So We're In Korea....?

2006-04-05T02:36:00.000-07:00

Alright kiddies guess who’s back with more stories from the land of pickled cabbage and squid jerky. That’s actually what I had for lunch yesterday; the squid was a little salty but come on now who really complains when they’re eating squid jerky. You just thank the heavens that you’re in a place where squid jerky can be enjoyed by the bucket full. And not to worry I will be bringing home the tasty little treats for the brave stomached to try back home, I know y’all can’t wait.

So let’s see… I left you guys at the end of October with Aaron’s b-day and Halloween being our highlights among others. The next couple of months were kinda laid back as we got in the routine of teaching and got over the fact that WE’RE IN SOUTH KOREA!! We made some fuckin awesome Korean friends, and also discovered the underground Korean punk scene which is blowing up huge right now. We’ve been doing our fair share of partying and drinking till wee hours of the morning which could also attribute to my lack of blogging cause I have trouble remembering what it exactly is that I did the night before. Regardless we’ve been having a ridiculously good time and its hard to believe that we’re gonna be outta here in like 4 more months. We’re planning to do a lot more traveling around Korea during the next couple of months so I’ll have more than just stupid drunken pictures of us. Relax there’ll still be a bunch of those jus more other stuff too.

So anyways here’s what we’ve been up to till bout after New Years and then some. Chek ya later Bitches!!!

- So we went on our first field trip with the little demons that we call kindergartens. Sorry I’m just jaded from being hit, smacked, screamed at, punched, kicked and junked by these little kids that demons is the only thing my brain can justify calling them. We went to a place called Fun Land. A place with ball pits, tubes and slides as far the eye can see, not to mention a million little 2 foot Korean hellions. Look at the one in the pink man, that’s hatred in her eyes, she hurled that plastic ball with rage people, rage!

- If I haven’t already mentioned it, we live like kings up here. Our place is honestly the nicest I’ve ever had to myself. Not to mention we have an oven which in Korea is a luxury. So for Christmas me and Aaron felt obligated to throw a traditional Christmas feast. So we rounded ourselves up a 12 pound turkey, got Aaron’s mom’s recipe for stuffing, and a 1kg can of corn, Thank You Costco!! All in all the dinner was amazing and everyone ended up trashed, not to mention leftovers. Who doesn’t love Christmas!

- So naturally we were in a very festive mood after our Christmas dinner success that we decided to celebrate, and what better way to do that than to join the Seoul Gun Club and fire off a couple of rounds. Now I’m not one for violence, but there’s jus something bout dudes and guns, I guess it’s a testosterone thing. It was fun as hell though!!

- Next weekend we had the chance to shred some Korean pow. We were invited by our director and her family to go snowboarding with them. We took on some new comers to the sport and had our fair share of fun watching the little snow bunnies eat shit over and over and over again! It was an awesome feeling rippin down the hill and realizing that I just carved a Korean mountain.

*Random Korean Encounter*

Drunken Korean Dude says to Cid: "You're beautiful!"

Cid: "Heheheh...Thanks"

Drunk Korean Dude: "How come you can speak?"

Damn straight drunken korean dude, damn fuckin straight.... how come she can speak. Thats bullshit, I'm gonna look for a mute button!

2006-02-15T20:58:00.000-08:00

Whassup Bitches!!! yeah been lazy for the past little while, it's cold here my brain tends to hibernate sometimes. Nonetheless I am still here and ready to hook y'all up with some nonsense to help you all waste time be it while at work or just not wanting to write that paper that you know you should have finished two days ago. Regardless of the situation I have your remedy! Alright so this post is gonna take us back to the good ol month of October. I just looked through the pics for that month and holy shit we were up to a whole lot. So for the purposes of simplicity and my overall laziness, this post will be in point form with lots of pictures... hmm I sense no complaints... either you like the pictures or not fond of my writing... bastards!! Anyways I'll be bak again soon with some more fun stories till then enjoy peeps!!

- First off we had the arrival of the infamous Ciddy Woolford and her friend Neetu. I think Cid got to Korea drunk, so we jus thought we'd keep goin. This is the night that started a number of rediculous and very blurred weekends here in S.K.

- We went to a martial arts festival and took a sweet little boat cruise with our director and some of her friends in Southern province of South Korea called Chung-Ju. Have you ever seen a little asian dude get knocked the fuck out by a round house super kick.. I have.. and it's funny as hell!!!

- Next up we hit up City Hall for the annual Seoul Drum Festival, which had to be one of the most amazing musical experiences I've ever witnessed. The whole show was outdoors and the vibe was just awesome! Aaron did a little show of his own.. we like attention!!

- Off to the happiest place on Earth.. its Everland!!! One of Korea's largest amusement park was clearly not ready for the nonsense that we were going to unleash upon it. Booze + theme park = extremely rediculous pictures and lots of heckling of the poor foreigners trying to earn money prancing around in light costumes. Ya see rocket man over there, yeah almost fought that guy, I think I was being a dick. Ah well, maybe next time you won't wear your red tighty whitys on the outside of ur pants.

- Our boy Blitz turned the big 2-3 and we rang that in style! We hit the town and painted it drunk. We partyed in an area called Hongdae, which is home to Seoul's largest university, good times!! Of course what would a bday be without a drunken dip in a grimy river! Thanks to the gadgetry of the internet we're able to share what has to be one ofthe funniest things I have ever seen. Watch and you'll see!!

Later that weekend we went bungee jumping to top off the bday festivities, a little sketchy the jump was but hey we're in S.K if it wasn't sketchy I'd be worried! I'm still alive so it was good.

- And of course how could we have October without everyone's favourite holiday Halloween. Now of course Aaron had to go and steal the show with the most rediculous costume known to man. Not only that but we decided why waste this in a cab ride, so we decided to ride the subway. I have never seen so many confused Koreans in one area, but they loved it. Did I mention we love attention!!

2006-01-09T02:25:00.000-08:00

So I'm not sure if I'm breaking rules of Blogging by throwing in a post that doesn't flow with the timeline of events that are goin down in S.K, but this my friends is a speacial post. Why you may ask? Well yours truly has finally gotten what he has longed for since his first taste at the ripe old age of 18. I GOT NEW INK BABY!! And if you haven't figured it out, I'm exremely stoked about it and thought why not share it with the rest of the cyber world.
So when I first got here I was told that getting a tattoo was gonna be next to impossible cause they are really frowned upon in S.K, but relentless as I am I couldn't just accept defeat. I mean since I got my first tat all I've ever wanted was to get another one, and for those of you who do have a tattoo may share the same adictive longing for that oh so wonderful pain of a tattoo needle, and for those of you that don't have one, no I'm not a sadist, I just have a passion for hurting my body in the good name of art. Anyways by pure luck I met this bartender at a club who had some pretty sick work done on his forearm so I asked him where he had gotten it done. He hooked me up with what a website address for a tattoo artist named Yushi.
So after months of endless searching I finally found the design that I was looking for and rang up Yushi. I have to say he is one of the koolest kats I know in the world, he's really laid back and humble and can speak English, always a plus in S.K. Not only that but he's fucking sick!! He's won awards at tattoo conventions all over the world and has been trained by one of the best tattoo artists in Asia, his master hailing from Japan who is also world renowned. The tattoo is of an angel, I'm not gonna go into too much detail as to why I picked this design, after months of searching this one jus screamed out to me and I knew as soon as saw it that it was the one. The angel represents perservierence and reminds me of the struggles that we encounter in our lives, regardless of which we should continually push through to brighter and better days.
Yeah I know its pretty big and the spot that I choose to put it I was told after I had gotten it done is one of the most painful spots on the body, let me the first one to vouch for that one, and if you can't tell by my rediculous facial expressions that Aaron so eloquently captured for you all to see, it fucking killed. Altogether it took 5 hours in two seperate sessions; the result is a beautiful piece of artwork that I can now call my own for the rest of my life, and we also gained a bunch of really awesome Korean friends out of it too. So all in all jus another good day in S.K!

2006-01-02T03:03:00.001-08:00

We took a little trip to the shopping district here in S.K which are all the rage down here. There’s a main area called Dongdaemun Shopping Stadium. It’s full of multi floor shopping paloozas, which are filled with every thing you could ever want. They kinda have a flea market feel to them, where each floor is dedicated to a specific good or gender and is rammed with stalls of merchants all hollering at you to come and buy their stuff. So we get off on this one floor and this Korean dude yells out “Hello friend!” Now we are not accustomed to hearing much English in the streets of S.K so hearing it sparked curiosity almost instantly. We head over to buddy to see what he’s got to say, and of course he starts buttering us up to try and get us to buy stuff from his shop. Unfortunately for homeboy all he’s got is dressy preppy stuff, not the kinda swag we were looking for, so we try and tell him that its alright and we’ll keep looking but he was having none of that. Now this guy was begging for a sale, and he’s stretching too. He kinda figures we won’t buy any of the sweater vest or dress pants he’s got hanging up I mean come on I really don't think at this stage of my life a sweater vest is a necessity. So he busts out these plain white t-shirts and says “Here good discount, only 10,000 won”. Now by this point we’re kinda laughing and trying really hard to get the gettin but he just won’t give up, he leans over to us and says “Come on just buy, if no I look stupid!”, pointing over to his buddies at the booth across from his, who are losing their shit watching their buddy stumbling through the few words of English that he knew to try and score a sale. We both busted a gut laughing and I finally gave him the money, not for the shirts but for the laughs.

After my new purchase of white undershirts I was riding a high that only the purchase of undershirts could provide. So we decided to give the shopping a rest and walk around and with some luck we stumbled on a skate jam. It was awesome to chill somewhere where there were some bumping beats and some dudes throwing down some sick tricks. We chatted it up with some of the locals and I found out a place where I could get some ink done, which by the way I am going to get this month, not to worry the whole thing will be documented by my trusty side kick and posted for your viewing pleasure, more on that later. We kicked at the skate jam for a while before we decided to call it a day and headed home.

Now something you need to know bout S.K and their lenient laws. It is completely legal to drink in public places in fact it is extremely common as we see older men sitting outside of 7-11’s jus pounding back that Soju stuff, which is the drink of the devil. So we figured we should partake in the festivities and decided to travel through our downtown area with a couple of bottles of the good ol OB. OB is a Korean beer, actually the only one that we’re able to stomach and hold down, its kinda watery but it does the trick and its cheap as sin. The bottle that I am blatantly advertising there is just 4 bucks and after bout 4 of those saying OB could be considered an Olympic event. Of course we had to pay some respect to all you guys that were unable to enjoy in the drunken debauchery, so Aaron poured a little our for the homies!!
That bike helmet that you see there is now our official Korean mascot and sits in our living room. I took it upon myself to be the official safety inspector of random bike helmets found on the streets of S.K, this one passed with flying colors. I’m sure the pictures speak for themselves, but we polished off 5 of them that night…I think, and wandered the streets yelling all of 4 words in Korean that we knew which were hello, don’t do that, sit down, and thank you, I’m sure we made a great impression on the locals!

2005-12-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

After much anticipation I’m back. Yeah I know I’ve been slacking which I attribute mainly to my new found love for Prison Break, which is a ridiculously amazing show. Anyways back to the wonderful world of S.K. So we’re about a good month in and still in tourist mode and this weekend we decided to hit up the War Memorial Museum. What better way to spend a day than looking at guns and tanks, I can’t think of one.
It was definitely the coolest place we’ve been too yet, the museum it self was huge, with four floors of historical weapons and lots of info on the South and North Korea war and outside a park that had real tanks, airplanes and helicopters that were used in different wars. wFor us it was like weere in a giant toy museum, we were running around and jumping onto tanks and inside gun ships until we were instructed by security that most of the tanks were there for display and not to climb all over like a jungle gym. Aaron's not so good with authority.

2005-11-22T05:33:00.000-08:00

Alrite people enough of your demands dammit, a man is entitled to some free time. Kay so we're now on weekend numero deux. Jus for the record the drunken debauchery doesn't really start till everyone's favourite minx Ciddy Woolford touches down in S.K. so the next few posts are of our mild mannered touristy adventures.

Anyways, so this weekend we decided to hit the town that is down and cheked out some malls in this one area of Seoul, more so to get something to eat rather than shop. We figured we were safe at the mall cause they tend to include pictures of food which I know is no fun but my stomach had just gotten better so I wasn't feeling extremely adventurous. We went to COEX Mall and scoped out a bunch of kool shit till we got bored and decided to wander the nearby surroundings.

We soaked up some pretty sweet artitecture and of course knowing my keen sense of direction we were lost within seconds. So after walking for about hmm say 5 smokes or so, we stumbled right into what had to be the coolest Buddist Temple I've ever seen. Seeing as this was the first Buddist temple I've ever seen, it didn't take much for it to land the top spot on the cool list. Nonetheless cool it was.

We took in some the Zenish qualities that the temple had to offer, we even got to go in and sit in on a prayer session. I wonder if it was sacriligous of me that the whole time everyone else was praying for world peace and other good stuff like that, I was praying that we would meet someone that hook me up with a joint. For the record its now been exactly 3 months, 1 week, 2 days and about 11 hours since I've rolled a jizzo and travelled to my happy place. But I'm doing good I swear and that's no thanks to all of you evil bastards that jus happen to non-chalantly tell me that you're really stoned, or to hold on for a sec while you roll a joint, much appreciated bitches =) Well that concludes another day in the S.K., till next time kiddies!!!

2005-11-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

Okay so at the request of some angry friends I have now made it my utmost duty to stay on top of this blog thing. See for those of you that have spent more than a day with me you'll know that I am only consistant with one thing and thats kissing the sky with my sweet mary, and unfortunately this bloody country would rather drink themselves stupid than reach higher levels of serenity and bliss. So without my favourite pastime I'm left with no excuses for keeping on top of this blog. And I'm sure you're all here for the visuals and care little about what I rant and rave. Well you're gettin both dammit unless I'm lazy which happens, tough to believe I know. Trust me folks this is just a small taste of what we've got in store, we've been here for 3 months and already have over 900 pictures. Yeah we're snap happy!!

So after we touched down in Korea and gathered our bearings we decided to do some much needed exploring, only we weren't really sure where or how to get anywhere. Armed with our Korean pharse book, that I now use as useful bathroom reading, we set off to figure out how to get to Seoul. We managed fairly well, don't feel proud or anything though, its not like we were speaking the language, we did more pointing into the book than anything else! Sad I know, but we've gotten way better. We head out to this joint called Technomart, which is a grown man's wet dream come true. You name it they've got it here, not only that but they have floors of this shit. Like an entire floor dedicated to cell phones, and another to mp3 players, insane I tell ya.
There were so many pretty lights and gadgets that I didn't know what to do with myself, thankfully I didn't have much money to blow so I was able to keep it in my pants... my wallet you sick bastards!! However since then we've definately donated much of hard earned won to the wonderfully hardassed Koreans who have been more than happy to take our money. For the record between the two of us we've got three iPods, two 100 gig harddrives, a playstation 2, and an external dvd burner. This is just the beginning!! =)

So anyways we did some exploring and natuarally got hungry and so the hunt began. Our goal: find somewhere to eat where the food looked reasonably edible and wasn't moving. Yeah that didn't happen! After endless walking and debating we finally stumbled into this one place and with our advanced pointing skills, we picked something to eat. What we got was rediculous in everyway, we're still on the fence bout what we ate but have settled on squid, which is really damn good for the record! As you can tell I was thrilled with our meal by the look on my face in this pic.

So anyways that meal would later prove to be the near death of me as it gave me what I was told was food poisoning, yeah I was estatic with the news too. But hey there's nothing like being hooked up to an I.V in a foreign Korean hospital in your first week in the country. Not to worry I've been good ever since and yes I have faced my slippery multi armed foe again and kicked his squigly ass!

2005-09-27T01:55:00.000-07:00

Anyeoung Haseyo Bitches!!

Yeah yeah so we're lazy but if you know anything bout us you're surprised that we actually made a blog. Now the next challenge is to update it on a regular basis, but we'll try hard to please you all!!

So after a grueling 24 hour plane ride and many drinks later we finally touched down in this land that they call South Korea. Wha Happen?!?! Oh yeah we're teachers, thats right parents are going to entrust their children with two of the coolest cats to ever touch foot in this country! Boy this should be interesting!

So after some delicious airplane food and a 24 hour flight will do some serious numbers on your stomach so naturally we headed towards the facilities and this is what we saw....

What the shit is this!!! Wha Happen!!?? Yeah thats right our first pic is of a toilet.. live with it! Or at least what we thought was a toilet... Am I supposed to rest my ass on that thing?.. I was afraid I was gonna fall in.. but thank the gods above this was just a cruel joke that they like to play on foreiners when they arrive... our real bathroom is a comfortable thrown.. the ones we're used to.

So we walked around the airport for like almost an hour tryin to find some Korean dude who was supposed to be holding a sign with our names on it. Yeah there was no dude or a sign.. but lots of Korean folk who looked like they knew where they were going and I swear laughing at us cause we looked haggered. After finally finding our Korean driver aka our boss, who mind you cannot speak more than three words in English our shit was thrown into a rickety van and we were off to our apartment. As you can imagine we had a million questions all to which we had to make up answers to on the hour and half ride to our place in ass to ass Korean traffic.

Yeah we know.. we got hooked up large!!! We have however moved from that apartment across the street but honestly its like a carbon copy of that apartment. We've got three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a kitchen, laundry the whole deal its a pretty pimp setup!! Not to mention a bunch of goodies left over from the other foreign teachers who used to work here. The other pic is from outside our apartment, honestly all these apartment blocks are all over Korea, they all look the same which can be troublesome when you're half asleep on the bus and almost blow past your pad.. yeah thats another story.. be paitient we'll get to it eventually.

Well thats bout all we've got for our first day, till next time!!