Summer Camp

This has been my first week of "English Camp". I teach about 15 students, mostly girls, from 1-3 in the afternoon. My theme has loosely been the Olympics. I really would have preferred to do random things all week but the school wanted a general outline and theme months ago so I am kind of stuck with it. I had the students create their own countries as team names, here's what they came up with:

Friendland

Rainbowland and

Unicornland.

Like I said, mostly girls haha.

Teaching these small classes is a really nice change of pace. It's pretty easy to keep order, especially with only 2 boys.

My B day is this weekend and it looks like Korea knew it was coming. There's a free rock festival at one of the beaches and there will actually be a band that I know and like there, Shadows Fall. Some of their songs chuff me a bit. Also there's a Foreigner dingy sailing race. I might attend but I won't be racing. To me racing ruins sailing. If I wanted to race I'd be out there in a Hallet with a blown 502 haha. I feel like sailing should be chill and stress free.

Shadows Fall:



This is definitely not everyone's bag, but the solos are awesome!!! Here's a band FOIL to contrast the previous:

Andy Mckee, the Eddie Van Halen of Acoustic



You really have to watch him to appreciate how difficult his music is to play.

Well, time to prep an Extreme Sports injury lesson!!!

A taste of home

Now that I'm in the land of lightning fast internet I've started watching complete seasons of TV shows I never watched back home. Here's a brief list:

Arrested Development - Funniest Sitcom Ever.
The Wire - Finally a legit crime drama - Rated ARRRRR
Dexter - Creepy Serial Killer show, pretty good though - Rated R +
Battlestar Galactica - I can't believe how good this show is. PG-13?

Once I get a full season of one of these shows they make for a nice background distraction. There are some English channels on cable but I don't have cable and didn't want to pay for it. Also I've seen some of the movies they show on those channels, absolute crap. Google "Dead or Alive" the movie for an example.

I can't wait for "The Dark Night" to come out. I think we have to wait for early August. I have a nonsexual man crush on Cristian Bale.

EDIT: There are a couple of new pictures here for anyone that's interested. Not many, mostly ads.

I H8 Milk

http://www.notmilk.com/

This really has nothing to do with Korea, but I've been looking into the whole milk thing again. Apparently it's worse for you than I thought. If you have the time try to read "The Famous Milk Letter" in the upper left corner of the notmilk website. We are the only animals that drink milk from a different animal. I wonder why someone decided to drink cow's milk in the first place. The worst part is, I'm used to it now and I love cheese!!!!

Na Koh Jid Mal

Here's my new fave Korean song by Big Bang. I love how G they try to be over here. The chorus can be transated as: "I'm so sorry but I love youIt's a lie" Like "Hey, I love you, just kidding." Certain people from college who read this blog might remember a girl named Mina saying something like this:
"Hey Tony, maybe you should be my boyfriend,just kidding." She is Persian but for some reason John Chase would say this with a Speedy Gonzalez accent. Random blog over.

MUDFEST!!!

This weekend I attended the 10th annual Boryeong Mudfest. In case anyone forgot it was the 10th mudfest they made sure to put "since 1998" on everything. This is quite a popular practice in Korea. Restaurants seem to be very proud of the fact that they've been open for 4 years (since 2004!!). Anyhow mudfest was awesome. We caravaned 2 chartered buses full of foreign teachers across Korea so we could cover ourselves in mud and play at the beach.

Things of Note:

Ricardo is now a novice Shark wrestler.
Kevin almost got the Guinness world record for high fives.
I might be in a commercial.
It's OK to cover yourself in mud if everyone else is doing it.
Surgery is pretty difficult to perform (I have a surgeon video game on my Nintendo DS)

A lot of stories, not enough space. Enjoy the pictures:

Punk > Ballads

In Korea most of the music you will hear is obnoxious. The pop songs are blatant rip offs of current hits from the states. The rap all sounds the same and is pretty tame. Everything else resembles some sort of Ballad. Most Koreans love ballads. When I ask the students what kind of music they like they usually say pop or ballads. I guess this makes sense, it's not called pop because it's unpopular. This is a problem because this music does not chuff me. I love to ROCK and you don't hear rock music on the radio or in public that often. This is why I got stoked a couple of weeks ago when I met a Korean guitarist named Hyuk. He was wearing a Chromeo band T-shirt not because he liked the picture-although the picture is pretty rad- but because he actually listens to the band. He has traveled around Canada and possibly the US and speaks great English for a Korean. He is in a Korean punk/ska band and invited me to see one of his shows. After I flaked on the first one I felt obligated to go last night, and I'm glad I did.

There were 8 bands playing in an uncommonly cool basement venue called Moo Monk. 7 bucks later I was actually listening to some music I could bear. I've never been a huge punk fan but anything is better than foreign ballads, especially when leather pants and boots are involved. The bands all had their own niche of the punk sound. Hyuk's band plays feel good ska/punk with a little Social Distortion mixed in. Some were hardcore and screaming (which I like), some even played solos which is rare for a punk band. There are many times that I have felt strange and out of place in Korea but somehow in the midst of mohawks and tattoos I felt more at home than ever.

Afterwards we went to a soju bar. By we I mean myself, another foreign teacher from Daejeon, and every member of every band that played. There were Korean friends and girlfriends thrown in too, but I think I was one of about 4 white faces in 30-40 people. We took over this little soju place and had an awesome time. It's great to see a guy with a red mohawk and a full arm sleeve tattoo run around hugging people. That was my Saturday night, here are a couple crappy cell phone camera pics. I never have my camera when I actually want/need it.

I've also included a picture of the worst tattoo ever. That's how it was introduced to me by it's owner's friends. If you can't make it out it's a cartoony punker kicking a zombie thing (I think it's some kind of metaphor about being against the establishment and white collar jobs). We were all cracking up at it and his excuse was "It was free!" haha. Also there is a bonus pic from a tram in the mountains above (B)Pusan.

Bonus trivia: The Korean letter/symbol for P and B is the same which is why Busan can also be written Pusan. There are a couple of letters like this in Korea, this leads to some pronunciation problems. I think R and L are the same too.