work has been going pretty great. nothing to complain about. i feel like i have a good-great rapport with my students and know their levels well enough that i can truly help them. some classes are unforgettable, with the best students, while others literally bore me to tears. it makes me have a whole new appreciation for teachers. a friend of mine from college is now teaching at my school. it makes it nice to have someone to relate to and not 2 women twice my age as coworkers.
during september, the week of my birthday, we headed to the philippines. tom and i wanted to go to china, but there were visa problems. fyi - a visa into china costs everyone in the world $35. unless you are american, where it will cost you $180. absolutely ridiculous. granted, i dont know the visa requirements for the USA. i'm guessing they're pretty steep as well.
but the philippines ended up being perfect. it was truly the most beautiful place i've seen so far on earth. tom and i went for 6 days and stayed at Ticao Island Resort. our friends Courtney and Lisa came for a couple days at the beginning and end of the trip. Other than that, we were the only non-Filipino people that we came across outside of Manila. The island was beautiful and grandiose, but peaceful and calm. We did tons of snorkeling while we were there. I went SCUBA diving for the first time. Tom's an experienced diver, so he got to go on some really insane dives. he went diving with manta-rays. we went on a motorcycle ride across the island (which to me was the highlight of the trip) on my birthday. all in all, it was a fantastic vacation. better than bali in some ways. i will forever recommend people visit the philippines. [pictures coming soon-ish]
so now, we're planning our next trip. in november, tom and i are heading to japan for a 4 day weekend. it only takes 2 hours to fly to tokyo, so we should have plenty of time to see things. we're planning on staying in the budget-friendly "capsule hotels" where you sleep in the wall. i haven't really looked into a lot of stuff to do in tokyo, but i know there's a plethora of entertainment there. i just hope i can get my little fingers on some rockband or guitar hero or SOMETHING.
on that note, we found ourselves in one of the thousands of arcades in Daejeon last weekend. They have the typical shooting games, punching games, whack-a-mole, DDR (dance dance revolution, for all over the age of ancient. . . ), and a ridiculously super-mega hard version of the drums off of rockband. basically, it was a totally different game with the same concept as rockband. but it was hard. i kept trying and trying, on the easiest level, mind you. even though i hate playing drums on actual rockband, i was jonesing for some fake band play. so i sucked. then this korean 14 year old went after me, and took the time to bump it up to level 18 or something and schooled me in the ways of the drumstick master. i can never show my face in that dirty arcade again.
bonus - they had tekken.
only one night later, tom, a friend, and i went and got korean bbq at this place by their school. apparently i ate some kind of sick piggy, and didnt cook it long enough. i've had some kind of bacterial intestinal infection since. thus, i've been hating my life and eating lots of soup. the medicine they give you over here is sure to cure cancer. or contains kryptonite. not sure which. but it's pretty powerful stuff. i'm just happy i didnt have to get a shot. so here's hoping i don't feel like crapola for the weekend.
other important things worth mentioning:
- my best friend Tamara had a beautiful baby girl 2 weeks ago - Ellie Marie. and yours truly is the lucky godmother. Ellie will be receiving plenty of totally cool multicultural gifts from around the globe in these first few years of her life. and she's beautiful. and she's the closest thing to perfection that tamara has produced with the help of an OB. . . the other two are a close second.
- Tom will be finishing his contract in December and flying home on the 5. So that makes me a little sad, but it lets him have time to get things done in Syracuse. He should be visiting NOLA come march.
- my mom and dad will be returning from their trip to italy tomorrow. they were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. i'm so glad they got out of the country finally. also, i can't wait to hear about their experience. i can only imagine the situations they got themselves into with language barriers, and just the difficulties of dealing with a different culture all together. i'm sure they did fine, but overseas travel is never perfect. and almost always comical.
-i almost forgot. i FINALLY started korean classes. it's going great so far. i'm stoked.
well, i guess that's about it. i've been feeling quite homesick lately. i think it's just finally catching up with me. i'm just about to my 7 month mark though. 5 months seems like it will fly by. well, hopefully i'll remember to update more often. [writing isn't the hard part. posting pictures is the pain. ]
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