Opportunities knock in the strangest ways

I've never been much of a journal-writer. I used to write all the time, but around the time I left high school my passion shifted from writing to photography. I'm telling you this because I don't tend to update my blog much even though there's a lot of things to write about.

One of those things is the strangeness of living in a completely different culture where being a westerner is an oddity and often a reason for unexpected opportunities. For example, last Thursday my friend Matthew called me out-of-the-blue and asked if I wanted to be in a commercial. He does commercials all the time for the city of Busan but apparently this time the company wanted someone new. So on Friday afternoon I showed up at the Nampo-dong station in Busan expecting to be one of many extras. To my surprise, it turned out that the commercial was promoting tourism and the only person in the commercial was yours truly. I spent the following 8 hours smiling, pretending to buy souvenirs, pretending to take pictures of a gorgeous sunset (which I plan to go back and photograph later) and running through a fountain with several Korean children. Afterwards I asked the director where the commercial would be shown if it was green-lighted by the city tourism council and he told me Japan, the Philippines, basically most of Asia and Los Angeles, but in LA it wouldn't be shown on TV but on one of those big LCD screens that you see on the outside of buildings. Okay then...

On top of that, tomorrow another film crew is coming to film me and my wife in our home. At least that was what one of the directors of EPIK (the English Program in Korea) told us after explaining that Shannon and I are the perfect couple to promote teaching in South Korea. In reality, the film crew called us and said that they need to film us at home, walking in the park holding hands, drinking coffee or tea at an outdoor cafe, enjoying our hobbies, eating Korean food and talking about our teaching experiences. So what we thought would be a simple video about us has turned into yet another commercial. I'm all for it but I think Shannon is still hoping for something a bit more genuine. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Anyway, that's it for now but I'm sure this is only the beginning.