How are things going in the cold wet Cape?
My side, the heat is debilitating, a natural sauna. All the forests and steaming rice paddies, combined with the start of the monsoon season are enough to cause one to break out in sweat without lifting a finger! (And yes, part of my idyllic country existence is watching rice grow - fascinating experience! Rice paddies are mozzie heaven.....acres of stagnant water. It's enough to make one never want to eat rice again. LOL!) I have lost count of the amount of dead mosquitoes I've had to vacuum up from my balcony. I keep the sliding door closed as much as possible, only to find the latest hatchlings littering the floor with their dead bodies. Hence, the spiders are my friends...I keep them well fed in a way, only thing is... my spidy pets are growing alarmingly fat and big from all the mozzie food!
Sorry if this sounds like a National Geographic editorial. It's just that I happened to catch a documentary earlier on the Sky channel. A South African snake hunter, called Austin Stevens, hunting snakes in Cambodia. It was GREAT listening to his lekker local accent :)
Mind you, I hear quite a bit of South African accent on tv here, mostly nature programmes.
Anyway, this weekend I became a speed addict! I finally travelled on the KTX (Korean Train Xpress) = bullet train. 300+ km/hr above ground! IT WAS AWESOME! The train even dips and dives a bit, like a banking airplane. When we passed another bullet train, we were wind-whipped! What a mini-adrenaline rush! Now, all I have to do is bungee-jump! AAAAARRRGGGHH!
It's been almost 3 months since I first arrived in Korea. Before I left SA, I told some of you that I was looking forward to just being able to hop on a train and travel round the country, looking for adventure, etc. Well, there's not been much of that happening recently. But now that I am more settled, it's time to keep travel luggage ready packed and on hand.
Heard some sad and disturbing news this morning. The mother of 3 of my students was found murdered in her home on Friday. They live near me, across the road. Police are investigating. Everyone's in shock. My friend, Gyo Lim, is feeling quite affected by it, as one of the students is her home-room student. Plus, they are her neighbours, and the mother was a good friend and neighbour to her, too.
I'm hoping (not that this is good, but considering the alternative) that it was a case of a drunk, jealous husband, rather than a nutcase running round the countryside with a psychotic, homicidal personality. How do the kids recover from something like this? Lovely kids to experience something horrific like this at a time like this, just before big mid-year exams. It is so sad.
One of the things that attracted me to Korea was the low crime rate. How everyone says it is safe enough for a woman to walk around at midnight on her own. That is still true, as I had the joy of experiencing this weekend, travelling around the country on my own after midnight, on a weekend. What freedom and bliss. I'd never be able to do that back home. But it took me 3 months to reach this point of trust and feeling safe enough to do this. (Being conditioned the way we have in SA, takes a bit of time to undo.) And you know what the funniest thing is? Last week, the VP at my high school, told me he thinks I should cancel my trip to Thailand because of the high crime rate there! I had to remind him that I come from SA and have been well-trained to deal with high crime rate. And then something like this happens in our little sleepy hollow.
I'll keep you guys posted on the developments. And don't worry, I'll be careful. Won't go about looking for unnecessary trouble. It's just that one expects crime to happen in cities, not out here in the backwater. Then again, many Hollywood homicide/horror movies are set in the backwater, aren't they?
Ok, ciao for now....
Good night...
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
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