Rockin

Can we just appreciate this line-up for a minute? This is a festival that's going on in Seoul in July. Ummm, Weezer, Oasis, Jet, Jimmy Eat World all in the same weekend? Yes please! I am especially looking forward to seeing Weezer in Korea. I've seen them a few times, but never in Korea, obviously. And as all Weezer fans know, Rivers has a thing for the Asian ladies. I wonder if that's why they tour around Asia so much? (Yes, I know he's married now...) Anyway, this should be good.

Lil Kim

I'm not going to lie to you, being within 40 miles of a country run by one of the craziest men alive does not give me comfort.  In fact, I worry about North Korea on a daily basis.  Sure we all know they would have to be extremely dumb to actually try anything because they don't really have any allies anymore, but I'm not sure that North Korea knows that.  Anyway, I equally love and loathe North Korea's newest threat about "wiping the aggressors off the face of the Earth once and for all."  Really North Korea?  Your last two missile launches haven't gone so well.  But anyway, here's a clip from "The Daily Show".  I don't know about you, but I think the mini Kim Jong-Il is adorable:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Welcome to the Jong-il
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Obama Style

Koreans love Obama.  I don't know if it's because they can pronounce his name really easily (unlike our former president who they call Bush-ey --Koreans put a vowel end on most English words), or because he's young or what exactly it is.  But every time I show a picture of a black man in a lesson invariably a few students will yell out "Obama!"  (Have I mentioned that most Koreans are a tad racist?  Because they are.)  Also, I used President Obama as an example in one of my lessons once, and in almost every class, all the students pointed to a student who "looked like" Obama, according to them anyway.  They think there's a certain look that some Korean men have that resembles Obama.  Apparently one of the teachers at my school looks like Obama too.  I don't quite see it.  There's also a restaurant near one of my friend's apartments named "Oh! Ba Ma."

Anyway, one of my students, Jin Sung, was entered in a city-wide English speech contest.  I had been helping him with his speech a bit over the last few weeks.  The contest was last Friday, and the co-teacher who I love, Sharon, got me out of teaching in the afternoon to watch the contest.   There were about 50 students entered in the contest.  After we watched a few contestants, I went out to practice with Jin Sung a few more times.  As we were practicing, Jin Sung told me that he wanted to do his speech "Obama Style".  I looked questioningly at Sharon because I had no idea what he meant.  Sharon explained that he wanted to hold the microphone instead of have it attached to a stand as all the other students had done.  This is "Obama Style". Apparently Jin Sung even asked the judges before the contest if he could hold the mike.  He seemed to enjoy practicing that way, so I told him to go for it.  However, I think "Obama Style" ended up distracting him a bit from his speech because he forgot a small part of it, but he does look cute:

Jin Sung's "Obama Style"

Obama's "Obama Style"

Anna Rickert MN

Korea vs. Iran

Last night I went to my first real soccer game. I'm kind of hooked. In fact I dare say I enjoy soccer more than football. I wish it was bigger in the U.S. As always sports kind of confuse me, but I guess it was the World Cup qualifying match for Iran. South Korea has already qualified for the World Cup. The game ended with a tie of 1-1. Apparently Iran still has a chance of qualifying.  And because Iran is in the news at the moment, the game even made the news in the U.S. as you can see in this Time article.  Here are a few photos from the game:

The World Cup Stadium in Seoul.

We were attempting to do "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil."

Julie, Chrissy, me

And a normal photo...

My fave girls: Jen, Chrissy, me, and Julie

We weren't that close but still a very exciting game.  

Jen and Adam enjoying the game with the thunder stick things.  

Another year older, and another year wiser?

Almost two weeks ago now (wow, time just flies) I celebrated my birth with some amazing people.  Take my word for it, birthdays are a good time in Korea.  On Friday night about 10-15 of us headed out to Hongdae in Seoul.  My friend Julie outfitted us with sweet birthday hats that she made herself.  All of the hats had a lot of photos of me on them.  You can see some sported here:

My birthday ended up lasting most of the weekend.  On Saturday night we celebrated with a cake that Chrissy bought for me.  It's probably the cutest cake I've ever seen:

I was going to write some deep post about being 26.  It seems like such a jump from 25.  But maybe I'll save that for another time.  Instead let's enjoy some good time birthday fun pictures: