A Matter of Perspective

In life as we look at everything we can flip a coin and be happy or sad. It truly does not matter what the circumstance, there is always a happy side and a sad side, it is only a matter of perspective that distinguishes the two.

The last week has been extremely interesting to put it lightly. The week basically began with my climbing the mountain south of my room here at the BOQ. You've already heard about that.
Tuesday was a lazy day, I didn't do much but try to recover from Monday. Then Wed. it was time to head out for PT again. We ran 3.5 miles under a Yellow Sand amber alert (we shouldn't have been running that much). I survived but was in pain as Monday was still taking its toll on my muscles. When I returned home after the run I weighed in at a miniscule 170 lbs. which is the lightest I've weighed since high school. No I am not starving myself to death, actually quite the contrary as I feel like I have been eating as much if not more than before, I'm just practicing what I preach and doing a lot more exercise.
Then for lunch on Wed. we had a lenten soup lunch, in which I ate way too much and then headed back to work. The rest of the day on Wed. was fairly mundane except for my invitation to participate in the good neighbors program and to do a briefing next Monday and Tuesday.
I arrived home and found that the sewer had backed up into my bathroom. I took the proper percautions and called the proper people but their system was messed up so the problem didn't get totally fixed until 24 hours later.

Thursday, I'll spare you the details on the sewer issue as they were rather gruesome. But I managed to turn around the slides for the briefing in record time and was off to take care of housing and the mail room. I was satisfied by my experience with the housing manager, but the person whom he referred me to for completion of my visit was totally unhelpful and undid all of my perception of housing which had been built up in the previous half hour. So when I went to do the customer evaluations for the sewer, I decided to do housing as well.

That afternoon, I arrived at home to a bigger mess than the night before. It had backed up even more but still hadn't overflowed into the living space fortunately. I was supposed to be at the good neighbor program at 1330 but the sewer guys didn't show until 1330 so I ended up a little late as I then had to get a translator to help me ask if I could leave and they could shut the door behind themselves.
All was well and they seem to have fixed the problem.

The Good Neighbor Program is a cooperation between the Korean people and the American Soldiers on the penninsula. We try to send some soldiers to almost every major event or festival over here to strengthen the bond between our people. Thursday was celebrating the first full moon of the lunar new year. There were games and singing and dancing, and lots of food, and many many fun things to do. I do have some good video which I will eventually splice into a quick snapshot of the event and post it.

Yesterday, I went on my first MWR Community Activities Center trip. We headed to mount Hwa-wang where we summited the peak and celebrated our achievement and then headed back to camp. It was a beautiful (though windy and cold) day and the scenery was breathtaking. Upon Karly's arrival and a few weeks of physical training (for her) I might feel comfortable bringing her to that place. I really want to get her up there but it is truly a matter of physical conditioning, if you can not be steady on your feet with 3-5 hours of constant exertion, then you do not need to be on a 10 inch wide path with a 40 foot drop to one side. It just is not intelligent.

I maintain that some of the most beautiful views and scenery can only be seen by those who are prepared and willing to take the risk to get there. The key is preparation.

I end with some photos. There was a castle at the top of the mountain. We didn't spend much time to visit it but I will be back.