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
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