A blog about my life in Korea, among other things.
Last week I discovered how a birthday is properly celebrated in Korea, thanks to my middle school students.
What started out as a normal, peaceful celebration…
…quickly turned into an all-out cake-throwing , face-smearing food fight, with more cake ending up on my students’ faces than in their mouths.
Wipe down the table, mop the floor, scrape the cake off the walls, and it’s back to class.
On my second visit to the church in my town, the pastor asked me if I played any instruments. When I told him I played the drums, I was immediately recruited to join the worship team. After a couple practice runs, I found myself playing for the second service on that same day.
Playing to a packed house!
Hardly anyone in the church speaks any English, but music is a universal language, and it is really neat to be a part of such a close-knit group.
I’m a Fruitarian now and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight
— Steve Jobs (from his biography)
I find it interesting how something immediately becomes more noticeable when given a name. Read this article and see if your perception of “Vaguebooking” doesn’t immediately become more conclusive like it did for me.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/imbecilic-art-vaguebooking/
*Warning: After reading this you may feel a strong urge to unfriend many people on Facebook.
Jonathan and I had the incredible opportunity to visit the Lahu hill tribe in the northern hills of Thailand. The Lahu people live very simply, using electricity only within the last decade or so. They operate a 100% organic coffee farm among other things. We stayed in the village during the Chinese New Year, which was a really neat time to go…
…Unfortunately, I got sick after the first day, and spent the next three days in a bamboo hut, hanging out with the snakes and scorpions, not to mention spiders as big as your hand.
This is where we stayed. Most of the Lahu people live in something similar to this. Made almost completely out of bamboo.
Pre-sickness I tested my Muay Thai skills (which are non-existent) against this Polish dude.
This was taken a split second before I dodged his blow and reverse roundhouse kicked him in the face…
…Haha jokes.
Our guide taking us around the coffee farm and through the jungle. He stopped briefly to cut down some bamboo stalks, and inside one of them found several bamboo worms. Lucky for us, it happened to be lunch time.
Dericious.
And for desert? How about some freshly-cut sugar cane? Yes please.
(This post is from about a week ago, but am just now able to post it…)
Today we got a little more adventure than we bargained for when we decided to go for a “short” hike in the morning. We had planned on meeting up with a group that was going for a two hour hike to see some waterfalls, but we showed up late to the meeting place. Using our big powerful brains, we decided to see if we could catch up with them even though we only had a rough description of where they were going. Having been in a rush to catch them, we skipped breakfast, and only brought one water bottle between us.
Convinced that we were close on their heels, we kept hiking up what turned out to be a very tall and very steep mountain. Needless to say, we were lost. After four hours of hiking up a steep incline, we were dehydrated, hungry, and ready to pass out. We had gone so far up the mountain that going back down the way we came didn’t seem like a good idea.
After sitting down wondering what to do next, we saw a group of hikers who pointed us in the right direction. We couldn’t keep up with them cause we were so beat, but after several rest stops we finally made it up the mountain, finding ourselves in the middle of a hill tribe village. Apparently we looked as bad as we felt, and the first person who saw us beckoned for us to come eat in his house. We gladly accepted.
Halfway up the mountain.
Near the top. Really neat to be hiking in the jungle.
Taking a much needed rest.
We made it!
The excitement of making it to the top alive quickly wore off when we realized the we still needed to go all the way back down. Lucky for us a super friendly Thai gave us a ride in his pick up truck. But the generosity didn’t stop there. He ended up treating us to a late lunch, and then went out of his way to drop us off right where we were staying!
Living the dream.
After meeting up with Jonathan, we spent the day exploring Chiang Mai. We saw plenty of temples, as well as some street markets selling loads of neat handmade goods.
This man is not real.
Coming from spending the night on the cold floor of the airport in Seoul, having my layover in China extended because of a delayed flight, I finally arrived in Bangkok just in time to catch the overnight train to Chiang Mai. After the excitement of being in a completely foreign place (again) wore off, I slept like a rock on the train, despite the cramped bench that served as my bed.
From Seoul to Guangzhou Baiyun, China
From China to Bangkok
From Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Waking up to the sun rising over some beautiful scenery passing by.
Jonathan and I had planned on meeting at the train station, but it turned out his flight was delayed and he was still in Bangkok, so I spent the day exploring Chiang Mai and testing my courage on the taxi rides. I thought this kind of driving only existed in video games… I was proven wrong on my first ride in a Tuk Tuk.
This is a shot of my driver hopping onto a sidewalk to get around some traffic.
Spent the rest of the day successfully getting lost, but had a blast!
