This is Pretty Cool

Sorry to not post all of the things I've been meaning to (vacation to Busan, more artwork), but I have these photos that I really want to put up here. I was walking around and taking random photos with my new camera, and happened upon a bee flying around this patch of flowers. I used the close up feature and took a few photos.

What I expected was something kind of cool, but I ended up with this:

Now this photo is kind of cool, but with 14 mega pixels, I am able to zoom into this:
This is a picture of a bee worth scientific study. You can see each individual bead of pollen, and my favorite part which is the structure of the bee wing. This is my favorite photo I have ever taken.

Anyway, I still swear I'm going to post more, so check back soon.

Rock Festival

So what's this now, August? This is my first post of the month so many days in, but I still do promise about 5 more this month from my vacation and a few other things.

Anyway, this first post is about something called 'Rock Festival' that took place at the local park in my city, Seosan, Korea. The only reason I really heard about this is because the two other members of my band, Iron Kimchi, were invited to play with a Korean band at the festival. I decided to not participate though I got sort of a pity invite to play with them. They picked up Adrian because they wanted to play one of the songs he wrote, and they took Jake because he is really a good singer.

So this festival took place on this stage. I took a picture while they invited Jake and Adrian on stage to warm up the crowd:

One of the great parts of the festival was that they included Korean dance troupes. There were about 4 I think in all, and the youngest one featured one of my former Kindergarten students, Barbie. She's front and center of this photo:

Here is a picture of Jake and Adrian playing with the band Sojumok. The Korean musicians were pretty incredible and their set sounded really great. They played and original song by Adrian called "On Fire" and then a Nirvana song. I'm not sure about the Korean audience, but the English teachers present really enjoyed them.
There were a lot of other Korean bands playing that I didn't pay much attention to, but a few did play English songs. The cooler part was definitely the dance groups. Here's one in a photo I like:

One of the more hilarious parts of the evening was that kids would come and say hi to and harrass the foreign people there. Some cute little girls just loitered around and asked questions, which was OK. There was one little boy who somehow felt the need to break dance next to us for most of the night. Here is a picture of him:

He had some pretty decent moves:
It was a fun evening, and that's all I've got. I promise I'll get back with another blog soon.

Mud Fest, etc.

So I'm guessing that regular readers of this blog know that I haven't been posting lately. I've got some 'splaining to do, definitely. Actually, I've been taking a break of sorts, which was motivated by the fact that I lost my camera a week or two ago, and haven't had any pictures to post because of it.

It all started with this thing called Mudfest. It takes place in Boryeong, which is near Daecheon Beach in Korea (this won't make sense unless you live in Korea). Anyway, its this giant festival devoted to the fact that this community has a special mud with cosmetic and healing powers. Actually I'm not sure about the healing part, but they do sell cosmetics with Boryeong mud in them. To draw attention to the mud, this community holds a festival called Mudfest in July every year. This event draws thousands of foreign English teachers, travelers, military personel, and a few Koreans, all looking to get muddy and drunk.

The festival takes place on a beach on the yellow sea, which is definitely awesome. Then there are all kinds of mud related activities. You have some mud painting (on the body), some mud wrestling, mud obstacle courses, mud slides, mud fights; basically put mud at the beginning of any activity and you have it. There is also some live music. I traveled to mudfest with some friends from my city, Seosan, and we all stayed in a hotel room right next to the beach (we packed about 12 people in this big hotel room). Some fun time was spent at the hotel room, as one of the teachers brought a beer bong.

It was also a great time at the mudfest, except for one small mishap. I had my cell phone, camera, and a friend's cell phone in my pocket in a plastic bag which I thought would keep them safe. On going through the mud obstacle course, I got mud in my eyes and kind of freaked out. I held on to a friend's hand and we all went to the ocean to rinse. After a while I was able to open my eyes again, at which point I realized that the bag with my electronics had split. So everything in there was destroyed, and my camera actually got really hot and I had to throw the batteries onto the beach. Sorry environment!

All in all it was a super fun weekend, all things considered. Losing my phone and camera forced me to go out and buy a better version of each. I got a new phone the next day after mudfest, and picked up a camera the next weekend at a giant electronics store. I kind of splurged and got this camera with 14 megapixel picture taking capabilities. Let me demonstrate:

The camera takes an image like this:

And then I can blow it up to this due to the extreme amount of pixels:

This is incredible to me, who has had a 4.1 megapixel camera for about 5 years. Anyway, everyone can look forward to reading this blog in the near future. I have a vacation the first week of August in which I am touring Korea, and then the rest of the month of August is sure to be filled with great blogs and photos. Keep reading! See ya!

Another Year

Well, some people may have noticed that I didn't come back home after my first year here was up. That's because I decided to stay here in Korea another year at my school. It really has been a great year, so many experiences, just read the blog I guess.

I'd like take this post to count down the reasons that I have decided to stay for another year in Korea. So here they are, my top 5 reasons to stay one more year:

5. Korean Kids are Cute

This is really one of the perks of the job that I get to work with these kids. I get them from kindergarten up to about 5th grade, which is great because they are still so innocent. Starting in about 5th grade or so some of the kids start to become jerks and sometimes get burned out from the overschooling they are forced into.

I think that Korean kids might be cuter than American ones

4. Korean Girls are Attractive

Nuff Said

3. It's an Easy Job with Health Insurance

Well I get paid decently for working only 30 hours a week. The health insurance is really great, the cost of living is super cheap, so I'm able to save a lot of money. The lack of vacation time gets a little old.

2. Korean food is really good

I have a theory that Korean food is just like a healthy version of mexican food. Mexican food is just various ways to combine meat, cheese, beans, vegetables, and tortilla; while Korean food is various ways to combine meat, rice, vegetables, and seaweed. The seaweed is much healthier than a tortilla and I think the rice is at least slightly healthier than beans.

They come up with some really great ways to do it, to. My favorite is triangle kim-bap (seaweed rice). Its just a triangle of rice and then a little bit of meat wrapped up in the seaweed. My favorite is where they put in a little triangular pork patty with the rice. Absolutely amazing.

1. My Little Sis'

As many readers should know, my little sister Kelsey is coming to join me at my school in Korea in September. The next year we'll be able to team up on adventures and picking on little kids. So, I'm definitely excited. I hope you are too, because there should be a lot more to come in the next year!

They Like Baseball Here

Hey look at that, it's two sports related blog posts in a row. Don't like sports? So sue me. I made it to a baseball game three weeks ago actually, I'm playing catch up with old pictures and material.

Baseball is very popular in Korea. Actually, last year Korea competed in the World Baseball Classic and got second place. They lost to Japan, but beat the U.S.A. In Korea there are 8 baseball teams in a country of a little over 40 million people. I guess we can compare that to the US which has 30 baseball teams in a country of over 300 million people. Actually one team is in Canada, but whatever.

They baseball game I saw took place in Seoul, at a stadium located on a subway stop called "Seoul Sports Complex." I think that a few teams use the stadium, so there aren't really any markings of affiliation on the stadium that show which team plays there.

The game we saw featured the Doosan Bears vs. the Samsung Lions. It was technically a home game for the Bears, but it seemed like there were about the same number of fans for both teams.

Below is what the stadium looked like, a baseball diamond in Korea looks pretty similar to what they do in America:

There is one (very) important difference at Korean baseball games. At these stadiums, people are allowed to bring in any food or beverage. Yes, beer can be brought into the game and enjoyed instead of paying $7 for one in the States. Amazing! I forgot to mention before, but I went with a few people from my city. In the picture below is Steven, Jackie, then Michael and Jake are enjoying the chicken. My friends Kayla, Crystal, Brian, and Renzo are there as well but unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of them.

The game was fun to watch, but it's surely a different experience from an American baseball game. It feels a lot faster in Korea. In the US it's a leisurely pace, each player is announced and slowly walks up to the batter's box. In Korea I couldn't really keep track of each player going up because there wasn't any announcer.

So it definitely felt faster here, but the game we saw was ridiculous. They couldn't get anybody out. The first inning ended at like 4 to 4 and lasted about 45 minutes. It was kind of like watching batting practice, or a little league game. After the first inning they started getting people out more quickly, but they game still lasted a long time. We had to leave early in order to catch the bus, so I can't tell you the final score.

One great thing about Korea baseball, though, is that the crowd is so enthusiastic about the game. There are cheers going on pretty much all the time, and people have those stupid thundersticks, too, so it gets pretty loud. There are cheerleaders, as well, so that's definitely nice.

Here's a banner I like that was talking about voting day or something, but it covered up and blocked the view of an entire section of people:

Well, I definitely had a blast and hope to go to a game again soon.

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.

Happy Birthday to Me

And now.....finally....the awesome birthday post.

As some know, my 26th birthday was last Friday night (crap 26 is old!). A birthday is exciting enough, but for this day our band also booked a concert/open mic night at the local bar. It ended up being a decent night, so I'll break into the pictures and details:

Here's the band playing anyway, the only new song we learned for the night was 'Summer of 69,' which rocked the house. I think the picture below is while playing Toto 'Africa' because I'm next to the keyboard.

Here's another picture, where I think we're playing 'Sweet Child of Mine', because Adrian has to sit down in a chair to play the solo.

So this night we actually got some people to come up and sing some open mic songs. We had a song from Adrian and then a few songs sung by a girl named Melissa with Adrian playing guitar. She learned some Lady Gaga songs which sounded pretty good. Unfortunately I have no pictures of this, though. There were also songs sung by Crystal and Sade. Crystal sang a 4 Non Blondes song and Sade sang 'Tik Tok' with me playing keyboard.

I picked the Cat Steven's song 'Peace Train' which is a really good song, but I did it no justice. It was my birthday, though, so nobody could hold it against me really. I tried to salvage some dignity by playing a popular Korean song by CN Blue, which people liked. The bartender Hong ran to the stage to sing with me and it turned out pretty well:

So after some more songs from the band it was time to celebrate my birthday. Megan, who came to town for my birthday was nice enough to get me this awesome tiger cake. I pulled a pretty clumsy move and elbowed it off of the counter, almost ruining the poor thing, but some efforts were made to salvage it and it turned out OK:

So then they played a happy birthday song and I stood there:

The best part of celebrating a birthday in Korea is that the bars will put on a pyrotechnic show. So the bartenders did a dance throwing around beer bottles ala 'Cocktail', and then they waved around a stick with flames on the ends. There was also some fire breating where they spit out a mouthful of alcohol while lighting it on fire. Pretty over the top. Pretty ridiculous. Pretty awesome.

So they flipped some bottles around more and made me a happy birthday shot. It was actually a glass sized shot. They made Megan and I cross arms while chugging and then kiss afterwards which was pretty awkward since my face was covered some kind of pink mixture. Strange times. But really fun.

Well thats pretty much what a birthday party consists of in Korea, it's a special bonus we get being English teachers in this country. I got a gift the next day, too, from one of my Kindergarten students which was really sweet:

That's all for now, see you next time!

A Self Portrait

So I'm guessing some readers are expecting a post about my birthday...and it's coming. I'm just waiting for a few more pictures from that night to come in. It will be soon, don't worry.

To hold you over until that post comes, I have a painting to post that was recently finished. It's a self portrait, obviously, well hopefully it's obvious. It's me made of about a thousand tiny retangles. Then I used only six colors to make up my face and hair. It think it turned out well!