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A weekend hike

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At long last, after nearly a year of longing, I finally climbed Buramsan. I may not have mentioned this mountain in my blog posts but from the moment I saw it on the bus coming into Byeollae that very first day I have been wanting to climb it. The peak on the right is  불암산  I went with one of the bilingual teachers from my academy. We started out by taking a bus as close to the mountain as possible. From there on we had to walk to the trail head, uphill no less. Both of us enjoyed taking in the view as often as possible. At the top of most mountains, there is an 아저씨 (ajussi) or 아줌마 (ajumma) who sells ramen or some such food to the hungry adventurers. However, because the top of 불암산 is pure rock, the rest spot is around 500 meters from the top. Grace and I were having a wee rest on a small boulder when an 아저씨 with a small dog came up the trail. The dog was very friendly and as we pet it Grace and the 아저씨 made some small talk. Eventually, he moved on ...

오랜만이에요 (It's been awhile...)!

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Greetings from the far side of the world! It has been a solid 5ish months since my last post, which, I will be the first to admit, is positively disgraceful. You have my deepest apologies and absolutely no promises that I won't do it again! What have I been up to the past five months, you ask? Well, mostly just the usual teaching and marking and so forth. We've had some changes at the academy with old teachers going back to school for various Master's degrees and new teachers beginning. I got a new schedule in March and am now teaching 30 classes a week. My classes are mostly good, but some classes are more challenging to teach depending on the day and the varying moods of my students. Over 설날 (Lunar New Year), I went to  속초 (Sokcho) with Lien which was a welcome getaway. We stayed in a lovely Airbnb that had a view of the ocean. We did a lot of relaxing and lazing about as was needed by both of us. Since then, I've not done a whole lot out of the ordinary. I...