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The Soul of Seoul Tours: The S(e)oul Derby Recap
On July 17th, fourteen teams came together to set the pace and win that race… if they could. The weather wasn’t superb, but the drizzle gave everyone a little push to move and groove and get indoors that much sooner. The teams included expat teachers, Koreans, service people and families looking to do something a little different with their Saturday afternoon. The premise of the event was that The Soul of Seoul Tours would give out a list of scavenger hunt clues which included things like finding someone walking around in a Hanbok, piling into a phone booth, making funny faces, hunting for kimbap and a host of other cultural, quirky and…
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A Look Back: Our Korean Wedding Ceremony
Three years ago at the end of October, my family from the States arrived to Seoul and we made our way down to Busan to prepare for my first wedding ceremony to my husband. Though it’s not our “official” anniversary because we chose our subsequent American wedding ceremony date in January, that doesn’t stop us from receiving a card yearly from my grandmother wishing us a “Happy Anniversary” in October. Every year about this time, the leaves begin to change colors and I am taken back to images of the colorful Hanbok that I wore for our ceremony surrounded by family and friends outside on a gorgeous day with blue…
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Pia Watching In a Small Hall
In a somewhat small concert hall set down very close to the bridge heading south over the Han River near Hapjeong Station, mostly girls, and a few guys they’d drug along, filed down the staircase to the hall to find their numbered seats to see Pia. Pia had already played here in 아르떼홀 both Friday and Saturday night and were rounding out the weekend with one last concert. The fans found their seats and it was clear this was a show for those hoping to get some pictures of one of their favorite Korean bands and not a show for their die-hard moshing fans that attend shows in bigger places…
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Do you still use film?
I have this Pocket Fujica 350 Zoom that my mom had given me when I was in elementary school. I still have the photos I took with it of my friends on the playground behind my elementary school. The camera is strong. There’s no cap for the lense and after so many years the fear of dropping it is gone. It’s durable and has definitely stood the test of time. It takes a good hunt to find film for it, but when I do, I stick it in, shut the back until it clicks and off I go, or off my husband goes. We took it with us to Japan…
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Every Single Day Plays @ Jisan World Rock Festival
Love Stage, one of the three stages at Jisan World Rock Festival this year, hadn’t had nearly the crowds that the main stage had leading up to Every Single Day taking the stage at 4:30 but as their time neared and they stepped up to sound check the people emerged. Their set included Echo from the recently popular Korean drama I Hear Your Voice, Lucky Day and Tik Tok from the first drama they wrote and produced music for Pasta and one of the big highlights of the show was Downpour, Sonagi (소나기) in Korean, from Cheongdamdong Alice in which they had the entire audience singing along. They played an acoustic set…
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A Typhoon Hits Seoul… sort of
This week there was a typhoon warning and schools were cancelled in Seoul, Korea. Looking outside my window I didn’t see much rain or winds and wondered what it looked like down on the Han River. Schools in Korea hardly ever get cancelled and if they were cancelled I imagined the worst, but wasn’t seeing it. A friend and I decided to head to the river and at the first entrance were turned away by some sort of Han River guard on his bike. We decided to go down further and try entering down there. It couldn’t be that dangerous afterall, right? Luckily, there were no guards further up and…