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I’ll get the Wat Traimit photos up soon and I’ll also post some new photos of the Yeosu Expo 2012 site, since I took a walk down in that area yesterday. As usual, I hiked up to Jasan Park to get some shots and then walked down the other side of the hill to catch a bus back to my apartment. In Jasan, there’s a small kids’ playground area that is very colorful. I took a photo of it and played around a bit in Photoshop. Here’s the result.
 Jasan Park playground in Yeosu This took me quite a while to do in Photoshop. I added a new background layer and converted it to black and white. Then, with a layer mask, I brought out the colors in the underlying original photo using my mouse. Whew! It took quite a while to do (using a mouse) and it made me realize that if I want to do more of these types of “enhancements”, I’ll have to invest in a Wacom pen tablet, which makes things a bit easier and faster and which I think I can buy here in Yeosu.
So, be on the lookout for more of these types of shots. Next, though, I’ll get the Wat Traimit photos posted and then some updates on the Expo, followed by other shots of my recent trip to Thailand and Laos. (Maybe not necessarily in that order.)
Yes, we’re enjoying the Chinese New Year, which is a 3-day holiday in Korea, and is one of the two big Korean holidays. (The other is Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving.) The official days this year are today, Monday and Tuesday, which makes for a nice, long weekend. This year is the year of the Dragon. Too bad the weather isn’t cooperating; it’s cooler today than it has been recently, and the KMA is forecasting snow(!) in Yeosu from tomorrow through Thursday. Do I put much faith in the KMA to call the weather accurately? Not by a long shot, so I’m gonna guess that we’ll get very little, if any. If it should happen to snow, I’ll go out and take some photos, if only to document that, once in a great while, the weather people give an accurate forecast. More later.
The weather here in Yeosu has been great lately, with abundant sunshine and temperatures around 6 or 8 C (mid-forties fahrenheit); however, the big factor is that the wind hasn’t been howling, like it usually does this time of year. I even managed to get a few jogging sessions in this past weekend. If it would stay this way the rest of the winter, I’d be quite content. It ain’t gonna happen, I’m sure.
No winter in Thailand and Laos, though. This is the best time of year to visit that area of the world, with temperatures in the 80s (30 C), low humidity and clear skies. It was wonderful when I went there in December and early this month, and it was tough coming back to what I expected to be cold, windy Yeosu. (Like I wrote, though, it’s not that bad right now).
I flew out of Incheon about 1 p.m. on December 19th, after taking the 11 p.m. bus from Yeosu on the 18th and then hanging out at the airport from 4:30 a.m. until the flight departed. Incheon Airport, Korea’s award-winning facility, isn’t all that bad to kill time in–lots of restaurants, internet access and other niceties in this state-of-the-art site.
At the main foyer on the first floor, there is usually some kind of Korean cultural theme or event. Featured this season was a traditional Korean winter scene. At 4:30 in the morning, there are hardly any other people around, and I usually head into McDonald’s for a large coffee. The fast-food joint is situated on one side of the foyer, so this was a very tranquil area at that time of day, especially with the winter scene just outside the boundary of the restaurant. So, here are a few photos of the setup.
Very nice, and, like most other things at the airport, a first-class effort.
I’ll get some more photos of the trip posted when I can, but don’t expect something every day–I have one more week of long work days to go before the schedule settles down. Stay tuned.
Here are a few final shots from my walkabout last weekend at the Expo site. Enjoy.
This is the “backside” of the International Pavilion area, facing the train station.
And another shot of the same area.
It appears that most of the outside work is finished on the apartment buildings of Expo Town.
And a couple of shots of the hotel, where more of the exterior covering is being put on.
Here’s a site that I hadn’t taken a shot of until last weekend. It’s the Fisheries Experience Zone. It’s the blue pylons down the breakwater near Odong Island.
Finally, here’s a general overview of the site. If you click on it a couple of times, you’ll get a very large photo of the area to browse. Might take a while to load.
I’ll be on vacation in Thailand and Laos soon and I won’t return until the first week in January, so I won’t be taking any more strolls around the area until then. More later.
Geez, it seems like I’ve been insanely busy lately, though I know it hasn’t been all that hectic; it just feels like it. Anyway, here are the other shots of the Expo site that I promised in my previous post.
First up is another shot of the International Pavilion area. In the lower right is the beginning construction of the Big O, which will be the centerpiece of the Expo.
Next, the Korea Pavilion from a different viewpoint, just to the right of the previous photo.
There are a lot of things I like about the Expo construction so far, but I think my favorite is this little bit of whimsy on the roof of the Expo Organizing Committee building. The forward looking lady is gazing out to sea with her spyglass. Definitely click on the photo a few times to get the largest view and to get a good look at her face. Love it!
Here, Expo Town is still under construction just behind The Spyglass Lady.
Finally, this was the busiest construction going on at the time, in the area of The Big O and the Thematic Pavilion, if I’m not mistaken.
We’ve had some great weather lately, and today was no exception–clear blue skies and a moderately warm afternoon. So, I took another walk in the Expo area and got some more shots. I’ll get ‘em up quickly, I hope. More later.
I promised some more photos of the Expo 2012 construction site, so here are some of the ones that I took a few weekends ago, on November 5th. I was going to get them up a few days ago, but last week, for whatever reasons, seemed quite busy, and yesterday I spent most of the time on our field trip that was postponed from that previous Saturday. Anyway, here are some of the photos, and I’ll try to get several more posted later this week.
I did a lot of cropping on most of these shots, since almost all of the site is surrounded by fairly high (7 to 10 feet) sheet metal fences and casual visitors, of course, aren’t allowed inside the area. There’s also a lot of clutter, cars, power lines, etc. to exclude in the attempt to get a “clean” view. Despite that, I think you’ll see that a lot of progress has been made since my previous visit on August 24th. Most of the visible changes can be seen at the International Pavilion area. For reference, here’s the Expo map that I posted earlier.
First, here’s a view of the area from the visitors’ center, showing about 2/3rds of the site, excluding the area near the hotel. (As always, click on the thumbnails to get a larger, more detailed view.)
Here are a couple shots taken in the area of the International Pavilion, with the Korea Pavilion on the right in both shots.
This one’s looking toward the apartment buildings of Expo Town.
This looks down a walkway toward what will be the Waterfront Plaza. On the left is the Korea Pavilion, the Expo Multipurpose Hall and the Sky Tower in the distance. Across from the Korea Pavilion is the Climate and Environment Pavilion.
Here’s a closer view of the Climate and Env. Pavilion, taken from the International Pavilion area through an opening in the sheet metal.
A closer view of the Sky Tower.
These were formerly used as silos and were a different color (blue, I believe). So, how did they become white?
Looks like fun! The guy was pushing himself from side to side with his feet and using a power paint sprayer.
Finally, for this post, here are a couple shots of the Marine Life Pavilion (Aquarium) and the hotel. There’s not much change to the exteriors (the base of the hotel shows the most progress), but most of the work is going on inside the structures. I’ll try to get some more photos of the area posted later in the week. Stay tuned.
Here are a few shots from my recent trip to Seoul. I only had my pocket camera, not the DSLR, so the quality isn’t the best, plus for some reason, my memory card got corrupted and I lost many of the better ones. All of these were taken in the Gwanghwamun area, near the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. This is the cultural heart of Seoul, a very high rent district, which has many theaters, concert halls and other venues. I was a bit pressed for time when I went the week before last, but I hope to get back up there in December and spend more time walking around the area.
I went to Seoul to get some more pages added to my passport. Here’s where I had to go–the U.S. Embassy. The last time I was up here, in 2005, believe it or not, the building was ringed with Korean riot police, acting as security, but nowadays you only see a few yellow-garbed security police.
I was standing in a central plaza of sorts when I took the embassy photo. In the plaza are a couple of large statues, one of King Sejong the Great and one of Admiral Yi Sun-shin, who used Yeosu as his headquarters in his battles with the Japanese. Unfortunately, the photos I took of the King Sejong statue were some of those that were lost on my memory card, but here’s one of Admiral Yi. You can see way off in the background the golden-colored Sejong statue.
Walking down the road a bit, you can see this odd Christmas-tree like structure, which marks an open space for street performances.
On this particular day, there was an exhibition of wheel chair skills, including basketball shooting and ballroom dancing, as this photo shows.
Just down from the performance space is a very lovely walking area below street level alongside a stream. It’s a great place for an afternoon stroll, and this day it was filled with office workers on lunch break, families and tourists.
Of course, the area is filled with upscale bars and restaurants. Here’s one that I thought was interesting, JS Texas Bar, complete with Elvis statue. It also had a classic Marilyn Monroe on the other side of Elvis, the iconic shot of her billowing skirt from the movie “The Seven Year Itch.” Unfortunately, it was one of the photos that the memory card ate.
Like I said, I hope to go back to Seoul in December and get some more photos. This time I’ll take the DSLR with me and a new memory card. 
P.S. I took a walk down to the Expo site this past Saturday and got quite a few shots of the construction progress in that area. Things are moving along quite nicely, it appears, and I’ll try to get those photos posted sometime this week.
Once every semester, our special English class (Vision English) students and teachers go on a field trip to various attractions around Yeosu. (Here’s a previous post about the field trip.) We were supposed to take the trip today, but it was postponed until next Saturday because rain was in the forecast; we were told of the postponement a few nights ago.
Everyone was disappointed, because we, the students and teachers, had been working all week on oral presentations that the students have to give at each site. Not that the work was wasted, but everyone was rarin’ to go.
As soon as I found out about the change of plans, I looked at the Korean Meteorological website. Sure enough, they were predicting from one to two inches of rain on Saturday. In the back of my mind, I wondered how accurate the prediction was, since the KMA seems, more often than not, to be unerringly inaccurate with their forecasts. I also noticed that they were calling for an 80-90% chance of rain in the early hours of the morning, with a smaller and smaller chance of rain as the day progressed, finally petering out around noon. In the back of my mind, I thought that we could probably have the field trip after all.
Sure enough, we got just over an inch and a half between midnight and 6 a.m., when it stopped raining. It’s now right around 10 a.m, the time when the field trip would have begun. Guess what? We’ve got beautiful blue skies and lots of sunshine, with absolutely no rain in sight. It figures. Hopefully, there’s no rain in the forecast next Saturday.
After enjoying more than a week off while the students took mid-term exams, I go back to work tomorrow. I didn’t do a whole lot during the time off, but I did get up to Seoul for a few days; I needed to get some more pages added to my passport. I wouldn’t have needed any more until my passport expired, but the Laos government chooses to take up an entire page with their large tourist visas. Because I go there so often on vacation, I use up quite a few pages in a short time. Although I enjoy Seoul, I don’t really like going up there because I spend so much money in a short time. The passport pages used to be a free service, but now the U.S. government charges $82 for it. Add in the cost of transportation there and back, a couple of nights in a guesthouse, eating, visiting the Kyobo bookstore for a few reading materials, and a trip to the Foreign Food Market in Itaewon, and the price climbs. I was able to get a few spices that I can’t find here in Yeosu, including a Cajun Spice Mix and a bottle of cardamom. I also discovered that they have all kinds of beans and pasta, so I got a couple of bags of couscous and, unbelievably, black-eye peas. Now I can have that traditional southern U.S. dish, Hoppin’ John, which, if eaten on New Year’s Day, will bring you good health and prosperity for the rest of the year. Yummmmm, I can’t wait. Heck, I’m sure I’ll cook up a few batches before then. I might even have to make another Seoul run.
Well, the World Series is over and the Rangers kind of blew it, but what a classic game 6 that was! I watched the replay on MLB TV when I returned from Seoul. I avoided checking the Internet and my email as a precaution to avoid seeing the game result before I watched it. A really exciting game and hard to top, as game 7 seemed rather anti-climactic (unless you’re a Cardinal fan).
I’ve still got a lot of photos to put up, including some from Seoul, so stay tuned for more later (sooner, I hope.)
Here are a few photos taken in one of Yeosu’s indoor fish markets last April, which just goes to show how timely I am at posting some of my shots. The fish markets are located in the area of town where there are dozens of folks selling vegetables, fruit, fish and other staples in a hodge-podge of outdoor and indoor markets. Here’s a view of the main street of this area.
Anyway, the outdoor market is still open, but the indoor ones, of which there are a few, are much nicer for winter shopping. Here’s a photo of the outdoor market, which I took way back in October of 2008 (and which I DID put in the main photo gallery, but not on the blog).
Inside the market, folks are busily engaged in buying and selling all sorts of seafood.
Following are several shots of various creatures from the sea; I know about the crabs and fish, but what the others are called, I have no idea. If anyone knows, please leave a comment. Enjoy.
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