There are a number of things here that do greatly reduce the suck factor though. Cell phones are more popular here than in the US and the phones themselves seem to be nicer that the one that I left behind in the US. Once you get a phone (I got mine for free from a friend who's leaving next week) you can get prepaid service on a month to month basis. It's only 10,000 Won (about $8.00 US) for approximately 30 min of local talk time and that's about all you really need because you can get calling cards to call back to the US for about 9 cents a min and the time you talk is not deducted from your 30 min that you paid $8.00 for. Basically you pay the $8.00 to keep your phone activated and then use cards to call home all you want. Incoming calls do not count against your time either so it's actually a pretty decent deal.

There's a number of brand new facilities here on Camp Page including a Community Activity Center (CAC) which is basically an AAFES food court, night club, game & pool hall, internet cafe, craft shop, big screen TV viewing place, and bowling alley all in the same building. Almost all of the activities are free and the ones that cost money are generally only charging to cover the materials and use of equipment. The gym here is really great and open long hours so I'll be utilizing that to realize some of my fitness goals while I'm here. There's a movie theater that shows movies 3 nights a week for free and the movies are fairly recent releases. For example, 2 weeks ago I saw Minority Report and tomorrow night they are showing Men In Black 2, so that makes them about 1-2 months later than their release in the US. Of course the coolest thing so far has been the DSL high speed internet that I just got yesterday. Shari & I each have web cams and this is truly a great tool. We can video conference (which beats phone calls) for free, and I get to watch Charlotte play in the morning (US time) before I go to bed at night. (14 hour time zone difference.) It is truly amazing. If any of you have web cameras and want to talk, let me know and we'll work it out. I'm using Microsoft Messenger right now, but I'm searching for something that gives a bigger picture. Anyhoo, add my MSN address to your list and we can meet on there sometime. kensmba@hotmail.com is the address. That is also the email address I'm using while I'm here. Shari is maintaining our permanent address kenandshari@yahoo.com so if you want to reach her use that one. If you send something to me at that address, she'll forward it to me.

Let's see, interesting things so far...for the most part I've been playing army for the past few weeks and I've had a pretty good amount of free time. Hopefully I'll get to play pilot again soon. I like that game much more that the army game. Oh yeah, we took a trip to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North Korea and South Korea this past week. It was pretty cool to see. I wouldn't recommend a visit to Korea just to see the DMZ, but since I'm here & the army's paying for the trip and giving me the day to see the DMZ, why not. It's not that far really, but the trip still takes about 3 hours due to the lack of any US type of interstate system. Mostly Korea is a bunch of towns connected by streets in need or repair. Think of it as taking the scenic route every time you travel. The DMZ is one of those places where they don't mess around. The North Koreans are looking for a reason to start something and as a result there's tight security and a lot of rules that have to be adhered to when you visit. It is a very structured trip, but it has to be that way because the North has killed US troops in that area for what they saw as violations of the cease fire. There have been cases of North Korean visitors making a run for the border (trying to get to the freedom of South Korea) while visiting the DMZ. Quite a few NK (North Korean) guards have also defected over the years. While we were there there was a group visiting from the NK side and the interesting thing was the way that the ROK (Republic of Korea - South Korean) Army soldiers face the NK side to watch the NK soldiers, the NK soldiers also faced the NK side while their NK visitors were there. When we visited the NK border, the ROK soldiers faced the NK side and the NK soldiers faced the ROK soldiers so they were basically watching each other. However, when the NK visitors were there right after we departed the actual border, the NK soldiers faced North to guard against any of their NK guests making a run for the South. Interesting. There's tons of other things that I could tell about this place, like how there's this really neat village just on the south side where Korean war survivors and descendants of Korean war survivors live that's called Freedom Village, and on the NK side there's one built to look just like it but no one lives there. Then there's the tower with the ROK flagpole located in Freedom Village. Well, NK built a tower & flagpole just like it, only much larger. It's actually pretty silly, but I guess it's a communist thing & I wouldn't understand. There was a case of one person actually making a run to the NK side. He made it successfully - no one to really stop him, he was free to go - but as the story goes, he was beaten and interrogated as a spy for several weeks, then executed. That's the story I we were given at least. Guess it's true.

Camp Page is located in the Korean resort city of Chunchon. One thing to note is that what is a resort in Korea would never even come close to meeting the typical US idea of a resort city. Even so, it's decent and has a population of about 250,000. Things generally seem to cost less here due to exchange rates I think. Some things here are purely knock-offs of US brands, but copyright laws don't seem to apply in Korea like they do in the USA. Example - I got a really nice Oakley ball cap for about $4.00 US. A local computer guy hooked me up (heck, he hooks everyone up) with a full version of Microsoft Office XP pro for under $5.00 US. There are places here where you can get Play Station 1 & 2 games for about $2.00 each. You have to have your machine modified (they add a chip for about $20 - so I hear) and then it will play all of the black market Play Station game CDs plus legit Play Station game CDs that you copy on your computer. Koreans seem to be masters of imitation in this arena. On the legit side of things, a lot of US brands are actually manufactured here and as a result, you can get the real deal for about half of the price. Example: I bought a Columbia jacket for $35 (knock-offs are even less I hear). I had seen the same one at the Ft Hood PX for roughly $85. The Columbia parkas with the zip out fleece liner sell for about $65 - $70 here. Last time I checked that was less than half of what they cost in the US. I'll gladly ship things to you if there's anything that you'd like to buy over here. Just give me a shopping list & I'll get you prices. Of course, that's only the Chunchon area shopping. I hear that Seoul is really the place to get the deals. I'll probably be heading there in a week or two to check it out.

Other things about Chunchon that are pretty cool: The local people are generally very friendly to Americans and the main hangout or "the strip" in the city is only about 1/4 to 1/2 of a mile out of the front gate which makes it an easy walk. There's all kinds of Korean restaurants (I've been to some that are really good) and shops along with a few chains that I recognize from home such as Subway, Burger King, & Baskin Robbins. There's also a really big underground shopping mall in this same area and a large department store (4 floors) that has a little bit of everything all located in this same area. I plan to try creating a web page and once I figure that out I'll put up some pictures so you can actually see some of what I'm talking about.

Of course you see some really strange things here as well. Koreans only seem to view traffic laws as suggestions so maneuvering about the streets on foot is done with the utmost of care and do not even consider crossing the street anywhere but the crosswalk because there always seems to be someone barreling down the street. Then there's the wide variety of vehicles that they drive. Everything from people moving furniture on mopeds (yes I said mopeds) to this thing they call the One-Eyed-Buffalo. Basically, it resembles a rotor-tiller connected to a wagon. It has a wooden bench seat for the driver and his family on the wagon with space behind them for hauling stuff and up front where the tiller blade would normally be are the front wheels which appear to power the thing. It's one of the strangest sights to see on a highway. Of course the food markets are nothing like those in the USA either. They eat things here that I only use for bait. that's not to say that it's all bad because it's not. It's just really different from American culture. Well, that's my long letter to friends for now. Take care and stay in touch. If I can do anything for you from over here email me and let me know.