The Walking Dead 2011

Look out! If possible, this year's Day of the Dead event at UMAR Huatulco was bigger and better than ever. Dead people, tragically young, arrived at my office door to make sure I didn't miss a thing of the big night. They weren't scary like Halloween ghouls back home. They were quite friendly and very charming. The problem is that, just like in the movies, their sheer numbers can be overwhelming and before you know it, you've b

een overrun. Luckily for me, everyone left peacefully without taking a single bite. They even left a gift of candy instead of the other way around. The big night arrived. The living and the dead hung out and had a good time. I didn't know any of the dead personally but I think several must have been very closely related to some of my students. The lighting wasn't conducive for photography and the dead don't photograph very well but I managed to get a few good shots.

This year we had guided walking tours open to the public.

For some, the fun continued on a parade downtown. It was starting off too late for me on a school night so I pushed on to skip a weary dawn of the dead.

Return to Jebu-do

Back in May, I made a day trip to Jebu-do, a unique island on the east coast. The directions I had weren’t that good. I found very little information about this place on the web and none of the teachers I work with had ever been there either. I made it.

If you’re interested in an excursion, just get to the train station in Suwon. Don’t go inside. There’s a tourist bureau on the right. Unless things change, they’ll probably direct you to a big red bus, no. 1004, that parks right out in front and will take you to the nearby mainland town where another bus crosses the long causeway that disappears beneath the water at high tide. Don’t worry about finding that bus. You can’t miss it. Or hike across if you’re in the mood.


It was an agreeable way to spend a Sunday afternoon, hiking around the shoreline. I had to be back in Icheon for work the next day so I left well before the water rose. I wanted to return at least one more time when I could spend the night and watch the causeway sink and rise again.

Two weeks ago, I returned to Jebu-do with a horde of elementary school children. Our school took a big field trip to finish the year before summer vacation with a little adventure. Visiting the island on your own is so different than arriving with six big tour buses full of school children. Hiking the entire island was out of the question. Instead, we took little spades and dug in the mud of low tide for shellfish, a popular activity at Jebu-do, something I hadn’t done the first time around. We had fun. Some of us got rather wet and muddy but not a single person wiped out completely. What are the odds? And we walked all the way to the water’s edge, a considerable distance.





Kudos to whoever organized this trip. The organization was impressive. All of those children had to be fed. There was some arrangement for a tasty seafood noodle lunch right at the beach. Job well done.

The video is from the original solo journey