Saturday, February 23, 2013

Taiwan is for Lovers!


Well hey there, random facebook friends loyal readers!!  Look at me now-2 posts in one month!  You're welcome.

A few days after Christmas, my crew and I headed to Taipei, Taiwan for New Years. My cuz Brendan even made the trek from Cleveland to meet us, which was AWESOME!! After spending 5 days in Taipei, he came back to Seoul with us and hung here for about a week. My foot was kind of jacked up, but he was an explorer-extraordinaire and SERIOUSLY made the very best of his time here. Kudos, dear cousin!! Here are some highlights!

We befriended some super cool Taiwanese middle school kids and convinced them to do a sweet photo shoot! ^^



Penis pastry, anyone??


Yune's totally into me...



Wuv.  Twu wuv.



Pretty tame day on the streets in our neighborhood...




Jolly Brewery [one of many we visited...]


DONG 101
Lebron, you bastardo...taking over Taiwan, too!?
The MOST righteous beef noodle soup ever consummed...by me.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY we went to Hooters.




Bubbles, you never cease to amaze me!!


Happy New Year suckaaaas!
Our New Year's eve was the most amazingly gay night of my life.  ELyse and I wore fake eyelashes, so that was inspiring:

We ended up in a gay neigborhood with tons of bars, and a huge stage with drag performers and a dj allllll night.  There were sooooo many men...herds and herds!  We danced...like there was NO tomorrow.  We were pretty much the only women there, and definitely the only straight people.  It was...epic.  We started a RIGHTEOUS dance circle, which the gays LOVED (no surprise there).  AND THERE WERE GAY BADASS FIREWORKS!! The next day I felt like Tom Power after a wedding ("I think both my ankles are broken.")

All in all, Taipei was AWESOME.  Besides the rain every. single. day, we saw lots of cool sights and temples, ate awesome food, met some rad people and partied like it was 1999.  I can't wait for our nexy adventure!!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Essentially a Year in Review. By Accident.

Sup, sup, ya'll?? Blah blah blah, I suck at blogging.  But here I am again-I'm back, baby! #bowsgratuitously

So I'm sure you're all thinking the exact same thing: 'What's new pussycat?'  Besides Tom Jones' popularity skyrocketing at this very moment (you're WELCOME, TJ!) a lot has been - a - happenin over here in the far East.  It's currently Lunar New Year, which means very little to me OTHER THAN the fact that we don't have school tomorrow, so it's basically my new favorite holiday. ^^


Okay, so I'm just now realizing that I haven't blogged since our Japanese bike trip from Hades in September (although in all seriousness, it was a-mazing..)  Since then we celebrated a little ditty I like to call "Christmas".  Here is a saweet photo taken by my very talented hetero-life partner, Elyse.  Her dad dressed as Santa one day for a photo booth at school.



Ok now I have to ree-hee-HEAAAALLY back track.  Halloween at school!  Here's a little sampler platter:

 
 
Before THAT was Chuseok, which is like the Korean Thanksgiving.  The kiddos wear their traditional Korean clothes (Hanboks) and we play games and celebrate all day at school.  SO much fun! [Elyse came and visited my classroom in the morning, too!]
 


Arm Wrestling is NOOOO joke for Benny and Rex...
 

When the leaves change in the fall, Olympic Park is absolutely beauutiful, so Elyse and I spent a day taking pictures and basking in the beauty that mother nature so aptly bestowed on us. Was that a haiku?  It should be...
 
 
 

 
 

In October we also had a field day with our kinder and preschool kids at the park.  We are literally across the street from Olympic Park, and we had to take buses-hilarious!  Reminded me of when I took a bus to Dover school for Kindergarten.  I mean, I could seriously throw a rock and hit the school from our house...SAFETY FIRST, PEOPLE!!
 
 

 
 
Ok, I realize I'm still not caught up, BUT this was a start.  Next blog will be about Taiwan for New Year's Eve with cousin Brendo!!  I will write it in 6 months soon! Peace out, loyal readers!
 
Love you. Mean it. Click.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Friday, November 2, 2012

Japan or Bust! [AKA the time we broke our vaginas]

Oh my GOD I suck at blogging.  My apologies, my 4 readers! ^^  Sooooo, what's new?  I mean, riiiiight??  It has certainly been a hot minute.  Since my last post, the most eventful..uh..event was going on an INTENSE bike trip in Japan.  LET ME TELL YOUUUUUU, it was rough.  We didn't think we needed to do ANYTHING to prepare for this suicide mission  adventure, but boy were we wrong.  It was literally the hardest thing I have ever done in my ENTIRE life.  I was all, "I bike to school everyday, foolios", and "it'll probably be flat, and if we get tired, the bus can come and pick our asses up".  Not so.  SOoooooo not so.


Where to begin.  Well, it took us about 20 hours to make it to our destination: Tsushima Island, Japan.  We left after work on Friday night and took a night bus to the city on the Southern-most tip of Korea. This was supposed to take around 4 1/2 hours BUT it was a Korean holiday and all the peeps were gettin outta dodge, so it took us 8 1/2 hours.  On a bus.  Where yours truly of COURSE slept like a baby could not sleep.  PLUS these turds were boozing in the back and asked to stop LITERALLY 20 minutes in.  I almost went ham on them.  THENNNN, we stop at our 3rd reststop, and it seemed like it had been a while, so my friend Elyse asked what the holdup was.  The trip leader proceeded to shush her, point at the bus driver and say, "He's taking a nap".  A NAP!!  IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRIP HE WAS DRIVING!  I mean, that's his JOB!  I don't get to tell my Kinder kids to chillax for a while so I can rest ma peepers, do I?  Did I want him to fall asleep at the wheel, plummet off a cliff and kill us all?  No.  By all means, take a 15 minute nap to rejuvenate, right?  Here's the amazing part...we stopped for an hour and a half!!  Good GRIEF we could have made it in 7 hours without him pulling a Rip Van Winkle on us!

Ok, so we finally make it to Busan as the sun was rising, and we had to wait a few more hours before getting on the ferry.  First we had to rent our bikes (which were WAYYY better than we expected) and we obviously chugged a few beers on the boat, since it was 8:00am five o'clock somewhere.

Alright, now it's time to succinctify this shiz. We biked about 70 miles in three days, stayed in 2 traditional Japanese guesthouses, and camped at two different sights nestled in the mountains. OH YEAH, IT WAS ALL MOUNTAINS!!!!! I simply can't convey the difficulty in words. Everytime we made it to the top of a mountain (we had to walk our bikes up most of them) we had an amazing joyride down (at speeds that felt like 50mph). Elyse and I were constantly on the verge or mental and physical breakdowns, but we DID it!! 40 foreigners went on thsi trip, but my 4 friends and I were by ourselves for 95% of the 5 days. We were named the "outcast group". And it's not because we're fans of the American hip hop duo... OH, and a few people crashed their bikes at high speeds. One girl got 40 stitches on her face and had to go directly back to Korea. We saw her bloody bike. Eww.
 
Dude, where the eff are we going?  Hey look, more Japanese writing!




Cute towns around every turn!




Oh my god, you guys, nature is the BEST!




Rockin campsite part deux!




Sunset at the top of Mount Eboshi



DISSSgusting traditional guesthouse our last night in Japan.  Ew.

Beer vending machines, anyone??? ^^

The beer we enjoyed the morning before the ferry ride home(aka barf fest 2012)

Elyse and Yune were in heaven with all the sushi.


Delicious breakfast at our guesthouse.  Barf.


This is my new BFF, Yune.  <3


This was our traditional guesthouse.  Pretty fancy, ehh?



Our first campsite..fire made by yours truly!



Outcast Group Photo!!



These occasiona tunnels were my saving grace. 
They meant we could ride THROUGH the mountain instead of up it!


There were BILLIONS of man-eating spiders on this island.  I got stuck in like 15 webs...

Mount Eboshi!

 

 So the biking was insanely strenuous, our guesthouses were shitty, camping was freeeeeezing, and I felt like I was raped by a rhino after biking so long every day, AND YET, this trip was awesome.  It was such a feeling of accomplishment doing something I thought was IMPOSSIBLE. We also laughed allll week.  Can't complain about THAT! =]  There's so much more to tell, but goodness gracious this post is already so LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG.


Here's the ferry TO Tsushima Island.  Mostly barf-free.
When we boarded the ferry back to Korea, it was raining, and super windy.  Every person was handed a barfbag, and dramamine, but I didn't know exactly how bad it was going to be.  The hour and a half ferry ride took 3 1/2 hours, and it was BARF FEST 2012.  There were 20 foot waves crashing over the ferry, the boat was rocking so much, we were almost completely sideways at some points.  Oh yeah, and EVERYONE was barfing.  I'm talking, atleast 100 people blowing chunks on this small ferry boat.  Everywere I turned I saw someone hurling into their barf-bags and the poor crew folk were running all overrrr the boat trying to help people/redistribute barfbags.  Just walking was a feat on this boat!  Thank GODDDD, I somehow avoided barfing. (My method?  Eyemask, and earbuds blasting music.  I was pretended that the rocking was just my body dancing!  Hey, it worked!)  My friend Lauren was one of the fallen...sadly.  But she was a trooper!

We returned our bikes, and took the bus back to Seoul, arriving around midnight, with school in the morning.  WHEW!  What a trip...

Can't beer a beer on the top of a mountain! =]