Typhoonicity

Hey everyone,

Hope you enjoy the cycling polar bear on the right, he can be found at Gwanghwamun (광화문), in old downtown Seoul, at the Green Growth Korea building.  I don't know how he hasn't melted and withered away in the heat and humidity here, but apparently he has some sort of miraculous cooling system.  Anyways, time to recap the last week for all you beautiful people.  The Friday before last (not this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113118/ )  or this,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195945/, or this,  
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293815/, but two Fridays ago, we had a going away dinner for our old vice-principal and principal; both of them were moving on to new schools (my old VP got promoted to principal).  The dinner was great!  We went to a tofu restaurant (sundubu: 순두부) and had some delicious bean curd.  This past Friday, we had a welcoming dinner for the new VP and principal at a sushi house, which was also pretty amazing.  I find myself getting really comfortable with these weekly dinners and I hope they keep happening (unfortunately I don't think they will).  But, before I get too far ahead in last week's timeline, let me back things up to last Wednesday.  I got to leave school early in the afternoon to head into a travel agency in Seoul, trying to find a way to China for Chuseok.  Unfortunately, I waited too long and flights were full and expensive, not to mention the 200,000 won visa (Thanks U.S. citizenship!).  Thankfully the afternoon was not a total lost cause; I finally got to take some pictures of the awesome animal display outside the Sejong Center in Gwanghwamun.  Check these guys out:

Glass horse? or maybe Dark Horse?

Clifford the Big Green and Red-Spotted Dog?

 

 

Babar!

Straw Alfalfa

and of course, an animal exhibit wouldn't be complete without the namesake:

A Wolffish, perhaps?

The trip to Gwanghwamun was made complete and fulfilling with a choice dinner spot at Tomatillo Grill, the closest to Chipotle that you can get in Korea and totally worth every won spent there.  Here's the menu:  
http://www.tomatillo.co.kr/sub02_01.html.  MMMmm...burrrrrrrrrito!

Some of you may have heard or seen on the news that a typhoon swept through Korea last Thursday.  Typhoon Kompasu hit Suwon early Thursday morning around 2 am and knocked out the power in my apartment.  Thankfully I had unplugged pretty much everything so nothing important got knocked out.  At school the next day the power was out, which meant no A/C, no computer or Internet, and no lights.  No school lunch either, so I only had to teach one class.  In the afternoon the power came back on, but my Internet was still out.  Seeing that I didn't really have anything to do and I had already napped earlier in the morning, I snuck into the music room and tucked in at the piano.  I was heard by one of the assistant caretakers/librarian? who is a few years younger than me and because he is ineligible for the army (poor eyesight), he is placed at our school to work instead.  Anyways, he plays the guitar and he came in to jam, which we did for a little while.  Needless to say it was a lot of fun. 

This past weekend flew by.  Saturday night there was a kickoff party for Fall Ultimate Frisbee League in Itaewon, which was great, a really good time and a great turnout.  Unfortunately, league play got rained out on Sunday, but I'm really excited to get back into ultimate.  I'm also excited for football season to begin, big game for the Vikes right out of the gate this Thursday against Dem Saints.  Nice win by the Badgers in Vegas on Saturday and big playoff push time for Los Twinkies.  That's all from this end.

What I'm listening to: "Love the One You're With" by Stephen Stills (I'm pretty sure this was a solo single...wow, that sounds redundant) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_0a10_1BZk

Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqZhM75aGMg
Does Stu Cook know Robbie Robertson? (probably...)

http://thirdstringgoalie.blogspot.com/

Book Review:
Just finished reading this book roughly a week ago and it was a very good read.  Easy enough to get through pretty quickly if you have the time and the dialogue and action keep the book going at a good pace.  Definitely a page turner and I'd say not a boring moment.  Worth checking out if you have a longer plane ride or enough spare time and short book stack on the night stand.








Two last pictures:

Sejong the Great, inventor of Hangul (한글), the Korean Language, and many other things.

They finally finished restoration work on this gate of Gyeongbokgung (경복궁), the main palace in Seoul at Gwanghwamun.

Jisan Rock Festival, North America and the Blog Strikes Back

Hi all,

It's the moment I hope most of you have been waiting for: The 1st new entry of my 2nd year in Korea.  As you can tell from the title of this post, I'm covering a few weeks of activity, it just didn't feel right to write this post while I was at home, so I decided to hold out until I was back to put up another mega-blog.  For those readers who ask, "Why go back for a second year?", my answer is simple; I am enjoying teaching here and I want to get more traveling in in this part of the world.  For me, it was a relatively easy decision to make and so far the second year in Korea has started off great. 

So, let's start off with the Jisan Valley Rock Festival, which was the last weekend in July.  This seemed like the perfect way to start off summer vacation and celebrate the end of my first year teaching.  Those of you who know me know that I'm a pretty avid rock festival fan.  I went to Lollapalooza in 2007 and 2008 in Chicago and Bonaroo 2009 in Tennessee, so it only seemed right to go to Jisan.  Even more enticing was the lineup for Friday night: Belle and Sebastian, Vampire Weekend, and Massive Attack on the main stage (I hoped to see all 3 for the first time).  Unfortunately there was some mis-communication upon our arrival.  Our timing was a little off and we missed the hourly shuttle to the ski resort where the festival was held and had to pile into a few taxis to get there.  Our cabbie was very poorly informed and educated on the whereabouts of one of the most popular ski resorts in his city and struggled to drive us to our destination.  Just picture a cab driver in Park City not knowing where Deer Valley was...I'll give you a few minutes on this one.  Now that you have the general idea of how this festival experience started out I can continue.  To make a long story short, we arrived at the festival after Belle and Sebastian had finished their set, which bummed all of us out, but we didn't let it ruin the rest of the day.  Vampire Weekend were also quite determined to lift our spirits as well; their set was incredible and the Koreans dug them as well.  Check out examples A and B:

So suave, definitely too cool for school

After Vampire Weekend, we had some time to grab a bite for dinner before the final evening headliner, Massive Attack, took the stage.  Once the main stage acts had finished for the night, the night time festivities around the grounds took place, which included fire juggling and ZZ Top coverbands.

Originally we hadn't planned on camping out at the festival because it supposedly wasn't allowed, but the way it was set up, there were plenty of empty tents on Friday night, so we found one and squatted for the night and Saturday morning we found some people heading back to Suwon and caught a ride with them.

The visit home was great.  I can't believe how quickly it flew by and I'm sure everyone who I saw feels the same way.  I'm so glad I got to see all the people I did in the short amount of time, especially Robyn (that's right, lil sis, you get a personal shout out).  I know she was trying to fit all of her friends in as well before they all went away to their respective universities.  The visit north of the border to Toronto was wonderful as well, as brief as it was.  The food was excellent and it was great to see everyone.  While I was in Minneapolis I was able to see a few Twins games, which was great, Target Field is a gorgeous place to watch a ball game.  When I'm back in North America for a longer period of time, proper visits are in store for everyone.

Which brings us to today, it's great being back in Korea, it feels like I never left on vacation (which is kinda weird, but welcoming at the same time).  My first official day back on the job was last Friday and so far the kids are super energetic and most of them seem somewhat happy to be back at school.  Slowly but surely I'm getting back into the routine of things, although it was definitely nice not working for 3 weeks.  It's also been a little strange getting back because there have been a number of going away parties for friends who are leaving.  You say goodbye and I say hello, pretty much.  Otherwise not much has changed here, the food is still delicious, the weather has been pretty rainy, although as I type this the sun is still shining brightly.  What else can I tell you?  Fall league ultimate starts this coming Sunday and I'm excited to get back into a weekly routine of frisbee, but don't worry, I'm still plan on doing my fair share of traveling.  Well, that's all from this end, I hope everyone continues to enjoy the blog as much as I'm enjoying writing it and all the experiences I'm having here in Korea.

What I'm listening to: "Liberation" by Outkast (special thanks to Prof. Werner for this)

Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S16RFatbZWI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3tOa6CXv1I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtbrY6QrgPw

Wet,Hot,Muddy Fun

Hi everyone,

This picture is the only one I could find of myself with some mud on me so take it for what it is.  Most of us were playing it safe and kept our cameras out of the mud.  Anyways, by now, most of you have seen the pictures that have circulated in the newspapers and over the Internet of the festival.  Needless to say there was a lot of mud and there's no chance the sea was clean after last weekend.  I'm not so sure about the health benefits of the mud, all I know is that the mud obstacle course was definitely a good time. 

We left Seoul early on Saturday morning to get down to the Mudfest and it rained the entire way down and for most of the afternoon.  But, once you're covered in mud, a little rain doesn't really matter, right?  After dropping our things off at our room (pension for Europeans) and grabbing some lunch, we made our way into the mud festival.  On one side of the festival they had different areas for self-massaging mud, a mud obstacle course, a human tug-o-war, mud wrestling pools, and mudslides.  They also had a mud color painting area where you could paint your body with different colored muds.  In addition, there was also a stage closer to the beach and there were a few different acts playing throughout the afternoon.  Past the sand sculptures on the other side of the festival was the mud fighting area, which was exactly what it sounds like.  After a few hours in the mud, we made our way down to the beach to wash off and headed back to our place for a nice nap.  For dinner, given that we were by the beach, naturally we had our traditional clam feast complemented with some crab and bean sprout soup, which was delicious.  By dinnertime the rain had subsided and the weather was pretty pleasant so we wandered through the festival to the main stage, where some K-pop (Super Junior, I think) act was performing.  They also had a pretty decent fireworks show going on over the sea.  For the rest of Saturday night we cruised up and down the boardwalk before ending the night with 노래방 (noraebang).

Some of our group crashed earlier in the evening on Saturday night and were up early on Sunday morning thanks to the blazing sun, which they were all too happy to share with the rest of us when they got back from the beach.  Sunday was great, the sun was scorching, but it was a good beach day.  Here are some pics:


  

The beach on a nice, sunny day.

I couldn't resist, could I?

Some sort of sculptures along the beach.

So, we sprawled out on the beach, enjoyed the ocean, soaked up some rays (and then some) and left Boryeong in the afternoon heading north back towards Seoul.  Lucky for me, the train stops at Suwon Station, so I get dropped off right at home.  This week was the first week of summer camp and it's going fine for the most part.  I've also started Korean classes in the afternoon and those are going well too.  The first day was really basic stuff, but we've ramped up our grammar and sentence formation, which has been pretty helpful.  Not quite sure what's on tap for this weekend, it's the All-Star break for the Korean Baseball Association, so no baseball games.  There's an interesting exhibit going on at the National Science Museum near Suwon, which I'll probably go check out.  Otherwise, we'll play it by ear and conserve energy (and money) for next weekend.  That's all from this end, here are this week's links.

What I'm listening to: "Tracy Jacks" by Blur

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNTeFdQGUo4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYppwj81SBY

Summertime and the Livin' is Easy

Hey all,

Again I apologize for the sporadic blog posts lately, as I'm sure most of you know, once the weather gets nice, all you want to do is spend your time outside, which is what I've been doing.  I've been playing a fair amount of tennis and basketball and enjoying the life outdoors and  as a result, I haven't really had a chance to sit down and write a new post until right now.  Things are very good right now, and not just because this week is the last week of the semester (although that does play a role).  I can definitely tell that the students (and myself) are ready for a well deserved vacation and I can't believe how quickly the semester flew by!  It seems like March was only a few weeks ago and here it is the middle of July, incredible!  The picture above is from a native English speakers field trip organized by my school district that we went on last Wednesday.  My school district has one of the highest population of English speaking teachers in Gyeonggi-do and last Wednesday was mid-year exams at school, so I didn't miss anything.  The first place we went to on our field trip is the burial site and shrine of a king, queen, and his son from the Joseon dynasty.  The story of the son's death is pretty interesting.  He fell into a rice storage bin and was locked in, lasted 8 days inside and then died.  I guess he must've really done or said something terrible to his dad for him to show no mercy.

The burial area also had these guys, straight out of storage from Spinal Tap's "Stonehenge" set:

We also got to make soap at an herbs farm near my school, which was entertaining.  I officially resigned my contract with my school last week so I am staying a 2nd year to teach, just in case some of you were still wondering.  Other than that, not too much is going on out on this end.    The living is easy and this weekend is MudFest down in Boryeong in the southeast on the coast and on the beach for some muddy fun in the sun (hopefully, looks like possible rain, so...Mudslide?), so pretty much every foreigner here will be there.  I teach English summer camp at school for two weeks and then I'm done teaching for a month.  At the end of the month is the Jisan Rock Festival, and I'm going down Friday to see Belle and Sebastian, Massive Attack, and Vampire Weekend, which should be a pretty awesome time.  And then it's back home on August 3rd for summer vacation!  That's all from this end, Viva Espana!

What I'm listening to: "You Are My Face" by Wilco

Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBhj73WtiZU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7aoWX8ENT0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpaG-L0zTJ4

World Cup Fever!!

Hey all,

I know it's been a long time, now I'm coming back home.  I'll chalk up the long absence away from the blog to a relatively busy schedule after school as well as the beginning of the World Cup and the absolute mayhem and pandomonium that started with South Korea's first game 10 days ago.  These pictures are from downtown Seoul, taken during Korea's first game with Greece.  The whole country has been swept up in the "Shouting Reds" mania!  And for good reason, the South Korean team, possibly underrated going into the tournament, has played pretty well so far.

They handled Greece fairly easily in their first game, but ran up against a much tougher opponent in group leader Argentina in their second game.  Unfortunately, their last group game, against Nigeria, doesn't start until 3 am in Korea tonight/tomorrow morning, so I'll find out the result tomorrow morning.  Hopefully it's a win; teaching on Friday after the loss to Argentina last Thursday night was not an easy task, made all the more difficult by the lack of A/C at school. 


Oh, and how could I forget the other important team I'm following:

Two weekends ago it worked out very nicely that the South Korea-Greece game was the early game on Saturday night, which acted as a nice warmup to the main event later that night (or early Sunday morning, however you look at it), England vs. USA.  We headed into Itaewon to watch the big opening match and the atmosphere was electric, although I don't think it could compare to the delirium that took over for South Korea's first game.  For the USA's second match, a group of us got together in Suwon and camped out outside the GS25 convenience store (a true Korean experience!) and watched the game on the big screen outside a restaurant on the opposite side of the street.  Another draw for the USA has given them some control of their destiny heading into their last group game against Algeria.  It would be great if South Korea and the USA could both advance to the knock-out stage (the next round, 16 teams).  Thankfully, the USA-Algeria game is on tomorrow night at a viewable hour and it goes without saying that I will be watching.

Outside of the World Cup Fever that has swept across the nation and most of the world, I have been pretty busy keeping up with tennis, playing some pickup basketball at a local university, and slowly learning some more Korean.  Last Saturday, a few of us took a little trip out to Chinatown in Incheon.  I was in search of some authentic dim-sum and was sure that if any place in Korea would have a selection, Chinatown was that place.  But, to quote the movie Chinatown, "Forget it Jake, you're in Chinatown."  I was literally awed that Chinatown, of all places, did not have any dim-sum restaurants.  They had plenty of Chinese restaurants though, and we settled for some Peking duck (I say settle very loosely) after watching a Chinese dragon parade.  The overall Chinatown experience was pretty good, it was enjoyable and worth the trip and definitely worth the freebies, the best of which were the sticky rice balls (no Chinese hot dog though).  The weekend adventures have slowed down a little bit, but they should pick up again very soon.  Whitewater rafting has been thrown around as a possibility, as well as bungee jumping.  I still need to go to my first Korean baseball game.  July will be a big month for some escapades, including the Boryeong Mud Festival and the Jisan Valley Rock Festival.  I can't believe it's already nearing the end of June, this past month has just flown by.  Almost a month until I'll be back in North America, which seems a little unreal to me right now.

That's all for now, time for the birthday shout outs section, being that it's that time of year.

Happy Birthday Bubbie!  I wish I could come to Toronto to celebrate with everyone, but at least I will be in town not too long from now.

Happy Birthday Mom & Dad!  I'm not sure whether I'll have a new post up by the time your birthdays come around, I'm guessing probably not since they're both this week.  Anyways, hope you two have a great time celebrating!

What I'm listening to:  "Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid)" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Back to Busan and Other May Adventures

Hey all,

I'm finally back with what I promise will be, an epic, mega blog post.  It's been a while since the last time I sat down to bang out a new post and I apologize for that, I didn't want to write something new without having the pictures to accompany my writing, but now that I have my camera back (and all 8 pictures I was concerned about), here goes the new post!  The pictures above were taken at Haeundae Beach in Busan during Buddha's Birthday weekend (May 21-23).  Most of you may know from reading this blog that I had gone to Busan twice before, once last October for the International Film Festival and this past February, because it was our departure port for our boat to Japan.  Like last October, foreigners and Koreans from all over Korea flocked to the beach to enjoy the nice weather and the long weekend.  We got in to Busan lat Thursday night via the KTX (Korea's equivalent to the Bullet Train in Japan, except it's a little bit slower) and proceeded to make our way straight to the beach.  We found a motel about a block from Haeundae that was relatively cheap, dropped our things off and went to enjoy in some nightime revelry.  Unfortunately the jjimjibang that we had wanted to stay at (the same one we couldn't get into last October) was under repair this time around, so it didn't work out again.  Anyways, everyone packed it in relatively early on Thursday night to get the adequate sleep needed to properly enjoy a long and leisurely day at the beach on Friday.  The initial weather forecast for the week looked great, but halfway through the week the forecast changed to rain on both Saturday and Sunday so Friday became officially designated as our beach day.  The weather was great on Friday, temperatures were in the high 80s (low 30s C) and the beach was packed.  There was plenty of badminton playing, frisbee throwing, and even some beach rugby.  The water was cold, but refreshing after hanging out in the sun and on the hot, hot sand all day.  Everyone got there fun in the sun time and by the late afternoon, most of us were ready for dinner.  Given that we were in Busan, a city famous for its seafood, the men (Dave, Alex, Peter, and myself) decided it would only be appropriate to indulge in some local cuisine.  The following pictures do our dinner more justice than any amount of words I type ever could.  Needless to say the clam dinner was excellent.

I mean, look at the size of that bad boy!  So delicious!

Pretty much a smorgasboard of clams, all different shapes and sizes and they had pretty good side dishes as well.

And here is the aftermath of our dinner.
So that was Friday night's dinner and from there we made our way around downtown Haeundae, culminating the evening with a late-night trip back to the beach.








Unfortunately, the weather forecast was pretty accurate in its predictions (unlike my sports predictions) and the rain started to come down around noon on Saturday.  Dave and I had found out through the grapevine that there was going to be a little ultimate frisbee tournament being held on the beach, starting on Saturday.  Fortunately for the tournament, light rain is almost perfect weather because it cools the sand and makes it very soft and easy to lay out onto.  So, Dave and I headed down to the beach and played a few games in the tournament before the rain picked up and they decided to cancel the rest of the games.  I think the Beatles said it best (of course I do), when they sang, "when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads..."  This is precisely what happened for the better part of Saturday and Sunday.  We went for barbeque for dinner on Saturday night and then out to celebrate our last night in Busan on our mini-Spring Break.  Sunday brought more rain, so we went to see Robin Hood at the local movie theatre, which was pretty disappointing, but seemed to set up for a decent sequel (possibly).  After the movie we trekked back to the train station to take the KTX home, wrapping up a pretty good weekend.

The past few weeks, Korea has been swept up in election fever.  Election Day was this past Wednesday, although it was just midterm elections, so mostly city mayors and local representatives.  The midterm elections are usually seen as an evaluation of the President and the ruling party and the results from Wednesday indicate that the Korean people are somewhat unhappy with the job Lee Myung-Bak has done thus far, since his party lost a considerable amount of positions.  Campaigning in Korea is somewhat similar, but also very different from campaigning at home.  Every day for the past few weeks I would be awoken around 6:30 am to campaign dancers (mostly ajummahs, older Korean women) waving signs to the beat of campaign songs.  The campaign songs are rip-offs of popular music, with catered lyrics replacing the original lyrics.  Highlights include the Beverly Hills Cop theme, "This Land is Your Land," and "If You're Happy and You Know It."  The politicians ride around on stages propped up on the beds of flatbed trucks giving speeches, somewhat reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt's trip across America, giving speeches from the back of a passenger train.  I'm just upset that I didn't have my camera with me to give any visual representation/videos of how ridiculous this actually was.

Last Saturday, I hiked Bukhansan with a few friends.  Bukhansan is a mountain within a national park, located just northwest of Seoul.  When we started out the weather was pretty nice, but about 3/4 through our hike, it began to rain.  Overall, the hike was pretty good, we saw some small temples along the way, there was a nice stream that our trail followed for most of the way up and down.  We found out later that evening that it didn't rain anywhere else, just on the mountain (lucky us).  Other than that not too much is new here.  I'm still getting adjusted to teaching during the month of June (I'm not used to the school year going this late), can't believe I'm coming up on 10 months in Korea very soon.  This week the weather has been great, can't remember the last time there was such a long string of nice days in a row.  Now, the important news, I finally booked my flight home to Minneapolis in August, as well as my flights to and from Toronto.  I will be back in Minneapolis on Tuesday, August 3rd and I'm leaving to fly back to Korea on Monday, August 23rd.  I'm flying to Toronto on Friday, August 13th and flying back to Minneapolis on Tuesday, August 17th.  Please let me know if you will be around, I would love to see as many people as possible.  I know it's not a lot of time but it's the best I can do and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone.  That's all from this end.

What I'm listening to: the new Blitzen Trapper album "Destroyer of the Void" streaming on npr.org/music

Links:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqtlcHiSHTE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM2637_waoI

Lotus Lantern Festival

Hey all,

I'll start this blog post by letting everyone know that the photos I'm using in the post weren't actually taken by me.  In my haste, while packing for the weekend trip up to Seoul, I forgot to pack my camera.  But, since I know how much people have been enjoying the photos in the more recent posts, I decided I would do some borrowing and don't worry, I will cite my sources.  This first picture is of many lanterns that were hanging outside the Bongeunsa temple in downtown Seoul, near Gyeongbukgong.  Most of that area of downtown Seoul (basically all around Insa-dong as well) has been lined with lanterns for weeks and there is a symbolic lantern that has been lit at the City Hall plaza for a few weeks as well.  This picture came courtesy of newspaperadvertisements.wordpress.com.  At and around the temple they had many different activities you could participate in, such as making your own lantern.  Unfortunately we arrived to the party late and missed out on the opporutnity.  Not that I would've made my own lantern anyways, those of you who know me well (which is most, if not all of my readers) know that I don't really have much talent or skill when it comes to arts and crafts.  The festival is held in honor of Buddha's birthday and as you can tell by the first picture and the next few to come, it is a very vibrant celebration.  The highlight of the festival is the parade, which was last Sunday night.  People and floats begin up near Dongdaemun and march down Jongno-ro through downtown Seoul.  When night fell, the parade got even better, because everything was lit up.  Again, I missed many fantastic photo opporutnities and I've made a promise to myself (and all of you) that this won't happen again.  Most of the floats had some image of Buddha or Buddhas, but other floats displayed elephants or fire-breathing dragons.  My favorite float was of Buddha sitting in a helicopter.  I'm not sure if this float was an accurate representation of a modern-day Buddha, but I thought the juxtaposition of old and new was great.  Anyways, here are some pictures from the parade for you to enjoy.

Photo courtesy of http://www.izsak02.com/                                  Photo courtesy of http://www.discoveringkorea.com/

Photo courtesy of seoulcityblog.com http://www.llf.or.kr/images/induction/festival_photo5_7b.jpg

This week has been pretty busy so far, so I'm definitely looking forward to the long weekend.  We're taking the KTX (the fast train) both ways, which should be nice.  Unfortunately the weather doesn't look the best, but we'll make do.  Otherwise not much else is new here.  I can guarantee there will be much more to write about in the next post.  That's all from here, hope all is well wherever you are.

What I'm listening to: "Over the Stairs" by Guillemots

Link of the week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuZo7pLnL7c