hope everyone is having a good holiday season. Rest and party and spend time with family and friends! I have been continuing to have a good time here. I was very excited Friday to receive a box of gifts from home, and I'm enjoying the fact that the school term is winding down. We've got some fun staff events coming this week, and then it will be Christmas, new student orientation, and winter camp / AP Psychology time! It will be a calm January and start of February, and then I'll be off to China. I got my visa for China with no issues, and I've booked my flights and hotels. I just need to book my Great Wall tour and get a basic plan sketched in for the rest of my time there. Now on to the photos.
So, I got to go to a cool National Geographic photo exhibit with a friend. It was really cool to see all the photos. They were all really cool and beautiful. There were some I'd seen before, but it was still great to see them all blown up huge. We had a good time there. I was surprised that we were there for about two and a half hours looking at the photos. Naturally we weren't supposed to take photos in the exhibit (not that that stopped everyone), but we did get a few photos outside the exhibit proper.
It's been snowing more often. There have been a few large dumps of snow, though they've always gone and melted over the few days following. This shot behind the school shows some decent snow cover one morning.
Also snow related, here's a video of some students playing football while it was snowing. The snow was coming down in pretty big flakes, but it didn't stick around for long. I took the video from one of the walkways between two of the buildings, and I also walk into the school and go to the window in my office to give you all a bit of a view into the school. Someday I should do a video tour of the school.
And while I'm showing videos, here's one of my washing machine. I've been meaning to catch it during it's massively joy-filled "I'm done washing your clothes, Dan!" song. I thought it was funny that after I had posted it, YouTube showed me all the other happy washing machine songs people had posted. Apparently this is a common thing to post on the internets.
There was a German Christmas market at Seongbukcheon Square. Since it was so close to home I went a couple of times. It was really small, as expected, but still alright. The sausages were crap, but the mulled wine and waffles were good. Also there's a giant Christmas tree there, which is sweet. The market's gone, but the tree stays.
After one of the German market visits we went to Hyehwa and checked out another of the Pal bars. These places are really dimly lit, and might seem kinda sketchy, but they're not that bad. I'm sure you'll appreciate the red neon and candlelight!
One afternoon I visited the National Museum with a friend. I hadn't been back since I returned to Korea. This is the view north from the Museum building.
A simple view of part of the Museum. It's a huge place. It's tough to walk through more than about half the permanent collection in one visit. This photo is taken from the mid-point of the museum, with the permanent exhibitions on the left, and the special exhibitions are held in the other half, off-shot to the right.
One night a few of us ended up at a Silent Disco in Hongdae. We were all given wireless headphones, and jammed to the same music. There were a few DJs playing music. The music was pretty hit and miss, but it was still a good time.
There were a lot of santas in Hongdae that night. One was dressed up as this hilarious bear. Anyone recognize this bear? lol.
Here's me at the silent disco. Note the awesome scarf. Tis my favorite scarf of all time.
One of my friends is a design student. She made this awesome hamburger! It's made of various material that aren't food, but looks good enough to eat! The whole thing can be taken apart and put back together. I was very impressed.
We've been hitting up Korean bbq lately. It's awesome as always. This was at the High Fire Mountain place in Hyehwa. I like it better than the other place next door.
So I went snowboarding with a few coworkers on Wednesday. We went after school, and first went to a really good dakgalbi place. The chicken was grilled on stone slabs built into a table, with fire underneath them. See the video of the grilling below. It was really good, and got us well ready for our skiing and snowboarding.
Grilling dakgalbi.
And here is a shot of some of the other tables at the dakgalbi barn.
So snowboarding went well. We were at a ski resort called Elysian near Gangchon. I tried to teach a couple of my coworkers some basic snowboarding, but that didn't go really well. I might try again because one of my friends wants to try to learn. I had a great time, and even though I hadn't boarded for about 5 years it came back to me really quickly. Oh, and the picture shows the spot on my face where I assume I landed. I fell on our last run, and knocked myself out again. This is starting to be a trend, and so I'm going to wear a helmet from now on whenever I board. I'm hoping to go at least a couple more times this season. There are a number of parks nearby, and it's a lot cheaper than in Canada.
And for the last photo, here's my stocking, stuffed with stuff (...), and hung from my air conditioner with glee. I look forward to Christmas when I can open it!
Among other recent events, I went to quiz night at Dillinger's a couple weeks back, and my team didn't do all that well. A friend was hosting the quiz, and it was fun, but I would have liked our team to place higher than 5th out of 7 teams. It was still good times though. I also got to go to a coworker's housewarming party, which was really fun. We ate and drank and talked from about 4 to 8. It was really fun. I was honoured to be invited and go share the company of some great people. And most recently, I got to see a friend and meet her husband. I saw them the night before they flew back to the States. It was good to meet her husband.
Yup, alright, I think that's most of what's been going on. I am still having a great time, and I hope all my readers are as well. Oh, and here's a special shout-out to my readers in Russia. I'm not quite sure why, but readers from Russia have taken the second place in my reader stats, pushing Canada down to third. I enjoy checking out the stats and charts built on them!
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all, and I hope you have a good transition into 2011!
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