Caveat: Hantucky; Hanhattan

If Yeonggwang County is Hantucky, then Ilsan may be Hanhattan.  I'm playing with neologisms, of course:  "Han" just means "Korea." 

Hanhattan has miles of wide, square streets, high rises, high density… with broad, well-designed parks.   Anyway.  I had a weird epiphany, walking along, just now, coming back to my hotel:  since first coming to Ilsan, I've had trouble remembering the name of Ilsan's "main drag."  I think of it, in my mind, as "Broadway."  But I've always had trouble retaining its "real" name.  And then today, I looked up at a sign, and saw it spelled out, and suddenly it made perfect sense to me:  중앙로 [jung ang no] – it simply means Central Avenue.  How freaking obvious!  It only took me 37 months to figure it out.  I always thought it was some obscure directional place name, like so many Korean roads and streets.

Here's a picture of Central Avenue, along a stretch between Jeongbalsan and Madu stations.  It looks like this for most of its 8 kilometer length.  High rises and big stores and shops and apartment buildings the whole way.

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Here's a picture I took earlier, when Ilsan at Jeongbalsan plaza was feeling exceptionally newyorky.  The horse-drawn carriage for tourists was the clincher.  These have been appearing here and there in Korea, recently.  I'm not sure what to think of it – it's clearly imported from the West.  But it's kind of cool, too.

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Here's a picture from my friend Curt's son's 돌 [dol] – special first birthday party.  Curt and his wife, daughter, son…

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I also got to see former coworker Grace, as well as some of Curt's more extended family, including his mom (who I met early last year when I went with Curt to his hometown at Jangsu).  And I got to see Pete (not Peter S. nor Peter J., but yet a different Pete), who was a former boss that I tangled with, back when I worked at the LinguaForum hagwon in the spring of 2008.  He seemed shocked to see I still was in Korea, and dumbfounded to hear I was working in a public school.  Well… Oh well.

Here is a cute little girl who was deeply enamored of her party balloons.

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