1st band night

So the weekend of the 25th has past. Ryan, I and a whole bunch of Cheoungju people went to Seoul to eat at a tasty all you can eat buffet and then go to their show. The club itself was a fair size with a fairly good musical instrument setup. Here is the link to the poster advertising the show they played in.


As you can see this is not your typical club. Punk, acid hiphop and ska are the main types of music played there. The show, as you can see, was originally scheduled for March 18, but was bumped back a week. You can still get an idea of the type of club they were playing in.

The guys did a fantastic job despite some instrumental setbacks (the guy on guitar broke all of his strings and had to grab another guitar). The Beatles and YMCA sounded great!
This is my favorite picture of the evening!



Ryan was especially on beat (rythmatically correct), I might add. He's great!

They finished up there and we went our separate ways in Seoul only to be called back again to another bar at 3:00 am in the morning where they just played for fun. Brandon and Jess (friends of ours in Seoul) were kind enough to let us stay with them and come hear the shows.

All in all, a wonderful evening.

A post describing the rest of the weekend is on its way.

Valentine's Day and other exciting info

Hello All!

Just wanted to let everyone know that although everywhere else February 14th is a day filled with "I love you" 's, the exchange of gifts and a romantic night out, here it is the official Korean chocolate day. Essentially, Valentine's day here is a holiday where females give chocolate to their enamoured male counterparts. It's been really funny these past two weeks because pink is a very big colour for men in these parts and so most of the chocolate filled baskets that have been done up are huge lacy pink affairs. It's great! Now, I would of course be rather morose during this post if this wonderful country had not made up its own holiday to counter the celebratory inbalance. White day, March 14, is a holiday designed for males giving females candy. I can't wait.

Now to the most important part of this post. Ryan has been playing drums with a couple of guys when they all happen to be out at the pub at the same time for a while now. Shockingly, the bar owner (named Ji-aon, good guy) has scheduled them to play in a club in Seoul! Needless to say they are fantastic. It's great to sit back and listen to them play. I'm a little concerned about the throngs of Korean women "putting off their wears" as Ji-aon so eloquently put it. He has asserted that this is a norm for popular Korean bands. Although my initial reaction was to imagine purchasing a rather large beating stick, (nothing like 'lay'n the beats' I hear) I think I'm just going to go and encourage fully clothed appreciation for Ryan's band. They're playing on the 25th so wish them luck! They're awesome!

A visit

So on January 27, 2006, a momentous occasion took place.

Pat and Judy Paulsen (also known as mom and dad to some) arrived in Korea.

That's right, folks!! THIS is the post talking about their whirlwind tour of this wild and wacky country, only slightly after-the-fact.

It was a really great visit, despite its brevity. On the Friday, Becca and I took at bus from Cheongju to Incheon (the city that actually has the international airport -- about 45-60 minutes away from Seoul) once I was finished work, and met them at the Incheon Airport Hotel. They were pretty jet lagged after the ridiculously long travel time, but we dragged them out to a galbi restaurant near the hotel, so they got their first taste of Korean cuisine right away. They weren't hungry, so they didn't eat much, but they both tried it, and liked it, which was a good sign.

Saturday, we went into Seoul, dropped off their luggage at Jess and Brandon's apartment, two friends of ours that have featured in a couple other fascinating installments thus far, and proceded to show them around a bit. We went to Insadong, a really cool pedestrian shopping neighbourhood with loads of little crafty-type shops and street vendors and cafes and the like. From Insadong, we then went to show them the aquarium at the COEX mall, which we've already shown you pictures of, so we're not going to bother doing so again. After the aquatic festivities, we went to Itaewon to eat at a fabulous Indian restaurant we frequent, and then down to the bus terminal to pick up our luggage and make our way back to our humble abode here in Cheongju.

Then sleep.

On Sunday, we slept in and lazed around a bit, and then went to church, showing them the various rooms and neat features of the church itself, and after the service going back home for a bit. When we got back, we took them to our favourite local galbi place, where they got a more expansive example of a typical Korean dinner spread (plus they were a little more awake for this one). We were really happy that it was even open, because most of Korea was closed in celebration of Solnal, the huge lunar new year holiday.



Monday was a trip to Songnisan, the national park about an hour away featuring the enormous Buddha statue and loads of really cool temple pagodas and stuff. It was regrettably cloudy and chilly that day, but the park is still spectacular, and a good time was had by all. After getting back to Cheongju, we went to an awesome chicken restaurant, then dad and I went and played poker with some other foreigners and mom and Becca went and hung out together for a while.

Tuesday I was supposed to work while Becca had the day off, but because she's awesome, she worked it out so she could switch with me, so in the morning we all hung out together and walked around our neighbourhood a bit, and in the afternoon, I took mom and dad down to the downtown area of Cheongju. We had coffee at the biggest coffee shop in town (called New Yorker for those who are curious by nature) and then went to check out the Yukgeori covered market, where you can browse anything from piles of frying pans to buckets of pig heads and pretty much everything in between.

Wednesday morning (we were still on a morning schedule at that point) mom and dad came into the school with us to see some of the kids we teach.

This picture was taken in my grade 3/4 split class immediately after one of the boys in the front row responded to my "How are you, Kevin?" with an exhuberant "I'M DIRTY!"

I swear I have no idea where he came up with that. I was as shocked as you are.



This is Becca with a class of three fourth-grade girls who have phenomenal English for having never studied outside of Korea. They're also really well behaved and less apt to say things like the kid in my class.



As soon as we were finished our classes for the morning (I still had a middle school class later that afternoon) we rushed hope, got mom and dad and their luggage and jumped in a taxi to head down to the bus terminal, where we bid our goodbyes, hardly able to believe that the visit was over already, and put them on a bus to make the 2.5 hour trip to Incheon by themselves.

They survived.

All in all, as I've said, it was awesome to have them, despite the short length of their stay, and anyone else who'd like to come for a visit is more than welcome!

That's all for now, folks!!

A trip to Seoul that wasn't the most recent trip, but happened since the one we talked about in our last post.

So a while ago (I'm not even sure exactly when at this point -- a couple weekends ago at any rate) we went to Seoul (again) to visit Brandon and Jess, a couple that we met doing out TESL course in Peterborough.

It was good fun as always.

On the way to their new place (still in Itaewon, but about ten minutes' walk from where they used to live) we had to take a pedestrian underpass that we'd never been in before, and there was some really neat graffiti.





What was really striking was both the size of these pictures, and the medium in which they were drawn. They're entirely drawn using black permanent marker, and they're huge. We didn't get a shot of one of us standing beside them for scale, cause we didn't think of it, but they're about my height on the wall.

Anyway, so that was cool.

Once we got to Jess and Brandon's place, they showed us around their new apartment, which was beautiful. We went up to see the view from their roof, which is accessed via a particularly precarious stairway.



That night we went to hang out with some friends of theirs, and on the way stopped and got the best pizza I've had so far in Korea. It was also the most unique, since we bought it out of the back of a truck.



5,000 won got you a roughly 8-10 inch pizza with whatever toppings he had that you wanted, and it was delicious to the max.

The next day, Jess and Becca went to see a performance of Notre Dame de Paris, performed by the original French cast. Apparently it was spectacular, but I didn't go, so that's about all the details you're going to get from me.

Brandon and I went to check out Insadong, which is a neat little somewhat touristy market area. It was cool, because it was touristy without being full of Itaewon-style crappy tourist souvenir shops and more traditional craft and artisan shops as well as restaurants everywhere and loads of stuff to see. It was awesome.

I didn't get any pictures of Insadong, but I did get a shot of a really cool high-rise building on the way back.



I later found out that this is the (a?) Samsung building.

I also got a picture of a parked car to give y'all an idea of how steep some of the streets/driveways are in parts of Seoul. As I've said before, Korea's a very lumpy country, so the bigger cities all end up seeping up hills and around mountains and stuff, resulting in some awesome winding alleys and streets, but also some very steep climbs for cars.



That's not even the steepest incline we've seen cars parked on, it just happened to be positioned to give a good idea of the angle.

Anyway, that about sums up that trip, and we've gotten *REALLY* behind on our updating (for anyone still left reading this), so hopefully within the next day or two there'll be a couple more posts.

Bye for now!