I have a kindergarten student who cracks me up.  Last school year he was in Teagan's class, and everyone knows Teagan likes to put on animated videos, such as "Peanuts", for his kids every so often.  Well, this boy, Alex, has somehow learned to imitate Snoopy (Charlie Brown's dog)'s laugh.  It's kind of like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH9MAhDvNjo
It's a fake laugh, everyone knows he's not really laughing, and the other kids don't really notice anymore, but he does it all the time and it gets me every time. I can't help but chuckle.  I'm smiling to myself as I write this.  Ahh kids.

So, if foreign teachers were complaining about not getting enough vacations a week ago, we shouldn't be now.  We had last Thursday off, for Children's day - a wonderful, sunny day of paintballing - the weekend, and then Tuesday off as well.  Some teachers even got the Friday and/or Monday off to boot.
On Friday, after a very delicious dinner at the Indian restaurant, some of us went to the Jazz bar.  I've mentioned this place before because it's so cool to be able to sit and watch really good musicians play good music.  And this time I took a short video.

Then Saturday was a full day for me.  It started when I went to the wedding of a friend from church (she's actually more of an acquaintance - really, I don't know her that well - but she invited me, so I happily went).  It was the first Korean wedding I've been to here and they're a little different than American weddings - mostly not as long.  Not too far from where we live is a large, white, castle-like building designated to be a place where weddings can be performed.  It is appropriately dubbed (in English at least) 'the wedding castle' - it's sort of a landmark in our area.  A friend has been to a wedding at the wedding castle and she has said that weddings there are like an assembly line - you're in and you're out - one after the other.  She said that guests then have a 'reception' dinner amongst all the other guests from the weddings around that time.  Efficient weddings: only in Korea.
The wedding I attended on Saturday wasn't as quick as those at the wedding castle I'm sure, but it went pretty fast still.  There was a 'reception' meal after the ceremony, but the bride and groom didn't attend it, which seems strange to me.  The two things that I really liked about the wedding were, first, when the groom sang a song to the bride, Jane, my church acquaintance.  It was sung in Korean but judging by the reaction of those around me, it was a funny song.  The second thing was that after the ceremony and the family pictures, all the guests were invited to the front of the church for pictures with the bride, groom and their families.  I felt pretty honored as one who knew the bride very little and the groom not at all.
After the wedding, I scooted off to Idong, past the awesome temple to our weekly jam session/practice at Live Story.  Our group is hoping to have some songs ready for the open-mic night on the 21st, but our practices still tend to end up with us just free-jamming, which is great.  Then, after a quick burger for supper, I buzzed off to join Alisa downtown.  We shopped a little, I bought a shirt, and then I was off again to soccer practice.  Saturday night soccer practices are the ones where we join a Korean team and they tend to be much more of a workout than our own practices.  This one was like that.
And, though you might not think so, there was still time that evening for a haircut.  Earlier, I had mentioned that I thought I needed one soon.  Jane, who was there and who's great, offered to cut it for me.  So she did.  She did a really good job too.  I've come to see cutting a friend's hair as a service to them similar to that of washing their feet in the Bible times.  I've never given anyone a haircut but I've been very lucky to have my mom and other good friends cut mine.  Thank you.

Sunday morning I went with Jane on a hike.  I've talked about my special place - the forested hill nearby with a trail through it.  Well, it turns out that there are paths through the trees everywhere around here.  We went down a good long one near her apartment.  The path goes up and along a hill and there are quite a few trails branching off and heading off along other ridges, each marked nicely with a sign.  But the signs are written in Korean of course, so for us non-Koreans it was a bit difficult to navigate.  Despite our attempts to keep a trail of 'bread crumbs', we took the wrong turn a couple of times on the way home and had to build up the courage to ask fellow hikers how to get back.
Koreans are so kind though.  We met quite a few people along the way and had broken Korean/English conversations with them; one of which was with a couple who were working in this small, peaceful farm that we found.  We had bravely taken a path coming off of the main trail that led down into the valley.  Amazingly, just a couple meters down we could already notice changes in the types of tree growth.  On the top of the hill, only pine trees grew, with little undergrowth.  But a short way down the hill, it was all deciduous trees growing, and with a lot more shrubs and plants underneath.  Then, further down the trail, we found this beautiful farm.  With homemade fences made from branches, it had been divided up into smaller plots as if it were a community garden of some sort.  But what I really wondered about was how anyone would go out there regularly, possibly even daily, to work on their crops - there weren't any raods, only walking paths, and it was quite a ways from the city I thought.

I like the boots and the small terraced hill.

Then right beside the farm was this seemingly empty, very pretty, temple-like building, which we certainly didn't expect.

It was another very cool discovery.

At another point on our hike, a big gust of wind blew through and we got to experience a pretty amazing Asian phenomenon: 'yellow (or Asian) dust'.  Wikipedia describes it as:

"...a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the springtime months. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia, northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles."

It continues to say that lately it's been a problem because the dust pickes up pollutants on it's way and because of it's increase in frequency due to the intensified desertification of China and Kazakhstan.  As it was on the hill, when the wind blew we could see a yellow tinted cloud blow all around.  It's possible that more people are wearing masks these days because of the yellow dust, but in our situation on hill when it blew all around, it was almost impossible not to breathe the dust in.  Moslty I'm amazed by how the geography of a place so far away can effect us here so intimately.  It really displays the power of the wind.

Thanks for reading,
Michael