Seoul Art Museum

Last Saturday, Ben, Tyler, Cecily, Emily, Greg and I went to Bundang for some language exchange party sort of thing they have every once in a while. Its a chance for people all around Seoul to go hang out and speak different languages. The entrance fee was $15, and included in the fee was unlimited beer and soju for 2 and a half hours. They also gave away prizes. The third place prize was $300 towards a tattoo by one of Seoul's best tattoo places. The girl we were sitting with won it, and she doesn't even want a tattoo! The second place was $500 and the third place was $1000! There wasn't many people there so I was thinking I had a solid chance of winning one of the prizes. When they pulled the number for the $1000 one it was for Greg! And he was only 2 numbers in front of me! We walked in at the same time but he signed up first. I was so mad! I really wanted to win it and get a free tattoo! Oh well.. my mom's probably happy I didn't win it.

On Sunday morning while I was eating my breakfast Ben called me and said him and Suzie were going to Itaewon. Now, usually Itaewon means an all day drinking affair, which I wasn't up for, and he assured me that it wasn't going to be that way. He said we were going to do something "cultural", so Emily and I met him and Suzie in Hanti and we took a cab to Itaewon. I already ate lunch, so I just had a Bloody Mary and a cup of chili.

After lunch we went to the Seoul Art Museum to see an exhibit by Yann Arthus Bertrand called "It's My Home". Ben said Seoul was the first place he was showing it around the world. He goes around the world and takes pictures from helicopters of different things ranging from people to nature. His philosophy is something like trying to show how we are changing the face of the Earth. The pictures were amazing! So many cool things.. some of the pictures didn't turn out great because I had to crop them. I wasn't really on my picture taking game that day, we were surrounded by huge tours of people and I didn't like being surrounded by them. I'll try to add some captions but I forget some of them.

A fisherman in a canoe amongst dead trees

Venice!

This was the ashes of a tree in a forest.. It was so cool! One of my favorite pictures

I forget

This is a date farm in Morocco I think. They are drying them

a flood

a guy napping in some cotton.. it looks so comfortable

This was picture on all the brochures for the exhibit.. its no wonder why. its like a sand barge or something that formed a perfect heart

A junkyard full of cars

A glacier that is melting

I don't know what this is.. some kind of port on the side of an island?

A marooned ship in Afghanistan

I forget

Fisherman stuck in vegetation on a river

The tree of life in Kenya! You can see how its roots spread out along the land

A mother picking the seeds out of cotton while her baby sleeps in the cotton

A junkyard

This is a garbage barge in Africa. It is just a tugboat. All the garbage is literally floating down the river, held in the middle by logs that are tied together. If you look closely you can see people all over it.

This is the border between North and South Korea

A picture of people in Africa. This one was really neat. It is on the floor of first floor and you can see it from the second floor looking down, at roughly the same distance away as his helicopter, so you can see what he saw.

A picture of outside from inside the museum.

These things were outside. They are some sort of optical illusion. It was really strange to look at them in person. They looked like they were flattened or some sort of 3-D thing you see with glasses on.

Thursday was the last day of intensives!!! That means no more waking up at 6 am! Except on Saturdays we have to wake up at 7, but thats only Saturdays. Because we teach less hours, we lost some of our classes. I lost some of my favorite classes, but also lost some of my least favorite classes. I'm still mostly teaching higher level middle school 3 students.. so 9th graders. Main branch and Parthenon went out for dinner and drinks to celebrate! This was our table, taken by Nancy

And this was the other table. 

We had sam gyeob sal, which is three layer pork belly something or other. It is really delicious. 

Me and Nancy!

When I wear these glasses, my kids say I look like this:

Little do they know I love penguins!

It was a miracle that I have today off, because I couldn't move until 430 this afternoon, and even know I am moving slowly. Intensives was a nice break of sobriety.. and after last night I don't want to drink for a while