Here are some other uncategorized still photos I have uploaded from my computer.
First, here is a picture of an octopus sculpture I saw in the Busan subway.
Next, there is the Busan skyline as seen from the top of Jangsan (which is situated north of Haeundae beach in the northeast part of the city). I’m looking south by southwest, here (roughly toward Taiwan, off across the sea by a thousand kilometers or something like that). You can click on these pictures to see bigger versions.
This is a picture of “Busan Tower” that I ascended while in Busan one evening. The view of the city, all lit up, was pretty spectacular, but I didn’t get any photos. Sorry.
Here is a picture I took of the screen in the express elevator that runs to the top of this tower. When your express elevator is running Microsoft Windows, and Windows crashes (as is its wont to do), does the elevator then crash, too? We were all somewhat alarmed to see the error message suddenly pop up on the screen, two thirds of the way to the top of the tower.
Here is a picture of greenery on Ulleundo that I like.
Here is a picture of red peppers drying in the morning sun on a Dodong, Ulleungdo, side street. A very common sight everywhere in Korea, this time of year. Such a delicious country!
Last: I met a guy and his wife and mother-in-law who were on tour visiting Ulleungdo. They shared some food with me and we chatted in a rewarding mix of his terrible English and my terrible Korean and his mother-in-law’s monologue. I took some pictures of the three of them, using their camera, with the view of Dodong harbor behind them (I hadn’t brought my own camera on that particular hike).
Then he took my picture in the same spot as they’d been standing. I wrote my email down for him, because he said he would email the pictures to me. I thought nothing of it – but the other day, I got several pictures of myself via email. So… here I am, standing on the rock path at the southwest corner of the Dodong harbor entrance (the camera is pointed roughly north).
Day: September 22, 2009
Caveat: 돈키호테. 진짜?! 왜요?
I keep telling myself that if my Korean is going to improve, I need to try harder to read things. I frequently puzzle my way through parts of newspaper headlines or articles, and I’ve learned a lot reading advertisements, but such forms of “found Korean” won’t be available to me when I return to the US. So I’ve been telling myself I should buy some actual books in Korean to try reading. It is perhaps too ambitious, given the pathetic level of my vocabulary — but I’m pretty good at working out the grammar as long as I have a dictionary in hand.
In one final visit to the bookstore today, I bought what looks to be a late-elementary or middle-school level text of Korean history, that I might try. I also found an abridged translation of Don Quijote (돈키호테 = don-ki-ho-te). I remember when I was first trying to learn Spanish, I would sit down and try to read, in Spanish, books I had read before in English. So what better first text to sit down with in Korean than a translation of something I know very well in Spanish?