I think I have figured out why I like Korea so much. It's because I am actually the long lost twin brother of Kim Jong-il, leader of one the axis of evil nations, North Korea. As you can all see the picture below, I am sure there will be no dispute to my claim of our kinship. I only hope they accept me when the time to return comes. In my search for a photo of Kim Jong-il I came across this site, which mocks the North and Kim Jong-il. Some people have too much times on their hands. I also went to church yesterday and I was astonished at how much it had changed, or so I thought for the first 20 minutes. It only took that long for every child in the building to start crying and for the newly called ward mission leader to start talking about how the ward needs to baptize teenagers and children and then try and retain them. It was all I could do to not laugh. Nothing has changed at all. At least the kids were all cute. I included a picture of them and Yi Choong-Sung, a member of the ward. I also put some pics of Sunhang, Miyoung, and their friend Yujin on the bottom too. Sunhang took those pics at a stake conference in Junju a couple of weeks ago and since I didn't take my camera to church yesterday I figured it would suffice. I also thought it would be a perfect oppurtunity to show the classic, "all Koreans give the peace sign in pictures" phenomena. I asked them finally why they always do it. They told me it was "V" for victory. I asked them what they had won and now one had an answer. Someone should really study that phenomena. Anyway I don't know how many more times I am gonna be able to post before I leave so I hope you enjoy the pics and I will see most of you in less than a week. Just in case I don't get a chance to update on the 12th (which would be the 11th there) Happy Birthday Mom!!!!! (in advance.)
I think part of the reason it's been so long is because everytime I update I see the date change and I realize that my time here is almost up. To be honest coming here and spending time with old friends, working, and even doing nothing but walking around and taking pictures has showed me how trully dull my "real life" has become. I am not sure I am ready to go back to that. On Thursday the sun was setting behind some apartments and I just stood there for a while and watched it until it finally dawned on me that I had a camera and I should take a picture. It's been the opposite ever since I bought my camera. It's presence has alerted me to beauty around me. I think it was in the first time I recognized something beautiful for beauties sake, but once I remembered the camera it didn't stop me from capturing it to show to all of you. The girl is a friend of mine named Jayoung. The next picture down is one of the old women who use umbrellas all year round. To protect them from rain and the sun. What a great invention that umbrella was. I also learned in my wandering around that Kunsan was host to an amphibious assault that marked the counter offensive against North Korea in the 50's. I saw several memorials honoring the marines who were involved. The monuments oddly enough had statistics representing casulties on both sides, which would be poor taste in America outside of a history book, on a monument we would want to place names I think.
