Just got back from 10 days in Vancouver for my sister's wedding. My first full day back, my Dad, little brother and I got up early and headed out to North Van to go fishing with my Uncle Frank on his boat.
We headed for Bowen Island and fished out that way. We ended up with 2 springs, which you can see Chad holding in the first picture (fortunately my sister just made him shave that ridiculous beard.) We also saw some dolphins and we had several seals following us hoping to snag our fish.
I took a short trip down to Namhae, an island down on the central south coast, last weekend. I had to take 3 different buses, taking a total of about 7 hours each way. That's pretty far for a 3 day weekend, but I'd never been to that area before, and the weather was supposed to be nice and sunny all weekend.
The island is the 3rd largest in South Korea, but it's only a little bit bigger than Saltspring. There's one small town of probably 30,000 people, and then several little villages scattered around the island.
As you can see from the giant garlic clove in the top picture, garlic is quite famous here, and apparently there's a garlic festival about a month from now.
In the second picture you can see a giant mask at the entrance to the mask dance museum, but it was closed when I went past.
I'd decided that I wanted to climb Mt. Geumsan while I was there. It's one of the tallest mountains on the island at just under 700m, and I heard the view was really nice. The weather was about 15 or 16 degrees and nothing but sun, which was perfect hiking weather. 
Unfortunately most of the pictures of the view out over the other islands were a little hazy, so this picture above is of Boriam Temple, near the summit of Geumsan.
I saw my first Korean-deer-while-jogging today (I've seen deer here before, just never while jogging.) Although I didn't have my camera with me, I think you'll find my drawing above is a fairly accurate representation.
The kids love when I draw on the whiteboard in class, because we end up arguing for 10 minutes about what the animal actually is. "Teacher, is it a shark?" "Uh, no." "Is it a gorilla?" "No." This could go on forever, so I finally tell them, "It's a tiger." "That's not a tiger," they say, shaking their heads emphatically.
To distract them from my (lack of) drawing skills, I change the subject to, "What do tigers eat?" The answer is usually some variation of, "They eat fish/deer/kimchi." And I say, "That's right. Do you know what else they eat?" To which I usually get silence, allowing me to deliver my punch line, "They eat little Korean boys/girls." That joke always cracks me up, but inevitably they turn it around and say, "No, they eat Canadian men."
The Saikung Peninsula in the New Territories is a popular playground for everybody living downtown Hong Kong to come and play in on the weekends. The area we wanted to go to was inaccessible by public car so we had to drive to a parking lot in the area, and then get a taxi to take us close to the coast. Then we hiked for about an hour, which got us to this nice, secluded beach. It was too cold to go swimming, but it's probably fantastic in the summer.
I went with my buddy Andrew. I told him to try and look cool for this picture, but...
His wife just had their second baby, so she's back in the States for a bit with her family. This allowed me to crash at his place for about a week, without intruding too much.
While I was in Hong Kong I took a ferry to Cheung Chau, one of the smaller islands in the area, for a couple of hours. As it's a popular day trip for everybody living downtown, and I went on a Saturday, it was quite busy.
There are no cars allowed on the island, so it was quite a nice place to look around. Above you can see one of the dragon boats that HK is famous for, with many bikes and bike-carriages in the background.
I think other than tourism, that the main industry is fishing, so here you can see a couple of fisherman in their tiny little fishing boats.
The coast was really nice, but unfortunately the weather was really dark and hazy, so none of the pictures turned out very well.
I had a fantastic time in Hong Kong. Although the weather wasn't great (cloudy with highs around 15 degrees most of the time), it's a very interesting city.
We ended up going downtown on New Year's Eve to watch the fireworks. They had 7 or 8 of the big buildings in Central (the main downtown area) rigged up with fireworks, so they were shooting them off the sides and tops of the buildings. It was pretty neat to see, but very brief. I think it was only about 10 minutes long.
I wasn't looking forward to coming back to Korea because I knew it would be freezing, but I got home yesterday morning at about 8:30. It was very cold and cloudy but dry. Within half an hour however, it started snowing like crazy, and within 6 or 7 hours we had about 25cm of snow. The roads were terrible and so my first two classes were cancelled, but it was business as usual for my last 4 classes.
One of the big banks in Busan. Finally some truth in advertising.
Just got back from 10 days in Vancouver for my sister's wedding. My first full day back, my Dad, little brother and I got up early and headed out to North Van to go fishing with my Uncle Frank on his boat.
We headed for Bowen Island and fished out that way. We ended up with 2 springs, which you can see Chad holding in the first picture (fortunately my sister just made him shave that ridiculous beard.) We also saw some dolphins and we had several seals following us hoping to snag our fish.
I took a short trip down to Namhae, an island down on the central south coast, last weekend. I had to take 3 different buses, taking a total of about 7 hours each way. That's pretty far for a 3 day weekend, but I'd never been to that area before, and the weather was supposed to be nice and sunny all weekend.
The island is the 3rd largest in South Korea, but it's only a little bit bigger than Saltspring. There's one small town of probably 30,000 people, and then several little villages scattered around the island.
I'd decided that I wanted to climb Mt. Geumsan while I was there. It's one of the tallest mountains on the island at just under 700m, and I heard the view was really nice. The weather was about 15 or 16 degrees and nothing but sun, which was perfect hiking weather. 
Unfortunately most of the pictures of the view out over the other islands were a little hazy, so this picture above is of Boriam Temple, near the summit of Geumsan.
I saw my first Korean-deer-while-jogging today (I've seen deer here before, just never while jogging.) Although I didn't have my camera with me, I think you'll find my drawing above is a fairly accurate representation.
It started snowing yesterday afternoon and it's been going strong now for about 30 hours. I went out for a walk this afternoon and we have about 50cm. It's crazy out there.
There's a really rural area not too far from my place, and I took a picture of the temple (above), but it's not very clear because the snow was so heavy.
I then took a detour into a hillside graveyard, and got this picture of a tiger climbing up a sort of tombstone. It looks like he's trying to eat the snow.
On the way back I snapped this little guy chilling out on a rope.
The Saikung Peninsula in the New Territories is a popular playground for everybody living downtown Hong Kong to come and play in on the weekends. The area we wanted to go to was inaccessible by public car so we had to drive to a parking lot in the area, and then get a taxi to take us close to the coast. Then we hiked for about an hour, which got us to this nice, secluded beach. It was too cold to go swimming, but it's probably fantastic in the summer.
I went with my buddy Andrew. I told him to try and look cool for this picture, but...
While I was in Hong Kong I took a ferry to Cheung Chau, one of the smaller islands in the area, for a couple of hours. As it's a popular day trip for everybody living downtown, and I went on a Saturday, it was quite busy.
I think other than tourism, that the main industry is fishing, so here you can see a couple of fisherman in their tiny little fishing boats.
The coast was really nice, but unfortunately the weather was really dark and hazy, so none of the pictures turned out very well.
I had a fantastic time in Hong Kong. Although the weather wasn't great (cloudy with highs around 15 degrees most of the time), it's a very interesting city.
