is this thing about 5" (12cm) long (the phone was 4"/10cm), it also had what appeared to be armour on it, and, according to Rachael who was bitten by one in Hawaii, the pain when they bite is comparable to "being stabbed with a hot needle". Fun stuff. Definitely going to make sure the bug screen on my windows are always in perfect shape haha

Oh yeah...also, I love my job...this week, a third of my classes are cancelled due to the Grade 9s writing exams, last week we only had to work for 4 days and the next two weeks I only have to work 4 days...yay. My school and I also started talking about signing on for another year, so I have to do an open class to a bunch of bigwigs next week. The hardest part: trying to pretend like my Korean "co-teachers" actually do anything. During the open class, we have to show them how we run a class. Since the Korean "co-teachers" are legally obligated to teach the class and I'm only supposed to be here to help with very specific things (speaking/pronunciation, etc) it should be interesting...In the 8 months I've been here, I've run every single class by myself, done all the planning, etc. Most of my "co-teachers" don't even show up to class, and those who do simply read in the back or sleep. The most active of my 7 "co-teachers" translates one or two sentences a class. So....pretending like we actually work together will be fun :)

Okay...that's it from me...hope you've all had a great weekend, talk to you soon!
T