Ah, homecoming. You know what I love? Delayed flights. I just LOVE sitting on a plane, for an extra 2 hours after boarding, waiting for takeoff. That's right, folks, TWO extra hours... on an 11 hour flight. Good times. Someone on the plane was unfit for travel and EMS had to come and take them and their luggage off the plane before we could take off. Then we lost our place for take off and had to wait in line, then when we finally got to Incheon, we had to wait for a gate to be open before we could get off the plane. Good times. Really. So we made it to Incheon, grabbed a bus to Central City (the place in Seoul where we catch the bus to Mokpo). Got dropped off rather far away from where we buy our tickets and catch the bus, were told to go int he opposite direction than that which we needed... ended up dragging our luggage (4 50+ pound bags plus 4 carry ons) an extra 400 meters... finally made it at about 8pm, missed that bus, the 9:00 was full, we got the second last tickets on the last bus to Mokpo, made it home at about 2:30am... and here we thought we'd be home at 10pm and get a good night's rest before teaching on Monday. HAHAHAHA.
P.S. Air Canada sucks.

CANADA

Hello all. Here we are in Canada... just over 72 hours in the country... And WOW IS IT EVER GOOD TO BE HOME. Might be better if we'd actually brought our traveller's checks with us... but hey, who really needs money right? So in the 72 hours that we've been here, we've managed about 15 hours of sleep... but today's our first day of crabbiness, and that was quickly surpassed - there's just too much to do and too many people to see to stay crabby for very long. Okay, I"m hungry - time to go find a multitude of wonderful Canadian snacks... mmmm crackers and sausage! More than 2 different kinds of chips and pop.... A&W rootbeer...so many good things.... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
See all of you "Koreans" in a couple more weeks, and as for everybody else, you'd better be visiting:)

The Jordan Emmans Band: First Official Gig

Hello Everyone! I realize that this is a little dated, but it took me time to create this post. Hopefully it will be done before we're back from Canada. Maybe not. We'll see. Anyway, last Saturday I finally got back on stage for real. For something other than a jam session planned at the last minute. This was pro man. We even had a set list. Anyway, Matt Amond, who is an adept songwriter in his own right, was kind enough to help fill out our sound on the electric guitar. He also did a set of his own by himself before the rest of the band filed in, just to give the rabid fans some relief.



After his solo set, Dan, Jordan and I joined in to complete the Matt Amond Band. We played a few covers and some of Matt's gems (like Spin, which is a funky little tune, and Shine, which is a catchy pop/rock song).

Then started the main event of the evening, The Jordan Emmans Band. We played most of Jordan's songs that we had worked on, with both Jordan and Matt playing electric guitar, and jammed on more than one of the songs. More than once we had spontaneous little sessions, where Dan would kick out a groove, and I'd play something over top, and all of a sudden heads are bobbing along. So we went with a couple of them and just had ourselves a little jam. Very fun and quite musical, too.





So this will, with any luck, be a regular thing for us, jamming and gigging, after Dawn and I get back from the Land of the Morning Tim Horton's. And hopefully we can get something recorded to remember it by. Or to sell to the throngs of fans lining up to hear us.
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Oh, they're there...



At least Laurel is...

Money is tough to get around here!

So apparently Canadian dollars don't exist in Mokpo, South Korea. I had a HELL of a time getting the Kookmin Bank downtown to exchange my Korean money for anything at all. I thought I had them when I pulled out my piece of paper on which I had scralled the definition for "cashier's check", and they said, "Oooooooh!". Thought I was golden. Nope. What we call a cashier's check they call a traveller's check. In American dollars. Why can they not just write a cashier's check for 2000000KRW? Who knows... At any rate, now we have American dollars to exchange. Yee haw! Guess this is what we get for living out in the sticks!

Gettin' Ready...

Just getting ready to hit the road and head out to Gwangju for the weekend! What's on the schedule you ask? Shopping, and playing the official first gig of the Jordan Emmans Band. Oughta be a good time. Pics and possibly video should be forthcoming, as well as first hand analysis of the show. Wish me luck!

Homecoming

Good news everybody! We are coming home!!! We finally have an itinerary and tickets will be picked up soon! We fly from Incheon to Vancouver, Vancouver to Edmonton on November 10. We will be arriving in Edmonton at approximately 4:40 pm. Interestingly enough, it takes negative seven hours to fly from Seoul to Vancouver. We will be in Canada until the second of December when we will leave sunny Edmonton and go back to dreary old Mokpo. I guess the time catches up with you on the way back: it takes 28 hours to get back to Seoul! Happy Halloween everybody, and see you in 11 days!

edit: Alright so maybe I should add our flight number and such huh? We will be arriving in Edmonton on Air Canada flight AC242. That is all.

The Jordan Emmans Band

Hello Everybody!

Dave has taken over the blog today. I dont' know if you all know this, but I can't be in just one band. It always seems to be none or 3. Since it's been so long since I have been in a band, I decided that, obviously it was time for me to be in (more than) one again. First I joined up with two fellow Mokpo'ers, Chad and Emanuel, and formed Billie Jean and the Kidney Beans. That was a success, and all members reported much fun. And, not surprisingly, from that experience came a second band.

Unfortunately, Billie Jean didn't fare so well in the judging, and the third place act was a guy named Jordan Emmans. A songwriter and guitarist (and apparently drummer?), Jordan was playing with a drummer named Dan, but no other accompaniment. And since his songs were really cool, I offered my services. He called me a couple weeks later, and we decided to start playing. The only catch is he and Dan both live in Gwangju, about 1.5 hours from Mokpo.

So we practiced on a Friday, I learned the songs as we played them, and it went really good. Then around 5 or so, Dan told Jordan that there was an acoustic thing going on at Speakeasy, which is a bar owned by a couple Canadian guys. Jordan asked if we were up to playing with him. We decided it would be cool. So I phoned Dawn to come to Gwangju so she could see me play and be all proud and such. Plus the last bus back to Mokpo was at 11 or something, so we would've had to spend the night apart otherwise. So we get to the bar at 10:30 or so, and we find out there's a couple other acts. One of the owners played a set with Dan on drums, and another songwriter named Matt played some of his tunes and some covers. So finally at about 1am we got on stage. We played 6 songs that I had played a couple times at practice, but we also played 3 songs that I had never heard before. Tough, but doable. Jordan is a good leader, so there's really no problems there. Anyway, check out the pics. Gotta go!