South Korea - Final Post

 Here is everything to finish off my 2 year Korea adventure. Writing from Taipei, Taiwan now..where the food is much better! I do not have the time to blur out faces anymore, please forgive me.

My first official work as an editor.

Eclipse. very cloudy this night unfortunately.

activity day - i forget what we called it, traditional farmer day or sth lol

beautiful bird. hard to see here sry

halloween - i carved the one in the middle

First time at ISKCON Daegu - guest leader from Russia. Awesome man. Attendees are mostly Nepali, also awesome.

Conquering the streets (legally too!)

fresh street paint - perfect korean prudence - it's actually just plain pavement, but they figured out how to paint out so it looks special. i was lucky to live in this neighborhood.

xmas carol perfmance winners!

this was the first time our school tried activity day with full freedom; each kid got a wallet with fake dollars, and for several hours could do any activity or snack they wanted, and they had to calculate themselves what to do, with what they had. 2 bucks per snack, 4 bucks per activity, started with 20. oh they could get more money, but they'd have to do an oral English quiz.

new student who came in the final month of the year. instant favorite :)

final day. we watched Pooh and friends cartoon, had some snacks, played some games. but only because we finished our textbooks early! barely!!

dressing up for orientation for new students that id never get to teach or see again lol

funny english name

abhisheka - for one of the biggest holy days of the year.

nothing special on the inside, just another korean restaurant.

i'm still part of my kroean doctor's diet group chat. he is so excellent with this stuff!

Life in Daegu #8

 I'm all caught up now with sharing pictures of the main poitns in my life from January to end of August 2025. My current plan is to finish my contract (end of Feb. 2026) and then leave Korea. I'll be a tourist for a while in the area, doing pilgrimage mostly. I am too old (experienced) to travel just to have fun, even though I have more savings to do that now. Hope all is well with you, take care now, bye bye then!

Kindergarten graduation ceremony. Most of these students I did not teach. The next graduation ceremony at the end of my contract will be more special; those 7 year olds will be the ones I taught as 6 year olds for a full year, and still interact with them on a daily basis (although I don't teach any 7 year old classes regularly) 

Happy birthday (36) party with bible class friends. At the moment, all these people are gone from my life. When they learned I wouldn't join their cult (which I told them at the very beginning) they don't seem to have time to message me anymore haha, no problem! I learned a lot. No regrets.

We learned that the birthday heart cake upside down looks like a butt!

'La Pate' French style restaurant, short walk from my oriental internal medicine doctor's office.

Thanks Lily! They (Koreans) are really good at mass-producing these cute stickers. It's a big picture but in reality it's quite small; maybe 2 inch diameter.

Pajama day at Wonderland, with Pooh class. They will be graduating from Kindergarten in February 2026.

Snow is rare here, so we took some time from class to take pics outside.

Felt suspiciously handsome on this particular day, so got one of my coworkers to take pics for me.

Pure gold ring I bought, custom ordered. 'Aum' - the fundamental vibration of this universe, and also the Lord Himself as a sound incarnation. Therefore, this jewelry may also count as a 'relic'.

Thanks Cherry from Tigger class!

First time making chocolate. Completely random, had no plan to do this, I just had extra cacao powder and fooled around a bit in the kitchen.

Little pond cafe area short drive away from home. Went here with my bible class auntie friends.

New hat, but still not my new main hat, which is white. I'll have to take some pics of me with that for the next post.

Cherry blossom season! Gorgeous. But dangerous; once the petals fall it becomes allergy season and those allergic reactions I got are the worst I've ever gotten. Should've worn a mask when walking outside...

Field trip day with Wonderland academy. This place was great. And, is actually government-run which delighted me. Nothing like this exists in the USA that I know of, definitely not at this quality at least.

This statue/monument is at the end point of the river bike course in Daegu, which is the longest city bike trail I know of. Some kind of war/death memorial, I couldn't quite understand the translation from the plaques.

Black belt of the 1st degree in Judo, yay!

7 stars market. I pass by it on the bike path, so this time figured I'd walk in a bit.

These were the msot time-consuming thing I've done so far in nearly 2 years. I had to cut everything and package it. The students wrote and colored on it.

Another bike trail memory, this is the farthest out I've been. Still technically Daegu city, but no one else was on the road for a while. Felt ghostly, but safe and peaceful.

First and only time seeing 'Alex' in South Korea.

My last time with the Bible class people. They're part of 'Shincheonji' - New heaven, new earth. I've now learned there are many Christian cults in Korea, and many of them have been very successful in their preaching abroad.

desert cafe

Another time-consuming preparation, but these are so worth it. I love being able to look at these every day when I want to. This was for 'open class' once per year the parents can come to school to sit in on a lesson, and ask questions afterward. It's quite fake overall; it's anything BUT an ordinary class. Mostly a performance to make the clients feel their money spent is worth it.

New brunch cafe opened very close to me. Too expensive for the mediocre food quality, but great atmosphere and they specialize in little dog picture zone lol.