Ok, let's try this blogging thing again...

October 15, 2010 from Busan, South Korea

I decided to try and start updating my blog again, hopefully this time it will last. Currently I am in Busan, South Korea visiting an old friend, Jenna Slesinski. Like me, she is an English teacher, so I decided it would be great to come here and see how the English classes are taught and how they differ from those in Taiwan. So far I LOVE it here, kinda makes me want to switch countries... but for now I think I should stay in Taiwan and see how the whole grad school thing goes. Right now I am on the last couple days of my 3 week long vacation, two weeks spent in the USA and about 5 days here in South Korea (I'll probably write more about South Korea once I get back to Taiwan).

I was VERY excited to get out of Asialand for a while and visit all my friend at home. It was nice to see my friends and hang out, but unfortunately a lot of my plans fell through. I just spent a lot of time at home and seeing my friends at home after they were done with work. I did have a nice fun weekend staying at my sister's place in Chicago though. Laura and James came up too and we went out and had a good time shopping and drinking. It was nice to visit but I don't think I will be moving back anytime soon, I'm actually quite excited to get back to Taiwan. I will leave South Korea Sunday afternoon to head back where I will start Chinese class and work again on Monday... back to the real world I guess.

First post from Taiwan~~

Friday July 17, 2009

I made it to Taipei alright. Emily and Laura were kind enough to drop me off at O'Hare and I arrived to Los Angeles with no problem. When I got there I found my friends Cala and Vicki who were going on the same flight as me to Taipei. We had a few hours so we just sat around until our plane left at 140 AM. The flight went very well, but it was a bit crowded. We arrived about 13 hours later in Taipei and I got a taxi to my new apartment.

Now when I first came into my new (temporary) place, I thought it was kinda small and dirty... but thats Asia for you I guess (TIA). My room is the size of a closet and my bed is a roll out mat... but at least there is AC!! Which I really am happy about since it feels like 117 every day with the humidity. Basically I sweat through my clothes within minutes of exiting my room (the rest of the apartment doesn't have AC... just the bedrooms)... the asians dont seem to sweat though, I don't know how they do it. Even when they are wearing jeans and three shirts and a sweater they don't sweat but I am soaked when I wear a tshirt and shorts... Well anyways it is now Friday and we arrived Monday... so what have we been doing since then? We have been walking A LOT. We walked just about all over Taipei and had a short day trip to visit Jiufen (<--- you can click on that to read more about it Mom and Dad) and thats about it. We are planning on a daytrip to Taizhong (<---- another link... see the color?) so I'll write about that later...

As for the job... I had an offer for another job at Uncle Sam's school to teach but it didn't work out in the end. But with the original company I was going to work for, I now have a meeting this Tuesday to discuss things... I'm not sure exactly what, but I'll write about it after.

The food is great and I'm glad to be back! Hopefully I'll start working soon though, but for now its nice to be able to spend the day seeing the sights that I didn't get to see last time I was here. .. I'll get some pictures up soooooooonish

Oh yeah... and there was an earthquake my first night here.. here is a link with info about it
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009jabu.php

It happened about 83 miles from Taipei where I am so it wasn't super strong but it did wake me up because all the doors to my wardrobe were banging. I was also kinda out of it with the jet lag but I did get up and run to the door because I thought it was worse than it was, but the next morning I saw it wasn't too bad... just the first of many I guess