Flaming Lips...in Seoul!

Hi everyone,

Just got back from seeing "The Social Network," the Facebook movie, which came out here last Thursday.  Definitely a very good movie; it was very enjoyable, entertaining and relevant.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be Mark Zuckerberg right now, even if he has 51% of the $25 billion Facebook is worth.  Let's just say the Aaron Sorkin did not hesitate to paint him and Sean Parker in a bad light, which in all reality, is probably how they should be portrayed, but I don't really know how the deal went down. 

The last two weeks have been pretty good over here in Korea.  In fact (and I'm not saying this just because my birthday is in November, no bias here) the whole month of November has been an incredibly solid and entertaining month.  Last week I battled a little bit of sickness, but I'm feeling fine and well rested now, even after an extraordinary weekend.  Last Saturday I worked at an English festival at another elementary school in Suwon, 매여울 (Maeyeoul) Elementary School, where my friend Keith teaches.  The school has only been opened for a little over a year and it is a very new building, much different from my school.  The festival was great and a lot of fun to work at.  The opening ceremonies featured a high school band covering Muse and some great songs and dancing by the students in pretty hilarious outfits.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera with me so you'll just have to try and use your imagination to picture these students dancing around in costumes representing different countries.  My job at the festival was to lead a treasure hunt game where the objective was for students to practice their directions in English.  I have to say that most of the students were extremely well-behaved and it was a great time.  We even got a huge lunch prepared by the parent association, which was excellent.  Nate also worked at the festival and after lunch we headed into Seoul to meet up with some other friends that were going to the Flaming Lips concert that night.  And what a concert it was.  At this point in my life, I'd say I've been to some pretty great concerts and I've been very fortunate that for these opportunities.  I don't know whether it was the anticipation to see the Flaming Lips, a band I'd never seen live before, or if it was the uniqueness of the situation, being able to see them live in Seoul, but this show was fantastic.  It might have made a difference that the venue, AX-Hall, is a little more intimate than the usual Flaming Lips concert setting (larger music festivals) and we were able to get up pretty close to the stage.  I can only speak for myself, but I was definitely in a pleasant state of euphoria after the concert ended.  It was a great way to start off Saturday evening and here are some pictures so you can see what I mean.

So many balloons!

 

 Really just a fantastic show, such good music and such an incredible atmosphere, I'm posting some video at the end of the post as well.  Saturday night continued with my friend Anthony's birthday celebration in 강남 (Gangnam), which was relatively near where the concert was and Sunday was another afternoon of Frisbee.  For those of us going to Manila, it was a final tune-up before this weekend, which seems to be the perfect way to cap off a great month.  To everyone at home in the U.S.A., hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving, don't each too much turducken.  Happy Birthday to Papa, I'm sure it will be another good year filled with happiness and good health.  Oh, and winter vacation tickets are finally booked, time to check off Thailand from the Asia checklist, still many more to go!  Enjoy the video clips:

 

Wayne Coyne PSAs

What I'm listening to: "Baby, You're a Rich Man" by the Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS1HGjIPQ1I&NR=1

Birthday Bonanza 2010

 Hey all,

Welcome to the 2010 edition of the Birthday blog post!  And what a birthday celebration it was!  I owe a lot of thanks to my birthday partner in crime, Gina (November 5th), who took it upon herself to plan out the majority of our joint birthday party last Saturday night and she did a fantastic job and it was a very fun evening!

The weekend festivities began Saturday evening with a nice galbi (갈비) and samgyeopsal (삼겹살) Korean barbeque dinner.  We had a pretty big group of us, I think roughly 30 people and the restaurant we were at was nice enough to give us a nice corner for our party crew.  After dinner we reconvened at our spot for the rest of the evening, the Nori Play Pub, also in Hongdae.  Once the majority of our party people arrived, we started the scavenger hunt, Gina's pet project and the centerpiece of the evening's events.  It was a grueling 2 hours of endurance and fun filled with endless challenges and riddles.  I provided the prizes for the winning teams and needless to say, the 1st place team definitely enjoyed their prize.  The rest of the night was spent dancing the night away well into early Sunday morning.  Thanks again to all the friends that came out to celebrate with Gina, myself, or the both of us.  The party was a lot of fun and I'm already looking forward to next year (although I'm not sure where the celebration will be).

Sunday we had a nice recovery day beginning with a little Frisbee and followed up with some much needed jjimjilbang relaxation.  All in all it was an amazing weekend and it was hard for me to see it end and get back to the working week.  This week, tomorrow in fact, I will be participating as a judge in the district-wide elementary school English speech contest, which means that I get to leave school after lunch (nice!) and listen to the various speeches and interview students after.  Thursday is a very special day here in Korea.  It is known as Pepero (빼빼로) Day.  Pepero are thin chocolate covered cookies and are shaped like the number 1 so on 11/11 everyone gives and receives them.  This weekend it's a toss up whether I go to an Apple Festival on Saturday or to a surfing festival, it's all weather depending and in the last week the weather has gotten significantly colder.  There was even a snow sighting last night.  Anyways, that's all from here, this month just keeps getting better with the Flaming Lips concert in two weekends and the Manila tournament at the end of the month, hooray for November!  I'll leave you guys with some more birthday pics: 

What I'm listening to: "Save My Love" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band off of The Promise

You can stream 15 tracks from The Promise online here: 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130858856

Seoul Trip/Halloween Thrills and Chills

Hi all,

I know, I know...long time, no write, but consider that a good thing because I've been busy and I also figured that waiting until after Halloween to write the next post was a good idea because I would have more material to write about and lo and behold, I do.  Now let's get down to it.  On your left is Changdeokgung (창덕궁), one of the palaces in Seoul, and famous for its garden, which Mom, Dad, Robyn and I saw this past January.  It served as a backup palace to the main palace at Gyeongbokgung.  It was stop #2 on our Seoul trip a.k.a. another awesome day off from school on October 20th.  The first stop was the Jongmyo Shrine, where all the former royalty are currently preserved.  After Changdeokgung, we went to Itaewon for lunch and onto Mt. Namsan and up to the top to check out the Seoul Tower (which, in my opinion, is nothing compared to CN Tower or Sears Tower).  Not the best day to look out onto Seoul as you'll see in the pictures below. 

 Looking down on Seoul from the cable car.













Looking out at Itaewon from the top of Mt. Namsan and not too much to see, hooray smog!










One cool thing about the top of Seoul Tower is the list of locations from all around the world and each place's distance from Seoul.  Notice the city and distance, if you're able to see either or both.

At the bottom of Seoul Tower there is also a Teddy Bear Museum amongst other touristy things.  On a hopefully brief sidenote, Korea has a fascination with things that are very cute.  Many couples wear matching outfits and one company that caters to these specific needs has a teddy bear as its emblem.  I can't believe there's more than one Teddy Bear Museum in Korea, but go figure.  Anyways, as the Teddy Bear Museum is clear to point out, Korea was built on the backs of these teddy bears, who suffered through many unbearable centuries as slave laborers in the Joseon dynasty.  Take a look:

Teddy Bear Slave Laborers enduring another arduous day of back-breaking tasks at the construction of a palace.

After emancipation, teddy bears quickly picked up a new hobby: polo.

Today, you can see many Teddy Bears fully integrated into Korean culture and society.  Here they are cheering on the Red Devils during the World Cup.

Clearly, as you can tell from the pictures, the Seoul tour was definitely a day well spent and it was nice to get away for the day. 

Last week there was a sudden drop in the temperature, which followed a similar pattern to the weather back home.  Most nights last week the weather was hovering around 0 Celsius and during the day it was only in the high single digits.  But, miraculously, last weekend it warmed back up with highs in the mid to upper teens and lows in the upper single digits.  In the frisbee community, this is known as perfect weather (you know, if wind didn't factor in).  Regardless, last weekend's weather was great and a lot of the Seoul frisbee community, as well as the hosting Daejeoners and fellow disc enthusiasts from Daegu, Ulsan, and Busan arrived in Daejeon for the annual Halloween Hat tournament.  This was the first tournament I've been at where so many games were decided on universe point (for those who don't know, universe point is equivalent to sudden death overtime in hockey or football).  Many exciting games and yours truly even won a spirit award for being the most enthusiastic on his team.  And of course, who could forget the Halloween party on Saturday night, here's a look at my costume, simple yet effective.  I tweaked it a little bit, but it still worked out.

 

And of course, how could I forget Halloween at school on Friday.  None of the students dressed up in costume, I didn't give them enough forewarning and their school festival was on Saturday, so many of them were busy preparing dance routines and songs for that all week, no need to burden them with costume designing.  Instead, we had a little Halloween face and hand painting time and trick or treating Friday afternoon in the English room.  The 6th grade girls from my advanced class were especially great and helped paint the younger students' faces and hands, leaving me some time to snap some photos.  Check out some pics.

Well, that's pretty much all from here.  Big celebration week for both sides of the family, Wolfish and Winston alike.  It's that time of the year.  Of course today is Bubba's and Auntie Sherri's birthdays, Happy Birthday to both of you from Korea!  Wednesday is cousin Karen's birthday as well as someone else I know and an anniversary as well.  For those of you wondering how I could possibly celebrate my birthday in Korea, here's your answer.  Another friend of mine from frisbee, Gina, has a birthday on November 5th so we decided to combine our creative and planning forces and hold a joint birthday party on Saturday evening.  You can be certain a blog post will be forthcoming, although I can't promise how much detail I'll go into.  It should be quite the extravaganza however.  What else can I say?  I hope this great fall weather continues for a few more weeks, that would be amazing!  Oh, I also finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last week and did so just in time because my local Books Libro just started carrying the 2nd and 3rd books in English of the trilogy, so I've now started on The Girl Who Played With Fire and I'm about 200 pages in after 3 days of reading.  If you haven't read them yet, I highly recommend them, very hard to put down and very enjoyable to read.  Now seriously, that's all from here.

What I'm listening to: "Spanish Key" by Miles Davis from Bitches Brew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fytOvlJ0MrY 

Other things I've been listening to (maybe posting a few months late, but whatever):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sj5_WITMpA

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1YNsXjFU4U