December and January Update

My last post was somewhat cryptic. But for those of you that understand how to read it the message is clear. Anyways many changes and where to start…

December
My sister (an extremely infrequent blogger herself) visits for Christmas and New Years. Also one of my friends drops by on boxing day for new years as well. The month was good and bad as it was also the end of my public school teaching contract. I spent my last day saying goodbye to students and showing some pictures from Canada. My thanks again to my partner teacher who made the experience such a good one and who also taught me a lot about teaching.

The month finished with a trip to Beijing, it was amazing! Me, R, D, and B all went to the Harmony Hotel. We got to see the Great Wall of China and Tiennamin Square. I also got to try Peking Duck (which is delicious). The first day was marred by the vintage clothing store fiasco. Basically we spent the better part of the afternoon looking for that place on the reconmendation of a certain travel guidebook. A note to travels, do not always trust your travel guidebook! The city itself was surprisingly beautiful. We were fortunate to be there on clear days. The olympic stadium was also very impressive. We got a chance to do some haggling, I could’ve have gotten better prices but the fun is in the haggle itself. My general rule was after I got half off I would I buy the item. December ended with us trying to find some place to celebrate the new year.

January
This month started off quite strangely. We were turned away from most bars because it was late and crowded. Beijing didn’t really seem to take note of our calendar year. We did finally find a place with a bit of live music to hangout until 2008. There were a few other foreigners in our bar but we kept to ourselves for the most part. D left on the 2nd, due to my own schedule I had to leave her at Incheon about 5 hours before her flight. I did make it back to Daejeon by about 8:30am, so I got a quick change of clothes and went in to work to find out what I’d be teaching for intensives. So far it’s been pretty good. R left a few days later with a good sendoff from the Noraebong (4am 4am). We had our awkward goodbye (neither of us being particularly good at the art of farewell) and I was off to work and him to his home.

January is now almost half over and I’m on my own again. Me and some friends went to Taehan Beach yesterday and volunteered to do some cleanup of the oil spill. I have to say given the magnitude of the spill i was very surprised by how far they’ve come in a month. I was little selfishly disappointed as well because I was relishing the thought of getting good and dirty and doing some hard work again. But instead I just scrubbed a few rocks and checked out the beach which is still a beautiful place.