I like The Strokes, I really do.

Just listened to the new Strokes album a couple times at work. Verdict: a couple really good songs, a couple not so good songs. Grade: B- But the single "Under Cover of Darkness" in an A+.
You be the judge.

Quick (kind of boring) summary of vacation

I'd thought I'd give my friends and family members that know about this blog a little update about my life in the past month so here it goes:

It was a long month. We are in the middle of our Winter term at school and the past month we had what the company calls Winter Intensives. Basically, students get large holiday from school in the month of January. What better way to spend the holiday than to take more English classes when other school isn't occuring. So I had to work just a little bit harder and wake up a couple hours earlier a couple times a week, but not too big of a deal.

The beginning of February marked the Chinese new year. My branch got a week off. Instead of wondering around Korea tasting the many varieties of Kimbap and Kimchi in the cold weather, I opted for the Philippines. Brian, a friend from Sioux Falls who works in Seoul, also took the week off. We decided we'd set off for a week of surfing.

We flew Saturday morning into the town of Cebu which is roughly in the middle of the Philippines. From there we took an overnight ferry to a town in Mindinao called Surigao. We spent the time drinking beer and singing Karaoke with a cock fighter and sleeping with wrestless dreams of the boat capsizing in the rough seas. The town had roughly had the population of Sioux Falls and it equaled it's total excitment. (Kind of a lame town). Then it was a three hour ferry to our island.

The island of Siargao is about a 40x40 km island scattered with a bunch of small villages and rural communities. Little beknownst to us, this island was about the only place in the Philippines that was still in it's rainy season AND we caught a typhoon off of Australia. I spent the majority of the time perpetually wet.

We battle the elements nonetheless. I spent the majority of our first day drenched either on the back of a motorcycle going to the surf spot or simply surfing. On surfing, I had never done it before but I was still able to get the hang of it and caught many waves on my own. Not that I like to toot my own horn, but I think that's pretty sweet. The next two days I declined the drenched days and read a bit. Finally, the sun came out and we rented motorcycles (10 dollars) and rode around the island. The ride itself was trip since it was filled with flooded roads from rice patties and typhoons and flat tires in the middle of the country side. I was told I was the first American that a person had fixed a tire for. The villagers sat under their thached roofs and looked on and eventually wanted to take pictures with us. (I thought Korea children stared).

To be continued... With maybe more interesting personal stories but I promised my mom that I'd start posting more to my blog and to my family who may not have facebook (hello Grandma, love you.)

Skiing

I hadn't been skiing for maybe over six years nor had I had the ambition to go skiing recently living in South Dakota with Great Bump and a limited budget. But I now live next to a friend that came from Denver and went to school in Bozeman. So skiing had to be done. I wouldn't say the low rolling hills of Korea have the fluffiest of fluff. But for someone that loved skiing and still loves snow, it is fun. A lot of fun. And even though I've touched only a snowboard every winter since early high school, skiing still takes the cake.

The picture on top is of the common rolling hills seen around Korea. The picture to the right is my friend Ross eating a ski lodge meal. It's not not chili.

Next week vacation

In case my family is worried about my visit to the Philippines next week. Here's where I'll be staying next week. Know you're worried but love you dad, love you mom, I'll be fine.

My Korean Home

My contract had said that housing would be provided for me. I'd advise anyone planning on working away from home to always look into the finer details.

A tiny introduction to Wolbae.

This is the view outside my classroom window at work. I live in the southwest corner of Daegu known as Wolbae. It so happens that this is the image of a much of Korea. The upper left corner holds tall apartment buildings. These are scattered in pretty much every town and are the general landscape of urban Korea. The right holds rolling mountains that make up much of the country. The haze would be smog. Although on topics of pollution my young students would say that Daegu air is clean. I'm not sure that they have lived in South Dakota nor have they tried go running outside on a smoggy night.

Dschinghis Khan - Genghis Khan [English Version with lyrics]

While looking for a video for one of my lessons today I came across this. Pretty awesome.