Pao's Labyrinth

"The Devil is like a strainer that separates the mud from the gold."
- Carlos Santana -

There's something self-narrating about the streets in the early morning hours here in Busan. There'll be paper littering the sidewalks that serves as impractical means of advertising nearby clubs and bars, even though the music blaring from said pubs pretty much promote themselves. The drunks also join the mass of trash you'd find on the streets. You wonder if they have any friends that would care enough to help them get home. Perhaps their friends have also fallen victim to the party juice and are slumbered a mere few feet away on the grass. There's also various kinds of questionable bodily projectiles that decorate this city's walkway: feces, urine, vomit, and sometimes blood. Such a picture is an inherent part of the drinking culture in this city.

I've been trying to jog more recently, due to the fact that I'm starting to look like one of those 75-cents-a-day-and-you-can-feed-and-send-him-to-school charity cases. You know, big bloated belly and skinny arms. Anyway, I jog around my neighborhood to get some cardio going in the morning, and this is usually when I get to encounter the discombobulated drunks. They're usually trying to stagger upright by the time I make my rounds, which essentially looks like a scene from a George Romero film. The scene in Dawn of the Dead where they start beating the zombies over the head with plywood and crowbars plays in my head as I watch the drunks attempt to return to society.

Haeundae Beach is probably the most popular beach in Korea. Many events and festivals take place in this seaside community.
Like the Salsa Festival!
Free Hugs campaign with friends from Spain, Guatemala, El Salvador, and a drunk Korean man.
Nights at Haeundae Beach are amazing. If not for the food and company, the scenery itself is remarkable.
Me, Ann, and Ho Jin trekking our way into the Salsa Dance Floor. Hot and sweaty. Just the way we do it in my native Mexico.
I'd also like to cry that my stash of corned beef is almost done. In related news, it's probably not a good thing to get chest pain in the middle of the night.

I start teaching again on Monday. They upgraded me back to my initial classroom on the fifth floor where they have super new computers and a pretty high view of the city. I'm so excited about it. I think my principal fought for me to get it back, because I'm such a cool dude. That, or administration saw my protruding belly and thought "This guy needs a little exercise...put him on the fifth floor."