Sarah on the 구름 다리 (Cloud Bridge)
Morrow and Sarah during our final ascent
The Thinker
He. Is. Crazy.
and because he’s crazy, he died in the terminal #rip
Playing catch with 성훈 at 금성중
Look at them shoes! 선기 got style
I almost forgot how beautiful silence was.
My Way Home: Hongdae Exit 9
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Ssamziegil,Insa-dong
The Horvaths Visit Korea
The Usual: Protests Outside the US Embassy
Military Training at the War Museum
Gwanghwamun Square
이대
Frozen Han
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One of Many New Faces ^^
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Taiwan was a tale of two cities: Taipei and Kenting. Taipei, the capital in the north, was rainy and empty (Chinese New Year) while Kenting, a resort town in the south, was beautiful and bustling. These pictures are the best that I’ve got from the island.
Taipei 101: the World's Second Largest Building
Shilin Night Market
48 New Taiwanese Dollars (aka 1.5 USD) =)
Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial
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We did our best to salvage an otherwise dreary stay in Taipei by seeing cultural sites and going to a club in the basement of Taipei 101. The sites were nice and the food was good, but needless to say, after 4 days in the rain we were stoked to head to the beach.
Kenting Beaches
Mooching off of the Chateau's beach front
MOPEDS
(fortunately, mine wasn't baby blue like Henry's)
Aside from getting pulled over for speeding, renting mopeds was the best decision all trip!
Maobitou Couple
Maobitou Cliffs
Cigars on da beach
My international travels are over (for the next few months)! I’m sad to see them go but happy to be living in Seoul for the month of February / taking language classes. My family’s visiting in less than two weeks so there’s much to be excited about.
Seoul photos abound.
Instead of posting last Sunday night I was busy sitting in a bus terminal in Seoul for 5 hours. We got to the terminal at 4:30pm and asked for the next bus back to Naju, which turned out to be at 9:29pm. I sat against a column the whole time and wound up getting back to Naju around 2am. I had a pretty unproductive and lethargic week — maybe foreshadowed by my weary Sunday evening– but let’s talk about the week before this one instead, it was much more fun!
School Festival:
I’m really disappointed that my school festival videos won’t load because they’re pretty epic. My two favorites are of a group of my students doing a fully choreographed dance to a K-Pop song and the other is a robot daft-punk solo act. If I can ever figure them out I’ll be sure to post them. But for now, these are some pictures from my school’s festival!
Please look at the kid on the right, hipster waiting to be born.
Drumming act that went on for a really long time
The catcher for my baseball team showin' off THE PIPES
This was before they started jumping on me and trying to steal my wallet =p
I love E-Waun. He told me looked like "this guy" and routinely puffs out his belly and provokes everyone to slap it (he never backs down)
Pretend Thanksgiving:
Most of the ETAs gathered in Seoul last weekend to have a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by the US Embassy. It was in the National Folk Museum and the newly anointed ambassador to Korea was there to greet us. The food was okay (but considering I hadn’t had mashed potatoes in 6 months I ate way too much) and the company was, as usual, classy.
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I had a pretty off week for some reason (besides bowling in Mokpo last night where my team killed it!), nothing bad happened to me but it just was a very lethargic few days. It’s about to be the start of a new week and month so I’m ready to start off fresh tomorrow. I think I’m stressed out by all the planning I need to do before the semester ends…but this time next month I’ll be on a beach in Melbourne and playing with koala bears so I can’t complain too much!
The festivities from Senior Week were over and we all gathered on Fordham Road to walk to campus for the last time. We took some pictures, waited, said goodbyes, waited and then took our seats on Edward’s Parade amongst thousands of families and friends (and Alex Trebek). It was supposed to be one of the most momentous days of my life, one that marked the end of an era, but aside from being unbearably hot in my all-black graduation gown I don’t remember much from Saturday May 21st.
I’ll always remember cheering on my peers, receiving my own diploma and—knowing that I was headed to Korea—saying farewell to my closest friends, not knowing the next time I would see them. But, for such an important day, I probably spent more time brooding over my father’s forgetfulness (he forget where he parked his car, turns out it was in a bus lane) than I did processing the imminent transition into adulthood.
That afternoon I stayed in the Bronx at my apartment, rather than head home and return to my high school bedroom, because I was headed to Lithuania the following day. I was leading a service project to a country I couldn’t have pointed to on a map a year earlier. With undergraduates to gather and itineraries to organize I had no time to leisurely reflect on graduation.
We were off to Lithuania for two weeks and when I returned to the States I only had a few weeks to prepare for Korea. In Lithuania, at home, in Montreal (weekend adventure in June), and at the onset of Korea I kept telling myself “Eric, you really ought to sit down and think about what’s happening with your life. I mean, you’re not a student anymore, this is a huge transition that you ought to process.”
I kept telling myself that graduation was a big deal, something I had to “process,” but any time I would try and be introspective I was unproductive. I never reflected on graduation because there was nothing to wrestle with, nothing troubling. As no urge to flesh out this transition arose I realized that “hey, maybe I wanted to graduate and everything’s for the best?”
I’m beginning to think that my being adopted is running a similar path.
