Recently in Long Entries Category

Varanasi is the holiest place in the world according to Hindu people, part of that being its location along the Ganges River, "Mother Ganga." For this reason, it attracts a lot of people, Hindu pilgrims and tourists. As a result, it is prime ground for touts, so we were on our guard from the minute we arrived. Above is the view from the top of our hotel in Varanasi, an excellent establishment with a great location on the river. 

Pictured above is Agra Fort, where we briefly stopped after the Taj Mahal before driving back to Delhi.

The next morning we woke a little later and headed back over to Connaught Place (the 'nice' British-themed are of Delhi) where our tour guide was located, to see about our train tickets to Varanasi. We had to check out of our hotel since our plan was to take the overnight train and thus we had no lodging, so we had all our bags with us. Since Paula had just finished her year in Korea and had to bring all her stuff with her, this was a little more than could be comfortably hauled around while strolling and sightseeing. So, we arrived at our tour guide's office around noon.

Hong Kong! On the way to India, we had a long layover in Hong Kong and we took advantage of it to get out and walk around the city a little bit. It was me, Hilary, and Paula, and we had a great time. The weather was super hot and we were sweating like crazy but we went on the longest outdoor escalator in the world (allegedly) and stopped in a Mexican place for margaritas. We also went to the zoological garden and saw monkeys hanging about (literally). We also stopped into a Hong Kong diner to get some food - real Chinese food! And dropped by the waterfront to see some amazing views.

Read on for the real adventure - India

I think I'm going to sacrifice chronologicality for the most part since I've been doing such a bad job of making timely updates, and try to stick with more interesting anecdotal non-time-specific posts. Hopefully it turns out well.

Today at school 2 girls came up to me and communicated to me (poorly) that they wanted me to help them with some interview thing after school. I agreed, because, why not, and I like when the students realize that I can help them with their homework assignments because I'm good at English. So, after school rolled around and at 4-ish they came to the office to get me.

So, since I haven't written anything in a long time I guess this post will be a summary of January, February, March and April. I did Winter English Camp for the first couple weeks in January, it was good and since I had the experience from Summer Camp last year I was able to do it much better this time. I had a class of 6th graders from local elementary schools, only about 2 kids came every day so we were able to do a lot of fun stuff and it was a good time. I also had a class of 1st graders from my school and they were cool but a little bit more rowdy. Overall the camp experience this time around was much better the students were all happy with no complaints, probably because I played a lot of games with them. I had planned a 2-week course of lessons with comprehension tests every now and then but based on the students' reactions to the first week, which was not bad but they just didn't quite have the attention span, I trashed the 2nd week and replaced it with Jeopardy games and other fun stuff. 

Christmas started for us on Christmas Eve. Hilary, Katie and I hung out at Hilary's apartment in Donong and exchanged gifts. As you can see, I received a Lego Millenium Falcon which I promptly put together. The next day, Christmas, would be for meeting up with friends and hanging out.

Our plan was first to meet up with Kenley and Stuart in Guri and have food, and then perhaps go into Seoul for a Christmas party. In Guri, we went to an "Italian" restaurant that was decent, and then to the food court at GS Square to get dessert, and debate our next move. Hilary had made tentative plans to meet up with Natalia in Seoul for a party, and eventually we decided to go, except Stuart who wasn't feeling great went home.

In December, John had to return to Korea for some more deposing of witnesses for his case, and this time my oldest sister Elise came also. I managed to secure a couple days off work to hang out with her for the week while John did work. One of her goals, being pregnant, was to buy Korean baby books, and so we'd end up spending a lot of time in bookstores during our sightseeing outings.

They came on December 12th, and I met up with them at their hotel in Gangnam, Seoul, and stayed there with them to facilitate tourism. It was really cool to have them visit, and really nice to see some family. The photo above was taken by Hilary at the hotel's breakfast buffet. As you can see, Elise ate so much that her stomach is bulging way out. Or, she's pregnant, not sure.

Hilary and I went back to the National Museum to finish up what we started with John, and met up with Hilary's friend Natalia, with whom we had Italian food in Itaewon afterward. Not much to say about this visit but I took some photos I want to share. The first, above, is some columns out in front of the museum, and that's all I know about them. Also, this was before thanksgiving, even though the blog posts are out of order.

For Thanksgiving, we actually managed to have a pretty traditional dinner, thanks to the efforts of Hilary, Katie and Stuart. The key was a box of stuffing mix sent by Katie's family, but it wasn't the only thing. Stuart brought mashed potatoes and with it, gravy. I didn't do any of the cooking but I did bring some extra sweet potatoes. It's difficult and expensive to get turkey in this country, but Katie got some chickens to make up for that. All in all, we had chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy and rolls, a good Thanksgiving meal considering the circumstances.

The day after, Hilary, Katie and I went into Seoul and saw a couple palaces and hung out with Kenley and Stuart. Not much else to say about it but I've included some pictures.

"Sir, please don't point."

Ah, the shame! I had committed a cardinal sin of the DMZ. They'd told us repeatedly and from the start 'the first rule of the DMZ is, you do NOT talk about the DMZ.' Really. The second rule is no pointing at the North Koreans. No gestures, no faces, nothing. The instant my hand formed into a point, albeit at the blue UN buildings and not actually at North Korea, a sniper somewhere probably locked onto my face, dialing in the range in seconds, ready to take me out if I was so bold as to point twice. That's what he meant when he added the 'please.' Such is life when you're standing on the border of one of the most hostile, secluded, poor and insane countries on the planet.

The week following the airshow, I knew we had an all-school festival but I had no idea just how ridiculous it would be. I guess since Korean kids spend so much time studying that when they have a chance to have fun they go all out. The first thing I noticed when I got to school is the costumes. Each class of each grade had a class costume/uniform, in the photo above you can see 3-10 class is in pajamas, 3-9 is dressed like old women, etc.

The morning was taken up with physical activities. There was a relay race, tug-of-war, a race wearing scuba fins, jump-rope with giant ropes, and so on. Around lunchtime a whole heap of Lotteria burgers were delivered, which, by the way, are terrible, and then after lunch we moved into the gym for a talent show featuring a little talent and a lot of ridiculosity.

Hilary and I went to the Seoul airshow a couple weeks after Chuseok. I didn't even know it was happening until I got an email from my dad a few days prior letting me know it was taking place all that week. Unlike other airshows I've been to, the airshow at this airshow wasn't really the main event. During the week, closed to the public, was a huge arms bazaar. In giant tents divided up by nationality of the dealers, secretive and shady people (I'm just guessing here) made secretive and shady deals with other secretive and shady people for massive quantities of death-machines. The Airshow was really the Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition.

Once all those secretive and shady people had their fill of weapons, they let the public in for the weekend to ogle at all the latest in murder technology.

The weekend (Oct. 2-3) after GEPIK training was the weekend of Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving, and Hilary and I decided to go with Global Campus on a 2-day trip they were hosting. I didn't even know where we were going with them until we were already on the way, but we had no other plans and a 4-day weekend.

The trip was cool, we met mostly interesting people from around Gyeonggi-do (the province we're in) and had a pretty good time. Pictured above is a drunk/crazy Korean guy who joined us at the Gapyeong Bus Station, sang "Amazing Grace" and then followed us all the way to the Nami Island ferry. Our leader "J" tried to get rid of him by threatening to call the cops, and the man responded "I am a cop." Good times.

This post serves as my catching up summary, so please read it if you haven't.

The week after John's visit, I was scheduled to go to a GEPIK training/orientation session for 3 days. The best part about this was that meant I got to miss 3 days of school, and the worst part about this was that I was missing 3 days of school that I would've missed anyways. The students at my school at major exams that week, so I had absolutely zero classes to teach Mon-Thurs, and then Friday was off because of Chuseok, Korean thanksgiving. The following Monday was also part of the holiday weekend, so I had essentially a 10-day break (that could've been longer).

Please reference this post for more information. The focus here is going to be pictures, that post can provide some more info and context. Back in September, John came to Korea for work, so even though he was here a week we weren't able to see him much.

We met up with him at Jamsil station on Friday night (9/25), after he'd finished his week of work. The above photo is John and Hilary at a Thai restaurant in Jamsil where we ate dinner. We didn't do much else on Friday, but we planned to meet again on Saturday.