Pick a Picture, Write a Story

So this is a random picture of me and my buddy Allan (TJ) when we went on a little trip to the city of Busan (bout 2 weeks before i went to Vancouver) Busan is kind of a cool touristy city thats a few hours train ride from seoul and is really quite cool. Things we did there included going skating, going to the biggest department store in the world and going to this awesome fish market where we had tons of fresh sea food and even live octopus (its freaking awesome) I also tried raw horse meat on this trip and it tastes way better than it sounds.

Also we were going to go to a Sauna but there was a sign with rules and regulations outside with the following quote (I forgot to take a picture of it) "The following persons are not allowed. People with infectious disease or tattoos." I thought it was pretty funny that my ink is lumped together with herpes in the eyes of this sauna.

Anyways in the picture we are just outside of the fish market and it was pouring some of the heaviest rain ive been in in a long time.... I think im still a little wet from it.

Song of the Day:

Toto-Rosanna

Probably my favorite 80's song, just a solid kick ass pop song. All the members of Toto are just so awesome (most of them used to be MJ's back up band) and the video is so classic 80's that it almost explodes with excellence. On a side note a really want to name a daughter Rosanna just because i love this song so much (ignore the cheesy overacting blonde who plays the Rosanna of this video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq4ychrRkQA

Did I mention I'm Teaching Here

I guess I haven't really talked too much about school.

But anyways, Kyungmoon Highschool has been an amazing experience with super cool kids. Things ive done have included taking them to the zoo (i li

ked it way more than they did) and taking a bunch of my winter camp kids on a scavenger hunt in Itaewon (the foreigner district of Seoul). Naturally when there i had to take them to get their picture taken with me outside my favorite bar in that area, cause that would be the responsible thing to do. But probably my best teaching experience was during my winter camp when i decided to force my kids into learning scenes from a movie and presenting them. The winners were Handsome Yoon and Duck (thats what they want to be called) who did a moving scene from everyones favorite movie ... Twilight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymgUCudusj0

Song of the Day: Lately I've really been into the Beatles musical, Across the Universe. I picked this song because its a Beatles song i wasn't really into this song until i saw the movie .. Plus it has its trippy moments.

Across the Universe Cast-Dear Prudence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEXakVA87PA&NR=1

off to tend the garden

D

All Filler No Killer

So in the name of just getting another post in I figured I'd just write a little personal shit.

Here are some quick little reviews (and gradings) of pieces of Korean Culture. These are just my personal views and are based on the thing i have been most exposed to

Nature- C+
Korea has some really gorgeous Mountains, decent beaches and nice landscape. The problem is I live in Seoul which in many parts is a big dirty city. I understand in different areas you get different environments and i'm cool with that. But the pollution in Seoul is seriously rough and definitely drags the whole grade down a bit.

Food- A-
Granted i'm a fat kid, and love all food, but ive really developed quite the taste for Korean food since i've been here. My biggest enemy, Kimchi, has now become one of my best friends. The key is to eat just a little bit of it everyday until you are forced to like it. My other favorites include, Galbi and Sam gap Sal (Korean BBQ) Mandoo (dumplings) and Octopus (its really good, seriously) Also, just outside my gym there is a guy who sells chicken skewers for a buck fifty... i swear im putting his kids through college.

Drinking- B+
While the whole drinking scene here definitely deserves an A (from the drinking culture to price of cheap liquor to the good/bad times to be had with Soju and Machiolli) the final score is held down by one important factor.... Korean Beer sucks. Let me put it into perspective, i was at a bar with a friend and he made the decision that he'd "splurge" to get the good import beer cause he couldnt handle drinking anymore Cass or Hite (the Korean brands) What did he get?? Budweiser

People- B
Obviously i understand the difficulty in giving a grade to an entire nation of people, and furthermore understand how utterly offensive that may be. I simply respond to those allegations with this... tough shit its my blog. The Korean people in general are amazing, very nice, accomodating and generous hosts on a personal level. The problem is when dealing with a large group of Koreans on a non-personal level (ie on the subway) their culture is so different from ours that it can be... off-putting. Getting pushed around and butted in front of by 50 year old women, getting nearly spat on by old korean men (and indoors for that matter) or getting yelled at on the subway for speaking english can occasionally be annoying. I can imagine how much worse it is for the few white women here because drunken korean men aren't always exactly, respectful of the foreigner ladies. That said, any Korean who i have gotten to know on a personal level has been amazing to me and I give them all an A+, so im sure its just one of those things thats once your, "In," your in.

That seems like a decent amount to comment on.

The song for this post is just a really uplifting song... i dont care if it got its popularity boost from being in a Coke commercial. Apparently its the world cup song too, so we should all hear a shit tonne of it this summer

K'naan- Waving Flag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC8V8S_REhk&feature=related

D'ai Ha Ming Gook (GO KO-RE-A!!!)

Home for a Rest

Hey again,

So as many of you may know, I went back home to Vancouver for a 2 week vacation. Why? you may ask (which you probably didn't) because it was the Olympics and i couldn't let my hometown have a party that big without me. Final analysis is that going home to Vancouver, or more specifically, Coquitlam, is the best decision I've ever made. Live Hockey games (including Canada vs. Switzerland), partying in Whistler, seeing all my friends and family, catching 2 wicked FREE live shows, Bedouin Soundclash and Daniel Wesley and of course breathing in that fresh clean beautiful BC air, can do a man some good.

Yet in spite of the amazing time i had back at home, the obvious highlight of the olympics was Sidney Crosby beating Ryan Miller with a quick shot in overtime handing Canada our 2nd Mens hockey gold medal in 8 years, and an olympic record 14 total golds . I was already back in Korea for this but suffice to say the Canadian Bar, Rocky Mountain Tavern, had more than enough Canadian Spirit

Heres just a sample of how we celebrated in Seoul

Song of the Day (or rather of the post since ive already done another post today): Savage Garden-Break Me Shake Me. When i was in Canada i was driving around in my moms car (since i moved my car is no the property of my sister). While thumbing through her CDs i found the old Savage Garden and couldn't resist. Here's my new favorite song on that album, and a hit that sadly kind of fell through the cracks. The beginning kind of reminds me of Under Pressure by Queen (another one of my favorites)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdvmw4FRzQ8

Man, in retrospect who would've ever thought he was gay??

Gumbai!!!

Return of the Blog

* revised from my original title, "Revenge of the Blog." Because a blog doesn't seek revenge *

10 bonus points if your a big geek like me and got that reference.

ANYWAYS ... welcome back to the blog. I'm going to try and do a super post today and hit a bunch of different topics .... then i'll try and post semi (ie more than once in 3 months) regularly again.

So for this first post back I'm going to quickly talk about an Ice Festival i went to in a little city called Hwachean back in January.

My friends and i hit this festival with avengence early on a saturday morning in hopes of being able to catch a late bus back. When we got there it was an amazing scene ... an entire festival on top of this huge frozen river. There was ice fishing, toboggan (sp) making, a mini bobsled run and an opportunity to jump into freezing cold water to try and catch fish with our bare hands. Sadly we were unable to do this as when we arrived to that station we had already missed the last call for that activity, we were heartbroken. On the upside we did go icefishing (and between 8 of us caught a grand total of 0 fish, while little kids all around us were catching fish like they were fishing with dynamite), and we transported around the river using these cool ice sled things to get around (lets see if i can get a video to work)

Anyways after all the fun and games we went to the bus station and saw the last bus left at about 7PM, but we wanted to chill out drink and party in Hwacheon. We figured we could find a motel or jinjilbang (public sauna) at the end of the night. The problem was, this is a huge festival and all the accomodations in the area had been booked for months. Also, it was freezing the entire night because hey ... it w as a fucking ice festival. So here we are, 7 Americans and 1 super drunk Canaidan stumbling around freezing our asses off in the middle of wherever Korea at 3 AM when we finally decide that a PCBang (internet cafe) would have to suffice for us. After a few hours of "sleep" we finally made it up and on the first bus home ...

Hwacheon Ice Festival gets an A + in my books ... and rumour has it they have a giant tomato fight in the summer ... i drool in anticipation!!

Some pics ...

Also, i know some people do like a Song of the Day section in their blog posts, and being a huge music nut i think i'll do the same.

Here's Jay Malinowski, the singer of one of my favorite bands with his new solo rendition of "Santa Monica" a song he recorded a few years ago with Bedouin Soundclash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeju--BGgNk

okbyenow