A Quick Note

Hi, sorry it's been a while, but I'm trying to load videos on here of the recent Iron Kimchi concert and it's not working. I'll post again real soon when I either figure out how to get the videos to load or give up and write about something else.

Kindergarten Graduation 2011

A few weeks late, here is my post on the JungChul Kindergarten graduation of 2011. This time at graduation I had been with the kids for the entire year, so it was just a little more exciting and endearing for me to see the little angels (and the devils) celebrate another year passed.

As people should know who read my blog, the graduation ceremony involves some plays and some dance routines by the kids. This year musical preformances were also included, so everybody had the chance to enjoy dozens of kids playing ocarinas, xylophones, and castanets. Anyway, I'm just going to get straight to the photos, AND VIDEOS!!!

Here are all of the kids set for the musical numbers:

Kelsey got to MC (master of ceremonies) with a teacher named Evelyn:

Here is the Aries class performing. They first did the "No more monkeys jumping on the bed," which was super cute, and then topped it with this song about reaching for the sky or something:

As they were walking off the stage, the smallest girl in the class, Kelly, decided to stop behind and wave to everyone. It was incredibly cute:

Next came the Snow White play, and this is Jessica looking very beautiful as the witch in her dress:

A few of my favorite students, Jenny and Anna. Anna is Snow White:

I was allowed to watch from the audience in the beginning, but after 45 minutes or so my boss Jay asked me to help backstage. I of course said OK, knowing full well that there would be nothing for me to do back there but to take pictures of the kids. Anyway, I got a few nice photos, although I had to miss the rest of the show.

Here is Lucy, but my favorite part is Ella and Rex behind her with very bored looks. Part of me wonders if they really know how demeaning their costumes are:

The Polaris class did a very well choreographed dance to a K-pop song, which I missed. I did, however catch a rehearsal earlier that morning. I like the video even though Jay and a teacher walk in front of the camera at the end:

Here is Tiffany with the Aries class:

One of my favorite photos is Louis. I'm not sure what his costume is, but he was in the Pinocchio play:

Here is Tom, looking handsome as the prince from Cinderella:

And a shot of the two foreign teachers at our school, AKA me and Kels:

Well, once again graduation was very fun (way more fun that teaching anyway). I was glad while it was happening, but also very glad when it was over. We also didn't have to teach Kindergarten classes until about a week after that.

Keep on the lookout for another post with more photos of the kids from the ceremony!

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:

Souvenirs and Christmas Gifts

So now that the amazing Packer Super Bowl victory is out of the way, I'll have some more time to blog. This post is about all of the souvenirs that I brought back from the trip to Vietnam. Knowing that goods from Vietnam would be relatively cheap, I did nearly all of my Christmas shopping there.

First, a few gifts for me. This is a three-stringed musical instrument that sounds a lot like a banjo and has snake skin on the body. I have done a little research to try to figure out what it is called and what frequencies to tune it to, but so far have had no luck. It's still pretty awesome:

I picked this up in the same music shop, it's a bamboo xylophone:

These are a few lanterns I picked up for myself:

For my dad I got every episode of Seinfeld in a DVD box set. I wasn't sure of how good the quality would be for a few reasons. First, the box claims the complete season 1-10 although there were only 9 seasons. Also, who thinks Seinfeld is "A good-hearted tween comedy"? Apparently the people who made this box:

It did end up being good quality, so it made a nice gift. I also picked up Mad Men seasons 1-4 for my mother among other things. Here is a nice action shot of her opening a lantern:

And the lantern in expanded mode:

For my sister Amber I got a few things including a lantern. Here is a picture of her opening a nice vace with crushed egg shells on the outside and a nice lacquer finish:

By far, though, my favorite gift that I got for anybody was this finely embroidered silk Japanese samurai kimono for my brother-in-law Dave. The second I saw it I knew it was perfect for him, and he said that he will use it as a lounging jacket when he has friends over. That made me feel good.

Well that's most of the Christmas gifts I gave, next I'm going to write a few posts of the time that I spent with my family in Korea.

I'm Still Painting

I want to take a break from the vacation posts and put a few of my paintings on here. I have completed these recently, within the past few months. Actually I'm going to have to do another post with lanterns I have painted recently because there's about a half a dozen of those as well.

Here is 'Sunrise, Sunset':

'Yellow Elephant':

'Bar Snacks':
This last one is an orange monochromatic painting I made after a picture taken of my friend Joe and I while pretending to smoke some bar snacks in a bar in Seoul. Anyway, keep reading and I'll post about my families trip to Korea soon.

Vietnam: Leftover Photos

So this final post on Vietman is not too exciting, but I wanted to add some more pictures that didn't fit in with the other posts.

Come to think of it, there is one story I meant to tell which I forgot:

While in Hanoi on our second night, Kelsey and I were heading back to the hotel. It's easy to find, but we would occasionally walk right by it because there is just so many other things to look at. That night, we walked right by it, but for good reason. A gate was pulled down over the front door. This presented a problem, that we couldn't get to our hotel room, and we had a flight the next morning. We searched all around the building for another entry and tried to pull up on the gate, but to no avail. This is one problem that we could not have possibly forseen. How can you plan for your hotel to disappear? You can't.

So we walked looking for other people, hoping that someone out there could help us. We walked to a cafe where a few people were eating, and finally a waiter at a restaurant was willing to talk to us. We communicated through a series of gestures, pointing, and noises that the gate was locked at our hotel. The guy, very polite says "oh, just knock on the gate!" Well he didn't actually say this, but he communicated it with gestures anyway. We went back to the hotel, knocked on the gate, and sure enough, it opened. We walked into the darkened hotel to find two sleeping mats where hotel employees were sleeping. I am guessing that this is fairly common in Vietnam.

I'll get to the photos anyway, now. This one is is a potato chip logo that I enjoyed. The man, Mister Potato, is very similar to another American tube contained potato chip mascot, but with a hat:

I have a few more photos of Halong Bay. It was a bit overcast so the colors aren't as vivid as I had hoped, but it's still pretty cool:

And another ship and mountain:

This is the houseboat where we went kayaking. On this boat lived both a cat and a dog. I'm wondering what the life of a houseboat cat is like:

Just the back of a hat that I liked on one of the bus rides:

A great sign, "Say no with smoking for your health!":

Riding in a taxi in Danang on the way to Hoi An:

This is a Vietnamese crosswalk sign. They were all blue and white, but every single one was a little bit different from the other ones. I'm not sure if each one is hand made, or what:

A chicken in a park we went to in Hanoi:

This is just a giant worm, nothing more:

I'll blog again shortly!

Last Day in Vietnam

On our last day in Vietnam, the train pulled into Hanoi at about 6 in the morning. We went to our favorite spot, Lake Hoan Kiem while the sun was rising and walked around it probably three times and watched the sunrise. We just literally had nothing to do and nowhere to go, so this seemed like a good idea. We saw some workout classes going on, including one of all middle-aged people dancing to 'Where do you go, my Lovely?'. Here is a nice picture of a tree:

Luckily, we were able to keep our bags at the hotel that we had stayed at a few days prior. They lady there, Bella was amazingly helpful. Without our bags, we were able to go and check out a few sights. We made our way to the Temple of Literature, a Confucius temple commemorating famous scholars and learned people.

First, though, we stopped at a park right across the street which required jumping a fence to get into. This place was so secluded, which was a nice break from the constant motor bikes whizzing past every second in most other places of the city. Oh, here's the park, it's basically a giant circle with a lake and an island in the center, which you can't see in this photo:

This is the gate to the Temple of Literature:

A super awesome vine-filled tree within the temple area:

A nice pink flower, feel free to comment if you know what type of flower this is:

The temple featured the biggest gong I have seen to date. I'm sure it can produce an amazing sound but no implements were present with which to strike it:

A nice photo of the buildings on the premises; I like the curves at the corners of the roofs:

Afterward, we headed back to the lake area and did some finished our shopping. While I was shopping, I left Kelsey by the lake and she ended up meeting two different guys who asked her to help with their English. The second guy we met and ended up going out for a few beers. I bought him about 60 cents worth of beer, he paid 10 cents for me to use a nearby bathroom. When I say nearby bathroom I actually mean alleyway where some guy lets you pee for a small fee.

Here's a nice photo of the historic district in Hanoi:

So we had our last dinner and headed to the water-puppet theater for our show. We paid an extra dollar for VIP tickets and were in the second row. VIP tickets are $3, so it was worth it. This is a pretty famous show, tickets must be bought at least a day or two ahead of time. My favorite part was the musical accompaniment, which was absolutely sensational.

Kelsey and I ended up being a little tuckered out for the show since we had not slept for a long time. The show had no speaking, only music, and told stories such as when rice farmers tamed the water buffalo. I caught a few photos, but don't have a perfect memory of the experience. Here are some of the puppets:

Here is a well crafted dragon puppet that sprays water:

Our last day was also New Year's Eve, so we got to see a lot of bright lights but had to leave town by around 10 to go to the airport. We had a countdown in the terminal on my Ipod watch and then sang 'Auld Lang Syne' with some Korean middle school students who were also in the terminal with us.

Really, the rest was even more blurry from there with the lack of sleep. We left the Busan airport around seven in the morning, got into the car, and drove all the way back across Korea in the tiny car. I probably shouldn't have driven with so little sleep under my belt, but there were no incidents. I then had a precious few hours of rest before I had to go to Seoul, check into a hotel and meet my family the next day. Keep reading, my families trip to Korea is coming up next!

A Few Shots from the Train

Riding the trains in Vietnam was a great experience. I really like the train as a form of travel across countries, or across continents as I hope to do some day. I discussed train travel with a French man and he much prefers it to traveling by plane because it imparts the feeling of traveling a great distance. While riding the train you get to see everything pass by out the window, and it gives you more time to think about what your next destination will be like.

Kelsey and I met some more cool people on the trip from Danang to Hanoi. An old man who was our cabin mate intently watched Kelsey while she was writing in a journal. She knew he was watching so she started drawing pictures to clue him into what she was writing about. When she pulled out tape to attach some tickets stubs to her book, he immediately went to his bag and got scissors to help her cut the tape. During her process of attaching the stubs, he sat there and watched and sliced the tape anytime she needed it.

We also met a French couple were actors in Paris, the man who I mentioned above. I had a nice talk with the girl, Roxanne. I mentioned about how in Korea people are always running into me and not looking where they were going. She went on a rant about how angry she gets and yells at people when they bump into her in Paris and don't say they are sorry. She translated what she normally says to people into English, and then I had her say it to me in French. It was very entertaining.

This ride started during the day, so I was able to capture some photos out the train window. It's a really nice ride through Vietnam because of the great jungle, mountain, and seaside landscapes. Here is a beach:

I stuck my camera out the side of the train and snapped this one:

And the sun set: