Ring the alarm!! A new blog :)

I'm sorry to all of my adoring fans that I have not posted a new blog in soooo long. I meant to, but life got in the way and I got too busy.
I now find myself with some time to spare so thought i'd give the people what they want and give a bit of an update.

As you may know, my brother came to visit me earlier this month. He was here for about a week and a half and we had a good time exploring Korea, and introducing him to my friends, and introducing him to the food. All of which I think he enjoyed overall. Except some of the food, sadly, but you can't win 'em all.

Since he's been gone a few weeks already, and they say pictures speak louder than words anyway, i'll just post some and let them tell the story.

Our story begins...Michael Edman in the subways of Seoul:


So we went to North Korea. The fog was dense and ominous. In fact, our JSA/DMZ tour was severely cut short due to the fact that because of the fog, the military was unable to properly monitor the North Korean's actions so for our safety we had to stay out of certain areas. This angered some people. but me? I thought it made it even more awesome.

This was our first glance into the JSA from the bus..





We eventually made it through security and finished our briefing by military personnel, and got to go into the conference building that is half in North Korea and half in South Korea. Here is a photo of the Edman Kids officially in communist North Korea!


Here I am standing next to one of the ROK soldiers on the North Korea side of the room. He is in a taekwondo stance. Which just proves how awesome taekwondo really is, for those of you who may have doubted. Anyway, This is me hanging out in North Korea.


Here you can see the view of the famous table room and North Korea in the background.




See that? It's a North Korean soldier! oooooh scary!



And here is the train station that they built to connect the two Koreas...but never actually ran anything because the Cheonan was sunk right before it opened and that kind of put a damper on things.




And here I am at the overlook where you can see into North Korea and the peace village and all that cool stuff. Notice the white background? Yeah. It was really foggy.



Anyway, we had fun in North Korea. I picked up some North Korean beer and soju in the gift shop and one day soon my friends and I plan to have a 'Communist Party' night. Also on the bus on the way back to Seoul we watched a really awesome Korean movie called JSA. I highly reccomend it. When we got back to my friend's house where we were staying, he happened to have a copy and let my brother have it, and later he took me to the bootlegger that he got it from so i have a copy too. it's really really good. Watch it!

Anyway, we did lots of other things too. Spent a lot of time in Seoul, went to Busan for a few days, hung out with my friends in Janggi, ate samgyapsal and of course went to noraebong. Here are some more pics. It's a lot of effort to put them in order so I will just say 'in no particular order':


at the fish market in Busan



Korean countryside as seen from the windows of the bullet train @300kph


Waiting for the bullet train to Busan at Seoul Station


A guy making rice cakes in the traditional manner in Insadong, Seoul


Some pics in Busan











Back to Seoul Tower






War Memorial of Korea












Last day in Korea...Claw machine, Noraebong, samgyapsal, and the exercise equipment that is all over the place for some reason







SO that about covers my brother's visit. It was a good time, and nice to see someone from the Old Country again.

So let's see, what else is new...
We pranked my friend Reed by filling his bathroom with 500+baloons.
Here is a photo while the ballooning was in progress, to give you an idea.



We have started a vicious cycle of pranking that I fear could go on inevitably.
I'm excited.

Let's see, what else...
i passed another taekwondo test on Friday. So that is awesome. I'm still movin' on up in the taekwondo world. Still loving it. This week for the first time in nearly 6 months, my taekwondo master tried to speak english to me. It was adorable. hehe.

I'm no longer going to be teaching kindergarten. I'm happy about this. The kids are cute but otherwise i didn't like it. I've never really liked spending long periods of time with little kids. So the fact that i'll be teaching elementary now is much nicer for me. Plus i can start sleeping in. So i've got that going for me, which is nice.
We had our graduation ceremony and talent show for the end of the kindergarten year last Friday (new term starts Wednesday, they have year-round school). It was cute. Here are some pics from that. Oh, and the slumber party we had the week before. That was actually pretty fun, despite my fears to the contrary.








I'm trying to think what else has happened in the last month that i should tell you about...
i think that's about it. Otherwise it's just the usual stuff...work, hanging out with my friends on the weekends, getting up to a bit of light-hearted mischief, the occasional shopping trip in to Seoul.

Overall everything is still going really well.

I'll end with a hilarious joke that I heard last night. Sadly if you don't know Korean it won't be funny for you. But i think the fact that i know enough Korean to enjoy a Korean word pun made it all the more enjoyable for me.

Q: Where does a Korean grandfather go to find love?

A: E-halmoni.com!

ba dum ch!
:-D


(ok i'll explain it...'halmoni' is the korean word for grandmother. and e-harmony.com is a popular dating website. see? Hilarious ;)