News

I know it's been a while since I've written in this blog. I've been really lazy about writing these days unfortunately. I've done lots of stuff since my last blog entry and I have some news as well. The news is that I'm getting married and there's a little one on the way too! Yeah, who'd guess it'd all happen so fast eh?

Haha, just kidding. I just wanted to give everyone who's reading a scare...or a shocker. I am far from getting married and having kids. Right now I am enjoying the beautiful fruit of my youth and independence. :) Tis a wonderful thing!

As for the news, my school is moving! Right now I work at the very far eastern edge of Seoul, in fact it's almost out of Seoul. My commute takes about an hour on the subway each way to work. But where the school is moving to is a bit closer. Not too close, but every little bit helps. They just bought the space for the school in a high rise building in a happening part of Seoul called Jamsil. It's right near an amusement park called Lotte World, a lake, Olympic Park, and lots of shopping and restaurants. So the space is being renovated right now, but come January we should be in the new building. Plus, we are also becoming the Wonderland Headquarters. The hogwan franchise that I'm working for is called Wonderland and I guess our school is currently the most well run and successful that they want our school to be the headquarters, haha wow! The school has been undergoing a lot of changes in the last few months and I guess that is why. Anyway, I am pretty excited for this move and change.

Other news is that Heather and I are now the proud owners of plane tickets to Thailand for Christmas and New Years! YAy!! :) Our co-worker from Belgium's wife is Korean and was able to find us an awesome deal on plane tickets. So we are flying on Christmas day first to Vietnam for a day which should be fun, then to Thailand. So we'll see what kind of adventures we'll get into.

The third piece of news is that I have decided to backpack Africa when my contract is finished here in April. My friend Sheila has been wanting to do that for a while and our contracts finish about the same time so it works out perfectly. We're going to start at South Africa and work our way up the east side and then across the top to finish the trip in Morocco and Spain. It will be an epic adventure I'm sure. It also puts a stop to my high loan payments that I've been able to make since coming here, but I figure I should take these opportunities while I can. I'll just pay the minimum on my loans and come back to Korea for a few more years to pay off the rest of my loans. All the while adventuring where I can. :)

So other than that stuff, I have been keeping busy lately. School is busy and hectic as normal, apartment life is good with my wonderful and sometimes crazy roomates, and weekends have also been quite packed lately. The weekend before last I went to Busan (a city in the south of Korea on the beach) with Heather and Michelle. It was a nice low key weekend. We went to the International Film Festival, visited a temple, hung out on the beach and enjoyed being in a different city from Seoul for a few days. Then last weekend Heather and I went with a tour group called Adventure Korea to do a Buddhist Temple-stay. It was quite the experience. We wore temple clothes, learned a lot about Buddhism and Buddhist monks. We ate the food the way the monks eat, we took part in their services, we did their bows (over 200 full body bows), we woke up at 4am for meditation, we made lotus lanterns and monk beads and overall had a fairly interesting and relaxing weekend. The pictures will soon be on facebook.

Well thats a brief summary of what's been going on with me lately. Soon I'll write another blog based more on my feelings and thoughts that I've been having lately. I think I've done a lot of growing up since coming here, and it's been an interesting process to be a part of, to watch in myself and to experience. ...yeah those are all kind of the same thing... Eh, more to come later.