The butterfly hill
The view from 강천산 (Gangcheon Mountain).
Erin and I on the easy part of the hike.
If you're not actively looking, urban Korea can be pretty depressing. It often appears flashy and commercial, while simultaneously dingy and repetitive.
... is good news, at least this week. I had a lovely weekend which I will be posting about, and this morning had an adventure just across the river. I can feel it -- spring is in the air!And yet, even as he thought of all these things, he noticed somehow that the sky was a lovely shade of blue and that one cloud had the shape of a sailing ship. The tips of the trees held pale, young buds and the leaves were a rich deep green. Outside the window, there was so much to see, and hear, and touch--walks to take, hills to climb, caterpillars to watch as they strolled through the garden. There were voices to hear and conversations to listen to in wonder, and the special smell of each day.
And in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build, and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn't know--music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real. His thoughts darted eagerly about as everything looked new--and worth trying.
"Well, I would like to make another trip," he said, jumping to his feet; "but I really don't know when I'll have the time. There's just so much to do right here."
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A view from the mountain I will be climbing. Photo from Adventure Korea.
"In essence, Korean education is more or less teacher centered and any attempt by the teachers and administrators to change Korean education to a learner centered one will not come without major obstacles as the classroom culture of Korean education is not set up for a learner centered environment.
I found this note on my door this afternoon after volleyball. (More to come regarding volleyball!) Since I understand about as much written Korean as spoken Korean, and I didn't have any friends handy who do, I used my trusty Google Translate skills.
Gratuitous pre-Korea volleyball photo!"When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future."
