Cirque Du Soleil

Last night I had the opportunity to see Cirque du Soleil. Right now, until November 15th, Alegría is performing by Seoul Sports Complex. When we bought our cheap seats (77,000 won apiece) we thought we were going to be on some high up balcony seat with a terrible view. We were amazed to find, when we walked in, that the circus tent was very small, and while we had a side view we were quite close to the performers. That being said, there was a pesky pole in our way that made it difficult to see things going on when they weren't center stage. We found our way around that though by moving our seats up to the 110,000 won seats during intermission. No one seemed to care since there were several rows of unsold seats. From there we had a spectacular view of the action.

They had quite a few acts, trapeze artists, people doing flips and jumps on beams, crazy strong men doing flips and jumps, hoolahoop girls, acrobats etc etc etc. Plus clown acts between each act.

One particularly notable act was these two women who twisted and flipped around each other like they had no spine. You can see a picture of the above, they are the two small women with blue hair. It was only slightly creepy.

Yea, another post about North Korea...

I can't help but be memorized by North Korea. I wasn't even looking for information, but I stumbled across this link on someone's blog and it has some amazing photos from DPRK. Here is the link to the photos, but I'll throw a few on here that I particularly like. Of course it's provided by Boston.com. I love them... that was my homepage for many years.

National Geographic documenary about North Korea

As I've mentioned before, I'm just completely fascinated by North Korea. I stumbled across this documentary on YouTube. It's not long, it has 7 parts. It only takes about half an hour to watch. It's definitely worthwhile.

Smog... yuck... *cough*

Up until the past week/ week and a half I've been very impressed by the low level of smog in the air in Seoul. For a city of 11 million people the air has been remarkably clean. Not to say that it's like being out in the wilderness, but I've certainly been in smaller cities with much worse pollution. Or I thought that until this past week. It seems as though a thick layer of smog has settled over the city with no intention of leaving as far as I can see. I was sick this past week, as were most people at work... and the smog didn't make me feel any better. Or is it more than a coincidence that everyone started getting sick as soon as the air quality took a nosedive with the won?


Here is a side by side comparison of a view out of my window last July, and a view out of my window today. Granted, it is a little cloudy today, but I can't even tell where the clouds begin and the smog end.

If you don't believe me, here is another picture from Olympic park yesterday. I was trying to get a view of the gate from the hill, but you can barely see it it's so smoggy. This is far from downtown too. Oh, and it was NOT cloudy yesterday.

Olympic Park

On suggestion from my friend and mother who were here visiting last week, we headed over to Olympic Park this weekend. This was the location of the Summer Olympics that were held in Seoul in 1988. The park is very big and very big... for a park in Seoul at least. It was nice to get out of downtown for a little while. The air wasn't SO smoggy. There's lots to see at the park. Supposedly there is an Olympic museum and an art museum, but we didn't even go to see those. We were entertained enough by just walking through the park.

The Olympics brought a lot to Korea. It ushered in a new era of democracy, encouraging the military dictatorship that had ruled the country for many years into electing a president. This was kind of the hope of bringing the Olympics to Beijing.. in hopes that it would bring more democracy. But no such luck. Though, I do think that the Beijing Olympics did one good thing. It made China face thier horrendous air quality issues. I guess the Olympics brings different improvements to different places.

The flags of all the countries that participated in the Olympics.

Lots of Korean parks have exercise equpment like this. Usually you see ajummas (women in thier 50's and 60's) using these sort of things... they are usually in much better shape than me. Here it was mostly kids using it as if it were a playground.

I've found that Koreans have a affinty for strange sculptures and outdoor art. The city is full of it, and Olympic Park seems to need one always in view of where ever you are standing. Here are some more examples.

What is it? We're not quite sure... but it is nice to see grass in Korea... especially grass that you're allowed to walk on....


Again... what is it? Art... I don't get it...
This was the most perplexing of any statues we'd seen yet in Korea. Giant thumb. Any ideas of the siginfigance?

Song from dance class

I recently started to take a dance class here. It's all in Korean so it's kind of difficult, but not that bad. Monday and Wednesday is hip hop class, Tuesday is Belly Dance, and Thursday and Friday are "Club Dance". Club dance is a class where you basically learn the steps to some of the popular Korean songs. Here is the music video of the pop song we were dancing to last week:



The song is called Hey Mr. Big by Lee Hyo Ri (이효리)

Sorry for the inundation of K-pop lately... it's my newest Korean culture interest. If you're not interested, just skim over all these youtube video posts.

The strangest music video I've ever seen....

Nobody by the Wondergirls: