새해 복 많이 받으세요!

Here we are at the Daegu Orions game in our Blazer's gear. Thomas, Reid, Me, and Moon (from L to R). The Blazer's broadcast halftime show shows pictures from around the world of people in Blazers gear, so we are trying to get on TV.

Happy New Year from Korea! They say literally, "many luck to you in the new year".

On New Year's Eve, I stayed home and watched some depressing, crazy Romanian movie about a college student getting an abortion. It was an uneventful eve, because in the morning I had to wake up at 4am to join my Korean friend, Moon, on a hike to see the first sunrise of the year from the top of Apsan Mountain. This would also be one of the longest days of my life.

The waking for the first sunrise is a Korean tradition practised by many. It is especially good in Korea to hike to the top of the mountain to see the sunrise before anyone else, as we did. Being as it is the beginning of the solar year, it might be reasoned that the year doesn't really start until the first sunrise. I decided to take that approach this year and didn't worry about when the clock strikes 12.

We left our abodes at 4:30 am and begin the hike through the streets of Daegu until we got to the outskirts. There was a small protest out there against a proposed tunnel the city wants to build to alleviate traffic problems. They were impressed that I already knew about the project - it would connect us with Thomas over in Jisan, but unfortunately would take several years to be completed. Anyway, we started into the forest in the dark and began to hike up the mountain at about 5. I had the headlamp, so I led us up the mountain - the trails can be hard to follow, especially in the dark. The hiking was good, it took about an hour and a half to get up to the top, it was a little chilly, but nothing like we would experience at the top. As soon as we got up on the ridge it was freezing. Two pairs of pants, sweatshirts, jackets, they didn't stop the cold. We continued along the ridge for a while and got to a helicopter landing area. We were seeing more and more people at this point and there were probably 100 people of all ages at the heli-site. We saw in the distance a big celebration further East and hiked to it, good thing we did because we were able to see the sunrise about 15 minutes earlier from over there.

When we got there we discovered that there was a road to the top, so several people had just driven their cars up. Weak. There were maybe a thousand plus people up at the ceremony and the city was giving out free soup and coffee to warm us up, which we were very thankful for. We found a spot to watch the sunrise and I pulled out my camera to find that it was too cold to use the darn thing and it wouldn't even turn on.

We waited around for almost 40 minutes to see the sunrise and we froze. There was a long line to get a pink balloon, which you are supposed to release at sunrise and make a wish. Moon and I released imaginary balloons and wished for Korean girlfriends. As the sun approached the horizon, it got very tense. With every new sunbeam peeking through the clouds, the crowd sent out ooohs and ahhhhs. The sun was supposed to come up at 7:10, it actually was closer to 7:40 because of clouds. We happily greeted sunrise, paid our respects and hurried down the mountain and out of the cold. It was basically a single-file line down the mountain on every trail in sight, so it took a bit longer than expected. We replenished ourselves with some hot soup - the Koreans call it hang-over soup, though we hadn't been drinking.

We returned home and got a few hours of sleep before going to the park to play basketball. Reid joined us at this point and we had a post-game meal at the new soup restaurant that just opened on our street. From there we went out to Sangin to meet up with more Korean friends and have some drinks. Things spiraled a little out of control and what turned into a simple basketball outing turned into a long night with eating live octopus tentacles and singing Piano Man in a karaoke room. That'll happen in Korea.

In other news, I graduated from my Korean entry-level course at the YMCA. I am now a beginner. See the pictures from our graduation below.

I wish you a strong 2009.