Chiang Kai-shek Memorial

been looking for a nice flickr/wordpress gallery plug-in to display my various photos without having to add post after post for each picture. and tonight i finally found one that fits my needs it’s called slickr, and after some tweaking and style adjusting, i got it working and looking good. (but if you have any problems with it or see any errors, feel free to leave a comment) just click the new photos link at the top of the page. you can’t leave comments on the photos here, but if you go to my flickr page, you can leave comments on the individual photos

recorded this while i was at a cross walk during my trip to Taipei, Taiwan. it seems everyone has a scooter here. can you count them all?

[media id=5 width=400 height=300]

i’m amazed at how fast the time here has gone by… i haven’t updated my site for a long time. i’ll try to recap what’s been going on lately.

school:

i finished level 2! yay! but didn’t do well on the midterms and the finals weren’t too good either… long story short; i didn’t score high enough to pass the class, so now i’m retaking it. i just started the new semester yesterday and so far i feel much more comfortable in the class. i can understand the teachers when they speak a lot better then the first time i started level 2. so i think it should be good this 2nd time and i plan on getting an A!

vacation:

after the 2nd semester ended, i had just under 2 weeks of vacation here. a friend from the US was also on his spring break and flew out here to visit. he stayed here for a few days and we traveled to see Seoul Tower, a Korean Folk Museum next to Lotte World, saw the DMZ along with traveling inside one of the tunnels the North Korean’s were digging, visited the Changdeokgung palace, which was the secondary palace for the king, and also did some various wandering arounds in Seoul.

after the time here, we hopped on a plane for a short trip to Taipei in Taiwan which was also a lot of fun! in Taipei, we visited the Taipei 101 building which is super-duper tall! and we also visited the BIG National Palace Museum with lots of old old Chinese art and other things. we saw the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall which was very big. while we were there, we got bombarded by some high school kids who seem to love talking to foreigners. they said they were doing a report on foreigners and asked us questions about Taipei/Taiwan, and then proceeded to want to take many pictures with us. i was able to give them my camera to get a picture of all of us too hehe. it was fun! after we were walking away, i saw them rushing over to another foreign guy to get pictures with him too XD we also met up with some of my friend’s co-worker friends at Intel who he has met on various business trips out there and ate lunch together. the trip was a lot of fun overall, but unfortunately i was still playing catch-up on sleep from the previous studying for finals the week before… so that tiredness plus the huge amount of walking we did really wore me out XD

Silly Taiwan Highschoolers

i took a lot of pictures and have been uploading them to my flickr page. i’ll be making separate posts with these, but you can check out all the pics now if you want here.

other things:

hmm, what else has been going on? the weather here in Seoul has been warming up–it’s usually in the 40′s and low 50′s now. i’ve been really hooked on Lost and 24 and squeeze in time to watch these in between studying.

i’ve been wanting to do some other things here lately. mainly revolving around art/creativity. i haven’t done much in the way of drawing/designing anything for a long time now, and i’ve been craving it. if i figure out how to better manage my time here, i’d like to maybe make some short comics about “Korean life” and/or do some more webpage designing.

hmm, that’s it for now. i’ll try to post more often

A from Z...?

after the month or so long break in December, i started the 2nd semester at Yonsei. i wish i had studied more during the first semester and the break, because it’s been very tough. mainly because i’m still not yet thinking in Korean… and it shows because i have trouble most of the time understanding what the teacher says. that, and i failed two of my mid-terms so, i’m pushing myself to study more and memorize more of the phrases and vocabulary we learn better. i have found myself getting a little better at understanding and memorizing the words. the more i use them and hear them, the better it sticks in my head. i have 5 weeks until finals, so hopefully i’ll get better before then and ace them

the weather here has been warming up into the mid 40′s and sometimes low 50′s which has been a lot nicer than the cold 20′s and below that it was a few weeks ago.

the picture is just a random shop in Korea that uses English almost correctly

Christmas here in Korea was enjoyable. it went by about as quickly as it does in the US which is always too fast. on Christmas Eve, i went to a Christmas Party at my church which was a lot of fun. we had Korean food for dinner, watched a video about Christmas which happened to be in English and had no subtitles, so most of the people ended up just talking to each other, then there were many different performances regarding the story of Christmas and also other interesting things, including a traditional Korean dance by a girl decked out in the fancy traditional clothing. some of the people at church somehow talked me into participating, so i became shephard #4. we had to make our own costumes, and i had nothing to use to make a shephard outfit, so i just looked like one of the few foreigners standing there reading his one line to the crowd XD we didn’t practice much, and so we got the audience laughing a lot… all unintentionally. someone dressed up in a santa outfit and gave gifts to all the children–they seemed to enjoy it a lot.

i spent Christmas day opening gifts my family sent me in the morning–my parents even sent me a tiny plastic Christmas tree after that, i was invited a gathering with all of the English speaking foreign single adults in Seoul from my church. not sure how many there are total, but there was about 25 people there. we played games and talked and had a turkey dinner. it was nice, since i’ve yet to find turkey here in Seoul (though i haven’t set out to really search for it), and it also reminded me of home with everyone getting together and having fun and eating a lot

last saturday night was a church Dance Party which was a lot o fun, but defintely too short. the organizers meant well, but too much time was spent in various activities to try to get all of us to socialize and get to know each other better. it’s strange, but i’ve found myself much much less shy here than when i’ve been in the US. but i think most Koreans seem to either be very shy around foreigners, or they’re very outgoing and walk right up to talk to you. many of them know English in varying degrees, so i can still communicate with them. i try to speak to them in Korean, but still have troubles with the speed in which they speak–too fast!

not sure what i’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve/Day here. it’s another holiday that’s not as big here as it is in the US. the Lunar New Year is very big here though, so that should be fun (unless i’m home alone for the 3 day event :p)

i’ll try to get some new pics up soon

i finished up the first semester a week or so ago. the finals were tough.  i didn’t study as much as i should have, and the listening and speaking tests showed that… and that which i did study i seemed to have forgotten during the tests also… overall i passed the 1st semester with a 75%. not horrible, but i would have been happier with a B. i’m now a week into my month long vacation before the 2nd semester starts. all the other students in Seoul are in the middle of their finals right now. i’ve been attempting to study alone at home, but have found myself easily distracted by computer, games and tv. i’m slowly getting into a routine. i’m hoping soon i can get some practice with speaking and listening with some of the Korean friends i’ve made here. most are pretty busy with school or work right now though.

the weather here has been getting colder. the saturday before last it dropped to 10° F! too cold for my tastes XD but, i went out anyway with some classmates to my teacher’s wedding. the wedding was nice and some of her older students showed up too. they had a big 4 course meal which was all western food (seafood appetizers, cream soup, rolls, roast beef, mashed potatoes and veggies. and fruit for dessert). there seemed to be over 200 people from my quick estimate, so it must have cost them a lot to provide all of the food for everyone. the wedding was held at a wedding hall, so i’m guessing they just paid a (large) fee and let the staff handle everything.

i may be learning some ballroom dances soon i’ve been wanting to learn more swing dance as well as other ballroom dances for a long time now, and today i met someone at church who knows many ballroom dances and is in need of a practice partner for the classes she’ll be teaching. it should be fun i hope

finally got around to uploading some pics from Seoul to my flickr account. check them out here!