..and her name was Katie Taylor!

Katie Taylor 

Check out this amazing video of the ‘Thai Tims’, kids from a school in Thailand, singing loud and proud about the legend that is Irish Olympic Gold medallist Katie Taylor.

Absolutely love these kids, such an inspiration for all.

 

United States of Trad

A friend sent me this link today. As I think it’s pretty awesome, and am astonished it only has 182 youtube hits, I’m sharing it here for all my wonderful readers to check out! These guys are reproducing some of 2011′s top hits…except they are giving them the ‘trad treatment’. What do you guys think? Can you guess the song right away? I wonder what song they will do next…

My Wacky-Tacky Umbrella Camera

That’s right…I attached my super, awesome ,wide-angle, water proof GoPro camera to the top of a super wacky, tacky, green umbrella as an experiment and boy was I pleased with the results. Cause you know, I’m cool like that. Turned out to be a perfect way to get those high angle shots, especially as people kept looking up at the wacky-tacky green umbrella with a puzzled look, which made for awesome “up close and personal” shots of completely bewildered strangers!  

Mission accomplished.

I know it’s 7 minutes long (a lifetime, eh?) so feel free to skip about a bit…enjoy! 

Andrew Mann for Eurovision!!

A good friend of mine and an amazingly talented guitarist, singer and song writer is in the running to represent Ireland this year in The Eurovision Song Contest. I first heard Andrew Mann singing in The Purty Kitchen in Temple Bar about…4 years ago and returned every Tuesday for about a year to here listen again and again. All my friends fell a little in love and one fell a lot in love. (They’re still together to this day! )

Anyway as my regular readers know, this is normally a travel blog but today and today only I dedicate this post to Andrew Mann and urge you to go check out his new single “Here I am”. It’s a a really beautiful song and I seriously can’t stop listening to it. To have an actually decent singer (ahem NOT Jedward) representing Ireland in The Eurovision would be amazing, but for it to actually be a good friend too is pretty much spectacular! 

Temple Bar Trad Festival

I went out to meet a Spanish friend for lunch yesterday and ended up staying out til past midnight, thanks to all the free TradFest events in Temple Bar. I met up with a load of awesome couchsurfers and spent hours walking around from pub to pub listening to all the great traditional Irish music and even had a free Irish dancing lesson in The Arlington Hotel!

We drank, we danced on the street, we danced in the rain, we laughed, and I guess we all made some new friends!

 

Here is a little video I made of our Sunday Session! Yeehaaaaw!

I think it’s BORING. BORING BORING BORING.

Today was so unbelievably frustrating. All 3 teachers were teaching students adjectives to describe what they think of certain music, dancing or hobbies. From exciting, to graceful, from beautiful to difficult, it would seem only one adjective in particular caught on in every class…BORING. 

Korean students don’t exactly think for themselves and love to copy/borrow other peoples opinions, which I noticed on one of my first days teaching here. (Click here for the hilarious consequences) So considering the whole lesson today was based on, “What do you think of X? What do you think of Y?” I should have guessed it would be a flop.

When discussing various types of dances I decided to make the lesson more interesting by showing them some funny videos on you tube. For example this gem of “Stavros Flatley” from Britains Got Talent.

When it finshed I asked the class, so what do you think of this kind of dancing? Without even looking up from the pad they were all doodling on they replied in the same monotone one word anser they had been using for the whole lesson..BORING.

I showed them Riverdance…the legendary Riverdance with Michael Flatley. But oh how silly of me, that’s a BORING DANCE along with every other type of dance under the sun.

My level 5′s were discussing music. I was quick to discover that music I have loved all my life from Jazz music, Salsa music, Rock music, Country music, Reggae music and even classical music…are all BORING. How had I been so blind?! I did, miraculously, get one other adjective wrenched from their closed minds, it appears they are all fiercely patriotic when it comes to anything Korean… K-pop music is “good” and the Korean Fan Dance was “good” too. Kill me now!!!

How Boring...

We talked about Native American Rain dances and I showed them a photo of their elaborate and colorful costumes which were, you guessed it…BORING. I got frustrated at this point because there is no way in hell you could ever describe a rain dance as being “boring”. Extravagant maybe, spectacular, colourful, unusual, maybe even scary but no way is it BORING!

Turns out I wasn’t alone in my findings today. Cindy and Daniel, the other Native English teachers in my school was trying to deal with the exact same problems. Attempting to teach a whole unit on puppets (a Unit usually lasts 7 days) when the students keep emphasizing their dislike/indifference to the world of puppets can be quite the challenge! I guess the ONE HUNDRED AND ONE MILLION PEOPLE who viewed this puppet pals video must just be brain dead thinking this video could be…entertaining when its so OBVIOUSLY BORING!!

One disgruntled and…wait for it…bored..student cheekily commented in class saying , “Teachaa, This is supposed to be ENGLISH class, NOT music class!!” Thanks for the memo you cheeky brat, now prepare yourself for one HELL of a lot of homework, a big chunk of tedious, tiring, dull, irksome, annoying, uninteresting BORING homework coming right at ya!

The ‘I love your blog’ interview

Right, so this cool little interview task is doing its rounds on the blogospher at the moment and I have been nominated by the always lovely, always smiling Suddenly Susan to try it out. Hopefully you will enjoy reading and it might give you a little more info about me.

Why Did you Create your blog?

This blog was actually set up as part of an online Journalism module while I was at Uni. The funny (sad really) reality is I hated the idea of been made to blog daily so much that I refused to do it and actually……FAILED the module and had to repeat it during the summer. Nightmare. Oh how things have changed. I ressurected it about 3 months ago and now can’t get enough of my bloggy wog.  The main difference is I can now write about my travel adventures instead of boring online journalism educational rubbish. HAPPY DAYS!

What kind of blogs do you follow?

I follow a wide range of blogs. From the always quirky ‘A Chick Named Hermia’ to my mates blogs about fashion, music and life. At the moment, however, most of the blogs I follow are written by fellow foreigners here in the land of the morning calm and revolve around life in Korea and it’s ups and downs. I also love reading travel blogs, when I have the time.

Favourite make-up brand

I’m not big into make up so don’t have a favourite brand. I have never really been a girly girl so would rather spend my money on cheap Ryanair flights to latvia than on a super expensive bottle of liquid magic foundation or whatever they call it! I normally stick to Rimmel unless I can raid my mums makeup bag..that has lots of lovely Clarins goodies.

Your favourite colour

No idea. I love wearing red lipstickk and at the moment I’m wearing lots of  black, which is fairly depressing so I would have to say….SKY BLUE or Pink or Purple during the winter! Yes I do love bright colours so I do!

Your Perfume

I have been wearing Sarah Jessica Parker ‘Lovely’ for a few years ever since my friend Jeni bought it for my birthday one year. I also love Lancome ‘Miracle’ and YSL ‘Baby Doll Paris’. Lots of sweet and lovely girly smells despite me not been a girly girl, I know! the perfume I’m saving up for/would ABSOLUTELY love ir Victor Rolf ‘Flower Bomb’..Mmmm

Your Favourite Film

Constant Gardener hands down. I ca’t get enough of that movie and really feel I can relate to it as many of the scenes were shot in a village where two friends and I spent a summer teaching English, in the far remote desert of northern Kenya. I also love Shall We Dance with Richard Gere and J-Lo and Amlost Famous…such awesome music!

What country would you like to visit and why?

This is a seriously difficuly question. So I ‘m going to adjust it slightly from ‘country’ to ‘continent’ and say ANTARCTICA! It’s been my dream to go here after interviewing Jonathon Shackleton about his polar explorarion. Seems like one of the most natural, ae inspiring and spectacualr places on the planet. Failing this I guess…Alaska would be cool too.

Write a question yourself and answer it: What are your plans for this weekend?

I’m going Ski-ing in the Korean mountains and am UBER excited. Have not been for years so hope I don’t fall over and  make a complete ass of myself, but that will be a story for another post!!

Hey you! You’re next…

From Korea with love

Ahn nyeong ha se ya

TourAbsurd