[chapter 5]

Autumn is typically a time that changes pace in conjunction with the color syrup like bleeding of the changing leaves; a time for reflection, a time for cracking the sticks and kindling to start building the nest for the fire that must glow brighter and warmer from the inner hearth of the body in preparation for the cold, still days to come. It's a time of turning in and resettling into a hibernating cycle.

Sure ain't the case here in Korea.

Halloween hit and the cycle surges violently forth, a storm of unsurmountable force with reckless disregard for time.

Thus, I haven't really had time. No. I haven't had any time. It slips through my hand so fast that it doesn't actually slip, it's a flash, a rod of lightening that I can't and won't ever be able to snag. It's sort of scary. So, today is a picture/video blog so you can get more of a visual experience as to what's been happenin' over here in the good ol' Korea (and I don't have to write as much).

Sit, back, relax, I hope you laugh.

 Scariest/coolest/prettiest/bizarrest Halloween class. We rule. Oh ya, I was a scary skeleton, and I was actually scary. None of the cutsie stuff.

Precious

 This is Mt. Seoraksan. I went for a weekend and got my mountain fix. It was wonderful. No I didn't get to climb those rocks :(  

In November I went to the Philippines for a weekend to play in an ultimate frisbee tournament. Yes, it was amazing and an absolute whirlwind. This is my new Northern California buddy, Maddy, and we are twins. I played with a team from the city of Busan. They were so awesome that they may have convinced me to move there. We'll have to see...

 This is a special fellow. He's allergic to dull moments. I'll have you know that he did in fact wear his head bandaged (as shown above) the entire weekend. Even at the party.

 Gnome-y made it! He thought it was too warm, I told him to enjoy it while it lasted.

First snow :)

Sidenote: Korea is really cold. 

Announcement: I FINALLY have pictures of me playing for the first time ever. I'm very excited about this. There's a player that photographs us playing as a hobby every weekend and he does a phenomenal job.

Saving the best for last! 

One day when this boy is on Broadway, I will get to say I taught him English.

Do either one of these videos work for you? I'll leave them up for a couple of days and if they still don't work I'll try reloading them. One is my kindergartener's Christmas play dance. I can't take credit for it, it's my Korean teaching assistance's master piece, she's amazing. The second vid is one I took a few months ago at my Taekwon-do studio, it's a kids Taekwon-do dance Gangnam Style, so awesome.

I hope you've all been good boys and girls! Happy Holidays!

[chapter 4]

I am a very lucky lady for so many reasons. What I thank most of my lucky stars for (and my life quite literally) is my awesome parents. This last month they came to Korea to visit me for 3 weeks! The best part was they had the open-mindedness and adventurous spirit to ride bikes all over Kyoto, Japan for a week, explore Seoul and even rent a car by themselves in Southern Korea! I can only hope that I'll be half as cool as them when I'm, well....older.

Highlight reel includes...

• Kicking their butts the first day. Haha, well I think that we'll all laugh about it someday. I had the brilliant idea to take my parents on a hike up a fortress near Seoul on their first day (jetlagged and all). Long story short: we got lost more than once, saw some great views and my mom basically couldn't walk further than a mile at a time the rest of the trip because it messed her feet up so bad. I've had better ideas. 
• Our bike escapades. I was ecstatic to find that both my parents were absolute badass city bikers. I found myself following them on wild rides through narrow Asian alley ways, in between rows of traffic, carving, dodging, weaving through people, trash cans, small and large animals, other bikers and even joining pelatons of Japanese school girls on bikes. We formed our own biker lingo "T-up to the curb dude!" and found ourselves constantly proclaiming our love for bikes: "You would NEVER see this if you weren't on a BIKE!" And, of course... crashed. 
• Them getting to know my life and all it's little pleasures, flavors, people, faces, sounds and idiosyncrasies. Realizing how food is so different here, the logistics of carrying home groceries when all you have is a backpack and a bike, the sounds of the preschool next to my apartment that surrounds my apartment throughout the day, the trash situation, the seeming non-existent level of crime, how nothing is what you think it is when you buy it, the ajummas. It goes on and on, but let's just say they learned a lot and it was great. 
• For me, one of my favorite memories was them getting to visit my kindergarten classroom. It was a half hour of preciousness. At first some of the girls were legitimately afraid of my dad because they're not used to seeing people that are 6' 3". Once they realized that he was not a scary tall monster, it was all hugs and dancing and laughing. I'm so happy that they got to get a slice of the love and contagiously bright energy I get to work with everyday. 

Ending note: Almost a week after they left Seoul, my dad's favorite team, the Giants, advanced to the World Series. So this next week, cheer for our favorite baseball team, I know Alison Teacher's class will be!

 Hiking a fortress outside of Seoul

 Our daily morning walks in Olympic Park

 On our way up Seoul Tower

 At a temple in Kyoto 

 The Golden Palace

 Turtle hoppin'

 Singing in the rain, in Japan.

 Olympic Park

[chapter 3]

Japandering.


Where to begin...

For starters, we stuck to one city in Japan: Kyoto, which I really liked because we ended up getting to know one city really well, rather than skimming the surface of a few different places.

Kyoto is very cool. Here are my top 6 favorite things/memories:

• Japan dances to the beat of it's own drum. Their electric and totally original sense of style, the anime thing, the geisha thing, the food thing...the whole package: they've got it goin' on. 
• The temples were spectacular with their awesome ancient energy and architecture. Plus, I got to do some real quality Buddha nerding out (I think about 1/3 of my photo's I walked away with from Japan are of Buddhas). 
• The bicycle culture. We rented bikes for 2 days and had an absolute blast. We saw every type of person on every type of bicycle: older folks on their bikes from 1935, the cute 20-something Japanese girls in heels on their perfectly shined and sparkly beach cruiser bikes, the college hipsters, the moms with child seats mounted on both the front and back of the bike effortlessly hauling through crowds of people; we even found ourselves in a school girl pelaton at one point! Plus bike riding is officially the best way to explore a city, hands down.
• The bamboo forest. Words cannot describe, I will just post a picture.
• The family marts (aka convenience stores for non-Korean residents). I thought they were pretty righteous in Korea, but Japan takes it to a whole new level for sure, there's something for everyone. You've got the massive magazine corner (aka Japanese porn that the teenage school boys spend some quality after-school time in), the "practical" section full of all needs ranging from disposable underwear to men's hair gel, the amazing ice cream section that has my most favorite green tea ice cream waffle snacks that I'm currently having withdrawals from, the lunch section with everything from fresh salads to inari to barbecued everything, and the copious amounts of snacks and treats. The first time we went to one we ended up spending a half hour just looking and laughing at all the bizarre things we found. Good times.
• The entire city of Kyoto hasn't been updated since the 70's. Yep. That means all the stop lights, signs, subway system, architecture (urban, not temples), and even taxi's are from 30-40 years ago. The amazing thing is that they do such a good job of keeping things clean and working that the stuff nearly looked brand new.

If your feeling inspired to travel to Japan, you should be fully aware of these three things:

1. It is really, really, really expensive. No like really. A lot. Maybe too much. This is where I say Japan is the France of Asia, but I think it might actually be even more expensive than that. You don't get a break either: everything costs so much money. Let's just say that one night we got one pizza, a small salad and 3 beers (granite it was a nice restaurant and good food) and the bill was $80. I cried.
2. You cannot fly by the seat of your pants. Japan does not like it when you just show up like "Oh hey there, I'm super cool traveler dude". Nope, that 'ish don't fly in Japan. When you land on their soil, you cannot leave the airport until you give customs an address of where you're staying (which means you need to reserve a hotel or hostel in advance, unless of course you're staying with a friend). 
3. They couldn't really care less about speaking English. Or making things remotely easy for English speakers. It's not like a lot of places where there's some desire or need to speak English, they just kind of do their own thing. So be prepared for not being able to communicate with a lot of people and not knowing what most signs say.

Here's a link to our Ryokan (Japanese style hotel where you sleep on the floor, very simple and less expensive than your typical hotel room in Japan) www.kyoto-ohto.com

The place we rented our awesome bicycles from was called "Rent-a-cycle" just 6 minutes away from Kyoto Station. Highly recommend this place, the guy was awesome and our bikes worked super well.

Alright, picture time!

 Kyoto

 A temple fit for a Giant  :)

 Everyone rides scooters.

Japanese gardens.

 Scariest Buddha

Family photo at Japan's version of the Yuba River.

 Geishas are surprising hard to find and capture. We finally caught one towards the end of the trip!

Mom slayin' it on the bike through the bamboo forest

Shortly after the bamboo forest...let's just say she brought the Cindy Martin to Japan.

Meet Gnome-y. He is my most trustworthy and pint sized travel partner. I had lots of photo ops in Japan. I realize I'm the only that's really obsessed with him, so I'll limit the number of photos I post of him, but don't worry, his appearance will be made again.

Gnome-y with the very friendly/adorable cafe owners.

[chapter two]

I was a stranger in an even stranger land, with lots of other strangers.

I was at Burning Man Korea.

This event is generally what I think you would imagine. Lots of foreigners (primarily from the Western continents of the earth), compiling on top of each other on a beach, drinking, dancing, face painting, frisbee-ing, eating and playing the day (and night) away.

Here were some of the things I wasn't anticipating, but in retrospect make perfect sense knowing the little I do about Korean culture:

1. There was an actual burning man structure that resembled the real thing, just much smaller and cuter (there's the Korean part) because there was actually two burning men, next to each other, wait for it....holding hands.

2. Not nearly as much art as you would expect at a festival where it's entity as a whole (from the roots, all the way up to each little branch and leaf) is completely saturated in artistic expression and creation. The reason for this being that as a festival being put on mostly by foreigners for foreigners who all live in tiny apartments and their modes of transportation are buses, trains, and planes, cannot physically transport any significantly large or impressive art materials.

3. Not much nakedness. Oh wait, that's because nudity in Korean culture is incredibly offensive (this was held on a public beach where there were Koreans enjoying their family weekend time). Ok, got it.

4. Absolutely no drugs, whatsoever. Oh, that's because besides alcohol, the criminal level of owning or consuming ANY drugs is so severe that it's not worth it to anyone to be caught within miles of it. Ya, ok makes sense.

5.  I don't think this has anything to do with Korean culture, but it is not acceptable to make mating/bird calls while waiting for them to light the men on fire, you will get verbally reprimanded. I was bored (light the men already!) and maybe intoxicated, ok.

Besides these odd and generally pointless factoids, it was a great experience. My favorite part, by far, was meeting so many awesome, like-minded people from all over the world. I met some new climbing partners from the States and other good people from places like the UK to Australia to South Africa, and many places in between. I also got to spend some quality time with some friends that I went with and I seem to love more and more each day: Molly, Lisa and Tyler. These three individuals never cease to put a smile on my face and have been great travel buddies. I only managed to get 2 pictures from the whole thing so I'll share those with you. Molly got lots more so I'll upload those once I get them from her.

If you've ever found yourself wondering what a Korean Burning Man handstand competition looks like, whelp, this is it. 

I lost. The guy was good, what can I say. He also outwitted me when it came to Canadian geography knowledge. He was a tough competitor, although I made up for it with......

This. 

Apparently I excel at slacklining while holding an umbrella and having bubbles being blown at me. 

Pimpin' ain't easy. 

Neither is being good at really, really pointless things. Story of my life.

Also, here's a video that I made it into, how weird! See if you can find me... http://chincha.co.uk/2012/09/koreaburnvideo/

To conclude this new chapter, I have an announcement to make: I've met someone. He doesn't know it yet, but I'm pretty sure he's the one.

Let me tell you about him.

His name is Will.
He is almost completely blind in his left eye, as indicated by his quarter inch thick left eye glass lens.
He looks like the 9 year old Korean version of Yoda.
Oh ya, he's a third grader.

I'm in love!!!

[chapter one. continued.]

Although I haven't gotten any good pictures with my students, I do have some good ones of them. These pictures really make my heart swell, it makes me proud to see my students so engaged and excited. You would never know that they're writing contractions on the board, usually thats such boring stuff. That's the magic of games and a little competitive spirit!

This picture is my personal favorite. It looks like he saying "DUDESSS!" and there's "dudes" written on the board on the right hand side. So perfect!

[chapter one]

Children are great. They have this way of keeping you so young, yet also making you feel pretty old at the same time. After a day of working with children, it's the strangest sensation. I'm both completely spent and energized at the same time. I'm exhausted because I've endured a lot of physical, mental and even emotional drainage- running, jumping, screaming (in a fun way), whispering, laughing, scolding, leaping and watching after squeamish, tiny people all day is.....exhausting. But, I carry away little moments that made it all so worth it.
Like the other day when we were learning about our new learning center and it's theme- the mall. We're suppose to talk about the vocabulary and terms associated with the mall (oh ya we're learning!). We got talking about what shoes I should buy when I go to the mall. These were the suggestions that I got for my new shoe purchase...

- Pink (light pink to be exact), superman shoes that have wings on them.
- Tiny boots that fit only on my big toes.
- Invisible shoes that make my feet disappear on command.

I did an impression of how I would walk if I found the tiny toe boots. Now, the kids beg me on a daily basis to "walk in the toe boots". Unfortunately, only the impression will have to do. I have yet to find any toe boots in Korea.





The big head is Benny. He is a ham. The face I'm making is my "Benny" face. Because he is crazy. Really crazy.

[dedications]

This blog is dedicated to you. and me.

It's dedicated to the curious, the rule makers and breakers, the innocent, the unbeaten path followers and finders. The path creators. Even to those that like to follow the clear, well worn path, that's okay too.

It's dedicated to all those that came before and have yet to come.

This world is a crazy place and we're all in it together. This is dedicated to you because you're in it with me.

So hold on tight! It's gonna be a wild ride...