Everybody...let's dance

The "Shots" song that was played during this dance performance was hilarious. I wished I would have recorded the beginning part of the song. At the start Lil' John yells, "Everybody let's get f***ed up!". Most of the Koreans just sat there with NO reaction. The rest of us expatriates however were laughing hysterically. I guess that's what happens when people don't understand a language!

At least this performance was not trying to promote the nightclub scene to the audience. This a variation of the traditional butterfly dance along with more elaborate outfits.

Drawing in Class

For this week the topic for my 8th graders was to re-create a folk tale. I did this Mad Libs style by taking out about 50 words out of each story. The students had three stories to choose from and were asked to make drawings with their re-made folktale. One of my students goes, "Teacher, you're in our story," and
showed me this picture. They tell me that I won't die in the story, even though their drawing shows me trapped in an elevator shaft.... "Teacher, it's a good ending," they said. I guess I'll find out when they all present next week!

In Motion: Geumsansa

As promised, here is some video footage from the Geumsansa Temple Stay.

This tour was right after we had finished unpacking at our sleeping quarters. Check out the huge pots that were used to cook dinner.

One of the many walks we had during my temple stay. In this video we were doing a regular walk. Whenever the Buddhist monks were praying (meditation walks), we were asked to walk in silence.

As the sun was setting the drum ceremony began. Our host monk takes over the drumming later on as the other monk goes over to the bell.

Construction Sign

A funny but somewhat sad warning sign at a construction site. I would definitely obey the warning if I saw a sign of a crying burnt up kid whose still on fire!

A few notes...

Hello everyone,

I was finally successful with posting my second video of my hike. If you would like to see it, please go to my March 16th post, "Getting Our Hike On". I did this for the sake of keeping my entries mostly in chronological order. As for my internet problems, some of it has been resolved. I can at least upload pictures at normal speeds on most sites, but video upload speeds are still inconsistent.

Some websites/domains do not connect directly to the source. If I go online from Korea, the bandwidth goes through Japan first, then to its source. This is the main reason for massive slow down on some websites. Unfortunately, Blogger is one of the sites affected. With all the catastrophic events happening in Japan, I'm definitely sympathetic about the whole situation.

Geumsansa Village

This picture was taken right after I finished making my lotus lantern. Going with the traffic light scheme for my lantern actually turned out pretty good.

Here is the Buddhist monk that hosted us during our temple stay. Even though he spoke broken English and mostly Korean, he was very informative and accommodating. Right here he is talking about the purpose of the tea ceremony.

While the temperature was still a bit chilly most of my weekend here, it was a great experience. We had several walks during my stay. During this time we were allowed to speak, but for the "meditation walks", we had to remain silent. The silence was because the monks were chanting and these walks were meant to cleanse our minds from negative feelings.


After sunset, the monks begin playing the drums. Our host monk on the right also briefly plays the drums once the monk on the left goes over to the bell.

A close up shot of a monk preparing to ring the bell.

Before the Temple Stay

Here is the front entrance of the temple village.
This temple was very interesting inside, but unfortunately the lack of light inside made those pictures unusable.
In this picture, I'm standing by the drum and bell tower. I will post a picture and video of the Buddhist monks who used the bell and drum later on.

I was allowed to take a picture inside this temple. It was much smaller than some of the other temples, but it was still interesting inside.

Orions - Daegu Basketball

This was my first basketball game in Daegu. Even though there were a lot of empty seats, it was still an entertaining game. There were several ties and lead changes throughout the game. I saw a few nice dunks and behind the back passes. The team is going through a rebuilding period the last few years, and ended up finishing 8th out of 10 teams this year.

Painfully slow and steady...

Hello everyone,

I've been having some problems with my internet over the past few days. I wanted to finish posting my videos from the Palgongsan hike and also add other interesting content. Unfortunately, my upload speeds have become so slow that its like I'm using an ancient 56K modem. My school restricts uploading for my blog so I can't go that route (that's probably for the best anyways). Hopefully I can get this issue resolved soon so I can update regularly again. In the mean time, here is one of my images of my continuous exploration of Daegu. As you can see, we have a pretty nice entourage here. This picture took me almost 5 minutes to upload! Stay tuned while I get this internet problem fixed.....

Right at the Edge

The resting "house" was about the midway point of our hike up to one of the peaks. I used my zoom for this shot to get a few details of the steps from the resting point.
This picture from farther away should give an idea of the distance of our hike from the midway point. We went downhill and then had to go uphill again.


I was standing near the edge of a cliff when I took this picture. On the left side is a view of one of the preserved temple areas.

I thought this was one of the coolest parts about the Palgongsan hike. This climb was steep and slippery enough that we had to use a rope to maintain balance. The guy on my left was a trooper. Even though he was wearing an arm sling, he successfully made his way up.


One of the guys I was with took this excellent action shot of me. The wind was starting to pick up when I was grabbing hold of this tree, so I couldn't maintain my position for too long.