Krabi, Thailand
We arrived in Krabi Town and went to scope out the area since we were only there for one night. We ran into another street market, and a few pubs and restaurants. There was also a pretty view of the river you could walk along. In the morning, we woke up early, and took a tuk-tuk to Tiger Cave Temple. There was a temple and very cool buildings, along with a waterfall and signs indicating that you could buy monkey food.
Thailand is amazing! Luke and I stepped off the plane and were immediately overwhelmed. Experienced a bit of culture shock as we immediately started bartering for a taxi to the guest house we were staying at. We arrived to the guest house around 11:00 pm and met Boyd, our host, who told us to drop our bags and go straight to the Sunday Night Market.
CEV Olympics 2017
For two weeks (eight days), four teachers taught students who were part of the Boston Program and four teachers taught “Winter Intensive” camp of students who had been to CEV before and were there to learn more. The Boston Program is an annual program that consists of students interviewing and taking tests to prove their English skills in order to travel to Boston for two weeks.
"Life is not all beer and skittles."
As Christmas approached, social media unsurprisingly became filled with friends and families spending time together over the holidays. For some it was even a White Christmas! For the past 25 years I've spent this holiday with my family, and this year I wasn't able to join them. I was a little down in the dumps at times because of it and would be lying if I said I had "the perfect Christmas" that I was used to. That being said, my Christmas was a new kind of perfect!
#LostInBusan
We got off the bus and I was automatically in everyone's way wherever I stood. People were flying by left and right as I stood there in a group with three other mid-westerners who had no idea where to go, or how to speak Korean. But nonetheless, we were there to adventure and see the big city. Before attempting to navigate our way to another teacher couple (who actually knew the city), we stopped at a breakfast food truck. Fried food on a stick.
Noraebang and Hwawangsan
This weekend we learned that South Korea has hot wings. And I mean HOT wings. It was maybe not smart of me to try one, but I had to know how good they were. I almost cried and my tongue basically fell off, but I survived. Really though, the chicken was delicious and its good to know we can find wings when we're craving them! We followed up dinner with a trip to our first Korean bar where we learned a simple two-part drinking game involving Soju.
Our First City Trip and First Week Teaching!
It was a good day. It was a good day in...Daegu ("Day-goo"). Ha.
We took a taxi to the bus. The bus to another bus. Then the second bus to the subway, and finally arrived to Daegu. For comparison, South Korea is about the size of Indiana, and Daegu - being the 4th largest city in the country - has a population of ~2.4 million. So it basically felt like a squished version of Chicago.
Moving In and Learning the Area
On our second day here, we woke up at 8 AM to head into town for our medical check before we could receive our immigration card. In an hour, we had received a vision and hearing test, checked our blood pressure, had blood drawn, peed in a cup and went to the dentist (where she looked in our mouths for 30 seconds). For the most part it seemed pretty similar to how things are done in the U.S. but there were still a few times we had to laugh to ourselves because it seemed odd.
WE MADE IT!
WE MADE IT!!!
In the last 48 hours, Luke and I started our big adventure by going to four airports and two countries, taking three different flights, problem solving our way through a foreign country and their transportation system, meeting our new coworkers, having our first day of training, and experiencing our first TRUE Korean meal.