The rest of April. The beginning of May.

What's happened in the past four weeks? Well. We got kicked out of the apartment (no fault of our own-the landlord gad a grudge against the previous occupants and decided 'foreigners, no!,' we spent two weeks looking at potential new apartments with our school director, we despaired at the prospect of living a ten minute drive out of town in a dingy high-rise, we finally found a wonderful new house on top of a Korean restaurant with a balcony (and a 4 minute walk to town), we ordered new wallpaper for it, we moved in, we basked in the sun on our new porch, be bought a grill and had a party with our new friends in Yeoju, Kate's parents visited from China for a weekend and Kate and Nathan went to an island in the West Sea for a weekend, which was lovely. Also, Nathan is still kicking Kate's ass in bowling, though the league is on a break at the moment.

The house:

What happens next?


This Friday we're going to a 'party' with all of our Korean teacher coworkers (we have no idea what to expect; we will report), on Sunday Tana is visiting for an afternoon, next weekend is Buddha's birthday (3 day weekend) and we're going to visit the old capital of the Shilla dynasty (Gyeongju), the weekend after that we're flying to Shanghai for a couple of days to visit Kate's grandmother and uncle, who will be in town to see Kate's folks, and the weekend after that we're hosting a pot luck for our school.

Oh, and we're going to buy bikes today! This will change everything, completely. We've also bought a handful of tomatoes, squash (we think) and pepper plants to complement our already growing herbs-in-pots garden on the porch. We've got a couple bags of soil in the car, now we just need to find pots big enough to plant everything.

In the midst of all this, we've both been knee-deep in getting ready to apply to graduate schools. It's made us kind of preoccupied and pretty worn out, but it's fun and exciting to be planning your life from somewhere as completely irrelevant to the rest of your life as Korea. I recommend it.

Here's a patchwork of photos from late May/early June:

Click here to view these pictures larger

I'm just a hair away from finishing editing the Ganghwado (island trip) photos. They'll be up soon.

Until then, :