Clapton Comes to Korea!!

Hello blogosphere!!

It's been a little over a week since the last mega-post about the Hong Kong and Macau trip, but I'm back with a new and most likely shorter post.  The past few weeks in Korea have gone off without a hitch.  We wrapped up the last two weeks of the school year and had graduation last Friday.  I got suited up for the occasion and was getting compliments left and right, which was an added bonus!  Some of the teachers commented on how I looked like a soon to be groom (very premature, might I add).  I don't think that's in the cards anytime soon, but I'll take the compliments, however they come.  This year's graduation definitely meant a little more to me than last year's because I actually knew the students, as opposed to last year, where I had only taught them for half a year.  The 6th graders that graduated had been my students for 1 1/2 years and I got to know most of them pretty well, especially the students who were also in my advanced class.  I even got a bouquet of flowers from a few of my students and took the requisite pictures with them.  Last week I was also busy signing yearbooks, which was kind of funny for me.  Elementary schools go all out for 6th grade graduation, including the yearbooks, which are nothing like my elementary school yearbooks from glory years past.  Ours were very flimsy collections of class and individual pictures with a few pages for comments.  The yearbooks that my 6th graders had this year were top notch (think high school yearbook, except just for 6th graders).  All the students had individual pictures taken a la senior photos and many of them were hilarious and ridiculous.  There were boys wearing sun hats and girls throwing footballs, both of which are obviously commonplace at school.  I guess it ends up being a pretty nice memento.  If I recall correctly, if I still have my elementary school yearbooks, they are probably shoved away on a bookshelf somewhere in my bedroom.

Outside of school, life is settling back into a routine of sorts.  As I wrote in the last blog post, the competitive ultimate frisbee season is underway, which means practice once or twice a weekend in addition to conditioning during the week.  January and February have flown by and it looks and feels like winter is fading into spring, which is great!  The weather for practice on Sunday was awesome, in the high 40s F and no follow up blizzard, like back home (sorry to rub it in).  The first big tournament is in Jeju during the third weekend in April, which everyone is looking forward to.

This past weekend, in addition to frisbee, I also went to my second hockey game in Korea.  I saw the same two teams play, the Anyang Halla and High One (both Korean teams in the Asia League).  Once again, the Halla were victorious in front of the home crowd and it was a sloppy but enjoyable game.  I went as part of a birthday group for a few friends and after the game, we ventured into Seoul, where I broke off to meet up with frisbee people for a going away celebration.  We started off at a concert for friends of friends, which was actually really good.  The band we went to see, Hit the 9, was an interesting mix of musical influences, probably not something that would work necessarily in America, but it worked here.  The instrumentation and sound was closest to hard rock, but then there were three singers, like the Ronettes or the Supremes (or more modern version: Destiny's Child), and they had choreographed dance moves.  Sunday after frisbee was the day I'd been waiting for for a while:  Eric Clapton in Korea!  The show was amazing!  It definitely helped that there were huge HD screens up on either side of the stage so that people sitting in the 2nd level (us) could see everything; these screens weren't there for Dylan last year and probably would've helped at least a little.  Clapton played a good mix of classics and new songs and went from electric to acoustic back to electric on the guitar.  I think my favorite song of the evening was "Badge," a song that's always been near the top of my list.  He played it right after the acoustic version of "Layla" and in my opinion, it brought the crowd fully into the concert.  I'll post the setlist at the end of this paragraph.  All in all, it was another good weekend and I can't believe I'm at the 1 1/2 year mark teaching here in Korea.  Later this afternoon I'm going to get a travel visa for China, which you need to do at least 6 months ahead of time, so this is the first step in the post-Korea travels and the first stop.  Nate and I haven't decided how long we want to be there for, but my guess is 1-2 weeks then onto Southeast Asia.  Here's the setlist and a video of "Cocaine" from the show.
http://www.ericclaptonmusicnews.com/eric-clapton-tour-2011-olympic-park-gymnastic-arena-seoul-sunday-february-20-2011/

Also, new Radiohead album came out digitally last Friday and that's what I've been listening to.

What I'm listening to: "Lotus Flower" by Radiohead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8

Death by Dim Sum: Lunar New Year 2011

Where to begin, where to begin?  There truly is no better place I can think of to bring in the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year) than in China.  Well, as my luck would have it, I was able to do just that, even if Hong Kong doesn't really feel like China, we'll still count it.  Last week really was an incredible vacation.  I know it probably feels like you've been reading that last sentence a lot lately, but it's the truth.  Everything seemed to work out perfectly for us leading up to the trip and especially while we were in Hong Kong and Macao.  Let me rewind back to last Monday (January 31st).  I had just found out that I didn't have a plane ticket for Hong Kong yet, but somehow, I was able to find one for pretty much the same price as the other guys on Orbitz.  Going through that experience isn't something I'd try and repeat in the future, but it was reassuring to know that less than 24 hours before our expected departure time I was able to find a ticket.  Call it luck or fortune, the ticket situation set a tone for the rest of the week.  So with the ticket situation solved, 3/4 of our group arrived in Hong Kong last Tuesday (February 1st) evening and within an hour of arriving at our hostel in Mong Kong (an older area of Kowloon), we sat down for dim sum meal #1.  For the Wolfish family reading this, the dim sum references may be excessively mouth-watering so make sure you don't drool too much on your keyboards.  Having access to late night dim sum, within walking distance from our hostel, was a dream come true.  Nate and I got to introduce Keith to dim sum and set him off on a week of culinary exploration.  There was plenty of shrimp chun fun, hargao, shumai, cha shu bao, ham su gok, and other delicious plates eaten over the course of the week.

Sufficiently rested and satiated from our first late night dim sum run, we awoke to a great day of weather on Wednesday and after some dim sum for brunch, we made our way to the market.  Going to a market in Hong Kong on New Year's Eve is quite the experience!  People were definitely stocking up on all sorts of goodies (fruits, meats, candies, etc...).  Check it out!

After touring the market place sufficiently, we made our way down to Tsim Sha Tsui, which is the area down by Victoria Harbour.  We took a walk down the Avenue of the Stars and got to look out on a pretty smoggy Hong Kong skyline, but the area was definitely very cool to explore and after walking along the waterfront we moved up to Kowloon Park, which is an awesome urban park.  I've slowly become a huge fan of big spaces of urban greenery, probably because there isn't much of that in Korea.  Anyways here are some more pics of that area, which is where we returned to take in the New Year's Parade on Thursday.

Wednesday evening the last member of our team arrived and we took him out for the requisite dim sum meal, where we had an order specially made for us and a dim sum item I've never had before: a special ham and cheese crepe, which was delicious!  After dinner we went to scope out the local flower market, which was bustling with people, even as late as 1 am!  On Thursday we went to go explore Hong Kong Island during the day and took a very touristy double decker bus ride around the island, but honestly, it was probably the best way to see the area.  The contrast between Kowloon and Hong Kong is vast but also pretty interesting to see.  Kowloon is definitely the older, more traditionally Chinese area and Hong Kong Island is a modern metropolis.  Both offer very unique experiences and I'm glad we got to stay in both areas.  After the parade on Thursday night we went back down to the harbourfront and headed to the Intercontinental for a drink (a recommendation from our good family friend Mike Eisenstein).  What a view of the skyline!  From there we headed back over to Hong Kong Island to check Lan Kwai Fong, a pretty interesting area where many foreigners go out.  It was definitely a good time.  Friday it was time to get suited up and make our way from hostel #1 in Kowloon (Geo Home Hostel if you were wondering) to hostel #2 in Hong Kong Island (Yesinn).  We were quite the ridiculous sight, all four of us in our suits carrying our travel bags.  Here's us with the first hostel owners:

After another awesome dim sum lunch (see photo above), we made our way to the ferry terminal to catch the ferry from Hong Kong to Macao, the beginning of what can only be described as an incredible Friday all-nighter.  We arrived in Macao around dinner time and after exploring the Grand Lisboa (the oldest casino on Macao, but too rich for our blood) we sat down for a nice Macanese meal that included duck, African baked chicken, and other delicious local goodies.  Apres le diner, we went for a nice walk around the city, which was very interesting.  Macao is a former Portuguese colony (until 1999) and the Mediterranean/European influence is evident everywhere, but especially in the unique architecture of the city.  It has a town plaza that if you didn't know any better, could be in Lisbon or Madrid instead of Macao.  Take a look at the New Year's decorations in the square:

 

After a nice walk around Macao, we made our way back towards the casinos to begin the rest our night.  We started off at the Wynn for a drink and some great Cuban cigars, here's a picture of the boys living the high life:

We roamed around the casino looking for the cheap tables, but the Wynn wasn't looking good (at least for our wallets) so we continued onward to the MGM Grand, which is where we found a home for the next 5 hours.  The tables all over Macao are a little more expensive than what all of us were used to back in the U.S.  Usually we can find the $3 or $5 dollar blackjack tables, but the least expensive tables in Macao were 100 Hong Kong Dollars (HKD) or roughly $12-13.  Our first go around at the blackjack table went all right then we moved on to craps, which didn't end well.  But, the night was still relatively young and after clearing our heads we went back to blackjack (except for Keith who learned how to play baccarat).  I've never gone to the casino and have everyone come out winning, but that's exactly what happened for us, which was amazing.  It meant we were able to enjoy an incredible 5:30 am dim sum meal as evidenced below:

Quite the successful evening!  We caught the first ferry home on Saturday, but we couldn't check into our hostel until 2 pm, so we wandered around downtown Hong Kong for a few hours, still looking great in our suits.  We were able to grab a good brunch in Soho, another cool foreign area on Hong Kong Island, and finally we arrived back to our hostel where we proceeded to crash for a few hours.  Saturday night, seeing as it was our last night, we went back to Kowloon and Victoria Harbour to check out the very cool Symphony of Lights display that goes on every night at 8 pm over the harbour.  After that we grabbed a pretty delicious Mexican dinner and enjoyed one last night in Lan Kwai Fong, which included checking out the view of the harbour and the Hong Kong skyline from a club located on the 29th floor of a hotel.  We all made our flights back home on Sunday, so no worries there.  We even indulged in some massages during our layover in Shanghai.  The aftermath of this trip is that now my passport is currently at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul getting an extra book of pages put in because I've filled mine up!  It's pretty cool to say you've filled up a passport!

This week is the last week of classes for the semester.  6th grade graduation is on Friday and then I have a week off (well technically desk-warming and prepping for spring semester).  I take the first half of the GRE a week from Friday and I've been studying hard in preparation, but this first part should go just fine.  It's all essay writing, which I'd like to think I'm pretty good at by now.  In other local news, the frisbee season has started up, even though the weather is not the best.  It's finally warmer at home than it is here in Korea, which says a lot about how chilly practice this past weekend was.  It was good to get back out there and I'm pretty excited for frisbee becoming a part of my weekly schedule again.  Also, concerts galore are coming to Korea, which is super exciting!  This Sunday, Mr. Clapton is playing at Olympic Stadium, which should be a great concert!  The following week, Elvis Costello is playing a more intimate show in Seoul, which I'll hopefully be able to go to.  Santana comes here in late March (undecided whether I'll go) and MGMT arrives here April 1st (and yes, I triple-checked, the concert is for real, already have tickets).  So, good work Korea and musicians worldwide for getting this done, up the music profile of the country.  Lastly, congrats to the Badgers men's basketball team for knocking off #1 Ohio St. again, I love it!  That's all from here, I hope everyone enjoys the pictures!

What I'm listening to: "Southbound Train" by CSNY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4880aISQYc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4hv_8TXFWg