FOOD! 2nd Edition

 Finally got more photos of food I haven't covered yet, 'bout time to post some more munchies!

My Drawings

Sorry these were supposed to be up a long time ago. Drawings I made in vain for my in-the-end-no-longer-required portfolio.

Korean Drums, can Sammy play like this?

NIIED invited us to their year-end party, coupled with a talent show by NIIED students, however there was also a drum performance by some Korean high schoolers that was impressive.

New blog.

Hello!
Well I decided to start a new blog, however it does NOT replace this one. Sometimes I feel like sharing that I have a blog to everyday people I meet, but this one isn't really for the general crowd since I use a lot of inside jokes, knowledge assumptions, Spanglish etc. Plus I wanted to do something to push me to take more photos. Thus I have created Wesley's Daily Photo Blog.

The deal is, every day I will take a photo, fantastic or not, and post it there with some afterthoughts. Some posts will be more spectacular than others but the point is to get the photos and content out there. Though I only have a couple days of content, I'd appreciate it if you'd pass it around to people who might be interested so I can get a ball rolling. I hope over time evident improvement will be shown as I learn and post!

Hope you enjoy! And do follow, I left a ton of options at the bottom of the blog for following, so whether you have a google account or not you have no excuse to not follow me other than that you don't love me.

Subzero birthday

Actually... who writes a blog about their birthday and then posts a photo of them self alone?

A cold evening at Dream Forest

I was in need of some my-camera-and-me time so I went out to a nearby park, appropriately named Dream Forest

50mm and a long overdo blog

Got my new lens, just in time for my 2 week vacation after a very challenging semester!

설악산 (Seor-ak-san) Seorak Mountain

I'm really busy with college applications and classes so I'm just posting this to prove that I'm still alive.

Blarz Blarz Blarz and Yadderz Yadderz Yadderz

Friday evening and I didn't go out, nor do I feel like studying. Might go to a coffee shop and just pull a pointless all-nighter because I can.


Ok that's a big lie.

Just thought I'd write something because it's been a while.

Jeju Island

Sorry it's been almost 3 weeks since I went to Jeju but I got kind of busy when I came back, and then pretty soon classes started. So here's on my trip to Jeju Island!

FOOD! 1st edition.

Since I'm not really good with photographing everything I eat, I decided to slowly make a collection of what I've had. Some of these photos I've posted before but I'll better explain them here, plus I'll add a personal rating out of 5 points. 5 being absolutely delicious and 1 being still worth a try. I'm not uploading any food that is really bad because I don't photograph bad food.

Busan

Korea offers a free shuttle bus to Busan for foreigners, which is good because a two-way trip by bus or the slow train could cost you W50,000, and the fast train W100,000.

And another panorama, This time horizontal.

So I could've done better and I need to go have another try but here's what I got anyway. This is a small pond in KyungHee University I shot during the rain. The angle needed to be a little higher too because I don't find the lower plants too photogenic. The center are isn't well exposed either. On the other hand I think I did a good job in avoiding distortion when taking the pictures.

민속촌 (Minsokchon) Korean Folk Town

Yesterday was our summer semester field trip, and so we went to a Korean folk town. It wasn't an over night stay like the last field trip to Gyeong Ju but I'd say the location was more interesting (or maybe the weather was just better).

Dinner and a VIDEOOOOOO

So! There was something I just had to eat as soon as I found out about it.

Fandom

It's been a  while since I've posted, so I decided to just write something short.

David

This is David. He's a Korean raised in Brazil. He works as a barista and knows how I like coffee. Plus he has a house and is always open to having guests. And so, I just had to go cook.

Lotte World

  So when the teacher said "Jump" I was the only one to time it properly. So while everyone else looks like they're watching a soccer game and someone is about to score, I just look plain retarded.
Cool right?

지난주 일요일. (Last week sunday)

Last sunday......
I stalked little children. Like a pedo.
Hur hur hur.

경주 (Gyeong Ju) and the Foreigners Festival

Finally got to see some Korean countryside. The university took us on a field trip to Gyeong Ju, 4 hours away from our homes in Seoul, to see some temples and museums.

Spring II and more photos.

Spring

It still gets cold in the evenings but noon is warm now and you get around fine with a light sweater.
And things are starting to bloom. Our university has a large diversity of plants so it looks great. The beotgot, a Korean equivalent to the Japanese Sakura blooms for a few days and I was able to photograph one that seems to have gotten ahead of schedule. Great looking trees.

I'm not that bad...

I always thought I had a bad sense of direction but I'm actually not having trouble getting around, but instead I'm meeting people who're a lot worse than me.
Who woulda thought?

Also a lot of people wake up waaaaaaaaaaay after me, weekdays and weekends, like it's normal. 2:30 pm people are having breakfast (I mean lazy college students of course).

In a sense these people make me feel better but also it's annoying if you want to make plans with them because it's gonna be late.

So yeah I've moved to the new dorm. I found out that here the washing machine is free. What the hell? it cost me W1000 per wash at the last place, and W1000 for the dryer. Here the dryer is Q500. And this place is cheaper... what.
Unfortunately the gym schedule sucks. I think it's 7-10 am, closes until 5pm-11pm. That means mornings don't work for me there, just evenings. But still, beats nothing. 2 nice pingpong tables and lots of people to play with (so I'm told).

ARIRANG

I didn't get many photos because we had to spend most of the KOICA event in a room waiting to go on stage. I thought this would be some large event with tons of foreigners performing but I have no idea what it was now. It seems we we're the only ones besides some Peruvian musician that was really good. The crowd was a bunch of people that looked like embassadors, and then some kids with blue caps and cellphones taking pics of us. GOD there were so many cameras, the pro type. And video. And after singing ARIRANG and Color Esperanza we had photos taken outside in front of a giant bowl of Bibimbab (kfood) and more photos and video (I had to spend like 3 awkard minutes pretending to observe some mayan-looking relic as they filmed me though I have no idea where that's gonna appear). And outside kids were asking us to take pictures with them. I also got interviewed for the Korean Times but I don't know if I really am gonna appear because it was a short interview and I wasn't really prepared for it because we had no idea whatthehell this event really was... but oh well. It was a lot of awkward fun!
I'm not on my computer right now but someone found some pics taken that day on the internet; I'll post them here next time, though they're really bad resolution.

More fun facts.

The streets here are actually dirtier than I thought they would be. Lots of trash, specially on Sundays because that's when people put their trash out but not when it gets picked up. And for some reason you get spontaneous wafts of  sewage-smelling air every 20 minutes.
Though Guate was dirtier, I think it's smellier here, and I'm not talking garlic.

Just a random panorama again.

Just click it and see. 8 shot panorama, the view from sungwook's apartment. The original has mega high resolution and you can even see into the windows (nobody naked though) but this blog has limited resolution )=<

This weekend.

When three guys get together over the weekend, have somewhere to crash, money, and nobody to care what they do, they will probably go out, get drunk, have girls over, get high on heroine and wake up with an ugly unicorn tattoo on their thighs. Pretty wicked right?

Well when Sungwook, Bambi, and Wesley get together over the weekend...

The Photography Club

Today was the introduction meeting for the photography club...
Well... not the most English-friendly club out there so I was very lost. There was a small group of English-speaking foreigners that went too but they didn't last the whole meeting. I didn't understand jack shpit but decided to sit through it anyway in case enlightenment came along the way...

It didn't....

Just throwing in one more photo.

A 4 photo panoramic from Dongdaemun, a popular shopping area. Took it last week but just put it together.

Photos!!

I finally found some adapters yesterday. Fortunately everything I have accepts 240V so I didn't need a transformer. So here are some photos so far. Nothing spectacular yet. Actually not many pictures at all but going out is always a rush so I haven't been taking many photos. When I get more time to be around on my own or with few people just relaxing I'll be taking more!

Irony

So I've had octopus chips, chicken kebabs, beef and noodle buns, fish-shaped sweet bread, random things in a cup with hot sauce, and rice dough sticks in super spicy sauce and I've been fine. I've had a lot of mysterious looking foods with no problem except the occasional burning anus.

Then I go to the college cafe and have me a cream bun. A couple hours later I'm in the hospital because of an allergic reaction... hmmm. I guess I'm not going there again. Luckily there's a hospital right next to the college so I could walk there, and Bambi lives nearby so he arrived quickly to help. It wasn't easy to get help. I could barely even talk because of my throat being swollen and the guy in the hospital was like "I need you to fill out this paper, and this and that and pay 63,000 won" and I was like "I'm DYING here!" and then the doctor I saw was talking on the phone and then after running some tests and shoving a camera up my nose (don't know why) he tells me I'm not having an allergic reaction, my throat just randomly closed, probably asthma.
Ok I know what an allergic reaction is like, and I know what asthma is like. That was allergies.
So after insisting they just give me the damn drugs I had the familiar injection in the ass done. I don't remember it being that painful but at least I'm fine now. I was given a prescription for pills to take after every meal but I think I'll pass, that doctor didn't really know what he was talking about. He did take this really nasty picture of inside my nose though... that was fun.

Anyway I'm meeting sungwook today and he's going to take me to buy my adapters.  Everything I have does 220v so I don't need any transformers. Hopefully I'll be putting up pics tomorrow!

An update

Hello all.
Well I'm not able to get adapters yet so I can't charge any of my electronics. But it's been a few days so I'm just gonna write a few things about so far.

First of all my hands are cold so typing is really hard. Today we walked aimlessly around town and encountered a lot of ice, though it isn't snowing.
But I'm too lazy plus have better things to do than spell check this thing so ignore my mistakes.

Second. It does smell like garlic, But I don't really mind.

Taking off

So I suppose 2 days before leaving is late enough to start writing this...
Hopefully we gave our goodbyes on Wednesday and there isn't much left for me to say.
I created this blog in an attempt to immortalize my trip to the other side of the world. Though for some of my friends going to Korea was just a fact they had known for years, for me it was just something I always thought "how nice would that be", but I always had a lot of doubts about whether I'd actually make it.  So making it there, for me, is plain epic.