''Dream Park''

Ever wake up in the morning, and wonder 'Hey! I wonder where the biggest Land Fill in the world is located!'?

As it turns out, i've been living half an hour away from it for the past 11 months.

GEC took the foreign teachers on one of our 'Cultural Trips' on Friday, and headed to the Sudokwon Landfill Site - an area 6 times the size of New York's Central Park (I don't actually know how large Central Park is, but it sounded impressive when they said it).

You might wonder 'Why the hell would you go to a place where they dump garbage?', and you know what? We did too! But as it turns out, the trip was a pretty interesting one - the Sudokwon Landfill is a site managed by a company, with the goal of turning a profit. They've built contraptions to harvest the methane gases created by garbage, and evidently, it creates enough power to supply 600,000 homes annually.

They also don't leave the garbage lying around, stinking up the place. For each landfill site (there are 5), they dump 8 layers of garbage (which are actually 4.5 meters of garbage, topped by 0.5 meters of dirt, each), sterilize everything, and then grow things on them.

After a landfill site is full, they have plans to create parks, golf courses, and ecologically-friendly sites where fauna can be reintroduced. Yes - all on top of garbage. They call the project 'Dream Park'.

It's forward-thinking and innovative, but I can't shake the whole 'it's garbage' thing. I don't know if I could ever go there for a picnic.

The first site was recently completed, and the next four sites are only expected to be filled by 2044 - so Korea's garbage is well-handled.

After we finished there, we headed to a Biology museum, followed by a construction site for a future Business-district (due to be completed in 2014), called Cheongna. It was a pretty cool day, and it sure beat working.

We've got one more week to go, before another week-long session break, which will be quite welcome. I'm looking forward to seeing Japan!

Happy Friday!