We woke up around 9:15am Tuesday morning and met Emma at 10am in the lobby of the hotel to get some breakfast, since she works 12:30-8pm on Tuesday, where did we go??? Dunkin Donuts... we loved the bagel breakfast sandwich with cheese, egg and bacon and some donuts of course. The Asian breakfast of noodles or rice is not our thing. After breakfast we got on the road around 11:30 and headed west to see the other half of the island today. We drove for about an hour to the other side and took the scenic shore road through the small Korean villages. Then we went to Sanbangsan, a beautiful volcanic mountain, that has a large Buddhist temple in the side of the mountain along with many statues at the base of the mountain. We climbed ... read more

One of the reasons that I really wanted to visit Seoul and South Korea was because of a new part of the city that was being built. I enjoy watching shows on Discovery channel and amongst one of my favorites is one called "Build it Bigger". I remember an episode where the South Korean government decided that they would reclaim a piece of land the size of Downtown Boston from the bay. On the land they would build a brand new city that would incorporate sustainable design principles, or more commonly known as Green building. For those of you who do not know I am a LEED Accredited Professional under the US Green Build Council. From the airport in Incheon a huge 7 mile long bridge was built to reach the new part of the city. ... read more

First we would like to say CONGRATS to Pete's mom, Georgianna, she retired Friday Oct 2nd from Nursing after many years of service. We wished we could have celebrated with you but Enjoy Retirement and we are thinking of you!!!!! We started the morning with a "healthy" American breakfast Dunkin Donuts. Gotta love anything from the US when you live abroad and miss all the food from home even if we didn't eat it while living in the states. I have to admit living in Asia makes me eat the worst American food there is, cause that is the majority of what they have over here; McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King(South Korea only). This was another lost in translation or lack of translation. Pete ordered a coffee and couldn't make up his mind, ... read more

We are writing these after we came back from vacation**** We are all packed and ready to go to Hong Kong for the evening then fly to Seoul, South Korea on Thursday, October 1st. We first had to go to Chinese class which was hard to sit through for 90 minutes when we knew we were going to HK for the first time and then 7 days in South Korea. We got out of class and took off for the subway. We recruited a few of our fellow teachers, Chris and Kelly, to crash with us in Hong Kong. Reservations for a four person suite at a Hostel had already been made. Crossing from Futian was fairly easy. We wanted to make sure that there were no delays or problems on the day of our flight ... read more

We wanted to share a few pictures that we have taken over the last 5 days of our daily life here. We went to dinner with another couple in our program that lives in our apt complex. Then we walked through the park that is next to our complex and found the following: an outside gym and women doing what appeared to be a Chinese form of line dancing. Kathleen and I said we would try to learn some of the dances by the end of our stay here in China so we could participate with them. On Sunday after I taught we found a new restaurant that served spaghetti, sandwiches and pizza. We ordered the spaghetti for 12 kuai=$1.76, sandwich for 15 kuai=$2.20 and bubble tea for 7 kuai=$1.02. I included some pictures to show ... read more