In Britt, Iowa every year on the second weekend of August thre is a four day event called the National Hobo Convention or 'Hobo Days'. Saturday morning I got up early and drove out to Britt from my new home, Algona, Iowa for the Hobo Days parade. I got there super early because I was worried about parking and ended up traversing the town for an hour and a half, stopping at a few garage sales on the way. A little before 10 I found myself on a park bench in the town park talking to other people from out of town and waiting for the parade to start. Once the parade started, it did not stop for an hour and a half! There were antique cars, tractors, floats, hobos, more tractors, Shriners, and more tractors; ... read more

The next day I got up early and took the MTR to meet Val at Tung Chung. I arrived a little early again and after waiting for a few minutes, I was in need of a restroom. The subway stations in Hong Kong made me a little crazy because there is no public restroom in the station. If you need to use the bathroom, and the station is next to a shopping center, you must go in there to look for the closest bathroom. I have a feeling this was done strategically to lure people into the shopping centers, and if you really got to go this is quite annoying. We took a bus to the Po Lin Monastery to see the Big Buddha. After arriving, we ate lunch at a restaurant in the touristy village ... read more

The next morning it was still overcast and raining on and off, so we gave the 'hogs' a rest, grabbed the umbrella, and opted to walk/take the metro. Our first stop was Ohori Park, a large, gorgeous, park with a pond in the middle of it. The pond was previously used as a moat for Fukuoka Castle (whose ruins we visited later in the day). After walking a semi circle around the pond, we found the Fukuoka Art Museum. I thought the ticket to see all of the exhibits was expensive, about $13, but it was totally worth it to see the Ancient Egypt in Torino exhibit. The Fukuoka Museum of Art had borrowed several pieces from the Egyptian Museum of Torino, Italy's collection. I read in the exhibit that many of the pieces had never ... read more

In January, much to my surprise, Miseon (the teacher whose wedding I went to last April) invited me to her younger brother's wedding. It was very much like Miseon's wedding with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions was that the father of the bride walked his daughter down the aisle. However, the bride and groom had still seen each other before the wedding since the groom had walked himself down the aisle right before the bride. The wedding hall was also very different. There was a raised aisle for the bride and groom to walk down, it kind of looked like a fashion runway. There were lights in the walls and on the ceiling that changed colors continuously. I was actually quite surprised that they left the lights on during the ceremony. The guests at ... read more

In order to celebrate the fact that we have been dating for three years, Mike and I decided to head to Seoul for the weekend! After school on Friday we came home, packed, ate a delicious dinner of KyoChon Chicken, then headed down to the train station. We caught the KTX a little after 8pm so we arrived in Seoul just before 10pm. We got off the train and then took the subway up to Jongno 3. Although we were told that we would need to take line 5 to this stop, we figured that we would be just fine taking line 1 since that line also ran to Jongno 3 and that was the line that was at Seoul station. When we got to Jongno 3 we were surprised to discover that we could not ... read more