Chuseok is labeled on our calendars as the Korean Thanksgiving. However, if you think about that for a second, it seems odd that Korea would celebrate Thanksgiving. Christmas, yes. New Years, of course. Even Halloween if you want. But Thanksgiving? I thought the fourth Thursday of each November was a uniquely North American holiday celebrating the survival of the pilgrims through the first Winters in the New World. Not to mention the fact that the Korean holiday Chuseok is celebrated sometime in September or October and has nothing to do with eating turkey, stuffing, or apple pie. It s [View Full Entry]

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It all started three years ago. One year away from graduation, no career-path in mind, and the audacity to dream outside of the box. Neither my best friend, Blake nor I wanted to jump into the rat race head first like many of our young and motivated college mates. Blake and I much preferred diving head first into dreams of waves bigger than we can handle in places far enough away to only be known as pictures on maps. And that's precisely what Bali, Indonesia was to us - just a picture on a map, half a world away. And that [View Full Entry]

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Look in a mirror and you won't see yourself; you'll only see a reflection of your outer appearance. Challenge yourself, your mind, your body, your courage, your strength, endurance, and patience; only then will you glimpse the self you look for when you gaze at a mirror. [View Full Entry]

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It was only a matter of time before I played baseball in Korea. It doesn't matter if I hadn't even seen a baseball field in Korea for the first six months. I was determined to not only find one, but to suit up and get a game in (be it sandlot, amateur, or professional). It ended up being amateur. Here's the story. The Chance Encounter It's just another average night in Korea. I'm walking home from dinner with my brother and a Korean girl we had just recently befriended. We're in Sunae plaza where we live and I notice a gentleman [View Full Entry]

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If you've ever been to Thailand you know what I'm talking about. If you have not been, then let's engage in a little thought experiment: Imagine you're a typical backpacker. You either quit your job or graduated from school and you have decided to up and leave wherever you're coming from to "travel the world." Well you realize that you can't see the whole world, so you figure out your options. You've saved enough from work/graduation money to either (1) backpack around Europe for a month and then return home to work again or (2) backpack around Southeast Asia for 6 [View Full Entry]

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Naturally, it could only be so long before I had to experience Korean baseball. Well, as chance would have it, the first Korean baseball I experienced was an amateur baseball game in which I played centerfield for the last two innings and was subsequently asked to join the team. I'll tell you more about that later. What I want to tell you about is the experience that is a professional baseball game in Korea specifically between the first place SK Wyverns and the last place Doosan Bears (GO DOOSAN!). So I'm sitting at work and one of the Korean teachers rolls [View Full Entry]

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Korea is about the size of the state of Indiana in terms of land area. However, Korea has 7 times as many people living on that area of land as Indiana has (47.5 million to 6 million people). To attempt to put this into perspective, take Indiana and everyone that lives there and then add everybody that lives in the most populated state, California, and dump them in Indiana. Then you'd still have to add another 5 million people, say Colorado, and that should set the scene for the Korea I'm about to discuss. See, when you have so many people [View Full Entry]

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Dear Comrades, My brother and I have recently returned from a very touristy trip to the capital of China: Beijing, or Peking for your old-timers. We saw some lovely landmarks - Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and Tienanmen Square. We took some touristy photos standing in front of said lovely landmarks. We hauled tail up to the top of the Great Wall, bought some postcards in the gift shop that was built into one of the towers on the Great Wall and hauled tail back down so as not to miss the bus. We even saw [View Full Entry]

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There are no guns in Korea. Well at least compared to the United States, it seems like there are no guns in Korea. Gun laws here are very strict. You are not allowed to keep a gun at your house. You are only allowed to own a gun for hunting purposes, and the few who do, have to keep these guns at the local police station. When you want to hunt, you go to the police station, check your gun out, hunt, and return it to the station when you're finished. This is vastly different from America, where it is considered [View Full Entry]

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Things I love about Korea - People are accepting, kind, and overly-generous (the other night, when I left the elevator, a 2-yr old girl very graciously and respectfully bowed to me and said good-bye in Korean, a courtesy, of course of which, I returned to the amazement of her parents) - Bread here is squishy soft - Snow is always snowball worthy... always - Currency is about 900 to 1, and that makes me feel rich when I regularly carry tens of thousands around in my wallet - Meals are served while sitting on the floor (chairs are indeed unnecessary) - [View Full Entry]

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