Lantern Festival

The Seoul lantern festival was this past weekend. Braving sub-zero weather I made it down to enjoy the festivities. The lanterns themselves are in the middle of a stream that runs right through the city. The lanterns themselves were really impressive. Also, saw the first snow of the winter that night.

Blackout Korea

There are no laws for public drunkeness here in Korea.

Notice and little green bottle? This happens quite a bit.

I Come with the Rain

There's a huge film festival going on in Korea right now. It's called PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival) and it's one of the biggest in Asia. This event draws a huge crowd and lots of good movies on the fringe get shown here. One of more anticipated films is the one pictured above, 'I Come with the Rain'. Josh Hartnett was in Korea recently promoting it and the hype got pretty big because a famous Korean actor, Lee Byung-hun, is in it as well.

I saw it last weekend at a sold out show. I don't want to give anything away but it's not a film you can easily forget. The violence is brutal and very graphic and a lot of people walked out of the theatre. I don't know if it will get a US release or not, but if it does, check it out.

Everyone Does It

I've been struggling to find fresh new things to post about. Things don't seem that 'different' to me now that I've been here 6 months. Kind of gotten into the daily grind, I guess.

Until I saw this book at our school today. I thought it was some kind of joke but apparently not. I was told some of the younger kids REALLY like this book and entire lessons are written especially for this topic. It's hilarious:




No sh*t?



Here we learn about different sizes and consistency!



Do deer poo at full sprint?



Who takes off their pants BEFORE going inside a public restroom?



+ Style points for going while smoking a pipe.



Look closely at the kid. Necessary? I don't know.

Incheon Beach Trip

In Korea, resorts, or condos, or beach houses, or whatever are called pensions. I don't know why and can't explain it, but that's just the way it is. It's essentially a beach house with nice accommodations that are fairy cheap to rent. We had five adults split a one night room for around 30,000 ($25), so yeah, pretty great option for trips.

The weather report said rain all weekend, but we had already booked the place (with no refund), and had gone shopping for food and drink. We decided to just let the bones fall where they may (Willow reference). Incheon is about an hour outside of Seoul and also located along the Western coast of SK.

As it turned out, the weather was fantastic.



Annyeong. Enjoying the cool breeze and nice weather.



Hangul for 'hello'.


Hae-min vs. wind. Wind:1, Hae-min: 0.



My co-worker's daughter, Hae-bin. SO photogenic rocking the stunner shades.



Some fisherman along the jetty. The tide was very low when we were on the beach.


An old, haggard boat waiting for the tide to return.


Our view from the room. This is where we were pounding samgyeopsal 20 minutes later.



Another view of the water from our room.


Beach shot #1.

Beach shot #2.


Beach shot #3.




Late-night shenanigans after teaching the gang Kings.

Bullseye

The following video is from one of my favorite shows (Flight of the Conchords) is pretty spot-on. Not only is he actually reading/singing Korean but the video in the background are exactly what are shown at the noraebang. They have absolutely no bearing on the song being shown but make for some pretty hilarious song/video combinations.

I love the water skiing clip the most.

Korea vs. Australia

Last Saturday I went to a friendly between Korea and Australia at World Cup Stadium. This stadium is famous for playing host to the 2002 World Cup in Korea, in which Korea fared quite well.

The stadium itself is state of the art. It holds almost 70,000 people and is very modern looking. Also connected to the stadium is a huge shopping mart, theaters, and a host of other restaurants. Ticket prices were 10,000, 30,000, and 50,000 Won respectively. We opted for the 30,000W seats which had a pretty good view of the field.

Korea ended up winning the game. Similar to my baseball games here, the fans are really loud and vocal which is really fun. Every time Park Ji-sung touched the ball everybody went ape.






Opening ceremony with the Korean band sporting some yellow hanboks.



The 'fan section' rocking a huge flag.



Game on!



Celebrations after the first goal.



A well placed corner kick to an Aussie's head.




I'm getting pretty excited for the World Cup next year!

The Pride of Pyongyang

Anything media-related out of NK I find to be pretty interesting. Take this following beer commercial. I think this ad came out this year, yet it looks to be current circa 1986.

I like the shot of the scientists in labcoats approving of the quality. It looks a little too 'heady' for my palette but apparently it's quite superb.

.

My swagger is Mick Jagger

After being inundated with K-pop, it's nice to reflect on some US cats that still rock it hard. Yes, M.I.A. is pregnant, Kayne has a rad MJ fade, but it's great to revisit a legit rap performance.

p.s. Lil' Wayne is still the best rapper alive. He's got the hardest bars, call him the warden.

GRAMMY'S - SWAGGA LIKE US
Uploaded by 3030fm. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Vacation: Part II

Here's the second set of photos from my recent vacation. My friend and I headed down to Haeundae, Busan for 3 nights of fun in the sun.

We ended up staying in a very nice hotel 5 minutes from beach that had shuttles running every 30 minutes down to the ocean. I was a little scared because the weather forecast called for overcast clouds with a chance of rain. Not exactly the ideal time to be beach bumming. But, as it turns out, the weather wasn't bad at all and the day was actually perfect the day we went swimming. Here we go...



Seoul and Busan are really on opposite ends of the country. A normal bus takes about 4.5 hours to get there, 6 hours if you factor in holiday traffic. Thankfully, Korea put in express trains (KTX) that do the trek with one 5 minute stop at 300 km/hr. It took us a little under 3 hours from point to point and was quite comfortable.



Here's our train pulling up. They hold quite a few people and we were able to get tickets for our trip 30 minutes before departure.



A pit-stop at the Fuzzy Navel before hitting the water. We had some burritos here (I haven't had one in months). It was really windy and our table outside blew over, including our meal and drinks. The bartender was really apologetic and gave us new food and drinks. 10 minutes later we were at the bar taking free shots with him (pop-itts [haven't had those since college]). We ended up meeting some people from England that joined us for the festivities. This particular drink is called the Black Mexican and was quite good.



The main beach, Haeundae. This place is INSANELY busy... but that's what we were aiming for. As I said before, beautiful weather that day. The summer gods looked favorably upon our trip.



A shot in the opposite direction. The tubes and umbrellas are available for rent at about $5 for the day. Of course we got some. I haven't had that much fun swimming in a long time. The waves are just about perfect for floating out in the ocean and also getting flipped by the occasional big one. The ocean itself was packed. I was being rocketed by a big wave, moving pretty fast and the tube and myself rolled over the head of a small child in front of me. He was shocked but wasn't crying. I didn't see any news the next day about a broken neck so I assume he was okay.




The boardwalk along the beach. Farther down, where the beach bends, we had some of the best seafood I've ever had in my life the night before. Sashimi, or Korean sushi, or whatever, is raw fish served without rice. Ocean fresh!



Yeah, this place is packed like sardines inside of a crushed tin can.



The ever-diligent lifeguards. These towers were spread all along the beach, about 100 yards apart. They also had buoys about 150 yards out you couldn't swim past in addition several more lifeguards on jetskiis patrolling the line. Pretty controlled area but is understandable considering how many people were there.



An old fishing boat farther down the coast.



A few from a rooftop where we had dinner. Some guy from San Diego was running the place and gave us some free drinks to help celebrate.



Back down on the boardwalk after dinner. They had a live Pansori event that was pretty cool. I had to fight my way to the edge of the audience to snap a few choice shots. Really interesting and these guys had tons of energy.


All in all, I had a great vacation. We did most of the things I wanted to do, and a few other non-planned ones. Good times.