Nhớ Nguồn

And now, part 2 of the Seoul experience, courtesy of our Korean tour guides. Taking a picture at one of the old palaces still in Seoul with a palace "guard." It's impossible to see, but the impressive beard that man is sporting is actually fake. Up close, you can see all the glue he had to use to keep it on. Pour soul... This is my obligatory "Asian pose" at the Cheonggye Stream. The 5-mile long river was an incredible place to escape the bustling streets just above, and I can only imagine how great it would be for dates. Apparently, the stream occasionally becomes a river when it rains a lot. There were escape ladders every few hundred feet. A "helpful" ajumma singled us out to explain to us the significance of the statue (you can't see it, but it's the large stone structure on the left) and the large stone dais that you can see in this photo. The statue is of Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, and the ...

Just last week, I had the pleasure of flying to South Korea to visit friends and family. It was a bit of a last minute trip (and it cost me like one), but I had a fantastic time! Here are my photos, thoughts, and observations of my one-week experience. To note, because there are a lot of pictures, I've decided to do this entry as two parts: the first part are shots from m camera, the second are shots from my Korean tour guide's. So apparently in Seoul, the way people go about buying housing is to come to one of these impressive looking model homes. They would then look at examples of the rooms and then buy them on the spot. The crazy thing, according to my Korean source, is that these rooms aren't even the final product! In essence, people have to buy their houses without knowing whether or not it will turn out the way they want it to! If you made a bad choice or had back luck, you'd literally have to live with it. I think this picture is indicative of South...

Pictures, en masse, of my experience of the International Teacher's Day in Viet Nam. I had no idea that teachers were so well respected and that this holiday was so important in Viet Nam!  One of my ILA students who gave me a paper-craft card and shiny new pen.  Interestingly, this girl isn't actually my student. I gave her a level test back in September and she still remembered me for some reason. She gave me a cute hand-drawn card.  I got to sit in the VIP section for the Teacher's Day ceremony at the Phan Tay Ho middle school. This picture doesn't do justice to the size of the student audience. Note the kids sitting on the second floor. There is an additional floor above that with more students and even more students in the back of the school.  I stuck around to get pictures of the stage. I hadn't actually noticed the girls in front of me while I was doing this, but apparently they noticed me. They promptly ran over...  ...and i...

This isn't my normal kind of post, but it's still related to Viet Nam. If you've got the time,  this article  is extremely well done and shares an interesting viewpoint into the politics of the South China Sea. Enjoy!

In Vietnam, they don't have snow days, they have storm days. Classes this afternoon got canceled, but I can't say I'm sad about that. With an incredibly full day tomorrow, I couldn't be happier to have the extra time to lesson plan tonight.

I absolutely love this picture, not because of what you can see, but because of what you can't. What's missing are the hundreds of kids that go to this school on this completely normal Thursday afternoon. Where are they? In their classrooms taking a nap together, of course. As I walked through the strangely peaceful quad, I could imagine every one of those rooms with almost 50 kids inside, sleeping together on their chairs, on the tables, and on the floor. I couldn't stop the smile that grew on my face.