Checking In

It's been a few days since I posted so I thought I'd just let give a quick update. First and Foremost! I updated a video to youtube that you should ALL go to right now and see. I did two versions of the song, one without autotune and one with autotune and some drums that I think is just hilarious. Zoey, I figure you'll enjoy it the most. Everything is played by me, and I layered: three vocal tracks, two guitar tracks, one (fake, computer synthesized) drum track and a fiddle track. Had a lot of fun with it, took me forever to track down the the video too. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25N8Esg5r-Q


Since I'm talking about videos uploaded to youtube I thought you guys might all get a kick out of this. I tried to upload it to youtube around halloween time but SONY would not approve the soundtrack and so youtube wouldn't accept it. (Apparently that's how these things work.) It's a little graphic but come on that is funny stuff. 

Other than that I've got no word at all. Counting down the days until Conor gets here, just relaxing, trying to eat well, and succeeding for the most part. The Kite runner is a pretty good book, it's no Bridge of Birds though, read that if you have to pick between the two.

I recently shaved my beard and grabbed a moustache, the kids hate it. Tylor says I look like an out of work porn star, but I don't know why the hell I look out of work at all. 

Must Run, next post will probably be when Conor gets here. I'm not doing anything this weekend, trying to spend as little as possible til next pay. Hoping to start sending everything I get home as soon as I get it now, I'll let you know how that goes. 

Jason.

Happy Birthday Zoey!

Happy Birthday Zoey, sorry I don't have a better present for you, but please accept this joke as my gift:

What does a clam do on his birthday?

He shellabrates!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHhahaahah. Good one Jason.

Seriously though, have a great birthday and a great year. I may miss most of it, but eventually I'll be back in action.

Updates:

School is running along smoothly, we got a few new Korean gals working for us and one of the guys recently left, but that hardly changes things for me so basically life is moving along on schedule. Mr. Conor Perry is showing up on the 15th of December with his girlfriend, and he'll be with us for a whole 3 weeks I believe, which means we'll be having fun. Lots of sights to take him to see. I haven't seen half of them myself so I'm looking forward to his arrival. 

SPD Contest

ECC had a special event at night called a SPD contest (Speech, Presentation, Debate) where we had to dress up and parents came to watch their kids give speeches and the like. I was chosen to be the English MC, which, since none of the parents spoke any English, turned into me announcing a kids name and then passing the mic to a Korean teacher who spoke for a minute and a half about them. It would've been fine but it was hot as balls in the room, and the whole thing took about 4 hours. I think our director thought it was a great success, but I thought the whole thing was a little strange. I would not have wanted to be a parent at the event, to go and watch my kid (and then a whole SLEW of other people's kids) speak a language I couldn't understand all night. Oh well. It might the boss happy, and it was pretty entertaining at times. PICTURES!    

Like I said we had to dress up, but I didn't get any pictures of myself, mostly because the parents probably would've thought it was weird to see me posing for the camera while their kids are up speaking.

For now, that's about it. Just going through the weeks here. Got mom's package in the mail today, I'll try to call but she won't be home, as per the norm. Thanks a bunch mom. I opened it up but didn't open up the wrapped things yet. I assume that was your plan. We'll see how long that lasts though, but I'll at least get hold of you before I do. The PJs are much appreciated.

Alright. I'm out again, enjoy your cold Canadian weather folks, although it ain't too warm here either, right now its 10pm and 4 degrees. We had flurries the other day, (supposedly, I was inside.) the kids were excited. 

Talk soon. 

Jason.

November Updates

Back again, trying to update more, sorry about the no posts. Let's go through the topics:


War


So North Korea 'threw some bombs' as my children say, at 연평 island, and two soldiers were killed. I've heard this has been on the news a lot lately back home. Let me at least tell you that there is no air of concern here whatsoever. To the Koreans here, this is just another in a long line of small harassments that North Korea has been perpetrating for years. It's not talked about here and none of the Koreans we know are worried. I just thought I'd mention that because Koreans worry about everything. I don't think theres need to panic as of yet. 


Wedding


Our friends Eric and Sylvia got married, so I'll put up a few pictures of that. I played piano and our coworker Danny sang a song, so Tylor had the camera the whole time. Unfortunately they serve drinks at Korean weddings, and Tylor's camera work was, let's say, hindered. But he did snap a few shots.

Much like the last wedding I attended, they did an american style, followed by a Korean style wedding. I didn't get many pictures of the Korean wedding ceremony (which is basicaly just them sitting in a small room while people perform some small rituals around them and take a lot of pictures. Here's Eric though in his Korean wedding tux. 

What I think is really interesting about weddings in Korea is the lack of ceremony. It's as if someone in Korea once attended an America wedding and said, hey we can do that! And then brought back the rituals but none of the importance. We were all just chatting and then we noticed the bride and groom coming down the isle, and no one stopped talking or mostly bothered to look at them. The whole time Eric and Sylvia were just up there doing there thing with the minister/priest/whoever, and the people sitting down weren't really paying attention. Pretty interesting. 

OK, I must run to work so I've gotta cut this short now. Hopefully you'll see a new post in the short future. Miss you guys lots, see you soon.

Quick Update

Hello family.


Just a quick post after the weekend. We went to a lantern festival in Seoul that had some pretty well-made lanterns, so I'm going to put up a few pictures of them. But first.... a picture of mom!

Patricia Mossman

Thought you'd enjoy that. I also found a picture of Sarah Moreau, but don't tell her about it because she might beat me up.

Sarah Moreau.

Ok, maybe that was mean. But let's be serious:

Anyway. Lantern festival. There's a manmade stream in Seoul (That I've posted quite a few pictures of before) and for an annual festival they set up 100's of giant constructed lanterns along the stream. We took the walk and here are some of the highlights:

 

After the walk we went out for a few drinks. Well actually, everyone else went out for a few drinks. I'm sober while I'm taking whatever medication it is I'm taking, as it doesn't sit well with me to be drinking while I'm on I don't know what. No worries though, all I need to have fun is the dance. And until the novelty wears off, making fun of drunker and drunker friends is a past time I'm enjoying. 

Nothing much more to say today. Next weekend we're going to our two x-coworkers wedding, so I'll take more pictures then. I'm going to play some piano or guitar while our Korean friend Danny sings. He's ok. He's no Jason Mossman. I'll keep y'all updated on the goingsons.

Anyhey. Have fun, update more soon.

Oh hey!

Wow, I'm so happy it's finally November! You know, because there's no internet in Korea in October.... Y'all knew about that, yeah? Well anyway, now that November is here it's time to get back to bloggin'.

I'll try to keep it short and sweet, and put up just a few pictures - I need to get back into the habit of making this a weekly activity. 

Let's throw out some topics and deal with them. 

My health. 

So I have Arrhythmia. An irregular heartbeat. I was having some chest pains and fits with a racing pounding heart on and off for about a week before I finally went to the doctor. He gave me an EKG and diagnosed Arrhythmia (which I guess is a blanket term for a lot of things) He gave me pills to take once a day for 30 days and to get better rest. That's all for now. They took a blood sample and I'm to go back in 30 days for the checkup. I don't really know what else I can say about it. I've been sleeping better this last week, and trying to eat a bit better as well. I will keep you posted, but so lately I've been having less attacks so, just going to take the pills and see what happens. Next week I'm going to join the gym to start jogging again, as per docs recommendations.

Halloween.

We had a halloween party for the kids, and a haunted house as well. It was a really fun day. The female teachers did face painting and played games with the kids, (like feeling the peeled grapes and guessing what it is, etc.) while our boss assigned Tylor, Brendan and I to set up and prepare the haunted house. We were terrifying, of course. 

We would get waves of kids sent in, and the navigated a pitch black room with us set up doing various things to scare the kids, my schtick was basically sitting down like a puppet, and when they got close enough a light would shine on me, and then brendan would jump out and scare the bejesus. bigeezes. bahjeezes out of them. It was a good time. At the start of the day, when the kids were really young, we were getting an alarming amount of cryers, but the late elementary school kids had a lot of fun. The middle/highschooler kids were a bit too cool for school, but what can you do. 

Pictures! We didn't really go as anything, other than just making ourselves look scary. They don't have a lot of costumes here because halloweens not nearly big enough, but I found a wig, and a rubber mask which I turned inside out, and put on some weird clothing to finish it off. 

 

Me one the left and Brendan on the right

That was on a Friday, we had no classes, just fun day all day for the kids, and then Saturday we went out to Seoul. 

Me and Tylor wanted to go as characters from black and white TV, after seeing a few pictures of this woman:

(That's Make-up, not computer trickery)

But after a few trial attempts, we couldn't get it right, so we decided to change the plan. We used make-up to make us look dead, and then we made nooses and wore them around our necks. Tylor wore one noose, and I wore two. He was hung, and I was well-hung. 

Ba dum Cha.

It was a good night, mostly only westerners out in costume but a few koreans as well. There was a real solidarity amongst people in costume, and we made a few friends and stayed out to greet the sun. Sorry to say we had no camera.

Life as its been.

School is good, no complaints about the day to day. I started going back to piano school, though I made a deal with the owner that for half price I won't get lessons but can just come in and play whenever I want to. It's good for everyone involved I feel. My fingers are rusty after a summer hiatus, but they're sharper now even after just a week of it. Tylor and Brendan and I have been living together in this house for a few weeks now, and it's a lot cleaner than you're imagining. I've been giving English lessons to an ex-girlfriend and shes teaching me some Korean too. We meet in Seoul every week. That's been going well, Tylor is going strong on learning Korean, and if he keeps it up (and I don't) he'll pass me in a 

couple months. I better keep it up. 

As well me and Tylor our brushing up on our French. When we stopped taking it in highschool we could communicate amongst ourselves pretty proficiently, but since then we've lost a lot. We've got some books now and we're going to try as much as possible to relearn what we've forgotten. We realize it will be an indispensable tool if we end up world-tripping for any long amount of time. 

Life as it will be.

This weekend we're going to an annual lantern festival that boasts 15 000 lanterns on the cheongyecheon  (a man made stream with lights and waterfalls etc) that should be gargeous, and I'm looking forward to it. I have to be in Seoul early to tutor, and Tylor will have to take his first solo ride on the subway to meet me. He's worried but it should be easy. Other than that, just planning to relax until the end of the month. Taking pills alone makes me uncomfortable enough, I'm not interested in any drinking to coincide, so it'll be a sober month for me. And that's all it took. 

That's going to be it for now. I hope to get some good pictures this weekend, so I'll upload after them. Really sorry about the time off, I'm going to get back into this habit, I promise. 

Cheers all, 

Miss you. 

Jason.


P.S. I forgot about a whole bunch of pictures I just got off of my camera, here's the link to them on facebook, you can see the failed attempts at being black and white as well as some halloween and other pictures Facebook