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Week 30 - Y2 (Sept 24th to Sept 30th) |
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Sunday Sept 24th, Again, somehow Joe, Greg and I all managed to get up
at a decent hour, and even managed to make it to the
north part of town to join a tour of the World
Heritage Palace, Changdeokgung. This palace can only
be visited on a tour, and they close various parts of
the complex in rotation, to help keep it
well-preserved. The palace was absolutely beautiful.
The colours of the paint, and the architectural
details were incredible. I could have stared for
hours at some of the buildings and still have been
completely intrigued. There was also a really
gorgeous "secret garden". Plus, the weather was
absolutely perfect-- hot but not humid, and not a
cloud in the sky. I wish it was always like this.
After the tour, we headed back to Itaewon (again) for
lunch at the one and only Greek restaurant in Korea.
Mmm . . . at least Itaewon has really good food, that
sort of makes up for the general sleaziness of that
neighbourhood. And then . . . it was time for Sergio
Mendes!!!! The show was incredible. He had an
eleven-piece band, which included 3 percussionists,
and 3 singers. The percussionists also demonstrated
some capoeira, which is a Brazilian martial art/dance
form. The band was really tight, and they played
forever. They just kept on coming back for encores.
It was fabulous.
This was a good week for concerts-- first Brad
Mehldau, and then Sergio Mendes. And on top of that,
this weekend, I missed out on a jazz festival about an
hour away from Seoul that was featuring Seamus Blake,
a sax player that I love. Unfortunately his show was
at the same time as Sergio Mendes' show, and since I'd
never seen Sergio live, guess who won out! I wish
that there were this many shows in Korea all the time
. . .
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Tuesday Sept 26th,
I had a new private student today. Ah Young found me
through my friend Sarah at home, who is also a jazz
vocalist. Ah Young was in Toronto this summer to
study English, and she saw some of Sarah's teaching
posters around the neighbourhood and ended up taking
some lessons from her this summer. Since Ah Young
wanted to continue studying jazz back in Seoul, Sarah
passed her along to me. Isn't that funny?
International student networking . . .
I just found out that I have all of next week off for
the Chuseok holiday. Chuseok is kind of like a Korean
thanksgiving, but it's a bigger deal (It was this
holiday last year that I took the Beijing trip). What
feels weird about having a week-long holiday is that
I've only been back at work for a month . . . most
people only have from Wednesday off. There are plenty
of jokes among my English teacher friends that I'm
never working, thanks to my light schedule and ample
vacation time!
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Wednesday Sept 27th,
Jae sprung some news on me today: Mike Downes, a
great bass player/teacher at Humber College is coming
at the end of October to do some
auditions/masterclasses with our students. There will
be a big concert in our school's theatre, and I'll be
singing on it! This is pretty high profile, and
actually, because it will be heavily advertised, and
recorded and so on, I'll have to get a special
temporary visa to be allowed to perform at the concert
(usually Kenji would too, but he'll be married by
then, and if you're married to a Korean, you can
gig/teach privates anytime you want!)
Anyway, as Jae was telling me all this, he also told
me that he needed somne pictures of me ASAP to put on
the poster. Since my headshots are outdated/in
Canada, there ended up being an hour-long
spur-of-the-moment photo shoot, with one of the other
teachers playing photographer. Guess I'm going to
have to get some real headshots done soon . . .
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Saturday Sept 30th,
Last night I went to Daegu, and stayed at Ange's (Ryan
and Lindsey's couch is currently filled with Lindsey's
mom, aunt and two older cousins!) This morning we all
took the train to Gyeongju, which is a really
traditional city on the east coast (close to Pohang,
where Jason lives). It was the capitol of Korea a
long long time ago, and there are still a lot of
pagodas, temples, stone Buddhist carvings, so on all
over the city. In fact, right by the train station,
there's a huge park where a lot of the ancient royal
family is buried in huge mounds (kind of the Korean
version of pyramids, this is how everyone is buried
here, in mounds of grass that look like little hills.
But the royal tombs are as big as any hill in Southern
Ontario). We found a really cheap motel that was run
solely by this adorable little ajumma (elderly lady),
who was incredibly sweet to us. When we were all fed
up, and we had picked up Mark and Miranda from the bus
station, all ten of us took three taxis far up into
the mountains to the temple of Bulguksa. It was
beautiful, but very touristy, which definately took
away from the peaceful atmosphere. Lindsey's family
really seemed to enjoy it. They are all from Dryden,
a very small town way north in Ontario, and this the
first time leaving Canada for all four of them. Korea
is quite a place to start! It's really interesting to
see older women's perspectives on Korea.
At the bottom of the mountain, strangely enough there
was a go-kart track! Of course, Ryan and Mark were
thrilled by this, and it did sound pretty fun, so we
decided to do it. It turned out to be way overpriced,
so Lindsey's family, Lindsey and Miranda declined.
Since I can't drive, and was not about to learn on the
go-kart track, Ange and I got a double cart that had a
fake steering wheel on my side! (Obviously designed
for children . . .) So Mark, Ryan, Ange and I
decided to have a race. Guess who won . . . yeah,
that's right. Ange and I kicked their butts!
When we got back to town, we somehow managed to find a
buffet restaurant (mostly Korean food) that would
appease Lindsey's fam, who haven't quite caught on to
the Korean food thing yet. We were kind of planning
on going out, but us young ones were exhausted from
partying too hard the night before, and the adults
were tired from walking in the mountains all day, so
we just ended up going back to the motel and crashing.
All six of the young ones packed ourselves into one
room. The ajumma gave us two yos, which are the floor
mattresses that most Koreans sleep on instead of beds,
so we did two in the bed, and four on the floor.
Great part was that we only paid $5 each!
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