So how was NARPI?

It was pretty fun actually.

For those outside the know, NARPI is the Northeast Asian Regional Peacebuilding Institute.  If the name isn't a hint, NARPI does pretty much the same thing I studied.

People from, mostly NE Asia came.  In no particular order, the represented countries were: South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Canada, the US, India, and Russia.

This one didn't come out well....

I ended up taking the month of August off from teaching to work on NARPI stuff.  That NARPI stuff ended up being collecting flight information, helping people get to and from the airport, photography, and some media work.  Some of the photography can be found here and here (albums labelled "NARPI" are mine).  I say "some" because I took 2,968 photos over 14 days for an average of 212 photos a day.  If you include photos I took of Howard Zehr's lecture the weekend prior to NARPI, it's 3,005 pictures.  Of course some of the photos suck...

This could soooo be on a brochure.

Others were, if I say so myself, pretty awesome from a "this can go on a brochure!" perspective....

I love the shadow in this.

Meanwhile, others appeal to my amateurish artistic sense....  Trying to format this is getting a bit obnoxious.

Before anyone decides to be annoying about spelling... very few people at NARPI, staff included, were operating in their native language.  That is to say, English was often the second language for people who might not have had many chances to practice... or their third language.  So don't sweat the small stuff kids.

In the full-size picture you can pretty easily see the threads.

Some were of a spider outside the building I was staying in... I especially like the ones from when I saw a bug fly into its web...

Other pictures, were pretty amusing.  Though I think there might be some people who might hire some international assassin to come kill me if I post them so... I won't.  You know who you are.  Bwahahahahahahahaha.  I'm not sure if an evil cackle works when you already say you won't post take advantage of the leverage.  So... STAND IN THE WAY OF MY WORLD DOMINATION AND ALL SHALL KNOW OF YOUR DEEDS!  ... or something.

Hmm... what are some of the highlights of NARPI?  Went to the House of Sharing, a home for victims of sexual slavery during WWII.  That was, well... depressing.  That's a pretty blunt way of putting it but I can't say I can think of many positive ways to describe learning about that kind of stuff.  Maybe informative, educational, uhh... a thing we did.  We met three of the women who live there.  They were pretty interesting people.  One was quite vocal on her experience, another enjoyed the singing of NARPI participants (she also happened to know... I think 4 languages), and the last one to join us didn't really say much.

We also went to an observatory that was just inside the DMZ.  I still don't full understand the whole rule against taking pictures of North Korea.  Especially considering the presentation the soldiers at the observatory gave us featured a live feed from cameras a floor below us.  I won't post any pictures from there... mostly because we weren't really allowed to take pictures of anything interesting (North Korea).  Not that North Korea was really that interesting unless you just want a landscape picture.  The lens on my camera isn't nearly strong enough to take anything more detailed than that.

We also went into a tunnel the North built under the border.  Apparently South Korea managed to detect the tunnel and dug one of their own to intercept it.  The North Korean tunnel was pretty crude, according to our guide it was dug by explosive blasting.  South Korea's intercepting tunnel using some German drill and was comparatively more... well... tube-like.  But this was outside the tunnel....

The South is so protective of it's territory they even labelled it!

Hmm... a crazy Russian dude also stripped down to his briefs and went swimming in a river.  That was... well... unexpected.

Oh yeah... the first week was in Yeongdeung-po, an area of Seoul.  It was at the Hi Seoul! Youth Hostel, a city government ran hostel that was more like a hotel.  Minus the rotating groups of kiddies it was pretty nice.  First time in awhile I had sheets to sleep on.  But the other place, a venue just outside a village called Inje, was pretty epic.  It's the Korea DMZ Peace-Life Valley Education and Training Center.

It deserves a larger picture even if the formatting is messed up.

Except for the need to hand wash laundry it was absolutely perfect.

What else can I say?  The people that came to NARPI were pretty cool (Otna eallyra... ustja iddingka!).  Yes, I did just do that.

Seriously my brain isn't really doing much right now.  Any questions?