Christmas

Carving the Christmas Turkey

Everyone enjoys the spread

Although I had to work, I had a pretty good Christmas. My friends Amy and Joel are some of the lucky few in Jeju with an oven in their apartment and ordered an 18lb turkey from Seoul. I haven't had turkey in a year and a half and boy was it delicious. I had to work on Christmas Day, thanks to the corporation that I work for, but it wasn't so bad when Emma and Amy delivered me some turkey! The best Christmas present ever!

The Thread

We're Rock Stars! I love Jeju because its like our own little playground in a way. You can pretty much do anything you want! Troy, Betsy, and I decided to become rock stars and we were the opening band for a show at the Led Zeppelin bar last weekend. Our band name is "The Thread" and we played 4 songs lasting 12 minutes! It went pretty well, though the sound was a bit rough due to the electronic equipment. It's a lot different than just playing in your apartment! Our friends Powernomic$ put on a fantastic show, and it was fun being the opening band!

Korean Class

My Korean Teacher

Some Students in the Class

For about a month now, I've been taking a Korean Language class at the Jeju Migrant Worker's Center. It's been a pretty good class for me. The level was actually way too easy for me, but the teacher spoke super fast and was a little difficult to understand. The best part was that she didn't speak any English, and she'd also use children's stories in class that I could break down at home then go to class and practice reading.

The class itself was a bit of an experience since it was full of mostly Phillipino and Vietnamese girls who married Korean husbands over the internet. The girls on the left in the bottom picture are from the Phillipines and the girl between Danielle and I is from Myanmar.

Danielle Teacher

Here's Danielle, the other 'new' teacher at our school. She's practically a veteran now since she's been here five months! She's from some little town near Vancouver, probably less than an hour's drive away from Node. Danielle is here to make a little money and get some teaching experience to get her teacher's certificate back in Canada. These days in Jeju she takes belly-dancing classes, studies Korean, and paints at the arboretum.

Node Teacher

Its probably about time I wrote up about the new teachers at my school (new 4 months ago)! This is Node. He's a pretty wild and crazy guy as you can tell. He loves coffee, games, and now climbing. He's a young one, fresh out of college and came to save some money for grad school in philosophy. Node spends most of his free time writing a book and talking me into getting off my lazy butt and going climbing.

Visitors from the Mainland

Lindsey came down from the mainland for a bit of climbing in Jeju. I had a super awesome time showing Lindsey Jeju's modest little climbing area. She found my blog through the www.koreaontherocks.com message board. She mentioned something about tele-skiing at a ski area 45 mins from her house.....sounds like a trip to the mainland soon!

Ultimate Frisbee

This is quite possibly the worst picture on the blog (I forgot my telephoto lens), but I wanted to write about ultimate frisbee and show a picture of the dirt fields at all of the schools. Every Saturday, a large number of foreigners on Jeju get together to play some Ultimate Frisbee. Ryan did it last year, but I never went because of climbing. Troy talked me into checking it out last weekend and it was fantastic. There were probably about 25 people of all abilities. You could just hop in and run around a bit. It was super fun and I'd suggest it to anyone on the island. There's even an international tournament that comes to the island in the spring.

Diaper Party

My friend Mark is having a baby in January, so while the girls were having a baby shower, Troy put together a 'diaper party' for Mark. I've never heard of a diaper party, but it sure was my kind of party! We hiked Halla Mountain up to the top. It was a nice day for a hike, but the top was quite windy and chilly. This was 2 weeks ago, and the last day before the snow came.

Mark on the Trail

It was tough, we were practically crawling our way up!

Nice stick

Mark: Future Father of baby Noah

We were pretty exhausted when we got to the top

Still... Busy! Busy! Busy!

Things have been absolutely crazy lately and I can't believe how fast the time has flown lately. My co-teacher, Brad, has gone on vacation to LA for 2 weeks, so for one week I had to cover for his classes, which included about 4 hrs of prep a day! I had no time to do anything! It was great to get out of my rut of a routine with my classes and try some more advanced level classes. Now, I'm glad to be back into my classes and try my new teaching tricks!

The guitar has been consuming my life lately. My teacher seems to ask so much of me that I can barely keep up and spend so much time playing that climbing and korean language studying have gone by the wayside.

This week has been busy, too. My friends Mark and Shannon are having a baby in a few months. While the girls had a baby shower, we had a diaper party and climbed up Halla Mountain. It was a great trip, probably the last weekend up the mountain without snow in a while.

I also had a visitor from the mainland this week, Lindsey. I had an amazing time showing her around and taking her out climbing. She's a really great girl, one of the best I've met in Korea, and she's really inspired me to make time again for climbing and also got me excited about going up to the mainland to climb.

My work computer has been on the fritz and replaced, so I haven't been able to upload pictures lately. Apparently it's fixed, so I'll get it back this weekend and put some pictures up.