Pre New years Exploration

So everyone here is setting up for the new years and stuff looks great. Carl heard of an artsy place that happened to be by our actual university, so we decided to check it out. We saw a few cool things, but in reality… there was nothing here. It was just people… being people…

Not mention it was freezing that day, I found a new meaning for the word frigid. During our korean lesson that day, this one girl named Amy came back from her sick day… still sick… along with this other guy named Nathan who also came in sick (with aparently respiratory bronchitis… Carl and I look at each other and know we’re going to get sick just because we entered that room (which has no ventilation btw… ugh…)

The next day carl and I split up and explored on our own. The area carl and I are staying at is called Anguk. It is was mad busy.

I wanted to draw some people on the train station because i needed some practice life drawing practice. It helps a ton, but people seem to get weirded out buy it. This old man sent a younger man to go see what i was drawing. When he found out i was drawing him he decided not to move as much which was quite nice. All the other people moved and made i more difficult for me… So when the train stopped I ended up in some random town, dont know the name of it, but it is was nice… kinda…

I walked around, grabbed some food, but didn’t get chopsticks so i had to go find some. I got quickly tired of this lonely town. It was right at the edge of seoul, so not much was going on around here. Carl on the other hand went around anguk and took pictures. Im not 100% sure what happened. But they are nice.

The next day was filled with a bunch of nothing. I once again drew all day. I went to this cafe called Coffee Bean, in Insadong and got the best hot chocolate ive ever had. The cafe has a really nice atmosphere.

I traveled around insadong even more and headed to the train station. I stumbled upon a chegi chugi tournament (which is pretty much just hacky sack wit a prettier ball).

That guy hit it about 64 times

it was ridiculous.

Early first days…

Jan 30th – Feb 3rd

It all pretty much started with me at bloomfield saying bye to Geornyce (aka. Gege… and other people) but mostly Gege for I will miss her the most… So yea I drive home… pack my things (last minute… yea yea… I know…) and then wait till 3 AM… Yay… staying up late rocks. I get to the airport and meet up with Carl where we jump on a plane to Atlanta Georgia… then on our 13 hr flight to Seoul. I would like to point out that on this flight my TV screen got messed up about two and a half hours into the flight. So i was able to watch one chris rock comedy special and half of superbad… the rest was just a long uncomfortable nap and 2 hrs of laptop power. All in all one of my worst airplane flights. We land in Incheon airport and get picked up by this taxi guy. We drive for about 30 minutes and end up in our host family’s house. Its a big apartment that was lovely. The husband of the family flew private jets for samsung and the wife I think played golf professionally… Moving on, the girl in charge of all of our foreign affairs, housing, student activities, etc is this very nice but ditsy woman named Sylvia. After a long conversation with the host family Slyvia takes Carl and I outside and tells us we have to leave the house in about 2 days… which is fantastic because we just loved lugging around our heavy luggage. So we couldn’t get to comfortable… which was hard because the beds were so incredible. After that Slyvia took us to see where the school is (after taking us on the wrong train). To make amends she took us to dinner. I then went to sleep at about 7ish…. only to wake up at 2am… and slept no more…
The next day kinda just merged into existence because I was up since 2 The most brilliant thing about the lady of the house was the fantastical homemade breakfasts. They were so good… Too bad she was afraid of me… At around 8 we left for class. Once we arrived there we had to take our placement tests. We came to the realization that we were too advanced for level 1 but not advanced enough for level 2… so they threw us in level 1. This is the second time we have to learn the alphabet -_-’ oh well…

Our teacher is brilliant. Even though she acts like shes teaching a kindergarten, it works, because most of the people in the this class dont really know any korean at all. Class ended and carl and I decided to wonder around Seoul alot, and look for the hotel we stayed at last time we were in korea. While looking for it we saw a multitude of other things that were photo worthy, but alas I didn’t have a camera. So we went to this camera store and I attempted to buy this camera that was about 350 bucks, only to find out my debit card didn’t work because bank of america sucks … So whatever we left the place and looked around (but i will not let that damned camera defeat me).The next day we went to class and headed straight to the host family to leave for our new dorm. We were quite excited because we were gonna get free internet, free breakfast, free laundry, our own bathroom, etc. We drove in a taxi for about an hour, and got to our so called super awesome dorm…

By the way we looked at a map of seoul and the driver decided to take the longest route possible to get to our dorm. It was a tiresome drive. After we got there we had to meet two other students. One was from our class whose name is Lucas, and the other guy was a brit named james. He’s been here only 3 months and his korean is awesome, but then again he is in a much more intensive course than we are. James decided to take on the challenge of eating a live baby octopus which is apparently something they do over here in korea. I haven’t met any koreans that would do it though, but James will. We should be seeing that next week maybe.
The weekend rolled on by and carl and i went to this techno mall place, which was just a big mall of electronics, nothing to special. I also tried to get my camera again… and for a second time my debit card failed me. But i was determined not to let that camera win. Sunday came about and we explored seoul a little more.

We went to an imax theater, in Yongsan… BUT by this time we had the camera so screw you debit card. To bad it was kind of cloudy. The other days where I didn’t have it, had beautiful sunny skys (even though it was still freezing). The Imax place also pretty much a giant electronic mall with nice stores and clothes, etc

In the begining there was Seoul…

p r o l o g u e . . .

Greetings from South Korea (Seoul specifically). My name is Mel (멜) Garber, and I’m a CAT student at Bloomfield College. Most of you know me… those of you that don’t have probably seen me. I pretty much live in Westminster. You may be asking yourself why would I say greetings from Seoul… Well I’m actually over here studying it up. It all started in the summer of 2007 during the East Meets West Program, where a handful of Bloomfield students got to meet Korean students and do projects with them, and then eventually fly to Korea. I was in that program, along with my collaborator Carl Mckevitt (http://carlmckevitt.wordpress.com/), who also has a blog up about this expedition. While we were over there we decided we had to come back. Being a 3d modeler and animator I was exposed to some of the best animation and modeling I have ever seen in my life, and knew I had to come back and learn these secrets… And i did. So now I’m here studying in South Korea…

A b o u t m e . . .

I am currently a Junior in Bloomfield College. My major is… I dunno my major. Things were going crazy and nothing seemed to be going in my favor… so I decided to make up my own major… My major is (well should be very soon) something along the lines of “International Animation for Video Games”. I do 2d and 3d art and animation, and i take it very seriously, which is kinda why I came to Korea.

n o w . . .

So now onto our plans while we’re actually here… We are currently in Seoul studying the language at this school named GaNada School. We have a Korean Class 3 hours a day and it’s a great environment to learn a language. The teacher is incredibly informative, knowledgeable and shes hilarious.

But alas we only have two more weeks of this class. Once March hits we will be heading to Jeonju University (전주대학교). When we get there, Carl will continue to do more language classes whereas I will be taking advanced animation classes and 3d modeling classes. Their semester begins in March which is different from the system in America. Their winter break it quite long but they pay for it in the summer. In Bloomfield we just have long breaks regardless and it drives me insane… Jeonju University finishes their semester late june, so we will be back July 1st.

m o v i n g o n . . .

Thats pretty much it for right now. I will update later with many pictures of Seoul and such. Oh and before I forget… Send Carl and I feedback please… There is really no point in keeping up the blog if no one reads it. You’ll get to watch Carl and I have a blast.. what more could you ask for. Keep reading, and I’ll update shortly…

안녕…