First six uploaded,

[wintercolours]

and the rest are coming:
Deb's Korea Photos

They're in the general order they were taken, and I'm going to try to get some notes attached to 'em before I leave. I can't promise anything, though, since I've really got to rummage up some grub!

Edited to addI recommend looking at these in slideshow form (which shows them at full size), and setting

Comments

[kinz4]

those photos are amazing! you must have had the best time. i don't remember if i mentioned this, but one of my good friends is in the peace corps over in china...she's also a teacher. thanks for sharing these with us!

[wintercolours]

It was actually more conflicted than I thought, in all my idealism - the director was a harsh, cold woman who housed us in a shack atop the roof instead of giving us our own place both because it was 1) cheaper and 2) gave her a chance to monitor us, and thus express her disapproval when we left the school. Apparently she thought the approximately $900 she paid us a month entitled her to own us, and frequently expressed rage or dissatisfaction when I'd leave in spite of her questioning. Bleh! She was the reason I ended up leaving after 3.5 months instead of staying out the full year, because it was too hard to deal with her neuroses and fear we were giving private lessons that she wasn't getting paid for (an unfounded fear). But I miss my students tremendously, and the way the dust played with the lights so that it fell down in crazy arrays and angles you would never expect. Light was everywhere. And the mountains! How I need them! I miss jumping rope on the balcony and seeing all there was to see of the town, of knowing I was

[kinz4]

...if only I could have tucked all my high schoolers into my luggage!

i kid you not, this is exactly what my friend said literally days ago about the people she's with in china! crazy stuff!

anyway, three and a half months is great...more than i've done! so don't sell yourself short ;) i am mighty impressed for i don't think i could do something like this...as much as i wish i could. maybe it's just a matter of just DOING it. despite the situation with your director, what a great experience!

[wintercolours]

I wouldn't change a thing! Even if those parts of it were hard, I loved being in Korea. I especially loved my one day on the bus to Kimcheon by myself, where I walked up the hill in the early spring and was surrounded by a cascade of falling cherry blossom petals - all around me like snow, but pink. I saved a few in my journal and relished being there. The thought of never standing there again is too much to bear. I know I'll go back. But another part of that was thinking of my dad, in Korea decades before, imagining how he must have been feeling and wondering if he'd ever taken a too-fast, too-rickety bus from one town to another. My dad may be out of my life, but he's not out of my memory, and it was pleasant to think of the strange paths time follows. I loved Korea, still do. :)

[kinz4]

such a gorgeous description. i'm just imagining it all in slow motion. beautiful. i really hope you get to go back one day.