A day on the town with the new camera

To Korea, down to Thailand, now back to Korea.

That's what I've been up to the past couple months. On January 3rd I indefinitely departed the United States to teach in Korea, first at an intensive camp, then starting in March at an Elementary school in Busan. But to make this happen legally, (Korea like's to make things difficult) I had to get a new working Visa, so i made a last minute trip to Thailand.

It has been an interesting, fun, and sometimes stressful last couple months. I have learned alot met a bunch of cool people. here are some highlights.

• Teaching at English Camp On Jeju island.../yelling at middle schoolers for a month. I had never taught before, but 3 days after landing in Korea I was handed some books and told to get up there and figure it out. I taught for 5-9 hours a day for a 3+ weeks with 1 day off. We made English plays, went on field trips, played soccer, had spelling bees and all the other things that kids do. It was a ton of work, especially for someone who hadn't worked a day in 14 months.

• The best part of the camp was all the other teachers I met. We all got along really well, and most of them had been in teaching in Korea for a while. So they gave me lots of teaching tips, and were also my tour guides around town. Me, the novice, with no spoken Korean skills could rely on them to find the bar or get the taxi back to our school.

• When we weren't too exhausted from teaching we either played 2 on 2 basketball or got our drink on down in town. I learned so much about the local drinking customs, ( I may cover this in the future.) and what you do after drinking...head to the closest noraebong and sing your brains out. Each group gets their own room, so no need to worry about embarrassment.

• At the end of camp, came the payoff, literally. We all received an envelop of cash. No questions, no taxes, no problems. Also at the end of camp we rented a van and traveled around Jeju Island, which sits south of the mainland Peninsula. All I really remember is that it was really cold and windy for these 2 days. We ate lots of tasty Indian food and Korean BBQ and slept in.

• The next stop in my little adventure was Thailand. First to Bangkok to drop off my passport and proper documentation at the Korean Embassy in order to get my E2 visa, then the overnight bus boat combo to Koh Tao. A small island on the Pacific coast. I chose Koh Tao for a couple reasons. My friend Marc, who I met while in Nepal was there doing some free diving, and I wanted to visit a nice, relaxed place and not jump around the whole country and be rushed. Plus I could get SCUBA diving certification.

• Koh Tao was a great choice, I was able to do everything I wanted. I learned how to breathe underwater, up to 18 meters. That's as far as my open water certificate allows. I saw a new world down there, bright corals, big, bright fish. And lots of little ones too. The rest of the time I chilled on the beach, snorkeled, ate cheap Thai food, drank Chang beer, watched sunsets, drank rum and cokes and generally partied it up.

• Then it was back to Bangkok for a little shopping and to pick up my passport.To the airport for my flight on Jinair. Which is a discount airline that flies Seoul-BKK once a day. I got a ticket 2 days ahead of time, during Chinese New year for 450$. I thought that was a steal, considering the circumstances, and all the other airlines wanted like $900. They had adequate service, as in food. There was no music, movies, TV and the stewardesses wore jeans and ball caps. But they were still cute, which is important!
  

Photos of the Day.

Here are a couple pictures from my trip to Nepal last year. And a couple reasons that I don't know if I will make it through my year contract in South Korea.

New Update: South Korea

Hey, for anyone browsing or just checking in. at the moment I am on Jeju Island In South Korea teaching English to little kids for a month. Then I am moving to Busan where I will be living for a year and doing some more teaching.

Ben

Festivals, beaches and madness in Cartegena

The past few days I have been up on the Caribbean coast in Cartegena. I was pleasently suprised to learn on my arrival that wednesday was the start of Carnival cartegena, a five day party building upto the crowning of Miss Colombia. There was a great energy in the air of this old Spanish colonial city as the reverly was building. Wednesdays festivities started with a parade of dancing groups, similar to what you would see in Rio for their carnival. Here in Cartegena they like to celebarte by cwowding the streets, drinking and spariying each other with foam and throwing colored powder on anyone within reach, especially a foreigners. It was great to finally arrive in a place where the party was just beginning. it seems over the past months I usually arrived a day or 2 after the party ended. Except for Holi in India, which is similar, with the powder throwing and heavy drinking.
The parade on day 1 was big, but the day 2 was twice the size, with floats of all the enhanced women vying for the prize of Miss Colombia. day 2 was fun, but a little scary, with mobs of teenagers running arouns with foam and powder attacking everyone. I actually thought it would have been nice to have a money belt to protect my camera. I have heard many stories of tourists geting robbed by groups. Their tactic is to spray you in the face with foam, so while you´re protecting yourself, they´ll stick their hands in your pockets and take anything they can get. After a few minutes in the chaos, I decided to retire to the top of the wall surrounding the city and take in the parade from safer distance.
After 2 days of partying I met up with my friends from salento and Medillin, Kevin, Simon, Chris and Regina and we headed out to a place called Playa Blanca, famous for its white sand beaches and clear water. It was fantastic. We slept in hammocks, relaxed, wandered the beach and just chilled out for 3 days. One bummer was I forgot to charge my camera and there´s no electricy on Playa Blanca , so didn´t get may pictures. saturday on Playa Blanca was amazing compared to Sunday. On saturday there are no tours, or atleast there weren´t any this week, as it is a holiday, so we had the whole place to ourselve more or less. When we walked down the beach to catch our boat back to Cartegena on Sunday, there must have been a thousdand people swimming and lounging. it looked more like a beach in Rio or Waikiki.
They were still partying in Cartegena when we returned, just as before, with a people covered in blue and white powder, and most people carrying bottle of rum. All of us weren´t as excited for the reverly as we were the first couple days.
I am now headed up for Tayrona National Park for some more beautifl coastal scenery and camping before I start my return journey back through Colombia.

Welcome to Colombia.

Hola Amigos! (I believe it´s compulsary to begin any blog post or email from a latin country with some sort of spanish greeting, even if it´s half of your total spanish vocabulary.)

You may be wondering why I decided to visit Colombia. A country supposedly filled with narco traffickers, kidnappers and FARC guerrillas. Well, these are the places I like to go. A little danger and adventure adds a little spice to the standard vacation. But actually Colombia has been breaking out of it´s old drug trafficking stereotype and becoming a traveler hotspot, and I wanted to get down here and check it out before it turns into the next Costa Rica. I have heard from friends and read online about what a gem this country is, and from my first week I can concur with all the general opinion that this a fantastic place to visit.

My trip started out in Bogota, the obligitory landing spot. I arrived on a holiday, when everything was closed for 2 days and all the other people at the hostel were recoving from the Halloween festivities. The hostel I stayed at seemed to be quite the party place. some guys has been there for 2 or 3 weeeks and seemed to be trying to see how many notches on the bed post they could rack up from the beautiful Bogata ladies. My craziest story happened when I accompanied a few fellas drom the hostel to a Tuesday night hotspot. After a few hours there I was ready to head back, I spotted a guy I recognized as he was hopping into a taxi and I joined home for a ride. After a few seconds the very drunk British guy asked the taxi driver if he could get him some coke...and not the soda. The taxi driver said it was no problem and drove down a little side street. I was like, Oh boy, we´re gonna get robbed for sure. The place we went was a little plaza full of 30 mariache band members, the taxi driver hopped out and returned 30 seconds later with a little baggy for a drunken British fella, who immediatly opened it up and began snorting, right in the taxi- We did make it home with no problems, but the driver charged us 3 times the normal rate, which I made the British fella pay for, since he seemed to have plenty of money.
The other couple days I just cruised around the city checking out some of the museums, including the police museum which has a bunch of info on how they tracked down Pablo Escobar in the early 90´s. Including his guns, motorcycle and clothing.

Next, I headed over to the coffee region in central Colombia, which was great. I stayed in this little town called Salento that is near the Cocora valley that has some amazing scenery of rolling green hills and an area of very tall wax palm trees. There are a couple photos of you scroll down. I arrived on the same day as about 10 other backpackers and we all stayed at the same place and did some hiking in the valley. but the highlight was playing the local game of Tejo. It is similar to horseshoes/washers/cornhole. How it works is you throw a metal disc onto a slanted board full of mud, in the middle you plave 2 little paper triangles full of gunpowder, that is placed on a metal ring. If you get a direct hit into the triangle there is an exlposion from the metal on metal contact with the gunpowder in the middle. it doesn´t happen very often, especially with the foreigners who had never played such a game. but once in a while we would get lucky and get the exposion we were looking for. The locals play on a court about 30 yards long and they hit the mud like 99% of the time. When we started playing our group was only hitting the mud about half the time on a court a third the length. But we improved steadily and by the end of the night I convinced some of my fellow players to move up to the big boy court, which was more fun and a little more dangerous, as some of our throws were liable to end up on another court. I think my experience of playing washers, bowling, cornhole and throwing rocks at signs while waiting for cars to pick me up while hichhiking helped tremedously and I was the winner of most of the games.

I departed salento with a few of my new friends and headed up to Medillin for a saturday night of partying in the city. We travelled north on the Panamerican highway, which was one of the most beautiful drives I´ve ever been on. The road was never flat and the views were amazing. Just non stop mountains and valleys. it reminded me of Costa Rica, expcet the valleys were deeper and the mountains higher, and the road smoother. I also came up with Colombia´s new tourism slogan. ¨Like Costa Rica, but with a tenth of the tourists and ten times the beauty.¨

We arrived in Medillin last night and sorted out our accomadation at the hostel, tehn heade up to one of the party areas where there must of ben about 40 bars in a 5 block radius. There was 6 of us, all teh same pople who I met in Salento. We decided that each person would pick a bar and we would go in fora drink. It ended up being a great night, full of beer, rum and the local drink, aguadiente. The last bar was the best, we were simultaneously dancing with some of the beautiful local girls while fights were breaking out at the bar and glass was being broken, this wasn´t in any ay related to our dancing with the girls though. We all ended up returning around 4 am. Great night.

photos...continued

Famous sculpture by Botero in Medillin
Kids in Medillin.
Farm in Salento.

Photos de Colombia

Playing Tejo in Salento. It is the national game, similar to horseshoes, except with a little gunpowder mixed in.
Trekking though Cocora Park.

A view of some very tall wax palm trees in Cocora.