Done My Two Spring Courses

 

This is the waterfront park where I do my walking. This part of the park has a track where lots of people walk and you can get a bike for free and just ride if you want. A couple times I went with Aminur and some other friends on single bikes, two seaters and even the huge ones built for six. The river is the Geum Gang and on the other side is the Gong San Seong Fortress. It's an old wall that's a UNESCO heritage site and it's been featured on my blog before I think. There was a huge festival last summer when they filled the river with boats and the park with decorations and they built a temporary bridge across to the wall and it was all lit up. It was cool. But on Dec. 19, 2021, the day I took this pic, it was still cool, but mostly cool temperature-wise.

The top pic is down on ground level in the park, but away from the walking track and the people. These were the first flowers I saw down there. Tiny blue ones. Meanwhile on the same day, up on the side of the highway where I took the pic of the track and wall from, there were some flowering trees and shrubbery. This was March 22nd. The bottom pic is a weird one. There are deer in the part of the riverside where I do most of my walking. The week before March 22nd, I went for a walk and saw these trees they had gnawed the bark off. There was fur and poop all around so I put a few hunks of apple in the tree. I KNOW deer in Canada love apples. The deer here just ignored it for at least a week. I put up 4 pieces and none were disturbed and I know this is a high traffic area for the deer. Weird.

By the end of April we had more flowers on the ground in the deer area. I go there because I can take off my mask and smell the fresh air and the flowers of the tree in picture 2 are about the best smell of spring. I think they might be Catalpa trees. They have what look like beans growing in them. 

By May 17th this is what we had in the walking/biking track area of the park. The city workers of Gongju plant different flowers throughout the year. The last ones that will be where the yellow ones are now will be the big sunflowers. At least that's what they had last year in the fall when they stopped with the flowers. I can't say I don't like the flowers of summer, but I'd rather just skip right to the sunflowers and be done with Korean hot, humid, yucky summer. It's the only season here I don't like. 

In this above video I say I was at the park two days ago, but it turns out it was a week and two days ago. So this was May 26th. I usually go to the park at least once a week. I'm hoping this works. I have tried to upload vids of the deer to the blog and failed because they're too big, but I'm trying a free site called Kapwing. Hopefully it worked. Anyhoo, it's summer now and I'm battling mosquitos, humidity and heat. I hate it. But the pics are nice, eh? So are the vids. Yay! It worked! BTW, the truck that passed was turning on the pumps for the sprinklers that keep these flowers watered. They suck water right from the Geumgang. Otherwise, it'd be pretty brown. It's not even summer yet and we're in a drought! I'm SO glad I'm not working in this heat!

Here's what the wall looks like now. Compare that to the very first pic. I think I might go tomorrow and take some pics. I thought I would go today (June 3), but it was just too hot. I've actually started going in the late evening/night time. It won't last long, but right now it gets a bit cooler at night. Soon though, it'll be just as hot and muggy all night long. Last week, in the last week of my first term of study, I exercised almost every day. I've noticed being at the computer for so many hours a week (I'd say 50 or more) hasn't helped my health, so I have determined to use the two weeks off between terms to try to undo what the first term has done. Twice that week I went night hiking. It was great, but the deer are braver because they know nobody will be in the areas where sometimes people go. Twice I surprised deer right beside the trail I was on. I almost walked on one of them! At night it spooked me almost as much as the deer! At the end of the hike another freaky thing happened. I was out of the deer area and back onto the walking/biking track where there were a few people even though it was dark, and I thought I heard, "David!" At first I thought I misheard, but as I got closer and closer, I became sure someone was calling me. Then I saw the people and they said, "Let's wait for David. Hey David, come here." and one guy waved. So I hesitantly waved back. As I got close, it became apparent to me that there was a little boy named David near a piece of exercise equipment that the family was calling. The mother appeared to be Korean and the father was a foreigner. I said as I reached them, "Is your boy's name David? My name is David too. I thought you were calling me just in case you were wondering why I waved." He said something in English like, "Oh, your name is David. I see, that is strange. Two Davids." I heard a European accent, maybe German, but couldn't place it. The family were more concerned with David than chatting so we just left it at that. 

So instead of hiking today, I went to the Ass Mart to get groceries and... have I explained the Ass Mart? It's called Top Mart, but I hate it. All the produce is packed in Styrofoam trays wrapped in cellophane, or just wrapped in cellophane. The trays are so they can sneak potatoes or tomatoes or strawberries or whatever, with bad spots on them in with others and put the spot side to the Styrofoam so you don't see it. Sometimes, like with the tomatoes, they ALL have bad sides to them. Things are just overpriced there too. I can get many things at 7-11 for cheaper so you know the kind of markup there is. I've just stopped buying their meat. A thin, kalby thickness pork chop is 4-5 bucks. I'm not paying that. Anyway, I call them the Bottom Mart because even in Gongju they're not the top. Bottom = Ass so... But I still shop there because it's a 2-minute walk from my apartment. 

Today I'm in the Ass Mart and I get to the eggs. It's the end of my normal circuit, but even still after a 2-minute walk there and about 5 minutes of shopping, I'm sweating. Even with the air conditioning in the store. There's a Korean guy at the eggs who instantly intrigues me for two reasons: he's bigger than me and he's sweating more than I am. For those reasons I was hoping he'd spark up a convo. As if he read my mind he says, "This is a better price." He points to my 15-egg carton and refers to the 30-egg flat he's holding. He says, "Two times the eggs, but not two times the price." So I said, "Oh, you're right! But, I have a small fridge." Anyway, as we talk, he tells me he has studied in Australia and he's been to Canada in Ontario. He also says that the eggs we are both holding are from his father's farm. As we make small talk, I notice that this guy is MUCH sweatier than me! We're both wearing masks and his is absolutely soaking wet! I'm wondering if he hasn't just finished stocking the egg area to get so sweaty. I never did find out, but he told me his foreign nickname is Jay. Big Jay the egg man just made me feel better about not working right now. If I had continued to work instead of quitting Gongju Dae and studying for my master's, THAT is how I would look during my teaching day. I'd be covered with sweat and I'd have a soggy mask on. No thank you!

As for my courses, it got a little sketchy at the end, but I got through them okay. The "sketchiness" was just plain reading and writing too much. And, as you may have noticed, I haven't been doing my therapeutic writing here on the old blog, so what happens is my rage at the injustice of our fucked up world builds. It doesn't help when entire sections of both courses consist of injustices in our fucked up world that are barriers to education. Add to that things like human trafficking, refugees, organ harvesting, culturally discriminatory practices, and so on and so forth... It got so bad, I actually wrote a few of the writing assignments late in the session almost as if I were writing blog posts. I knew I'd lose marks, but I had to do some "chest cleansing" writing - writing about bad shit to get it off my chest. To be honest, I'm surprised I didn't drop an f-bomb or two in there. And, as always happens to me, when I work too much, I work even more at night when I'm supposed to be sleeping and regenerating, I'm dreaming of writing and reading the course for however long I'm able to sleep. This has been a clear sign for me on a number of occasions throughout my life that it was time to stop doing the job I was doing. Drilling for gold in my sleep, cooking chicken in my sleep, tree trimming in my sleep, I quit all of those jobs shortly after I was doing them in both waking and sleeping states. 

My dreams have been, well, not normal, but better since I finished the last of the studying. I have two weeks off and I intend to go to a few ball games during that time, maybe write a few more blog posts and dream of my usual whackadoo things, not writing for my master's. I even had trouble with my posts getting all re-formatted during submission and had dreams of assignments not being received and not being able to upload... this is the 55-year-old, online student's equivalent of the dream about going to school in your gotch I think. Or naked. But now I'm having normal underwear/naked dreams. Just last night I dreamed I was video chatting with a friend and there I was on the screen starkers. But that's my superpower. It's how I stay healthy. I guess.

So, June 16th the new term begins. I'll be studying two new courses, curriculum design and creating a positive classroom environment. Hopefully those will be easier. I've figured a few things out that will help me. I flat out missed a week of correcting writing assignments for both of my courses first term because I forgot, and there was a check-mark next to the assignments meaning they had been completed, so I didn't notice. That has since changed. This past week, we didn't get a check mark for completion until we had handed in our written assignments, graded three others and had ours graded. But I won't get any marks added and that's fine. My fault for forgetting. I guess this is one of the drawbacks to having no personal contact with prof or fellow students. In this case I'm sure one or the other would have reminded me. But live and learn. I also have a better idea of what the profs and fellow students are expecting. I have to be honest, there's a little bit of walking on eggshells trying not to offend involved, but I expected that. I'm now a bit more familiar with the best way to handle it. Hopefully it's going to make the second term easier. 

The grades, I still haven't figured out, but I've heard they'll be ready by Saturday. That'll be Sunday here. I won't be on the Dean's list, but I'll have a decent start. I'll let you know...