Valentine's Day

Last year I spent Valentine's Day eating some great AMERICAN food at Avenue's Bistro in Brookside.   This Valentine's Day was spent with 5 coworkers and what started off to be a slow night ended up being quite fun!!  We started off at a Japanese restaurant and ordered a lot of sushi and sake.  I've only had sushi once before, but I'm starting to like it...I think.  We spent a couple hours at the restaurant and then headed to the "Symphony."  Symphony is an upscale noraebong (karaoke bar).  For those of you who know me, you probably know that I can't sing. I'm not being humble here.  I really can't sing, but here in Korea that doesn't stop me from having some fun and making a fool out of myself (I'm very good at that)!  Here is a list of songs that I remember singing (if you want to call it singing): Hungry Eyes, Eternal Flame, Gangsta's Paradise, Like a Prayer, I'll Be Missing You, With or Without You, Wonderwall, Hero.  Yes, I had a mic in my hand for all of those songs, plus some others but I forgot what they were.  We stayed at the noraebong till about 1am and then headed to a dance club called "Lounge 3."  I'd never been there and when we arrived we were the only people there, but were promised that by 2am the place would be bouncin...the promise was upheld =)  We were solo for a while, but then came the Korean masses.  The music was amazing and the remainder of the night/morning was spent on the dance floor =)

This is me at the Japanese restaurant.  This is a fish that I did not want to eat.  But I lost a farkle and therefore I had to eat the head of the fish.  Gross!

A Korean dude on a custom motorcycle!

Greg and I singing "With or Without You" or "Hero" to the ladies in our group!

Same Same

My Himalayan Trip

This upcoming Friday, February 20th I hop on a plane with a final destination of Bagdogra, India. From there I'll be on a bus to Sikkim, India where I will start a 6 day trek in the Himalayan mountains. Sikkim is nestled in between Nepal (to the north) and Bhutan (to the south). I am going with 4 other people that I do not know, but they work at my sister school, so hopefully they will be a fun group! We will be doing a route called the "Dzongri Trek" where we will get to see the 3rd highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga! The highest altitude that we will be hiking at will be around 15,500 feet, but Kanchenjunga's elevation is 28,169 feet. Wild!!

Going to the Himalayan mountains has been a dream of mine for many years. Simply put, this trip is a dream come true for me and my excitement is unmeasurable!! This trip is also a bit different than what I'm used to in terms of backpacking or roughing it. We have to use an outfitter to go where we are going, which means we will have our own cook, guide and a yak to carry most of our stuff. We will not really be roughing it that much at all =)

I will be taking a lot of pictures, so like I did for my Christmas trip, I'll include a link to my photo album for you all to enjoy!



Somewhere in Sikkim, India.
Kangchenjunga
This is the route we will be on. We'll be going from the south to the north.

Life In Korea Via Rappers

This is a video made by some English teachers here in Korea. It's hilarious....and very accurate!!!!  Korea is so hard to describe, but these guys nail it!!

Backfire

Back at my last job as a school counselor I was also the assistant coach for 3 years for the boys swim team and the girls swim team. Coaching added quite a few hours to my work week (weekend) and some stress as well...there was always drama with the swimmers or their parents. So when I came to my new school I said to myself that I was here to enjoy and explore another country/culture and not spend all of my time working. Thus far I have done a good job at that. When I came here I kept my mouth shut that I have experience in coaching swimming, therefore I escaped coaching middle school swimming. (I know, I'm a bad employee). Now Spring time is rolling around, which means high school soccer season is starting. My closest friend here at work is the Head Coach for the girls soccer team. The first 2 people that said they would be his assistant coach ended up bailing. I told him if he couldn't find anyone else to be his assistant coach, then I would do it. Well, he couldn't find anyone else, so I am now the assistant coach for the high school girls soccer team. WTF?! =) If I would have coached swimming I could justify not helping out with soccer, but since I avoided the swim season I feel somewhat obliged to help out now. So in my attempt to avoid coaching, I am now coaching a sport that I am relatively unknowledgeable about. That's what I get!! =)

Not Much Going On

In my attempt to update this on a regular basis, it's time for a post even though there's not much to write about at this moment.  Last week I had 3 days off plus the weekend, so a total of 5 days off for the Chinese Lunar New Year.  This is a huge holiday in Asia.  In Korea, pretty much everything shuts down for 2 days.  I went up to Seoul several times over the break and it was dead!  Originally I was supposed to spend this break in Tokyo, but I spent way toooooo much money on my Christmas trip, so I opted to stay in Korea and relax...and it was great.  In 3 weeks I leave for my India trip.  I'll write more about this trip as it gets a bit closer to departure date (Feb 20).  Like I said, there's not a whole lot of new things going on right now...

This is a gift from my Korean buddy Sam. He's a graphic design student at a local university and he has his own line of clothing called "Mating Heroes." He makes some pretty funny shirts and this is one of them. I have the pleasure of wearing this shirt around...haha!


Min Hyung (friend I met back in KC) and I hanging out at one of my favorite places in Itaewon, 3 Alley Pub.