Going to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches...

I hope everyone has had a wonderful week thus far. Mine has been going well, I caught a slight cold (NO, I DON'T HAVE THE SWINE FLU HAHA) so been a little under the weather, but nothing serious. I went to the pharmacy the other night and after a few days of medicine, I feel much better. Today is my last round of pills, and I feel about 80% today, so hopefully by the weekend I'll be back to 100%. The weather (as I've said before) during fall in Korea is unbeatable. Usually about 80 degrees and sunny with no humidity. If that's not amazing, I don't know what is. I wish it was like this year round! HA! But, if it was, then maybe everyone in the world would want to move here.
So this past weekend I went with my friend Kevin (his English name) to his hometown of Eumseong in the province next to ours Chungcheongbukdo which is basically South Chungcheong province (much like North and South Carolina). Here is a map click the plus symbol 5 times and you can see Eumseong, remember I live in Cheonan.
Chuseok is next weekend (for those who don't remember, Chuseok is a harvest festival celebrated in Korea on the 15th day of August on the lunar calendar) and one of the traditions of Chuseok is to return to one's hometown and pay respect to their ancestors by going to their grave and bowing. Kevin told me that most people will bow to the two generations above them, living or deceased. So, for instance Kevin's father is still alive, so he will bow to him two times, and then his grandfather is deceased, so they will go to his grave and bow two times to him. So, that being said...it is very important for the graves to be cleaned well around this time of year. So, this past weekend when we went to Eumseong (which, by the way is a very small town, and the hometown of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon) and helped his family to clean up the graves. We had a pretty good work party, there were maybe about 10 of us and we had about 20 graves to clean. The area around Eumseong is really beautiful and it was a nice change of pace to be out in the country as opposed to city life. I was upset I didn't think to take my camera, so unfortunatly I don't have any pictures. To clean the graves, there were basically two people running weed eaters with blades on them and taking out all the weeds/bushes/etc that have grown since last year, and then the rest of us raked all of it up and cleared it away. It was actually a very unique experience, and I enjoyed working along side my friend and his family. I told him several times that things like that I truly enjoy, feeling a little more like a citizen than a tourist. We worked for about 5 hours cleaning all the graves, and then after that his mom and aunts made us a nice lunch.
Eumseong is also very well know for peaches. Kevin's dad actually taught English for 30 years and is now "retired" but still operates his peach farm that has around 60-80 peach trees. This is their busy season, and so after we took a short break, we helped his dad pick some peaches and get them boxed up for the market. For those of you who remember one of the dumbest, catchiest, songs I can remember, the music group The Presidents of the United States of America had a song "Peaches" and it made me think of this song that I'd forgotten years ago. So, anyway...if you like dumb music, or silly songs, maybe you'll like to revisit your past and listen to the song.
HAHA...I've had that song stuck in my head for the past 4 days, so be careful!

Finally...

Ok...first off sorry to everyone who has been checking for a new post, that actually makes me feel good that some people care enough to want to hear more of my ramblings! HAHA! So, to all of you, thanks for checking and I'm really sorry it's been so long since I've written.
Well...I've been back in Korea for over a month, hard to believe how fast the time passes! I had a wonderful visit with all of my family in the States in July. I had the chance to be there for two weeks visiting Paonia for a few days to see the amazing things that Mom and Dad have done with their house and yard. That's one thing I really am impressed with my parents, they are very hard working and are always trying to improve their place. It looked, great and I even got to sit in my Maxima for a minute up in the garage. Hard to believe it had been over a year since I'd driven or sat behind the wheel of a car! HA! To go from driving daily, to driving, well...never. It's become normal I guess to not drive, but I did miss my Maxima for a few minutes, and the power it had, and of course blasting some music (I love those Bose speakers, amazing! HA). So, yeah...their house and yard looked amazing as I had figured it would.
I also spent several days at Mer and Becca's houses respectively. We had a chance to do all sorts of fun things, go to a carnival, go to a bouncey castle place, go hiking, go to a baseball game, watch some fireworks, go to Park City, visit with my Shawcroft cousins (and Uncle Curt and Aunt Sharon), go to a BBQ at Darrell's house, go to a SLC Buzz game and get some great pics with the kids and the mascot, watch the 24th of July parade and receive a bunch of unwanted fliers from all the local Spanish Fork businesses, and watch the Rockies on Becca and Dal's HUGE screen (as my nephew Luke pulled for the Giants, which, BTW Luke, the Rockies still have a 2 game lead in the Wild Card dude), play Wii with the nieces and nephews, and see my good friends Tom and Greta (and Tom's parents) and their daughters. So...I had a busy, great time there in the States. It was weird to go shopping at Wal-Mart, and I bought a washcloth (something I've never found in Korea, well...they have wash clothes but they are REALLY different here) and I forgot the thing in Utah. I have a bunch of the pics from there, but thankfully Becca has already posted most of the cool pics on her blog, so please go look at all the pictures there! HAHA! Really...if there are more you want to see, please e-mail me, but honestly, Becca has most of the good shots I had posted on her site, so that makes it easy for me.
So...I've been back in Korea for a little over a month. As some of you may know, I ventured out and decided to open my own school with my friend Dana (she's Korean, that's her English name). It's been quite an adventure...we started with just three kids, and in a little over a month we now have 27. So...I feel pretty good so far, at least we had enough to pay our rent, and pay for our electricty, etc. I was pretty sure that the first few months we'd take a loss, so having enough kids to at least make a little money has been nice. The area our school is in is a smaller area, but there are no other English schools with a fulltime foreign English teacher. A few of them have a foreign teacher once a week, or some of them just have Korean English teachers. So, I think that's been one thing we have going for us. We have two 40 minute blocks with the kids, Dana teaches for 40 minutes, and then we switch off and I teach for 40. A few time blocks we have enough kids that we teach at the same time, and then the kids just switch classes. I hope that made sense. Most of our kids are around 6-9 years old. Koreans study English, music, art, taekwondo, etc. etc. usually after school and sometimes late into the night. So...we have the kids right after they come from school...so our first class is at 1:30 PM and we run until around 7:20 PM. So...that's a little about our school. Here are some pics, I'm actually quite disappointed with the quality, I'll try to take some more soon, and maybe they will look better.
OK...well now I feel better that I've posted...I know it's been an awfully long time since I've been on here, and I really like doing the blog, guess I've just not made the time.
So...it was great to see all of my friends and family that I got to see while I was in the States, and thanks for all the food, and fun while I was there.
I PROMISE I'll do better at keeping up. I think the hardest thing is just getting started again, sort of like excersizing I guess! HA!
Oh yeah...we've also started our 9th season on Southern Fried Football (fantasy football) with me, Mer, Becca and Dal all playing. I'll keep you informed of how awesome I am doing, and how poorly the other three are doing.
Thanks to everyone who spends some of their time reading my blog...I appreciate it! :)
Also...per Darrell's request, I have added two Sancho pics from the DMZ! HA!