Remember, Remember the Fun of September

Well howdy, folks. Hope you had a good September. Mine was fun, though not terribly eventful.
One new exciting thing? I have a cat! His name is Jack and he looks...


Like this! It's great sharing my apartment with a very vocal,



yellow-eyed, soft, gray bundle of cuteness. He'll be with me until I leave in December when he'll find a new place to live for a month before going back to his former owner/cat dad.


In other news, I got to see a really cool Korean musical with subtitles that was performed in front of the palace above. The music was really fun and I felt really lucky to be able to see what the people were actually saying and singing about. I've seen some really good Korean shows without subtitles, but this was one felt like treat.


I also participated in the second-annual EV camping trip at the Paju Wild Grape Village. Here's our roaring campfire.


And here are some of my friends enjoying some good campfire talk. The group was smaller this year and there were only people from my department along, but we still had a nice time.


The next day we played "Jackpot." It's a game where one player throws the balls and assigns each throw a point value. As soon as someone reaches 500 then they switch with the thrower. I hadn't played since middle school and it was surprisingly fun.


I also went for a little hike and enjoyed some pretty nice views.

The next weekend I headed to the Pusan (Busan) International Film Festival. I forgot to take pictures there, but it's not such a big deal since I was just there in July and got some good ones. I went with two of my Edutainer pals. We saw one horrible movie (luckily it was bad enough to be totally amusing), some rather cool ones, some silly ones, and one really good one. The really good one was called Bottle Shock and it was fun and heart-warming. You should totally go and see it. All in all it was a great weekend. The company was what really made it a good time.

After the festival I made it back to Paju to join some villagers in visiting Peacetown, an orphanage that's not too far from EV. Groups from the village go there once a month to play with the kids.



Here is a sweet little girl who took to me. We talked to the kids about Halloween and gave them some candy. We also made them balloon animals. As part of my Edutainer skills I've learned how to make a balloon sword, bear, dog, hummingbird and hat. Most of the kids wanted swords...


which they promptly started using as guns like the one pictured above. I died about 700 times that night from being shot by balloon guns. It was kind of exhausting. The kids were great and it was so obvious how much they needed our love and attention. I think I'll definitely go back next month.

Other than that, not much has been going on. I've cast the play that I'll be directing starting at the end of this month. I'm excited about the people I'll be working with and the script is fun and the music is great.

I also did a raw fruits and vegetables cleanse with two of my friends here. Basically the plan was to eat only raw fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds for 7 days. I ended up keeping it up for 10 and a half because I felt energetic and my skin looked great. I am planning to do a colon cleanse at the beginning of November with one of my friends. It sounds kind of rough, but apparently it will really improve my health and I'm curious to see if I can do it. I'll let you all know how everything comes out (haw, haw!).

I'm planning a trip to Lao in mid November, and then my Uncle Sal/Chava is coming to visit me. Once I finish work on December 5th, we'll be heading to Cambodia and Thailand (maybe with a few more days in Lao) for a couple of weeks and then it will be back to Michigan for Christmas and back to NYC for the new year and the next opportunity. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!