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joncasssouthkorea - Jon Wick

"Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."

-Donald Miller

*Please feel free to subscribe to this blog- super easy, just click the blue button below and fill in your email- and you will recieve email updates everytime a new entry gets added, perhaps more convienient for everyone!

Some other websites wed like to share about us, our friends, or our lives here in Korea and beyond...

** For more pictures of our trips through Asia and beyond (that I couldn fit in here), check out my picture page at flickr .
**Ive started as a Contributing Editor of the travel website TheExpeditioner . Check it out for interesting travel tidbits and information.
**The organization that helped us along the process of getting to Korea, Reach to Teach ESL teacher recruiting
**Our friends, Shawna and Jonny G.s, amusing blog, the Waygookinway
**Random thoughts by our friend Lance, click here for his blog
**Also, join Jon on Twitter now! For random thoughts, reactions, and shenanigans we find ourselves in!

Besides this blog, Ive been lucky enough to have a few published articles out there in cyberspace. Here are the current ones, feel free to check them out, Ill be updating this with new links as soon as they get published! Thanks for the support and interest in my writing!!

www.bootsnall.com ~~ 7 Truths You Won't Hear About Teaching ESL Abroad
WOMT Radio Interview ~~ An interview regarding observed tensions between North and South Korea.
www.thetravelrag.com ~~ Budae Jjigae, Memories of War
www.theexpeditioner.com ~~ The DMZ: Travel To The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
www.matadortrips.com ~~ South Korea Exploration: Roadtripping the Peninsula
www.bootsnall.com ~~ Eating in Korea: A Laymans Guide To Dishes You Must Try
www.glimpse.org ~~ Shots and Snails... An article about my first teacher dinner in Korea

Philippines
January 27th 2009 -» February 18th 2009 Beijing, China
April 30th 2009 -» May 16th 2009 Vietnam & Hong Kong
August 14th 2009 -» September 4th 2009 Kyoto & Tokyo Japan
October 11th 2009 -» October 18th 2009

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Joined on: September 10th 2008
Last Login: November 23rd 2009

Blog Entries: 59
Photos: 1299
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Blogs & Travel Journals

by joncasssouthkorea, order by Date newest first.

By joncasssouthkorea
November 3rd 2009

Blog-abration #7: Sweet Cassie North America » United States » Montana » Butte

DSC02319

The first 24 hours in Korea, no, the first week in Korea, were some of the most difficult in my life. You are exhausted and jet lagged; you are expected to work the very next school day, whether that is after a weekend or within hours (as we were so lucky), you haven’t eaten anything in roughly a week because either you can’t find anything tolerable, or you can’t stomach any of the available eats. Besides not sleeping well, unpacking what life you’ve managed to stuff into your luggage, and trying to figure out a new job that comes with little [View Full Entry]

By joncasssouthkorea
October 26th 2009

Blog-abration #5- Our Friends Asia » South Korea » Gyeonggi-do

Our farewell dinner crew! Good times

Welcome back to the Blog-abration Celebration (you didn’t forget about this did you?) of our year in Korea and of everything Korean. Cass and I returned to Montana, safe and sound, an are getting some semblance of normalcy back to our lives- more on that will come. I have a plan for two more final Blog-abration posts after this, and I’m sure the anticipation is killing you all (yeah, right). You probably already figured this theme was on its way. We’ve been fortunate to have met some amazing people in Yeoju (and the greater Korea) that we are sure will be [View Full Entry]

Cass and a few of her teacher/friends at dinner

By joncasssouthkorea
October 14th 2009

Tokyo: The Official Conclusion of our Time in Asia Asia » Japan » Tokyo

Tokyo Eye Pollution

We had to delay our plans a bit getting to Tokyo because of the aftereffects of the typhoon that ripped through Japan the night before. Nagoya, a city we would pass through on the way back to Tokyo, saw the brunt of the storm; major flooding in the area eventually killing two people. As Kyoto settled down and the rains stopped, there were still delays in the train travel due to high wind. We bummed around the city, visiting the shops and picking up some stuff before we jumped a train around 3 p.m. which got us into Tokyo around dinnertime. [View Full Entry]

Discount electronics... come get your discount electronics!

By joncasssouthkorea
October 11th 2009

Kyoto: Typhoons and Temples Asia » Japan » Kyoto » Kyoto

Welcome to Ancient Japan

The minute we touched down in Tokyo, we heard rumors of an impending typhoon headed this direction. I’m not going to lie, as expensive as Japan is, the best 1,000 Yen we possibly spent was on umbrellas at the first train station. You can’t rain on this parade. Or as we soon found out, you can’t rain on this parade of temples. Kyoto was the ancient capitol of Japan and still the center of the ancient Japanese traditional culture. The city, a bigger city of one and a half million people, contains seventeen UNESCO World Heritage sites. If you are unfamiliar [View Full Entry]

By joncasssouthkorea
October 8th 2009

Anyeong Hi Kaseyo!! Korea Sarangeyo! Asia » South Korea » Gyeonggi-do

Taegukki- The 'Old Glory' of Korea

"Good bye!! We love you, Korea!" I’m going to interrupt just before the last of the Blog-abrations to let you know what we’ve been up to lately. Lots have been going on, plus a week in Japan, so for the last installments of Blog-abration, I know you’re all on the edge of your seats, please stay tuned… One last going away party, if you can call it that, was two days spent in Suwon, with a couple of our favorite ‘peeps’ (as Reagan would say) Reagan and Leandra. With the hanus traffic during the Korean Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving) holiday, it works [View Full Entry]

Our Gangnam Apt. friends after driving us and all our stuff to the bus terminal

By joncasssouthkorea
October 4th 2009

Blog-abration #4: Yeoju, South Korea: A Photo Tour of Our Korean Hometown Asia » South Korea » Gyeonggi-do

Home Sweet Yeoju
This picture, not this one but one exactly like it, was the first ever visual evidence I had of town. I got it about a month before leaving for Korea on Google earth. Little did I know it was from the... [more]

Before coming to Korea, we couldn’t find any information on the designated town we were to call home for the next year. Literally, the only two solid bits of information, if you can call them that, in which we knew for sure was that Yeoju is the home for some kind of world ceramic festival and there is a premium outlet shopping mall in town. You could say we were going in pretty blind, but in the end, it was an absolute blessing. Before I get into Yeoju a little, we’re currently enroute to Japan, the final leg of our Asian [View Full Entry]

By joncasssouthkorea
September 28th 2009

Korean Blog-abration #3- The Wide World of Korean Food Asia » South Korea » Gyeonggi-do

The Notorious Kimchi
The other, other, other white meat

It’s no secret, Korean food is a love/hate relationship. It never really allows any room for indifference; definitely one or the other… or both… or neither. For Cass and I, it’s both, but more along the lines of love, and I’m not too proud to say so. We’ve actually evolved to be somewhat of connoisseurs of the cuisine this last year, and it has been a wild ride. Anyone interested, I invite you to read an article I got published for more insight into our forays into the realm of Korean food, here’s the [url=http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/09-06/ [View Full Entry]

By joncasssouthkorea
September 20th 2009

Korean Blog-abration #2: Kpop & Superstar K Asia » South Korea » Seoul

Dazzling K-Pop

Count down is now under twenty days until we shove off from the Hermit Kingdom, and it’s starting to hit us that we’re actually leaving. We are leaving Korea on October 5th, officially, and spending a week in Japan, exploring Tokyo and down through Kyoto and beyond (if we have time). Then on the 10th, we will be jumping back on a plane to head back to the western hemisphere, changing planes in Seattle and then to Bozeman. Neither of us can really believe that we are leaving sooo soon! There are all kinds of things creeping up on us, and [View Full Entry]

The tense moments before the winner is announced

By joncasssouthkorea
September 11th 2009

Korean Blog-abration #1: No Rae Bang (Karaoke Rooms) Asia » South Korea » Gyeonggi-do

Sing it Cass!

So we’re back, another awesome vacation abroad finished, and we had a pleasant surprise waiting on our phone when we arrived at the airport… more vacation! Yes, while we were gone, the Korean ministry of education issued a mandatory one week quarantine for any teachers that traveled out of the country, a precaution for the H1N1 flu virus. Since we arrived the night before we were to go back to school, (and are totally healthy) that means we had one more week vacation… yippee! What we didn’t realize, was that we weren’t the only ones on quarantine, the majorit [View Full Entry]

By joncasssouthkorea
September 3rd 2009

Onward... Hong Kong and Macau Asia » Hong Kong

Star Ferry with HK

The greatest city on earth & Asia’s Las Vegas… What’s not to love about these two, right? After a day of bumming that included the famous ‘water puppet show,’ we left the friendly confines of Hanoi for the modern marvel that is the existence of Hong Kong. We had almost 3 days there to check out all we could, not enough to discover all of the wonders our friend Laurel had so graciously offered, but enough to give us the vibe of city life that should suffice for, basically, all of eternity. We got into HK in the middle of the [View Full Entry]

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