New blog.

By the way, I've started a new blog...so this one is finished. Check out the new one here. :D

Lots of snow + lots of rain =

At H&B's

Gandalf

aka my dad.

As an aside, it's nice to be back in Canada. It's nice and icy and cold and snowy.

One of the nicest things about being back in Canada...

...my new nephew! :)

Good-bye Korea!

I'll leave you with one of my favourite things about driving in Korea...
...getting stuck behind a truckload of cute men! (All Korean men must do 2 years of military service in their 20s). ;)

Good-bye Korea, I love you, I will see you again soon.
Hello Canada, I love you, I will see you soon! *muah!*

I'll be home for Christmas...

And not just in my dreams! I'm comin home Dec 18....yay!

My next favourite monks

Whilst whiling away a couple of hours in the magnificent gardens surrounding the Potala Palace (residence of the Dalai Lama), we met these wonderful monks:

Don't you just love those runners? (the other one has sandals and socks on...cute!)

They spoke barely a lick of English, and had one old raggedy English phrase book which was, well, not the greatest to say the least. But, through the use of mimes and that book, we sat and had a wonderful time with them for hours. The funniest was teaching them the word, "monk." It just wasn't sinking in...so finally I pointed at each of our group in turn: "Monk, monk, teacher! Teacher, teacher, monk!" They got it after a couple rounds of that. hahaha!

To sit with people so eager to learn, and trying so hard to understand was something else. Maybe in the future I'll re-locate to Tibet University...

My favourite monk

This poor little rascal was bored out of his tree at the Jokhang Temple in central Lhasa, and while other monks and commoners were seated in great halls listening for hours upon hours to scripture readings, he amused himself by bothering tourists. It was pretty comical...he'd run over to a group of tourists taking photos and stick his head in the pictures, and pretend not to notice he was getting in the way. Sometimes he blocked people's paths and wouldn't let them pass, sidestepping and demanding a toll.

We first saw him running over the roof here, and followed him.
Spying on people below...
And so we played with him for a bit:

Young boys are often put into monkhood (is that a word?) by their parents at a very young age. In fact, the population of Tibet has been steadily decreasing and one factor is the tradition for every family to have at least one son as a monk.

Shish Kebabs

Last night saw me and 4 of my friends going out to a nearby "hof" (bar/restaurant). We had shish kebabs! Yum-my! Well, not all of them were that yummy...I ate one crunchy thing that I rather disliked and was then told it was a "sandbag" from a chicken's stomach. Oh please pass me another! hahaha. I love the Korean tradition of barbecuing your food in front of you at the table. I will miss Korean food!!

S with pre-bbq'd food:
Food cooking:

My side of the table:

Yum and Not So Yum

So, on our trip to Seorak, we visited the East Sea, as I mentioned, and we saw rows and rows of squid drying the the wind. Dried squid is a big treat here...people eat it all the time, usually while they have a beer with friends. No thank you!

On the other hand, Korea has amazing street food everywhere, and always at the bottoms of popular mountains. My favourite is roasted corn on the cob. You can also get chicken, toffee with nuts, rice cake (which is like cake, not like popcorn like at home), boiled fish paste (disgusting), and fried bugs (also disgusting).

Seorak

Couple of weekends ago saw me back at Seorak Nat'l Park with some friends, and was it ever gorgeous!!! Clean, crisp air, fall colours, bright sunshine. Almost thought I was back home there for a bit...not to mention we accidentally happened across the East Sea...also clean and beautiful! (unlike the grey mess that is the West Sea). Here's how we felt...us Maritimers were right at home!

Well...ok, maybe...

After a lovely break of no blogging...maybe I will keep it up. I guess not everyone can have facebook. ;) I just find blogging really time consuming, but maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe I will just post a few things, here and there. And maybe just one picture at a time, since I find that to be the most annoying part of blogger. It takes so darn long to upload photos! And only 5 at a time. Sheesh, get with the times folks.

So, here's your one picture. This is my home. I live in a complex of 4 buildings called Hiveras. A, B, C, D. I live in B. I'm leaving in 4 weeks to go back to Canada for a bit, and I'm actually gonna miss this place. Mostly b/c of all the great people who live here.

Ok, one more

I'm already feeling guilty. And I figure I should go out with a bang, so here ya go. This is my home in Incheon, South Korea, at night (obviously), from the top of Gyeyang Mountain (the mountain that has kept me sane in this busy city). Seriously, get facebook. It's so much easier. :)

The End.

I'm sorry friends. This blog is too much trouble. I'm not gonna keep it up. If you have facebook, you can add me as a friend and see my pictures there. If not...sorry. I just can't be bothered anymore. It was fun while it lasted though. ;) Love you lots.

Good-bye Girl...

...off to see the world. I'll miss you.

Town

Most of our scenery was pretty brown along the drive. The mountains are very rocky and brown with not a lot of vegetation, the valleys are also brown and rocky, and the river was actually made of chocolate, as you can see. But then, all of a sudden, we'd see these cool little towns with green and yellow fields layered one above the other. I assume they were irrigated from the river.

Animals & Carts

The small towns we visited were really rustic and basic, having few (if any) cars, but lots of motorcycles and carts and animals...cows, horses, pigs, and packs of mangy dogs that roam around and howl all night long.

Post office:
Crosswalk:
View of the one-street town from our "restaurant:"
Some kind of pig eating breakfast on the sidewalk:
Bored, but pretty pony & cart beside a little market:
Traversing the open plain:
And in the cities we have human-powered carts. The rickshaws have their own lanes, and they are a fabulous way to get around:
And they're harder to drive than you think!

Cute

Was talking to two Korean friends tonight and we discussed the expressions, "Crystal clear," and "Clear as mud," to indicate comprehension. So after awhile, one of them decided to try out his new knowledge, and the end of one of my sentences exclaimed, "Crystal mud!"

Pilgrims & Prayer Flags

Pilgrims from the Tibetan countryside come from all over to visit monasteries in Lhasa (the capital) and other cities. In the picture above, you can see three young boy monks bowing in front of the Jokhang, one of Lhasa's oldest and most prominent monasteries. Below, you can see a young person doing the bows on the street. Many pilgrims do this sort of bowing all the way around the temple. It takes hours and hours, and I can't imagine how hard it would be on the body. Most of them have pieces of wood strapped onto their hands so as not to rub them raw. Other pilgrims usually put small bills into their hands as they pass:
Around all monasteries, you can find prayer wheels which pilgrims and monks (and anyone else who wants to) spin as they walk by. The wheels have a little rolled up prayer inside them, so when you spin the wheel, it is thought the prayer gets released up to the gods. The woman below is not spinning the wheels, but she has her own tiny prayer wheel that she is spinning around and around as she walks the circuit:
This cute little woman saw us taking pictures and jumped right in, wanting her picture taken. The old women loved to see us and were always so friendly:
Most pilgrims, as I mentioned, spin their own wheels. Here's a man with a gigantic one! He has a pouch attached to his clothing to help him carry it:
One day while we were visiting the Jokhang, there was a mass convention going on. Pilgrims from all over came and sat all day on the floor listening to a monk read from what I assume are Buddhist scriptures, or teachings. It seemed so boring to me, but they were content. They were all following along in their own books, and every now and again the monks from the monastery would walk amongst the seated people giving them yak butter tea. There were lots of visiting monks sitting and listening too, which I will show pictures of later. This is a picture looking down on a section of the main room for the pilgrims (they weren't even in the same room as the reading monk; just listening through a speaker)...the other main room was filled with monks. There were also people sitting everywhere on the sidelines, above, below, all around:
Finally, on mountains and on highways, you can see tons and tons of prayer flags flying in the wind. They are fastened there to appease the gods, and when the wind stirs them, it is thought the prayers go up to heaven (does look a bit messy at times I admit):