the philippines was gorgeous, and just what i needed. i can’t wait to go back.

alas, all good things must come to an end.

well it didn’t start snowing until christmas night, but it’s been pretty snowy and wintery ever since — the first real snow of the season.

ice on the han river, seoul [joongang daily]

it’s actually not been that bad so far. sure it’s in the frigid single digits fahrenheit, but it hasn’t been excessively windy. it has, however, been extremely icy, which makes it hell walking up and down the mountains to my barracks building and office. and apparently, driving as well:

someone is going to have some body work to do on the underside of the chassis….

seven days until the philippines, sixteen days until my challenger srt8 gets to korea!!!

courtesy of ROK Drop:

Naked News Korea Girls Start New K-Pop Band, The Naked Girls

I am sure everyone has been awaiting in anticipation to see what would happen to the unemployed Naked News Korea girls and now we have our answer, K-Pop!:

“We have gathered Minkyung, Jaekyung, Hyeji and Taehee to form this girl group, and will officially debut under the name Naked Girls in January next year. Their performances will be composed of inappropriate songs and choreography, definitely not suitable for youth. The girls’ activities will be focused more on musicals rather than national television.”  [Extra Korea]

Here is more on the group’s signature calling card, “the sexy cal“.

You can see more pictures of the girls here.

james & miwa outside the seoul hilton hotel

well, another christmas away from home. it was pretty relaxed. spent christmas eve at the commander’s place, and then went to seoul to see miwa on christmas day. she made a nice christmas dinner for me and her friend doo hee.

courtesy of doo hee’s phone:

so i met miwa after work in hangdang, where we sat down to a delicious meal of shabu shabu and lots of silliness, as always. miwa is so terrible though! we were walking to the train, and this hajima was selling puppies. they were so cute! well, miwa convinced me that they were for food. i was soooooo upset! turns out she was lying and was just trying to provoke me. i nearly flipped out. not cool!

puja, korea, 27 november 2009

so unfortunately, we were working friday over the four-day thanksgiving weekend, because every time i have anything planned, @#$%ing 2ID or 210 Fires BDE comes up with some last minute tasking—in the case of last wednesday, it was division safety stand-down day. consequently, thanksgiving consisted of serving lunch to the joes in my dress blues at the chow hall, followed by dinner at the commander’s house, and finally a blitz back to camp casey to get some sleep before 0430 wakeup the next day.

by 0600 we were on the road to scout out some sites around korea, which generally means within shooting range of the DMZ, along north korea air avenues of approach. we hit our sites without too much trouble, except for one road which was mislabeled on the map and sent us on a two-hour long detour.

the cool part was taking a break and stopping to get some lunch in paju book city, a pretty artsy-looking area north of the han river that runs through seoul. we drove up to simhaksan, which holds a buddhist temple complete with a giant statue of buddha. alas, our fearless driver missed a turn on the return trip, which brought us directly to the DMZ near warrior base, where we do our grenade ranges, and in the general vicinity of panmunjom, the village just south of the 38th parallel where truce negotiations were held to end the korean war. so we kind of took the scenic route, but we made it back, which is all that matters.

also, don’t let sgt epps take photos. he’s a good soldier; a good photographer? not so much. ::james shakes his head::

okay, first question: why do the civilians get the focus for our operation?! aside from that, check out the sweet footage of the MANPADS kill around the 1:40 mark:

sweet.

avenger killing an aerial target, taken from the tower:

frame-by frame stills of avenger destroying aerial target over yellow sea with a stinger missile, daechon, korea, 11-10-09

click on the photo