YES, I know! It’s been ages – excuse excuse – Moving on.
Just got back from an 8 day trip to Hong Kong, Macau and Beijing. Amazing time! I feel like I’ve been gone about 3 weeks though, there was so much packed into everyday. I’m transferring the 9 GB of pictures to my computer now, so… I will go and sift through those, then update further with details of my adventure.
Friday night we had a Halloween party for all the kids at the school. It was a lot of fun, all the teachers got to dress up and scare kids all day. No complaints there. Halloween isn’t really celebrated by Koreans though, it’s sort of the gig of foreigners and Hagwons to have halloween parties. So about the only decorations you’ll find are some weak banners and the only costumes you’ll find are wizard hats/capes and scream masks. Dan and I ordered some pirate costumes (including a hilarious mask that served to terrify kids all day long, luvs it) from Amazon, and Mia and Keith got halloween decorations from Keiths mom in the states. The school was pretty decked out, it was great. And the kids absolutely loved it.
We took them through a “haunted forest” with masks on, where spooky ambient sounds were playing, and they were brushed by creepy feeling things. Dan would pop out with his mask every once and a while to a chorus of screaming girls. Then we took them into the game room for games and candy and pizza. All in all, great Halloween.
Dan and I get over a week of vacation at Christmas time, so naturally we wanted to plan a trip of some sort. My BFFL Christina happens to be heading to Hong Kong at Christmas, so that was definitely one of the places we had to go. It was then decided that seeing the Great Wall snow covered and not completely littered with tourists, and spending New Years Eve in Beijing would be amazing. So Beijing was the second stop on our itinerary. We managed to get an amaaaazing deal on a flight through Air China; Seoul to Hong Kong to Beijing to Seoul only $340. We were originally looking at spending just under 1k for the flights, and that seemed reasonable to me.
With that done, we had another dillema, as it turns out anyone who wants to get into mainland China (no visa required for Hong Kong) first requires a travel visa that you must apply for at the Chinese Consulate in your home country (or so I thought, because the Canadian Chinese Consulate website told me so!) So I’m frantically trying to get all my documents together to send back to a travel agency in Ottawa who will put my application in for me. This required me to send my passport through the mail, not exactly the best thing to do with you’re in a foreign country, or ever. Also, I don’t really know how to send things in the mail in Korea… so… sending my actual passport while not being completely able to communicate what kind of shipping I need was really stressing me out. I decided I should do a little more research, it couldn’t really be this difficult to get into China? So I began my research, read a few blogs and a few Visa sites and discovered that in fact you can apply for a China travel visa abroad, so I’m thrilled. I send off an email to the embassy in Seoul, hoping they can help me. Then I look a little more, and it turns out the rules have been changed as of 2007. You can no longer apply in person for the visa, you have to enlist the help of an authorized travel agent to put in the application for you. Uggghh, but, it’s still better than sending my passport all the way back to Canada! I just need to find an English speaking Travel agent in Seoul. Which I did! Read some forums and someone suggested Apple Tour and Travel a travel agency affilated with the USO in Seoul. Called them up, and they can do it for us! I was so so so relieved. Going to Seoul next Saturday for haircuts, shopping and China visa! Assa!
Got on the bus yesterday afternoon to go to Yeoju, a trip that usually only takes about 30 minutes took almost an hour and a half. The reason? Military convoy including 2 tanks immediately in front of us on the tiny 2 lane highway, going probably 20 km. I should have noticed something was up leaving Janghowon as there was all kinds of traffic being directed by military people, and the bank of the river is absolutely littered with some ramshackle military camp covered in camo nets. The gas stations we creeped past were also jammed with military vehicles. I wish I had my camera to get pictures. Is the north on the move?! What’s going on in my quiet Janghowon.
but that would be a lie. I get lazy, blogging is hard work! Anyway, here I go.
Click to see album
More commentary on specifics in the album.
So, yesterday, I’m just starting my preschool class when Sally (cutest thing, probably 4 years old) calls me over and is pointing in this little comic book she’s been looking at. The whole thing is in Korean except for this one speech bubble that happens to be in English. Sally asks me what it says, so I read it out to her: “Yo, yo. What’s up, dawg?” I just about died, why this is in some little kids comic book is beyond me. After I read it to her she repeated what I said under her breath for about the next five minutes as if she was going to make sure to commit it to memory. Cute overload.
Got Aion a few days ago, let the celestial Korean mmo immersion begin!
It’s pretty good so far, exceeded my expectations of it. It’s almost like it’s struck a balance between the games that try to take themselves super serious and WoW, which has become mega cutesy.
/nerd off
