Last Sunday I did my grading for yellow belt. I’d been practicing my skills for a couple of weeks but it was going to be my first grading and also my first opportunity to meet Master Chang. Despite being very comfortable with all my skills I still found myself waking up on Sunday morning feeling very nervous. I arrived at the school in time to have a quick practice before we were told to be seated. We would be called up in groups of the same level and Master Chang would judge us. (more…)

While I was living in Korea I started studying Hapkido and Young Jin Hapkido Academy in Jinju. Hapkido is a Korean martial art similar in style to Aikido from Japan. It is a very complete martial art as it employs strikes, kicks, throws, joint locks and weapon techniques. The word Hapkido itself can be split as follows: Hap – Co-ordination of mind and body, Ki – The inner energy created through “Hap”, Do – Art. So the Art of co-ordinating ones energy. My two months studying Hapkido in Korea gave me a great introduction to the art and when I returned to England in December I wanted to find somewhere I could pick it up again. (more…)

Hello, my name is Justin-Min and I am 7 years old. I was born in New York in America but now I live in Jinju in South Korea.

I like dinosaurs and scary things. I also like playing soccer and swimming.

(more…)

Hello, my name is Lee Joon-Ho and I’m 8 years old, but I’m not half way to 9 yet. I was born in Beijing in China but now I live in Jinju in South Korea.

(more…)

A couple of my students had been readin about websites in a book so I decided to let them post a profile of themselves on here that they can view anywhere. You can read about them in the following posts.

Well it’s 7am on one of our only long weekends and Abi and I are off to Seoul.

Out bus leaves in about an hour and a half and could take anywhere between 3 and 5 hours depending I where you look. We’ve gone all out and opted for the “Excellent Bus” with wifi, aircon and all the other gubbins and at only 22000₩ it’s still much cheaper than driving.

Not got a lot planned but hopefully going to see Gyeongbukgong, maybe go to an aquarium, see the worlds largest gold plate building and do a little bit of shopping as well.

Will try an update more over the weekend with some pics etc.

Spring is well and truly here in Korea. The blossoms are popping, the sun is shining and it’s starting to get warmer. To celebrate this fact, take a look at my entry in to Gizmodo’s Spring Shooting Challenge. (more…)

Titanic fever has well and truly hit. It’s 100 years since the Titanic sank and there are all sorts of things popping up to remind us of it. Some will argue that it’s incredibly tasteless to celebrate an event which lead to the death of 1500 people but I say look at all that it’s brought us!

For those who don’t have eyes or ears, The RMS Titanic was the grandest passenger liner ever built and was said to be unsinkable. Unfortunately on it’s maiden voyage it struck an iceberg and sank leading to the death of 1517 people. There’s a far more fascinating tale underneath but thankfully James Cameron did a fantastic job of capturing the scale grandeur of the ill fated wonder in his 1997 movie Titanic which is being miraculously re-released in 3D to commemorate the 100th anniversary. (more…)

Following on from my last post about my love of Micro Four Thirds I’m happy to announce that April 3rd is officially Worldwide Micro Four Thirds Photography Day!

Not really certain what all this entails as of yet and why they’d have it on a random Tuesday is beyond me but for anyone that’s interested take a look at micro43day.org/ for more info. (more…)

Since moving to Korea I’ve really gotten in to my photography (which you can see from the explosion of pictures on my Flickr page). As some of you might know I currently use an Olympus E-P1 which is a Micro Four Thirds camera. The Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system is a fantastic standard developed by Olympus and Panasonic for a range of mirrorless, inter-changeable lens cameras.  (more…)