Really? 14 months? Really?

Yeah, so. It's been 14 months since my last entry. Obviously a lot has happened. Let's see....went back to Florida for Chuseok, back to Florida for Christmas and went snowboarding in Colorado for Spring Break of 08. Spent the summer in the States, best friends got married and I moved to Bangladesh. It's been busy. I suppose I should do a better job keeping up, but I didn't. Maybe things will improve now.

I left Seoul after five years of working at the school. It was a really good run and I made incredible friends. I learned a lot, but I was ready for another adventure. To that end, I chose a school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The school is really interesting; the staff and kids are unique people. Living here is obviously different than living in Seoul, but I'm enjoying it. Maybe I'll write a more detailed post later. Ha.

Here are a few photos from the early days in the 'Desh. The school took us on a tour of the old part of town.


A busy port in Old Dhaka.


Looks like they still love Harrison.

School also took us on a boat tour. This boat is loaded with dredged sand that will be used to make bricks.



Here is a before video of my new apartment.



And here's the after video!

Somewhere between normal and invincible

Greetings. Since I last posted, I've been to Kho Chang and chilled for a week, got the cast cut off in Korea and traveled for almost 32 hours to get to Orlando. I've been really lazy here and should really have posted more about the last couple of weeks sooner, but today was such a good day that I'll skip the other stuff for now and come back to it later.

I WALKED TODAY!! When I got back to Korea and had the cast cut off, the doctor told me that I would still need the sticks for two weeks, then I could start to walk. I was pretty bummed, but what could I do? I feel like I've had a pretty good attitude this whole time and I tried really hard to not let the cast and sticks slow me down. I knew that getting the cast cut off wouldn't be the end of it all, but having it gone really makes me want to be fixed. It's been a week since the cast was cut off and I desperately want to be done with the whole thing. It's been an interesting experience, but enough is enough.

I've been trying to put a little pressure on the foot over the last week, but there has been a bit of pain and my leg just hasn't been ready to walk. I've been in the pool every day, slowly rehabing the leg and basically waiting for the two week deadline that Professor Kim set on me.

Today, all of a sudden, I tried to take two steps and it worked fine. Just like that, I felt good enough to walk from my bedroom to the pool without my crutches. A journey of 20-30 steps, but symbolically it was huge! :) Now it's just a matter of easy does it and hopefully within a week I'll be walking.

To commemorate this auspicious occasision, I've decided to take a stroll(crutch, hop, you choose) down memory lane and add a little gallery of the places the cast, the sticks and I have been.


Oh yeah, the subway...I've never gotten more looks in Korea. "What is this guy doing? Why isn't he at home?" It felt weird, but the pride was easily put aside EVERY time I got on the subway and someone got up to give me a seat :)


The front seat of everyone's car and taxi cabs. The long cast kept me out of trouble, and out of the back seat. (and out of trouble in the back seat, I suppose)


Hammocks. On the roof of my apartment working on an uneven tan, or camping at Seoraksan. Hammock=Summer


In front of the fire. Got to work up that sweaty leg some way.


In the Garage. Negotiating obstacles became de riguer with the sticks. I hardly ever fell ALL the way to the ground. :)


Thailand. Why not? I traded the water for the beach, great company and Thai food. It wasn't that hard.

Cast, crutches - Thanks for the memories. Now get lost.

Love,
jc

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

It only took 3 years...

It only took 3 years, but I found the giant bottle of Corona again. The first picture was taken in May of 2004 and the second is from last weekend.

I have to ask myself - has the bottle of Corona changed as much as I have? I mean, he's obviously looking good; his leg's not broken and his hands indicate his zealousness for life. (Which I'm sure his facial expressions would do, if he had a face)

Has he had the crazy experiences that I have? I imagine he's been busy; I haven't seen him in three years, after all.

Has he met people as wonderful and amazing as I have? Must be, I had to stand in line to get my picture taken with him.

Thanks for providing perspective, Corona bottle. Sometimes it's good to reconnect to the important things. Thanks also to everyone I've met since I met you. I've had a good stretch and it's only getting better every day.

...Now if only we had the Corona bottle's blog, we might be able to see if he's thinking the same things......

Love,
jc

ps. I'm still broken, but fine. My doctor agrees. I've downgraded my condition from invincible to normal and it seems to be working. Short cast coming June 19, all casts off July 3.

Update

Here's the skinny.

I went to the doctor on Tuesday and Professor Kim told me that my fracture is still non-displaced. That means no surgery! I have to go back once a week for x-rays and as long as I'm taking care of myself, I won't be setting off any metal detectors when I finally go to the airport to travel this summer.

Currently, my mobility(read sense of invincibility) is increasing due to a hard cast that runs from my toes half way up my thigh. I'm getting used to the crutches and things get easier every day.

My friends still rule, everyone is taking good care of me! Rides to and from school, dinner deliveries and assorted means of cheering me up.

Remember, it's just a fractured leg. It could be worse! (Is this comment for you or for me?)

I'm in good spirits, we just had the day off for Buddha's birthday and the hockey team pulled a late-nighter to celebrate. I didn't skate last night, but August is just around the corner, right?

Love,
jc

A Different Kind of Busy

Well dear readers (all 3 of you), Thursday was an interesting day for jc. We were playing soccer against our Varsity team, when I had the chance to dump a free ball into an empty net for a goal. Unfortunately for me, the ball wasn't exactly free. The next 2 seconds are a blur, but I've reconstructed them thusly. Off-balance, I tried to kick the ball. Maybe I hit the ground, maybe it was just the clean all-ball tackle, but regardless, the ball didn't move. Neither did I. I distinctly heard four rips, tears or cracks as I fell to the ground. "Are you okay?" No.

Flash forward to the emergency room and I'm looking at the xray of my right fibula. "Do you see that crack?" Yes. Simple fracture just above my ankle. Ugh. I'll spare the details of my 15 hour stay in the emergency room, but the highlights included a screaming kid in traction getting his arm set. "Would you mind waiting outside?" No. Another highlight was the interesting process of allocating rooms to waiting patients. "There are no rooms, so you'll have to wait." "How long?" "Maybe a few hours, maybe a few days." "Can I wait at home?" No. Good thing Jonathan was there to keep me sane. You should see my rock the wheelchair. I also enjoyed the self-service, take a number xrays and sleeping on a bench in the lobby of the hospital for 4 hours. "Room yet?" No. At one point, I tried to ask for a room in Korean and everyone cracked up. I may have asked for bread.....Damn aspirated consonants.

Anyway, I was waiting for a room so I could schedule a surgery to plate my fracture and get a cast. Luckily, the professor(?) looked at my film and decided that I don't need surgery. Tuesday I go back and as long there's no displacement of the fracture, I won't need a plate.

Soooo, now I'm homebound and trying my hardest to slow down and relax. It's not easy you know? The cool thing is the fact that the people I live and work with are amazing and super caring. "Do you need anything?" Yes. Everyone has already been over, bringing food, well-wishes and even a party last night. Thanks everyone!

More updates will be forth-coming.

Love,
jc

Busy Weekend!

The season of packed weekends is upon us here in Seoul as we scramble to spend quality time with all of our friends that are going their separate ways in the summer.

This weekend consisted of a baseball game, a wedding and a triathlon!

Here is a photo of Adam and his beautiful bride, Jasmine.




Korean weddings tend to border on the cheesy, but it was a lot of fun and everyone had a good time.




Team Pride (with new swimmer Lizzie) arrived at the annual SIS tri with the intentions of upholding our two-year reign as the second place team.




This year we didn't take second, but winning the First Place trophy filled the void!




Summer is just around the corner, you never know, I might be knocking on your door looking for a place to sleep!

Love,
jc

Lazy, lazy

Greetings from jc.org.

In an effort to catch up on a long neglected web site, I've posted pictures from my trip last summer. So far, I've only put the Munich pictures up, but in the next weeks you can expect to see photos from Thailand (2 trips worth), Prague, Vienna, Venice, Japan and India.

I want to get everything up before this summer. I'll do my best.

Love,
jc

Follow this link to the Munich picures, or navigate from the main page. Remember, jc.org looks best if you're rocking a big screen resolution. I'm not smart enough to code it in any sophisticated kind of way. JC.ORG - Bringing you the best of 1996 web technology! :)

SunRadio at Spring Scream Festival Taiwan

Hey all,

This weekend I lived the rockstar, international jet-setter dream.

My friend Jon's band, SunRadio was playing the Spring Scream Festial in Taiwan and he asked me if I wanted to jump down to the island of Formosa to check out the band and the show. We didn't have much planned, but I decided to go with it and check it out.

We left Seoul with plane tickets to Taipei, hoping we could work out everything else when we got there. The festival was in Kenting, Taiwan which is 400 km from Taipei. We had no idea if we could get there, but we went for it. Keeping in mind the teachings of The Secret and The Alchemist, I thought the universe would conspire to help us out. At 4:45, we were still 10 minutes from the airport and our 5:30 flight and I started to doubt myself.

5 minutes later, Pedro (the slow, but cool van) pulled in to Incheon airport. We quickly busted the valet parking, leaving the Korean ajeoshi speechless to park the sweet van. We ran into the airport and found no lines at the check-in, security and immigration counters.

We made the flight and one fortuitous event after another we were on a high speed train to Kaoshuing. Upon arrival in Kaoshuing, we found some people that helped us into a cab and we were off to the festival with no problems. More friendly people helped us from Kenting to the park and about midnight we rocked into the festival grounds. One minute later, we met up with Miso, the singer in a shuttle bus that brought us straight to our cabin. We were there, with no way to make our 1pm flight in Taipei on Sunday. No worries. Party tonight and stress tomorrow.

After a late night jam session at that Atash cabin we hit the sack and woke up Saturday morning for breakfast and a relaxing swim. We tried to arrange flights from Kaoshuing to Taipei on Sunday, but they would have been 400 USD! Instead we ended up arranging a taxi for Sunday at 5am to Taipei. Time to relax. Everything was taken care of. Of course.

Spent the day relaxing at the festival. Great bands! Mates of State headlined and ruled.

I was the unofficial street team for SunRadio. I was talking to everyone about the band, selling t-shirts and cds and hyping the show. I apologize to anyone I talked to more than once, but I was working for the band. Give me a break.

The SunRadio show rocked and the weekend was crazy.

Long and short, we made it back to Seoul no problem and I feel like a minor part of the rockstar lifestyle.

Here are some photos from their show. I'm trying to get the video up, but I'm having problems.....

Love,
jc