Leg Update

So, I haven't done such a good job posting leg updates. It's because I've been too busy not letting a broken leg slow me down!

Everything's fine, situation normal. Today I went to the hospital for my four week check-up and the bone is healing very nicely. It never displaced so my doctor thought it would be okay for me to get a shorty cast. Here are two shots for comparison. I have to say, the short cast is awesome! I'm sitting at my desk right now with my knee bent-amazing! It's so much smaller and lighter, though, that my balance is affected. Ha. Time to relearn my crutches.

By the way, when they cut my cast off, the leg was gross. It smelled and I have significant atrophy in my right leg. It's tiny compared to the left. I'll spare you that picture. :)

Tomorrow I'm off to crutch around an island resort in Thailand for a week! Then it's back to Seoul for a couple of days of rest and then the cast comes off! I can't wait.

Love,
jc

The Great DaeHan Roadtrip

Well, school has been over with for almost two weeks, and I still have a broken leg so instead of jetting off on an exotic summer trip, I've been hanging out here in Seoul. Last week I went on an incredible road trip with my good friends Aaron, Denise and Marshall around the Korean peninsula. It was an especially nice trip because we got to spend a week together before all of them leave me in the yellow dust next year when they move from Korea. :(



I managed to talk everyone into taking Pedro on the roadtrip, because of the roominess and LPG factor, which ended up saving us tons of money!



We started our trip by cruising out to the east coast. We camped at Seoraksan National Park near the city of Sokcho, which is nearish to North Korea. The beach is fenced off by barbed wire and there are machine towers every so often. It reminds you that the Koreas are still technically at war. Yikes. The camping was great fun and the weather was nice enough for me to sleep outside in my hammock!





The next day, we drove down the coast to Gyeonggju, the ancient capital of Korea. There are Gyeonggju pics in my Korea page from a trip a few years ago, if you're interested. The day was LONGGGGG, the roads were steep and Pedro, while fun, is not really equipped for racing up hills. :) We also took an unscheduled stop to fix Pedro-he was giving us some small problems. Long story short, we ended up going to two different garages and now he's as good as new! We all expected it to happen, so it didn't really dampen spirts. Roadtrip 2007!



From Gyeonggju, the boys biked to Ulsan while Denise and I played around and drove to meet them. They were originally going to bike to Jinha Beach, but the roads were busier than they were expecting. Ulsan is a city of industry. We were surrounded by petrochemical plants, Hyundai factories and semitrucks (one of which almost flattened us). Needless to say, we hurried to the beach.





When we got to Jinha, it was raining. Nevertheless, we found a place to stay, a place to eat, played some midway games and I taught everyone cribbage. Jinha seems cool, but nobody was there when we were. I think the Koreans don't generally have long summer breaks like us, so it's probably only hopping for one or two weeks a year.



The next day we drove to a great Buddhist temple, Tongdosa. It was really beautiful. That night we drove all the way back up north to Weoraksan National Park and camped for one last night before we came back to Seoul.





It was a lot of fun, and I really cherished the time with my friends. Thanks for four amazing years you guys!

Love,
jason