And finally, a new update from your not-so-faithful correspondent...

Continuing where we left off... Chris met me at the airport, large Diet Coke in hand.  Does the man know me or what?  My flight was late, immigration was busy, it took a while to get back to Seoul, and I had to eat, so I didn't end up getting to the concert until I'd already missed two of the three bands I wanted to see.  Bit of a waste of money, there.  Oh well.

The next day I went to the doctor who told me my eyes are getting messed up again; at the very least, that's a $500 test, and at the most, it's more surgery.  Continued on from that to Korean class where we happened to be learning about words for funerals and funeral customs.

Cheerful day, Thursday.  I wasn't sad when it ended.

Friday we went to the Chicken Art Museum.  That's a real thing, and it's exactly what it says it is.  Unfortunately, once you're past the novelty, art about chickens is not actually all that interesting, and you have to resort to walking around the place making bad jokes about cocks.

Here are some examples of chicken art:

Friday night, drinks in Itaewon.  I think there were some bands involved, but none that were really worthwhile.

Saturday, trip up beyond the Civilian Control Line to see some buildings that had been abandoned since the Korean War, when the area switched sides.  I wrote about the former Labour Party Headquarters before (in my entry about Nodongdangsa); that's not quite past the Control Line.  To get past the Control Line, you need to go on a special tour, and I happened to find out about one from a friend.  The tour was about art, which had been placed in these locations we were going to see, and was largely terrible... but I got to finally see Woljeong-ri Station (formerly rather busy, now long dead with what's left of a train rusting away next to the tracks) and a few other old buildings that you can't go into because there may still be mines lying around. The station has been cleared and repainted (to what end, I'm not really sure).

There's also an observatory where you can go and look through binoculars into North Korea; I paid my 500 won and got a good up-close view of some North Korean fog.

It was not a nice day.  Actually, there hasn't been a nice day since.  The observatory has a little shop where you can buy North Korean money (for way, way more than what it's actually worth) and North Korean alcohol (which tastes a lot like the alcohol you'd expect to get in a country that can't even come close to feeding itself, let alone producing any kind of luxury goods.  In other words, not noticeably different from paint thinner).

Then there's another one of the tunnels the North Koreans tried to dig into South Korea.  According to the display there, they got about 95% of the way to their projected arrival point when they were caught.  Walking through the tunnel itself is not really an exciting experience, though you do end up about 300 metres from the border, so there's that.

This pretty much brings us up to the present.  Work started again on Monday, by which I mean I spent almost six hours sitting in my classroom waiting to be told what to do; everything is still a mess, but I did teach three classes today, so things are moving along.  I'm sure I'll be back in no time to tell you more of the follies of my Korean public school...