SoKo-LoCo

From Russia to England to Canada to Costa Rica

I totally forgot all about my blog after we left Russia back in October.  Oops.  We left Russia haphazardly due to some last-minute family stuff and decided not to go back….which was good for my sanity (long hours of work), but bad for our bank accounts as we hadn’t actually be paid yet for the month of work before we left.  Oops again.  We also lost a tonne of our belongings (most notably all of our warm-weather travel clothes and gear, boo-urns!) as our boxes still hadn’t arrived from South Korea.  Live n learn, right? Right.

From Russia we went to England.  We spent a month there in West Yorkshire, specifically Haworth (Bronte Country).  It was a little slow at times (we drank a lot of wine and watched a lot of Sopranos) being that the weather was rainy and cold.  I did get to meet Jeremy’s brother and dad, which was nice.  His dad made us some killer meals, including roast pheasant that he shot himself (I got some buck in a bite to prove it!).   On the few sunny days we headed out to the moors (the ones from Wuthering Heights) and went to the pub for wifi and brews.  We ate a lot of pub grub and Indian food as the Tesco’s has full prepared Indian meals that were scrummy.

We hit a bit of a standstill at that point as we didn’t know what to do next…I had just put my applications in for grad school to start in September, so we were left with 10 months to fill until that point.  Since it was getting closer to Christmas (it was mid November by this point), and I was a bit homesick (I blame the idleness and the weather), we opted to go home to Canada and stay until after New Years.

It was great to be home for the holidays as I hadn’t been home for a year and a half, and hadn’t been in Canada for Christmas since 2006.  Jeremy was able to meet my parents and bond with my lil brother over xbox games and nights out at the pub.  Not surprisingly, all of my friends at home immediately loved Jeremy and we spent a lot of time catching up on lost time.

That brings us almost up to date.  I was accepted to the university I wanted the most (University of Guelph), which is about an hour and a half from my hometown.  I was also offered full funding (thank God!) and a summer paid position that will start sometime around May hopefully.

Although we had at this point spent ALL of our money and had started dipping into my line of credit (supposed to use that for school, eek), we decided that once we start school/work it will be pretty darn unlikely for us to ever have so much time off….so on that note, we decided to ignore the financial stupidity and have some fun by going to Costa Rica for 7 weeks.  Take that, financial stability!

We’ve been in Costa Rica for the past week and a half, and although it’s not as cheap as we had thought it would be (we are spoiled after our travels in SE Asia), we are definitely glad to be here, soaking up the sun.

We landed in San Jose from a connection in Miami that we just barely made.  We were exhausted as we’d been traveling all day, and to make matters worse American Airlines lost all of our luggage and our airport pick-up deserted us at the airport.  Awesome.  Usually losing luggage wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but as we flew from Canada, new airline restrictions hadn’t allowed us to take ANYTHING except my netbook and camera as carry-on.

We hunkered down in San Jose for a day while we waited on our bags…we were smelly and gross, and the backpackers hostel we had chosen proved to be a bad choice (DO NOT stay in Tranquilo Backpackers in San Jose!).  It was not tranquil at all….the kitchen ladies woke us up around 6am both mornings banging and yelling, they played obnoxious dance music all day at full blast, and the staff was clueless….plus it felt like we were in a nasty neighbourhood.  Anyways, enough whinging.

We left San Jose the morning after we got our bags and headed to La Fortuna to see the great Arenal Volcano.  Unfortunately it was rainy and dark the entire time, so we didn’t see the volcano until we were leaving - although we got some nice shots of it spouting ashes, so that was cool.  We took a ‘jeep’-boat combo across the lake (by jeep, they meant van) to Monteverde-St Elena.

We had an awesome time in St Elena, our hostel (Pension St Elena) was AWESOME!  If you ever go, stay at Pension, the people are amazing, the rooms are sweet (and cheap), and we liked it so much we stayed an extra night.  While in St Elena we went on a nighthike where we saw two tarantuals, a scorpion (I spotted it), some tiny frogs, a lot of crazy nightmare-esq insects, and olingo (a cross between a raccoon and a monkey from the looks of it), and a palm pit viper.  I know, it was cool.

We decided to be brave, and although I’m afraid of heights we went on a canopy zipline tour….14 cables, some up to 1km long, all either through or over the cloud forest.  It was UNBELIEVABLE.  The rush was intense, the views were astounding, and I was so proud of myself for doing it.  Jeremy and I were also 2 of only 6 of all the people in our group to man up and go on this crazy “Tarzan Swing” in the jungle…I’ve never been bungee jumping, but it’s similar…just instead of bouncing up and down, when you step off the platform you free fall and then swing when you reach the end of the rope.  Again, awesome.

From St Elena we got a shuttle to Playa Samara, which is where we are now.  The beach is this absolutely huge crescent of gorgeous sand, the water is warm and clear, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather.  We’re here for another couple days and then we head to Montezuma, where we have a cabina booked for a month in the jungle (about 1 km from town, 2km from the beach).  From there we’ll have 5 days to make our way back to San Jose and we’ll be back home in Canada March 2nd….after that we have almost two months to find an apartment in Guelph, get Jeremy a student visa (he’s also going to school, just waiting on his acceptance), and get settled back into a semblance of ‘normal’ life…

Until we’re forced back to normalcy, we’ll enjoy our extended vacation from ‘real’ life:)…and I’ll try to write more once we’re in Montezuma.

Ciao!

Pree-vyet eez Rahs-see-yah!

I suppose I should change the name of my blog from Soko-Loco….to Rooskey-Loco…but it just doesn’t have the same ring.  We have officially jumped ship from South Korea to Russia, so I’m currently writing from Tyumen.

We’re in Tyumen for the next month before we head off to Nizhnevartovsk for another 7 months or so.  So far our time in Russia has been, well, interesting and entertaining:).

We landed in Moscow, where we were met by a man named Igor, who bought us beer and chips while we waited for our connecting flight to Tyumen.  It was pretty interesting as he drove us through Moscow to park on the side of the highway to enjoy our beer.  We had our first police encounter within the hour when the mee-lee-tsih-yah (think Militia) told us to move along.  We got into Tyumen early morning Sunday, exhausted and smelly from our almost 40 hours of travel.

We settled into our temporary apartment and had a little sleep.  When we woke up and looked outside we realized we were in what we would term as the ‘ghetto’….Our first week went by pretty quickly.  I spent the week sick in bed with flu, while Jeremy went into work a couple times to do random classes.

By the second week we were moved into our semi-permanent apartment (until we leave for Nizh).  It’s awesome inside - huge, high ceilings, very comfortable, aside for the tiny/springy bed, which Jeremy can’t sleep on and is forced to sleep on the couch until we leave (boo).

Tyumen is a pretty big city with lots of grey buildings.  However, there are lots of trees, and it’s pretty exciting that we’re having our first ‘real’ autumn in awhile - changing leaves, cool breezes, and our new ghetto neighbourhood smells like apples in the evenings (although I can’t find where the apple trees are).  We’ve decided that most of Tyumen has fairly decrepit areas, so although our neighbourhood looks old and a little sketchy, it just matches most of the other areas, in between the modern buildings.  Jeremy’s started to take some pictures on his walk to work, and I’ll hopefully get out this weekend to add to the collection so that we can post some soon:).

As for work, it’s fairly exhausting.  We had become accustomed to the laziness of work at Chosun, so although we don’t have many more actual teaching hours, the prep time required and the weird shifts are tiring.  Right now I work 4-9:45 two days a week, 1-7:30 two days a week, 1-5 one day a week, and then (horribly) I have two morning classes on Saturday.  I don’t actually teach the entire time I’m at work (max 5 hours a day), but because there are two schools we teach at, a lot of my ‘off time’ is spent cabbing between schools.  However, the students are a lot more dedicated and motivated than in Korea, and I have a few kids’ classes that I’m enjoying.  Three of my eleven year olds made me a card this week with my picture and ‘super cool teacher, you are very good, we love you’ on it…so, although the schedule is tiring, the actual teaching more satisfying.

Another hugely satisfying aspect of Russia is the yee-dah (food).  After Korea, this place is heaven for cheese, meat, chocolate and beer.  We were apprehensive about the supposed lack of vegetables (we were warned), but we’ve found most of what we’d want anyways, aside from fresh broccoli.  Right now we have 9 different types of cheese in the fridge, so although I’m a bit worried about returning to Canada as a chubby, round, cheese-filled dumpling, the food is good.  We’ve only ate out twice as last weekend we opted to stay in and recuperate, but hopefully this weekend we’ll explore more and see what there is in our neighbourhood.  They’re really into sushi here, so I’m hoping we can find a sushi joint close by.

Other than that, we’ve just been adjusting to work etc.  It’s a very professionally run school and if we were ‘real’ teachers it would be a perfect fit.  Right now Jeremy’s ‘in training’ for his director of studies position, which he’ll take up when we go to Nizh, so I have a feeling that things will change quite a bit once we get there.  Overall it’s been a good couple weeks here and I’m looking forward to getting out and actually seeing more of the city, although apparently the only things (aside from restaurants and bars etc.) worth seeing, we already have….a statue of Lenin and the ‘Central Park’ where they have a merry-go-round and rides for kids.  Pretty funny since we saw those two things our first night here, but then again I guess there isn’t much to actually see in Gwangju, or in my hometown either.

Anyways, it’s now almost noon and I should start getting ready to go into school later.  I promise I’ll post pictures as soon as I can, we’re having a good time over here and are glad we’re experiencing teaching and living outside of Korea.:)

Until next time,

Karen

After a long blog hiatus…

I realized today I haven’t written since…well, forever.  I guess life has just been a little complicated in the past months to sit down and write.  I haven’t even had the time to write/post pictures of our month holiday in Vietnam, which by the way, was amazing.  I’ll try to post some pictures later.  We basically went down the entire coast, saw a lot of great sites, ate some good food, and met a lot of people, complete with a 7-breakdowns-in-one day DMZ motorcycle trip.  It was definitely a holiday to remember.

However, at this point I don’t have the strength or focus to recount all of it, so just take my word on it, it was good.  I’d still vote Cambodia as a more relaxing, welcoming place, but Vietnam is definitely up there for interesting places to travel.

Moving on to the more recent past, the last few weeks back in Korea have been, well, stressful to say the least.  Jeremy and I have been incessantly job-searching, which has had its ups and downs.  It’s been a rollercoaster of excitement, disappointment, repeat.  At first we were looking at Japan, then Taiwan, then onto China…then we decided we needed to get further away from the Asian lifestly we know, so we applied to some jobs in Kazakhstan and Turkey.

Tonight, all of our stress and hardwork has finally paid off.  We’ve been offered 9 month contract jobs in…guess….Russia!  Not just anywhere though…the middle of Siberia to be specific.  We’re going to be working in a small city called Nizhnevartovsk….and to make it even better, Jeremy’s gotten the position of “Director of Studies”…so not only are we making good money, but we get flights, visas, accomodation, all our bills etc. paid for…all we have to do is buy food.  We are especially excited as we’re hoping that when we finish we can do a month or so in Greece and Italy before heading back to Canada.

So, as of now (things tend to change a lot when you’re trying to get international jobs), we are going to celebrate with some cold Asahis and oven pizza:) Ah-sa!

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

I again profusely apologize that it’s been a good month since I last wrote.  I’m not sure where the time goes, but it does.  Anyway, let’s see.  Second week of April was my ‘quarter century’ birthday.  It’s funny how at home I feel so old compared to everyone, but here I’m a ‘baby’ relatively, so I enjoyed my friends’ envy at my so-called ‘young’ age ( I still feel old, don’t worry).

My birthday was on a Thursday, but luckily it was over an exam period, so I had a light work load (2 hours of teaching!).  We had a very chilled night of drinks at the back gate of the university followed by kam-ji-tan (pork soup), which was delicious.  On Friday night we met up with some friends for some Indian food, and Katie and Arlo made me an amazing layered butterscotch and chocolate cake.

Saturday was the ‘big’ day so to speak.  Sharon and Priya took me out for my first real pedicure and manicure in the early afternoon, which was very girly and entertaining…I’m apparently not very good at staying still, so they had to re-do a few of my nails as I kept smudging them, but other than that, it was a success.  After our mani/pedi session, we went shopping for a birthday outfit.  Being that I am horrible at shopping in Korea, Sharon and Priya did most of the work.  They convinced me (rightly so if I may say) that a blue seventies-style tube-top dress was good as my ‘birthday suit’, and Priya found me some dangly earrings.  To top it off Sharon and Priya bought me an awesome necklace.  If you’re wondering, don’t worry, I’m still more of a jeans and skate shoes type of girl, but it was fun to dress up for the evening.

I hurried home to start preparing for my party.  Jeremy was the boyfriend of the year.  He helped clean the apartment, ferried patio furniture from friends’ roofs to ours, and helped make the food too.  I had decided that since it was my birthday I wanted to have all the foods I loved, so I made mini-cheesecakes, chocolate-covered strawberries, taco dip, and home made pizza.  Jeremy made up a cheese platter and about 100 jello shots.

The party started off well, and Katie soon took over the pizza-making as she is much better at rolling dough than I am.  The apartment was soon bustling with all our co-workers and friends, and the food was a huge success, including the artichoke dip Jess made and the birthday carrot cake Jenna made.  The night was made even more special when a group of about 8 of my friends presented me with a beautiful pendant that they designed for me and had made from our jeweller friend, Misub.  We headed down to the bar for a quick drink and Jeremy and I called it a night as we were pretty exhausted.  It was a great party, although the clean-up the next day was a little less to be desired.

The following week was awesome as Jeremy finally (finally!) decided to join me in the mindset of “let’s leave Korea!”.  It was such a happy day for me.  We decided that we’ve had enough and are leaving in September.  We handed in our resignation letters on Friday, much to our boss’ Korean-esq grumblings.  We then gleefully set off to catch a plane to Tokyo for a 4 day weekend.

We got to the Busan airport early Saturday morning and had a 2-hour ordeal going through multiple security checkpoints, interviews, and bag searches.  It was all very redundant and very inefficient (i.e. very Korean).  We were glad to get to finally get onto the plane and head off to the land of the rising sun.

We met up with Caitlin in Tokyo.  It was so amazing to see her face, it was March since I last saw her last.  We were immediately amazed at the positive contrast Japan is compared to Korea.  The streets were clean.  No one horked on the streets, no one pushed us, swore, spoke loudly on their cell phones (actually no one spoke on them at all, apparently it’s rude to do so).  There was greenery everywhere…and healthy, loved cats and dogs lovingly doted on by their owners.  Our eyes were again opened to the fact that Korea is just a place you want to stay for any amount of time when there are so many beautiful cultures out there.

We spent 4 days reveling in the beauty that is Japan.  The people were all kind and generous - elderly men tipped their hats to us, women stopped on the streets to let us pet their dogs - and thanked us when we took pictures of their dogs!

The guesthouse where we stayed was on a charming little street, and the owner was one of the most kind and generous men I have ever met.  Since we are friends with Caitlin and Kevin, he let us stay for a ridiculously low price, and he even ended up driving to the train station on our last day since it looked like it may rain.

Getting back to the first day, we spent the afternoon wandering around some of the different areas in Tokyo.  We went to the electronic district, and then headed back to Caitlin’s hood to eat some Indian (yes, on our first night in Japan, we had Indian).  We caught up with Kevin and planned the rest of our time in Tokyo.

On Sunday we got up and went to Asakusa, where we saw a temple and learned some interesting facts about what women do and don’t do in their kimonos from a little Japanese man.  We saw an impromptu Samuri/ninja show on the street and had a lazy beer with endamame and chicken skewers on the street.  We made our way to the Imperial Palace where we lounged on real grass (amazing compared to Korea where what little grass there is is not meant for lounging or enjoyment of any kind) and watched children actually playing and laughing (also amazing compared to Korea where children spend all daylight hours tucked away in school rooms).

After the Imperial Palace, we looked up and realized we could see Tokyo Tower from the gates.  We looked at it, and  using our not-so-proficient math skills decided it would be about a 15-20 min walk there.  Two and a half hours later we had finally made it.  The view from the tower was awesome, it seemed that Tokyo was never-ending.

After walking for a good 10 hours, we decided it was time for dinner and stumbled into an authentic-style Japanese restaurant.  We ordered beer, which was the coldest, most refreshing beer I have ever tasted in my life.  We had fresh tuna with avacado, tempura, fresh tuna spring rolls, and of course, soba noodles.

By the time we got back to the guesthouse, our legs were aching from walking all day.  Although it wasn’t that late we said an early good night, and set our alarms for 4:30am so that we could get up in time to see the Tsujiki fish market in action.

The Tsujiki fish market is known as the ‘birthplace of sushi’, and it takes in over 15 million USD daily in sales.  It basically supplies the entire city with all seafood-related products, and the profits from the market could relieve some country’s debts pretty darn quickly.

It was an amazing sight to see, despite the blearly eyes.  The tuna were massive (pretty sure some weighed more than I do), and the efficiency with which the workers cut the tuna is ridiculous.

After touring the market for a couple hours, we decided it was time for a 8:30am sushi breakfast and headed to a stall just outside of the market for a break.  After breakfast we were all in a food/sleep-deprived food coma, so we headed back to the guesthouse for an early siesta.

After our nap we headed out for the alloted 15 minutes of shopping that Caitlin is able to withstand (I managed to buy a scarf), and then headed to a little hole-in-the-wall “pub” that Caitlin had frequented before.  Instead of ordering directly from the wait staff, we ordered our food through a vending machine that dispensed tickets.  We then took our tickets to the bar staff and sat down while they brought us sushi, noodles, and all-you-can-drink-in-an-hour sake.  The joy of sake was not lost on us, as after 2 years of soju, sake was like heavenly syrup.:)

After our sake marathon, we went to head home, but were soon stopped by a Japanese woman who wanted foreigners to hang out with her American boyfriend (who didn’t speak Japanese).  We joined them for a few beers and a shot (which was difficult to order as they didn’t understand ‘shot’), and then headed back to the guesthouse.  At the guesthouse we chilled with Kevin and Caitlin and then headed to bed.

On our last day, we didn’t have much time, so we went out for our last meal for the traditiona Edo food (I think it was called moojayki), and big cabbage pancake-like things.  Both were delicious, although I was partial to the avacado pancake, as the moojayki, as Caitlin pointed out, looked ‘a little like vomit’….still tasty though.

We had our tearful goodbyes and hopped on our plane back to Korea, now considering the idea of moving to Japan in September.

The work week back after Japan was fairly uneventful, and this past weekend I spent in Daejon with the girls for our 3rd laser/girls weekend, which was as usual, a lot of fun.

We’re coming up to the weekend again, and I’m pretty excited considering the fact that we only have 4 more full-time teaching weeks until exams, which is then followed by a month-long vacation in Vietnam (we just bought our tickets yesterday)!!!!  After that, it’s smooth sailing as we have 3 weeks working 4 hours a day after vacation and then we are heading out of Korea…wherever the winds take us, or wherever offers us a job!

Sianara!

March Madness

Again, I apologize for being lazy and not keeping up on my half of the deal, which is writing about what’s going on over here.  It’s been a ridiculous couple of weeks.

The last time I wrote, it was just coming up on Jeremy’s birthday.  The week before his big day I decided I would make him a cake from scratch for his birthday party at the German pub.  I enlisted the help of my friend Katie, who has unbelievable baking skills, and we sat down to make a ‘death by chocolate’ cake the Thursday night before the party.  All went off without a hitch, until mysteriously the cake wouldn’t bake.  We retraced our steps and came to the conclusion that we did everything as per instructions, so decided to wait a bit longer….but to no avail.  It was then that we were shocked to realize that in the process of making stove-top cream icing, we had knocked the dial for the oven and turned it off.  At that point, I decided to let it re-bake and that I would deal with the consequences in the morning.

Baking a cake is not exactly my forte, as unlike in cooking, I can’t taste and adjust as I go.  In the morning I was doubtful of the quality of the cake, and quickly set to making two more cakes - one a flourless chocolate one and the other a standard glazed.  I ended up bringing the original cake and the flourless to the party as the glazed ended up looking like a massive dunkin’ donuts concotion that I was immediately disgusted by.

We dressed up and got down to the pub Friday night fairly early because our friends from Mokpo, Leah and Jamie, were in town and waiting for us.  We hadn’t seen the pair since the fall, so it was awesome to get to catch up and share some travel stories….and hear their surprise news that they had made a trip to the courthouse to legally tie the knot! (Jamie is American, Leah is Canadian, so they wanted to get the long visa proccess going before heading home).

After a bit, all of our ‘guests’ showed up, so we sang the standard birthday bit and cut the cakes…both of which ended up being de-licious.  There was a clear divide in opinion on which cake everyone liked - it seemed the guys liked the death by chocolate and the girls preferred the flourless one….but they were both good, and I was relieved that I hadn’t mistakenly served my friends garbage or caused any form of food poisoning…ah-sa!

We had some late-night sausages (which are delicious, the German pub knows how to make a good platter), and then headed to Speakeasy for some dancing, and were home in bed by 4amish.  Overall, a pretty good birthday party for Jeremy, friends, food, drinks, and dancing…nothing to out-of-the-ordinary happened, although there were some odd love tristes going on at the bar, but it was Friday the 13th, so it could’ve been stranger.

The next day we lounged at home, and then broke out our green to head back down to the pub for the St Patty’s day celebration.  We were pretty tired of drinking from the previous night, so we decided to go with some of our guy friends to see a late-night showing of “Watchmen” instead.  Luckily, Koreans are wimps about the cold, so the heat was on nicely in the movie theatre as I was wearing a green strapless dress for the intended St Patty’s night.  We got some popcorn and the guys brought in some beers and soju, and we settled down for the 3-hour comic book extravaganza.

I enjoyed the movie, although it was reminiscent of “Sin City” styling, but nevertheless, worth the money to see it on the big screen.  By the time it finished, it was almost 2am in the morning, so we thought we’d head back to the bar to see how the night was going.

At the bar we were greeted with a packed room of highly intoxicated people, spilling glasses, flailing cigarettes, and sloppy kisses.  Being completely sober was a new experience for me at that point in the night, and I gotta tell you, drunk people are highly unattractive.  I made my way through the pulsating crowd to say hello to some friends, narrowly avoiding mooning the entire bar on three counts where drunk friends decided to pick me up for hugs…needless to say I was not very impressed, so I had a coke and then we went home.  Happy St Patty’s day, eh?

The next day (Sunday), was Jeremy’s actual birthday, so we went to homeplus to get some grocceries so I could make him a big birthday dinner.  I made eggplant parmesan, stuffed bell peppers, and of course, another cake.  We had a very relaxing day at home, and called it an early night.

The following week at work nearly killed me.  I decided I’m very VERY over living in Korea, muchless teaching in Korea, and so I spent the week convincing myself that it wasn’t worth it to just pack my bags and leave (financially), and that I would tough it out to at least September, if not next February.  I did, however, spend every free moment I had surfing the web for jobs in other countries.  Although the need to leave Korea has become rather suffocating, I don’t think it’s financially viable, as I want to pay off my student debt and have some money for after next February for travel plans…so I’ll have to suck it up and stay, le sigh.  Regardless of my feelings, my contract ends in September, so it’s up to my boss to decide if he will extend me for only 6 months or not (can’t sign on for a standard year contract as I want to finish at the same time Jeremy does).  I figure that if he won’t sign me for a mere 6 months, I’ll head to Australia in September on a work holiday visa and pick some asparagus and cherries for 20 bucks an hour…anyone keen to join me??

I finally got through the week, which was slightly improved by hearing from Caitlin, Kevin, Chantelle, and Russ that they had all fleed the country and were living it up in Tokyo.  They had all worked for my previous employer, Sewoon/ABC, and had been so screwed around and had so much money kept from them that they decided to leave without notice - kudos!  I was hoping that the lack of teachers would close the nasty hagwon, but unfortunately they replaced them quickly.  Regardless, now I only have a couple friends stuck at that place, so it’s less stressful overall.

On that note, Sharon and I went back up to Daejon this past Saturday to visit Annie and get our second round of laser hair done.  Annie informed us she has been awarded an internship dealing with nationals regarding nuclear technology, so I was proud to note another friend moving up in the world (all my friends at home are moving up too, yay!).  We had a quick lunch and headed to the clinic, where the doctor greeted Sharon with, “Ah, yes, I remember you.  Drunken patient”.  Hy-sterical.  We finished up at the clinic and grabbed some coffees at a nearby cafe.  We sat outside to enjoy the nice weather (it went up to 24C this past week!), and decided to head straight to our favourite Italian joint to keep the conversaion going.

We had an awesome dinner, drank some wine, and soon realized it was getting late.  As a class-A worrier, I mentioned that we really ought to get going if we were planning on making the second last bus…but the girls were too relaxed from the wine.  We missed the second last bus, and then it was time to go so we could get the last bus home at 10pm.  Again, both Annie and Sharon seemed unconcerned by my insistence that it was time to go, and by the time we got to the bus station (5 mins before the last bus), the bus ticket counter was closed for the night…that’s right, my worrying was fully granted.  We hopped back into a cab to go to the train station, only to find that the next train wasn’t until 1am.

We decided to head out to a bar for some more drinks while we waited, and had some delicious Irish stew as well.  Sharon and I barely made the 1am train, as it was pouring rain and cabs were sparse for Korean standards.

We collapsed into our chairs and promptly passed out - a day of lasers, heart-to-hearts and wine will exhaust anyone.  We got into Gwangju just before 4am, and we made our separate ways home to our beds.  It was a very long day.

Sunday night I slept in late and was visited by Boram and Katie early evening.  We decided to meet up with the guys for dinner at a kamjitan (spelling is so wrong) restaurant near the back gates of Chosun.  Kamjitan is a big communal pork spine soup, which may sound a little off-putting, but I assure you it’s awesome - the meat falls off the bones and it has a delicious broth, with veggies, noodles etc. After dinner it was pretty late so I called it a night as I have a set skype date with my parents.  Jeremy went back to Stu’s to get some white chocolate cheesecake Katie had made for dessert.  He brought the cake home, and although it was dropped promptly on the floor (doh!), it was awesome, as we expected from the kitchen of Katie:).

The week has started off alright, although our boiler was momentarily broken, which meant I couldn’t shower for work on Monday…whoops.  Yesterday I got the good news that our mid-term trip to Japan was approved of by the director, so we’re going to visit Caitlin and Kevin in Tokyo from April 18th-21st, so I am pumped:).  It will be short, but so worth it to see Caitlin, plus our flights were ridiculously cheap (about 250 canadian round trip), so we just had to do it.

Aside from that….I’m now at home nursing a cold, which I think was caught in my office as it seems we spread them around pretty easily.  Jeremy’s on his way home to bring me tomato soup for breakfast, yay:).

Until next time, ciao.