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.

Sushi! And Soap!!!

A couple nights ago, Ryan and I went out to his favorite restaurant ever, Mari. From the moment Ryan and I decided we would go to Korea together, he's been all 'I can't wait to go to Mari!'. We went to Gangnam on thursday, and wandered around for a bit. It is a fairly nice area there, with lots of interesting restaurants. Today i went there on my own (MY FIRST SOLO SUBWAY TRIP!). It is an easy subway ride as there is no transfers from our line. I got out of the wrong exit of the huge subway station, but after wandering a bit i ran into the store Lush, which i remembered seeing while walking with Ryan. After that it was smooth sailing.

Bianca, i thought of you as i wandered around the store. (Bianca had previously raved to me about how much she enjoys soaps from there). As well, there was a Korean guy totally hitting on me the entire time. I walked in and he smiled this huge smile and was all "Hello hello come this way i know exactly what you need'. Curious as to what it is that i needed (as apparently he knew better than i did haha) he showed me over the the 'sexy fox' station that they had set up. He then proceeded to hand me at least 5 different products from their 'sexy fox' line. He either was totally hitting on me or REALLY wanted to get rid of that sexy fox stuff. I bought this honey scented bar of soap instead, that has actual honeycomb on it! Very exciting for me :).




















Anyways, as promised, here are pictures of Ryan and I eating delicious Sushi at Mari. My god, I do so love sushi. I ordered the 'Red Green' sushi which had avocado, tempura, fake crab and tuna. Ryan had the delightful 'Philidelphia Roll', which had avocado, cream cheese, some kind of fish, and was rolled in fish eggs. They were truly delicious. I enjoyed it so much i was craving more sushi for lunch today. We went around the corner to the Japanese restaurant. We each ate our fill of sashimi... 7 dollars each! I absolutely love how fresh, delicious and CHEAP sushi is here. Mmmmm.... tuna sashimi... you are my favourite.

Ryan says i must now mock Joel about how much better this place is than Michi. [Insert mocking comment here?]

Pagodas!

A couple of days ago, Ryan and I went to the Insadong area, to do some shopping and some touring around.It really was quite a nice area. We arrived, and wandered through the park surrounding Jogysa temple. As excited as i was to see it, we could not go into the temple because it was closed on tuesdays! We were disappointed, but knew we could simply save it for another trip to the area. However we still enjoyed walking around the park, which gave such sites as my first urban park in seoul, a group of people doing tai chi together in the park and... this bowl/calender thing?



I found myself fascinated by this odd thing. It had a sign with information about it, but it was all in korean (hangul even). No hope understanding that... But from what we could figure out it seemed to be a calender of some kind. We were intrigued.






After the park, we walked around the streets a bit. There were the most fabulous jewelry fabrication stores... all way out of my price range. You know that you cannot afford the gems that they are calling 'beads' at a store when they bring out a miniature scale to weigh the 'bead' for which you are asking the price. The gem shops were plentiful, and gorgeous, but i was afraid to even enter them with so many tempting, beautiful, expensive things.



We finally found a map that showed us the way to get to the shopping street of Insadong... and what do we find right on our path but Tapgol Park! Tapgol is (i think) the korean name for a pagoda. So, essentially, this is Pagoda Park. Here is me standing very excitedly at the gates, looking forward to going inside.


As we enter the park. Note the closest pagoda (same as in next pictures), and the glass behind it encasing another pagoda (shown after).




This is an example of what a pagoda can look like. These pictures show their outside, and their beautiful detailed rooves inside. Ryan 'took one for the team' and layed on his back in the pagoda to get that last picture's angle right.

Finally, this is the oldest pagoda still standing. It is made entirely from stone, and is encased in glass to protect it. This pagoda is said to be over 600 years old.













After having our fun in the two parks, we found the Insadong area. We shopped around and found christmas presents for people, some beautiful handmade paper i bought for myself and ryan oogled the scroll paintings. We both agreed that we would pick up some scroll paintings for our apartment once we have both been paid.