New Updates - Dec 25

Ugh, I don't like the idea of posting stuff out of order, I find it confusing. But some of this stuff is old, so it would be buried under new posts. So I'll have a page in the beginning to show when new stuff has been added. It will also be a motivator to finish posting stuff that I haven't gotten around to doing yet.

Dec 25: My 25th Birthday - Aug 7-8

Nov 11: Baseball - Doosan Bears vs. LG Twins - April 11, and Dobangsan - June 28

Nov 5: Doohee's Concert, Cheeky in Myeong Dong

Nov 4: I finished my 24th Birthday, Namsangol Hanok Village, Cute Kids at Lynn's, Hapkido, Saturday Class, and Konglish.

Nov 2, 3 edit: I did some work! Buddha's Birthday and Kyeongju Trip I are finished!

March 7-8 edit: Halloween, Boryeong Mud Festival, The Last Jackie's Hiking Trip, Dr. Fish, and the Yeoido Fire Festival are finished!

Feb 24 edit: Thailand and Bali are finished!


To do list:
2008
Mokpo - Aug 15
Osaka and Kyoto - visa run take 2 Dec 15-18
Children's Grand Park

2009
Musangsa Kyol Che - Jan 24-31
White Day - March 15 (ajummas workout)
Cherry Blossoms
Shaman Ritual Festival - April 19
Lotus Lantern Festival - April 26
Musangsa - Buddha's Birthday - May 2-5
Doyang Sabunim's baby's 100 day anniversary
Chiang Mai - July 26 - Aug 2
Jon's going away party - Sept 5
Hapkido Black Belt test - Sept 26
Konglish - Only in Korea
Musangsa - Cheusok retreat - Oct 2-4
Photography lesson - Oct 24
Suwon Fortress Palace - Hwaseong Haenggung - Oct 25
Gyeongbukgung - Nov 8
Haeshindang Park and Hwanseongul - Nov 14-15
Last Chance Musangsa - Nov 21
Going Away Party - 28
Last Day at Lynn's - Nov 30
Hapkido Going Away Party - Dec 1
Arrival in Canada - Dec 4
Around Halifax
New Glasgow
Toronto
Reunion with the Fam
Christmas in Lethbridge

2010
Arriving in Victoria
Around Victoria
Goldstream Park

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! I have journeyed long and far, and I have made my return home for the first Christmas with my family in 5 years. What do I reap from my harvest of family tidings? Sentimentality and comfort. I am so relieved to be home and have it feel so normal. I know of all the things Korea has given to me, it has clearly retrieved my sense of family value. I am so lucky to be able to share things with my family, immediate and extended. I have never been so close to so many people I'm related to.

Christmas has always been a time of good feelings and family traditions. I love Christmastime. It was hard in Korea when it wasn't so important to the rest of the country. I didn't know much or relate well to the more important Korean holidays of Cheusok or Lunar New Year. Christmas is the BIGGEST holiday for Canada, and I've always felt it's a time of showing others and especially family you care and love them.

I mean, in the past there was a fair share of drama to liven up the cold evenings cooped up with people who "weren't speaking" to each other, but not this year. I just see and feel lots of normal happiness with love everywhere. I really feel loved by my family, and I really feel like this is an excellent Christmas.

May everyone find joy and their moment of solace this holiday.

Changing Gears

As of December 4, 2009, my time as an expat ESL teacher in Korea has finished. I am taking a short family and friends visiting trip during December, then off to Victoria in January to study Oriental Medicine.

May the spinning whirlwind and shaking up of my life once again begin!

Only in Korea

The things that exist here, can only be believed with photo evidence:

Christians are extremely creative here. This is a steeple of a Church near Sungsin University Station with, yes that's right, the Messiah climbing a ladder to the top. Everybody, wave to Jesus!

This cake was given to me from a student. I gotta love the signature.

I saved the best for last. On a bus headed out by Dangsan station on line 5, Aaron spied this piece of artistry:

I wonder if they pour beer with head or without...

One Month Countdown

Today is now one month left until I take the plane back home to Canada. I will have been living and travelling in Asia for 2 years 3 months when I go. I'm beginning to feel the crunch to finish everything on time. Like going on paperwork things, finishing my student loan application as well as banking paperwork here. Also, I have like stuff to buy some good souvieners and things that are just easier to buy here, pack and ship home, not to mention make sure I "see" everything that I've been putting off. Lots to do. I don't intend to waste any time.

Korea Places 25 Out of 30 in a Global Happiness Index

From a kids newspaper my school subscribes to:

Switzerland Is the World’s Happiest Country (30-10-2009)

According to this year’s OECD’s NIW (National Index of Well-being)국가행복지수, Switzerland is the happiest country. The data was released on October 22, after studying 30 OECD경제협력개발기구 member countries in many different areas such as economy, social networking, and general well-being. According to the results, Switzerland ranked top.

Other European countries including Norway, Sweden, and Austria followed next. In North America, Canada was named the happiest country. The U.S. ranked 20th on the list. In Asia, Japan appeared to be the happiest country - it ranked 18th place in the list.

Sadly, however, Korea ranked 25th among the 30 member countries. The other 5 unhappy countries after Korea were Poland, Slovakia, Mexico, Hungary and Turkey.

Educational Materials

As quoted from a Korean-based English textbook:

"When you turn me on, I make a loud noise."

Gotta love when things get overlooked...

BTW: I totally had a kid spell six S-E-X today! Heehee

Cute Kids in Hanbok!

Cheusok is Korea's Thanksgiving, and the date varies because it is set by the lunar calendar. This year it was on Oct 3. It was really cute, but a few of the kids at my school go to the same kindergarten, and they came to our school wearing their traditional hanbok clothes. So cute!

Doohee's Concert - Sept 4

A friend from Hapkido goes to Korea University not too far from where I live. He's part of the concert band at the school, and invited the dojang out to the concert if they could make it. I grabbed a couple tickets and took Aaron. Most of the music was medleys of movies and famous bands like the Beatles and Michael Jackson. It brought back memories of when I myself was in band. I played the flute and trombone back in high school.

Of course pictures aren't so great for concerts. The still shots I have of Doohee are too small. In the movie, he's the clarinet player in the second row closest to the edge of the stage. He played second clarinet. Doohee was really glad we came. It was a good evening.

For the intermission, a guy came out to play the sitar, or Indian guitar. I really like this instrument myself, it was cool to see it played live.

New Creative Uses of English

A bar in Nowon. I'm sure there's a completely innocent reason for the name...

Instead of Mustache Ma's I suppose...

Found in by Apgujeong St.

Yeah, that wheelie chair could be pretty handy.

-At a hospital in Girem.

Cheeky in Myeong-Dong

The cheeky clown in a bar in Myeong-dong.

 

Later in the same night we find this add for, I hope to God, a sausage restaurant.

25th Birthday Hapkido and Hike - Aug 7-8

I was actually in Thailand for my birthday, so I met up with people the week after. I didn't have as exciting a party as last year, I just met with some friends in Hapkido at a bar on Friday and did a casual hike thing on Saturday.

Dobongsan - June 28

I went hiking up Dobongsan, a mountain in northern Seoul, with my friend Yonghwa and this group called Meet-Up.

We started around noon. The group was headed by a guy named Michael. I met a number of interesting people to talk with. Often during the week, becaues I'm teaching ESL kids and working with a mostly Korean staff, my English is limited to what others know. When I find myself around native speakers on the weekend, I have a tendency to get really chatty.  It feels like a breath of fresh air when I don't have to be too careful with how I'm saying something, like if I'm enuciating correctly, using simple and straight-forward enough grammar, or watching my vocabulary or idiom usage.

Hapkido

Being in Asia for as long as I have and not experiencing martial arts in some fashion is of course blasphemy. I did not was to be walking slander, so I got some help from a friend and found a Hapkido dojang 10 minutes walking distance from my house. Lucky me!

The dojang is called Heuk Choo Gwan, or Black Eagle Club. The two masters who run the dojang are brothers and are really kind and good people. I really feel like I will be able to enjoy myself here.

I am a terrible exerciser. I really don't enjoy doing things like gym workouts or personal training. I am much better being told what I have to do. Self-discipline is much easier when I don't have to think about my workout schedule. Just show up to class and do what the sabunim says. Also, I'm able to go every day of the week.

I specifically chose Hapkido over Taekwondo for a couple reasons. One is that Hapkido is a powerful martial art that is similar to Aikido. They both are grappling arts and allow me to learn ways to use my opponent's momentum and power against him. I learn many take-downs and pressure point holds. I do not have to be particularly strong to be able to defend myself. Taekwondo is more of a sport than Hapkido. As well, Hapkido focuses on harnessing qi power, which is of interest to me.

A minor drawback is that they can't speak English. I mean, there's an amount of monkey-see, monkey-do involved anyways. It will be a good motivator to learn some more Korean :P

Waaaaa! I'm such a dork in this picture.

Korean Baseball - Doosan Bears Vs. LG Twins - April 11

Take me out to the ball game! It was a really nice sunny afternoon at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium.
Me and some friends decided to check out yagu (baseball) Korean-style. Korean baseball isn't Major League quality. Aaron considers their level similar to the American AAA.

Baseball in Korea, like everywhere else, is based on corporate sponsorship. However, unlike in the West, with baseball teams' names being some animal/character/icon + city name, Korean teams are named after their companies that host them. Like, the Kia Tigers, Samsung Lions, or the Lotte Giants. My personal favourite is the Hyundai Unicorns. I've just never seen unicorns as logoical emblems for a masculine sport. The FEARSOME UNICORNS! :P

Special Testes

No I don't make this stuff up! Found on a little girl's school notebook.

Postcard from Julia!

Yay! Julia send me a postcard from Italy! Such a gorgeous location, I'm so jealous. She says Venice is fantastic and beautiful, "just very expensive!" Thanks so much!

Stitching Pictures - First Attempt

This isn't really my first attempt at stitching pictures together, it's my second. I finally got a good enough version of Photoshop that has the auto-align feature in it. I was somewhat successful the first time I did it, for a picture from the top of a mountain when I went to Musangsa.

This picture set was from Sunday, Mar 15 at Olympic Park. This time, auto-align didn't work at all, so I tried to do it manually. I have to have more overlap in the pictures for the program to detect automatically. Thus, this is my first attempt at manually stitching pictures together. I give myself a 4 or 5 out of 10, because of the obvious problems with it, yet it doesn't look TOO crappy.

Rarrrr!

Attack! Puddle monster will come to the home and eat the sister! And I hitted it with a blowdryer!

Konglish and Random Korea Love

I found this walking down a galbi (BBQ'd meat) street. They obviously serve only the highest quality judo beef.

Ahhhhhh Dokdo, I heart thee. This is part of the ongoing propaganda to ensure that the tiny island of rock is indeed Korea's and not Japan's. Found in a taxi in Gangnam.

Incidentally, this restaurant is on the way to the Canadian Embassy....

That's right, they start young in Korea.

You cannot escape the CUTE. The CUTE is EVERYWHERE. The CUTE will FIND YOU. Even if it is in your sausage-ee!

Neurotransmitter release, hotdog subway, and poo diving

I'm really getting used to how people use English here, or just how there are wild and crazy cartoons everywhere. It's hard to find it funny and demanding of broadcast. Buuuttt.... on occasion, I still come across stuff that makes me laugh.
That's right, botox is out! Only hardcore GABA action is good enough to treat those unsightly frown lines.

Both clever and time consuming. Get this guy something to drink with that dog!

I don't care what the message is, it's poo with goggles. Goggles! The wild imaginations Koreans have.

New Workplace - Lynn English

Welcome to my new stompin grounds. This be the Coral room at Lynn English, my designated room for prep. Kind of cute, hmm? Everything's all very cute, actually. It looks a lot more like a daycare than a school, which is great. The old place, Jackie's, looked more like an office than a school, so a daycare's at least got hot air balloon wallpaper to look at.

In addition to cute wallpaper, the place also has

Baby plants!

These are the closest things I have to pets right now, my little Chinese wolfberry seedlings. I growed them from seed!

Everything is cute when it's tiny.

They are only little grasslings at this point, but it's nice to have something to tend in my otherwise dead apartment. I like the place sure, but it's a little dark most of the time. I'm worried that the little ones don't get enough sun, so I put them on my window ledge when I go to work.

Home Cookin'

I just made a really tasty Thai chicken curry. I topped it off with a Thai tapioca and coconut milk dessert. The tea is from Burma, so it's not a perfect "Thai" meal. Still delish!

Saturday Class

For a little while, I was working Saturdays at Lynn's. It was a nice bonus to my monthly salary, and not really a lot of extra work. The main thing I did was try to get the kids to create interactive conversations that sounded approximately like real-life ways to use English. Now, if I said that to the kids, they'd stare blankly at me. I thought it would be fun to make things TV-themed, using interviews.

At first, we did talk shows, and then newscasting. Everyone seemed to really get into it. =^_^=

I tried to break up the different themes into parts, with some fun vocab. Talk Shows were divided into the host, the guest, and entertainment (like a song and dance).

Ryan's a really quiet speaker, so even in a small room he needed a microphone.

The audience even got to ask the guest or the host some questions at the end :P

Eventually, we even did a real interview with tourists down in Insa-dong. If I can, I'll see if I can get any pictures of the event.