Christmas Skiing Trip to Yongpyong

Hey everyone,

As promised here is the skiing blog post from last weekend.  The picture on the left is of Nate and myself after we had finished our morning runs on Sunday in some brutal -17 Celsius weather.  All weekend long the weather (especially the wind) was not very kind and last weekend had to rank up there as some of the coldest skiing I've done in recent memory.  That being said, I'm glad that we decided to go; it's always nice to get away for the weekend and the discounts we got by going with the Discover Korea group were too good to pass up.  There was some snow on the mountain, but not nearly as much as either of us would've enjoyed.  The majority of the runs were covered in man-made snow, which turned to ice in the afternoon and froze again overnight, but it was still fun to get out there for the first time this season.  We left from Suwon after school on Friday and took an express bus out to Gangneung (강릉) out in Gangwon-do, which, if some of you more seasoned readers of this blog may remember, is where my Chuseok 2009 journey began.  We stayed overnight in Gangneung and caught the shuttle to Yongpyong (용평) Saturday morning, where we met up with the rest of the Discover Korea group.  Yongpyong is roughly 40 minutes from Gangneung, so it didn't take us that long to get there in the morning, which was nice, because it meant we got a full day of skiing in on Saturday.  Yongpyong is nearby Pyeongchang, the Korean city that is vying for the 2018 Winter Olympic bid.  There are 2018 Winter Olympic flags and signs up everywhere, but it's my opinion that if the IOC was worried about having enough snow at Whistler and Blackcomb last year, then there's very little chance that Pyeongchang could host the Winter Olympics.  Unfortunately it just doesn't snow enough here or consistently enough for the mountains to be able to guarantee snow for the skiing, snowboarding, and other sports.  Back to last weekend, renting ski equipment here is always a fun adventure because my build is so different from the typical Korean build.  It's always a challenge to see whether the rental shop will have ski boots in my size.  It didn't make much sense for me to bring my ski gear from home, especially if I'm only using it a few times a year, so rental equipment was the way to go.  Anyways, the rental staff found me a pair of 320mm ski boots, which I was able to squeeze into on the lowest setting, although my calves were happy to be done skiing on Sunday.  Skis were not a problem, but the rental staff were a little worried that because the bindings on my skis were on the highest setting, that if I fell, I'd be ejected pretty easily.  Thankfully, falling was something I didn't have to worry about.  The weather on Saturday was cold but manageable.  It hovered around -15 Celsius for most of the day with a great cold wind blowing across most of the mountain, but at least the sun was out.  After a few hours on the slopes we stopped in for some lunch.  Typically, my favorite ski snack/meal is a nice hearty bowl of chili, but unfortunately, there was no chili at any of the chalets so I chose the closest Korean equivalent: kimchi jjigae, which is basically kimchi stew with spices, some beef, and tofu (the bean part).  We got a good 3 1/2 hours on the slopes in the afternoon before we called it a day and met up with the rest of our group for a little Christmas dinner.  Our Christmas dinner consisted of pizza, chicken, and beer, which was all good and it was nice to meet some new people.  It turns out a few people from the Discover Korea group also live in Suwon.  One of the greatest pleasures post-skiing is to relax and rest up the sore muscles in the hot tub.  Luckily, as is only natural of a Korean ski resort, there was a sauna in one of the hotels right next to the mountain, so after dinner, most of us checked out the hot baths to give our muscles some rest and relaxation.  The mountain remains open for evening and night skiing, but we decided that it was too cold and we knew we we're going to try and hit the slopes again on Sunday morning.  After getting a good 3 hours in Sunday morning, Nate and I returned our equipment and caught the shuttle back to Gangneung, where we took an express bus back to Suwon, which took a little longer than usual because of Sunday afternoon traffic (unavoidable on any weekend). 

  

The last few days have been mostly a build up for me for my trip to Thailand.  I have most of my clothes and other things I need to pack out right now and once I finish this post I'll finish that.  Those of you that have seen me in the past few weeks know that my mane or Jew-fro has grown out a little bit and I think it's time to get it shorn a little bit before I embark to hot and humid Southeast Asia.  That's about it from this end, I've got my camera ready and I'm packing a notepad and some pens so I can keep of everything we do and see and give it back to you when I get back in two weeks.  I hope everyone has a great New Year!  Hopefully mine will be spent celebrating a Badger victory in Pasadena!  Here's a little something to get all those Badgers in the right spirit.

What I'm listening to right now: "Day Tripper" by the Beatles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwmtNk_Yb2Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxJzADik5TA 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K03W8UAlRgw

The Great December Rundown

Hi everyone,

Greetings from my chilly classroom!
I can't believe how quickly the month of December has flown by!  I was looking at my past posts and I realized I haven't written anything new since the Manila tournament, which seems like a while ago, and I guess it's been about a month.  It's amazing how fast time flies by when you're busy and occupied day in and day out.  Anyways I'll try and give everyone a brief but informative description of the past few weeks, but I think I might have to break this up into two parts.

The pictures above and below were taken during my Advanced class' cooking class at the beginning of the month.  It was a special activity my co-teacher and I planned to give the students a little break after their test in my class and before their test in their regular classes.  Each group of students made their own spaghetti and it was pretty interesting to see some of the ingredients that each group brought.  The mother of one of the students gave her daughter American cheese to put on the pasta instead of parmesan (why, i don't know).  In fact none of the groups used parmesan cheese (it's pretty hard to find, especially around my school); all the other groups used mozzarella cheese, or as the students called it, "pizza cheese."  And, of course, each group had some sweet Korean pickles to go along with their meal.  When each group was finished cooking, I came around and sampled some from each group and most of them were pretty good, although I don't think I'd recommend American cheese ever.  I know the kids enjoyed it, which is really what mattered and they learned some new vocabulary words and practiced words they already knew.  All together it was an afternoon well spent.

The following weekend my school had a teacher's trip planned so we all met at school Saturday morning and departed for our day-long adventure in Seoul.  Our first stop was part of the old Seoul Fortress, which in recent years has been restored and is open to public to hike.  We hiked a decent portion of the old fortress wall in pretty chilly weather and most of the teachers were glad to be done and moving on to lunch when we finished.  We had lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant that served a very old fashioned Korean meal that consisted of many side dishes and a few different main dishes.  There was kimchi (of course!), kimchi and seafood pancakes, fish, spicy octopus, bulgogi, japchae, a few different kinds of vegetables, an assortment of rice cakes, and of course, soju!  It was a delicious meal and afterwards, we made our way to Seoul World Cup Stadium where we were going to see a traditional Korean holiday musical performance.  If I had to compare the performance to something, I think it would be like the holiday pantomimes in the UK.  There was singing and dancing and a storyline, but it all seemed like it was sort of a farce or more like a lampoon.  The only problem with the performance was it was done entirely in Korean so I couldn't really understand anything, aside from changes in the plot based on scenery or costume changes.  Otherwise it was pretty enjoyable (even if I did sneak in a little nap time as well).  The next day the few members of the tribe from Ultimate and some other frisbee players (including are wonderful hosts Clay and Jackie) got together for a Hannukah brunch.  Needless to say the camaraderie and food were both excellent.  There were homemade latkes, bagels, cream cheese, lox, sufganiyot, and homemade applesauce.  It was a great time and I'm glad both years I've been here I've been able to celebrate Hannukah in some capacity.  The food is the best part of the celebration; well, food, friends, and family.    

View of part of Seoul from the top
of the Fortress Wall

Performers from the Korean holiday musical

The students had their final tests on December 16th, so the last week of school was a difficult stretch to get through because they were tired and didn't really feel motivated to learn and I don't blame them.  Thankfully now we both have some time off before I come back to teach winter camp.  This past weekend I went skiing with Nate at Yongpyong, the largest ski resort in Korea, but I'll write more about that in a separate post.  In short, it was a very fun, cold, but enjoyable weekend.  Right now I'm looking out my window in my classroom and it's started to snow a little bit, but it doesn't look like anything that'll stick on the ground.  In other news, I'm getting pretty excited for my trip to Thailand.  I leave this Thursday (Dec. 30th) and will be there until Jan. 9th.  We're arriving in Bangkok, flying to Phuket the next day, then we are in Phuket for a few days, Ko Phi Phi for a few days and back to Bangkok to finish off the trip.  I'm excited for the food, the weather, the relaxation, pretty much all of the trip.  Nate and I also booked tickets to go to Hong Kong over the Chinese New Year (which is the first week of February), which I'm pretty excited about, so much dim sum waiting for me.  That's about all the news from this end.  For everyone celebrating Christmas, I hope you had a good celebration!  To everyone on vacation or about to be on vacation, I hope you enjoy yourselves, I know I'm going to!  Oh, and how could I forget, GO BADGERS!!!

Here's a little video of the cooking class:

What I'm listening to: "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfXswFmSzM

What I'm reading:  Trinity by Leon Uris

Thrilla in Manila: Manila Spirits 2010

 Hey all,

I want to start off by saying that the lack of pictures in this post is mostly due to the fact that I didn't really have my camera with me during the day because I was out on the field and when I did have my camera, it wasn't really the most opportune moments to snap some photos.  With that being said, the quick trip to the Philippines was excellent.  We got into Manila a little before midnight on Friday night and caught the shuttle bus bound for Clark that the tournament organizers arranged for us.  Clark Field is roughly 2 hours away from Manila so we didn't arrive at the tournament site until after 2 am Saturday morning and we had to be at the fields for 8 am, so it was a quick night of sleep.  Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of time for sight-seeing on this trip, but from what I saw and have heard about Manila, it's not the nicest city.  I'm interested in all the history that has taken place there but modern-day Manila is very cramped and packed in.  There are malls everywhere and lots of traffic, but I guess that's a given in any big city.  Clark Field is an interesting place.  Up until 1992 it was a U.S. Air Force compound but has since been converted into a resort and family camp area.  Our accommodations were pretty nice.  We split 2 villas between our team (or at least the Korea half of our team) which meant that each person got their own bed (a rarity at Ultimate tournaments) and the villas also had a nice living room and dining room area.

Back to the actual tournament...We had our first game Saturday at 8 am and while we were warming up, we got to meet the other half of our team who came from Singapore.  I had no idea what to expect from them, but they all played really well and were a definite asset for our team over the course of the weekend.  Our team played alright on Saturday; we had moments where everything was clicking and other moments when things completely broke down.  But, this is to be expected from a team that really hadn't played together at all.  The weather was pretty decent all weekend long, in the high 70s Fahrenheit and very humid, but a welcome change from the cold front that blew in back in Korea at the end of last week.  After the games on Saturday there was a tournament party and originally our team had intentions of attending, but after a day of play and the late night on Friday, only half of us made it out.  I was not one of them and felt quite refreshed Sunday morning after the 9 hours of sleep Saturday night (a rarity on a normal weekend!).  Sunday we won our first game and moved into semifinal game for 9nals (Ninals) against Beijing.  Unfortunately we got off to a rough start that we couldn't recover from.  Overall I believe we finished 13 out of 32 teams, which was disappointing, but gives all of us some motivation to work harder over the winter in preparation for the spring season.  The tournament itself was a lot of fun and I'm glad I went, it was nice to get away to somewhere warm for the weekend, especially after being in the news all week.  It was also great to see Shira Klane, a friend from Madison and Minneapolis, who is currently working in Vietnam.  She played for the women's Ultimate team at Wisconsin and picked up with a team based out of Cambodia for Spirits.  I know that Dave, Shira, and I took a picture for everyone back home, but Shira has it on her camera, so when she posts it, I will put it up here as well.  The return journey to Seoul was pain-free and before leaving the Manila airport, the requisite dried mangoes were purchased and brought back to snack on, hopefully they last a long time.

In other news, I know some people are probably wondering what the real deal with last week's artillery exchange at Yeongpyong-do and the following diplomatic gestures is all about.  To tell you the truth, it's all a little confusing as to why it happened and what will happen next, but rest assured, I'm safe and sound here in Suwon and just hoping that diplomacy is able to work all this out.  I know American (and Canadian) news outlets tend to sensationalize world news like this and I've seen articles that have blown the event out of proportion, but day to day life here hasn't changed at all.  I think I wrote in an earlier post that I'm going to Thailand for my winter vacation with my friend Judy.  Well, we finally booked our tickets and we'll be going from December 30th-January 9th.  We'll be in Bangkok for 3-4 days and are trying to decide what island or islands to stay on.  We're deciding between Ko Phi Phi, Ko Samui, and Ko Pha-ngan, so if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please let me know.  I can't believe it's already December and I'll be going on this trip soon.  It's almost time to add more pages to my passport!  Also, in music news, Eric Clapton comes to Seoul February 20th, one more concert I'm probably going to have to see.

Congrats to the Badgers for pretty much securing the Rose Bowl bid, can't tell you how much I'd love to be there!  Let's see if maybe they can sneak into the national title picture after this weekend.  I'll leave you with another action shot from the weekend and the usual links.  Happy Hanukkah to everyone at home, enjoy the latkes and sufganiyot.  I think we might try and get a Hanukkah brunch together here next weekend.

Scoring a goal and trying not to run over my teammate.

What I'm listening to: "Sweet & Lovely" by Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, At Carnegie Hall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLujHZMeqw
I'm sure everyone will enjoy this:
http://dosdose.com/game/13/where_in_the_world_is_carmen_sandiego/

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

Weekend Warriors

Hi everyone,

Wow!  What a weekend!  I'll start off with the most obvious starting point, formerly #18 Wisconsin knocking off #1 Ohio State at Camp Randall in Madison!  A huge victory for the Badgers and I can definitely say I wish I was back in college to experience the after-party and festivities that went on well into Sunday morning back on campus.  For anyone that wasn't able to see the game or didn't read/hear about it, here's a recap and highlights from the game:

http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=30289027.

Given that there is a huge Badger group teaching over here, we decided we had to find a place to watch the game.  Thankfully we were able to all get together at Sam Ryan's in Itaewon (이태원) yesterday (Sunday) afternoon to watch the game.  I came straight from frisbee, where my team, Team Squid, finally got our first victory of fall league, which was long overdue.  There were roughly 30 of us from Wisconsin at the bar watching the game and the atmosphere definitely made it feel like we were all back in Madison.  It was a great way to continue what was already a pretty great weekend.

The weekend started off well with payday last Friday, always a good thing.  I had to own up to a little bet that I made with Dave and so we went for the first half of our bet for a nice steak dinner at VIPS (a Korean steak chain restaurant) and then onto the PS3 room to try out the new Winning Eleven soccer game.  Those of you over the age of 40 can go ahead and laugh or scoff that this was legitimately on our agenda for the evening (and the weekend) but believe it or not, video games are a part of my generation's culture and how could we pass up a new sports game.  Plus, my interest in soccer has grown exponentially since playing FIFA and Winning.  Anyways, after some gaming we met up with friends in Hongdae (홍대) and hung out for the rest of the evening.  Saturday brought us to the frisbee field for some competitive pick-up games on a lovely autumn afternoon.  After the games we cruised to Itaewon for some delicious galbi dinner and some much needed jjimjilbang cleansing before heading out for the evening.  Two of the girls that came over with Dave and I, Jessie and Izzy, were having a double birthday bash and we met up with them for the rest of the evening.  Sunday was fall league and here's a picture of me from our game:

Getting the disc in power position, nice!

 

It was another great day for frisbee and it felt great to finally put all the pieces together for a win.  Next weekend is the league tournament so hopefully we can go on a little run and string together a few wins in a row.  Great to see the Vikes win this morning over breakfast, even if it was an ugly win, it still counts as a "W."  Awesome to see that the Leafs are 4-0, what a change from the beginning of last season, hopefully they can keep it up.  In other pretty exciting news, I'm going to a frisbee tournament in the Philippines, just outside Manila, at the end of November.  I'm pretty pumped to check off another country and see where all those great (well, most of them) nannies of mine came from (Cecilia, Josie, Fe, Delores...that's all I can remember).  I'm about 150 pages into The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and it is definitely a page-turner, very captivating writing and lots of intrigue.  I'm looking forward to reading some more before bed tonight.  I think that's all from here, as always, here are the goodies!

What I'm listening to: "The Boy With the Arab Strap" by Belle and Sebastian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYZPTTgMGCk

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5B53b9ntQ

Oh yeah, and Dad says hello: