I’ve settled back into training once again after my trip to Korea. Nothing really to exciting coming up. A little depressed at the lack of Christmas festivities and cheer here, but I find it hard to get in the mood myself when it’s 90 degrees.

Massage

Since returning to training, I have been having some issues with my back so I finally decided to get my first Thai massage. For 200 baht ($6.11) you can get yourself an hour massage! So after suffering through the back tightness without much relief I wandered into the closest massage parlor to my apartment on Sunday after church. Never had a massage before, much less in a foreign country. The lady there didn’t speak any English so I was completely lost. To the best of our hand charades I gathered she wanted me to change into these weird cotton pants. Did that and the massage got under way.

She started at my feet and worked her way up my legs. We hit quite the bottle neck at my calves though. She probably spent a good half of the time on my calves alone. I actually ended up getting an hour and a half massage as she rushed to get the rest of my body after the job she did on my calves. At one point she, this small Thai lady, was standing with one foot on each of my calves walking up and down them. It was actually pretty terrible. I had no idea my calves were so bad and I barely got my back worked on which was the main objective. Massages aren’t all they are cracked up to me. I was actually sore from the massage the next day. I am happy to report, though, that after some more consistent stretching I am starting to loosen up some.

Job Interview

My life always seems to be filled with random opportunities and I’m not much for turning them down. This random opportunity came up when  I ended up getting forwarded an email from my friend Liz who works at Thai Village. If you are just now reading, Thai Village is where I had the opportunity (see another one!) to volunteer for a week while recovering from my concussion. Essentially Liz is a friend of a guy, and that guy’s friend is looking to hire someone to be filmed for English videos.

I guess the company is actually a pretty big deal. It is a pretty high tech Thai online learning platform that has received investor money from Microsoft. For the interview I had to prepare an English lesson around 10 minutes in length. I’ve never taught before and I hate languages so I was pretty nervous about this. I rode my bike 40 minutes to the interview, and thank goodness is was an overcast day otherwise I would have been drenched in sweat.

At the office, I met the guy I was interviewing with. We started talking and actually hit it off right away. He was a really nice guy. He studied his MBA in Chicago so we had some close connections and things to talk about which I normally don’t have with Thai people. Then I gave my English lesson and he gave me a little feedback. He said he could tell I was prepared and that I sounded engaging, but I needed to put a little more energy into it and smile more. I smiled all the time while we were talking and he said that would have added a lot to the lesson. I agreed with him and attributed it to nerves. Hopefully, if I get the job I won’t be as nervous and I can show a little more personality in the videos.

Everything else went really well up to the lesson and he said he gave me the pass on the lesson. He sent the lesson recording to his partner back in Bangkok and now I wait to see if they like it as well. If I get the pass from her I am their guy and we start filming. The gig is roughly 60 hours of work over a 2 month project period. The pay should be around $1,000ish which would be huge for me as I am running really low right now and might not be able to fund my travel plans for getting home after Thailand (Mom, if you’re reading, you know what I want for Christmas). I am generally overly optimistic so I think I’ll get it, but realistically I would say there is a 70% I get it. Whatever happens happens and I don’t get it I’ll figure something else out. I always do.

 

And that’s my life right now. I have another really awesome thing coming up soon that I don’t really want to talk about yet, but it’s got me really excited. In the next coming day I’ll be doing some Christmas things with church so a post about Thai Christmas caroling might be coming up. Until next time!

Time flies when you’re having fun! Time went way to fast in Korea, and sadly it is time for me to leave.

For my last day in Korea, Maria and I went to the Namsan Seoul Tower in the morning. The view was amazing, but we decided it would be even better at night. We decided not to go up beacuse we were already running late for lunch with Pastor Kim.

We got to church and Pastor Kim had food waiting for us and he gave me a nice little sermon and then talked about how I need to marry young. He offered me a bunch of free church pens. Paspt Kim is the type of guy to make you feel like you are receiving something really special when he gives you something too. John Kim showed up at church and then after some good conversations we left to go to the Korean war museum.

I love visiting the foriegn history attractions, especially relating to war, because it is always interesting to here the local side the American text books leave out. A great example of this was the Vietnam war attractions I visited in Vietnam. Korea, however, made American sound like total heroes in the Korean war. It turns out the museum was funded partially by America. That’s why it was so pro America, but South Korea and the US do have a good relationship.

After the museum the three of us headed to Namsan Seoul Tower. This time we actually went up and got to see an incredible 360 night view of the city. At every angle you can see giant skyscrappers sprawling out over the landscape. Seoul is particularly beautiful to me because of the mountains intertwining there way through the metropolitan maze of buildings. Most all of these mountains are equipt with parks and hiking trails.

Korea is honestly one of the top countries I have ever been to. I have a habit of visiting a lot of poor underdeveloped countries probably because that’s more of my budget, but Seoul really took my breath away. I’m not much of a city guy, but there is just so much going on and always something to do. I was shocked how clean it was too. I rarely saw trash and almost every public restroom was pleasant. The subway system, maybe because it’s still a novelty to me, was awesome and actually kind of an exciting place to be as you could literally get to anywhere in the city for super cheap.

Growing up in the US, at least in my experience, you are kind of lead to believe that the United States is the greatest country in the world and that no other country comes that close. After visiting Korea I definitely no longer feel that way. Korea is one of the top countries in the world in my opinion. Good economy and great way of live as far as I could tell from my, admittedly, short stay.

Hong Kong on the other hand made me feel differently. I was really surprised by the amount of Western business men everywhere in the city. The city to me did offer nearly as friendly of a feel either. A huge chunk of the people there smoke so if you are on the sidewalk you are sure to get your fair share of second smoke whiffs. The city was nice too, don’t get me wrong, but it was a lot dirtier. Probably as dirty as a standard American city honestly.

The only reason I was in Hong Kong was on a long layover so I didn’t have a ton of time to really get to know it that well. I did manage to get to Victoria Peaks which is a nice high vantage point of the whole city. From what I overheard from a tour guide the largest building is apparently 480 stories. As a farm boy from Pigeon, Michigan this kind of stunned me as I realized how far away this is from anything I ever experienced as a city. This isn’t the farm any more!

After my flight out of Hong Kong I made it back to my apparently and got unpacked and resettled into my apartment. Tomorrow starts a usual day of training. Boy how I missed the road!

Not sure what my next post will have in store, but there might be some Thai Christmas celebrations coming up!

I had a crazy awesome couple of days in Korea, but now I am on a plane back to Thailand. Time to recap the adventures!

My Sunday in Korea was a good one! I’m the morning we got up and made our way by car to the Lutheran Church there. It is actually the only Lutheran Church in all of Korea. Everyone there was so nice when I first came in. They even had an shortened English service before the Korean one. After the English service I met Pat. Pat did the liturgy for the English service and was actually a US Army soldier stationed in Korea. Him, his wife, and two kids we’re actually from the West side of Michigan. It was really suprising and nice to see some people from back home.

Right before the Korean service James Lee walked in. James Lee is another high school friend. It completely caught me off guard because I had messaged him and he said he was going to be on military duty as a translator for the upcoming winter Olympics in Korea. Fortunately for me his departure dates for that got moved back! I was so happy to see him too. Everytime I see an old high school friend, like with Kisun, we always laugh about the good times in the dorms and I feel like things haven’t changed a bit!

After church there is a nice get together “youth” group. It was pretty much a group of the church’s young people who have graduated high school. Most of them have made studied either high school or college in the US so their English is very good. John Kim, another high school friend, showed up during this! More sentimental memories! After the youth group we had a meal as a church. Then the group of Maria, John, Kyle (nice guy I met at the youth group) went out to some markets.

After we wandered around the market, and I got my fill of hodduck they took me a Karaoke place. Karaoke here, like Thailand, is pretty serious. They have these places that are just filled with a bunch of dedicated mini karaoke rooms for you and your friends. The room is just big enough for a couch facing a pretty high tech Karaoke system and screen. There were two mics and the system allowed to configure everything like adjusting the key of the song to a better range for you. Even with these features I am still pretty horrible at singing, but it was a fun time!

After Karaoke we all went to a restaurant and had some typical snacks which was liver, intestines, rice cake, and dumplings. Good food! My chopstick skills are slowly but surely improving! After that we all split ways and Maria and I went home where her mom had actually made us dinner. Needless to say, I ate real well that night!

After a packed Sunday I had a more relaxing Monday morning. We woke up a little later and Maria and I went for a hike on a mountain near her house. After we went through the mountain I got some more hodduck of course! She bought some ingredients at a market for her mom. I think it was for kimchi. On a side note, the Ha family has their own fridge solely dedicated to the making and storage or kimchi. It’s a big deal..

After the hike and some lunch we had plans to rent the traditional Korean clothing and visit the palace. If you dress up, apparently admission is free. Plus it would be cool to pretend like I’m in the movie Mulan. So we got off the subway and got in our traditional clothing. Then we walked to the palace and got there at 4:15pm. It closed at 4pm… We had to improvise.

We went to go walk through some traditional village and we spent forever trying to find a park that was on this tourist map we had. But we couldn’t find it, and to make it worse it was around 15°. I’m used to Thailand’s 90° so this was a shocker. After wandering around for a bit and seeing some cool buildings we ended up taking pictures in front of the clothes rental shop!

After returning the clothes we wandered around downtown. They have a cool stream running through the middle of the city and the whole place was decked out with Christmas decorations! Warmed my heart. That’s the stuff I don’t get to see in Thailand. It’s good to be with friends during the holidays!
Next post I’ll talk about my last day in Korea and my Hong Kong flight mishaps and downtown Hong Kong explorations.