Off to Thailand (teh-gook)!

I am getting ready to leave for Thailand tomorrow morning!  I'm so excited, and can't wait to experience (and share) all of the wonderful things in store for me :D

I will be getting picked up by my friends Connie and Erin in a taxi at about 7:10 am tomorrow morning.  Then we will take a limo bus for 7,800 won to Busan, which is about an hour away and a half by bus.  We will depart from Busan International Airport at 12:45 pm and arrive in Beijing at 2:05 pm.  We will have to entertain ourselves until 7:45 when our next plane departs for Bankok, where we will arrive at 11:45 pm. 

Our friend Howard joined our trip late, so he will be arriving Sunday morning at 2am.  We have all kinds of things planned and booked from a Thai cooking class to a jungle tour on an elephant!  It is going to be amazing!

Here is my vacation fund in Korean won!  I will be exchanging it into Thai bhat once I get the airport.  I'd like to go ahead and thank my parents Mike Manary, Theresa Manary, my Aunt Colleen Berg and My Grandma Jean Manary for their early Christmas present to me, which was a generous contribution to this fund from each!!  I was going to have to do this trip on the cheap, but now 'money aint' a thang!' 

 This is my brand new traveling pack!  I just ordered it a few days ago and it arrived just in time.  It is a 'premium' 60 liter travel pack.  Spared no expense! ;)

It is big and comfy!  Hoping it joins me on many adventures to come!

Christmas Carols!!

I have continued doing songs with my students, and this time included the 3rd and 4th graders!  We had Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells competitions over the last couple weeks and I have some great videos from those!

Here are the 3rd graders on their BEST behavior, lol.  This is also their first year studying English, so they do a wonderful job here!

Here is my favorite class, the 4th graders.  They are just amazing, even when I catch myself being boring haha

Here is the 5th graders doing Jingle Bells.  My favorite singers in the school!

Here are my 6th graders, and as usual half of them are over enthused and half are under.  Either way they are entertaining!

Now for a couple notes about the videos.  It is sometimes hard to see how the winners, ARE the winners by these videos because I am judging their whole performance, not just the clips used.  Also these songs were not rehearsed as much as I would have liked due to the upcoming break, so many classes could not sing ALL of the verses (mainly for Jingle Bells, I mean.. how many English speakers even know the whole song?).  The ones that you see singing the 2nd and 3rd verse did so well because they knew them at all.  The runners up actually sound better to me on THESE videos, but the winners sounded just as good or better.  

Finally, I must say, that I am still overwhelmed by the Let It Be performances previously posted.  That was such a high bar in my opinion that the rest of the songs will have to be masterfully done to compete!  Hopefully I provide some amazing competition next year, hope you enjoyed!

My Apartment (Finally)

Well just after 4 months of being here in Korea I guess I'll finally share some footage of my apartment and surrounding area!  The video is self explanatory, the photos are basically what I see when I walk to work.

Most of these I took walking home from school one day.  This is actually the entrance/driveway to my school on the right, and part of the playground on the left.

A look down the road I walk every day.

Some of these houses are SO cool looking, I want one just like it when I buy a house back home (someday).

Another cool looking house.

I mentioned in the video that many of the houses have stairs to the roof.  This is partially because there is not a ton of flat ground here and it's so mountainous.  The other reason is with no clothes drying machines, they hang their clothes on a line on the roof.  Also good for barbecues and shooting fireworks (as I have found recently on a friend's roof).

Here is another cool house, and the Jesus statue again.

My fire escape that I shot part of the video from.  

The Jesus and the church at night.  It seems all of the churches decorate with lots of Christmas lights.

Me with my new leather jacket in my elevator of mirrors :)

PINK Belt Test

Last week I took and passed my 3rd belt test, and this particular belt is pink!  Now I don't mind wearing pink sometimes, I actually have a pink dress shirt, but when it comes to Taekwondo.. I guess I would have picked a different color, haha.  The one high school student who is in my Taekwondo group is going to love this.  He (and almost all of the students in the group) is a black belt, so even when I had an orange belt he would walk up to me, point at it and say "cute."  Haha he is funny but I'm making it a little too easy for him this time.

This is the progression of belts.  I started out with white, and had to take a test for yellow, orange, and now pink.  I only have 5 more to go before I start preparing for the black belt test, which is a big deal, and it's only offered 2 times a year I think.  I will go to a big gymnasium somewhere else in the city for that test, and I will get a big plaque and certificate if I complete it.

Here is the test which like the others has 4 parts: the 'basic action,' pumsei 3, the kicking test and then board breaking.  I was pretty well prepared for this test, which is the most difficult so far (just since there is a lot to memorize) but I still had a little difficulty with it.  One of my biggest problems is I like to go too fast, so in the beginning you will see Master Lee telling me to slow down.  It's easier for me to just have it automated from muscle memory, than to go slow and think about each move.. so a little room to improve.  Also I messed up a little bit in the basic action, as you see me freeze for a second.  I had actually showed up early that day and got winded playing soccer before hand, then had quite an intense session.  I think I'm in pretty good shape right now and I was just whooped!  Then it came time for the test and it was hard to gather my concentration, but luckily I pulled it off.  There is another part of the basic action you will see me do twice, I'm not sure why Master Lee told me to do it again, I showed him the video after and pointed it out but I didn't get an answer.  Also I sometimes I forget to 'cry' out (haaiii!) when I kick, which I need to make sure I do.  The last comment I will make about the test is kicking the 3 boards at the end HURT SO BAD!  Like, wow.  You can see my reaction, almost hopping around a bit.  I made the most contact with my toe knuckles, instead of the top, middle part of my foot.  Anyways all of that was worth it, as I make my way closer to the goal of black belt!

Master Lee and I!

Taekwondo Festival

Last Sunday I participated in a Taekwondo 'Festival' which was really cool!  Unfortunately I didn't get any videos of my performance, but I have several awesome videos  and TONS pictures of the kids, and a couple pictures of my performance.  I usually do Taekwondo with the older group of students, which only includes a few of my 6th graders, some middle schoolers and one high school student.  When I showed up for this event I was greeted by TONS of my younger students who were all too excited to see me doing something other than teaching, haha!

I thought this was taking place at some gym a few kilometers away, but it ended up being in MY school's gym in front of lots of parents.  This made me a little nervous, because I try to separate school and Taekwondo.  I have a certain standard of professionalism at school, and a bit of a relaxed attitude when it comes to Taekwondo.  It wasn't a bad thing, but it made the experience a little more nerve racking and interesting!

I took this picture, the rest I got from Master Lee.  (100 photos total)

I think these are 1st or 2nd graders, so I don't teach them, but aren't they ridiculously cute?

^^^ I rest my case.

This one in the yellow and black jacket is one of my favorite kids in my school.  His English name is Mason and he is one of my fourth graders.  Sometimes he is one of my classroom cleaners and he is just so cool!  He is the one jumping around in my video earlier in this post.  Actually on Monday he and 3 other students were cleaning my classroom and they came over to talk to me about this festival; "Ryan Teacher, Taekwondo good!"

I showed them the video of him jumping around, it was priceless.

These are the older students that do Taekwondo with me.  

Peace :)

You can actually see me taking one of the videos in the back of the gym!

Yes, they are performing to Ricky Martin, SMH.

This was me for 2 minutes, while Master Lee introduced me, waiting to begin.

Shizah! (start)

I was to perform three things: Pumsei 2, pumsei 3 and a bit of board breaking/kicking.  You can see pumsei 2 in my orange belt test video, and pumsei 3 in my upcoming belt video.  The board breaking was really cool and I wish I had the video.. 4 other students went and then I broke 4 boards.

I can honestly say that I am RARELY nervous, but I was so nervous for this once I got out there.  I was the only one to do a solo performance, and I stood out there for about 2 minutes while Master Lee introduced me in Korean.  The only thing I caught was he talked about how I'm a teacher and I play guitar a lot, haha.  I did really good though and got many compliments, what a relief (and experience)!

Live Music Downtown

I spent a little over 3 hours downtown yesterday running errands, exploring Lotte Department store, and watching a couple high school students performing some songs with a pair of guitars.

I had to pick up my guitar amp downtown for the 2nd time.  I accidentally blew it a while back, got it fixed for 40,000 Won, but then it blew again.  The first time I know it was  my fault, but the second time did not make sense, it just stopped working mid playing.  The music shop offered to fix it for free this time which was awesome.  I went to pick it up Tuesday and it wasn't ready yet, even though it was supposed to be ready Monday.  That was a bummer because I had to take the over crowded bus there and back during rush hour.. at least it was a free fix.  I went and got it yesterday and it works great now.

There are two large department stores downtown, one I have already explored which is the Hyundai Department store.  Since I was in no rush and was searching for a couple odds and ends, I took my time and explored the other one, Lotte Department store.

The first tall building is Lotte Hotel, and right next to it (to the left) is the Lotte Department store.  Behind it is a court yard and the other part of the Department store, and that is where the musicians were performing.

When I was right outside of the Lotte Deptartment store I saw a couple high school kids performing!  They played a couple songs in English/Korean, and several only in Korean.  I took some videos and mixed them together.  They performed "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, then Let It Be by the Beatles (obviously).  They did one other popular American song, but I'm not sure of it's name.  He also at the end you can see that he played the Kazoo for a little bit too!  I apologize for the poor sound quality from my phone, but the main singer (on the left) was very talented!

Let It Be (6th Grade Edition)

I did the Let It Be competition with both the 5th grade class, and the 6th grade class.  I think overall the 5th graders took it more seriously and did a better job, but some of the 6th graders did really good as well.  6-1 were the winners, and 6-3 still got a bit of a prize for their outstanding enthusiasm!  Enjoy!

Now I am doing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with the 3rd and 4th graders, and Jingle Bells with the 5th and 6th graders, so I may have more videos like this coming!

Teacher Trip!

This past Thursday I joined the rest of the teaching staff in an overnight hotel meeting/ end of the year celebration.  It was really fun and a great bonding experience with the other teachers.  Being a foreigner in the school makes it hard to get further than 'hello' and 'nice to see you' with the other teachers.  With the exception of my co-teachers, and when we play volleyball, I just go about my business.  That is fine, but whenever we go out to dinner and the other teachers get a couple drinks in them, they open up incredibly!  They have plenty of English vocab to communicate, but I think we are all just timid at other times, like at lunch time in the cafeteria.

We left the school at 3 pm and traveled about 20 minutes to another part of Ulsan.  We brought all of our things up to the rooms of the hotel, then went down for a soccer version of volleyball.  I'd seen videos of this, but had never played before.  It was really fun and I was actually pretty good!

 

For this game, the women were allowed to use their hands like in volleyball, but the guys had to use our heads, feet and knees like in soccer.  Each team could get up to three hits per turn, and you can play it on a bounce.  The last kick landed out of bounds.

 

Next we had a meeting about the school year and the coming school year.  For about an hour I read news articles on my phone, since I understood no part of the meeting.  My co-teacher Jack did point out which days we will have off for holiday next year though near the end of the meeting, so at least I gained some knowledge during this meeting :)

Next we had dinner, which consisted of raw fish, lots of mekju (beer) and soju (watered down vodka).  It was really fun, and one of the best times to bond with the other teachers, because like I said before, they really make the effort to talk to me after a drink or two, haha.  Had a lot of fun, and enjoyed the food.

The raw fish, and several side dishes.

My co-teacher Mr. Cheung and another teacher at the school.

After dinner five other teachers and I went to a norebang (personal karaoke room) nearby.  These are actually all teachers that I play volleyball with, so it was really fun!

After the norebang we went back to the hotel, had some snacks, and played some cards.  It was a wonderful time all around :D

And here is breakfast: scrambled egg soup, kimchi, anchovies, and a couple other random side dishes.

Cultural Fusion (through music)

So my friends out at UNIST (Ulsan National Instituted of Science and Technology) invited me back out to their campus, but this time to give a speech on American Culture!  My friend Rao was doing a project for a class about different cultures, and sharing those cultures through music.  He asked me to participate and play a song or two, and of course I gladly agreed!

The event was held in a lecture hall on campus, and there were only about 22 people in attendance, but it was still very cool to be a part of.. and actually featured!  At first I thought I was just playing for a couple people and a video camera, and it turns out I was featured on the poster of this event!  However I was even more excited about the event because of this, and prepared 2 songs and a short speech on American culture.

My friend Rao sang a song and did a presentation about Pakistan, and wore a traditional Pakistani dress shirt.

A really cool guy from Mongolia did a presentation and sang as well.
My friend Tong did a short presentation about Vietnam and played lead guitar for the song "Afterlife" by Avenged Sevenfold.  He has some amazing guitar skills.

I performed last since I was "featured," which was an HONOR.  I was really happy to do it, and wasn't nervous, however when I asked how many people could understand English, and less than half raised their hands.. it really broke my concentration.  It shouldn't have, but I was trying find a balance between how I communicate to my English students, and the audience that I anticipated.  So I edited the videos up a bit due to little stumbles and fumbles, but I still feel that I did pretty good, and they all thought so (all that matters :)

 

When I played open mics over the summer I did this song with an electric guitar, and it would sound even better with drums.. and bass.. and a whole band!  But regardless I love playing it and decided to do an acoustic cover.   Tong's electric was in drop D and had a tuning lock on it, so I stuck with the acoustic.

I did mention a couple of things about music and art, but I cut that since I stumbled a bit.  We also talked about how many people think all Americans eat McDonald's every day.   Of course I couldn't talk in the depth that I would have liked to about American culture due to time restraints, and I found myself changing my speech midway through due to the language barrier.  I am my worst critic, and I wish I would have done a better job, but it still was an awesome experience and my friends at UNIST were very happy with it.

This is one of my favorite songs to play, but it is a bit controversial, and as I noted in the video I slipped up on it a bit so I cut it short.  However I think the message that I stated before hand was the point I wanted to make, that we all have problems, and we all should be empathetic.  The audience also had a chance to experience this style of music, which is one of the main objectives of this event.

All in all I had a great time participating in this event, and I'm glad I did it.  Afterwards the fellas cooked dinner and I played a few more songs for them.  A good time was had by all :D

Let It Be

Over the last 3-4 weeks I have been teaching my 5th and 6th graders the Beatles song "Let It Be."  I often adapt my guitar playing to the text book CD Rom songs, but the older students have little or no interest in these.  A little over a month ago my three co-teachers and I sat down and discussed several things about how we are teaching in the English department.

My biggest interest was the 6th graders, who are the toughest to teach.  They are the toughest to teach because they are the oldest students in the school; they are the toughest because they have a 'too cool for school' attitude; and they are tougher to 'entertain.'  I honestly knew I could have gotten by the way I was teaching, but I decided I wanted to challenge myself to interest the 6th graders.  I got a whole lot of ideas from my co-teachers, and one of them was doing pop songs with them instead of textbook songs.

Now I call the Beatles 'Classic Rock,' not Pop, but in Korea, anything that is popular is 'Pop.'  The Beatles are fairly popular here, and I love their music, so for my first song with them I chose Let It Be.  We spent about 5-7 minutes a class on it for 3 weeks, and handed out the lyrics in both English and Korean.  They got one practice run through before they performed for the camera, which is of course a competition!  (Make anything into a competition and the Korean children treat it like the Super Bowl.)

We had the 5th grade competition on Tuesday this week, and will have the 6th grade competition starting Friday, and because of testing on Thursday will do the final class next Thursday.  We video taped all four 5th grade classes, and Mr. Park and I decided that class 5-3 won.  I mixed them all together to make this video, using the best material I had (of course there is a lot of good material that I didn't use).  Also while practicing we always used a YouTube video with lyrics, and I would try to play along with the solo.  Because of this I felt it necessary to play it for the competition as well :)

Next I will be doing a Christmas song with each of my classes.  I will do Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer with the 3rd and 4th graders, and I'm not sure yet, but something "Pop" for the 5th and 6th.  Next year I will be looking for good ideas, so if anyone has suggestions/requests, email me them!

Little Hike

I was walking the the little path that Jack and I do everyday this past Saturday, and I took a video of this rock/waterfall.  Usually you can barely tell there is any water running down, but since it had rained recently it was really going. 

Also I point out that there is exercise equipment everywhere.  At just about any park you will see workout equipment which at first was quite interesting.  Also some times you'll pass gas station attendents or people waiting for the bus doing make-shift pushups or some kind of exercise.  If only that was popular in the US, haha.  As a matter of fact I was inspired, and when I was just going to do a quick hike I ended up getting a really good workout in at the park that Jack and I always go to, and jogged back :)

Dinner at UNIST

This past Saturday night I visited my Engineer friends at their Technical Institution UNIST.  I made friends with these guys a couple months ago, and see them every 1-3 weeks on Friday nights.  The group consists of 2 Indian fellows, 2 Pakistani fellows and 1 Vietnamese guy.  One of the Indian guys, Sai, is the one I talk to the most on instant messenger, and we have become quite good friends.

I haven't had real authentic Indian food yet, and there is a very popular Indian restaurant her in Ulsan called Namascar.  Sai had his 30th birthday last week and we talked about going there for dinner to celebrate.  He said that if I came out to UNIST (which is quite far for me on two buses) that they would cook me some food way better than the restaurant.  I thought that was a great idea, so I agreed. 

I mentioned that I was planning on going to my good friend Connie who has met these guys, and she wondered if she could come along.  I loved the idea because she's good company, and because then I would have a traveling companion out to UNIST!  Of course Sai didn't mind and we planned on going together after visiting our friend Julia in the hospital.  She has Pneumonia, but is getting better.

Here is Julia!  The next day (Sunday) we had a little pizza party with her, Connie, Howard and I. 

 Here is Connie on the bus!  If I had gone from my apartment the first bus would have been about 45 minutes, but from their neighborhood it was about an hour.  The second bus was about a half an hour to UNIST.  That girl next to her doesn't look too happy, but Connie does! lol

Here I am having more fun than usual on the city bus haha

Here is a really cool fountain on UNIST's campus.  We had to wait for our friends to come get us so Connie and I hung out around this for a bit.  Of course we had to run through it when the water wasn't spraying.  Connie ALMOST got soaked.

 

This is in the kitchen at UNIST.  The kitchen was pretty big and had 12 burners.  I only have one at my apartment, oh too bad they don't live closer.  Well anyways this is Dong from Vietnam, and he is a fantastic guitar player.  I've really switched over to acoustic over the last year, and his roommate had one so we had a nice jam session while waiting for the food to be ready!

On the left here is Rao from Pakistan, one of the funniest guys in the group.  In the middle is Sai from India, one of my best friends here, and then Connie.

Bon somtey (sp?) is cheers in French, which Connie just taught me.  We brought rice wine to share since they had never tried it before.  The rest is pretty self explanatory!

We ended up having a great dinner but it was not Indian food.  There were 2 main dishes, one which was Pakistani was chicken and some kind of sauce.  The other was a random mix of Mexican and Italian styles, which was interesting, but delicious!  They also made homemade pitas to scoop the food up with.  I still need to have some real Indian food soon, but it was really nice none the less.  We learned a bit about their cultures, and then went out and had a fun night together!

Orange Belt!

I did just earn my Orange belt in Taekwondo last Thursday, so I thought I would share the video of that.  I think the video of my Yellow belt was a better performance, but that got lost with my long lost phone.  The reason this performance is a little 'choppy' is because of the language barrier.  I knew the moves to do, but I didn't always know when to do them. 

There are four parts for this test.  The first is the basic action, which I know, but did not know I had to 'cry' or make the "aye" sound.  The second part is pumsei 2 which is the series of punches, kicks and blocks I memorized.  The third is the kicking test.  And the last is breaking the boards (there were two stacked). 

I did reach the third belt in under 2 months, so there is a chance that I will earn the Black belt before the year is up!  My friends and I met a girl that was just about to go back home (to California) and had just earned her Black belt when we went to Busan for Halloween a few weeks ago.  She actually stayed in Korea 2 months longer than planned so that she could take the Black belt test before she left.  She said it was very worth it; it's done in front of a huge crowd, and you get a big plaque certificate!

The boy with the glasses right in front of my fist was one of my break-dancers.  The one right behind my fist is a high schooler who just started coming a few weeks ago.  He and I and have so much fun just teasing each other and competing all the time.  I just love Taekwondo!

Gaji San!

I had one of the craziest Sundays ever a week ago.  I hiked the peak of the highest mountain in Ulsan, and the third highest in Korea with my friends from Hogye (same group that I did Pereaso Falls with, and nearly the same location!).  There is a little background information necessary, but in a nut shell: we got caught on the mountain in the dark, and got lost on the way down!  It was actually really scary, but I'll have to give the whole story to put it into perspective.

On Saturday my friends told me about this hike, that would take about 5-6 hours, but that it would be amazing and worth it.  I would have to leave my apartment at 7:30 am to meet them, then head out to where the mountain is.  I had already committed to attending an event that my friend was DJing.  He is one of my pretty good friends here, and it was supposed to be a huge event, so I didn't want to cancel.  What I decided is that I would go, but not stay too late, and then go on the hike the next day.  I got there and it was "Funk" themed, so the dancing was endless.  I was dancing for about 4 hours and didn't leave until 2am.  I was determined though, so I got up at 7am on 4 hours of sleep, and made it to meet my friends on time.

We all caught the bus and made it over to where Gaji San is ("san" is "mountain" in Korean).  We actually began our hike at 10:30 am, and it was beautiful.  There were some intense portions, and some fairly relaxing and scenic parts.  Where we started running into trouble though because some of us could hike fast enough to complete it in 5-6 hours, but a couple (out of 7 of us) could not keep that pace.  It was not a problem waiting at certain points, or in my case hiking a little slower to join them.

The hike was beautiful though, and we crossed paths with many friendly Korean hikers along the way.  We stopped at one mountain peak to eat with 3 Korean fellows, and then made it to the peak shortly after!

 Here is our little picnic with the 3 Korean gentlemen. 

As we were in the final stretch to the peak we passed this group.  The one guy was climbing that tree to pick fruit, which was right over the face of the mountain.. haha no thanks.

Picture taken as I reached the peak!

Julia and Connie.  Unfortunately after this long and crazy hike Julia (one of the fast hikers) caught pneumonia :(  She was already a little sick I guess, and then went on this hike.  I visited her this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It looks like she is doing well, but still in the hospital. 

 

 Serious picture..

(Connie, Julia, Howard, Erin, Myself, Kathrine, and Norah)

CRAZY picture!

This is a bit of a silly video, and at the beginning they were joking how they were recording each other recording each other, so I recorded THAT.  haha then I walked over and said Tru HD(ehh), which is from a Korean Smart phone commercial.  (Koreans add the 'ehh' to many English words by the way.  Example: "The puppy is cute-ehhhh," or in volleyball: "nice-ehhh!")  Also "kimchi" is what people say instead of "cheese" for a picture haha.

Now we had a couple hours to get down, but it had taken us about 6 hours to get to the peak.. which was not good.  Also if we were to complete the 'loop' of the hike route, it would have been shorter on the way down, but the others worried about taking the wrong way down.  So when I was not worried about getting caught in the dark, it quickly became apparent that if we didn't hurry we would be in a little trouble.

As we were making our way down, the faster hikers were getting more and more worried about the time, and decided they were going to just go ahead.  I was with them (a bit ahead of the slower hikers) at a path intersection, and knew the right thing to do was to stay back with the others.  I did just that and did my best to lead them in the right direction as quickly as possible.  As dusk set in and we saw that we were not yet very close to ground level, a bit of panic started setting in.  Our faster friends had just reached the bottom, and we knew we had a ways to go.

Well we were on track and making it in the darkening night for a good while, but finally took a wrong turn.  At this point our friends at the bottom had found flashlights at the temple (at the base of the mountain) and borrowed them from the monks.  As they were coming to meet us we found a farm house with a light on and a barking dog.  We were not sure if we should go back into the pitch black woods of the mountain, or attempt to ask for help at this house.  Since our friends were determined to come find us we ventured back into the wilderness, and eventually found the trail (thank you glow in the dark post!).  Our friends actually overshot us by about 15 minutes, and we found that out be all yelling as loud as we could, followed by them (also thank you cell phones!!).

This is what hiking in the dark looks like..

When we knew where we were and that help was on the way, my three hiking companions and I took a seat on the trail and told stories until we were 'rescued.'  It was just rediculous.  We hiked for 9 hours; I had been dancing like crazy the night before and gotten 4 hours of sleep.  We all made it back (I slept on the bus) and had dinner in Hogye.

I was so wiped out, even with 8 hours of sleep, that I had almost no energy on Monday.  I canceled my doctor appointment and Taekwondo.  All in all it was still a fun experience, and definitely one I will never forget.  Also I still love all of the people in that group, but some of them are more suited for 'advanced' hikes.  You live and you learn!