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Looking Back: Our First Year Of Marriage

Griffin Stewart — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:00:50 +0000

Just wanted to share a video of some pictures from our first year of marriage and also let you know how you can make a similar video. First, enjoy the video. Most of these are pictures of places we have been together. A few actually have us in them. It has been an amazing year!

How To Make One Yourself

To make your our video similar to this one, go to pummelvision.com as you may have guessed from the video. There you can pull pictures from Flickr, Facebook, Dropbox and a few others. You’l have to authorize pummelvision to allow access to the account you choose and then also let it know if you want to publish to Vimeo or YouTube, so you can instantly link it to anyone on Twitter, Facebook, etc. After that, put in your email address and wait a few hours to a couple days and pummelvision will email you when your video is ready.

Bonus Video!

Griffin has been taking pictures every couple of days and posting them to his Facebook account. Here is a video of all of them. These are taken and edited on an iPhone. Enjoy!

A Great Weekend Courtesy of 10 Magazine & Thanks to You!

Griffin Stewart — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:13:53 +0000

Thanks to all our readers and friends, we got to spend a very fun and enjoyable weekend in Seoul this past week. Because of your votes for our video, we made it into the top ten entrants for 10Magazine‘s Korea Awaits Video Contest! Thanks again for your support. We gathered along with the rest of the top ten entrants at Villa Sortino in Seoul for the announcement of the winners as well as some delicious Italian appetizers and wine. After some mingle time, and a brief video interview, we settled in to watch all the finalists videos before the winners were announced. We placed seventh overall, which was a little disappointing, but when we saw what kind of video they were looking for in the grand prize winner, we didn’t feel so bad. Please don’t take this the wrong way, the winning video was packed with creativity, an original soundtrack, some green screen magic and is very entertaining to watch. We are not saying that we thought the winning video was bad, just that it was not what we thought they would be looking for and not really the style we personally enjoy making. Click here for the the top ten results. Here is the winning video. Enjoy!

And here is our video in case you missed it

The Consolation Prizes

When it comes to consolation prizes, 10 Magazine did not disappoint. They sent us home happy with a package including:

₩50,000 gift card to On The Border
₩20,000 gift card to Caffe Bene
2 Tickets to Miso: A Traditional Korean Musical worth ₩40,000 each

We went to On The Border that night and enjoyed some good Mexican food. It was not quite as good as our favorite Mexican restaurant, but free Mexican food in Korea is always a welcome treat and we even had enough left over for lunch the next day.

After On The Border we headed over to catch the 8PM showing of Miso. We had no idea what to expect, but were excited about the fun date night at no cost to us! We were quickly blown away by the professionalism and beauty or this amazing performance. The lighting was fantastic and the live music and coloful costumes all combined to leave us memorized for most of the show. All we could do was sit there and enjoy the beauty as the plot unfolded before our eyes. We were also glad that it was more of an instrumental musical than a vocal one and because of this the story relied more on acting and scene changes than speaking which we would have not understood. This was a huge plus and the reason we would not hesitate to recomend the show to anyone who is looking for a great date night idea in Seoul.

During one of the performances, Valerie was picked out of the audience and brought up on stage to perform a balancing act with the cast. She did an excellent job and even outperformed the Korean college student they had brought up to compete with her;-) When the show finished there was a short time to meet and take pictures with the cast, but by the time we got our camera, the time had ended. We think this may have been due to the world cup game being on, but are not sure if more time is normally allotted or not, so if you go, make sure to rush for the pictures afterward.

Valerie getting ready to balance the spinning wheel on stage at the performance of Miso.

Upon exiting the theater, we heard some chearing coming from down to the street and decided to walk over and investigate. It turned out to be thousands of fans watching and cheering for the Korean Red Devils to beat Greece in the world cup. The city had set up huge TVs in the square in front of City Hall for the event and the atmosphere was electrifying! We joined in the fun for a while and then headed out a little early to beat the crowds. This was definitely the most fun day we have had in Seoul and just want to again thank our family and friends and 10 Magazine for providing us with the opportunity.

More Information About Miso

For those interested, here are some pictures and more information about Miso.

A Poster with some of the cast we saw.

A Picture from their website of one of the drum scenes that was very enjoyable.

Another picture from their website. This one of a knife and sword dancing scene that was very fun to watch.

You can check out a plot summary from their website and more here.

NOTE: 10 Magazine, On The Border and Miso logo’s are all copyright their original owners and their depiction on this on this site in no way infers ownership to me. All pictures of Miso provided by the Miso website. No photography is allowed while viewing the production of Miso(I secretly took the one of Valerie with my iPhone before being caught, so maybe not as secretly as I had hopped;-)

The Kindness of Strangers

Valerie Stewart — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:11:39 +0000

When we arrived in Korea, we didn’t know a Seoul, er soul…

We were able to meet the American teachers we were replacing, but only for a brief time before they headed home. So, we were left in Korea with only each other and did not know ANY of the language. Fortunately, our co-teachers showed us more kindness than we could have imagined.

Mr. Choi was the first to come to our aid. He is my official co-teacher and has been nothing short of a blessing to us. He took the time to get us checked into our hotel when we first arrived and he is the one who actually selected our apartment for us. To make things even more convenient for us, our apartment is located within walking distance of his own home. He is kind enough to give us rides home from school when we don’t have Korean lessons and frequently stops by to help us with any problems we are having in our apartment. (I.e., not speaking the same language as the Landlord, appliance instructions written in Korean, setting up accounts for utilities, etc.) We have been fortunate to spend time with Mr. Choi outside of school. He invited us hiking with him where we bottled fresh mountain water to take home. He and his beautiful wife have offered for us to visit their home at some point for dinner. He’s a fan of FRIENDS! We are privileged to call him our friend.

Valerie and Mr. Choi on our hike up the mountain for water.

Griffin and Mr. Choi resting at the top of the mountain.

Mr. Choi getting water from the spring at the top of the mountain.

Mr Shin has also been so wonderful to us. As soon as we arrived in Korea, Mr. Shin became our official tour guide. He has taken us many places around the country and offered us delicious Korean meals at some great restaurants, never allowing us to pay. (We have forced him and his wife to allow us to buy them dinner, only one time.) He is also a Christian and we have visited his church on occasion. He introduced us to our church home, which has led to many friendships and other opportunities. His wife studies English and speaks well, although she is very shy. She sometimes translates to her husband, the English teacher! Both are very kind to us and fun to hang out with!

Valerie and Griffin With Mr. Shin at Ki Rim Sa Temple near Gyongju, South Korea

Mr. Shin generously serving us a delicious lunch.

Mrs. Nam is Griffin’s co-teacher and everyday, except Wednesdays, he has “teacher time” when he and Mrs. Nam talk about many topics from movies to education to technology and even politics, most of all the differing culture and perspectives of our respective countries. This is one of the highlights of Griffin’s day at school. Griffin really enjoys learning about the Korean way of life and also comparing and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each culture and their different social, economical and educational systems, traditions and ideas. Afterward, he shares what he has learned with Valerie and day by day we become more knowledgable and interested in these wonderful people and their culture.

Mrs. Nam does such a great job of letting Griffin know about upcoming events and also helping translate or take care of many different things that he would otherwise be unable to do. After realizing Griffin was taking the bus to Valerie’s school three days a week for Korean class, Mrs. Nam generously offered to take Griffin and drop him off when she can. This has been a huge help and allows Griffin to arrive at the school ten to fifteen minutes earlier than would be possible with the bus. Mrs. Nam has become a great friend and has been very helpful in helping Valerie and Griffin learn more about Koreans and their culture than could ever been discovered in a culture guide, newspaper or TV program.

Griffin with Mrs. Nam. Griffin really enjoys talking about cultural, traditional and other differences between Koreans and other parts of the world.

A few months ago, we were all strangers to each other. We are proud to now call them friends.

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