Kimchi-land Update!

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Hello everyone! How are you doing? It's been almost (or just over?) a month since our last post and what a crazy, busy, wonderful month it has been! Before i get to that, we are officially in our last leg of this year in Korea! 8 more days and we are outta here! BUT, don't get too excited yet, we are not coming home straight away! Starting September 1, we will be taking a 100-day trip around South East Asia and it looking something like this:

Sept 1- fly to China. 13 days in China, including Beijing, Xian, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Sept 14 - Fly to Taiwan. 6 days in Taiwan, including Taipei and Taroko Gorge
Sept 20 - Fly to Philippines. 3 weeks in the Philippines including Manila, Boracay and Siquijor islands
Oct 8 - Fly to Vietnam. 3 weeks in Vietnam, working South (Ho Chi Minh City) to North (hanoi)
End oct - Fly to Thailand. 2.5-3 weeks in Thailand. From here the rest of our trip is a little fuzzy but we plan on visiting Malaysia for a couple weeks and possibly Myanmar..we'll see where the road takes us!
And FINALLY< DECEMBER 9 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada! Mark your calendars folks, we're coming home!

Now, let's backtrack a bit...Ah, Mudfest! What a wonderfully dirty weekend! Sounds fun? It was! We took a long bus filled with drunken foreigners to Boryeong city on the west coast of Korea for a weekend of rain and muddy fun! Koreans believe in the healing powers of mud so basically you covered yourself in mud, let it dry, rinse in the ocean and repeat! There were mud slides, mud jails, mud wrestling rings, coloured mud painting and mud fights (obviously!). It was so much fun!

After that we had a busy week preparing for our black belt test in taekwondo. We were getting good and starting to believe we might have a passing chance when...a roll my ankle during practice 3 days before the test! bah! I could barely walk, let alone do kicks and turns so the outlook was grim. Thanks to the glorious magic of accupuncture (yes, I am now a firm believer that it works!) my swelling went down and with the help of a lotttt of medical tape, I was able to perform the test! The test itself was a little nerve-racking. There were 3000 taekwondo-ers from all over our province, 98% of which were under the age of 10 and NONE of which besides Mike, Drew, Austin and myself, were foreigners! We certainly stood out, but then again, what else is new! As of today we are still unsure of the results of our test (it takes 30 days) but we all agreed after that we did our best and if we don't pass then we simply weren't ready for the test! Later that week, our master gave us our black belts as a gift for our hard work, complete with our names written in Korean on them!

A few hours after our test we had our 3rd and final set of visitors from home! My mom and sister arrived into Busan Saturday night and we had an action-packed week planned with them! Equipped with a rental car, Sunday we drove to Namhae, a beautiful island on the south of Korea that every Korean raves about. It was beautiful! Rice fields as far as the eye can see, white-sand beaches, mountain top temples, scenic coastal drives - what more can you ask for!

The rest of the week was spent exploring Yangsan and Busan. Mom and Sam came to school with me one day and met some of my students and loved that! We also went to a giant fish market, to a Giants' baseball game, got a tour of Beomeosa temple from a teacher at my school and and tried lots of Korean food (for better or worse!). The weekend was spent in Seoul, a little bit overwhelming with all the people I think, but a good chance to see the more modern/global part of Korea (lots of English spoken, many foreigners everywhere!). It was a lot to take in in 9 days and they were exhausted and ready for home by the end of the trip but it was topped of by an unexpected upgrade to first class for their flight home! What a way to put the icing on the cake! Unfortunately we sent my computer home with them, along with all our photos, so we don't have many photos to share of their visit or the last month here!

Shortly after they left, we left as well on our summer vacation to Jeju island, in Korea, and then onto Japan. We arrived home yesterday and are still getting things sorted. With only 8 days left in Korea, time is limited and there is so much left to do! We will try our best to keep this blog updated with pics and stories from our travels and would love to hear where this summer brought you all! We miss you and wish you all the best!

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