Piano Concert

A few months ago, our Korean town was lucky enough to gain a world class pianist. His name is Philip Thomson, who studied at Julliard and is on sabbatical from the Univeristy of Ohio in Akron. Philip played a show at a local church in Seosan, and many of us foreigners were lucky enough to see him preform a lot of Franz Liszt pieces.

I thought it was cool just to be able to see a guy play who has a picture like this:

He played his Liszt songs, which were really amazing. His hands flew all over the keyboard. Unfortunately, the video quality of what I took is not very good, so I won't put it on here. There is one video at the end, so keep reading!

The only problem during the show was that these Korean people would not shut off their cell phones, despite being reminded to at the beginning. At least four different songs were interrupted by ringtones. I have a message for the people of Seosan, Korea:

Grow up you freaking idiots. You are listening to a world class musician who is nice enough to play a free show for you and you can't put your phone on vibrate? Not even after a warning? Not even after one, two, three other phones go off? How are you dense enough to not just hold down one button on your phone for three seconds to enable vibrate? Get a clue and pull your heads out of your asses because you people disgust me.

Anyway, nobody from Seosan will probably read that so I might as well move on with more pleasant topics. At the end he took a group photo with the other performers; a pianist on the left, two singers, and then on the right was the MC. I think he is a pastor there or something:

Many of the foreigners got to take a photo with them as well:

And I took this one while he was playing a short song:

He did end up playing an encore for the people standing around after the show, which I taped. I don't know the name of the song, or the composer, but I do know it's by a Brazilian. Anyway, enjoy:

They Like Soccer Here

So the FIFA 2010 World Cup is here, and people around the world are coming together to root for their home nation. Maybe not as much in the states. Well, I don't really know how it is in the US since I don't live there.

Anyway, the games are an exciting national event here in Korea. It doesn't matter that the games are played in South Africa, because they are broadcast on giant screens around the country. Koreans act exactly as if they were going to the match; putting on face paint and red shirts, buying thundersticks, and then watching the game in a group on a giant screen. They root and cheer at the screen as if the players can hear them.

In Seosan, the biggest event is at city hall, where they project the game onto an approximately 20' screen in front of a giant open field. Everybody gathers, and there are even vendors selling food, beer, thundersticks, and these little devil horns that are so popular with the kids. I went to city hall this past Thursday night to watch the Korea vs. Argentina match along with most of the other foreign English teachers. Here is what it looked like:

All of the little red lights are the devil horns. The game was pretty exciting, but if Korea scored a goal things went completely bonkers. They would turn off the screen, flash lights, and spray this confetti all over the place while everybody screams. The picture below is what it looked like, but can't come even close to capture the excitement of the moment.

Half time was a spectacle, too. They had a few dance troups of 'ah jee mas' perform onstage to keep the excitement of the game going through half time. The term 'ah jee ma' is popular to refer to middle aged Korean women who wear giant visors over their faces during the day and are terrible drivers from what I hear.

My favorite part was when two of my friends, Adrian and Collins, headed to the stage during halftime to lead the crowd in chanting 'Dae han min guk'. I think the native Korean people were happy to see some foreigners chanting the official name of the Repulic of Korea. This picture is terrible but I put it in anyway.

Probably the most amazing thing about the night was the amount of trash. EVERYBODY there had wrappers, beer cans, broken thundersticks, etc., and not a SINGLE garbage can was located on the premises. Seriously. They did have a crack garbage removal team who ascended upon the field as soon as the game was over and had the place cleaned within a few hours.

So the game was a great time and its fun to feel the spirit of the people coming together for an event like that. The whole next day I was singing this cheer of 'Dae Han Min Guk, Korea' to the tune of a Beethoven song (the ninth I think?) to my students. I think they hated it.

Another Field Trip, Huzzah

Last Friday, my school went on the first field trip of the year. The weather turned out to be perfect; sunny, about 70 degrees, and little wind. It was also a great time for a field trip for me because I had been up past 2 at least three nights that week. Luckily, I brought my camera along and took some photos of the kids.

The field trip was to a small park located on the hill in town. It's surrounded by some trees and stuff, so it makes a nice opportunity to let the kids get out and practice some of the art skills they've been learning.

Walking to the park

Clara making some fine art

Some other kids I don't know

So the kids were told to stop drawing after only 20 minutes or so...I think the more important thing was to have photos of the trip to show parents. They gathered by class to get photos with the teachers.

Gemini Class

During the photo session, the kids not currently being shot were free to play around. Some ventured out to pick flowers.

Lyn finds some nice flowers

And after that was lunch. The teachers are given some food, but its also nice to hang out with the kids and steal their snacks.

This girl Clara, just about the cutest little girl of all time. I gave her a flower to put in her hair.

Another girl whose name I don't know

And after that was play time. I don't really have photos of this because I was too busy pestering the kids.

Judy running for some reason

The play time went on for a while, I got sweaty, and eventually it was time to leave. On the way out we passed by some excellent cherry blossom trees, in full bloom. Just ridiculous. See photos below:

A close up:
So anyway, it was a nice day even though I had to teach classes later that afternoon.

The Folks Came to Korea

As I mentioned last time, this is the first of my series of posts where I describe when my parents and little sister came to Korea, and then we all went and met my older sister and her husband in Japan. I figure I'll wipe out all of the Korea stuff in one post so I can get to the Japan posts quickly. It was actually a really good time spent in Korea, though.

My parents and sister, Kelsey, ended up leaving the states on Christmas eve, and then flew for about 12 hours while experiencing a time change of 13 hours. This meant that they basically flew for the entire time it was Christmas. How nice of them.

It was just a simple matter of hailing a semi-shady taxi to my town from the airport in Incheon, well known for shady taxis. This guy seemed like he didn't like silence and kept talking about the long bridges he was going over. Except by talking about, I mean that the only words he know about long bridges were 'long bridge,' so he just said that over and over. After paying a fair price, we arrived safe and sound at my somewhat tiny apartment where we all were staying and celebrated Christmas with the help of my 12" Christmas tree I bought for about $8. It was nice.

The next day was a full day to spend in my town of Seosan, Korea, so I tried to make it worth while. The morning included a small tour of the town around where my school was and to a nearby temple. It's a really beautiful temple, called Sogwang-sa, and I'm planning to write a post about it sometime soon. See picture:

We had a nice lunch of sushi, and then toured the market nearby my home which has a pretty impressive amount of sea food. That night was definitely the most exciting one in Korea, and one of my favorites of the time that I spent with my family. For dinner we had what is called Korean barbecue, where meat is cooked on a grill at the center of the table and wrapped in a lettuce leaf along with toppings, as I had mentioned before. The dinner was complete with some soju and a few beers bought by the guy at the table next to us. We then went to norebang (singing room) and cranked out two hours of well sung favorites. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't have any photos of this part. That was nearly the end of a great day, which was eventually capped off with Dok Bokki (what my sister calls Korean fire noodles) and some ice cream.

The next day was off to Seoul by bus. We left late morning and had a small hangup at the Bus terminal in Seoul where the taxi drivers didn't know where the hotel was and also didn't want to take us because it was in a really close neighborhood. We eventually got a taxi to take us to a nearby hotel where a desk worker called our hotel to bring the manager to walk over and get us. No problem. This hotel ended up being top-notch for what the price was, so If you are ever in Seoul looking for a cheap stay look no further than the Cello Hotel. The manager speaks great English and will go to great lengths to make the stay enjoyable.

This is a photo walking back to the hotel that night.

That day, Sunday, was spend eating Thai food at my favorite Thai place outside of Thailand, called Thai Orchid, located in Itaewon. They pretty much lived up to my promises of great food so I was happy. We spent the rest of the day exploring a part of Seoul called Insadong which is in some ways like a giant souvenier store. There are just dozens of shops, museums, and souvenier stores for virtually any Korea related gift. I also saw this robot:

A few stands had this traditional Korean candy made from stretching sugar strings into hundreds of strands and wrapping them around assorted nuts all while doing this chant about how great the candy is. It was definitely worth a photo and the candy ended up tasting OK.

An outdoor mall building had this directory of stores, and my dad noticed something interesting top-center:

Yeah, so no comment on that one. That capped off what I thought was a really enjoyable experience in Korea. I think Kelsey and my parents had a favorable impression of the country, even if the amount of snow we got on Sunday in Seoul made things a little difficult. Actually there was only one restaurant open when we were trying to get food delivered to the hotel, but the manager there was excellent enough to find it and order us some delicious chicken. See you tomorrow for a Japan post!

4 Months Down

As most who read this blog know, I had my four month anniversary of living in Korea a few days ago. It's been a lot of good times, good memories, some annoyances, and some strange/absurd/wtf type things. To commemorate my four months here, I'm going to talk about this category of these situations.

Here are 5 of my top strange/absurd/wtf situations in Korea:

1. Mothers and daughters holding hands

This is definitely one of my favorite things about Korea. Whenever I walk through town and through the market I always see mothers and daughters (of all ages really) walking and holding hands.

I think this stems from how it is customary for a child to live with their parents until they either get married or go to college. If they finish college and don't get married or a job somewhere else, they move back in. This means that there are countless 20 something and even 30 something girls living with their mothers. Whenever they go out to the market, they hold hands. It's really cute.

2. The bug bomb car

My town, Seosan, has a way of controlling bugs (though it doesn't seem to do much) where they have trucks and motorcycles outfitted with a fogger on them. These vehicles then drive around the streets, often leaving a giant cloud of noxious fumes on the sidewalks. Let me rephrase that, giant sometimes inescapable clouds of noxious fumes on the sidewalks. A few times I have been walking down a street or sidewalk and one of these trucks drives by to leave me with no choice but to duck off the side of the road and stay low. Here are some pictures I stole off my friend Lisa's facebook album:

3. Fan Death.

I have written about this before, and it still just boggles my mind.

4. I only have to walk three blocks to get an octopus

This is one of the great things about where I live is that I am just a few minute walk from a really great outdoor seafood market. They sell other things, but this market is pretty famous for having great seafood. I think I can get about anything there, buy my favorite things to look at and dream about buying are the octopus.

This market is a great place to just walk through and see some interesting sights. From the seafood, various other street foods, art, and clothing, there is a lot to look at. Possible the strangest thing to see at the market is an old lady who has been working a job which requires her to bend over so much that she is permanently bent. There are literally dozens of these ladies at the market whose permanent posture is now bent over at the waist looking directly at the ground. I would take a picture of them but I feel bad.

5. People never look where they are going when walking

One time, while driving my little sister's then new Volkswagen Jetta, I was on the backroads at night and encountered some deer standing by the side of the road. They were stopped, and I proceeded very slowly by them in an attempt to not strike them with the vehicle. While passing one of the deer, it started running before looking the direction it was moving and bumped its head directly into the side mirror on the car.

For some reason I will never understand, this is exactly what happens with Korean people on the street, them being the deer and me being the car. There will be a group of people talking, and one will say goodbye and leave while walking off and not looking where they are going. This leads to a lot of bump ins between them and me. It's really stupid. People, please look before you walk.

The Hidden Valley Ranch

So this post is actually about a valley next to my town, not the delicious salad dressing. Did I get anyone there? Ha. Lame.

One of the best things about living in my town is that we have mountains (actually more like hills) to the north, and there is a really beautiful valley in those mountains. I had found this valley on a route from my apartment a while ago and was planning to post about it, but two weekends ago my friend Daniel showed me more of the valley near his apartment. It's actually much bigger and better than I though.

I'll just get to the pictures since there's not much more to the story than that we walked around for a while.

On the way there were a few huge praying mantis' in the road, which are common in Korea. These are some of the coolest looking bugs I have ever seen, and this one allowed me to get nice and close for a photo.

There was also this junkyard on the way with this fence around it and some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen. Look a the markings on that guy. Does anybody know what type of spider this is?

This is a tunnel where we walk under a highway to get to the valley. The guy is Daniel.

This is basically what the valley looked like. Just farm after farm in this expansive, beautiful land.

Here is some kind of a lake in the valley. The tiny white objects are people.

This is just a photo I liked with some rice paddies in it.

So this is a giant rock face at the top of a hill. If you look closely, there is a roofline down and to the left from it just a little ways. My friend Daniel went up there a week later, and it turns out that it's actually a Buddhist temple up there. When he went there was a lady there and she served him some tea. I really want to go sometime.

Having something like this valley makes me glad to live in a town with at least a hint of easily accessible natural landscape to explore. I'll post again when I make it up to the temple.

The View from the Top

Hi everyone, I thought I would use my extra time tonight to write a blog post. I had a class I didn't have to teach and I'm really happy about it because they are all apathetic middle school kids who I hate trying to teach. Otherwise things are going well at school, I just finished my evaluations for this month and the week is almost over. Wow, three months. This Friday we actually get a day off for Korean thanksgiving, which is awesome.

So Korean thanksgiving, or Chusok, is apparently the like a Korean Christmas in terms of how big it is, but we got really screwed because it fell on Saturday. If it would have been on Thursday we would have gotten Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off. But here we are, anyway, I'll just enjoy my one day. I haven't really gathered what happens on this holiday except for the fact that they all travel to see their family and then eat rice cakes or something. It means that the roads will be ridiculously congested, too. My student was telling me that if it takes three hours to drive somewhere you can pretty much expect it to take eight or so. Ha ha, have fun Korea.

So anyway, about this post. I had made this hiking trip about a month ago to an observation tower that is located in our town on a hill that borders it. It kind of got pushed on the back burner for other posts and other life activities I guess. Right now is as good of a time as any though, I think.

I made the hike by myself on a Sunday afternoon. It was pretty muggy at that time, so I was really sweating my ass off.

The observation tower from below

Its a really nice hike, and not too long either. It probably took me about fifteen minutes to walk there and then about fifteen or so to walk up the hill. At the entrance of the flat area on top of the hill is this sign:
So I don't really understand why it's called a mountain fortress and talks a lot about a wall and a walled city. Hmm, some great blog writer I am.

Anyway, when I got to the clearing at the top of the hill, there was a huge work out area. It included some hula hoops, a padded running track, plenty of apparati (is that the plural for apparatus) for doing crunches, push ups, pull ups, and some other zany exercises which are kind of like an elliptical machine, a giant ship steering wheel, and a small rotating platform so you can twist your midsection. I'll do a post on Korean workout parks before winter since they are everywhere and they are pretty hilarious.

The park. I think the red logs are balance beams.

The observation tower from directly below

So after climbing up the 40 or 50 steps to the top of the observation tower, there's a breathtaking view of the city. It's easy to see that the city isn't huge or anything, but it's definitely not tiny. The town is basically bordered by this long strip mountain/hill or whatever and then on the other sides it's mostly fields of rice paddies.

Looking southwest

Looking south

Looking southeast

So that's basically the town I live in from above. You can kind of see where I live in the picture looking south but it's not too easy to describe, and I'm lazy. Oh, the last thing I'll put in here is this crazy sign I saw in the workout park at the top of the hill. I think it's something about keeping healthy.

Ouch.

So my town has a batting cage, conveniently located directly behind my school. Craving some baseball action, this Sunday I went for the first time. I only swung at about 100 balls, but I got this ridiculous blister on my hand. I was wearing the gloves that they provided, but they were these strange gardening gloves.

The batting cage is nice, thought there are three right handed cages and only one that caters to both righties and lefties. It's a super good deal to bat there because it's only 500 won for 20 balls (about 40 cents), so I did about five rounds.

The batting cage

my hand day 1

my hand day 2

So today (Monday) my rib cage was super sore and it hurts to twist in some directions. My hand still hurts a lot if I stretch it. We'll see if I go again this weekend.

Brown Town

This isn't completely intentional, but today this blog is taking a turn for the brown. It happened, though, so I have to write about it.

Last saturday I was out around town trying to explore more of Seosan. I walked toward this large green hill which borders one side of the city (actually called a mountain here). This was extremely scenic, the hillside is lush with green trees and plant life. As soon as I was a good portion of the way up the hill, I felt this rumble in my stomach. I think we all know this rumble, the one where you know your bowels are a ticking time bomb of disaster, and I knew I had about 7 minutes. Luckily, I was near the town hall and cultural center, and I knew of at least one public toilet around.I didn't have to walk far to find this little oasis, a lifesaver. I was really about to try to find a secluded area on the hillside to do the deed and wipe up with money from my pocket.

Once inside, it wasn't all good news. I encountered this little porcelain hole in the ground, lovingly called a "squatter" by some fellow foreigners. Well, long story short, I managed to get it done and come out of this situation clean.

Now, I was free to explore this hillside complete with cultural center and park. This statue is an entrance leading up to a shrine.

This shrine is for the founder of Korea. I managed to scare the crap out of some guy who was peacefully walking around this courtyard when he came around a corner and saw me.

This is a sign outside of that shrine telling about the (real?) history of the Korean nation. It's a little hard to make out on this website picture, but it says:

"Enshrined in this shrine at the foot of Puch'un-san Mountain are the portrait and memorial tablet of Tangun, the founder of the Korean nation.

According to Samguk Yusa (The Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms) by Buddhist Monk Iryon, Tangum was born of Hwanung, the son of Hwanin, the heavenly god, and a woman transformed from bear in 2333 B.C. Tangun founded Tangun Choson and ruled it for two millennia. Asadal (now Pyongyang) was the capital of the first Korean nation."

The park also had this nice pathway which led to a rock rotunda where it looked like a water fountain show happens along with a nice workout park.

This area also provides a nice view of the city from above. It's really great to live in a part of Korea where its not just mile after mile of city streets (Seoul) and I can get a little bit of nature. The beaches are also pretty close so I'm going to check them out soon.