Shilpokpo is a nice 70m ice line that we found last weekend.

Towangsongpokpo is the biggest ice climb in Korea. The lower falls are 100m of 70-90deg ice and the upper falls is another 150m of vertical to slightly overhanging climbing.

Good Eats and Good Fun

Mel and I had a great weekend.  We headed out of Seoul for the weekend in hope of finding some ice for ice climbing, but it has been pretty warm lately and there was not much to be found.  Mel has a pretty good picture of what we did find on her blog.  It is cooler this week and hopefully we will have better luck this weekend.  We did manage to ride on the 300km/hr KTX  train.  That was pretty cool.  We also had two really great dinners.  The first was at a restaurant called simply "Mushroom."  We got this really great beef mushroom saute that we wrapped in fresh lettuce and rice at the table.  We also found a really great sushi restaurant in our neighborhood that proceeded to bring us three free sushi rolls and free wine by the end of the evening.  We will definitely go back.

Quiz Night

Mel and I joined Jenny, Nicole, Pete & Jeff in Itaewon last night for Quiz Night.  Our team was called 'High 5' because I let it slip last week that I had been on a TV quiz show in high school with the same name.  It was a ton of fun and we ended up winning.  The prize: THREE PITCHERS of shitty beer.  I was really proud of myself for knowing that Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' was released in 1979, especially because the question asker dude was making fun of us for not being old enough to know such trivia.

Mel's Birthday

I have been a little slow in getting this up, but last weekend was great.  It was Mel's 26th birthday and her dad Ronnie Love visited us from China.  He works over there part of the year.  It was fun to show him around for two days.  He is really into music and wanted to find a music shop.  We had no idea where to go, but later when we were sitting in a second floor bar we saw a lady walking down the street with a guitar.  I quickly got up the nerve and ran downstairs and out onto the street.  After accosting the poor lady and pointing at her guitar I managed to figure out that there was a music store near by named Nagwon.  An hour later we found not one, but hundreds of music stores.  Ronnie was impressed and thoroughly enjoyed himself especially when he found a guitar nearly as old as himself that he had dreamed of owning since it was new.  The next dax we returned hungover and found Mel and nice guitar for her birthday.  I have really been enjoying listening to her practice in the evening.

Three Things

One - Get Skype and talk to Mel and I for free!
http://skype.com/
My username is "pearen"

Two - Thank you Jake! The beer was wonderful. Y'all would not believe how good Oregon beer tastes after 3 months of Hite and Cass.

Three - We had no idea what the calligraphy on the front of the 40 Christmas cards that we made and sent to family and friends said. Louie informed us, "The writing on the front is an old traditional writing on a card that is sent to a married couple who have a new born. It wishes for a long and healthy life of the child and things like that. I thought that was kind of funny." I promise nothing subliminal was intended for any of you, except maybe Kelly and Jason.

Funny Story

Sometimes I forget that I live in a ginormous city, but then I go around the corner and see this....

So, Mel, Becca and I went to see King Kong the other night. Actually, we wanted to see Narnia but it is dubbed here. Guess I will just have to buy it bootleg off the street for a buck. Anyway, we decided to see King Kong and looked at the poster for show times. I thought we could make it to the 10:15 after Mel and I got off work at 10. I wrote down King Kong (닝농) in Korean plus the time we wished to see the film (20:15) and indicated that I wished to have 3 (SE gae) tickets. We got to the theatre a few minutes late and were astonished to see that the previews were over and people were in our seats. Seats are assigned here. The people reluctantly moved and we sat down to watch the movie. Ten minutes later Becca asked Melanie if she thought it seemed like the end of the film. None of us knew, but something seemed weird. Twenty minutes on, Mel got out the tickets and I realized that 20:15 is really 8:15 and not 10:15. Oops! Those people that we kicked out of our seats must have thought the weiguks (foreigners) were really crazy showing up 2 hrs. late for a movie.

Becca's Visit

Becca just left. I put her on the bus to the airport this morning. She seemed to have a good time visiting Mel and I. We had a ton of fun showing her around and trying to find food that she liked. Lets just say that "The Bean" is not nearly as big a fan of Korean food as I am.

She loved Insadong and had a great time doing a ton of shopping for cool Korean crafts. It was easy to keep her from buying shoes because none of the shoes here fit her.

It was so nice to have some family around near the holiday times. I am sorry to the rest of you whom I have been ignoring for the past two weeks. I will again have a bit more time on my hands to skype, blog and email.