For Make Special Moment

More movies: Yangshuo syle

2009-03-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

The following three videos are from our hike through the rural area between Yangding and Qingping near Yangshuo. We took a bus to Yangding, a bamboo boat several miles down river, then hiked about two and a half hours to Qingping, looked around a bit, and took a bus back to Yangshuo for dinner.

Cory being weird.

It's a guy. And he fishes with birds. The guy uses Cormorants to do his fishing for him. Apparently this is really common among fishermen in the area. They tie a string around the bird's neck to be able to pull it in and so it can't fully swallow the fish it catches, then they make it spit the fish back out and send it out to catch more fish. The birds get fed at the end of the night.

Choreographed and directed by Chinese film director (and local) Johnny Mo, the local farmers, fishermen, schoolchildren and theater students put on this show every night. Next to the spectacular nature itself, this river show is THE best attraction in the area. These two videos can't possibly do it justice, but we took them anyway, so here they are.

Videos Part II

2009-03-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, another set of videos, to soon be followed by actual stories about the trip by at least one (hopefully all) of us.

Our first night in Xi'an, we come across this troupe out on the street near our hostel. They weren't asking observers for money and all looked like your average folks from around the city. I guess they were just having a night out on the town...

A quick video from our tour of the terra cotta warriors site. Like a lot of the things we saw, pictures and videos don't really do it justice.

Xi'an has a nightly lights/water/music show that's free to the public. This is a bit of it.

They have neat kites too!

That's it for this update. More a written post and more videos to come.

Video Goodness

2009-02-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is the first set of videos I've uploaded, ranging from Seoul before we left through our hike along the Great Wall of China. Enjoy!

Just before our trip to China, we stopped for some more sightseeing in Seoul. When we went to Korea's national war memorial, we found these guys drilling.

On our first day in Beijing (day 2 of our China experience), we walked down to Tiananmen square. It was certainly a strange experience. I looked up and down the (huge) street and easily recreated the famous "protester vs tanks" photo in my mind. Anyway, this video is basically a 360 view from inside the square.

We were in Beijing at the during the Lantern festival, which is the first major holiday of the lunar new year. I was tempted to buy some dry ice and join in the festivities, but decided against.

We took a series of three clips as we hiked along the Great Wall. The last one was meant to be the longest and include reflections, but the hike took longer than we anticipated (and we'd used up too much of the memory with photos) so the last is actually the shortest. Still, we hope you enjoy them:

Part 1/3

Part 2/3

Part 3/3

To be continued...

2009-02-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

Thoughts that have passed through my head since entering China. Part the First.

1. "This place smells like fish. Does this whole country smell like fish? I hope this whole country doesn´t smell like fish."

2. "This train is huge! I´m taking a picture!"

3. "OHMIGOSH I WANT A SEASHELL HEDGEHOG!!!"

4. "It´s conspicuously easier to get into the world´s largest Communist country than it is to get into my own home country. . ."

5. "Mmm, it smells like spices in here. Not like fish at all!"

6. "I miss Korean letters."

7. "Stalin should have let his moustache grow out. He would have taken a better picture."

8. "I like Chinese food."

9. "Chinese people are nice."

10. "Chinese money is way more colorful than American or Korean. Stylish."

11."Holy crap I´m in Beijing. Score."

To be elaborated upon later.

We're here!!!

2009-02-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

Qindao - We're here!!! We've been keeping notes on our observations. More to come when we have more than 10 minutes at a computer terminal.

Beijing- We've just arrived in Beijing. It's 6:30 and we were on a long train ride. Look for a story involving a boat, a German-Chinese city, a train and a day in Beijing (or as much as I have energy to type) in about 14 hours.

A (slightly) more refined Itinerary

2009-02-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

(Dates and times are in China Standard time, so GMT +8)

Tuesday, Feb 3rd: 15:30- Leave Gwangju for Seoul [Check]

02/05 16:30- Board a ferry bound for Qindao, China. [Half Checked.] We're sitting in the terminal, tickets in hand, waiting to board the ferry. It was an ordeal getting here though. Two taxi drivers at the station refused to roll down their windows or talk to us. Four more drove off when they found out that we were travelling in a group, and 2 just pretended not to recognize the directions (written in Korean) that we had taken down from the ferry company's website. Jerks.

02/06 am- Arrive in Qindao, look at the German architecture

02/06 pm- Board train bound for Beijing

02/07 am- Arrive in Beijing, check into Peking International Youth Hostel, begin poking around the city the size of Belgium.

02/11 pm- Board a train bound for Xi'an.

02/12 am- Arrive in Xi'an, begin searching for tombs and clay warriors

02/15 pm- Leave Xi'an by some mode of transportation heading in a general Southeasterly direction.

02/15 pm -02/20 am Make our way down to Hong Kong, seeing what we can see along the way.

02/23 noon- Board a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul/Incheon.

02/24- Becky returns to Hwasun

02-25- Josh and Cory return to Hwasun

Dinner (sort of) and a movie

2009-01-30T04:42:00.000-08:00

So as we said already, we are on vacation. The thing about this is that with all of our free time come laziness and unhealthy habits. For example, the following are the three courses of Becky's and my dinner tonight.

First, we have a piece of mom's fudge topped with some French Vanilla ice cream and a mini Reece's cup.

Next, a piece of pang-tueegee (think similar to a popped-rice cake thing) with peanut butter and strawberry jelly.

Finally, a big lettuce, carrot and green pepper salad with dressing on the side (because we were feeling guilty about the junk food.

In other news, Becky got her multiple entry stamp for her Korean visa yesterday, so she can officially come back after the trip to China. Also, Becky, Cory and I saw Valkarie yesterday. Decent popcorn flick overall, but I think I'm going to enjoy Inkheart more. I'll let them fill you in on their thoughts. Cheerio!

What Stands Before Us

2009-01-27T01:26:00.000-08:00

**Edit by Josh**
So I guess I had the blog set to only allow comments from registered users. Sorry about that. It's fixed now; anyone should be able to comment on any post.
**End Edit**

So though I have my own Xanga account and though I promised to write more on it, I never did. You see, graduating college gave me an out from doing anything productive for... ummm... a while at least. But now I have a husband and a friend who want me to do this whole blogging thing with them. Thus I have responsibilities in the production department once more. Good, I guess. I know that I will be more than thankful for their push when one day I, in my hazy imaginings, try to look back on my trip in China and the greater length of time in South Korea and realize that nothing in my memory will match what I write down during the experience.

It is now vacation and, as all vacations seem to go, the days fly by faster than a glimpse at a shooting star. I recently realized that we would be leaving for China in a little more than a week and our final plans are not complete. While Josh seems to find this less concerning, I like to have our places of sleep and modes of transportation at least figured by the time we set sail for the red land.

Overall, I'm not quite sure what to think of this trip. I've never had a desire to see China. My vote was for Thailand and Malaysia this vacation. Actually, anywhere in Southeast Asia would have been welcome. Any of those countries would have been warm. However, Josh's vote won out. So we are now going to a freezing land the size of the States, and are hoping to traverse as much of the country as sanely possible while also enjoying the culture. Our original plan had been to stay to the big cities, seeing as we don't speak a lick of the language and Americans are not the most loved species in China. However, the wonderful travel book that Josh's folks gave us for Christmas opened up the endless possibilities China has to offer. Thus, we will probably skip Shanghai to see some smaller villages and more of the nature in South-Central China before heading on to Hong Kong. The revamped schedule is certainly more rushed than the previous, but at least now we will get to see more of small town China. It's like leaving out L.A. to see Colorado or Arizona. However, in the end, it all comes down to where the bus and train schedules can direct us.

What particularly interests me is how I will find a modern Communist country. We are allowed personal Bibles, but may not bring extras to share. We might be allowed to post on this blog, but then again, it may be blocked, which is when pencil and paper will come in handy. In a country with the highest rate of state sponsored executions (20+ a day) assigned for everything from murder to drug possession, what are the authorities like? What local stares will we face? Seeing as Beijing is one of the largest cities in the world and just had the Olympics, I doubt we will run into much trouble. We might be prime targets for petty theft, but I doubt Beijing will be discourteous to tourists seeing as tourism is one of its largest growing industries. I think that Xi'an, where the terracotta warriors are, and Hong Kong will both also be more than hospitable. I just wonder about the rest of our trip, particularly the train travel. What stories will we have to tell? Well, we'll see, we'll write, and hopefully, we'll have quite the (safe) adventure in this next month.

A carefully thought out, meticulously detailed itinerary of our upcoming trip.

2009-01-26T09:16:00.000-08:00

It's to China.

Ok, so maybe we don't technically have the whole trip mapped out like a "responsible" group of "adults," but we do have a few things settled. For example, we know what country we'll be visiting: China. We also know where we would like to be at the end of the trip: South Korea.

In all fairness we have the beginning (leaving South Korea on the 5th via the Incheon-Quindao ferry) and end (return via the 4:30pm Korean Air flight from Hong Kong on February 23rd) set up already. It's just the middle bit between there that's still up for grabs. We're thinking about spending about 5 days in Beijing, and a few days in Xi'an and Hong Kong, leaving eight or so days without definite plans.

The problem with those empty days is in choosing between all the stuff there is to do. I remember one of my professors (Alan Holiman, I think) telling me the story of an English friend of his who, in planning a weeklong trip to the USA, thought he would have time to rent a car and drive to New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, Kansas City, and the Grand Canyon. We have a similar problem. We'd love to see the Three Gorges Dam, raft on the Yang Zhe river, feed pandas in Sichuan, hike and go spelunking in Hunan, and see the Portugese influence in Macau and French influence in Shanghai, but there's just not enough time to get everywhere. We have a couple of tentative schedules, but we'll have to see which fits best with the train and bus routes. Fortunately, we can check those online before we actually arrive in China, so look for a more defined itinerary in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, Korea is in the middle of celebrating the Lunar New Year (설날 "Seolal"). This is the biggest holiday of the year. During Seolal which began on Saturday and ends Tuesday night, most businesses shut down and pretty much everyone able to travel goes to his hometown to spend the holiday with family. Becky, Cory and I will be travelling to the province just to the North (aptly named "Northern Jeolla Province") of ours to spend the last day of Seolal with Becky's co-teacher, Kim Ok Jin and her friends and family. I'll let you know how that goes.

Ok, I expected this to be a bit longer, but as it's just about 3:00am here, I'll just leave it at that and go to bed. G'night!

P.S. We like to hear how you guys are doing too, so send us e-mails, facebook messages or comments with something a bit more substantial than "Dood, wut up?" mmmk?

Introductions

2009-01-14T00:14:00.000-08:00

Life is full of special moments. They come in all shapes and sizes: watching the sun rise from your front window on a snowy winter morning, getting your first kiss from that certain someone, or sitting down to dinner with your loved ones after a long absence. And, occasionally, finding a particularly funny line of engrish on a box of women's sanitary napkins. This blog is mostly concerned with special moments of the latter sort.

Korea is an odd and interesting place. Rather than keeping seperate, semi-regularly updated blogs chronicling our adventures in the far east, we three stalwart journeymen (well, one's a journeywoman, I suppose) have decided to combine our efforts and present a single, cohesive tale of our travels.

Initially, the idea was to give us someplace to write about our trip to China, coming up in February. Aside from that, though, you can now come here as your one-stop shop for all things relating to Josh, Becky, and Cory. We'll sing for you, we'll dance for you, we'll make special moments for you (um, not in the way the aforementioned box means). All clear? Good. High five.