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.

Parents visit to Noryangjin

A couple weekends ago, my parents came to town for the weekend. It was great to be able to show them around the city, and to see them again. As I will not be going home for Christmas, we got together and celebrated an early Christmas.

So, this is the kind of thing you could be in for if anyone came and visited me out here *hint hint* lol.

My parents arrived Saturday morning after an overnight flight from singapore. As they were rather tired, we kept it pretty low key on the Saturday. We mostly just stayed in and gave christmas presents. My parents gave me a vareity of beads and art supplies... they know how to spoil a girl :). Incuded was a package of this powder they picked up (palm tree?). You mix it with water and get a mouldable paste. After you mould it and it dries, you have a beautiful, rather hard and durable-ish piece that you can do with as you please. My mom made beautiful praying hands that she showed me. Traditionally, they are made to be burned, but i bet it could work well for jewelry pieces too :). I usually post pics to my other blog, but for these ones i'll post here when I finish a couple of pieces.

After all the present excitement, it was time for supper. I decided to take my parents to Noryangjin, the huge fish market here. Mom had WAY too much fun wandering around, picking the two best fish to eat for our supper. Really a great time. We had a flat long fish, a fat fish, scallops, and shrimp. Such a great meal :). The picturesdon't show just how large the place was.



picture from upper balcony. The grey things in front there are all shrimp.


Plates of sashimi (you get the whole plate for about 20$). Also, large rays. Delicious? I'm unsure.


We didn't eat any of these fish.


We ate the long, silver fish here. They were a little bony and soft for my tastes, but still very tasty.

So, that's the saturday. More to come about our sunday in Insadong and Korean BBQ.

SamGyeTang

Ryan and I have both been hit by the cold this week that has been slowly and ominously passing down the staff-room line, myself worse than Ryan. As colds go, it's really not too bad, mostly just a racking cough. However, we want to be as careful as possible as our school isn't exactly generous with sick days. Following Korean custom, people drag their butts into work no matter how sick they are. This is how the cold has been able to roam so freely around our staff, as no one is going home.

So, our boss invited my boyfriend Ryan and I out for supper on Monday night (which was truely lovely of her). As soon as she found out we were both sick with colds, she immediately suggested that we go out for SamGyeTang, the Korean version of chicken noodle soup.


Like the bad blogger I am, i did not take pictures while there. However, I searched Google Images and found this to be the closest there. It essentially is a whole boiled chicken, stuffed with glutinous rice inside. The broth itself is filled with uncut (because they say it keeps the nutrients in better) ginseng, pieces of bark, dates, other dried fruits, garlic (as i said, uncut cloves) and various other hunks of herbs and spices. The result is an extreemely tender chicken, but with really mushy rice.

Final verdict after trying SanGyeTang... prob not for me. It was really fatty soup since the chicken skin was still on, but lacked a lot of flavour. This is a soup known for it's 'well-being' (koreans are really big on random 'well-being' things) rather than it's taste.



On the other hand, Ryan made me chili tonight. Very delish.

Cute students

Wow. It's been a really long time since i posted here. I have been putting most of my time into my art blog, which details my jewelry. I know this bores most of you to tears, which is why i have two blogs. However, if some of you have changed your mind or didn't get the link, my art blog is at www.meisterdalediane.blogspot.com

Things are fine here in Seoul. Teaching is going much better now that the hours have lowered from ridiculous (9-7:30 monday to friday, and sometimes working saturdays) to difficult (9-6 MWF, 9-7:T Th, no weekends). The pay went down slightly, but i just didn't care.

I really love my kids. The kids are really high level, and even my lowest kindies can hold conversations in english. My parents were just visiting last weekend, and I showed my mom the school on monday. She was suitably impressed.

I will be trying to continue to post more as time goes on. As I leave you after this rather short post, I leave you with pictures of grade two students in moustaches. Oh R2 class, you are my favorite. You're just too too cute. The front girl in the yellow shirt is Dallae, and the serious(ish) boy beside her is Dong Gun.

Beach Weekend

I had a wonderful time this weekend, spending time in Busan. Last month, a trip was set up for this weekend, for a bunch of teachers to go off for the weekend. 100$ for a train tickets and two nights hotel sounded pretty good.
Busan is on the southern tip of the country, so we took the bullet train to get there. We all met up at the station after work... all 30 some of us. Loaded up on the train and rocketed off for the 3 hour trip to Busan. The bullet train we took motered at 300 km per hour, so that gives you an idea of the distance we were going.
Once we arrived there at around 1:30, the lot of us checked into the motel and dropped stuff off. We were staying at the 'lovely' Bally Motel. While it is definately a 'love motel' (the type of motel people usually pay by the hour), it was only 5 minute walk from the beach and we were able to book the penthouse level for the 30 of us. We had three rooms for staying in... two designated as 'party rooms' and one 'sleeping people room'. I'll give you one guess as to which one i picked (if you guessed sleeping room you guessed right). The room was large but only had 2 beds for 10 of us (the rest slept on mats on the floor). Luckily, Ryan and I raced in first and staked out our territory on one of the beds in a seperated bedroom. No floor sleeping for us

!

After getting settled, it was time to go to the beach. No matter that it was 1:30 am.... the beach was calling way to strong to this Sask girl, and i know from previous times how enchanting the ocean can be at night.... i think i prefer it at night? We went to teh beach and an ajuma (old married woman) was there selling roman candles and sparklers on the beach. We had went with Sylvia, a lovely Texan that we met on the train and spent most of the weekend with, and she bought some roman candles. I was dubious at first, but they were so fabulous when she shot them off. We also bought a couple sparklers and had a wonderful time holding sparklers, sitting on the sand by the dark, peaceful ocean.

These pictures are of Sylvia, holding roman candles (none of my pictures of shots really turned out, but http://ryan-howse.livejournal.com/ Ryan's did.If you want to see more pictures from this trip, i'd click over to his blog as he also used his camera.

We stayed at the beach till about 4 am. After this time, we were feeling kinda hungry. We went walking around, and saw this guy making fried sandwiches as streetfood. We thought it was ham, but post-order realized we'd gotten spam sandwiches. Fried spam sandwiches all around! Spam spam spam spam spam...... eugh.... but we were hungry. Here's the fried spam sandwich guy. He was so friendly, i just had to take a picture. Round 4:30, we finally hit bed.

This was the whole of my existance from about 1 pm till 6 pm Saturday. We plunked our butts down on the beach with a bunch of other people, and just stayed there all day. I did some beachcombing and found beautiful sea glass (my first time!) and shells along the sides. I'll be blogging about that on my other art blog, Flights of Fancy http://meisterdalediane.blogspot.com/ if anyone is interested in checking that out.

I also did a little walking around along the boardwalk. However, mostly, we just plunked our butts down on the sand and enjoyed. The water was still quite chilly, but i enjoyed wading a little in my new boyshorts (bought at a 7-11 for 6$!). That night we went out for supper, played some cards and had a couple drinks, and then went back to the beach for the evening. It was wonderful.

Nothing much happened today. We went back to the beach for a bit, had a wonderful champagne brunch (with the best champagne i've ever had... in korea! who'd have thought?) and then caught the train back to Seoul.

Just chillaxing now, pretending work doesn't exist tomorrow, and basking in the warmth of poor ryan's red, sunburned head. I know there isn't many pictures here, and it's because ryan's camera is better than mine. If you want to see more pictures, just pop on over to his blog http://ryan-howse.livejournal.com/

Dale's going to a metal show

Back in Regina, I took ryan to a local folk show. It sucked, to be short. The bands either had more enthusiasm than talent, half the band didn't show up, or were so boring they put valium to sleep. As Ryan doesn't exactlly like folk music in the first place, he was all 'You owe me'.

Well i guess it's payday.

Tonight, I am going to Asian Metal Fest.

Actually, i'm kind of looking forward to it. I do so enjoy hearing live music, and i am looking forward to going out to one of my favourite areas of Seoul (so far) to do it, in Hongdae. I've even decided to really get into the fun of it and dress appropriately (or as close as I get to it). Above you can see me dressed as i will be tonight. It is kind of hard to make out details, but if you could see closely, you'd see that today when i went out shopping, i bought burgundy tights and fishnet stockings. I am wearing the tights with fishnets on top. Also, i bought one of those underskirt things that i am seeing all over korea (you wear it under your skirt and the bottom peeks out below your skirt, to give it more body, length, and fabric variation).

As well, i have been tinkering this week and made a necklace for me to wear tonight as well. The frame and the red part were painted by myself. It's clasp is a huge clothespin with beads, worn on the side. I bought the chain and the pin in Dongdaemun (the gigantic, cheap, bamboozling shopping market here in Seoul).

So, wish me luck and hope that my more hipster/nerd roots don't show through, and that the koreans don't elbow me too hard when i am learning to mosh haha.

Edit: I took this picture afterwards, and added it so that you can actually see the fishnets. /you can really see the crinolin of the underskirt too. There... tasha... now you have your pictues :).

Shopping Saturday

Yay! Finally Saturday! This week seemed especially long, frustrating and stressful at work. It is the start of a new semester, and there are a few glitches we are still trying to iron out. Things are going okay considering the circumstances and being short-staffed, but it makes for an exhausting week, no question.

So, to celebrate the weekend's arrival, i went out shopping/exploring today. I set forth on my own!

I started off with a really tasty lunch in Gangnam, seen here. My orriginal plan had been to go to Paris Croissant, but I was distracted by this cute looking coffee-shop, Cafe Pascucci. I had a wonderful ham and cheese panini, that came with a couple chips. The iced tea sucked, but everything else was nice.

.

After catching lunch, I wandered by Lush to buy some fancy smelling soap (Karma.... what an odd but cool name for a soap). I also did some shopping when i was in the subway station. Here in Seoul, they have stores inside the subway stations, underground. I found this store that had these really cute shirt/dresses, on sale for 10$. What a great price for such cute clothes! I liked that store... The unfortunate part was that it did not have change rooms. You could not try on the clothing. However, the clothing was the looser, wear a belt with it, one-size-fits-all type. You think i'd have learned by now, but, without thinking, i picked the nice, on sale shirt.... with elastic under where the boobs go. Unfortunately, my boobs are a little.... large.... even by Canadian standars. By Korean standards.... sigh. The rest of the shirt fits me fine, but the elastic cuts right across the middle of my boobs.

Anyone want a super cute shirt? I could ship it to you. I'd hate to see the thing go to waste. It's nice and long, long enough to wear as a shirt/dress with tights. I think it would fit many of you gals. Here's a couples pics.

The necklace you see there was one i just finished off today. More info about that will eventually be posted to my other, art related blog, http://www.flightsoffancy.blogspot.com/.

After buying the cute shirt (which i am so sad doesn't fit!) I took the subway to Yangjae and, after much trouble and help from a nice Korean buisness man with minimal english, I found the Yangjae Flower Market.

The Yangjae Flower Market is the largest flower market in Korea. The hours seem very strange to me... the cut flower portion opens at 4 am! I don't fully understand that. Their hours are from 4 am to 3 pm. Maybe florists here are really really big morning people?? hahaha. Who knows. Either way, after spending too much time shopping in Gangnam and then having such trouble finding teh place, i didn't get to see the cut flower part. However, the live plant greenhouses were open all day as the plants are not transported back and forth (unlike the cut flowers, where sellers set up new booths every day). For under 20$, I got a two really nice ceramic pots that would have been quite pricy at home, a big bag of dirt, an applemint plant and some rocks. I was quite pleased with this. Now i am able to transplant my palm tree (mentioned earlier) as it has grown too big, and also grow a pretty little applemint plant in my appartment. Very exciting :).

Here are some pics i took around the greenhouse. I almost walked home with one of these beautiful Calla lilly plants (the yellow ones) but they were a little more pricy than my bargain, 2$ applemint (since they were 25$).

I really need to get more regular about posting here. Some people are saying i need to update more often, and they are right. I have a bunch of photos i took on Lunar New Year that i still haven't shown.... bad me. At this rate, i'll just save them and show them next New Year haha.

Korean Clothing

Just a short post this time... i don't have that that many pictures to upload here. Ryan and I have been really taking things easy this week as we were both quite QUITE sick. I am pretty much over it (but still a little shaky) but Ryan is still working his way through it. Poor ryan :(


So, I have a couple of clothing type pictures to upload here. This may bore some people.... it may delight some people... whatever.


First of all, i thought i'd mention, especially with 'Pink Day' (anti-bullying day... look it up if you don't know about it) comming soon, the extreme prevalence of males wearing hot pink here. I swear... it is very common here. Pink shirts, pink ties, pink pants, pink scarves... it's all fair game. And honestly.... it looks really good on them! Hot pink is such a vibrant colour, and it looks great with the black black hair that is everywhere here. The picture is one i secretly took of a guy and his pink scarf on the subway. Just thought it might be interesting to some people at home.



Quite some time ago, i was looking around in the highly fashionable (but not the most fashionable) district of Sinsa. I found this clothing store that had such interesting clothing! I just loved so much of the clothes there. They had a more sculptural, interesting feel to them. I especially liked this skirt. It was only 50$.... i figure once i have made some money here i will splurge and go back to that store to buy me a fun, vintage style, interesting skirt. One of the other teachers at the school wears things like this to work, and i can't help admiring how great she looks in them every day.

Hongdae

Wow... i am starting to kinda fall behind with the posting here... I am getting more pictures than i have put up posts for sure. A couple weeks ago, I was surfing around the internet, looking at some of the fun Seoul blogs that i have found, and a couple were talking about the Hongdae area in Seoul. Hongdae is the neighborhood with the major Fine Arts university in Seoul, so the area surrounding it is kinda arts heavy. For me, this works out great. I decided to go visit the area, as it was told to have a large arts supply store and also a large english magazine store.

Upon arriving, there were many restaurants around the subway station, mostly seeming to specialize in seafood (not exactly a rarity in Korea). Here in Korea, it is very common to see fishtanks with live fish, crabs, squid etc outside restaurants. It is fascinating to stop and look in the aquariums as you go by, like looking through a pet store... where people eat the pets? I have one such fishtank filled with live squid right at the base of my appartment, for the restaurant that is on the first floor. In Hongdae, the crabs looked particularly delish (they were HUGE!). If i ever get the hankering for some seafood i think that the crab restaurant there would be best. These pictures of the 'local wildlife' around the Hongdae subway station.



After walking for a bit, I was getting closer and closer to the university area. Walking around, I found MANY bars and clubs that looked interesting (Hongdae has a very strong clubscene). Many seemed to have live music, which is a huge plus for me. I also saw many many restaurants, many looking interesting. I found quite a few dessert restaurants as well... if i had been hungry i think i'd have had a very hard time resisting this awesome looking waffle and ice cream place.



In the end, through much wandering, asking for directions with much charades, and the help of one PC bong (computers with internet rentable by the minute for very cheap) where i printed off a map, I was able to find the art supply store. I was pleased to find the sheet metal i needed there that i had up till now been unable to find. However, even with help, i was unable to find the large english magazine store. Oh well, there is always next time. Next time if ryan and i ever feel like going to a club, we will go there for supper, then the magazine store, and then to a club to make an evening of it. That could be fun :).

Speaking of fun.... i will let this last picture speak for itself. HAHAHA

Jazz night, seeing Owen Hart Jr. play

This post has been waiting a bit of time for me to have a chance to type it up and post it. I am really keeping very busy here with work. The hours are kind of long... I try to get to the school at about 9:15 and i don't leave the school until 7:30 pm. It does feel like all ryan and i have time to do during the week is work, though. By the time we get home and have supper and such, it's usually about 9 pm... leaves 2 hours to do things before i try to get to bed around 11ish. It really makes for a long day... but the kids are great and the money is good so i am not complaining.

About two weeks ago, Ryan and i saw a poster taped to the ground in front of the subway station. Really... the poster was just taped to the ground. I guess they are going for a place people would be guaranteed to look? They were posted all over the place. I took a quick picture of the website portion of the poster and decided to check it out. I was intrigued by the promise of jazz on the poster, and the picture of a sax player doin' his thing. It's no trombone, but a girl takes what she can get.



When checking the website, I discovered it was in Korean (duh!). Luckily, the Korean staff at the school are very kind and helpful, and one of them helped us out by calling the phone number listed, and getting general directions to the place we are going to. We discovered it was in the Nakseongdae neighborhood, which is only one subway stop off of ours! She typed up directions as she was talking, but they were all in hangul so i could not understand them. I had to run to teach class then, and by the time i went back to get those typed directions she was gone!!!

So, Ryan and i went for a nice supper at Subway (the Nakseongdae location is the only location we know of!) and then we decided to just start looking around. Half an hour later, we were still searching for this club. We saw posters everywhere, taunting us, and the posters even had a map, but we did not understand as all the landmarks were in hangul (hangul being the korean alphabet). After a while, exasperated, i am ashamed to admit that i ripped down one of their posters with a map on it (i figure it couldn't do them THAT much good 20 minutes before the show started). I then tried asking koreans as they passed where the heck we were on the map, as we had been walking for a bit. We discovered that the best time to get koreans to help you find something is while they are waiting at the light... look for someone youngish, dressed in buisness dress, waiting for a light so they aren't busy. They usually speak enough english to point you in the right direction for what you are looking for (the buisnessy young people speak the most english).

After discovering the 'ask while they wait for the light' tactic, we finally made it to the Mo' Better Blues Bar club, 5 minutes before the show was supposed to start! The club was small and smoky, but very cozy. The owner of the club was very friendly and spoke fair excellent english. He came over to have a quick chat and drink with us, as the set was starting. He seemed like a very friendly guy. The bar made EXCELLENT tequila with lime on the rocks too... using top quality tequila (NOT Jose Cuervo!) and even top quality lime mix.






















Owen Hart Jr. was the feature musician of the quartet that night. Apparently, so the owner says, he is a very big jazz drummer in Europe. After seeing him play, i could easily see why. The rest of the quartet (a bassist, a pianist and a saxophonist) were quite good, but Owen's solos were nothing short of amazing. His solos were really quite inventive and he kept the tension tight all through his solo. I remember Dr. Lewis, an old jazz director of mine, used to say that any band can play loud. It takes a truly skilled band to play quietly. Owen mastered the art of dynamics within his solos, playing occasionally just above a whisper in his solos, with the audience so fascinated you could have heard a pin drop. Those are magical moments. Not only were Owen's solos awesome, but he truly mastered the art of leaving spaces and having quite sparse but meaningful spurts during the other's solos. In short, WOOO for Owen Hart Jr., and not only because he put me on the guest list after i messaged him about the show on myspace :).

All in all, it was really a fabulous night. Ryan seemed to quite enjoy himself as well, and was also quite impressed by Owen. I do plan on going back to that club for sure, especially after we discovered, on the way home, that it is only a 20 minute walk from our house (we didn't even need the subway!) However, i think this will have to wait until after we have been paid, as it came to quite an expensive night! We didn't get a receipt we understood and don't know whether it was Ryan's cover charge (which they put on the final tab) or my expensive tequilas that pushed it up, but for 2 drinks and 2 cokes came to 40$. If ryan had been drinking too, we really could have racked up quite the tab that night. However, it was worth it, as the atmosphere was great and the jazz was fabulous. I look forward to going back again :).

Winter festival!

Last weekend, Ryan and I went to the Hi! Seoul Winter Festival. It is a bit of a christmasy thing, but the light displays stayed up until January 18th. The winter festival included such things as a large outdoor skating rink (so crowded it looked like bumper cars, especially as Koreans are not known for their skating abilities), a couple music acts (that we missed), and beautiful light displays along the Cheonggye Stream .

The Cheonggye Stream is an interesting part of Seoul. After the Korean War, that was one of the poorer neighborhoods in Seoul, and it was unfortunately right around City Hall. The city decided to revitalize the neighborhood, and one of the ways they did this was by creating an urban stream that goes right through Cheonggye. The 'stream' is beautiful, featuring such things as a waterfall, bridges, tunnels and, for the festival, beautiful lighting displays. Here are some pictures of Ryan and i along the stream, with the pretty pretty lights.





We had a wonderful time walking along the light displays. We saw the 'digital garden' but it was lame (classical music playing with a projector and pictures of flowers). We were FREEZING as it was kinda cold that night, and we rejoiced when we saw a huge bookstore to warm up in, Young Poong. The place was HUGE, featuring three floors of books, DVDs, music and even a section with jewelry beads (YAY!!). Ryan was very pleased to pick up some classic books. Having happily bought jewelry supplies and cheap english books, we went home.

On our way home, we saw a balloon blowing in the wind. The wind was QUITE strong that night, and the balloon was blowing crazily all over the place. Ryan decided to save the balloon as a present to me. The picture here is of ryan, triumphantly holding the balloon he rescued for me. It was pretty funny watching Ryan nab it. The balloon was blowing unpredictably and wildly in every direction... it did not want to be caught!


Apparently, as part of the winter festival, they even had horse drawn carriage rides! I don't even want to think about how expensive they probably were. The roads in Seoul are very very busy all the time, packed with cars. I can't imagine how they do these rides. I was intrigued, and satisfied myself with a picture of the horse drawn carriages in Seoul.

How to Eat Korean Barbeque

Friday night, Ryan had a mad craving for some Korean Barbecue. I have never had 'real' korean barbecue. I have had bulgoghi (beef barbecue) in regina. However, due to fire codes, Canada cannot have real korean barbecue.

At an authentic korean barbecue restaurant, you are seated at a low, low table (about the height of my knees off the ground) and you get pillows to sit on, on the ground. I do wish it was more like Michi at home, where they have a hole in the ground where your legs go. However, this is not so much the case here. You sit cross legged on your pillow at the low table. In the middle of your table is a grill. There are hot hot coals glowing underneath, and a metal grill is put on top.

Here is what we did at the BBQ restaurant!!

1) After your grill is set up by the waiter/waitress, go to the buffet. Here you will see a variety of vegetables, salads, dipping sauces, mandu (delicious, delicious korean pork dumplings), rice, and a variety of raw meats. You take meats on one plate, everything else on the other. Rice goes in little bowls that go along with it.



















The picture here is Ryan bringing over the rice for our BBQ.

2)Next thing you do is put the raw meats on the grill. The meats included beef strips (delicious, as beef is rare here in korea), a variety of cuts of pork, and many different types of seafood. You lay the strips of raw meat out on the grill, along with vegetables such as onions, garlic, and sweet, sweet enochi mushrooms. This is also a good time to fry the mandu. Some people do not fry their mandu here, but i like my dumplings to be hot so i do.




















This picture is of our fully loaded grill. We had beef strips, an onion, and a couple mandu on the go.

3)Once the meat and vegetables are fried, you then take them onto your plate.




















Here is my plate all prepped for it, with a little bit of salad on the side. You can see the large plate of lettuce in this picture too. The second picture is of ryan with his plate all prepped to go.

4) The next step is take a lettuce leaf and lay everything out on it. One strip of meat, some mushrooms, some garlic, some spicy pepper, and i like to put some rice. It gets layed out like a wrap would.


















Here is ryan with everything layed out on his lettuce leaf.

5) You then roll up the lettuce wrap. I like to dip mine in the dipping sauce then. Once dipped, you devour the thing. If you are a newb at this, like me, the getting of the lettuce wrap in the mouth is not always a pretty thing... More of a shoving of it in the mouth direction without it all falling apart hahaha.





















This picture is first of me dipping my wrap, and then devouring the product.

We had so much fun at the korean bbq restaurant. Final price... 18$ for both of us to eat. That is so very reasonable, for two people to eat buffet! Especially considering that they had pretty good beef, which is rare here in korea (they usually have pork or seafood instead). It was only a 2 minute walk from the subway station, so it is quite close to home and in our neighborhood. I plan on definitely coming back to this delicious restaurant again for some sweet, sweet korean barbecue.