Hello everyone! I'm going to try to get this blog up and active again after a very long break. I have A LOT of catching up to do - even though I haven't posted anything here, I've been busy and seen a lot! I'm not sure how well that's going to work, or how fluid it will be, but I appreciate you sticking with me! Here's a quick re-cap of what I've done since writing last:
August-October 2010: backpacking in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore. Expect more details (or at least pictures) on this amazing, seven-week adventure soon! (I know that I made this trip a year ago, and I said then that I'd blog about it 'soon'...sorry. Also, this stuff obviously isn't so fresh in my mind anymore, so there might be more pictures than words. Maybe that's not a bad thing!)
October 2010: Happy homecoming! I was unemployed for all of three weeks, started off working 5-10 hours per week at the Lester Public Library of Vesper, and then life took off from there. After just a few months at home, I was working two part-time jobs, became interim director of the LPLV (an AMAZING job, so many good memories and experiences), and was playing piano for two churches every Sunday! I had honestly been prepared for several months of unemployment while I looked for something to do or waited for the next EPIK contract period to start, but I ended up with a job I loved that I could barely tear myself away from, met so many new and awesome people, reconnected with my family and old friends after over a year away, and generally had a crazy, awesome, profitable time. Despite the wonderful-ness...
August 2011: I packed it all up again and hit the road for a new adventure. Doing this was the most difficult decision I've ever made. I had such a great situation in Vesper, but there was also a nagging feeling that I just wasn't done traveling yet. My love for Korea, and particularly Jeju Island, has been well documented on this blog, and I decided that I couldn't pass up any opportunity that I might have to live there. It took awhile to get everything sorted out, but I was very stubborn on my application - the only way I was going through all the hassle of moving again was if I could live on Jeju. But it paid off - I was so happy in mid-July when I finally got that contract with "Jeju" written on it. As a friend pointed out, my Facebook profile picture for the last year and a half has been a shot of me on Jeju Island, taken on my first visit there back in spring 2010. It's fated!
Anyway, back to the timeline: On August 6th I said goodbye to my family and flew out from Chicago to Beijing. I was only there for a day and a half, meeting up with my tour group to visit.....NORTH KOREA! Yes, you read that correctly. I spent 10 amazing, strange days in the DPRK, long enough to have a few once-in-a-lifetime, nowhere-else-on-earth experiences, as well as become incredibly sick. North Korea deserves its own blog post, or several...coming soon!
We arrived back in Beijing on August 18th, and I switched gears to get ready to teach again. But since I've done the EPIK orientation before, they wouldn't let me come back a second time. I was actually really disappointed about this - it would have saved me some money (free room and board in Seoul, vs. hanging out in Beijing on my own dime), and I could have met several hundred other teachers. Oh, well. I spent about six days in Beijing, mostly just relaxing and recovering from Pyongyang belly (which is the same as Beijing belly, or Bali belly, but slightly more sinister - this is North Korea, after all). It was my second stay in Beijing, so I'd already done the big famous touristy things. However, this city is gigantic - a metro area the size of Belgium, according to Lonely Planet - and there are hundreds of things to see and amazing foods to eat, when my stomach would cooperate. So I roused myself to do one touristy, sight-seeing thing each day, besides an amazing camping trip on the Great Wall! Again, all this stuff will have its own post in the near future.
For now....
Summer Library Program 2011, final prize party. The calm before the storm.
The storm.
My last day...awww. So, so sweet!
