Korean Folk Village

On Saturday I went to a traditional Korean folk village sponsored by the chapel here on post. It was really cool to see the lifestyle and the way that Koreans lived.

A view of part of the park from a hilltop.

This was over the path leading up to the sculpture park.

One of many sculptures. Things like this are huge in Korea. You see them and places to buy statues everywhere as you are driving.

Pots to store Kimchi in. Kimchi is a sort of steam cabbage that is served with almost every meal. These pots where everywhere.

 

Masks are also very popular in Korea.

These pavilions were extremely ornate.

  Close up of the pavilion.

Look Laura, It was hosta land here too.

Can any one guess what this plant is?

Here's the answer . . .

Yes indeed. They were growing hemp here.

And here is another short video I put together of what I filmed in the park.

 

Have a great day. Andy

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For

Here it is. The video that gave me so much trouble. It would have been sooner but due to some laziness on my part and some other circumstances (see previous post) it has taken longer then I thought. And Laura, sorry there is no Michael Scott or Dwight Shrute tag team. Hope it works. Enjoy. And as always, Have a great day. Andy

Hello

Once again it has been almost a week since I posted last. I'm sorry. I have been working a ton lately. Last weekend we had a gunnery which is were the pilots fly down to a range and shoot some rockets and their 30mm cannon for practice. So most of the company went out to the field but I was one of those that got to stay back. Because of that I would go into the shop around noon and we would fix anything that was broken when a helicopter came back. Often I wouldn't get back in my room till 10-11:00 at night. But it wasn't to bad, and I learned some good stuff.

I have to say thank you first of all to my wonderful family over at just another day in paradise and terri and her talk for a wonderful package I received in the mail. Lots of things to keep me entertained. Thank you very much.

  

I also have to say thank you to whoever sent me this

I am assuming it was someone who reads my blog because it came from Washington and I don't know anyone from Washington personally. So whoever it was thank you very much. It looks like a really good book. I can't wait to read it.

Have a great day. Andy

Army of the One

This is a picture of a t-shirt I ordered online that just arrived to day. I thought it was awesome. It is signed by Matt Hughes who fights in the UFC and is one of my favorite fighters.

Here is the back of the shirt. The verse is 1st Timothy 1:13,15-16 and is Matt's favorite verse.

In other news there really isn't a whole lot going on over here. I haven't done anything but work relax so I don't have much to say.

I got some more videos of apaches and jets that I am working on editing together but it takes some motivation to do and often I don't have that. But I'm trying. Other then that. 

Have a great day. Andy

Sorry Ma, I Joined the Infantry

A few weeks ago I had to go over to Camp Humphrey's to CIF or Central Issue Facility. This is where I get most of my equipment issued to me. Stuff like my body armor, helmet, knee and elbow protectors, entrenching tool, rucksack, etc. You get the idea. We had to put it all in our rucksack and another big bag and take it all on the bus back to Camp Eagle.

To get to the bus stop we had to carry the two bags up a hill to the bus stop. I think they did it like that on purpose. The two bags loaded with equipment weighed about a ton and I thought that my shoulders were going to tear off trying to get up the hill. It was not very fun.

Here is some of my equipment. That is mostly the main items. I have a lot of other little pouches that all get hooked onto the body armor. I also have several cold weather items, and two sleeping bags. All in all I really felt like I had joined the infantry.

Have a great day. Andy

Birthday Presents

You all now a few weeks ago was my birthday. Well this week I actually got my birthday presents from Mom, Dad, Heather, and Laura and Aaron. I was shocked at the amount of stuff I got from all of them, which included a lot of treats.

Here is the box I got from Laura and Aaron. Everything was wrapped up all nice. How cute.

And the contents of that wonderful box. You better believe I laughed my head off watching that DVD too. Will Ferrell is the best. And Here is the box from Mom, Dad, and Heather and the contents . . .

If you were wondering, No I don't need prilosec, that is actually a DVD that came in a prilosec box I guess. And that piece of paper in the back is the color my parents just painted the kitchen.

Needless to say I am going to be busy for a while watching movies, reading magazines and getting fat off of all the food I just received. Thanks to my entire family for the wonderful presents. I love it all.

Hope everyone has a great day. Andy 

Update

I' just wanted to post a quick update. I haven't really had the chance to update my blog recently. I am sorry about that. Between crazy hours working and the internet not be cooperative all the time it is hard to get a post on. I am working on it though. I have a few things to post about hopefully by this week. But right now, I am going to bed.

Andy

I'm So Honored

                    

I am so honored. Today I was giving my first award from my mom over at My Little Corner of the World. Thank You Mom, I love you that much too.

I am new to this whole blogging thing so I don't really know how to handle this whole thing. I don't know if I'm supposed to give a speech or something to go along with it. Um . . . Ok first off I would like to thank my mom for graciously awarding this to me. I am so honored. Secondly I would like to thank all my readers who make this blog possible. Thank you to all my sponsors and I would especially like to thank, Oh wait is there like a time limit on my acceptance speech where if I go over the time I get set on fire or attacked by a wild bear. I guess just to be safe I will wrap it up here.

Pretty much everyone who's blog I read has already been awarded this so I guess if you read my blog I would like to pass this award to you. Thanks for reading even though it can be boring at times.

Have a great day. Andy

Gotta Love Computers

I was supposed to head over to my company yesterday but the base was having a change of command ceremony for the old commander who is leaving to transfer power to the new command coming in. The other four people that are going to the company at the same time as me, and I ran into one of the sergeants in the morning. He said it was stupid for us to go to the co. today because they were having rehearsals for the ceremony all day and we would just sit around. Therefore since no one else knew we were coming today we should just "disappear" and go to our rooms for the day. Well it didn't take much to persuade us to do that. So I spent the day in my room, sleeping, watching movies and the like. Which brings me to my next point.

I am angry at myself, and my computer. During the day I was looking out my window with my trusty digital camera in tow filming 2 apaches as they ran through pre flight checks then took off. After they were gone I moved on to taking short videos of the ROK air force as they were flying past in formations then breaking off to land one right after another. I, as you should already now, was in my glory. It was awesome. About twenty minutes later the apaches came back and I got footage of them landing and taxing over to park. Well by then I had about 15 short video clips and there was nothing else happening so I headed over to my trusty laptop to load the videos on and edit together some type of short video to post on my blog. I had something extraordinary in mind to. There was going to be music, and explosions, and aircraft flying around, and possibly Michael Scott and Dwight K. Shrute(assistant to the regional manager) would make an appearance. Ok, sorry I got a little carried away. But honestly there was going to be music and aircraft.

Anyway's, I popped in the little media card into the computer and transferred the recordings over popped the card back out and into the camera. I decided that video clips like that take up a lot of room on a media card and since I already had them saved on the computer I would just save room and delete them from the card. So three push's of a button later and they were gone. Awesome. Cant wait to get started. Head over the the laptop. Open the folder I saved them too. Wait, Where are the video clips (insert agitated scream).

Apparently my computer wanted to play silly little computer games with me today and when it said transferring files it was really punting them into the hinterlands of your hard drive where you know the files are there but only a super mad computer genius could ever have the wisdom, let alone, the technology to restive them. Isn't that magical. Just to spite me there was only one video there which happened to be one of the poorer quality ones.

So here you go. Instead of a wicked awesome video that would likely have won an Emmy (or at least some sort of rip off award) You get this. A lackluster video recorded on a digital camera. Take into account that I was zoomed in all the way. That's why it looks shaky. And that little portion in there where it looks like there was an earthquake and you see the sky for about 15 seconds, yeah I was trying to catch a ROK flyover. Sorry about that. I hope the video works.

UUUGGGGGHHHH! Now my computer wont load the video. So I will do my best to get that loaded at a later time and for now you only get this post and the above picture of a perturbed Andy.

Hope your day goes better then mine.

Andy.

FPCON

Here is a some military lingo for you Aunt Karla and Diane. FPCON - short for force protection conditions. Basically it's the amount of security needed in response to terrorist threat levels against military installations. There are five stages of FPCON beginning with FPCON Normal then going from FPCON Alpha and up to FPCON Delta.

The reason I decided to share that is because the level just got raised for South Korea. I don't know why but for some time know there has been a ban on the importing of American beef. Just recently that ban got lifted causing some uproar amongst the civilian population in South Korea. South Koreans have a reputation for holding demonstrations that more times then not turn into a riot.

The commander of the U.S. forces of Korea had seen the lifting of the ban as something that could be a threat to military personal therefore raising the FPCON level, mainly because the riots and demonstrations often occur right outside the gates of military posts.

Now I don't know how you all feel on the subject but I don't see my self participating in a demonstration against imported beef. Then again I don't see myself participating in any type of demonstration. But I just think it's crazy the things that people start a riot for. Don't these people have anything better to do with there time. If you really feel like you need to start a riot at least be demonstrating against something reasonable.

Taking a quote from John Stossel "give me a break"

Andy