n. korea, are you there?

going to n. korea any time soon? well as of today, thanks to google, "everything from Pyongyang’s subway stops to the country’s several city-sized gulags, as well as its monuments, hotels, hospitals and department stores" is on google maps.

according to the washington post, "North Korea was the last country virtually unmapped by Google." before today, n. korea appeared as a white space on google maps, as if it didn't even really exist. they must have very good paper maps there.

so the great news is that you can now find directions to some of the most sought after tourist destinations asia has to offer. for example, the juche tower, dedicated to the Juche philosophy, the set of ideas that have made n. korea the vibrant place it is today, is an easy drive across the taedong river in Pyongyang. 

juche tower

don't think you will feel the n. korean spirit there? there's also the Victorious Fatherland Liberation Museum, and just south of pyongyang is the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. you can learn about how during the korean war sinister looking american doctors stepped on babies while priests dropped pieces of hot metal on them, and how american soldiers put planks of wood across children and stood there until they went bye bye. ridiculous you say? think again, these exact incidents were meticulously captured in paintings.



yes, what was once a white blob on the map between china and s. korea is now chock-full of information, right at your finger tips. next time i go to dandong, china, i won't be afraid to cross the sino-korean friendship bridge into n. korea like i was last time.

since i was there, i thought it would be interesting to compare an aerial view of dandong, china (left) and the n. korean city of sinuiju (right), which are separated by the yalu river. china must really get a lot out of that friendship with n. korea...

not that dandong is totally off the hook either. there has been some weird stuff going down there lately...

but seriously, you can do guided tours of n. korea--it even has it's own wikitravel page. these were the best pointers they had on there:

"It is generally safest to at least appear to take everything they say seriously, even if it contradicts everything you were ever taught in history class or defies even the most basic human reasoning" 

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"Most, if not all, tour groups to the DPRK are asked to solemnly bow and lay flowers on one or two occasions in front of statues of Kim Il Sung when visiting monuments of national importance. If you're not prepared to do this, do not even try to enter North Korea."

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"Interestingly enough, North Korea has three amusement parks, two of which are abandoned due to mutual lack of interest and electricity. Sadly, the Kaeson Youth Fair has now closed, taking the infamous "Roller Coaster of Death" along with it.  Please note that power cuts may hit without warning in the middle of any activity. Whilst you might welcome this if the jukebox is starting to get to you, this is not a desirable outcome if you are in the middle of an amusement-park ride, particularly as these blackouts can last for hours at a time."

so what do you say, let's go to n. korea!!  *jumps in air and pumps fist*

fender bender

yesterday i got into a fender bender involving a 16 year old girl. i am ashamed.

i'm hoping for a no-fault verdict from the insurance companies--we were backing out of driveways that are precariously placed right across from each other in a small cul-de-sac (zach's house!). clearly, neither of us were looking, and we didn't stand a chance.

her car definitely got it worse than mine, and it was a new 2012 camry, although the car had already been in another accident because there was a huge scrape on the side :(  my bumper just had some of her paint on it. long live the almighty 2003 focus!!

after it happened the girl ran up to me and started yelling a little. it was such a minor fender bender and so stupid i couldn't bother getting worked up and pointing fingers. i said to her calmly-- look, i think this was both of our faults. luckily the girl's boyfriend agreed, which seemed to calm her down. i do remember being 16 though and getting into a more serious fender bender and it's pretty scary--mainly because you think your parents are going to flip out. so i kind of felt bad, i should know better to look in my mirror more closely.

after the incident her mom and sisters ran outside and started yelling in korean, so i was a little worried how that was going to play out. language barriers in these kinds of situations always make everything 50x worse. they all acted really weird about the whole thing though, like they didn't even come over to my car to inspect the damage they had done (we moved our cars back into our respective driveways following the collision), or take any pictures. every time something needed to be exchanged or communicated i had to walk over to them. maybe they were all afraid, i don't know.

that night, i ate korean food with zach and my parents. coincidence? yes. i didn't think about it until just now when i was writing this!

and again...

hmm so my chinese blog didn't really work out. moving on...this blog is just going to be whatever i want. that's the best.

i felt inspired to start blogging again after recently stumbling upon one of my co-worker's blogs. well, ex-coworker now, she is on medical disability leave and may not come back. 

about 2 weeks ago we got an email that said my co-worker was on indefinite leave and that there would be some restructuring because of this. one thing that happened was that my boss got a promotion, essentially taking this woman's position. upon hearing this i mainly just felt happy for my boss. the whole thing was really sudden, and i never knew this co-worker to be sick--in fact she always seemed very lively, so i just assumed that something strange was at play and it was her personal business. i didn't really work with her that much.

however i found out on friday that this co-worker is actually really sick, and according to her blog, has been for the past 4+ years. what started as breast cancer spread throughout her body, and now she has like 4 or 5 tumors in her brain. apparently she has been living for 17 months with the brain tumors, whereas most people only live 3 to 6 months.

i don't think i need to express how sad i felt reading this blog. i sort of read through it backwards- starting from now and going to the beginning. there would be like one post where the test results were good and the tumors were shrinking and then the next post would report that the tumors had doubled in size. she started experiencing seizures and has lost muscle control in a lot of her body, so she can't walk. there was one day at work she came in with a black eye which gave me kind of a weird impression of her...turns out she tripped over a cord at a gas pump and hit her head on the curb. in general, her appearance has changed a lot (in a bad way) because of side effects from the medicine. she doesn't really look like the same person anymore. did i mention she has 5 kids and a husband, all college aged and younger? yeah. at the first the blog was very hopeful, but by the end it seemed like a quiet, and somehow positive, resignation. she is happy just for little things each day (although i'm sure they haven't been with out their downs as well). 

on the positive side, i had a good impression from her at work and thought she was friendly and energetic. pta obviously treated her very well during this ordeal, and she said working helped to keep her going. for someone who has been wondering for 4+ years when their life was going to prematurely be taken from them, her outlook was amazing to me. 

so why did that inspire me to start blogging again...i don't know. i guess everyone has a story to tell, a perspective to share. i wouldn't want to sit around reading cancer blogs all day, but i think it was good for me to have read hers, it made me feel a little bit more well-rounded. 

i guess my basic thought is, if you have something to say, you should say it. blogging in china was easy, everyday life was so interesting and i was dying to write about it. here is a little more challenging 但是我要努力 (but i will strive) because i really don't think i'm that jaded. i'd like to write, so we'll see.