In Myeongdong...

So we're in the store where you an haggle down prices of clothes and whatnot and just try your best to deal with the vendors. I like this style because I can play with the minds of the vendors at first because they can't tell what my nationality is. As a matter of fact, they go through 3 different languages, 5 different dialects, until finally trying to speak Korean to me, by the time they reach that point, they feel embarrassed for being unable to recognize their own people that they start at a significantly lower price because they think that they might have offended me.

They didn't. I mean nobody can ever tell what I am, Chinese, Viet, Thai, Japanese, and because I'm "dark" skinned, sometimes even Filipino. I find it fun to watch because my surname doesn't help very much either.

In any case, just thought I'd post that. I definitely will have a TON of pictures tonight though.

25 Years later...

I woke up early today, at around 5AM. My mom hears me on the computer and decided to walk in to the room and to do her usual mom stuff. Don't know why she did that, but because I realized 7 days from now I will be completing my 2nd decade of life and entering into my 3rd, I decided to wish her a happy anniversary.

"Happy anniversary mom!" I say.

She paused for a moment... "Oh.. yeahhhhh...."

She then drank some water and went back to sleep.

My dad wakes up an hour later and does the same thing, except this time to use his computer.

"Happy anniversary dad!" I say.

He also paused for a minute. He stared blankly a bit longer than mom did.

"Thanks Guangheo" he says a bit later.

It's my parents' silver anniversary, and they completely forgot.

In Daegu, Reflection of Kyeong Ju

Had an awesome time past few days, but didn't have any internet access whatsoever until last night. Was busy eating at the highest class restaurant in the city and then seeing the skyline from the 23rd floor of the richest of my uncle's apartment. SO that being said let's talk about dialects. Man, I was embarrassed yesterday in the subway on the way back from the restaurant because I had no idea what one of the other passengers was saying to me. He had apparently asked me if I could shift down a seat so he could sit next to his friend, but at first I thought he said he wanted to take a look at my phone. It had never occurred to me that the dialects of people in this country could be create such a contrast because I'm so used to listening to the Seoul "normal" dialect of the country. It sounded like this man was speaking with a really thick indian accent in his korean at first and at some points in the more rural farm areas of the country, some of the people sound like they're speaking an entirely different language. Their honorifics change as well as you move into different provinces. Considering how small the country is, it's pretty funny to hear how much a language can change as you shift to other parts of it.

Anyways here are some pictures. The "hills" are actually tombs, some real authentic KBBQ, not the one's that you other people eat at commerce or up in markham etc. LARGEST SLICES OF PORK I HAVE EVER SEEN, WAS VERY DELICIOUS. And some blooms form Korean magnolia trees. They are GIANT size, wow. Back in Canada they're little bunches of tiny white flowers. Here it looks like someone injected them with roids or something.

Back to Seoul tonight, and some "normal" stuff to do again. My sister and I were getting a bit bored of climbing mountains and looking at statues and temples... My dad was thrilled the entire time. My mom... She just came along for the ride pretty much

Still no idea

Where this place is. Think it's tong yeong. In any case for future reference, the other day I had a conversation with this old man (well more him just talking). He was reciting some old korean proverbs to my sister and I, obviously my sister had no idea what he was saying. One of the proverbs he said was to always remember which generation you are and from which family. So for the sake of me remembering in the future.

(李)(Lee) of the Cheong Ju province, 34th generation.

Now for few more pictures. Oh yes, and just a side note, Koreans really are as dramatic in real life as they are in the show.

To Be Honest

I have no idea where the hell I am right now. Some place in the south coast still obviously. We were going to use this room in which 2 of us had to sleep on the floor last night, but it turned out if we paid $20 more we can get two king size bed accomodations so obvously we went for that. Until I later then proceeded to find out that particular part of the building didn't have wifi signal, whereas our old room did. Which is why now I am posting instead of the usual evening post because I am downstairs now in the lobby area.

In any case, can't post pics either because I left my USB cable upstairs. Last evening as we were coming back we were greeted with four coach loads of korean school girls. Extremely loud and obnoxious ones at that. I think they were yelling in the atrium area that leads into the rest of the hotel rooms well into the night, and morning... Yeah I heard them pretty loud and clear as well.

I'm also going to rant quickly about the coffee hear in Korea. I'm hoping to find a starbucks soon because so far every single coffee that I have had here was so weak in fact that putting any sugar or milk or cream of any sort would make it taste like I was drinking some sort of sugar drink rather than coffee. I need to drink it black for it to have remotely any effect on me. I only complain because I've been getting these massive headaches from the weakness of the coffee and get so full from drinking it waiting for the caffeine to kick in just a BIT. I hear the starbucks is slightly better, but nowhere near what we would expect from typical starbucks coffee.

Going to be going some sort of ferry boat today... I'm not very good with boats so we'll see how that goes.

Nam Hae Sight Seeing.

My dad promised that we wouldn't be climbing mountains of any sort this time. I clearly remember last time I was here, we cleared through at least a 100 km worth of trails up mountains in 30º weather. Not very fun at all, especially with the humidity. So I had my hopes up in not having to do it again, but of course, it truly wouldn't be a real trip to Korea if we didn't clear at least one mountain. So we did, which is why I am too tired to make this post very long at all. Pictures are worth a 1000 words so they claim, but I think a few just make us speechless (good or bad you can decide).

Here we go:

Nam Hae Hilton Resort

The cool thing about Korea is that you can clear it from the tip of the country to the other with only a half tank of gas. Of course the gas they use is diesel in a majority of the more economical cars. I was wondering why the pedal felt so heavy and the engine was creating such a deep bassy noise. And the gas meter wasn't going down nearly as fast as I thought it should.

Anyways 6 hours of driving and we are now at the southern tip of the country. It's definitely noticeably warmer here than it was back in Seoul. We had the super fresh korean version of sashimi called hweh. So fresh that it moved in your mouth, though I didn't really take a video of that, I did take pictures of the food this time. Funny how so much of the trips I go on is entirely about the food that I'm eating. Felt great, I think we've had soju nearly every single day we've been here. Not surprised, I think last time I checked the only country that consumed less alcohol per capita than korea was ireland and russia.

In any case, we have this ridiculous suite. I can't believe how nice it is. I think this was the first proper shower I took since we've got here on Thursday. I feel so much cleaner now. The following are the pics of the food and a video (if it works) of the outside patio we have that looks out into the ocean and the occasional english failz. Very nice I gotta say.





No Comment.

Very nice.

I felt gross after eating this sashimi pizza.

Lee Seung Chul Concert

So I got to see this amazing singer today. Let me start off first with the utmost respect I have for all professional Korean singers for sounding as good if not better, live as they sound in the studio. Secondly, I swear that I met this man today at the concert (I mean the drummer in case you can't tell from the title of the video). He was jumping insanely with the same hairstyle as well. Hilarious to watch. The elders of this country certainly though have a whole ton of energy as they were probably more enthusiastic about the concert than the younger people were at the parts where the crowd was jumping.

In any case here are a few pictures.


Entrance to the venue.


More lost in translationess.


Blurry photo of him haha.

He ended the show with this song. It was such a powerful song, and the entire crowd sang with him. I love this country.

I am sailing, I am sailing,
Home again cross the sea.
I am sailing, stormy waters,
To be near you, to be free.

I am flying, I am flying,
Like a bird cross the sky.
I am flying, passing high clouds,
To be with you, to be free.

Can you hear me, can you hear me
Thro the dark night, far away,
I am dying, forever trying,
To be with you, who can say.

Can you hear me, can you hear me,
Thro the dark night far away.
I am dying, forever trying,
To be with you, who can say.

We are sailing, we are sailing,
Home again cross the sea.
We are sailing stormy waters,
To be near you, to be free.

Oh Lord, to be near you, to be free.
Oh Lord, to be near you, to be free,
Oh Lord.

Lost in Translation

I guess that some of the most interesting things I come across are for the simple reason that they don't make any sense. Figures of speech from one language that are directly translated into another can make absolutely no sense. We went to Coex mall today, one of the biggest in Seoul. It was pretty fun, didn't do any shopping there because it's an obvious tourist area designed to rip you off as much as possible. What I did find though was one particular shop with a cool name. Definitely was the highlight of my day. I'm jet lagging hard though. Woke up at 4 in the morning.

I finish this post with the following:

Thursday, 7:22 PM

I am finally here in Seoul. Some of you will ask how the flight went? Well I'll put it bluntly. One crying baby to my right, a feisty little kid to my back and a whole load of noise from numerous "turbulence incoming" warnings. I'm quite tired, but thankfully we arrived in korea at a time when sleeping is supposed to happen, rather than arriving at 4 in the morning like two years ago.

I will grab a picture of this later as well, for those of you who have me on facebook, you should be able to find my mobile uploads as I went through the airports and stuff! So go check that out.

I think I would like to make a general statement with regards to the impressions I first had this time around being a bit more aware of what to look for. It's dusk and the sun is about to set, and as we leave Incheon I feel some pressure upon me. It was only about a half hour car ride to get here, but the moment we hit the edge of Seoul first thing that comes to mind. Crosses. Red Crosses, filling the skyline along the elevated highway. It made me realize and think hard about the difference over in North America and here in Asia with regards to the declaration of the faith.

With the recent collapse of the world economy and especially with the US, as a Christian it makes me want to not only analyze the situation from a practical point of view, but from a spiritual view as well. All the current first world countries in the world save perhaps Japan and China, got to their status with a common worldview. That being the Christian worldview. With the implementation of pluralism and the rejection of faith and theistic entities, perhaps coincidentally their economies and arguably their societies went awry. Where belonging to the Way was once a norm, has now become something to be ridiculed, a mockery of western society.

And along comes Korea, a tiny little country on a peninsula that is coming out of the second world state it once was, and being responsible for some of the largest corporations in the technological world today.

I'm going to be honest, I find a lot of Koreans intimidating despite being one. Not because they aren't nice or whatever, but because of their fearlessness and sheer determination in all aspects of their life. Especially within their faith. They are the only country crazy enough, brave enough, to be sending evangelical missionaries to the middle east amongst the amount of strife that goes on there. Red crosses everywhere, a nation unafraid, unashamed of what they believe in, willing to shout out to the world what they believe in and what they stand for.

Dinner time!

At the YVR

Well I'm at the YVR right now (Vancouver), and it turns out that they provide free internet here! Though I assume it's not a very secure line to be on that's for sure. I don't mind I mean, it's not like I have anything confidential or anything to hide now do I?

It's really bright and sunny here, I'll post up pics when I land in Incheon and get a proper connection. It'll be 5 in the evening there! Just in time for dinner so I won't be jet lagging at all I hope. The flight should be about 7 hours I'm guessing since we need to clear the Pacific.

Lee Seung Cheul concert this weekend! haha, don't think we can take pictures though so we'll see how that goes down.

The Day Before

So I would like to first make a shoutout to Toni (CLICK) for giving me the inspiration to start one of these during my trip back to my motherland, the south one. I'm really excited and am far better equipped this time around for it to be documented a lot better with pictures, videos, and of course random rants about what I'll experience there. The goal is for it to be a daily thing for the full 17 days. Dad's put a lot of effort into making this one more organized than the last time I went in the summer of 2007. Doubt things have changed that much, but my korean has improved, so we'll see how that goes down!