Reasons for moving to Seoul:

Reason #1 was so I could date, fall in love, not get married, and live happily ever after.

Reason #2 was so that I could do fun things that did not involve batting cages.

Things were going swimmingly with both.  I was two dates away from changing my Facebook relationship status and I’ve already been able to do a lot of fun things.

Then, my would-be admirer told me they were moving to Indonesia.

I think I’m feeling a little bit, what others call, broken-hearted…

I’m not too familiar with this particular emotion.  It just doesn’t happen to me all that often.  I think it happened once in 2001, last year when I read Brokeback Mountain, and now.

However, I still have Reason #2, and despite being quite sad, my friends and I went to a fusion gayageum (가야금) concert this weekend with Yeoul (여울).

I love the gayageum.  It’s an incredibly beautiful 12-stringed zither, and the concert was amazing.

Reason #1 sucks right now, but Seoul’s really picked up a lot of slack with Reason #2.

Here’s Stairway to Heaven and Under the Sea.  Probably not what King Gasil had in mind… but it was awesome.  You can check out all the photos here.

Stairway to Heaven

Under the Sea

Related posts:

1. Lotus Lantern Festival 2010 in Seoul This weekend I spent some time in Seoul to check...

After two long days in Seoul walking more than I have ever walked in my entire life, I pulled it together enough to wait it out for the Lotus Lantern Festival Parade.  I’m glad I did, because I loved it.

In my former life working in politics, I attended many (MANY) parades.  As a rule, I don’t like them… I’ve been scarred ever since I was forced to march for Joe Lieberman with two interns and a Joe-mobile in front of John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards, and their enormous staff.  (NB, this was BEFORE either Lieberman or Edwards took their respective nose-dives into meaninglessness… or, at least before Edwards’.)

Aside from the beautiful lanterns and beautiful hanbok — both of which make me incredibly happy — it was so nice to see so many smiles.  I don’t typically get too many smiles from Koreans.

It’s not like Tennessee where you have to smile and say hello to everyone you see.  And it’s not like Connecticut where you have to smile and say hello to everyone you see (who has the same skin color and socio-economic status)… I just don’t get too many hello’s in Korea.  And I’m okay with that (really I am!), but it was nice to have an hour or so of endless waves.

I was also excited to try out my new Canon s90 camera, which I paid way too much money for at the Yongsan Electronics Market — learning the hard way that sometimes free trade agreements can be quite wonderful.

I’ve always carried cheap point-and-shoots, so I was pretty pumped to finally upgrade to something with more flexibility without being enormous and forcing me to carry the badge of Fake Professional Photographer.

So, here it is.  You can view the full set here (40 photos).

Related posts:

1. Lotus Lantern Festival 2010 in Seoul This weekend I spent some time in Seoul to check...

This weekend I spent some time in Seoul to check out the Lotus Lantern Festival.  Buddha’s birthday is this month and there are a lot of things going on.

It was very interesting in comparison to American festivals… by that I mean it was A LOT less annoying.  Of course, I can never figure out if I’m less annoyed because no one is talking to me or if it’s actually less annoying.

I will give Korea the benefit of the doubt on this one.  It was a great festival with booths on lantern making, temple stays, books, etc.  Plus, instead of serving fried Snickers bars, they had healthy temple food.

One of the best parts was getting to see a traditional tightrope-walking performance — called jultagi or 줄타기.  I had seen this in movies, but never live… and to channel Annie Hall, it was pretty neat!

You can see the full photo set here.

Related posts:

1. Lotus Lantern Festival Parade After two long days in Seoul walking more than I...
2. Bulguksa Temple I cannot do justice to Bulguksa Temple… It was originally...
3. Donghwasa Temple Near the top of Mt. Palgongsan is Donghwasa Temple.  It...

Giving into Olympic fever, I went out to visit Olympic Park in Seoul last weekend.

I’m always so divided on the Olympics.  I think it’s such a gigantic waste of money, but at the same time I can’t stop loving them.  In my heart I really, really wanted Chicago to win the bid for the 2016 games, but now that it’s all over, my head is really glad they lost.  Now Rio de Janeiro can bask in the post-Olympic haze of unused judo and weightlifting arenas.

But, since my heart still remains with the Olympics, I was really excited to see Seoul Olympic Park…

You can view the full set of photos here.

The pool where Greg Louganis won two more gold medals…

The gymnastics center…

My favorite… an abandoned plastic chair by the gymnastics center.  This is why I can never fully support America hosting an Olympics.

Related posts:

1. Lotus Lantern Festival 2010 in Seoul This weekend I spent some time in Seoul to check...
2. Kim Yu-Na breaks her own world record to win Olympic gold Enough has been written about Kim Yu-Na’s performance today, so...
3. Lotus Lantern Festival Parade After two long days in Seoul walking more than I...

I went to the War Memorial of Korea several weeks ago, but I haven’t written about it in hopes that my original feelings about the place would moderate.  It is very different from war memorials in the United States, and I didn’t want my pre-conceived notions to get in the way (because I do actually love the war memorials in DC).

The War Memorial of Korea does display artifacts going back thousands of years through Korea’s history, but the bulk of it seems to focus on their civil war from 1950-1953.  And in that, it focuses mostly on what they used to kill people.

I realize there’s a lot of cultural bias coming from my end especially given that I really love the war memorials in the US.  I feel like the WWII and Vietnam memorials do such a good job of honoring the sacrifices and losses of so many Americans.  I find them beautiful and awe-inspiring, but not pretentious or grandiose.

While there were several nice spots highlighting the gravity of the situation, to me it seemed like a massive display of guns, tanks, and planes.  Also, there was a playground in the middle of the Memorial, and there was even a shooting range for kids to practice killing the enemy.  (I’m all for kids having a good time, but perhaps a less bellicose venue would be more appropriate.)

Perhaps I should just think of it more as a museum and not a memorial.

Here are some photos.  You can view the full set here.

This was a great piece showing a South Korean and North Korean soldier holding each other with a split down the middle.

And… the infamous playground beneath the helicopters and planes waiting to drop some firepower!

And here’s where you can practice your aim at the pop up enemy!

No related posts.