As I write this, there are grade sixes running around screaming in the hallway outside the classroom while my co-teacher is munching chips or something with her mouth wide open.  Sometimes I feel like my entire life these days is one big obstacle course trying to get away from noise...

Still, lots of good stuff from school these days.  Here's a sampling:

Co-teacher to student who had just had his hair done: "You got a perm!  It's nice!  It looks like lettuce!"

Confused boy to me: "I can't remember how to write a small m..."
*I showed him*
Boy: "Oh, right!  It's the one that looks like a butt!"

Me: "What do you want for Christmas?
Boy: "Girlfriend!"

A couple of girls in grade four actually drew boys in their class, complete with names, as something they wanted for Christmas.  I was sworn to secrecy.  Well, okay, maybe if you don't want people to know, you shouldn't write it in a class project... but whatever, I'll keep their secret safe.  Not so sure about their friends, though.

Also, in grade two today, one boy didn't have his coloured pencils and the girl next to him (one of those ones who's got her pencil out thirty seconds before I've asked for it, and colours everything pink) wouldn't let him borrow any of them unless he said the colour in English.  Thanks for supporting my work, kid...

Aside from that, Chris and I have spent two rainy Sundays in a row at temples.  It's fall now, and while the leaves are still not *quite* up to Canadian standards, they're doing pretty well.

Haeinsa is one of the most famous temples in Korea, built in 802 and, of course, remodeled extensively since then.  I wanted to go for the Tripitaka Koreana, which is a set of 81,350 wood blocks containing the complete scriptures of Buddha.  The first set was carved in 1087 to invoke Buddha's help, of course, but proved to be of little help later on in the 13th century when the Mongols invaded.  Of course, not much was of help to anyone against the Mongols.  A second set of blocks was finished in 1251 and moved to Haeinsa in 1398.  The buildings that house it were specifically and ingeniously designed to protect the blocks from the elements.  These days an ajosshi is on hand to specifically, if not ingeniously, protect the blocks from the photography of curious tourists, so I don't have a picture, but they look like this:

I didn't get any pictures of the temple itself because it's a temple and I have lots of other pictures of other temples and, anyway, the leaves were much more fun to photograph.  Here are some pictures of leaves with bits of temple in them.

This past weekend we saw the Yecheon Astro-Space Centre, and that was a lot of fun.  It was oddly empty; maybe not that oddly considering it's way out in the country, but usually kids are climbing all over these places, so it was weird that we were almost the only ones there.  The whole thing has the look of a project that got a massive cash infusion around about 1993 and nothing since, so it's kind of run-down.  For instance, there's a scale model of the solar system out front, and Uranus is full of cracks.  

...after giggling about that, we went inside and went on some rides.  The first one is just two completely enclosed cars that go around in a circle and tilt so you feel like you're going up; I was pretty sure we weren't actually going up at all, but had some worries about the stability of the aging structure nonetheless.  Meanwhile there's a video.  This is meant to be a "G-Force Simulator", though Chris felt it got up to 3G at the most.  I felt it was fun at whatever number of Gs it got up to.  

The next thing was a zero-gravity simulation; here we were strapped inside a machine that tilted us around and upside-down and every which way.  It really only confirmed my dislike of being upside-down.

Then there was a 3D movie about a dinosaur called Dinky.  We had fun laughing at how silly it was, but weren't really clear on what it had to do with space.

Finally, another simulator lets you pretend you're walking on the moon.  This would have been much more fun if not for the tiny little chair which was digging into my ass the whole time.  Still, jumping several metres into the air was fun.

The last stop of the weekend was Guinsa.  This is a relatively new temple, first built in 1945 and then destroyed in the Korean War and rebuilt in 1966.  Unlike other temples, it was built upward, making for some spectacular views and some spectacularly sore legs (for two days and counting...)  

The jars you can see in the first picture are all different kinds of pastes or seasonings.  We also saw a room full of women peeling and chopping up garlic.  Wiki says the temple can house up to ten thousand monks and can feed up to twice that many, so I guess they probably need a lot of dwenjang and gochujang and ssamjang and all the other kinds of jang.

The leaves are still looking pretty.

I'm not a hundred percent sure what this dragon statue was about, but it has to do with a hundred years since the birth of the former head monk Sangwol Wongak.  There's a whole hall devoted to him with a big statue of him instead of Buddha as well.

This hall and statue are at the very top of the hill, and I feel I deserve some credit for that.  

The actual main hall of the temple is... well, I'm not really sure, but this seems likely:

So, the whole thing was both interesting enough and pretty enough for me to feel it was worth the trip.

Meanwhile, the grade sixes are still screaming...

One last thing before I conclude this update, and that's that Paul is in town for a few days with his (wife?) on their way to live in Australia (permanently?).  Last time he was in Korea they were on the other side of the country and I didn't see them; this time, since they're in the same city (in fact, I pass their hotel on my way to and from Korean class), I feel like I should, especially since I have no desire ever to go to Australia again and so it might be the last time.  Some sort of closing parentheses, as much as one can do that on a relationship.  In fact, what I want to do is meet both him and she-who-shall-not-be-named and try to finally deal with the situation somewhat maturely, and boy, am I off to a great start by refusing to say her name!  So I proposed a meeting, but he made lame excuses, so I don't know if it'll happen.  Well... anyway, that's that.  

It's now about four weeks until Korean class ends and five and a half weeks until vacation.  Things should get better after that...