Pictures and Politicians

There's a civic election going on right now in Gwangju. Actually, the campaigns are going on right now - the election will be on the 31st (which is actually a holiday because of the election). Anyway, campaigns here are a little different. People have rented 1 ton trucks and put a combination of big pictures, loudspeakers, big screen TV's or people on them to blare out (visually and audibly) the reasons that you should vote for them. One person replaced "YMCA" with their name as part of their jingle (they all have jingles). They will also park outside our window with the noise cranked for 15 - 20 minutes at a time.

On street corners, campaign workers wearing their candidate’s colors will bow at anything that they possibly can. They work hard since busy street corners will often have up to 20 people bowing to a lot of traffic. Plus, you have to out perform the other people trying to campaign beside you. Emily keeps being given business cards by various politicians and their supporters. (I don't think I'm pretty enough.) She was at a supermarket today where they would read some message over the intercom; the workers would repeat it and then bow.

Anyway, if you're ever campaigning in Korea, here's the apparent strategy: lots of loudspeakers and ample amounts of bowing. How can you lose?

Moving on, though, here are some recent pictures of Emily & me. It's been a while since we've posted pictures but I promise I've been trying to put some up lately. It hasn't seemed to want to upload them for whatever reason. Korea does filter their internet (I'm not sure how, but they do) and it sometimes interferes with our blog. Enjoy!

This is us at Boseong Tea farm. That is green tea growing in the background. Looks like a bush, right? Yeah, I thought it would look more exotic too.

I'm not Buddhist and you're probably not either, so likely neither of us know what this means.

Emily with a big lying Budda. Actually, I think there's two lying down there. This was at "The Temple of 1000 Buddhas & 1000 Pagodas." There's actually maybe 100 Buddhas that we saw and a total of 20 pagodas, but time passes and so I'm sure there was more at one time. Legend has it that all the Buddhas were made in one night. I'm not sure if this is attributed to supernatural causes or just a lot of people working really hard, but that's a lot of Buddhas in a little time.

This picture I am particularly proud of. It turned out really well. It's a bunch of Buddhas at a temple.

This is a picture of me at the beach in Busan. We went there on the long weekend three weeks ago. Children's Day & Buddha's Birthday (both holidays) happened to land on the same day this year. Some holidays are based on the solar calendar (i.e. Christmas, Children's Day) while others are on the Lunar Calendar (Korean New Years, Buddha's Birthday). As a result, many holidays change their position every year.

Finally, just a reminder, it is only 42 days until Emily and I come back to Canada! Feel free to drop us a line, either by e-mail, commenting on our blog or by phone (e-mail us if you want our number). We'll be in the country for most of July & August, so there'll be lots of time for getting together.