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happy birthday jo … the big 14 today. i’m thinking of you petal!

… well, it wasn’t the bestest birthday ever, but i had a good day.

the irony of teaching in an adult hogwan is that i get a lot of leeway regarding my lessons. today, i took two of my classes to paris baguette to celebrate my birthday. the first class bought a cake for me and we had coffee with it. the second class just had coffee, but we had a lot of fun and talked for a long time.

at my office i also had another small party, this time with pizza and coke. then when i retuned to my school, my boss gave me a gift voucher for the local buffet restaurant (enough for 2 people to eat free) and my late class went out with me to enjoy beer and snacks.

so, it was a good day overall. i didn’t work too hard, the weather was fantastic, i had a good time with my students and i had a surprisingly nice day.

had a marvelous weekend with my mate ryan. he arrived in town on saturday afternoon and we immediately headed to namdaemun. he was going to buy a lens, but decided not to. i spent a little bit of money on a flash unit. after that we headed to coex and straight across to bong eun temple. ryan and i spent the late afternoon and evening at the temple, capturing lots of great photographs.

ryan’s lens broke, so he dropped big money on a new lens … then that night we went back to my neighbourhood and drank some really nice dark beer.

sunday we got going early and headed straight to insadong. the buddhist festival began at midday but we wanted to catch the monks before the crowds arrived. we photographed the monks during prayer and even saw the young monks, who only made a brief appearance. i didn’t get any good photos of them though!

we noticed that the lanterns were set out in the shape of a lotus flower, so i had the idea to get a photograph from a higher angle (to capture the roof and lanterns). so ryan and i went into a nearby building, got the elevator to the roof, and took some great shots. the view was pretty sweet, since the blue house (korea’s presidential house), gyoungbok palace and jogye temple were all in view.

we bumped into an american girl who was in seoul for the day, and was lucky enough to have found herself in insadong to catch the festival. we also met another girl who is an israeli journalist doing a month long story on south korea. i caught up with a few other friends and members of my photography club.

ryan and i wandered up and down the street for most of the day, looking for photos … at about 6pm the rain started and we took it as our cue to head home. although we missed the night parade, i wasn’t particularly worried. i saw it last year with steve!

back in my neighbourhood, again, we had samguypsal for dinner and drank more dark beer at the same bar. after the two of us knocked back 5 litres of beer, it was time to wander home and get some rest.

on monday morning ryan headed home. my internet died, so i did some editing and went to a pc room to play warrock all afternoon. i went home, watched golden compass (which isn’t a bad movie) and got some needed sleep.

the last two days are the most active i have been in a long time. it felt good to get out and stretch the legs. i wasn’t as tired as i thought i’d be either. so it gives me hope for my pathetic fitness levels.

i have a bunch of photos. i posted some to flickr and i’ll post some to my blog tonight when i get home.

had a great day today … celebrating sujoung’s birthday, we went out to yongsan and visited the war memorial. we’d arranged to meet about 20 other photographers there. we got a big group shot of the photographers at the memorial, then spent the afternoon wandering around. i had a great chat with some new friends and it was quite a lot of fun … i also managed to get a few good shots.

while we were there we saw a wedding ceremony that we assumed to be set up for tourists. it seemed weird to have a traditional wedding exhibition at a war memorial. however, it turned out to be a real wedding. the wedding, on the memorial grounds, is in the style of the king and queens of former korean dynasties. so the bride and groom get paraded around like royalty. quite a crowd had amassed to see the spectacle and most unusual wedding … to further add to the strangeness, the groom was a foreigner!

after that, sujoung wanted to eat indian food (particularly nan bread) for dinner. so steve joined us and we headed to itaewon. we had some great indian curries at an ugly restaurant. fortunately, the curry was good and the restaurant was bad … and not the other way around. then we scooted up to the aussie shop for a couple of vbs, before waddling home on the subway. as i write this rant it’s only 8.30pm, but it’s been a long day and the time feels much, much later.

all up, a good day out.