12/30! On The Nose!

Tips for successful tourism include: not being a tourist
not caring if people know you're one. I'd rather get directions
than wander lonely as a cloud, I'd rather sit in the spot
that everyone drawn here like flocking voles sits because
it's worth it, even if it's not secret, I'll get it.

Like how I tell folks to check out pike place if they haven't.
The things a city owns that belong to the world, and the
things that belong to the neighbors--- I am a local at my
locals, and running numbers everywhere else.

Or I am a local everywhere, but only trust my fellow
locals at the spots I've worn in with elbows.

It is hard to share joy without sounding like namedropping,
it is hard to namedrop without ruining joy. I will glide
across these pavements I've not known before,
I will take all the pictures I need

but I'll try not to be an asshole about it.

11/30! A Scene We'd Usually Avoid!

Neckerchiefs. Cologne. Muscle relaxers-with a scent/how?
The grease in the hair and the grease in the thighs and the
grease the guy in the misfits shirt managed while sliding into
his pants. The one girl/guy couple, hottest in their near shirtlessness
by the window, attribute traffic to that.

We think the doorman suspects.

These lines of traffic-- we've come blocks just to
not get in. We are wobbling hard toward a club with
the right backbeat, we only want a slice and don't
care where we get it from.

The new city stomp, the old city hesitate.
The happy lipstick party inviting only half
of us. The crowd churned down Polk street

flying elbows, jutting knees, too much scent,
too much dirt for any where we'd go if--

but get the cameras right and
all you need is the rest of the
room and all you need is one good
picture, to say I've been here, I've
swung my fists, this is everywhere
I've been adult but so much worse,

better

10/30! Ashbury Heights!

"what's that flaming cathedral in the distance?"

this road winds like yarn. triangles and spirals and
houses clustered like apartments, apartments spread
like ramblers. Ropes around a narrowing hill.

When we talk about the city, we talk about The City.
Everything I know about this place I learned in
documentaries about Jefferson Airplane and
the film Basic Instinct. 

"you went to the mission and you got
tacos?"

a thick film of glass when we get over the
bridge from east bay, and the way that
everyone says "east bay" like a sentence,
after the show that starts awkward and ends
triumphant, the uber driver says "the city"

and the entrance feels like one
like it should, no long suburban
depression trailing into density,
too tired and building weary to
recognize.

This is not a poem about
san francisco,
it's a poem about knowing nothing
about it, but the hill, the
sillhouettes at midnight after
Oakland ends for us. It's about the imprint,
the "in a few years will Seattle seem--"

the new space forever,
frozen pizza thawing, the smell of
burning pepperoni spilling out into
the bay.

Three Through Oregon

1.

For a while, we thought we were in Seaside.
The crags spiking from the water, the earth’s dome edge
visible beyond the pacific. The tidepools drying,
leaving dead jellyfish, plankton baking with maggots.

Then we thought we were in Pacific City,
with the houses all slung low and cute
over the sand, the road wandering and ending
near the hill we climbed last year,
and it sure has eroded since then,

Huh?

2.

I am killed by ultraviolet.
I am toast in a broken oven.
There is no water for my feet,
only an icebox and pick.

I am grounded by seafood,
swam by late night Frisbee chase
and not good enough at ping pong
for family occasions.

The Mo’s in every town,
the pirates with their coffee
curving 101, I hug the side
of passenger vans,

Tipping but never rolling,
swerving but never crashing
rocketing towards oncoming camrys
sliding back over double yellows just

3.

Riding back from the edge of the earth,
free of coastal chains, or national, through
pine bluffs and mini valleys and every
third mile someone with an “Ie” ending
their name runs a family diner, every sixth,
an ammo store.

Salem looks like a slice of Portland hot-injected
with South Everett, Hear No Evil’s Car-Audio store
crowned the king of roadside wordplay, the
trailer park a few blocks from the state capitol
and the freshmen ahead of me chattering about
the day awaiting them in Portland, whether the
Smiths are still alive.

Don’t blame me for sleeping, don’t blame me
for staying awake. Killed in the body, mind swimming
and the days weight settling in at the base of my neck,
as we roll into Oregon City, “Welcome to Historic Oregon City.
The end of the Oregon Trail” across from a
Home Depot and McDonalds.

Trains and Tall Buldings 3: Dispatch from the Central Oregon Coast

Many American cities with "city" in their title aren't recognizable as such*. This seems especially true in the Northwest, where a "city" suffix guarantees a post-rural town that's been swallowed by (or is currently being swallowed by) growing sprawl. Sometimes this takes the form of a dual-downtown situation, where the historic, old downtown is preserved, (with various levels of care) and serves as a destination for tourists, or prospective urban transplants.** Then, a mile or so up a road that more often than not serves as an inlet to multiple cul-de-sacs, there's a huge parking lot with a flagship store (Wal-Mart, if the town is poor, a Safeway/Haggen/Costco if not, Whole Foods or Trader Joes if they have attracted a lot of post-citydwellers) and several other chains-- a Subway, McDonalds, Starbucks, Dominos, etc. I first noticed and identified this in Stanwood, where I lived on return to the states, but have noticed it in growing small towns all over Western Washington. The idealist in me says (dammit!) the old, walkable, local downtowns should be enough for any town, but the pragmatist in me says (well, I guess) this is a decent compromise. More on that, probably at some future post, but this is the context needed for my trip with Rachel and her family to Lincoln City, Oregon.

Located halfway down the coast, at 8,000+, Lincoln City has the third largest population (after Astoria and Newport) of Oregon's coast. When we first drove into the north end, there was the mile-up option, two large parking lots with strip-malls about 40% full of business. A McMennamins. A Safeway, a Grocery Outlet, "the 60s Diner," something called the Dapper Frog, and a pizza place. Lots of Space-For-Lease. 

We got to the beach house, overlooking the pacific ocean. It was serene, spacious, gorgeous. This seems to be a feature of all Oregon coast beach houses.

The first day was largely beachlounging, eating, getting settled. The next day we piled into a couple of cars and drove through Lincoln City to Newport, Oregon***. Lincoln City is an interesting case, as for the longest time it was a series of much smaller towns. The result, as you wind down 101, is a series of your classic, historic downtowns connected intermittently by sprawl or woods. I'm a bit miffed my vacation has to ends when it does, because I want to walk around Welcoma and Taft, especially. The town itself probably couldn't sustain this many centers of eating, drinking, and trinket-buying, but in summer, Lincoln City can grow up to 30,000 people due to tourism. Which is it's #1 income source, natch.

It'd be a great spot for a school of some sort; it seems uniquely positioned to make for a sweet little college town. But that's not the business I'm in.

Twenty miles south is Newport, the largest town on the Central Oregon Coast, an hourish east of Eugene. After noodling our way through the Nye Beach Neighborhood, we disembarked at Bayfront, which serves as both an active fishing port and Newport's crown tourist destination (the aquarium, wax museum, waterfront, and undersea gardens are all there). 

I got the feeling both Nye Beach and Bayfront serve as Old Downtowns for Newport; the mile-up strip mall option wasn't one parking lot or series thereof, it was the whole stretch into town, a la Highway 99 in Washington. Bayfront promised the unique-to-Newport.
As such, I wanted to fall in love with Bayfront. I didn't. I mean, it was fascinating**** but . . . inevitably, things sold to tourists and tourists end up being useless; people buy the things they truly need in or near the places they live. Resulting in blocks and blocks of shirts that say things like "If You Like My Bumper, You'll Love my Headlights!" or "If you're not fishing, you're doing it wrong." 

I mean, a block of these stores, fine. Or you know, one really good one. Two decent ones at different ends. . . but in Newport, next to bars that advertise themselves as "a haven for the riff-raff, the ne-er do-wells", bars that probably had to slap "historic" into their name just to remain, across from the docks where fishermen haul in the seafood that serves one of the many Coastal Chains, are rows of pastel butterflies, of sub-Hot Topic/Spencers storefronts that you wonder who, how, why?

Not to say I wasn't charmed at points. The Seafood was damn good. The fascination factor kept my head swiveling, and the town makes no attempts to hide it's grime or industry. In Seattle they'd probably set up a toll system to eat your fish and chips above a dock of Sea Lions.

*the obvious, glaring exception being New York City. Haven't been to either Iowa or Carson Cities, but impressions have not been of huge metropoli, foster-wallaces notwithstanding.

**"You know, it's such a shame to leave Seattle, but I could actually see us living here. . . this is such a cute cafe and look! That bar has a sign for live music. Plus, we can do most our shopping at the farmers market for the three months that it exists."

***There are more Newports than any other town in the English Speaking World. It's just that catchy! (And functional!)
****Fascinating is still better than the Grey Hell that is going through Lynnwood, or Oregon City. Fascinating is better than the grinding depression of Hoquiam, Wa, or even, arguably the Endpoints of Gentrification that a handful of Seattle's neighborhoods are rapidly becoming. But we can ask for more from our communities than single-mode identifiers OR a sub-gonzo journalistic licking of blood-stained lips.

7 Asterisks, or Why I Got into this Cascadia Thing When I Kept Saying I was Already Exhausted and Trying Not to Do So Much

Tomorrow starts the Cascadia Poetry Festival, four days of lots and lots of readings, workshops, panels, critique groups, open mics, and slams all weaving their way in, through, and around the theme of Cascadia. This is probably the largest single event-co-ordination I've been involved with. Specifically, I've been co-planning the Beer Slam and the Afterparty, both events which will hopefully provide the splashing, fun, raucous dolphin caught in an otherwise fairly serious tuna net.*

That said, when co-planning as a loose part of Seattle Poetry Lab, there's a fluidity to the conversation and action that can be electrifying**; a sense that the crew is more than just a collection of folks executing specific tasks to fit a schedule, this is a group of people united around ideas, or at least the discussion of them. Of bringing ideas to a table.***

I think, as Paul Constant points out in his excellent Stranger article, that discussion is in its infancy, or maybe its pimpled teenhood, but it's still growing. There are specific elements of the Cascadian Thing I'm interested in; Place has always tormented my writing no matter how much I tried to get away from it**** and the idea of a Cascadian Voice is intriguing to me, partly because of its simultaneous specificity and vagueness. It's far more specific than just "The Northwest," and more inclusive-- CPF (as it forever shall be known) draws heavily from Canadian poets.

But it's also a little vague; as a generations-native Seattlite, I can tell you there's a big goddamn difference in experience, perspective and artistic input between someone who grew up in Maple Leaf, Seattle, and someone who grew up in Walla Walla, or a farm outside La Grande, or a condo in downtown Vancouver.

What I hope is that discussions of Cascadian Poetry can grow to acknowledge this variety and encourage a more global view of Northwest/Cascadian/WABCOREGONSOMECALIFORNIAANDMAYBEMONTANA poetics.***** As a Seattle writer, I've gotten more and more interested in how that translates to writing about and experiencing other places, and how the experience of other places influences writing Seattle.******

I'll be interested to see where all the talks-- formal and especially informal-- go. More than most fests, what interests me about this is the conversation. This is a poetry fest for people who want to be interested, who want to engage. I suspect I'll probably disagree at some (many?) points on what constitutes "innovation," and I'll be straight up that the more hardcore political/anarchist/decolonize elements of the Cascadia movement hold no interest for me. I'm glad though, that a wide swath of writers are included******* and, that, as hard as it's been to program, a competitive element is included; the Northwest has had a long history of producing or housing performance poets whose work interacts with and crosses over into academic circles, blurring (what I think are largely manufactured) lines.

Okay. I told myself I'd not get past 7 asterisks, so read all my clarifications below and come to the fest. It'll be less work than reading this whole thing was, I swear.

*the other events will probably also be fun, but mine are the ones with "beer" in the title, where FUN IS ON THE AGENDA.
**Which is important, because this has been a lot of goddamn work.
***Or, you know, just bringing the table.
****The writing about place, or the place itself.
*****As opposed to a less global view, which so many NW-focused writing events tend to do, inadvertantly. There's a certain element of privilege that happens here, I think, especially when writing gets too exclusively nature-y. But that's a convo for another time, especially since I'm helping out with a fest whose flag has a tree on it.
******There's a certain Seattle Travel Poem boilerplate that seems to go "I went to New York and it was amazing but kind of dirty, and I thought about Frank O'Hara. . .  I went to LA and blah blah smog. . . I went to the midwest and relished their hospitality but oh! their politics. . . I'm glad to be back in the land of (lame joke about coffee or flannel, and SCENE.)" I am so weary of that boilerplate.
*******For the record, between myself, Aaron K, Paul Nelson, and some help from Jocelyn M, and Nadine M (different Ms) we scheduled near on fifty poets for just the runoff slam, beer slam, and afterparty alone. ALONE. So we aren't suffering for volume, that's for sure.

For the first time since starting this blog

Somewhereincolorado will actually BE somewhere in colorado!

I'm reading in Boulder on Thursday night. Then I'll hang there, or in Denver with Elyse and Chris, and just sorta see what's up for a couple days, and come back to seattle in time for Runoff!

I had been to Co. before this, back in 2001, in Manitou Springs, mainly. But that's another story for another time.

The Day After Christmas

the bus driver swerved
tailgated a truck with political
stickers all the way
from Everett

to somewhere called Newberry Court,
a small city nearly lease ready

while a Russian woman laughed
loudly at the girl who asked if she was German.
"Oh, svweethhchaart, I vish."

"are we all children of Roethke?"

Wednesday morning I had the honor of sitting across the table from Paul Nelson, who held a recorder and asked me questions about Filthy Jerry, faith, empire, and poetic form. It'll be up in about a week or so, and we'll see just how badly I butchered my thoughts on complex issues like the State of the Nation, my Personal Faith Journey and Poetry.
Nonetheless it was a good conversation, but I'm never quite confident in my ability to not come off like a jackass in these situations.

 Riding a bus north to Bellingham, where I'll say goodbye to David Ney who moves to Brooklyn. Oh hey, just passed through Everett, where monday's Da'Daedal will occur and I swear I'll have a new thing written for it. I swear.

#19: New Danger Activities

When I wake up four hours later,
two hours earlier,
they've caught the bomber,
shot another, and east coasters are once again
let outside.

In Texas, they aren't sure who's fault
it is, "complicated" gets slapped around
like a hockey puck.

in the four hours without
wiring, I stared at the pulled
shades of an airplane
as sudden altitude drops
sent fingers to armrests,
flight attendant's spread-on smiles
clicked into place.

I swear the lights went out at
least once, but maybe I was dreaming.

Three days ago, eating a style-of-pizza
in it's city of origin, I was more worried
about waking up in a shooting gallery,
oversleeping a stop, losing my girlfriend
in the snakes and ladders of looped buildings
or being frozen in place by sudden blasts of snow.

At Least They Got The Guy, the new headline,
makes sense, I'll take it, what else can I?
put my life's temporary
break in a nostalgia file for later,
get back on the checks that need writing, the grins.

At some point in all of this
I failed conciousness duties by relying soley
on print media,

five days ago, getting packed, wondering what the trip would do to me.
how the bits and pieces alter, the imprints of place grow new chunks
of muscle. the where to goes.
running was the least of my concerns.

I've been writing throughout my trip to Chicago, but it's all handwritten and will take a few to get posted up here. 

Filthy Jerry and the Terrifying Truth About Love and Breakfast (5/30)

271 miles to Spokane, Washington, from Seattle. Filthy Jerry didn’t mind the distance, or the way that the sun curled it’s flaming fingers around his ears and face halfway there and started talking dirty in a huge, loud voice. What he minded was the unsanitary methods of the lone diner he stopped at in Quincy, Washington, whose primary export is despair. As the sun spread his dirty fire over cement and scrub-brush alike, it wasn’t inside that eggs were cooked. It was the pavement. No butter, even. Right there, parking spaces 4-7. You could only get the eggs scrambled, and bacon burnt. Grown farmers wept openly at the sight of chicken progeny, charred and crusty on their plate.
Filthy Jerry had known hopelessness-- in days and nights and hostel rooms wherein he got his nickname—but never had cement felt so much like glue, had the existence of sky seemed to mock everyone. There is no horizon to ride to when it is all horizon. His love was waiting somewhere inland, at a diner with stoves and people who would never dream of shedding tears. She would either propose to him there, he thought as miles of sameness rode towards him, or he’d find her there with a man who’d never been to Quincy.

Canada Island!

not drugs and I have spent the last three days in Victoria, Canada. it is a good place, full of historic architecture, beautiful views, and a record store called Talk's Cheap, which is sadly closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Not drugs and I inhabit a large, brick organic cafe across the way with multiple Tom Waits-related paraphanalia and hey, the servers are friendly. Who knew.

If you are a native of Seattle (like me) and you ever feel weird about how wealthy/posh/boouizhay Seattle's gotten over the last fifteen years, go to Victoria. You'll feel better.

The suite was a penthouse one, given by one of Not Drugs' professional friends, and we sat in awe of the wealth that it felt like we had, the view we enjoyed, the hot tub we lounged in, and the ability to still eat frozen pizza in a penthouse suit and drink Canadian Club. There is a CD player there. The only CD we had with us was Shabazz Palaces and that is fine.

Tell us about the Owls, Dana. The Owls.

For the past couple of months, Rachel (heretofore to be referred to as "Not Drugs") and I have been curling up on whatever couch, floor or bed was close at hand and watching David Lynch's perpetually iconic early '90s TV show Twin Peaks. Being Lynch at his (arguably) most accessible, the show tends to serve as an alt-culture touchstone for a lot of people, and one of the most interesting things about re/watching the show was the reactions of those who hadn't watched it yet -- "I know! I know! Someday." I can't really recommend the show; it's already been recommended to you, geeked on by your friends and generally deconstructed. It's worth checking out, and largely unlike most things produced prior or since, but it's also just a TV show for about 80% of the time. The other 20% is the reason it tends to hang on in the minds of critics and fans, be rediscovered. But I think most great TV shows hit that sort of range-- between 70-90% of the time they're average-to-good pieces of entertainment, then that other percent they cross over into Art on the level of the Great Films, Plays or paintings. But half the time you're watching TV for a certain sort of comfort, anyway.

But! This is not a TV review. This is about geekery. The wiki link for TP has changed since last time I looked at it a couple months ago-- that's how dedicated the fanbase is. There's a convention/retreat in North Bend, Wa (where some of the exteriors were filmed) every year that Chris Gusta goes to-- it was ultimately through one of those trips that he decided to move to the northwest. Not Drugs and I are not so dedicated as that. But having a free Sunday, we decided to head out to northeast King County to check out Twede's Cafe, home to the pie, coffee and atmosphere that Dale Cooper was such a fan of.



The original interior got arsoned about ten years ago. These days, it reminds me a bit of the Stanwood Cafe, albeit slightly more dissheveled. The prices are a bit high, but the portions are such that Not Drugs and I split a Fish 'N Chips and were almost too full for pie. Almost.


By the bathroom there is a wall of pictures, newspaper clippings, memorobillia, etc.


It was interesting people-watching and guessing who was a tourist (I guess even today that Peaks tourists account for roughly 5% of the business there and probably more on holiday weekends) and who was a regular. Some small towns have folks sporting the kinds of cowboy shirts you can also get at Red Light Clothing Exchange, but North Bend doesn't seem to be one of them. The place fully embraces the tourist element-- all the servers were wearing shirts advertising Twede's 1) 50 Different Types of Burgers (yup) and 2) Home of Twin Peaks' Pie and "a damn fine cup of coffee."
The place also hosts an open mic on Tuesdays.
This all seems for the best; North Bend wasn't depressing in the way that some Washington towns can be, nor was it generically strip-malled but the downtown didn't appear to have the internal bustle of an Arlington (though that may be good-- less meth) or the diversity of business of Stanwood, or the packed-right-in cute historical downtown of neighboring Snoqualmie. If you were there for a reason (like a TV show conference) you'd probably find a decent bar or restaurant or two, but nothing jumped out at me as "ooh, we should come back for that," even with my er, "unique" fascination with the smaller towns and suburbs in Western Washington.






Also, it should be pointed out that neither North Bend nor Snoqualmie seemed like places where the woods nearby contained portals to Unspeakable Evil. But then, maybe that's part of the point.

dongtan-hwaesong-suwon-seoul

humidity. the rain is part of the humidity. they aren't separate elements. the bus is underwater. schoolgirls giggle like schoolgirls at the athletes, the soccer players, the tennis instructors, imported from the united states. the run of water. the flow of traffic. diverted into. the disparate looks at a nation that refuses to be submerged. seoul burned, they tell me, it wasn't so tall then, but we rebuilt it. five teenage boys in a war memorial, making jokes at the simulated shooting experience. rushing soldiers overhead in stone. this is what the guns are here for, the 3-d movie and video games, to absorb the weight of jokes and float above them. we try to live peaceful now, but always watch.they remember macarthur. the minibikes speed quick between buses. outside faces condense with a thin film, like what we wrap our beef and sprouts in, this is japanese food, before, it was mongolian. fusion. shoes piled by the door, signs in english and korean and japanese survive bombs and land wars and taste like fusion.
___________________________________________
submitted to Hoarse, so may take it down in a bit, if they choose this and not the other, more ridiculous thing I sent them.

Korea Trip 2011 Wrap - Up Party Program

Because if I do not write a trip-wrapping up post now, I likely will never do so, and thereby will disappoint myself and possibly others. So! In a convenient multi-list format, here are things about the trip I haven't yet mentioned:

Lies:

* I was not in Busan. For some reason I thought we would be in Busan, but we were not. I was either mistaken or misled or simply a spreader of lies to all I know. But the places I went were: Incheon, Suwon, Seoul, Hwaesong/Dongtan (like, a suburb of Suwon?) and Pyeongchang. Those were the places. Not one day, moment or second in Busan.

* The food was not weird. It was delicious. Some of it was unfamiliar, but I imagine I'll find myself at Korean Restaurants more often these days.

* Formality: maybe it was the camp format, or a concession to American Ways, but it really wasn't terribly formal. I've been in the houses of relatives where I felt less at ease.

Kids:

* as I believe I mentioned before, ten year old boys are ten year old boys no matter where you go. even if they are familiar with, know how to deal with and are well equipped to handle school, they would still rather put chairs on their heads and yell "Teacher! I am Transformer!"

* they love to catch Dragonflies, these kids.

* anna (many children used english names), a 10 year old girl who looked about seven, had braces and was generally quiet, comes up to me the day before departure: "teacher-- you go seattle tommorrow?"yes.
the next day she approaches me with a pen, rolls up my sleeve and writes "I love you. Bey! --anna"

Culture:

* Korea is very Korean. White people in Seattle love to talk about how very White Seattle is, but it's fricken' London compared to Seoul. 99% of Korea is Koreans. . .

. . . but that doesn't mean the city isn't international-capable. The country. Signs in Korean and English. German tv stations in the hotels. Parisian Baguettes. Etc. The whole culture has it's arms open. Which is maybe easier to do when you can present an obviously unified front? I dunno.

* The buildings are tall, but somehow I don't think I'd go insane living there. Maybe it's the inbuilt parks between apartment buildings or the fact that I know in the back of my head I don't speak the language and thereby a lot of the noise would be rendered useless to me, but I think I could do it.

* Not that I'm planning to move.

* There. Necessarily.

other things? maybe. maybe more pictures. maybe links. maybe k-pop videos. but I know how I work and how this blog is and I don't like making promises.

Asahi(koreatrip #7)

. . . is the Budweiser of Japan. Accordingly, it tastes way better than Budweiser, but was not worth the 8,500 won I spent on my first drink in two weeks at Incheon International.

I've spent about 60,000 won this trip, but much of it today, as time was running out. Flight boards in 15 minutes; accordingly, I'll post a full(ish) recap, with pictures and links and snark and sincerity, later. But three things about the airport:

*"tasteful" korean porn totally available at the the book/video store. "ero blockbuster" the only words in english.
*there is a Dunkin' Donuts here. There is not one in Seatac.
*of COURSE it is Wi-fi-ed. Of course there is an internet lounge. Of course you can charge your ipod at one of the free ipod charging stations past the security checkpoint.

two photos(koreatrip #6)

we went on a walk up to some buddhist shrines. this is suzanne in a hollowed out log. because of blogger-in-hotel-lobby-shortcomings, this post has taken 20 minutes, and only two pictures instead of like, eight. also, I was posting blind (going only by th ephoto number.)



kids!

Pedagogy (koreatrip #5)

Day two of teaching went better than day one. This is always the case, you'd think, but it is not, in fact, always the case. (how's that for some bible-style obfuscation?) I'd rather day two be good and things get progressively better, than start good and fall flat.

I'm writing this from the Kensington Flora hotel lobby, which means this, too, shall be a short post. To prove I'm in korea: 아나댐; 나ㅓㅇ댜맺 쟈뎌개누

no idea.

You'd Think. . .(koreatrip #4)

that in a city like Suwon, next to an international hotel, there would be at least ONE place selling postcards. Cheap, tacky postcards. That I can send to friends, enemies and loved ones.

This, so far, has not been my experience. In further minor frustrations, my camera battery is dead, rendering the picture uploadery I was hoping for undoable at this time. In four hours I'll be on a bus, with the rest of the WBC team, to the countryside, where the real meat of english-teaching will begin.

In the meantime, packing, church, coffee, attempting not to slip into food coma simply from the residual hospitality of the last three days.

Five Videos, Zero Context (koreatrip #3)