Weekend update

Life has been extremely busy for me. My teaching load is up, which I really like, but that means that I no longer have my mornings free, and I'm frequently at the school until 8 PM. Still, I can't believe how quickly the time flies by. I'm getting over a nasty cold, so I get tired really easily these days, too.

This weekend was interesting. On Saturday, I met Kathy, my roommate from Wesley Mission School, in a city called Suwon. Suwon has an excellent fortress that is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites. We visited the palace and then took a dragon trolley (see the photo below) around the fortress wall. I'm hoping to go back sometime and walk the perimeter of the fortress (5.2 km).

The palace:
The dragon trolley:In honor of my dad, my life-long teacher of Fort Appreciation 101, I present Hwaseong Fortress.I took the day off from my usual responsibilities at the church on Sunday and spent the day at a youth festival in Seoul. I helped at a tent that had displays and activities to educate middle school kids about North Korean refugees living in South Korea. I got to meet some university students who came to South Korea from North Korea a few years ago. They didn't speak much English, and we were pretty busy, so I didn't really have a chance to talk with them, which was a little disappointing.

The tent I worked in had maps displayed on tables showing the routes that refugees take from North Korea. Since they can't cross the DMZ, they go north from North Korea into China. From there, some go to Mongolia and then to South Korea. Others cross China and get to Thailand, which offers them some assistance in getting to South Korea. Still others cross China to Vietnam, travel through Vietnam to Cambodia, and then go to SK from Cambodia. A few get assistance from embassies or human rights groups in Beijing. The entire time they're in China, they're illegal and have to be careful not to be caught or they'll be returned to North Korea. The whole journey takes about two years. It's an incredibly long trip. Many times, they have to work illegally in order to earn money to continue traveling. They usually don't speak the language of the countries they're traveling through. I can't even begin to imagine it.

When the kids came to our tent, they were given 100 dominoes. They had to stand the dominoes up on the map along the refugees' route. They had 5 minutes and had to use all 100 dominoes. Since the maps were relatively small, in order to use all the dominoes, they had to take a circuitous route, not unlike that of many refugees. If they knocked any dominoes over while setting them up, it symbolized setbacks or even the return of themselves or friends or family members to North Korea. Once all the dominoes were standing up along the route, they would knock the first one over. If the dominoes didn't collapse along the whole route, it meant that they didn't make it to South Korea and were stuck somewhere else. The kids just had fun playing with the dominoes, but I thought the effect was pretty gripping. Here are a couple photos. The weird blue tint is due to being under a blue tent on a really sunny day.