Bummin'

Here's a photo my friend Torquil sent me. The picture is of me (note the long hair!) and my friend Scott from Indiana getting ready for some climb in New Zealand. I really like this photo because it shows what my whole year in NZ was like in just one picture. I hope Torquil doesn't mind me posting it on my blog. (Torquil: I'll take it down if you want). Torquil was my best friend during my trip to New Zealand. He's a really great and amazing person. It turns out that he's also an amazing photographer. You can check out his work at:

http://www.torquil.com/

http://www.rufuszebedee.blogspot.com/

Summer Vacation!!!

I'm free!!! Today was my last day of work and I'm off for a one month vacation! It's been a little crazy the last couple days, a few things have gone a little haywire, but I'm back on track. The biggest thing that went down is that I'll be homeless for 3 days. I freaked out at first, but now I'm pretty excited. I think I'm going to camp on the beach and hang out with the Koreans. It should be awesome!

I leave Wednesday, Aug 29th to Yangshuo, China for a rock climbing trip. I'll be gone for 3 weeks. I can't wait! This place is absolutely gorgeous. Here's a picture I sniped from www.xclimber.com:

Poker

I finally found a group of guys that meet up every month or so for some poker. Last weekend, we played a tournament style game of Texas Hold 'em. I lost, of course, then they continued to play a dealer's choice cash game. I was definitely out of that one for now since they played Omaha Hold 'em, which I don't really know how to play. I can't wait to play again to win my money back!

Nostalgia

I haven't mentioned it much, but living away from home for more than a year can take its tolls on the emotions every once in a while. I'll admit that I get a bit homesick at times. During these times, I sometimes go through bits of nostalgia where I look up random stuff on the internet from my seemingly past lifetime. Lately I've been going through music nostalgia due to this recent wind ensemble festival. Through my internet searching, I found these two awesome pieces and a couple other wonderful clips too. These are when I was a member of the Star of Indiana, "Brass Theater" show.



This song is way cool, but I only play in a very short section. You can sort of see me around the 1:00 remaining mark. I'm the front french horn player with the badly dyed yellow hair. The music is "Swing, Swing, Swing" by John Williams (not to be confused with "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Louis Prima)




This is one of my favorites but there's no close ups where you can see me...sorry. Again, I'm playing the french horn. The music is the finale of "Firebird" by Stravinsky.

Thanks to Raquel Rodriquez for posting these videos!

Summer Band Festival

Its time again for the Jeju Summer Band Festival. Not too many people around here know that one of my loves is wind bands, so its been a great few days attending concerts for this festival. I would really recommend for anyone to check out any of the free concerts. They've really attracted some amazing talent this year, and all of the ensembles are phenomenal.

Most of the bands are traditional western wind ensembles, but this one is a traditional Korean orchestra. They had a very unique sound to any that I've heard, but I really enjoyed it.

Rooftop Sunset

It was another gorgeous sunset tonight. A nice evening after the last couple days of thunderstorms.

Lonely Rock

I went out for a nice sunset cruise and found these fishermen sitting on the rock. The lights on the horizon are squid boats.

Kim Jong Il May Visit Jeju in Oct.

From the Korea Herald:

A Grand National Party lawmaker claimed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il may pay a reciprocal visit to the South as early as October after this month's summit with President Roh Moo-hyun.

Wow, who would know I could get even closer to this guy! The headline says that he'll come to Jeju!

End of an Era

I've been without the internet for more than a week now. It's been quite nice actually. Quite liberating also. I seem to be way more productive and do other more interesting things than surf the internet. In the 12 hrs since I've returned to the cyberspace world, I've done many ridiculous things like join Facebook and other waste of time things. However, in defense of those silly things, I've been able to say "Hi" to people I haven't seen in many years.

On the flip side, it's been officially goodbye to Ryan. I'll miss him a lot. He's definitely been my best friend here in Korea and a great friend in my life. We've shared quite a year this year, and I'm proud to have shared it with him. The one thing about the traveling life that I've lead over my life since college is that I really dislike is the fact of saying goodbye, maybe forever, to friends.

Guitar Club

Alaska Sam and Young Suk started a Wednesday evening guitar club jam at a local bar called La Vie.