New picture walk

Quite some time ago, when I first moved to South Korea, I put up a picture walk going from my house to the subway station. I like picture walks because it shows the little things that i see along my way... as if you were walking along with me.

Here's a new picture walk, from my house to bring Ryan a forgoten cell phone while he was writing at his favorite cafe.




Here's the front step to my house. Yes, house! I am so pleased to be out of apartements again. We rent a little one story 2 bedroom villa. Here you can see the tiny little garden I built here with random bricks from the neighborhood. I have osteospermum, columbine, pineapple sage, campanula, basil, one pink tulip, and some sprouting lettuce and spinach.


After turning to the right, (you can still see a little of my garden!), you are faced with a steep, crumbly hill. This slope has made nervous many koreans in high heels durring summer, and even myself have to hold onto the wall durring winter. It's really quite steep. It didn't help when a construction company dumped a big pile of sand at the top of it, and now the whole slope is made more slippery by sand everywhere.

You can still see the side of my house in this picture (on the left). Once reaching the top of the hill, you can look down and see the convenience store that is so close to us. This street is also quite run-down and steep, cars rarely drive here, all we get is the occasional motorcycle really (which you can see parked beside my house). I guess when you live on a mountain, steep hills is what you get.

Following the curve of the street you saw previously, you reach my bus stop! This bus takes me up the mountain when I don't feel like walking it. Busses here are really cheap. While there are no monthly bus passes, you load up a money card and it only costs 60 cents per trip.

This is the construction site along the way down the mountain. I have no idea what they're building but whatever it is has a basement, and is quite large. A small apartement building maybe? My area is highly residential, as many foreigners live around here.

Keeping on going down the street. Note the lack of sidewalks... but the cars are usually pretty careful as it is a residential neighborhood and lots of people walk around here. The PB is a Paris Bagette, a large chain here in korea with acceptable french bread.

Here's a small family run grocery store, and a hardward store beside it. The hardware store is closed since it's sunday.

And we've arrived at the cafe to find ryan!

Here's your cell phone, Ryan!

Noraebang fun

Noraebangs are Korea's version of kareoke. Now, back in Canada, I loved kareoke. I did not love sitting and listening to a bunch of strangers sing, but i did love it when my turn/my friends' turn came up. I find it to be extreemly fun, and at about 15$ an hour it's not horribly priced either.


Now imagine... it's only you and your friends that sing, no strangers involved! No drinks sold there (at most, but some exceptions), but you can bring in your own alcohol if that's what you need from one of a plethora of convenience stores (as long as you're discrete, and yes they sell cold alcohol in the convenience stores here).

Not that i usually need 'liquid refreshents'. I see kareoke like i see dancing.... if you will only do it when you're drunk, maybe you shouldn't do it at all? Trust me, we'll thank you for it lol.


Luckily i have a man who feels much like I do. We go singing for the enjoyment of it. Last weekend, we were checking out the arcade while waiting for it to be time to go to our movie (we saw Clash of the Titans and enjoyed it for the silly epic fun it was). Lo and behold, they had tiny individual soundproof (we hope? sorry to others if they weren't haha) noraebang booths. We imediately jumped in for some impromptu fun.

Here's Ryan rocking out.



We only sang one song (it was about movie time) but we made it a good one....

Spring in Seoul

Wow.... practically had to blow the dust off the keys and claw away the spiderwebs before posting this entry here. It's really been a while since i last posted here. Well, here's my update about what things have been like here. I don't want a long rambling post, and most of you already know this stuff if we are close... so i'll keep it short.

-finished my old contract at my previous job. Ended well, but was ready to move on to bigger things.

-started my new job, working at a private elementary school. I love it.

- moved into the central foreigner area here in Seoul rather than the south area. House rather than apartement. It's great, we love it.

-CATS! Meet our kittens, Necro and Thulu.

So, winter is finaly over here in Seoul. I went rollerblading the weekend before last. The air was warm, and even if it was cloudy it felt so good to be out again. I hadn't been rollerblading in over a year, and god, it felt good. I stopped and rested a bit beside the Han river, and saw sailboats. Thought of you, Dad. Maybe we'll go sailing when you come visit? I don't know if you can rent them.

The cherry tree is in my neighborhood, near the busstop. The river picture is a view of part of downtown Seoul and the Han river.

New Years Resolutions

I guess it's that time of year. I've made a couple New Years resolutions.... well more like goals... to keep in mind through the year.

1. To continue to grow as a teacher.

I have a new job starting in march, as previously mentioned, and i look forward to working with real teachers. Some collaborating, curriculum planning together... it's a good thing. I look forward to this oppertunity. Maybe i'll even get some professional development, and learn more about the koeran view of teaching? That would be fabulous. Either way, i hope to continue to become a better teacher.

2. To continue working with my art

When ryan told me i needed to have more specific resolutions, i determined that i wanted to enter a minimum of two online contests with my work (prob my jewelry). I have a bunch of differnt sites i frequent that have regular contests, so the logistics shouldn't be too hard. Only problem with the 'viewer voting' contests is that it often turns into a contest where the winner is the one who's blog gets the most views, as they send over their viewers who vote for them. Either way, the important thing isn't to win, it's just to enter.

3. To improve my trombone playing.

Specifically, i want to improvise publicly once this year on my trombone. I have a meet-up group i play with, and prob will find something through this group.

In closing, here are pictures of me playing and one of some people in my group. I took the pics of the meet-up site, and they were kindly taken by the meet-up leader.

Merry Christmas everyone, and job news

I've got a new job. Starting in march, I will be working at elementary school here in Seoul. It's pretty exciting, as this isn't an after-school academy, but an actual elementary school. This means things like lesson plans, real teaching, and some freedom. I am so very pleased about this. The contract is signed, this is a done deal. My current contract is up only about 3 days before, so i'll have, like, zero time between jobs but that's okay. Another job is in the process of sending Ryan a contract to sign. We are very pleased.

Another plus about this job, and the one ryan's going for, is the drastic increase in vacation time. Both of us will be taking pay cuts, but be working far less hours and get way more vacation. We'll be getting about 3 weeks off in the summer, and hope to come home briefly during that time. A very, very nice thing that our current job didn't afford us.

Well, it's christmas day here in Seoul. Not a lot of exciting things are happening here for christmas, it's not that big of a deal here in Korea. Everyone gets a day off, but it's not a major holiday like Solal ('chinese' new year) is here. That's a much bigger one i'd say. It's interesting the way they do it here. We get a day off for both the Christian holiday of Christmas and the Budhist's holiday of Buddha's birthday. I like how that mixes together. The more holidays i get paid for, the better!

Ryan and i have great plans for christmas break. We'll be heading down to Singapore and staying at my parents place. They are in canada, so it should be so very nice to have a quiet, hot vacation by the pool.

Our place is nicely decorated here for christmas. We've got a tree, and lights all around. I even made a handmade copper star for the top of the tree! It looks great, and i'll be posting pics of it on my other art blog eventually (but prob not till after i get back lol). I'll end this post with pics of ryan and i christmas shopping for ornaments.

To-Do list on a cold rainy sunday

Saturday was a great day. I went out for lunch with an art meet-up group, and bounced ideas about running a casual jewelry workshop. It should be fun.... I will be taking a group of people to the bead area, where we will all go shopping. From there, we can go to a coffee shop and create very very basic style beading necklaces/bracelets. We're talking simple stuff. After seeing how this goes, maybe we can try something more complex? Metal punching, torching, etching, fabric working, collaborative work even... who knows? Maybe I can spark the jewelry bug in other artists. Or maybe we can work together on some assemblage tins? The sky is the limit really... or rather people's interests is the limit. I do have that problem where no one usually is interested in the things that excite me.... but maybe since i'm working with artists it might be different?? Who knows. Worth a try though!

Later Saturday night, I went out for a night on the town with Ryan, in my favorite neighborhood of Hongdae. After happily wandering around and soaking in the mood of the neighborhood, we failed to find the reggae show we were looking for. However, we did find Club Palm, which was had a live jazz group. Lots of jazz, tequilla, wine, and chilling was had. A good night.

But now it's sunday. A cold, rainy Sunday and i'm still sick with bronchitis. As a result, i should not be going inside. A jewelry day it is....

Totally ripping off Joel's livejournal style,.... here's my to-do list for today:

-sleep in
- drill metal tubes
-make sample chips for metal brushes, for knowledge of effect in future use
- aneal more sheet copper (too rainy for torching)
- solder bezels (see above reason)
- do ink transfer onto brass for cuff (ooops! forgot to reverse the text! but it didn't transfer legibly anyways)
- finish fabric cuff (just didn't get to it. not sure where to go next anyways)
- finish purple ribbon necklace
- organize ribbon and fabric shelf
- buy groceries
- slowly go insane from boredom and cabin fever and become depressed at the waste of a day off
- clean appartement
- do dishes
- kick ass at online scrabble


So, I got most of what i wanted done today. All except the torch work... but it was raining so i couldn't go do that outside. Instead of that, I did get lots of other jewelry stuff done. I call this a good day :).

How was everyone else's weekends?

Parents visit to Seoul part 2: Insadong and BBQ

So, here's the second post about my parent's visit here to Seoul. We were all a bit tired after Noryangjin on Saturday night, and went to bed. I dropped my parents off at the lovely "Motel 21" love motel. This motel does not even try to hide what it is there for... check out these door handles.



In case you can't tell, they have naked ladies for their door handles. In order to open the door, it's hard not to grab indecent lady parts lol. But the price was really right, and the place is only 1 block away from my appartement... the location was really it's appeal. Luckily, my parents are the adventurous sorts and found the whole experience hilarious and good for a story.

After a leisurely breakfast at my place of fried eggs, fresh pineapple slices, and assorted pastries, we decided to take the subway to the Insadong neighborhood.


I am pointing to where we started, at Seoul National University. Ryan is pointing to Insadoing, where we are going. Dad isn't even pointing in the city of Seoul.

Insadong is the tradional arts and handicrafts area of Seoul. While we did get lost trying to find the shopping area, we found beautiful streets covered with large fall leaves.



It was almost like a little piece of Canada, but our leaves are nowhere near this huge. We were all completely charmed by the huge mapple leaves.

Finally, we found the shopping area. Insadong is the touristy neighborhood of Seoul, where you can best buy traditional Korean handicrafts. Lots of scroll paintings, art galleries, tea shops, clothing shops, and much more. We had a lovely time searching the tea shops for the perfect teacups, and looking through fabulous art galleries. We encountered some of the local sellers, who were so friendly.



Mandarin oranges are in season now, and they are sold everywhere. This street orange seller insisted that before we could take a picture, he needed to clean up his cart and tuck in his shirt all nice.

After a great time wandering around the shops, it was supper time. We went to a fairly new BBQ restaurant in a neighborhood close to my home, Guro. Korean bbq is really an experience worth having. BBQ here is by far my favorite korean food. I know i've posted about this before, but it's well worth repeating. It's all in the process.

You pick your meat, and then they bring you a big plate of your raw meat and turn on your grill. This one was a charcoal grill. You grill the meat to your desired level of crispiness.



Korean bbq is about more than just the meat, like all korean food it's also about all the side dishes that come with it. We had kimchi, dwenjongjiggae (ryan's favorite korean spicy tofu soup)an order of mushrooms to grill, cabbage salad, rice, seaweed soup, and raw onions in a sweet soy sauce. As for other accompaniment to the meat, we had lettuce, spicy chili sauce, and garlic. Washed it down with a large bottle of beer (really, they're huge here).



Going clockwise from the bowl of soup at the front, Dwenjongjiggae, Onions and sauce, seaweed soup, cabbage salad, lettuce, leftover sauce from onions, spicy chili sauce, garlic, Cass beer, more garlic, kimchi, and rice. We really had quite the full table.



Here's Ryan making his meat wrap. You start with a whole leaf of lettuce, then put rice (if you're me, but many don't). You then put spicy sauce and meat fresh off the grill. Top with garlic (grilled or raw is your choice) and then wrap like a tortilla.

After groaning from eating so much good food, we all went home to sleep it off. Said goodbye to Dad, as he had meetings the rest of the week. The next day I took mom to the school to have her meet my kids and see the school. After suitably impressed her, it was off to the airport for her flight back to Singapore. All in all, a great trip.

This is what i can promise any of you if you come visit lol. Meat, street sellers, fish, art, tea and chillaxing. A good vacation, if you ask me.