Saturday, December 22, 2012

Wrapping Up and 2 Wonderful Dogs

Wednesday: 
  •  The big news Wednesday was the election!  There was no school and some businesses were closed (including CrossFit Suncheon) so people could get out and vote for their new president.  The winner was.....Park Geun-Hye!  The conservative female who many of her critics had named her "The Daughter of a Dictator" due to the negative feelings towards her father, Park Chung-hee, a former President of South Korea who ruled in the 1960's and 1970's.  He is credited with completely transforming Korea's economy (prior to his rise to power, North Korea actually had a stronger economy than South Korea), but he had several human rights abuses, jailing and torturing political opponents and banning things like mini-skirts and rock music.  Many Koreans have very mixed feelings about him and his daughter.  
  • My province/state, Jeollanam-do, does NOT like them.  In fact, a whopping 89% of voters in this state voted against Park Geun-Hye!  I was shocked!  Apparently, I live in the San Fransisco of Korea haha (except I don't think there is any place in Korea that in anywhere near as liberal and radical as SF).  Many of the policies of the two candidates were quite similar actually, which makes it interesting.  I think it was more an election about whether or not people wanted the daughter of Park Chung-hee in power.  It was a close election though.  Here is a table that is from Wikipedia that explains the election results.  My state is South Jeolla.
regions · provinces · cities Park Geun-hye.jpg Moon Jae-in cropped.jpg


Park Geun-hye
Saenuri
Moon Jae-in
DUP
Votes % Votes %
Sudogwon Seoul 3,024,572 48.18% 3,227,639 51.42%
Incheon 852,600 51.58% 794,213 48.04%
Gyeonggi 3,528,915 50.43% 3,442,084 49.19%
Gangwon 562,876 61.97% 340,870 37.53%
Chungcheong Daejeon 450,576 49.95% 448,310 49.70%
North Chungcheong 518,442 56.22% 398,907 43.26%
South Chungcheong 658,928 56.66% 497,630 43.26%
Sejong 33,587 51.91% 30,787 47.58%
Honam
(Jeolla)
Gwangju 69,574 7.76% 823,737 91.97%
North Jeolla 150,315 13.22% 980,322 86.25%
South Jeolla 116,290 10.00% 1,038,347 89.28%
Yeongnam
(Gyeongsang)
Busan 1,324,572 59.82% 882,511 39.87%
Ulsan 413,977 59.78% 275,451 39.78%
Daegu 1,267,789 80.14% 309,034 19.53%
North Gyeongsang 1,375,164 80.82% 316,659 18.61%
South Gyeongsang 1,259,174 63.12% 724,896 36.33%
Jeju 166,184 50.46% 161,235 48.95%       

Thursday:
  • I had school today.  We were doing more apocalypse lessons and I did the Pokemon review game with the 1st graders.  I'm so glad I waited until the end of the year to do it, because I don't think they would do anything else except maybe watch a movie.  
  • I was also helping one of the English teacher, Ms. Choi, with a speech.  She, along with about 30ish other English teachers from Fulbright schools, are heading to Texas for two months to study English and American culture and to teach about Korean culture as well. Ms. Choi was chosen as the leader of the group and she has to write and deliver two speeches on behalf of all of the English teachers.  She was pretty nervous so I helped her out a bit.  I think they'll go over well!
Friday:
  • The big project of the day was finishing up the workbook for Winter Camp.  It is pretty much done and I think it is going to be so good.  It really is a high quality camp and I think the ETAs and the campers will have a blast.  It's in 2 weeks!!  I am really excited for it.  I saw who all was going to go and it's a great group of boys.  We are definitely going to challenge them, but it'll be fun too.
  • We had a free day at CrossFit and it was intense as usual.  I did clean lifts, kettlebell swings (300!!), box jumps, and double unders.  I only have about a week and a half left of it until I head to Busan!  I'm definitely bummed, but it'll be good to see if I can keep up my fitness levels for these two months.
Saturday:
  • Today, we headed to Ms. Choi's house for lunch.  She is also my host father's sister, so the parents and twins and I piled into the car and headed over.  She actually lives in a house, which is a little unusual, especially in a place as big as Suncheon.  Her house is nice though and she has two wonderful little dogs!  They were barking like mad at first because they didn't know who we were, but they were pretty friendly afterwards.  The twins were absolutely terrified of them though.  They refused to go anywhere near them and would run away from them if the dogs even looked at them.  I petted and played with them though.  I tried to play fetch, but they had no clue what it was.  I don't think they are really trained and they just live outside.  It was nice to play a little with animals though!
Okay, I think I'm going to head to The Liz coffee shop to work on a few things for winter camp then I'll just take it easy for the rest of the evening.  I'm making plans for Christmas!  I am going to hang out with my Mokpo friends and we are going to have a little pow-wow in a motel and play board games and stuff.  Should be a fun time!  I'm glad I'll be able to spend Christmas with my friends! 

Have a great weekend and congratulations on surviving the Apocalypse! :)

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