Oh I started off the year with so many good intentions for this blog. But any of you who know me, know I am a terrible procrastinator. In fact, as I write this entry I'm procrastinating planning a lesson for a class I have in two hours. You're Welcome.
(Note to reader: I will continue to blog about my trip to Malaysia, but not today)
I returned safe and sound from Malaysia and was back at work on the 16th of February, teaching an advanced English class. It was a like every ESL teacher's dream. I had about 12 students, all high level english speakers, all very keen. I taught them about formal academic debate, argument structure and making objective, logical statements. (Believe me, we had some interesting discussions about the topic "Couples should live together before they get married" - quite a different perspective from the one that's in North America right now) At the end of the two weeks we held a formal debate where I divided the students into two teams and randomly assigned them to the negative or affirmative side of the topic "Children with Mental Disabilities should be Fully Integrated into the School System". It felt so strange to give them their assignments for research and have them take off with it, no help needed from me! I was very proud at the end of it. It was also a rare pleasure to get to learn all of my students names.
The regular school year got into swing in March, with lots of changes underway. There was the usual circus of losing 1/3 of the teaching staff to mandatory reassignment and gain that many new teachers as well. In Korea, teachers must change school every 4 years to ensure that remote schools are staffed as equally well as schools in larger cities. Sounds great in theory, but it's a logistical nightmare: many families wind up with a mom or dad who lives in one city during the work week and travels home on the weekends. If both parents are teachers, often the children live with their grandparents. So we had lots of good-bye dinners and then lots of "welcome" dinners. My supervisor, Son Hwa-Ja, was reassigned, but thankfully another teacher I already know and who has excellent English was promoted to fill Hwa-Ja's place: Choi Young-Ju. Choi Hyun is still my main co-teacher, but she's a bit absent-minded and her English isn't great, so it's nice to have another person to go when there are questions or problems.
On top of the staff change up, I was ousted from my beautiful "English Zone" classroom which I had enjoyed so much last year. Mr. Jo, our progressive vice-pricipal, signed our school up for a pilot project introducing a western class schedule to Korean High Schools. The goal is to make the education more student-centered (as it is in the west), where students choose their schedule to fit what they want to study or pursue for a career, rather than the current Eastern teacher-based philosophy. Part of the change involves having teachers stay in one room and the students travel to different rooms based on the subject. Ironically, this changed occured for every Korean teacher, but went in reverse for me. The Korean English teachers now have their own homerooms, (including the English Zone, which is now Mr. Lee's Homeroom) and I travel from English classroom to English classroom depending on the class, carrying all my lesson supplies and handouts with me. Until the projectors were installed and working, I also had to recreate my powerpoint presentations on large poster paper and magnet them to the chalk boards!
As an incentive to schools to take on the new system, the government also gave approx. $2 000 000 in funding to schools for renovations and upgrades. Awesome stuff, except that our renovations weren't finished on time, so for the first two weeks of school I had no office or desk to work at. I usually sat in an empty teacher's conference room, freezing my butt off. (BTW, March was unseasonably cold for Korea this year, we had snow on March 10th and temperatures frequently dipped below freezing at night. Now you may think, "Why Lisa, aren't you a tough Canadian girl? A few degrees below zero is nothing!" but you would be an ignorant Canadian who takes your insulated/CLOSED doors and windows and effeciant furnace for granted)The lack of desk also meant I had to carry all of my materials with me everywhere, as I had no where to store them. So I brought a backpack to school everyday full of my resources. Thankfully, soon a desk was provided for me. Unfortunately, my office is a completely different building from all my classes, so I'm still lugging alot of stuff around with me during the day.
Oh well, having adjusted to all the changes now, the semester seems to be going just fine. It's hard to believe I'm already on to the 7th week. April 1st was the beginning of my last 6 months in Korea, time sure is flying. Lots of fun stuff has been going on socially, but in an effort to keep these entries short and more readable, I leave it here. I tell you about my rocking social life, and more about Malaysia, soon. Honest!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Rickety Train Ride to White Water Rafting Site
AA, SB and I on our way to the white water rafting site on the Padas river in Sabah Borneo January 2010. The river is muddy and swollen from the rains the day before. As the train ride continued, the river became choppier and choppier...
Monday, March 1, 2010
Bursting with Pride for my Country!
It's a well known fact that Lisa does not do early morning wake-ups cheerfully. Whenever possible, she does not do them AT ALL. But this morning was different. This morning Lisa felt excitement akin to the anticipation a 6-year old feels on Christmas Eve, as the alarm clock began clanging away at 4:45AM. Today, the Canadian Men's Olympic Hockey Team was facing off against the USA in the gold medal match. To be more specific, facing the US team again, after losing once already and fighting hard to make it back into the final game. And I was determined to watch, cringe and cheer with everyone else back home, regardless of whether or not the sun was up. So donning my Canada hoodie (which I bought in a moment of "I'm already homesick" at Pearson airport before returning to South Korea) over my pj's I headed to AA's apartment to watch the historic game. And, well, you know how it ends.
Is it just me, or was there something about these Olympic games that felt almost magical? Even from way over in South Korea, I could feel the buzz, feel the momentum building through out the last two weeks. Not just around the hockey teams, but all the games' events. Our nation was knitting together much closer than our geography would seem to allow. Unable to watch most of the events live to do the time change and Korea's Sports News channels insistence on replaying their speed skating and figure skating triumphs ad nauseum, I had to follow most of the excitement through internet reports from CBC and various status updates on Facebook. Even so, I definitely caught Olympic fever, the Canadian strain, and it's major symptoms: glowing heart, American-like Patriotism (the kind where you really do feel your country is better than everybody else's) and homesickness.
I found myself saying on more than one occasion, "How on earth did I manage to NOT be in Canada when we are hosting the Olympics?" as if those all the very rational and responsible reasons I came back to Korea for a second tour of duty no longer mattered. Talking with friends and family back home, you could hear the excitement and pride in their voices as we discussed our skyrocketing, record-breaking gold medal count and the big opportunities ahead to claim more hardware. Growing up, I remember always feeling alittle sad that our country's medal count usually kept us in the top 20, but not often in the top ten. It was often argued that for our small population size and the low amount of investment/sponsorship our athletes were recieving, any stop at the podium was a big victory. And now, finally, thanks to the "Own the Podium" iniative, our athletes finally got to really shine and on home turf too!
The Men's Gold Medal Victory match was the only portion of the games that I watched live, thanks to an online feed from an Australian sports channel. I'll have to satisfy myself with pictures of the opening and closing ceremonies, and perhaps, in a few months when the networks ease up on the copyright infringment, watch a few of the highlights on Youtube. Even so, in my tiny apartment in South Korea, I feel hugely, proudly Canadian and I'm celebrating with you all in spirit. See you in 7 months Canada!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sabah, So Good!
Selemat Petang! Wow - time flies! Already so far behind in the blogging!
I'll try to update you as best I can on how we spent the last few days we had in Sabah, the eastern province of Borneo, Malaysia. I'll save the recent excursion to Miri & Mulu National Park for the next entry.
Our second full day in Borneo was a full day indeed. Because of the wet weather (see previous entry) we decided to for-go a two day hike up Mt. Kinabalu and opted for the less exciting, but convenient day trip offered by most of the tourist operators in the area. The tour took us, a middle-aged Japanese man, and a family from India with two adorable little ones in a groaning minivan up into the Kinabalu mountains (and the clouds) before going into the park's Botanical gardens for an informative introduction to rain forest flora. After which we enjoyed a tasty Malaysian lunch before driving to the Poring Hot Springs for a fantastic walk through the rain forest canopy via a suspended walkway. Then AA, SB and I took a dip in the hot spring tubs. By mid-afternoon the rain had moved into the mountains and we spent most of the 1.5 hour drive home slowly winding along the mountain roads covered by clouds. When we arrived back in the city, we hit up an Italian restaurant across the street from our hostel for some fantastic thin-crust pizza (I'm on a vacation from Korean food, not Canadian, after all).
The next day was the big highlight of our short time in Sabah. We were pick up early by Mini-van and drove 3 hours through the stunning countryside to the tiny town of Tenom, where we got on an old rickety train to get to the launch point for white water rafting on the Padas river! The course boasts level III and IV rapids, but thanks to all the rain the day before, the guides advised us that we would actually be navigating level IV and V rapids instead. In the minivan, the only folks who appeared to be rafting were the three of us and Ronnie, our guide. The other men in the van were simply catching a ride to Beaufort en route. However, when we arrived at the train station in Tenom we were joined by 40 Brunei soldiers on an Adventure Training course (a break from their usual boot camp routine). Needless to say, we were a popular addition to the group. The muddy Padas river was all riled up from the rain and after some brief safety instruction and strapping into our jackets and helmets, we hit the river. It was the most exciting, heart-pounding experience of my life. Our raft capsized once in a really tough section of rapid, only Ronnie managed to stay in the boat. Most of my raft members resurfaced close to raft and scrambled back inside quickly. However me and one of the soldiers found ourselves quickly being swept down river away from the boats, struggling to hang on to our paddles and figure out which direction our boat was in. We followed Ronnie's urgent advice to swim right toward the bank and it wasn't long before we were back in the boat and back in business. We rafted for about an hour and a half before stopping in a (relatively) calm stretch for lunch at a stilt-home of faded clapboard. Toddlers chased puppies and chickens around the grounds while we chowed down on some delicious home-made Malay food. It was exactly the break (and fuel) we needed before we went back out on the river to finish the course. Our second time round, our team seemed to hit our stride, navigating the rapids with more confidence and grace than the first time round. Near the end of the course, the river calmed significantly and we were able to hop into the river for swimming/body rafting. I climbed out of the raft onto the bank thoroughly soaked on rubbery legs and feeling elated.
(I'm sorry, I have to interrupt the narrative here for a moment: Korea has been following me everywhere on this trip! K-pop has just started blaring in this cyber cafe - the group 2NE1 for those of you who know who that is, if you don't just Youtube 'em - which reminds me that I forgot to tell you about the 100 or so Korean tourists who managed to find us on Mamutik island. They were impossible to miss - all wearing matching baby pink polo shirts and big sun-visors and staying far away from the beach. Oh gawd, why? Instead they blared bad Korean music, Noraebonged and played coordinated group clapping/towel waving games on a green space near the public toilets...oh Korea, if you're going to follow me all the way to a beach in frikkin' Malaysia, at least try to enjoy it! We've also met folks from Korea at nearly every stop - though thankfully they are the more adventurous type!)
Anyways, we all made it out of the river alive, feeling fantastic. We had another rocking, rickety train ride to Beaufort I believe and then a shorter ride back to KK. One of the guides of the trip, Angelo, rode with us and AA and I really enjoyed chatting with him about his rafting experiences, and some Sabah environmental and political issues.
Arriving back in KK, we debated about heading out to see some of the nightlife (which would include partying with those Brunei soldiers, a few happened to be staying at the same Hostel as us) or getting up real early to catch the ferry to Brunei. We wound up doing neither. The plan to go to Brunei got kaiboshed when I did a little online research around 1am and found it really difficult to find availability to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, a fly-in only location which we were really looking forward too. We decided it would be better to stay in KK at least one more day and get that part of the trip sorted out, rather than delay booking it and miss the opportunity. So we weighed our options, talked to a few airlines and managed to get some flights but they meant taking a flight to Miri in Sarawalk that night. So we're skipping Brunei this time. To be honest, we were mostly going for the stamps in our passports and since Brunei is quite a bit more expensive than the rest of Borneo, we felt it was better to spend that cash in Sarawak where we would get the most out of it. After all the tickets were bought, it was still only lunch time, so we grabbed some grub and our bathing suits and hopped on a speedboat to Sapi Island, another island part of the same park as Mamutik. This island had much better snorkelling and assortments of fish! I still had the bottle of fish food (re: breadcrumbs) from Mamutik and had blast starting a literal feeding frenzy around me in the bright teal water. (You'll love the video, once I get it posted!) Amanda and I took a short hike through the interior of the island to the other side, where we enjoyed a fantastic view of the sea stretching out to the horizon. Then we headed down to the abandoned beaches of the island accessible by hiking trail, but not by boats. We found several fresh monitor lizard tracks in the sand. And a few hops and scrambles-over-rocks later, we found 3 of those giants slowly lumbering across the sand. Two of them quickly slipped behind some rocks and into the forest (I'm sure they'd heard us coming a mile away), but a slowpoke patiently waited in the sand for us to go by (we had to go waist deep into the water to give him his space, we didn't feel like testing how aggressive monitor lizards are). We caught our speedboat back to the jetty at 5 pm, enjoyed a dinner of delicious Arabic food on the wharf and finally got to watch a spectacular KK sunset, which all our guidebooks had raved about, but we'd seemed to miss every night so far. As the brilliant golds and oranges began to fade into magenta and purple hues we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
As our plane lifted off, I felt reluctant to go. I know that Sabah has so much more to offer, so much to see and do that we simply couldn't get to because of time and budget constraints. It's definitely on my list of places to return to. Kota Kinabalu turned out to be a great base-camp for our day-trip excursions and a good introduction to Malaysia, a great place to get our feet wet (Literally and figuratively). At the same time, I was so eager to get to Miri and head on to Mulu National Park - we had seen so little of the Borneo rain forest, soon we would be flying into the heart of it!
I'll try to update you as best I can on how we spent the last few days we had in Sabah, the eastern province of Borneo, Malaysia. I'll save the recent excursion to Miri & Mulu National Park for the next entry.
Our second full day in Borneo was a full day indeed. Because of the wet weather (see previous entry) we decided to for-go a two day hike up Mt. Kinabalu and opted for the less exciting, but convenient day trip offered by most of the tourist operators in the area. The tour took us, a middle-aged Japanese man, and a family from India with two adorable little ones in a groaning minivan up into the Kinabalu mountains (and the clouds) before going into the park's Botanical gardens for an informative introduction to rain forest flora. After which we enjoyed a tasty Malaysian lunch before driving to the Poring Hot Springs for a fantastic walk through the rain forest canopy via a suspended walkway. Then AA, SB and I took a dip in the hot spring tubs. By mid-afternoon the rain had moved into the mountains and we spent most of the 1.5 hour drive home slowly winding along the mountain roads covered by clouds. When we arrived back in the city, we hit up an Italian restaurant across the street from our hostel for some fantastic thin-crust pizza (I'm on a vacation from Korean food, not Canadian, after all).
The next day was the big highlight of our short time in Sabah. We were pick up early by Mini-van and drove 3 hours through the stunning countryside to the tiny town of Tenom, where we got on an old rickety train to get to the launch point for white water rafting on the Padas river! The course boasts level III and IV rapids, but thanks to all the rain the day before, the guides advised us that we would actually be navigating level IV and V rapids instead. In the minivan, the only folks who appeared to be rafting were the three of us and Ronnie, our guide. The other men in the van were simply catching a ride to Beaufort en route. However, when we arrived at the train station in Tenom we were joined by 40 Brunei soldiers on an Adventure Training course (a break from their usual boot camp routine). Needless to say, we were a popular addition to the group. The muddy Padas river was all riled up from the rain and after some brief safety instruction and strapping into our jackets and helmets, we hit the river. It was the most exciting, heart-pounding experience of my life. Our raft capsized once in a really tough section of rapid, only Ronnie managed to stay in the boat. Most of my raft members resurfaced close to raft and scrambled back inside quickly. However me and one of the soldiers found ourselves quickly being swept down river away from the boats, struggling to hang on to our paddles and figure out which direction our boat was in. We followed Ronnie's urgent advice to swim right toward the bank and it wasn't long before we were back in the boat and back in business. We rafted for about an hour and a half before stopping in a (relatively) calm stretch for lunch at a stilt-home of faded clapboard. Toddlers chased puppies and chickens around the grounds while we chowed down on some delicious home-made Malay food. It was exactly the break (and fuel) we needed before we went back out on the river to finish the course. Our second time round, our team seemed to hit our stride, navigating the rapids with more confidence and grace than the first time round. Near the end of the course, the river calmed significantly and we were able to hop into the river for swimming/body rafting. I climbed out of the raft onto the bank thoroughly soaked on rubbery legs and feeling elated.
(I'm sorry, I have to interrupt the narrative here for a moment: Korea has been following me everywhere on this trip! K-pop has just started blaring in this cyber cafe - the group 2NE1 for those of you who know who that is, if you don't just Youtube 'em - which reminds me that I forgot to tell you about the 100 or so Korean tourists who managed to find us on Mamutik island. They were impossible to miss - all wearing matching baby pink polo shirts and big sun-visors and staying far away from the beach. Oh gawd, why? Instead they blared bad Korean music, Noraebonged and played coordinated group clapping/towel waving games on a green space near the public toilets...oh Korea, if you're going to follow me all the way to a beach in frikkin' Malaysia, at least try to enjoy it! We've also met folks from Korea at nearly every stop - though thankfully they are the more adventurous type!)
Anyways, we all made it out of the river alive, feeling fantastic. We had another rocking, rickety train ride to Beaufort I believe and then a shorter ride back to KK. One of the guides of the trip, Angelo, rode with us and AA and I really enjoyed chatting with him about his rafting experiences, and some Sabah environmental and political issues.
Arriving back in KK, we debated about heading out to see some of the nightlife (which would include partying with those Brunei soldiers, a few happened to be staying at the same Hostel as us) or getting up real early to catch the ferry to Brunei. We wound up doing neither. The plan to go to Brunei got kaiboshed when I did a little online research around 1am and found it really difficult to find availability to Mulu National Park in Sarawak, a fly-in only location which we were really looking forward too. We decided it would be better to stay in KK at least one more day and get that part of the trip sorted out, rather than delay booking it and miss the opportunity. So we weighed our options, talked to a few airlines and managed to get some flights but they meant taking a flight to Miri in Sarawalk that night. So we're skipping Brunei this time. To be honest, we were mostly going for the stamps in our passports and since Brunei is quite a bit more expensive than the rest of Borneo, we felt it was better to spend that cash in Sarawak where we would get the most out of it. After all the tickets were bought, it was still only lunch time, so we grabbed some grub and our bathing suits and hopped on a speedboat to Sapi Island, another island part of the same park as Mamutik. This island had much better snorkelling and assortments of fish! I still had the bottle of fish food (re: breadcrumbs) from Mamutik and had blast starting a literal feeding frenzy around me in the bright teal water. (You'll love the video, once I get it posted!) Amanda and I took a short hike through the interior of the island to the other side, where we enjoyed a fantastic view of the sea stretching out to the horizon. Then we headed down to the abandoned beaches of the island accessible by hiking trail, but not by boats. We found several fresh monitor lizard tracks in the sand. And a few hops and scrambles-over-rocks later, we found 3 of those giants slowly lumbering across the sand. Two of them quickly slipped behind some rocks and into the forest (I'm sure they'd heard us coming a mile away), but a slowpoke patiently waited in the sand for us to go by (we had to go waist deep into the water to give him his space, we didn't feel like testing how aggressive monitor lizards are). We caught our speedboat back to the jetty at 5 pm, enjoyed a dinner of delicious Arabic food on the wharf and finally got to watch a spectacular KK sunset, which all our guidebooks had raved about, but we'd seemed to miss every night so far. As the brilliant golds and oranges began to fade into magenta and purple hues we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the airport.
As our plane lifted off, I felt reluctant to go. I know that Sabah has so much more to offer, so much to see and do that we simply couldn't get to because of time and budget constraints. It's definitely on my list of places to return to. Kota Kinabalu turned out to be a great base-camp for our day-trip excursions and a good introduction to Malaysia, a great place to get our feet wet (Literally and figuratively). At the same time, I was so eager to get to Miri and head on to Mulu National Park - we had seen so little of the Borneo rain forest, soon we would be flying into the heart of it!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Coming at Ya from Borneo Malaysia!!!
Hey All - I guess I spoiled the surprise, but I'm writing to you from Malaysia!!! Yesterday we (Amanda A, hereafter AA, and Shari B, hereafter SB) flew from Seoul to Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the Sabah province of Borneo Malaysia. The plan is to travel west from here through Brunei and the Malaysian province of Sarawak, then hop on a boat or a plan to Singapore and explore some of Peninsular Malaysia. Well that's the first 3 weeks. I'm splitting off from the girls in Kuala Lampur to fly to Chiang Mai Thailand, for a week at Elephant Nature Park (you may recall me gushing about this place last year).
Now I realize that my last entry ended in November. I've decided I'm not going to write up a huge thing about December/New Years. One of my goals for the New Year was to update this blog more frequently, therefore have shorter entries, easier for ya to digest. A comment I just had from my mom confirms this as a good idea. Here's the highlights from the end of 2009:
- weekend Christmas shopping in Seoul (ate 2.5 feet of subway sandwiches while there, I'm not ashamed!)
- finals at school + Christmas holidays coming up = lots of watching "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" and singing carols in the classroom
- had a REAL turkey dinner at Jodie and Stephen's place with a few friends, soo soo good!
- Skyped with family back home
- toured around SK with my friend Mike (who was visiting all the way from San Francisco!), showed around Gwangju, Suncheon and Seoul. We went up Namsan Tower (the Seoul equivalent of the CN Tower) and did a temple stay at HwaGaeSa.
- Snowball fight with Zen Master and 3:00 AM meditations at HwaGaesa
- 5 days of "Additional In-Service Teacher Training" at Seoul's NIIEC centre
- Desking warmingin a cold teachers office (but you've heard my take on that!)
Here's the pics from it all, they tell the story better than I do anways. December
Also, here's some pics of me teaching (as you requested Uncle Mel!), a cornucopia of hilarious Korean signs/stuff, and the outcome of a funny student assignment. Enjoy
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...
Ok, so landed in Kota Kinabalu around 3:45pm local time. Getting off the plane, the humidity and sweet smell hit me immediately. My guidebook gave us a good tip on looking for 'minibusses' (ie. minivans) to get into town for 2 Ringgit (60 cents) rather than taking a private taxi from the airport for 30 Ringgit ($10), so we hopped in one going the right direction. One of the passengers was a friendly local who helped us get on the correct city bus to get to the heart of downtown KK, where we could walk to our hostel. Everyone here is really friendly, and in a sincere way (as opposed to the "Friendly" people in Thailand who were happily trying to con you). We're sticking to a budget this trip, so we're staying in a dorm-style room with bunkbeds for 10 people and only fans, no air-conditioning. No privacy, but you meet lots of backpackers from all over. After checking into our hotel and changing out of our winter layers (because it was -5 when we left Seoul), we deided to hit the waterfront nightmarket for some local food for dinner. We ate fried noodles w/ chicken and veggies for $1/plate and drank ABC Miah's, the wierdest thing I've ever tried to suck through a straw. Ingredients included canned corn, condensed milk, grenadine, chopped nuts and some green stuff soaked in syrup for good measure. Shari and I also tried some mystery meat - the vendor told us it was pork, so our best guess is that we ate sections of pig tail. We wandered through the craft market and the fruit market in the hot rain. I tried two new tropical fruits: Mangosteen (very sweet and strange looking) and Duku-langsat(which is like a big grape except that you peel it and the inside comes out in sections like a citrus fruit). We loaded up with fruit to eat for breakfast the next day and made our way back to the hostel. I was exhausted - the trip had started at 10:00pm in Suncheon to catch a midnight bus from Gwangju to Seoul and then get on a Plane at a 11:00am. I'm a light sleeper so I really didn't get much if any sleep on the bus or plane. I decided to hit the showers (a good way to keep cool at night is sleep with your hair wet after all. When I got in, a little pink gecko clambered up the wall away from me. I kept my eye on him as I soaped up, and good thing I did. The little bugger climbed until he hit the ceiling and then started making his way across the ceiling directly above me. He lost his grip right above me, naturally. He landed with a loud splat at my feet. I very gracefully squealed and huddled against the door. We stared at eachother dumbfounded for a moment. Then he spotted the exit, which I just happend to be blocking. I squealed again and hopped to the opposite side of the shower as he scooted out under the door.
Today we headed to Mamutik island by speedboat from KK harbour. We thought we would get rained out, but those ugly storm clouds stayed near the mainland and we got to enjoy some swimming and snorkelling (though, as can be expected in a public swimming area, almost all the coral was dead from being stepped on), Tom Yam Soup for lunch (spicy tomato and herb soup with veggies and chicken) and happened upon a HUGE monitor lizard lounging on the rocks. No seriously, HUGE. HUUUUGGGGGGEEEE! We thought at first he was Komodo dragon. Yeah, that big.
I just finished a big dinner at the food court of a big shopping complex and am heading back to the hostel to relax for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we going to Mt Kinabalu park to do alittle touring of the area (the wet weather makes any serious climbing too much trouble for us) and check out the poring hot springs! I'll let you know how it goes. I cannot WAIT to get into that beautiful jungle that is just pressing itself up against the city. Cross your fingers for me that the rain stays away!!!
Now I realize that my last entry ended in November. I've decided I'm not going to write up a huge thing about December/New Years. One of my goals for the New Year was to update this blog more frequently, therefore have shorter entries, easier for ya to digest. A comment I just had from my mom confirms this as a good idea. Here's the highlights from the end of 2009:
- weekend Christmas shopping in Seoul (ate 2.5 feet of subway sandwiches while there, I'm not ashamed!)
- finals at school + Christmas holidays coming up = lots of watching "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" and singing carols in the classroom
- had a REAL turkey dinner at Jodie and Stephen's place with a few friends, soo soo good!
- Skyped with family back home
- toured around SK with my friend Mike (who was visiting all the way from San Francisco!), showed around Gwangju, Suncheon and Seoul. We went up Namsan Tower (the Seoul equivalent of the CN Tower) and did a temple stay at HwaGaeSa.
- Snowball fight with Zen Master and 3:00 AM meditations at HwaGaesa
- 5 days of "Additional In-Service Teacher Training" at Seoul's NIIEC centre
- Desking warmingin a cold teachers office (but you've heard my take on that!)
Here's the pics from it all, they tell the story better than I do anways. December
Also, here's some pics of me teaching (as you requested Uncle Mel!), a cornucopia of hilarious Korean signs/stuff, and the outcome of a funny student assignment. Enjoy
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming...
Ok, so landed in Kota Kinabalu around 3:45pm local time. Getting off the plane, the humidity and sweet smell hit me immediately. My guidebook gave us a good tip on looking for 'minibusses' (ie. minivans) to get into town for 2 Ringgit (60 cents) rather than taking a private taxi from the airport for 30 Ringgit ($10), so we hopped in one going the right direction. One of the passengers was a friendly local who helped us get on the correct city bus to get to the heart of downtown KK, where we could walk to our hostel. Everyone here is really friendly, and in a sincere way (as opposed to the "Friendly" people in Thailand who were happily trying to con you). We're sticking to a budget this trip, so we're staying in a dorm-style room with bunkbeds for 10 people and only fans, no air-conditioning. No privacy, but you meet lots of backpackers from all over. After checking into our hotel and changing out of our winter layers (because it was -5 when we left Seoul), we deided to hit the waterfront nightmarket for some local food for dinner. We ate fried noodles w/ chicken and veggies for $1/plate and drank ABC Miah's, the wierdest thing I've ever tried to suck through a straw. Ingredients included canned corn, condensed milk, grenadine, chopped nuts and some green stuff soaked in syrup for good measure. Shari and I also tried some mystery meat - the vendor told us it was pork, so our best guess is that we ate sections of pig tail. We wandered through the craft market and the fruit market in the hot rain. I tried two new tropical fruits: Mangosteen (very sweet and strange looking) and Duku-langsat(which is like a big grape except that you peel it and the inside comes out in sections like a citrus fruit). We loaded up with fruit to eat for breakfast the next day and made our way back to the hostel. I was exhausted - the trip had started at 10:00pm in Suncheon to catch a midnight bus from Gwangju to Seoul and then get on a Plane at a 11:00am. I'm a light sleeper so I really didn't get much if any sleep on the bus or plane. I decided to hit the showers (a good way to keep cool at night is sleep with your hair wet after all. When I got in, a little pink gecko clambered up the wall away from me. I kept my eye on him as I soaped up, and good thing I did. The little bugger climbed until he hit the ceiling and then started making his way across the ceiling directly above me. He lost his grip right above me, naturally. He landed with a loud splat at my feet. I very gracefully squealed and huddled against the door. We stared at eachother dumbfounded for a moment. Then he spotted the exit, which I just happend to be blocking. I squealed again and hopped to the opposite side of the shower as he scooted out under the door.
Today we headed to Mamutik island by speedboat from KK harbour. We thought we would get rained out, but those ugly storm clouds stayed near the mainland and we got to enjoy some swimming and snorkelling (though, as can be expected in a public swimming area, almost all the coral was dead from being stepped on), Tom Yam Soup for lunch (spicy tomato and herb soup with veggies and chicken) and happened upon a HUGE monitor lizard lounging on the rocks. No seriously, HUGE. HUUUUGGGGGGEEEE! We thought at first he was Komodo dragon. Yeah, that big.
I just finished a big dinner at the food court of a big shopping complex and am heading back to the hostel to relax for the rest of the night. Tomorrow we going to Mt Kinabalu park to do alittle touring of the area (the wet weather makes any serious climbing too much trouble for us) and check out the poring hot springs! I'll let you know how it goes. I cannot WAIT to get into that beautiful jungle that is just pressing itself up against the city. Cross your fingers for me that the rain stays away!!!
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