Cave of Wonders

The Yangsan Dinosaur Cave museum is... a... science? museum in Yangsan. Pete and I ventured there one Saturday.

Dinosaurs greeted us:


Caves are cool. Dinosaurs are cool. This cave was used during the Korean war for something and looks like it was part of the Dharma Initiative.



Inside there were some fossils of things. There were also some minerals, which can still fit with the "Cave" aspect of the museum's name, if not the "Dinosaur" part.


As we walked further into the cave though, the exhibits stopped making sense. There was a room full of interactive paintings like the ones I posted about here. There were some things in jars.


There was a dead chinese man, pickled and divided into one-inch slices in a questionable knockoff of "Body Worlds."

There were three Santa Clause mannequins, one with a saxophone. There was a 3-D Dinosaur movie!

Yeah, that's a pirate back there with the dinosaurs.


Outside, there were pathetic, angry monkeys in cages. And raccoons. And this:


It's a tunnel that rotates around a catwalk. The inside of the tunnel is splattered with blacklight paint, and as it rotates, you feel like you're falling sideways. It's an amazing illusion and probably the most interesting thing at the Yangsan Dinosaur Cave Museum.

I have a lesson

My second semester will end in three weeks, and I still haven't shown you my classroom!

This is the English room at Naedeok Middle School, where I teach on Thursdays and Fridays.


There are 36 seats, but I have a couple of classes with 38 students, so sometimes they have to share desks!

I wanted to share this. It's from an activity where I gave groups of students an answer (like "because it's fun!") and they wrote a question to go with it (like "Why do you play soccer?")

The answer here was "I feel happy."

(Monkey and People was the name of their team.)

Happy Birthday!

It's been a month and a half, but I turned 28!

Peter and I had a picnic on Saturday by the river in Yangsan.


(Pictures of me in this post are taken by him.)

He brought bubbles.


(I brought water guns. It was fun.)

That evening, we went to the city and saw Autumn. On Sunday, my actual birthday, Pete and Autumn and I had ice creamy waffles for breakfast and then Peter and I explored a mostly-empty building at the north end of Gwangalli beach.

Here's the view from the 14th floor (there are business on maybe 2 or 3 floors but everything else is empty.)


And looking down...


And then there was a visit to Me World and the drop tower.


Autumn's gift was *another* picnic (I really like picnics!) for which we walked to Shinsegae, the world's largest department store, to buy CHEESE and SALAMI and WINE and CAKE. These are rarities in Korea. (Well cake is not a rarity, but good cake is.)

Pictures of

Here are a few pictures of things.


A port-o-squatty, discovered while on a walk in Yangsan.

White fog on Haeundae, Korea's most famous beach.


One day in early May my walk home was interrupted by this...


There was a typhoon over the weekend, and on Sunday I passed a playground that had flooded, so kids were sliding down the slide in the rain, into a foot of muddy water. I didn't take a picture.

Narrative posts again tomorrow :-)