It’s one of those drizzly, rainy days over here, just wet enough to keep me from wanting to go outside. Unfortunately I don’t really have a choice in the matter, I have a big pile of Christmas gifts that need to be mailed, not to mention some out processing stuff to take care of. It never ceases to amaze me how much paperwork the Air Force manages to generate when you leave an assignment. Our mortgage closing was more streamlined than this, and that thing had like forty pages to it. Oh well, it’s for a good cause.

Now I’ve just got to figure out how to get all this stuff down to the post office ..

I uploaded some pictures Riki took of the boys trip to “Boo at the Zoo” down in Little Rock just before Halloween. I’ve never actually been to this for one reason or another but it certainly does look like a lot of fun. I couldn’t help but laugh at some of these pictures .. my boys certainly do know how to ham it up.

It’s getting positively cold over here now, which is a good thing as it means it’s almost time to go. We’re going to be playing war games again over here soon. I guess Korea had to get in it’s last parting shot on me before I escape. I think I’m going to go Christmas shopping next weekend if I’m able. We’re supposed to be having a Thanksgiving dinner thing a couple weeks from now, which should be nice. I’ve also been having “going away” parties every weekend, which is really just another excuse to go languish away in the bars down town. But hey, I can do that. I’ve got to enjoy my little alternate reality I have here while I still can!

Being from the Midwest, I’m accustomed to big fat thunderstorms on a regular basis. I think we literally had one every other day most of the summer one year when I was living back at Whiteman. You also never see the ever present haze you have over here. I’m always startled by how close certain things on the horizon are when the sky clears up as it does form time to time. I’ll never forget how huge the sky was down in Texas, it felt like you could almost see past the horizon at times. Even the sunsets are different here. American sunsets have that classic defined look to them, a blaze of colors followed by a fade off to the deep purple of night. Korean sunsets are huge and soft and take over the entire sky, again I assume due to the haze. They invoke a different feeling.

It’s interesting, because you can draw a lot of parallels between the Korean people and the Korean weather when you actually start to look at it. I wonder how much of an effect the weather has on a culture? I’ll say this much, it certainly has an effect on me. I realized that these sorts of things are a major contributor to feeling like a visitor. It’s just foreign for lack of a better word. Odd stuff that you would never think of until you find yourself thinking of it.

We had the annual Osan Air Show this weekend. Now, under normal circumstances it’s only a so so endeavor. I mean, this is Korea after all. They have a few fighters zip around for awhile, some random fly bys of whatever they can scrape up out of Japan and Guam and here on the penninsula, and a smattering of Army equipment and South Korean aircraft. The highlight is the Black Eagles, a Korean stunt team akin to the Blue Angles or Thunderbirds that you’ll see back in the United States. They fly T-37′s and generally put on a decent show, although I wouldn’t call it anything particularily special.

Unfortunately, our short little dictatorial friend up north decided to literally drop the bomb last week and test a nuclear device. This resulted in a bunch of cancellations for our Air Show. Do I think it was intentional on North Korea’s part? Did they blow up a tiny little bomb just to show they can put an end to Osan’s yearly spectacle whenever they want? I’m no expert, but it’s entirely possible. Jerks.

I went and wandered around anyway and took a few pictures. As it turns out, I had my camera set to some ridiculous settings from the last time I was screwing around with it, that made all my pictures come out overexposed and blue tinted. I tried to correct it as best I could on the computer. You can’t really tell since the pictures I put on this website are so small, so it’s not that bad.

Also, I was looking around the picture gallery earlier and realized it was horribly disorganized and hard to find stuff in, so I broke down and rearranged everything into chronological order. Better? I dunno, but it makes me happy.

There’s not much else going on over here. Well, I mean, there is the whole North Korea wanting to test a nuclear weapon thing. Personally, I’m convinced this is all just another ploy by Kim Jong-Il to ensure North Korea enters back into talks on the best terms possible. I’ll be absolutely amazed if he actually tests anything, or even HAS anything to test. North Korea is notorious for doing stuff like this, making huge dramatic threats and then changing direction at the last minute, all to gain some strategic advantage in negotiations. We’ll see I guess. I talked to a few South Koreans about it and they could care less, they think it’s all a ploy too. Actually, a few of them thought it was all fabricated by the United States. That’s South Korea for ya.

We should be closing on the house within a week. Ug, Im all stressed out about this, I really need to get out of this country and get on with my life.

I added the ability to subscribe to website updates via email. Any time the page gets updated it will send out an email to all the registered users letting them know. If you don’t want to get these emails you can disbale it in your profile. It’s not perfect but it seems to work well enough for the moment.

I’m also stumped, and need help figuring something out. I’m getting this growing feeling that things are .. different .. since I was home on midtour. I can’t really put my finger on it. When I first got here to Korea, I had all these ambitions. I was going to eat right and get in even better shape, I was going to get out and experience the local culture, I was going to try to learn some Korean. I made grocery shopping lists and cooked my own food. I went out on the weekend from time to time but it was rather irregular and certainly not anything I couldn’t live without. I called back home religiously, and frankly talked to my friends more than I did when I was actually IN Arkansas. I went down town and bought random Korean trinkets to send back home. I had all these plans to pass the time, and every day was one more day gone before I could go home and visit.

Now I’m back. I call home but it’s sporadic. I stay up until like 6am and then sleep all day until it’s time to go to work. I go out every weekend with the same people to the same bars and have the same conversations. I have very little interest in going anywhere and could care less about speaking to Koreans, much less speaking the Korean language. I pretty much eat whatever the Air Force is serving in the dining hall and occasionally stuff people moving out of the dorms leave in the kitchen. Tonight was the first time I’ve cooked in weeks, a glorious meal of macaroni and some chicken wings I found in the freezer awhile back. I’ve managed to keep exercising at least, but not as much as I’d like to. I’ve developed a rather new procrastination habit as well, even for things I enjoy like playing with my nifty XBOX 360. Why would someone put off doing something fun? It’s just weird. It’s all just weird.

At first glanced I’d say I’m depressed, but honestly I don’t think that’s it. From what I’ve heard this happens to a lot of people after they go home and visit. It’s like you build up all these expectations, and then the visit back home just kind of deflates it all. It’s a very marked change. Someone explain this, there’s got to be some fancy psychological mumbo jumbo to make it all fit together.

We’ve been house hunting like mad in Missouri, and are very close to sealing the deal. If everything goes well we should have the place by the beginning of October. I’ll try to get some pictures up here once all is said and done. It’s not my PERFECT house; then again nothing is. Mom worked her butt off helping us make this deal, so the thanks goes to her. Barring some unforseen weirdness, we should be home owners by the time Logan turns eight!

Osan suffered a torrential down pour this past weekend; it feels like a swamp outside, everthing is all squishy and the humdity is thru the roof. I guess several parts of the base flooded, including my workplace. My dorm room is exactly as I left it, there’s hardly even any dust which is kind of weird. I’m still pretty jet lagged at this point but it’s not nearly as bad as it was when I first got here. You get used to it after ahwile.

Four more months, and this place will be behind me for good! Between work stuff and house hunting I’m hoping it’s going to be pretty fast. I think I’m going to go to the gym for a bit and then head in to work and get caught up on stuff.

Oh ya, I’ll try my best to get a little “how to” up here soon on posting to the website and stuff like I promised I would. We’ll see how the week goes.

Well not really. I mean technically I DID enter North Korea at one point, but it was only a few feet, and it was inside a building. And I had guards. However, at any moment the communists could have come bursting in. Talk about a close call!

In case you can’t tell I went on the tour up to the North Korean / South Korean Demilitarized Zone. You know, the DMZ, the 38th parallel, the dividing line between the Koreas for the last fifty years, and one of the most heavily armed tracks of land in the world.

I have to admit, I thought it would be slightly more .. sobering. I mean, I realize there is still very much a possibility of conflict here. North Korea has made dozens of raids and aggresive moves in the years since the signing of the Armistice ending open conflict between North and South Korea. They’ve tried to assasinate the South Korean president twice at various points. They’ve killed American and South Korean soldiers without provocation. They even captured an American naval vessel and held it’s crew hostage for a year at one point. All that being said, the entire thing felt very Disney World to me, more like a tourist attraction than a DMZ. It was a good trip though, and well worth the twenty five bucks it cost to sign up for it. If nothing else, it was a chance to see something that I believe will dissapear from the Earth within my lifetime. Plus I got out of Songtan, which is always a good thing.

Nothing, other than they all happened in the same 24 hour period and I took pictures of all of them.

The cherry trees caught my eye as I was walking to work .. they’re booming all over the country and it’s just wicked looking. The work pictures are just that, more helicopter pictures and other random things. The BBQ was, as usual, over on top of the Asia hotel in Songtan, courtesy of our Production Superintendant JD Burns (the guy that resembles a leprecon). And Operation Joe? That was our super secret undercover plot to cover the General’s car in 33rd Rescue Squadron “Green Feet”. This venerable Air Force practice, known as “tagging”, was carried out in the traditional fashion; under the cover of darkness and alcohol. It was a complete success!

On an unrelated note I did some software upgrade to the photo gallery over the last couple of days, which is why the site was down. Not much has changed, although there is now a nifty “rate picture” option under each picture. Fun!