Just Some Blossoms and Bees

So this post has no exciting news...just that I bought a new camera last week. It's a long story how I lost the other one, but let's just say I was pretty drunk and ran into my friends head with my lip while we were chasing someone. I'm pretty sure that's the moment that my old camera flipped out of my pocket and was lost forever.

Anyway...I took this new camera out to take pictures of the cherry blossoms that have recently bloomed in Korea. It makes this place so much brighter, and it draws attention away from the trash and junk on the street. Also, there were a bunch of bees on this tree that I took photos of, so check them out:

More later....

Iron Kimchi, Finally!

It's a great day for this blog, as I am finally able to add some concert footage of the last Iron Kimchi show featuring our original singer, Jake. You may remember him from previous posts about the band, as well as the time that I dressed up as him.

Our concert went really well, I think our band ended up playing about 20 songs in total. The instructions from the management was that we could play as long as we wanted, but we couldn't take a break. So that's what we did.

This first video is of us playing an A-Ha song, 'Take on Me'. It's one of my favorite songs, and Jake sings it well:

Near the end of our planned set was that song 'Maps' by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We didn't have a drummer, so Lucas played percussion by just beating on his guitar. The guy who was taking video just left the video on me, which I hate, but here it is anyway:

So after the set we played a bunch of songs that we wrote out the guitar chords and printed out the words for. There was at least one John Denver song in there. We played a Gwen Stefani song 'Holla Back Girl' which I sang. From what I remember it was good.

Here is the best photo I have of the second lineup of Iron Kimchi, together for the last night:

Lucas, Jake, Me. Iron Kimchi.

After that we went to noraebang, and we forced Jake to sing about another 20 songs over maybe a 4 hour period. He said he could barely talk the next day, so I consider that a victory.

What's to come of Iron Kimchi now, you ask? Well, for the remaining two months that I am here we plan to play with a reformed lineup. We now have a drummer, Joe, who has been appearing in the blog. We also have a new singer. She's pretty good. Also I got a bass and Lucas still plays guitar. We should have some new gigs coming in the next few months, so keep an eye out for that. Oh, our new singer is Kelsey, so that's pretty cool, right?

I Got PAID

I thought this would be exciting news for my readers, that I got paid for something other than teaching. Well, it's not a lot of money, but I got paid a comission for a painting of some dogs for my friend Jackie. I'll just get on with the painting:

I just had to paint her three little dogs. The only catch for me is that they are so ugly...but in kind of a cute way I guess. Oh well, I only had to stare at this picture for about 10 hours:

One noteable change is that I did not paint the penis of the dog on the left. I thought that was the classy thing to do. I also changed the background to a more soothing blue color, because I really hated the yellow. I think it turned out well, and Jackie says that her mom may comission me to do a large family portrait for them. We'll see how that goes...

A Bungeetastic Day

Last Sunday was quite a day. Seven of us woke up early and caught a two hour bus ride followed by a half hour bus ride. This brought us to a park ourside of Seoul which features bungee jumping; sweet, sweet bungee jumping.

We got to the bungee jumping stand at about 1:25 and booked reservations, which ended up being at 1:30. At least this way we didn't have a lot of time to think it over before we took the 45 meter drop. That should be about a 15 story drop, which is from a platform above a lake, pictured below:

We decided the order by a large, elaborate round of rock-scissors-paper, which I lost every round of and hence was set to jump last. Kelsey and Lucas ended up going up to the platform first to jump. Unfortunately Kelsey jumped while I was in the elevator so I don't have any pictures of her. Here is a picture of Joe, looking really nervous for his jump:

And the girls, Farinaz and Rachel. Farinaz didn't jump because heights aren't really her thing.

Heights aren't Spencer's thing either, but he still jumped:

Before jumping, we decided to each shout a catch phrase while falling. This way if we died we would have last words for others to remember us by. Spencer yelled "I'm a big deal," I yelled "Zeppelin rules," and Joe yelled "Durka Durka." Lucas didn't prepare his phrase, so he unintentionally said "holy crap" while stepping off of the platform. By far the best was Rachel's because we encourage her to yell some swear words.

Anyway, here is video of my jump:

It was definitely a great time to make the leap from the platform. Really exhilarating. The most awkward part was landing in the boat because I wanted my feet to land and stay there, but I was still bouncing.

Now here is Rachel's jump, you can hear her swear words pretty clearly, so cover up any children's ears while viewing:

Rachel defnitely looks proud of herself after her jump, as she should:

A Mustache Update

I know everyone who reads is curious about the status of my mustache, I just know it. Anyway, as you can see below it's much fuller and looks pretty great now. It's weird, though, the response from Korean people is usually that it looks dirty and they don't like it. I did get a few remarks that it is an interesting shape and that it looks good, so that was nice.

Most definitely my favorite part was last week when Kelsey caught me coming out of the bathroom stall and two of her five year old boys were pulling their pants down to pee. She asked how it was going, so I responed, "pretty good, just a dude with a scary looking mustache hanging out with two small, naked boys in a bathroom." It was my favorite.

Wow! A Korean Wedding

I want to spend some time getting blogs out today because I have a quite a few back-logged. I guess you could say I have a lot of back-logged blogs cloggin my noggin.

Anyway...this post is about a wedding I went to two weekends ago. The bride is a kindergarten teacher who used to work at my school. Here English name is Michelle, I don't know her Korean name.

I showed up with my neighbor Joe, and we were able to take a photo with Michelle right before the wedding started. Joe and I had both learned to tie a tie from watching internet videos about half an hour before this photo was taken. I think we both did a good job. Oh, and Michelle looked very beautiful in her dress:

The wedding took place in this massive wedding hall a few blocks from my apartment. The complex is about 6 stories, each with a waiting room and the wedding room. The wedding room isn't big enough for everyone, so when the ceremony started a lot of people just waited out in the other room and kept talking. It was pretty loud and I couldn't really hear what the minister was saying. It was just strange to me that everyone just stood out in the other room and didn't really care what was going on. People were even talking inside the wedding and it didn't matter. I guess that is just a cultural difference between Korean and the U.S.

The wedding hall had this super nice ceiling ornamentation:

The ceremony went maybe half an hour, then the bride and groom walked out and were shot with streamers:

There was a slight problem when dozens of the streamers stuck into the ceiling ornaments:

After that was photo time, so the whole family got together. There was also this dress maintenance lady who hovered around the bride and groom to make sure that their gown and tux were absolutely perfect for the photographs. She was dressed in jeans and an old t-shirt, but it didn't really seem to matter:

The photographer was another dude dressed in jeans, an old sweatshirt, and a backwards baseball cap. It didn't really seem to matter.

The whole wedding process took about an hour from the ceremony to the photographs with the family, and then there was another wedding ready to take place immediately afterward. It seems like with six stories of weddings in the place at an hour apiece, they could crank through about 50 to 60 weddings a day if they need to. To me it's like a wedding factory with no real sentiment to it, but I think in America it's also a bit overplayed so that they can sqeeze every last dollar out of you.

Despite everything that put me off about the process, it was still a nice time. I like Michelle and her husband, but I can't remember his name. We also had dinner which was all this weird seafood and unfortunately no cake.

Yet Another Costume Party

Last night the foreigners of Seosan found another reason to get dressed up in ridiculous costumes, this time for a birthday party. It was John's birthday, a guy who I've known for over a year and a half now. He picked a superhero themed dress-up which led to some great costumes.

I don't care a lot for superheroes, so I picked a real life hero named Jake who used to sing in my band until he left about two weeks ago. I think our faces are shaped pretty similarly, so my biggest task was to grow some facial hair and turn it red somehow, as well as getting a seahawks hat and some glasses. I spent about a week and a half not shaving to grow some pretty thick chin warmer, and then shaved it into this:

This is a picture of Jake:

And me...I did an OK job, but the beard is maybe a little too red. I painted the seahawks hat with some acrylic paint and wore a shirt that used to be Jakes.

I'll get to some of the other costumes anyway. Kelsey, Farinaz and Rachel dressed up as the power puff girls, three cartoon-girl-superheroes.

Here is John, dressed as Lex Luthor:

This is Joe, who always looks handsome in a photograph no matter what he wears or does. He is dressed as a costume Dwight from 'The Office' wore in an episode:

This is Larry dressed as Ryu from the street fighter video games:

This is Jacques as Hunter S Thompson from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' and two girls whose names I don't know and custumes I don't recognize:

And Kinsey as Quail Man from the TV show 'Doug':

Actually the best costume of the night was a guy named Josh who went as Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four. I unfortunately don't have a photo of it. Oops.

I wasn't going to let all of my facial hair go to waste, so I shaved a sweet trucker 'stache: