Sinbi Muay Thai & Phuket

I arrived yesterday at night jet lagged and tired. But luckily I had a taxi driver waiting for me at the airport. Turns out he also teaches at the gym.

As soon as we get to the gym I see there are foreigners sitting outside and talking. After dropping off my luggage I go and join them. They are really friendly and not at all what I expected this to be like. They were tough to be sure but also very welcoming and inviting.

I was really hungry and thirst, so Nathan (UK guy) motorbiked me to the nearest 711 where I got some water. And my roommate Jordan (US girl) got me some left over pizza.

This morning I saw them again and got my own motorbike. The training schedules are 7:30am-9:30am then 4:30-6:30pm. Since it was my first day and I was a bit sick I decided to just zip around the island on my motorbike. I got lost so many times to count. At one point I couldn't start up the bike, and we were pulled over by Thai cops to check for driver licenses, luckily I had mine mailed out to me weeks ago from Canada so I was fine. But my friend wasn't so lucky and had to pay a 500bht fine.But in the end it all worked out and now I am back at the gym waiting to snap some good photos when afternoon training starts. I think I will join the morning training tomorrow.

Oh did I mention I went to the beach? This beach is fucking amazing to say the least. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far and the best part is that it is only a 10 minute motor bike ride away from the gym.

Peace out from Phuket!

Thailand here we come, first stop Malayasia

So it is 5:30pm Malaysia local time.

Last night my girl drove me to the bus terminal and we had a really sad goodbye. I got the Incheon airport around 6am and checked it. But turns out I didn't buy enough luggage allowance - I only bought 25kg and I had over 40kg. This meant a lot of throwing away. Most of my clothes are gone now.

The flight itself wasn't so bad. AirAsia is definitely a budget airline based on the leg room you receive.

I arrived in Malayasia my connecting flight destination and now am waiting for the next flight directly into Phuket which is at 8:30pm. Luckily I made a friend with a girl who was sitting beside me on the flight so now I have some company for the wait. Her name is Joanna and she is going to Australia to see her boyfriend. As luck would have it her flight is at 10pm, so I guess we are in the long haul together. Talks about long distance relationship keeps our conversation going :D

Peace out for now
From Malaysia.

Goodbye Korea (Friends edition)

I had my going away party with friends this past Saturday. We had some chicken and went to the beach to continue the party.

It was quite weird planning my own going away party. But at the same time it was good to see everyone one last time before I head out.

And it was weird because most of my friends don't know each other.

I am going to meet up with David and Weonsop tonight for dinner and head out tomorrow night to bus to Incheon and fly to Thailand.

Below are some pictures.

Peace out.

I love these kids

Today was my last day at school. Wow I never thought it would be this hard to leave them. Students kept coming up to me today to say goodbye and give me presents. My summer class/conversational class students made a custom cake for me. It was really good and yummy. And I got lots of presents. My favorite one so far was a picture of my summer class students and I during camp.

I almost cried at the end of the day, when my high class girl students started to sing for me :( Here is a video of part of it, they got shy once I started recording haha:

I also finally finished packing after sending two large packages back home of clothing.

Later tonight the new teacher Peter is going to move in and I am going to move into my friend Mark's apartment near Gwanan with the help of my Korean teacher: Jee Hye (she's driving me there yay!)

Peace

Socrates Cafe

Since about 6 month ago I started going to a Philosophy cafe discussion group. We meet up every weekend on Sundays at a Starbucks to talk about philosophical topics such as: "what is a family?", "what is the role of the government?", "what is wrong with boys wearing dresses?"

Its really cool and the people there are not pretentious like some of the philosophy discussions or major students I have found back home. I have learned a lot about various topics through these discussions.

I came for the last session today and to say goodbye to everyone.

Peace

Language Cast Busan

Around 9 month ago I started going to a language exchange party called Language Cast in Busan. It was really cool you can meet lots of people from many different countries and practice your Korean. Oh and did I mention there is a lot of hot chicks?

Anyways I always tried to speak Korean whenever I can and this party helped me a lot in terms of making new friends and practicing my Korean.

Wish I did a post about this sooner because I would have had more to say, but not its such a routine part of my life that I don't even think about it anymore. It is a given that Monday nights are Language Cast nights.


Below are some pictures from the meeting and my friends.

Peace

Beach Volleyball

The weather is getting colder and colder now in Busan. I have been playing beach volleyball ever since the beginning of summer. At my favorite place in Busan, Gwanan beach, there is a group of foreigners and Koreans who gather regularly for pickup volleyball. I was introduced first my my friends Richard and Monique who are now in Toronto. Ever since then I have been coming every weekend.

Here are some pictures of beach volleyball and a video that my friend mark made of our games.

I am the super tanned one in black shorts.

Peace.

Saying Goodbyes (School edition)

My last day at my school is on the 25th. So in typical Korean fashion I decided to get parting gifts for every teacher/administrator/staff in the school. There is a version of pocky in Korea called pepero. I gave all the teachers a box of that, and for my co-teachers I got them an extra big box along with a personalized letter. All in all it came to about 80 000W, which is about 1 days salary. But things like this should be done since the school has been so nice to me and its just common sense manners or 만나 as they call it in Korean (I hope I wrote that right)

Everyone was really happy and I think it raised my karma points by a lot. The next foreigner teacher will have the bar set high for him lols.



As for my students, last week in class I did a lesson plan explaining to them what I was going to be doing after Korea and why I was leaving. They had a worksheet which was a fill in the blanks exercise for a letter I wrote to them. Afterwards I had the high level classes write a letter to me since there was still time left. I had some really funny and touching ones which I stored all in a binder for souvenir. And some of them even made colorful letters in their spare time outside of class. I posted some of the letters down below.

In addition to the letters, this week I had a speaking test with all my classes and took individual pictures of my favorite students. So now I have like 200 pictures of middle school boys and girls stored on my computer. I really hope no one take this out of context lols. And I filmed some of my students as they did the test because they were so damn funny, here is the link:


Next week will be my official last week and the teachers who share my cubicle section is apparently planning a little farewell party for me :D More updates to come.

And it turned out I bought too much pepero so I gave some to my favorite students as well.

Update October 29th:

Here is the video of the cubicle party put on by my co-workers:

Here is the video of the party put on by my summer school/conversational class students:
They made a cake just for me with an edible picture of our summer class, and it was amazing!

The last period of the last day of my classes on the 25th, I had high level girl students. At the end of the class they started to sing a goodbye Korean song for me, I took out the camera too late and only got part of it but it was really touching and amazing, I am going to miss there little nigglets.

Here is the video of the girls singing:

Two of the trouble makers of the school cooked some traditional korean pancake and brought it to the teachers room, here is a video of them explaining it to me in English. They are so funny:

Peace

Medal from Bike Trip

Found a little nice present in the mail a couple of days ago. The delivery guy knocked on my door while I was cooking food, at first I was confused because I didn't order anything. But after a round of body language communication and broken Korean I figured out that he was saying the post office left something at the restaurant because I wasn't home.

And here it is in all its glory. I was so excited :D

Came in this box

Sexy wooden box

And a strap for hanging it

Certificate of awesomeness

The amazing medal for my accomplishments. This thing is heavy and has my name engraved in it as well as a wooden box for display and a certificate of authentication in velvet :D

BIFF and sneaking inside

The BIFF stands for Busan International Film Festival. Growing up in Toronto we had TIFF which is the Toronto International Film Festival. I never really got whats so exciting about these things, especially the red carpet opening. But my goal this year was to see and do as many new things as I can and so I readily agreed when my friend Steve invited me to go red carpet watching at the opening ceremony.

To be honest it was actually pretty fun. Running around with my new camera and trying to catch glimpses of famous people, most of whom I didn't even know. I feel like thats the same for most people there. I had an ajumma (old korean lady), ask me who Cecilia Cheung was :D

Speaking of which the most famous people we saw at the festival were Cecilia Cheung, and this Korean director that I forgot the name of.

After all the celebrities have left Steve and I decided to explore and by luck or skill we managed to sneak past the security guard. So we had free access to the BIFF opening day. We got to the rooftop of the building and could see everything that was happening at the premiere. And the other theaters inside were doing test runs of the movies that were going to be shown during the festival and so it was all empty so we got to sit in on some of them.

We almost got caught a couple of times , but by our quick feet we managed to elude capture. Sometimes we just pretended like we belonged there and no one questioned us - LIKE A BOSS.

All in all a really fun night that I will never forget.

Update: Now that the opening is over I am trying to get tickets to see some of the movies which are dirt cheap 6000W each ticket, which is about $5 Canadian - I love you BIFF! Some of the ones that stood out are:

Cold War, Argo, The Concubine, Nairobi Half Life, Doctor, Dangerous Liasons.

But because I work during the week, and lack of tickets I probably will only be able to see one or two of these at best. :(