Memories from 2005 on Ganghwa Island

During my first year in Korea (2005) I lived on Ganghwa Island.

I taught at 3 middle schools. My 'home' middle school was located in Hwado which is a two-street hamlet that is located at the bottom of the island next to Mani mountain.

I wish I could take credit for this pic but I don't have a panoramic zoom lens yet for my camera.

This is very representative of a Korean rural winterscape. Everything is yellow and brown with a dash of white. The blue sky helps lessen the gloomy aspect that usually accompanies the winter months here.

The school had about 98 students. This pic is from December 5th, 2005 when it snowed enough to make it possible to have snow fights.

The guys did most of the throwing and the girls did most of the running--check out how fast she's moving, lol!

The two guys snowing this girl might not have had the best English skills but they did seem to have their throwing technique perfected.

The girl in this picture was one of my favorite students. I think it also helped that her mother had the only western style food store in the entire hamlet. They sold different kinds of fried chicken in a box. I really liked the sweet and sour with a good dash of spiciness chicken and would order it at least once a week.

She looks like she's sad here--but she loves the attention from the boys.

Ah . . . young love.

This guy was going to try and brain me with a snowball--I told him in simple terms what would happen if he did . . . needless to say he didn't throw the snowball.

Nice mask . . .

I think I'll do a retrospective series of posts over the next little while.

J