Im BACK!!!

sorry to everyone thats been naggin me for updates. Its been a really busy month this month and I've really been putting this off but............. Im BACK....

As im living in asia its only appropriate that I be working asian hours so im work days typically start at 9:30am and end any time between 6pm and 8:30pm depending. Also trying to keep my Muay Thai going which is usually an hour a day so all that plus prepping for my GMAT test there aint much time left for blogging. Im going to make an effort to keep this update though since I had a few people encouraging me to keep it going.

Highlights of this month:

- My friend from etobicoke Mike Landa came for a visit and stayed with me for aboooooouuut 2 weeks. He is currently in Hong Kong but I have tonnes and tonnes of pics to post on facebook in the near future.

- Another highlight waaaaaaaas this huge festival in korea called Mudfest. SUCH an amazing weekend.

Mudfest is a festival in Boryeong on this beach called Daechon beach. Mudfest celebrates as you probably guessed, mud. There is some mud in the area that is supposedly very healthy for the skin so to celebrate this why not organise a week long drunk fest with THOUSANDS of people where you just cover yourselves in mud for  9 days lol. We went in a group of about 177 people something like 5 buses from Seoul all the way to Daechon beach. It was an incredible weekend. They had a stage set up right on the beach which basically turned into a club at night and during the day they had tonnes of "mud games" like slides etc where you covered your entire body head to toe in mud.... super awesome and Ive got some pics for you below. I promise to keep this update for all of you interested. Check my facebook for a tonnnnne more pics from July ..

Talk to you soon!

 

Best Haircut Ever!!

Had an awesome day today. Figured I really needed a haircut badly and have been putting it off for a while because i can barely communicate. Anyways decided to go to the salon my two friends go to. Had to learn which bus to take etc and once I got the the area it still took me a while to remember which building the hair salon was in (there's also a movie theatre in the same building). Made it to the hairdresser and I didn't really know what to expect but who would have though it turned out to be the greatest haircut experience of my life. First of all i hadn't asked my friends how much the haircut was so i had no idea whether they were pricy or not. First thing i noticed was the place was beaaauutiful really nice and everyone that worked there were wearing ear pieces to communicate lol. I was brought to a bar in the middle of the floor and it was stocked with EVERYTHING. I had a glass of orange juice and some strawberries. They had wireless as well and there was a sort of lounge overlooking the mountains in my area where people waiting for their significant others could bring in their laptops. 

The haircut started with the bar and moved onto another totally seperate room that was really dim and this was the wash station. Not like any other wash station ive ever been to. You get an aaammmaazing scalp massage before and during the shampoo. Then over to the hairdresser who cut my hair really really well but took forever, so so long. Then back to the shampoo room for another wash and scalp massage (i cant tell you how amazing these massages were). Then back again to the hairdresser for any final touches and trims he needed to make. The whole thing took probably a bit over an hour but it was such an awesome experience. For only?............................ 20 bucks. I was getting nervous because i was expecting to pay like 40 or so, i mean i have paid 30 in toronto for a cut alone and none of the extra perks.

We went to a bar called monkey beach last night and it was the wildest experience i think ive ever had at a bar. We had all heard good things about this bar but decided to venture out last night. When we first walked in we were pretty shocked and thought it was super lame. Tiny room all lined up with picnic tables and people just sitting around talking. We decided to stay just to see what would happen (this was at about 11:30pm) Went to the bar and found out they sell buckets. Sort of like beach sea sand type buckets you used to make sand castles with BUT they sell any mixed drink in these buckets and fill it with 8 shots of your choice plus mix for only 15 bucks. Anyways we grabbed 2 of those and a table to share. All of a sudden the owner of the bar puts on a fire chain show lol which was amazing and then 20 minutes later puts on another fire show with a spear burning at either end.

After this he started a game which happens every friday. Everyone in the bar lines up to throw a basketball through a hoop at the front of the bar. If you make the shot you win one of 9 bottles of whisky,gin, or whatever a full 26er basically lol It was really hard but girls got 5 shots and guys only 1 so there were a lot of girls winning bottles lol.

After this i dont remember exactly when but the place just ignited. There were people dancing EVERYWHERE you actually werent allowed to sit on the seats of the picnic tables and if a bouncer saw you they would tell you to stand up because there were too many people dancing on the tables.

Another amazing weekend in Korea. More pictures to folloooowww!!

Summer,summer,summmerrtiiiiime

Hey everyone sorry its been a while. I have been so busy with prepping and exploring the city still that its been a while since I've posted. I manage to grab some pictures from work of the little Hellions that drive me crazy every morning Mon-Fri. We aren't allowed to take pictures ourselves but our school takes some for the website so i just grabbed some from the archives of my class. Below are three pictures. One general picture of my class and one, one during a birthday party and the third is me with my buddy Justin when he was the birthday boy.

From left to right:

Justin (back row) Joyce, Claire, Yae Jhee, Chi Ho, Austin, Andy, and my favourite Minsoo

(front row)

Esther, Suh Hee, Bona, and Joanne

The english names are the one's they chose for themselves and the kids with korean names wanted to keep their korean names.

Speaking of english names one kid in my co-teachers class insists on his name being Harry Potter and with his parents they decided that was his english name for english school. He doesn't respond or listen if you call him Harry Potterrrrr it has to sound like an english accent so we call him Harry Potta... so funny

This past weekend I got to spend some time outside of Seoul (about an hour) soooo beautiful there's so many damn mountains in this country its crazy even within Seoul. Its such a massive city but for example two subway stops away from where I live there's about a 4 hour hike up one of the mountains right in the city.

On the weekend I was lucky enough to be able to visit a korean friend of mine's family in the country. About 6 of us went and had a BBQ at my friends aunt's farm. Everything we ate aside from the meat was fresh from the farm including the best and freshest rice i've ever had in my life.

Anyways this weekend wasn't too outrageous we just made a few trips outside of the city. Next weekend I'll be going to visit a good friend from high school in Busan which is a beach city about 3 hours away on the high speed KTX ( a train that goes 300km an hour lol)

Transportation is just amazing here there's absolutely no need for a car and yet every household has 1-3 lol.

Be back soon!!

If there was a water park in heaven it would be called Everland

Today was a nice warm(ish) day so a few of us decided to go to the waterpark just outside of seoul. Its supposedly the largest indoor and outdoor waterpark in the world. It was amazing, about a half our or so outside the city and one of the korean co-teachers drove us there today.

As you can imagine since it was a waterpark I didn't have the opportunity to snap too many pictures but this park was just beautiful. They built it way up in the mountains and just the scenery around you when you're climbing the towers to get on a slide was totally worth it.

On another note the main reason why I absolutely love Seoul so far is that Koreans are the most hospitable people I have ever met. Again today I experienced a random act of kindness to welcome me to their country. I had just bought my ticket and I was waiting for my friends when a Korean couple approached me. Of course they couldn't speak much english they were also about my age and they tried to offer me a free ticket to the water park as a gift and kept saying welcome welcome to korea. This sort of thing happens pretty often and regularly when we go out Koreans invite me to their table to speak and chat. The last time this happened one of the guys from the group also paid for our entire tab as he left the bar. Pretty amazing people....

Here are a few pics of the waterpark. Some hilarious things of note I want to share:

1.) I dont know if I mentioned this before but when Korean women leave the house they are dressed immaculately no faults make up is amazing, heels all the time, and dressed perfectly. Anyways a great example of this today was that most of the women at the waterpark wear heels everywhere. I even saw women wearing their heels onto some of the tube slides. When I say heels i mean HEELS, stiletto heels lol.

2.) Second thing is that koreans have some sort of crazy hair phobia I think. There isn't a pool in the country that you can swim in without bringing your own swim cap. EVERYONE in the water park was wearing a swim cap.

3.) You have to wear life jackets to go a certain depth in the wave pool but most koreans wore them on all the slides too lol even though there was only abut an inch of water. lol good times

This was the main entrance to the waterpark.

From the other side of the wave pool, you can see slides straight ahead on the hill and to the left. This place was just MASSIVE.

Craziest wave pool ever it actually created 2.4m cresting and crashing waves it felt like you were in the ocean.

That building was the 6 floor indoor water park section of the place.

FC Seoul

This weekend we had pretty horrible weather here..... :( Still have some interesting stories.

My school had a welcoming/goodbye party for myself and two teachers that are leaving korea this weekend. It was pretty fun (especially the part where i had to sing in front of the whole school staff which was about 20-30 people).

We had dinner at an amazing italian restaurant and it was actually probably some of the best italian food ive ever had surprisingly lol. Also while we were eating some korean drama movie star showed up and all the korean teachers went crazy hahaha.  After dinner the two teachers leaving had give a speech in front of everyone and then to my surpriiiiise the tradition for every new teacher is to sing a song in front of all the staff in this upscale restaurant. I was pretty terrified aaaaand the only song I could remember off the top of my head was this song we learned in the kindergarden class lol It was called who stole the cookie from the cookie jar and it was the perfect selection because you get to pick people out of the crowd to sing a section so i didn't have to do it all on my own. 

After that we went bowling which was pretty hillarious as well and then to end off the night we went to a noraebang which is like a karaoke place. There's millions in korea probably like 5 per street block everywhere you go. This one was so crazy it had like a dungeons and dragons kind of theme and instead of rooms the karaoke rooms were like space pods lol it was the strangest thing I've ever seen.

Saturday we went to see a Seoul FC game at the world cup stadium. It was AWESOME and I'll definately be checking out many more games. The stadium has its own subway stop too so its really easy to get there. The weather was terrible so the stadium wasnt very full but each section is basically first come first serve for seating so the area of the stadium we were in was 12 dollars and we got to sit about 5 rows from the field, so sweet. The crowd was going bezerk they had their own drumming section and flares etc. so fun. I have more pics too!!

Crowd in the section behind the goal post.

Some amazing english advertising. Everything is so horribly misspelled and misused here half the time it doesn't even make sense.

One of my students gave me this drink during class. Its like a fanta bubble tea. Its orange fanta pop with tapioca so amazing.

More neighbourhood pictures. I went searching for the nearest basketball court and got slightly lost.

Two drunken business men holding hands in the subway.

Right before this they both tried to get through the same turnstyle because one of their subway cards had no money on it..... this didn't work and one of them decided to crawl on hands and knees under the turnstyle lol haha it was quite a scene.

Sidewalk batting cage a few minutes from my house.

Seoul FC World Cup Stadium

Teacher, Can I write about how a Hippo can crunch a humans head??rom

had the biggest laugh today with one of my classes. I have a one hour class with two elementary students that have the biggest imagination ever. Their assignment is to write a research report on African wildlife and the heading of this post is from my one student Alex who was just obsessed with Hippo's crunching humans lol. Both of these kids have the most morbid sense of humor and the teacher who im taking over for was telling me he has to constantly tell them they cant write about maiming and crunching and being eaten by animals lol   Funny day.

Im a few days in now and I had my first weekend in downtown seoul. This city is awake longer than any other city I've ever seen its quite acceptable to go out on a sat or fri around 6 or 7 for dinner and not get home until about 9am the next day. Koreans are pretty wild, its also quite acceptable to see VERY drunk middle aged men or women either puking or stumbling all over the streets. Since I've been here its happened at least once or twice a day. Also I tried soju for the first time. For those who dont know, soju is a vodka distilled from rice and is VERY powerful wow I had half a tiny bottle with dinner on friday night and it packed a punch. 

Anyways here are some pictures from my first weekend, I still havn't gotten into the habit of taking my camera with me EVERYWHERE which i always end up kicking myself for but I'll start uploading more pictures in the future....

This was cool an all purpose store van lol it had everything from pots and pans to hats and garbage bags. It was like a convenient store, hardware store, walmart all in one driving up and down the streets.

This guy below was passed out cold on a bench in the bar when we first got there and about half an hour later he got up for a second wind lol.

Jenn one of the canadian teachers from my school with some korean friends we made.

The dude making the face is an f16 pilot from the korean army. Most of them didn't speak very much english except for the girl her english was great.  With the guys the only common ground I had with them was basketball and UFC thats all we could understand of each other lol

Just another rediculous hill

Apparently when you buy a beer in the subway for a walk to the bar you get a free packet of squid, absolutely no idea why.

Squid and butter flavoured chips, yummm

There goes the neighbourhood

Here's some pics of my neighbourhood I took today while taking a walk to this little coffee shop round the corner form my house.

Today was the first time I tried to order a meal on my own with limited knowledge of the korean language............ there were a lot of blank stares going back and forth between the cashier and I and a lot of laughing on both ends because it was just soooooooo hard to try and order something with my little phrase book. I ended up with a BOMB tuna sandwhich and a random glass of welchs grape juice hahahaha

Usually there are menus with pictures etc to order from but my neighbourhood as i said before is very traditional so i was just looking at some writing on a chalk board.

This is walking towards the han river and nearest subway station Bangbae

Just a shot i took to 

show the hilly roads in my area I basically live on a massive hill.

My school Alphabet Street which is actually one of the nicest buildings inside and out I've ever seen. Also an example of korean driving/parking. Two cars parallel parked in the middle of the street lol

 The street my school is located on.  

My temporary residence is in the house in the middle.

No one in my neighbourhood ever locks their front doors, most of the time doors are just wide open with no one home.

This is a park right outside my house thats always full of people. This is a really small park compared to most. The opportunities to get outside and be active are amazing here. Everyone cares about their health so much. Most parks have outdoor stainless steel gym sets that are aaaaalways being used by the elderly people in the community.

Below is my local grocery store.

First Impressions

Hey everyone,
Using my roommates internet to give everyone a little update and let you know im still alive. I dont have any pics yet but I'll be posting some up asap. I've only been here one day and already I have so much to talk about lol

This city gives off a great first impression, aesthetically it is a beautiful city. There is just so much to do here too, bike paths everywhere and tonnes of great hiking just outside the city. There are a few things that really made an impression on me straight off the bat. The driving, amount of people, subway system, women, stores. Its just a sensory overload everywhere you look lol.

I landed in Incheon which South Korea's airport and apparently was voted best airport in the world four times in a row (according to my driver). First of all I almost got lost because all the signs where in korean and i had no idea how to get to customs. There is an actual subway system INSIDE the dam airport lol this blew my mind since ive done quite a bit of traveling to and from south africa and sometimes found myself sprinting long distances to make connections. This "subway" takes you anywhere in the airport.

One I got out of the airport I found my driver this was my first contact with a local and it was great lol. The guy was 48 his name was Mr. Jang he was this really like goofy friendly guy lol. Wouldn't let me take any of my bags whenever I offered to help he kept saying no and that it was his job. He had a long chat from the airport to my school which should have been about a half hour drive but turned into 2 hours because we hit traffic. The traffic and driving is INSANE I wouldn't never drive here in my life its like an organised chaos. There is no such thing as right of way (especially for pedestrians) and once you're off the many highways the roads are SO narrow they can only fit one car and there's pedestrians everywhere but no cars slow down or give you right of way you just have to basically hug a wall for dear life when a car comes by and ALWAYS be weary of where vehicles are. One highlight; I asked my driver to stop so I could go to the washroom because my bladder was about to explode. So he cut off three lanes of traffic to make the exit and then turned down a one way as cars where coming towards us and took a SHARP left, RAMPED the sidewalk and drove between the trees, garbage cans etc on the left and the buildings on the right and dropped me off literally at the steps of a small mall so I could go to the washroom. When I came back he continued to drive on the sidewalk until we hit the next road. Pedestrians didn't even seem to blink and actually since ive been here Ive seen Everything you can imagine thats supposed to be on the road up on the sidewalk. Also saw one of the largest bridges in the world here as we were driving it was crazy, kilometres long and over the ocean. Not sure what areas it was connecting yet but just the size of it was something ive never seen before.

My neighborhood is pretty cool its south of the Han river and very chill. North of the Han is where the heart of downtown is so my area is much quieter and there are no foreigners here other than a few of us from my school. The subways are just amazing in so many ways. Cheap (90 cents), huge (almost every subway stop has a massive mall), fast (never wait more than 2 or so minutes), and so so clean. Oh also you can use your cellphones which are also rediculously cheap and all cellphones come with TV so everyone's watching TV in the subways.

Koreans are actually pretty tall but I definitely stand out when I head into the city lol yesterday I was in the subway and these two girls were staring at me lol they must have been about 22 ish. Finally one of them said Hi! in english so i turned and said helloooo and they ran off giggling/screaming. I laughed so hard. Korean women are in another world. There's the ajumma's which are the older women and for some reason they ALL wear track suits and massive visors (pics to follow). Most korean women wear so much makeup that their faces actually look white, kind of like a mime lol. I have not seen one woman since I've been here that is not insanely made up and well dressed no matter what they're doing.

Anyways fell like this post is getting too long. Pictures to follow I havnt pulled my camera out but after yesterday I decided i need to have it with me at all times because there's just so many interesting things going on in this city.

Talk to you all sooooonnn!!

Leaving on a Jetplane

Hey all,

Lots of people have been asking me to keep them updated and show pictures etc. Im positive I'll have a bazillion things to tell everyone about so I figured id create a BLOG!!! lol  I think its the easiest way for people to see what hijinx im getting up to on that side of the world.

Thanks to everyone for sending me off in style love you guys lol I think I had about 5 back to back nights of goodbyes..... im exhausted. Here are some pics from my last week or so.

Everyone's been asking me how it feels to be leaving my friends and family and move to a foreign country for a whole year without really knowing anything about the city, where im living, and what my job is going to be like.  Here's my answer:

I know its going to be a great experience all in all and its something ive been wanting to do for a while but its still pretty scary. I've actually been trying not to think about it too hard because that's when it really freaks me out haha the last night of goodbyes was pretty sad and it finally hit me, also when my i realised its mothers day soon and im about 20 hours away by plane. So yea its kind of scary but im really excited to land and get my life started over there.

I have a list for you guys of things I do know, which actually still isn't very much lol

Things I know/expect:

- Pretty sure Korean people are going to have a tough time with my name

- Im probably going to be a giant

- Im living in Seoul

- Spicy Spicy food

- My school's name is called Alphabet Street, awesome name

- Im teaching 5 classes a day 3 of them being kindergarden kids and the last 2 elementary classes

- Teaching hours are going to be anytime between 9-7

- The first day I get there Im being met by a driver and taken straight to the school, followed up by a dinner with all the staff...... and im going to be exhausted 

- Apparently the school has bought me a comforter for my bed and its some sort of crazy floral pattern

That is the extend of knowledge im armed with before getting onto a plane and flying off to another country for 1 whole year. Cant wait, I'll miss all my friends and family but I'll be back soon :)

Next post I'll either be landing or in the airport.........stay tuuuuned