Back in Hwacheon (on a BIKE)

I'm ba~ck!!

You thought you had gotten rid of me?

Nope!
I'm still here and guess what? My humble little blog has now had exactly 딱 6,000 page views!!!!

(Well... before you read this and ruined that perfect number...)

Okay enough of the Joff gifs

I am back from summer vacation and just finished the second week of school.
My mood in two words: Exhausted Happiness.

Some things have stayed the same:

I'm still in Hwacheon.
I'm still teaching at Hwacheon Elementary School.
I'm still teaching 3rd and 6th grade regular classes like last semester.


Some things are different:
I moved to my own "house".
I'm teaching 3rd and 6th grade after school club classes now instead of 5th and 6th.
My partner in crime, Amelea, has moved to Seoul
I have a new cohort, Wei, teaching at my same school (and just like me last year, often wondering what on Earth to make of these minions)
Actually all the foreigner teachers who were here with me last year are gone.

Wait, Gabby. Why are you back in Hwacheon?
Well... like I said, I really really love Hwacehon, my school, and my students. Coming back to teach the same classes was like a homecoming. The pricipal, vice pricipal, and other teachers were all so warm and happy when we met again and their genuine greetings gave me the confirmation I need. I made the right choice. I'm glad to be back.

Of course everything hasn't been rainbows and pots of gold.
I am now living alone for the first time in my life

 

 and settling in isn't as easy as it was in my imagination. My new place is... well, it's a "fixer-upper".
I've been pretty busy trying to clean it up to a level I'm satisfied with, and the fact that it still isn't at that level is a constant source of stress pinching a nerve in my neck relentlessly.
Since I haven't finished up at my house yet, you don't get to see any pictures either (don't worry, I will proudly display them to you when it is properly presentable)

For now, let me just share a bunch of pictures of my new daily commute.

Basically my new place is about twice as far from town as my place last year. So I could probably walk home if I had to... it'd just take an hour or longer. There are several city buses and a school bus I can take on school days. But to avoid the financial commitment of that, I've started biking again.

Yes, Gabby Walti who has a fear of bikes and has crashed into houses because she paralyzed herself in fear while going downhill, is now biking daily.

It's about a 30 minute bike ride from my house to school. And honestly, it's breathtaking. So breathtaking I can ignore the terrifying thing I'm using to transport myself.
See for yourself:

(I took these photos this morning when it was all misty so you can't really see the mountains... so I'll definitely take and share more photos in future blog posts!)

I bike down this little paved road for about 10 minutes to really get out of town and into the countryside.

 

Then it becomes this nice little bike trail for another 10 minutes (about half of which is right by an army base. Yes, I have gotten a few catcalls from the cheeky baby soldiers already ㅠㅠ)

 

 

 Then I bike over this bridge with three arches and a fantastic view:

 

Then the last 10 min or so I bike through farm fields and farm houses to get to my place. Most of it is rice, but there's some other crops as well as lots of animals.

For example, see those white things?

 

They're these giant duck-topped cages where chickens are raised. This one is obviously not in use anymore and overgrown, but just imagine chickens inside instead of plants...

 



They also raise lots of cows like this one:

 

And when you add in one vocal donkey and lots of protective dogs, you can understand my daily soundtrack. Mooing, braying, barking madness. And every morning, a regular thousand rooster crows. (Okay... maybe not a thousand...).

When I bike past the farm houses, their dogs always bark. Even though I would think that after two weeks they'd be used to me by now... I sure have gotten used to them. First there's this dog who is always a bit too late. He realizes I've rode past and then starts growling and if he isn't too embarassed for missing me, barking. Always makes me laugh. Then there's the mini dogs who I think are Cairn Terriers and their little high pitched voices. Then there's a dog I've never actually seen, but I've named "pig-dog" because its barking seriously sounds like a pig.

 

Speaking of pigs! There's lots of other wildlife out where I live too!

Since, as you may have noticed, the majority of the bike trail is along a small river, there's lots of water-fond critters along my route.

If you have really amazing eyes, maybe you can make out the tiny white figures in the distance, on the side of the road in this photo:

 

This is the best photo I have of the white cranes. (After further research I've found that they are more likely egrets, but I will keep calling them cranes because I'm stubborn)

They must have a sixth sense for cameras, because they never move when I just bike past them and I've been able to see them with just a few yards between us, but as soon as I bike past with my phone in hopes of taking a picture they always fly off.

So here's a nice image from the wonderous Google search engine.

 

 

 

 

There's always dozens of these cranes when I bike to/from town. But there's also a bunch of ducks and other small birds and a few grey herons that seriously look just like the Great Blue Heron (like as if I'm back home in Oregon <3)

Along the path theres hundreds of dragonflies, and no matter how dilligent I try to be, I always end up crushing one who is lazily lying on the bike path.

I've also become a frog murderer. Well, there are these little tiny frogs, and they are really no bigger than my thumbnail. And it was an accident! Despite the first few gifs on this post, I am not like Joffery! There is nothing worse than the moment when you look down and directly in front of your bike wheel you see something and as you identify it as a frog (or dragonfly) it's too late. And you spend the next 10 minutes biking with depressing existensial thoughts about "what is life" and maybe even cry.

I've also seen two snakes and another animal I could never crush with my bike...

You see, some countries have dangerous animals like cougars and wolves and things that live in really rural areas like Hwacheon. Korea once had tigers but those are long gone. All that remains on this list of "dangerous wild animals" are wild boar.

 

And guess what I saw walking down my bike path yesterday?

Yup. A boar, the size of my bike (not an exaggeration this time, truly huge) was walking down this path:

 

At first I just slowed down a bit and stared in awe as I grew closer and closer. Then the boar turned around and looked right at me. I stopped my bike. I stood frozen for a billion minutes (see, my exaggerations are easy to spot) then slowly turned my bike around and sped off to bike down a different road to my house (there's several different routes through the rice fields).

In short, I didn't wait to see what would happen in the mighty Korean Wild Boar vs. Teacher Gabby showdown.

I would not win.

And so I am still living and writing blog posts.
I will definitely try and write more soon. But no promises... because you know me ;)

안녕

- Gabs