First birthday.

This 'umble blog turns one year old on Thursday, and what a year it's been. I'm very thankful to the visitors, readers, commentors, and fellow writers who have helped evolve the site and its author. Here's to many more years of Brian in Jeollanam-do! Well, maybe not many.



I'm also thankful that the weather is much kinder than it was roughly one year ago, when a good bit of Suncheon was flooded because of Typhoon Nari, the subject of my first post. I got back to Suncheon the evening of September 16th to find the roads slow going. The area around the bus terminal is lower than the rest of the town, making the building an island amidst knee-deep water. When I told my colleagues and students about having to walk the six kilometers from the bus terminal to my apartment---because no buses or taxis could reach the terminal, buses weren't running routes through town, and taxis weren't picking up water-logged foreigners---they didn't believe me. Here are a few pictures:







My shoes were ruined, as was everything inside my backpack, and it took several cycles to get my clothes clean. My camera actually fell out of my bag somewhere near E-Mart, but I managed to retrace my steps and find it again.

The final two photos are of Dongcheon, the river that runs through town. The second one was taken in March, as close to the spot of the original as I could remember without actually looking at the picture. The trees and people provide perspective, and indicate that the water level had risen a few meters in a few hours.




I haven't been able to find much reliable information on the typhoon, but some articles say as many as 14 Koreans were killed. Here's a small photo gallery from Jeju Island, which was hit especially hard and was declared a national disaster area.