Farewell to a Good Friend and Mentor

What better way to spend the evening than with good friends, music, and drinks.

When I first came to South Korea about 3 ½ years ago, I had nothing to my name aside from the clothes on my back and the two bags on my shoulders. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have a home, no money, and I couldn’t speak any of the local language to even be able to ask for help. But there was one person that I was lucky enough to meet on the boat traveling to Korea, who befriended me during my first critical baby-steps into this country, Dag. 

 

And snapping back to the present, I’m even luckier that I got the chance to meet this friend one last time before he leaves Asia, for what may potentially be forever.

Ever since our chance encounter, Dag has been like a mentor to me, always being there when I needed it, and ready to part advice on traveling, education, and life in general.  He inspired me in my early days of teaching; Dag had worked as a language teacher for over a decade in Slovenia, during the Cold War when the Eastern Bloc was still a reality. 

Where Dag has lived for the past few years, out in the countryside.

He's also shared with me a renouncing for travel--a self-proclaimed “travel junkie”—who traveled multiple countries on foot, train, bus, boat, and even horseback, in some cases. That drive to see the unknown is what brought Dag to Korea over five years ago, when he sold his car and bought a plane ticket out on a whim. And now, after over half a decade of dealing with discriminatory visa policies and hassles with immigration officials in South Korea and Japan, Dag has sadly decided to say goodbye to Northeast Asia.

 Thank you, Dag, for the excellent weekend of drinks and music among the rice fields and cherry blossoms of Wonji, along with being able to see you during your last weekend here in South Korea and Asia. 

I hope your future endeavors in Australia, the Blue Mountains, and South America brings you a good change of pace and happiness throughout your life. Hopefully our paths will cross again in Chile in a few years!

Until South America, adios!

 Also, if you're curious to catch up on Dag's travels, he has a blog! (And yes, that is me passed out his shack...)

Going to Malaysia, out of work soon, comic exercise

Plans are all set and I'll be traveling abroad again for the first time in year, this time out to Malaysia for a little bit of journalism work and partially for vacation (first time ever?!). Hope to actually produce a comic coming up for a publisher in the next few weeks, so going to keep things under wraps until I can provide more information about that. But I promise this story is going to be a good one!

As far as an update on life, my contract with Taereung High School in East Seoul is coming to an end in two weeks and I still haven't found a job here in Korea. Things might be a bit tricky and I might have to take time off from the bigger book that I'm working on to tend to life problems. I know I keep talking about this "American Immigrant" novel and yet not showing that I'm producing any work for it, but trust me I'm almost already up to 50 pages penciled on it so far and I'm going to be inking in the near future.

Last thing is that I do want to show some art that I had originally did in university, got halfway done on, and gave up. Been sitting on my external hard drive for almost 1 1/2 years and I just took the rest of a day to sit down and finish it off. It feels so good to paint again after pencilling for months. So here it is, pulled from a small prompt I got out of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" trilogy (a must read for all visual artists, not just comic artists). Goal was to tell an ambiguous story about a cop, a crook, and a third person and be a bit more complex and subtle at the same time in the storytelling. Figured to add another challenge by rendering the whole thing digitally. Originally had the story called "French 25," but looking back I'm not too crazy about the name, either way here it is...

Korean Students, Wobbly Heads

Final days of being a teacher at Taereung High School are coming up, and definitely makes me sad to have to say goodbye to all of the students. During the last two days of the semester I got some time to do some painting demos for class (my students found out I can do more than just talk in English ;) ) and figured to show some of the better ones that came out. Enjoy!

The "So Mang Ban" Crew -- Taereung High School

Btw, even though people have been supportive of this idea of a weekly comic about recent grads, I haven't had ANYONE submit a story for it! Tell your friends, anyone that's grad recently that has to now pay off some student debt. Have a great day and see you all around.

Seoul Grind