Hello all, yet again several weeks have flown by and I've been lacking in my group emails. Time goes by very fast in Korea for some reason. In Thailand I lived several lifetimes in those 6 months and did more than I thought humanly possible.

But here I am, almost at the one year anniversary of my Asian Adventure, I arrived in Thailand last year on April 19th. I'm going to remember the date this year by beginning my marathon training program on that date, as my marathon is on October 19th, exactly 6 months later. I have an idea of how fast I want to run it, but I think just completing it will be great as well.

Things are getting better all the time over here, spring is arriving and it gets warmer and warmer. Right now is the cherry blossom festival as all the fruitless cherry trees of Korea and Japan are blooming. I can't say I got too excited about it, as the trees aren't that big, they don't make fruit, and I've seen plenty of cherries in my time. But the Koreans flocked by the hundreds of thousands to the countryside to catch a glimpse and take pictures.

For those of you I kept out of the loop, I had a relatively serious bicycle crash two and a half weeks ago. I was riding on a broken brick sidewalk, made a right turn, wasn't paying attention, my wheel caught, over the handlebars I went, and landed on my left eyebrow. It was quite a shock to the head, but luckily I was right in front of a hospital and a nice man helped me to my feet and inside.
Four x-rays, 21 stitches, no concussion, and an incredible amount of antibiotics. The doctors spoke excellent English and everyone treated me very nicely. They gave me two shots of antibiotics and told me to take 12 pills a day for the next 3 days, which is a massive overload of antibiotics on the system. As soon as they wore off I became very sick and I'm just getting over it today.

My director was very helpful throughout the process and gave me time off to recuperate. I like my school, my director's a sweetheart, and most of the kids want to learn English. The hours can wear on me, I work a swing shift, 3-10:30, and it's turned me into a huge insomniac. I plan to combat this with taking runs in the morning.

I now have a wicked scar over my left eye, between the eyelid and the eyebrow, and had to wear a big bandage for a week or so. My kids flipped out! They normally overreact if I wear my glasses instead of my contacts, and a huge eyepatch and a black eye rocked their little worlds. They calmed down eventually, and it gave me ample opportunity to make up lavish stories on how I received the injury. My favorite was an epic battle between me and 10 chinese ninjas.

In other news, I've purchased a used 125cc motorbike from an acquaintance and have been cruising the Korean streets on it. It's made my life much better, allowing me to get out of my little neighborhood and out of town easier. I've named it the "Golden Child", because it's yellow and groovy, just like me!
I've also brewed my first batch of Stephen's Brown Sugar Amber Ale, which I plan to bottle this evening. Brewing beer is a lot of fun, and I hope it will turn out all right.

Many of you may have heard about heightened tensions between North and South Korea, just rest assured that it's nothing more than some cage-rattling by the North to create unrest for Korea's new administration. We have a new political party in power with a new president, who wants to take a more hard-lined stance against the North's nuclear ambitions, along with an exchange of POWs. But have no fear! My city is Korea's emergency capital, as it has large straight roads for aircraft to land on and is surrounded by mountains.

My new favorite sport is screen golf. You rent a little room with a big screen and a whole bunch of sensors. It spits out a ball and you play a computerized game of golf. I couldn't believe how accurate the sensors were, even for putting.

Other than that I'm really just living and working in South Korea. The Koreans are good people, there is hardly any crime and I feel safe walking the streets of my city, even at 3am, which I couldn't say for many US cities.

I miss hearing from you guys, let me know what's happening in your part of the world, and if you've heard any good music lately let me know!

Cheers.