Last night, the streets of old town Yangsan heard shrieks of terror and delight from a crazy waegook (foreigner) on the back of a bike.

The Female Kiwi has been promising me my very first motorcycle ride when the weather got nice ever since I got up the nerve to ask her in the dead of winter. It's been 16-18 degrees Celsius (somewhere in the 60s for you Americans...errrr yes I am American too...) all week, absolutely marvelous bike riding weather. Anyways, the Half Asian, Hooligan 1, the Female Kiwi and I were chowing down on Pakistani food when the bike thing somehow came up.  Since the Female Kiwi had her spare helmet I decided that my first ride could be a short one, just between the restaurant and the Hemingway bar (for MOVIE night people, I'm not a total lush) down the road.

Problem number 1: My hair was in a high tight bun.
Solution: Let hair down in an effort to fit into the helmet....end up with ridiculous curly hair flying everywhere.

Problem number 2: My giant handbag...full of things like A People's History of the United States 1492-Present (a 634 page book by Howard Zinn), a camera, a mini notebook, my wallet, my emergency girl kit (smaller bag filled with things like concealer, chapstick,  hand sanitizer, tissues and the like), a packet of flashcards filled with my new Korean vocabulary words, multiple pens, a box of band-aids for my many sundry accidents....you get the point. This isn't exactly the sort of handbag you can hold while riding on the back of a motorcycle.

Solution conversation:
Me: Half Asian...will you hold my handbag?
Half Asian: Oh hell no. I know how heavy that thing is.
Me: ~turning desperately to Hooligan 1~ Will you please hold my handbag? Just until we get to the bar?
....I will admit, I didn't actually wait for the Hooligan to reply, I just sort of shoved it into his hands and hobbled away as quickly as I could and got on the bike.

For the entirety of our slow descent down the back alley toward the main road it went like this:
Me: Oh. My. God. OHMYGOD OHMYGODOHMYGOD.
Female Kiwi: NOT SO TIGHT! You're killing me Alex!
Me: Sorry! ~loosens up for a second before going back to strangling my poor Female Kiwi.
Female Kiwi: ALEX!
Me: OHMYGOD. SORRY. OhMYFRICKENGOD. EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

However, the second we turned onto the main road and picked up some speed I relaxed and had a blast. Thus the streets of Yangsan hearing my shrieks of joy. I don't think that it's everyday they see two crazy foreign women on the back of a bike wearing ridiculous helmets (mine was white with a giant pink star on it) and yelling. Well, Female Kiwi wasn't yelling. She was laughing her ass off at me.

When we passed Hooligan and the Half Asian I saw one of the funniest sights of my life: Hooligan 1 holding the handbag as awkwardly as humanly possible sort of away from his body as if to say to the world 'really, it's not mine. In fact, it's so far from my body that you might be mistaken and think this lovely girl next to me is actually holding it.' It was hilarious.

I had such an adrenaline high when I got off. Josh, the co-owner of the Hemingway told me I hadn't really experienced motorcycle life until I had driven one myself.  I told him that was probably a terrible idea. 
Josh: Why? Are you accident prone or something?
Me: You have No Idea. I think that might be the understatement of the century.

(Further) Spaz update: I tripped walking down the bus aisle last night and while I caught myself mid stumble I managed to land hard on my bad ankle which is still all angry and throbby at me. ALEX FAIL. The Tall Lanky Potential Climbing partner despairs of ever actually getting to go climbing with me. I told him he should probably abandon all hope now. Oh well.

I spent the day with in-laws planting a field of potatoes.  The parents-in-law had started the work yesterday, so we finished adding the potatoes, spraying fertilizer and covering the furrows with plastic.

Click on any photo to enlarge.

I wrote earlier (edit: I wrote earlier, on a different computer, and haven’t posted here yet) about the factories moving onto the farmland.  Here is an example.

Hmm. I have no photos of actually planting the potatoes – too boring, I guess.  Here is the vat of fertilizer on the back of a kyeonoonggi.  Oh, a kyeonoonggi is a tow-wheeled tractor and some models have a pump for this kind of work.

Above is a farmer on a neighboring plot spraying his fertilizer.

Below is  the finished product.  The plastic keeps pests out and heat in like a tiny green house.  The black areas prevent weeds from getting sunlight.  And in the fall,you just let the wind dispose of the old plastic for you.  Naturally, that last comment was sarcastic, but there is a lot of plastic wrap tangled in tree in the area.

Some of the old rice was burned away and I thought it looked interesting.

Okay, so the first article on today's Korea Times webpage is "Why is Lee Pushing for Education Reform?" First of all, maybe because Duh, Korea could really use some excellent education reform. Let's move beyond the obvious though, the article didn't actually mention any critique of Lee's plans despite what the title seemed to imply. The only less than satisfactory line in regards to Lee's actions was this:

Lee's new hands-on approach to education is seen as a rare move from the head of state, who has been mainly focused on reviving the economy and creating jobs.

I've repeatedly mentioned that short time economic revival measures are great for kick starting a sluggish economy but long term investments, particularly in education are invaluable when it comes to providing a viable workforce. Importing skilled workers is hugely expensive and eventually will impact a firm's ability to maintain a competitive edge in the global market.

Besides, I don't think that the president wanting to cut down on ridiculous hazing practices and decreasing the burden of private education costs for families is a terrible thing. Now if only he could get all of the public schools on the same vacation schedule so families could maybe take a holiday together...