Backlog - Events from the recent past

Here are a few photos from recent events that haven't yet made it to the blog. Thought I would just put them together:

Feb. 3 - Lunar New Years meal: baked ham, deviled eggs, mash potatoes, sausage, cheese and crackers.

Feb. 8 - Velveeta Mac & Cheese! Sent from Mom, enjoyed by us

Feb. 11 - Our apartment surrounded by noisy things

Feb. 20 - Our loot after a day of shopping at Costco in Busan (300,000 won later)

Feb. 21 - My first attempt at baking. Success! Flour-less peanut butter kiss cookies.

THE BOOK

As some of you may be aware, I recently worked on creating a photo-book of my and my parents' trip to Denmark. It has commonly been referred to as "The book" since it has been published and printed. Amanda just found a neat little trick to embed book previews from Blurb, the company that prints books, so I would like to share with you "The Book":

Denmark by Andrew Tisue | Make Your Own Book

Monkey Butt

Yes, monkey butt. For those of you who have any experience with a motorcycle, you know what I'm talking about. For those of you who don't, monkey butt basically refers to having a really sore tush after hours of sitting on a bike. The book below was a gift I made for my dad and step-mom. It's a collection of my favorite photos that were taken during our motorcycle trip up the north-shore to Canada last fall. 975 miles in total.

Monkey Butt | Make Your Own Book

Snow Day!

After Jinyeong received a record ~20cm of snow, almost 8 inches on Valentine's Day, our school was forced to cancel classes. Amanda and I took advantage of this unexpected day-off by enjoying some coffee at Caffe Bene with Kang (well I did, and Amanda stayed home to work on finishing her top-secret project). Later we went for a walk and photographed the snow covered city. See the photos with descriptions I took here.

Where Are We?

The idea for this post came to me long ago, but I am just getting to it now. Luckily for you, however, it wasn't until recently that I learned how to embed videos in my blog, and not until very recently how to create a video in Google Earth. So now, the shear millions of followers of this totally awesome blog can watch and understand exactly where we are located. Enjoy:

Oh, PS. I apologize for the very annoying "TRIAL VERSION" watermark smeared across the video, but I did not feel like coughing up $399 for the Pro version of Google Earth, and figured I could make the most of my 7-day trial.

Where Are We? from Andrew Tisue on Vimeo.

The most recent image Google Earth has to offer was taken March 11, 2006. A wee-bit outdated. Here's a more recent image courtesy of Daum maps. However, our apartment building is so new it isn't shown here either.

"Shhh! Be Quiet, please."

This is one of the phrases that we teach our students. It’s part of the curriculum and every student at the Red level learns it. Unfortunately, the construction workers outside our apartment don’t seem to be familiar with the phrase…

Yesterday morning Amanda and I were woken up at 7:30 from the workers across the street banging and clanging huge conduit pipes around for the construction of the new building. We also listened to our neighbors above us make continuous banging noises as if they were simultaneously rearranging all their furniture and playing Dance-Dance-Revolution at the same time. As we went to bed last night we were again serenaded by the furniture-moving-DDR combination. This morning, again at 7:30 the construction workers across the street were at it, building the form-work for the new building. Then, after trying to muster a little more sleep, at 8:30 our apartment shook from the noise of a jackhammer ripping up the street just outside our apartment. Lovely. Along with the jackhammer came the utility workers with an asphalt saw and large truck-mounted generators.

So, in total we now have an orchestra of furniture-moving, DDR playing neighbors above us, a restaurant moving in below us, the construction of a new building next to us, and utility and street repairs just outside our windows. Needless to say, it was not a happy morning.

Here’s a taste of the noise:

Noisy Korea from Andrew Tisue on Vimeo.

Video: View of landscape from top of mountain

Get a feel for the landscape surrounding Jinyeong from the mountain-top pavilion we hiked to Friday afternoon, February 4, 2011.

Mountain-top Pavilion View from Andrew Tisue on Vimeo.

NOTE: to view the video FULLSCREEN, hover your mouse over the video, then click the 4 arrows that appear in-between the vimeo logo and volume bars at the lower right.

Here are a couple sketches I did of the pavilion during our time there:

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Video: Walking through the "Old-City"

Get a feel for what the "Old City" is like in Jinyeong, South Korea as Amanda and I descend the base of our hiking mountain and make our way back to our apartment through the "Old City". We filmed our walk around 6:00pm on the evening of February 4, 2011. Along the way you will see the narrowness and complex weaving of the passageways that create the fabric of the neighborhood. There is a stark difference between the quality of the "New City" and that of the old.

Old-City Walk from Andrew Tisue on Vimeo.

NOTE: to view the video FULLSCREEN, hover your mouse over the video, then click the 4 arrows that appear in-between the vimeo logo and volume bars at the lower right.

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IT'S ALIVE!

We ate raw octopus and fish. It has been done.

Last Friday night after work, Glen and Luke took Amanda and I and our new Korean teacher out to dinner to celebrate Iris' hiring. When we asked where we were going Glen told us it was a surprise. This made us a little nervous, so we bombarded Glen with questions the entire way to the restaurant. The establishment we were soon to dine at is owned by the mother of one of our students. This is all Glen would reveal. Once we arrived and sat down, Glen and Luke ordered and in a short while we had a feast of raw food before us. First was the octopus, which must have just been cut up moments before being served to us. The tentacles were still squirming on the plate, and their suction cups were definitely still capable of doing their job. After wrestling a piece off the plate and fighting the small tentacle chunk to release it's grip, Amanda and I prepared to ingest the food. At that moment Glen announced: chew quickly or it will stick to the inside of your mouth! OK! Down the hatch! Here's a photo of the octopus I took on my phone:

After biting through a few pieces we got over the fact that they were still moving. As far as taste, I'm not sure what I could compare it to, but it really wasn't too bad. There's not a lot of flavor, and the meat is really chewy. Had it not been so difficult to get them off the plate I think it would have been a lot easier to eat.

We also ate some raw mussels (I think) and a raw fish that came served in a large wooden boat:

In the end it turned out to be a very good meal, and we were certainly surprised!

Photos from the hot spring in Bugak Hawaii

It was 3 1/2 weeks ago now that we went to the nearby town Bugak with Kang and his wife Choi, and two of their sons: Xavier and William (Amanda and I gave all three of their boys "English names" for them). But better late than never I thought it would be good to write a blog about the experience. We had a very fun day with the whole family at Bugak Hawaii, which could be minimally compared to Vallyfair theme park. Bugak Hawaii has many attractions, even in the winter. It's very old; Amanda's parents said they even visited it when they lived in Korea for the military some 20 or so years ago. But since then, I think the park has grown even more. Back then it was just a hot spring. A natural one :) But now, it is a hot spring both indoor (the original part) and outdoor (new); there is a large area with kid-rides, a large building that exhibits ice-sculptures annually, and they also have a huge junk of land dedicated to a park with obstacle-course like playground stations. And even further up the hill from there is a nice sized snow-tubing hill. Needless to say we took full advantage of all Bugak Hawaii had to offer.

Here's all of us standing in front of a snow-sculpture in the middle of the park. 2011 is the year of the rabbit according to... something. In the back row from left to right is Kang, Choi, Amanda and I. In front are Xavier and William.

A very happy William after enjoying a couple hours of tubing.

These are some photos of the first thing we did: snow tubing! It was a blast. The weather was just perfect for such a day as well. It was sunny and warm but not too warm for the man-made snow to melt.

We came across these extremely hungry fish in a large pond that was just down the hill from the snow-tubing area. They were moving quite slow in the frigid water but once we started feeding them some snacks they kicked it into high gear.

Amanda made it quite clear she wanted to have a photograph in front of the ice-wings inside the ice-sculpture building. However, there were a number of little kids that had a more legitimate reason for wanting the Kodak moment. Well, after being budged in front of a couple times Amanda made her way to the wings and made the little kids wait :)

After all the snow-tubing, park climbing, walking, and ice-sculpture viewing, it was time to make our way to the hot springs! The best part of the day. Amanda and Choi made their way to the Ladies' dressing room while Kang, Xavier and I headed for the boys'. We met outside at the new outdoor natural hot spring. It was not extremely large but a good size. The pool was in somewhat of a horseshoe shape. It was all naturally heated and it felt great! We spent about an hour laying around in the hot water. Kang tried out his new waterproof camera, and the kids fought over the floaty tube they brought. It was extremely relaxing.

After we were finished outside we went indoors to an area that was open to both men and women where you could stand in large hot tub like things and be pounded with hot water. This also felt fantastic. Shortly after entering this area Kang suggested we head to the showers. Expecting a normal shower room like back home I thought nothing of it and said ok. So the girls went their way and we went ours. Well, it turned out Kang meant we should now go to the separate mens' and womens' indoor hot spring area; nude. It was a bit of a shock. I thought we were going to a normal shower room to clean up and head home, so I asked if I could keep my suit on so that I could take it off in the shower and give it a rinse before we left. Well, after we walked upstairs to an area that looked nothing like a shower room, and more like a lobby, Kang said: Ok, here (take off your shorts). So we did, walked through the lobby among a handful of naked Korean men, and passed through a set of doors that lead to the huge indoor hot spring area, full of nude men. It was then I realized I had misunderstood. Well, standing naked among a bunch of other men thankfully wasn't completely unfamiliar for me, being that I have a couple years of high school wrestling shower room experience under my belt. So, after about 10 minutes of awkwardness I got over the fact that I was the only 24-year-old Caucasian American in the room of about 200 Korean men. The experience turned out to be quite relaxing in the end. There were a number of different pools you could enter: a cold pool, warm pool, and hot pool; a green tea pool, a sauna hut, and a traditional Korean sauna room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling which had traditional Korean spices hanging in burlap sacks from. In the center of the entire room were two long washing stations you could sit at and bath with soap and shampoo, so at about 7:40, realizing we had only about 15 minutes to get out of there, we quickly scrubbed down and with soap and scrubby brush things and then made our way out. All the while, just on the other side of a large aquarium were the women, doing the same thing as we were. It's safe to say we had a unique bonding experience with Kang and his family that day. After we all reunited outside the locker rooms, Amanda and I looked at each other and said, "Turns out we weren't just going to take a shower!"

You can view all the photos from Bugak Hawaii here.