Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Backwards in Time

Ok!

I'm alive. I have been sick for a couple weeks and very busy with school and a special project.

I am going to take you on a quick trip backwards through time. This is starting about a month ago and going back to the last post.

here we go:



On the real Halloween day, we went to an area of Seoul looking for Halloween parties and ended up at an empty bar that serves "Soju Kettles" which is Sugar and Soju in a cut off soda bottle:


A couple days before that I took part in the circuit bending challenge! It was a lot of fun. I found out in November that I was one of the winners!


The weekend before Halloween was a little more happenin' than Halloween. I got a lot of good reactions from people.


Renae was shiny!


Alien on the Subway!!!!!!




Jesus has a store in the mall:


This is my new makeshift studio:


Renae bought me a bike for my birthday and it rocks!
It has a generator for the headlight!


My bed with awesome blankets and a new friend.


I wore shorts at our school's Halloween party (the Friday before Halloween)
so I wouldn't expose myself to the kids.


Some of my kids at the party:


Cool street art:


Robots outside a public bathroom:


Murals in a walkway under the street.
This is Brett from the Drum Festival.
This week in November is his last week here.
He gave me an awesome cd he made and maple syrup!


This doesn't make me want to take the stairs.


The Korean bathhouse gave me my man clothes!
Its a nice place to relax and soak in different herb water of different temps.
You can sleep there too. It is cheaper than a cab home.
Unfortunately this one wasn't working properly and smoke was getting to us.
We left at 5a.m. and unsuccessfully tried to get soft pretzels before boarding the early morning subway. Also, I got a pimpin' hat for my pimp suit.


I didn't go to this place.


But I played my guitar in an awesome club of rockin' Koreans that welcomed Renae Brett Coreen and I with beer and awesomeness.


Cool store that I didn't go into:


Cool store that I did go into:
This was awesome. The girl running the store had a cat.
I have been obsessing with only one TV show: Heroes.
I think it's cause I feel like the world needs saving.
She was watching Heroes when we went in.
I was so happy. The store was also happifying.
There is a lot of awesome handmade stuff in there!


More cool ad/street art.
These are cool in my book. They are awesome and for independent stores.



Some of my homeroom kids before a bday 'party'
We had one today. It is mostly an opportunity to force cute pictures on the kids.
Birthdays aren't really fun but you get a lot of awesome food!





That just about catches us up, although I have no idea what you are up to. Send me an email or some snail mail. I have received 3 letters so far and they have made me very happy. Thank you so much. As soon as I can jump out of school to go to the post office a lot of you will be getting something in the mail and I will be broke again.

The next couple of posts should catch up to present time. Not a lot has happened due to my illness. I am much better now.

If you want to find info on the circuit bending challenge go to the where here meets there blog.

If you want to find out about the awesome music of Brett's band go to tongue and groove's site.

Also, with December coming up, I have been here almost 3 months! That is 1/4 of a year!
I am 25% done my contracted time here! Don't worry, I'll be back after that. I have to...
My Dad get married in September next year! See you in another 75% everyone! -- just think of me as a really long, but very worth it, download on an old 28.8k modem! wooooo those things could fly! I also need to get away from the computer (did i just call myself a download?) you wish it were that easy! so do i sometimes. peace and love.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Seoul Drum Festival Appendix A


Brett sent me this picture of the riot police. There are more in the background but it doesn't show the crazy amount of them there. I watched a line march by of about 4 across and 200 deep! They were chanting like they were in the military, too; raising there helmets and shields, shouting. I think I mentioned before that all Korean men are required to go into the military when they are my age for 2 years. Fighter jets fly by my classroom almost everyday.

Reid brought up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Eastern Garbage Patch. I wish we could put all the money and manpower devoted to the military toward making the world a better place. Things are not looking good for good old planet Earth.

Life goes on... for now.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Seoul Drum Festival

The drum festival was a beautiful experience. I met up with two new good friends, Brett and Coreen, a couple of awesome Canadians that I spent most of the night with. I was waiting for Jesse, Tiffany and Renae to get there and eventually they showed up and we had a blast.


Did I mention I have seen the craziest spiders in Korea? I have not moved too close to any of them because of an irrational fear that the one I am looking at will turn out to be a Korean jumping spider but it doesn't keep me from taking pictures. I was camera-less when I came across the nastiest one I have seen so far. This was early in the day before I boarded the subway on the way to the festival.

I got out of the subway near the World Cup Stadium where I was surrounded by SWAT team members. I would say about 400 cops, all in full gear, were marching around, some were just chillin'. I was too scared to snap a pick after I heard about some crazy riot police incidents in Korea. Apparently, they have messed some people up and killed some people in the middle of peaceful protests. I have not looked it up yet. Later, Brett told me he took some pictures and I am waiting on him to send them. He told me that there was a protest of about 50 workers going on and that is what attracted so many riot-geared five-o. Scary.

They had free shuttles to the show but I couldn't find them among the prison buses (later, I found out they didn't start till 5pm) so I had a nice long walk to the park it was being held at. I knew I was close. People pointed me in the general direction until I made it. I ended up seeing some nice scenery.


I walked across this bridge 3 times, figuring out which way I needed to go. It was a beautiful place to stall.


I saw a rollerskating team at the stadium and happened to end up behind them after getting a little lost. I figured they were probably going the right way but I didn't ask till we were almost there. One of the awesome things about Korea if you are a roller skater, bicyclist, or skater (or wheelchairer, i guess) are the ramps they have on the stairs:


It would be so much easier if they were wearing their roller blades! I know one day I am going to make trouble for myself on one of these sets of stairs.



Right before going down the steps I snapped this photo. All of the bridges are individually special looking; most of the buildings are not. I said it in a previous blog entry that the buildings would be so ugly if they weren't uniformed and scattered close together but I think, especially against the water they look atrocious.

When I got down to the park I saw another crazy spider:


Sorry for the poor quality but I am not sticking around something that looks like that and asking it to pose and smile; that's what nature photographers are for...

Speaking of nature photography, just after the spider, I snapped this one and thought of a career change, then I thought of the spider again... I'll stick to teaching for now.


But I am still really happy about this one! I once thought dragonflies only have a lifespan of 24 hours. Tis a common misconception. I don't know where I got the idea from but I am not the only one who pulled it from somewhere. Some adults do only live for 4 weeks or so (some a lot longer) but I still thought it was beautiful to see one relax and not move at all. For a couple minutes I stared at it and thought about that. Then it flew away.



The dragonfly was outside a campground that I thought was the festival at first. It reminded me of Tent State


The show didn't start till late, but there was an early preview performance on a small stage.

The lady with the trumpet rocks it. It sounds more like a Rusted sweet voice singing in a high pitch. I loved it. They went on for longer than and hour, non-stop.

There was also a drum circle and tents for all of the performers. I recieved some free cds and dvds.

To my surprise, I passed the main stage when I turned the corner of the last tent.

How did I not see this before?

I made friends with a Korean guy, whose job it was to give out free water. He let me use his phone.



I saw this scene sometime after I met Brett and Coreen.





The toilets are nicer than indoor toilets; brought in on trailers and more than enough for everyone. Right as I was taking the picture a woman rode by on her bike... (I flashed a lady right outside of the bathroom. - hahahaha)



GS 25 is a convenient store. They have so much goodness at this traveling location. Hot water for making ramen noodles, cold drinks in refrigerators, hot coffee and tea drinks in hotterators, and some glowing things I tried to do some fire spinning with. I took this picture to remind myself of the hotterators that I tried to get a cold coffee drink from.



The show was amazing. An all woman's group kicked ass, an all blind group ripped it up, a band performing at the Olympics from China was there. They rocked some E L O 14 person band deal and some cool electrodrums. There was a DJ (represent - just needed a beat boxer and they would have had almost everything.) Julliard music school broke the fast paced beats with some composed weirdness. There was African drumming, awesome Korean drumming (the group from earlier really put on a show!) Another girl saw me and Jesse busting out fire spinning and she had her glow balls with her. She was from Australia and I desperately wanted to spin fire with her. I miss it, especially with such driving rhythms. I didn't take my camera out much. I was happy dancing and talking. But I do want a costume like this:




Also the awesomest guy in the history of awesome came on pretty late and stunned me. First playing with 3 drum sticks in each hand with crazy rhythms and a wall of sound from 1 guy. He was playing the drums with his long hair too! Then he did fire spinning drumming! That girl already left - she would have been so happy. Then rocked it on this awesome hammered string instrument: (I hope the video works - it is crapquality but you can tell) he also played some drums with mad water as a finale. It was so good. A group from England went on after him. They were also cool but no one wants to go after this guy.



{video not working yet - sorry}




On a completely unrelated not, Seoul has a lot of these 'punch-this-thing' games. The first one I tried (and most of the ones by my house,) is called 'Girl Fighter.' They also have soccer 'kick-this-thing' games.

Renae punches the living stuffing out of a bag...






!!!! Amber got THE HIGH SCORE!!!!!! Holy Moley!!!! There are people who have been punching this thing for years and she rocked all of them! She put me and all of the Koreans at the batting cage to shame! Oh yea, there are just batting cages randomly outside some places.


Awesome Amber!

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The United States is a Clown Named Big Head


This is what I looked like on actual Chuseok Day. Renae and I went to the amusement park in Seoul called Lotte World because it would be less crowded on the family gathering oriented holiday. There were still some lines, but from what I hear they were not comparable to the unbearable waits on some busier dates.

They rock Oktoberfest in Korea depending on where you are.


It is 'the thing' at Lotte World to where ears on your head. We didn't go on one of the only rides we waited in line for because we had an appointment time set up for another roller coaster before we got to ride. The other roller coaster was way cooler; "The French Revolution!" It was indoors and we did a loop over and around people on a walkway.

I took a picture of the picture the camera took of me on the coaster. This is, of course, strictly prohibited, but I pleaded ignorance and got a two photos off before they stopped me. This picture is slightly better than the last. I am still messing around with the camera a lot. The bitch is, sometimes, there's no time to adjust settings.

This is about 1/3 of the amusement park. It is muti-leveled inside and there is a large island outside.

They have a magic castle too.


Again, not a great picture, but I was on an escalator and didn't want to go all the way back up and down again. They have countries from around the world represented with their flags and a cartoon character. The United States is a clown named Big Head. All the other countries were pretty dignified in comparison; the Big Head stands alone.

I spent the last hour of my time at Lotte World at a crane game trying to win a stuffed animal. The crane games suck here but I thought I might get lucky. Well on Renae's go at it, the machine malfunctioned and gave us infinite turns. We tried every animal in the cage. One was moving so we tried to edge it towards the hole. We did this for about an hour, then it was time for Lotte World to close and we were very hungry. I have never been so frustrated in my life. I know that I have not learned my lesson and still will try at these impossible crane games until a miracle happens. I will keep you posted...



We had off the day after Chuseok also. It was a Wednesday that felt like 3 Sundays combined. Winding down from a looooong weekend, Renae and I went out for a relaxing day and ended our Chuseok at a jazz club called Once in a Blue Moon. It was the perfect ending for the busy break.

This was in a really high class area. I saw some street art outside of an Armani store. There are a lot of designer stores and high class automobile retailers there. I am not sure if it is an advertisement or a satire but the stencil has a registered "r" on it:



Also in the area was the world's largest tribute to something a few of us at Rutgers invented known as the "1-up." I post these pictures for their pleasure.


Also I found a place to invest all the money I make while I am here:

With a name like that, how could I go wrong? Maybe one day, just for fun...



Updates on other things since then:


Mad for Garlic is a restaurant that has nothing but amazing garlic dishes! Everything was so good. Also the walls are decorated in garlic. There was even a wreath of garlic!

...and ice in their toilets??!



Blue lights are serious.


A creepy outside of a restaurant:




In this version of dodge ball, apparently the opposing team gets to have some people surrounding the other team! Awesome!

When I rule the world this will be the flag:

The Earth will be called Crazy Pepper and everyone will eat awesome spicy food.



A mega crowded hip-hop club.

A not-so-crowded hip-hop club next door to the crowded one.



This picture is from Renae's window. A woman dries peppers on her roof. When I walk down the street there are people who just lay them out on the side of the road. I wouldn't know what to do with so many. Some people do; there is an amazing condiment here: red pepper paste. I love it. I can't get enough of it. It is my wildest flavonoid's dreams come true.

I am gonna go get me some of that pepper paste. Next time I will update all of you on the international drum festival they had here a couple of weeks ago and more!