Coolest site ever

Here 's a great site to use for planning biking and running training routes all over the world.

Hiking in the Himalayas

We just got back yesterday evening from a 2 day trek in the western Himalayas!! Woo! And now- 20 hours later- my legs are still completely exhausted! Need to do a few more shorter trips to get in shape before we try an overnighter again...

So, we left early Sunday morning and headed for the hills just north of McLeod Ganj (the city we're in right now). After about 15 minutes of walking uphill, we realized what we were in for, for the next 8 hours.... 14 km and 7 hours later, we were almost cresting the mountain, acompanied by the boom of thunder and lightning overhead, when rain started falling on us. I asked our guide if we could stop to put rain jackets on, but he told us hurriedly, "No no, 2 more muinutes. Fast!". So then he takes off, jogging up the rest of the mountain. The rain that was falling quickly turned into hail. Just when I was starting to panic, I got to the top of the mountain, and ran under this tarp that was set up in front of a little cabin, where our guide was beckoning us too. Seriously as soon as we stepped under the crowded overhanging, the sky opened up, and little gum-ball sized hail was dumping down on us!!

As soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized that the little cabin was actually a huge cave that went about 15 meters back, and was housing about 30 hikers taking refuge from the storm! It was pretty exciting, sitting in there wrapped up in blankets, being served chai tea, watching the hail pour down outside of the cave.

About an hour later, the hail stopped, and we all emerged to a clear sky, and beautiful mountains surrounding us. It was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen!! (I will add pictures in a week, when I put them to CD). We camped at this plateau at around 3300m (started at about 1800m). The hill was covered in wild irises and other flowers, and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around the area.

Our guide cooked us an amazing 3 course meal (complete with 3 kinds of curry) on a camping stove!! It was incredible- definintely the best food that we have had so far.

The following morning, we trekked up to the snowline, and a glacier on the slopes of the neighbouring mountains, before beginning the long descent back to town.

No more time at the internet cafe.... gotta run!!! Take care everyone!

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Woohoo!! I love you and miss you Mom! I hope you're having a great day! I wish I could be there to celebrate with you!

Enjoy the Saefway cake! Save some for me!!

xox
-Kaleigh

The first week in India...

Hmm, this post will be a bit disorganized... I'm too hot to think properly about what I'm typing. I think it's been over +30 every day we've been out here! Insane!! Actually, when I flew into Delhi last week at 9pm, the sign beside the runway read +39!! gross!! Needless to say, the majority of what I've been doing is sweating hahaha.

After meeting Rach at the airport at 2am last Friday, we took an autorickshaw through the sketchiest area of Delhi, where we got a hotel for the night. We paid WAY more than we should have, but it was late, and the conversion math just wasn't working for us, so we shelled over 20$ for a good night's sleep. A few hours later, without that much needed sleep, we emerged from the hotel, to greet our first day in India. What a day that was... neither of us was prepared for the chaos, filth, and insanity that is Delhi. After about 5 minutes wandering around, we decided the best thing to do would be get out of that crap hole as fast as possible!! Unfortunately, foreigners can't buy tickets at the bus or train station (this is what we were told anyways- it may or may not be true), so we were led 20 minutes away to a "government" booking agency. After gettign mad at us for being skeptical about the whole sketchy procedure, they insisted there were no busses or trains out of Delhi of the next 5 days (which I find VERY hard to believe), so we ended up buying a plane ticket outta there to Srinagar, Kashmir.

We were both aware of the political unrest in Kashmir, but Rach's brother had been there a couple of weeks earlier, so we thought it would be ok. And it was!! It was gorgeous! WE stayed in a house boat for two nights, on a peaceful lake amidst the mountains. There were a lot of soldiers in the city, and the state, but they were all really friendly, and even posed for pictures with us!! That was great =) Although a little unnerving, seeing soldiers in little makeshift sandbag/barbed wire bunkers skattered along the road ways. Anyways, our experience there was great, but we moved on pretty quickly, since our travel time is pretty short.

From Kashmir, we headed to Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh. Unfortunately, we had 20 hours of bus travel between the two cites. Our first day of travel ended in Jammu, which is honestly the most disgusting place either have us have ever seen. Stepping off the bus into mounds of garbage, the smell of urine in heat saturated the air, making for a pleasant welcoming. After 30 minutes of searching for a hotel, we finally found one. After checking out the tiny room, and paying, I headed into the bathroom, only to find we had a present left for us in the toilet- a floating turd!!! I was so disgusted, and immediately went downstairs to get a refund. Unfortunately there were no other hotels, so we had to sleep in the turd one, but we took off as fast as we could the next morning...

Dalhousie was great though. We spent the last few days there, doing some day hikes/walks around town, and sampling all the yummy Indian food.

Now we are in McLeod Ganj- the home of the Exiled Tibetan Government. We have yet to actually see the Dalai Lama's Palace yet (we were too excited about email, after no computers for the last week and a half) but I'm sure it will be great. There is a really large community of Tibetan refugees living here, but from what I've seen so far, it seems to be an enormous congregation of dredded hippies. We hadn't seen any other foreigners yet, but that's al there are here! Ther are also bakeries!! Woohoo!! I had carrot cake today- it's been so long since I had baking, so I was pretty pumped =)

Well, that's it for now!! I miss you all at home so much!! Take care, and keep me posted about all of your adventures!

Creative writing from my kiddies...

I got my older students to do some creative writing for one of our classes, and here's a couple of stories that they came up with....

The Tiger

Long time ago I have tiger. She is very smart to play with. Her is too fun but tiger has strange habit. Every night she disappear. I think this is unusual and I bind the thread around her legs.

At night thread is moving and I follow thread and I surprise because she is woman. We married and happy but she had one problem. She is back tiger every morning.

Fly Man

Today I walk on road and I play ping-pong. At that time I change into a fly. I go to fly school. There are many fly friends. I say "hello, hello!!" but they are disregard me. I'm very very sad and I want to their kill. But they pluck my legs. I'm very very pain.

But fly man help me and I have imitation legs. I am happy. I change into the person. I step on fly teacher. Squish! Wow! Fly teacher is crush! Fly teacher shout "I will be back!"


Hahahaha I was pretty entertained by these- thought I'd share them. I guess these guys are Schwartzenegger fans....

Hammy!

Here's Hammy- our friendly hamster, whom we inherited from friends leaving Korea, and whom they inherited from a student, who brought it to school in a plastic bag... "Teacher... hamster???".

I guess I've always been partial to animals that I can't accidentally kill by stepping on, but this guy is pretty cute. He's also pretty skilled at acrobatics, but unfortunately he's camera shy, so I have yet to get video footage of him in his natural habitat, monkey-barring across the cage.

Cherry Blossoms

Home Medicine

Last night
we attempted
a lint
transplant
but
her navel
rejected
it.

-Tom Robbins

Beijing, China

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope you have all had a fantastic holiday! It has been sad being away from all of you that I love so much!! Christmas is especially hard for that, but I'm trying to keep it real- watching Christmas Vacation and leaving milk and cookies for Santa =) Actually, I spent Christmas on an airplane this year, returning to Seoul after a wonderful holiday in Beijing!!

We arrived in Beijing on December 16th, to crazy winds strong enough to blow me over! Thankful that we had opted to pack our big Winnipeg-style winter gear, we hurried into the airport from the plane, and caught a bus to our hostel. The hotel was a nice walk from the main area of Beijing- Tianemen Square, Mao's Mausoleum, and the Forbidden City. It's so exciting being in a city with so much history!

Enormous painting of Mao above the gates to the Forbidden City.

For the next 10 days, we walked and biked around all accessible areas the city- aside from the pollution (which makes Seoul's dirty air look breathable) the city is really beautiful, alive with colourful temples, friendly people, and bikers everywhere.

Some of my favourite places were.....

The Summer Palace, about an hour drive out of the city. In the heat of the summer, the royalty would escape to this area outside the city limits. In preparation for the Olympics, the painting has recently been restored, so the colours are so beautiful- especially against the bleakness of winter and ice.

We spent a couple of days biking around the city, visiting all the various temples and siognificant places thrgouhout the city. The views were great, and bikers are given two full lanes of roadway in some areas!! Soo luxurious- especially compared to the "bike paths" in Seoul which are genenerally littered with parked cars, crazy motorcyclists, and people who look like it is their first time on a bike. The bikes themselves were awesome- super old school, with mechanical breaks, weirdly angled pedals, and only one gear =) Woo!!

In the evenings, we watched a few performances of acrobatics and Kung fu, which were spectactular! The Kung Fu show basically explained the process of becoming a monk, and the martial arts that are involved in this school of Buddhism. The acrobatics shows seriously had me sweating the entire time- I was so nervous for all of them- not that they didn't look completely competent, just that everything they were doing was completely unbelievable! I wish I could've had a video camera to show you all!!

My personal highlight, though, was the hike along the Great Wall. Starting from Jinshanling, I hiked about 10km to Simatai, along the crumbling remains of China's main barrier from Mongolia. The views were truly mindboggling- the wall stretched as far as I could see, branching into multiple segments ontop of the ridges of all the surrounding hills. After hiking along what was essentially a stairmaster for about 5 hours, I arrived at Simatai exhausted, but thrilled by all the incredible sights I had taken in.

On our second weekend in Beijing, Tom's brother, Pete, and his girlfriend, Allison, joined us. It was fantastic to see some familiar faces after 17 months away from our friends and family. We had a wicked weekend with them, eating, drinking, and exploring Beijing! It was nice to be able to spend Christmas morning with some family, though, and we had a great breakfast with them before heading out to the airport for our flight home.

Tom, Allison, and Pete biking (too bad I can't focus)

Northern Thailand

The rest of the hot and humid summer proceeded on without anything of note, until the Korean holiday- Chuseok. This holiday is similar toNorth American Thanksgiving, and generally people return to their hometown and spend the week with their families. We headed out to northern Thailand, and spent the week around Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, with only a week it's hard to organize independent travel, so we did most of our hiking and excursions with a group or a hired driver.

Northern Thailand is extremely luscious and mountainous, and it feels like virtually all the land is blanketed in tropical forests. The area felt so secluded- even with the many voices of the group we were hiking with, it felt so peaceful. The group was incredibble- there was a group from Israel, a couple of South Koreans (we impressed them with our minimal knowledge of Korean) a couple from Ireland, and four of us form Canada. The Israelies and South Koreans had an interesting talk about their views of mandatory military service, as a few of them had just completed their time in the army. Most people we have met in Korea seem quite resentful of the years they are forced to dedicate to the military, whereas the four from Israel all spoke about their time in the army as if it held some of the best memories of their lives. Anyways- interesting to think about how countries motivate a sense of patriotism and desire to serve into their citizens.

As a prairie girl, I guess any change in elevation seems to awe me, but the streams weaving through the mountains, and the steep slopes topped by little villages in the distance would have impressed even the toughest critics. The humidity was extreme (which I used as an excuse for my insane sweating hehe), but a powerful little waterfall in the middle of the hike was a perfect escape from the heat.

We spent the night in a indigenous mountain tribe village. Their traditional housing is raised huts, in which one generally lives (in tight quarters) with most of their extended family. The family we stayed with made a delicious dinner of curry, veggies, and lychee fruit. Mmmmm....


We hiked out of the village the next morning to an elephant camp, where I rode on my first elephant! Their trunks were adorable- always snuffling around for snacks. We followed up an already incredible day with some whitewater rafting and bamboo rafting on a nearby river.

Later on that week, we spent a couple of days driving west past Mae Hong Son, where we took a boat close to the border of Myanmar to visit some of the Karen Long Neck hilltribe villages. The Karen have long been living in Thailand as refugees of Myanmar, but recently the Thai government as recognized them as residents/citizens of Thailand. The women in these villages begin wearing these coils around their necks, forearms, and calves from as young as 5 years old, although we were told in the village we visited that the rings are not mandatory. Their purpose was originally for protection, and communities were losing many women to foreign "businessmen" who would essentially kidnap the women to take them home as brides. The distinctive rings make the women much more identifiable, and therefore offer some protection against these kidnappers.

Karen Long Neck hill tribe village

Long Neck woman living in the village

Bali, Indonesia

In August 2006, Tom and I took our first holiday out of Korea to Bali, Indonesia. Bali had everything- fantastic snorkelling, adorable wild monkeys, volcanoes, mountains, beaches, temples, and great food! It was truly an incredible holiday.

On the first day of the vacation, we spent a day snorkelling, and exploring a wildlife sanctuary tucked away on a little island south of the main island of Bali. Although the snorkelling wasn't the greatest, the wildlife sanctuary more than made up for it. They had a turtle breeding ground providing shelter for hundreds of turtles from a day old, to 150 years!! The turtle in the photo below was one of the oldest at the sanctuary.



We checked out some of the many incredible Hindu and Buddhist temples scattered throughout the island. Indonesia is exclusively Muslim, other than Bali, which integrates its traditional customs (which are still strong in modern Bali) with a combination of Buddhism and Hinduism. The stone carvings in the temples, often on which monkeys were perches, frequently feature the face of Barong, who is supposedly king of the good spirits in Balinese culture.

Dreamland Beach made for some nice swimming, although it was a bit rough in the strong surf! I did a much better job at collecting sand in my bathing suit than stayign aflot- that's for sure. We also gave boogie boarding a try. Unfortunately, I wasn't as successful as I had hoped- it looks deceivingly easy! But between my attempt at holding my bikini bottoms up, my bikini top down, and clutching onto the board, steering clear of the people playing along the shore was not really an option. I had a knack for faceplanting into the sand, anyways.

My personal highlight during the trip was a fantastic dance and chant, performed by about 30 men in traditional Balinese clothing, at the top of a cliff overlooking theocean as the sun set- truly incredible. Funny Story: Before the performance began, Tom and I were walking along a path along the edge of the cliff, monkey watching. As we were taking some photos, a curious little monkey (Curious George perhaps?) jumped on Tom's head and stole his glasses!! The little bugger then ran away, and started chewing on them, while sitting on a branch hanging off the cliff just out of reach. A team of a couple of Balinese men chased after the monkey- seriously hanging off the edge of the cliff, and retrieved the glasses for us! It was so great. But Tom had to wear nasty glasses all sticky with saliva, and missing ear pads for the rest of the day.

Close to the end of the trip, we decided to do a midnight hike up to the second highest volcano on the island. armed with flashligts and water, we started the hike at about 3am. After the swealtering heat and constant sweat dripping down me for the rest of the trip, the cold temperatures were a welcome respite from the heat. We reached the top of the volcano while it was still dark. Since this volcano is a common tourist destination, they have built a little shack on the top, where you can cook using steam heat produced by the volcano. Our guide cooked us some eggs, which we dined on while watching the sun rise illumunate the mountains surrounding us.

North Korea!!

Much to our shock, we saw an advertisement for a South Korean tour company doing regular hiking trips into the Geumgung (Diamond) Mountains of North Korea. Up until this point, I hadn't realized that the country was open to any tourism, but actually they have seen more than 3,000,000 visitors since opening the border in the east province to hiking!! Anyways, I was very excited to sign up for this trip- to see a country that few people will ever get to enter.

Anyways, North Korea itself is extremely close to Seoul. The DMZ is approximately 80 km from the city itself, and several tunnels have been found under the DMZ that reduce this distance even further. The area open to tourism, however, is right on the east coast of the country, and although it was only 150km away, the drive there took all night! how I miss the prairies!!!

After passing through the many layers of barbed wire fencing and the hundreds of soldiers stationed on either side of the border, we got off the bus- not quite as rested as we had hoped- at the immigration building. After an hour or so of getting all the necessary paperwork done, we boaded a new, "North Korean friendly" bus, and headed into the little tourist town they have build for this commercial endeavour.

The area was seriously incredibly beautiful- some of the most spectacular scenery I have seen. Unfortunately, it was pretty foggy the whole time we were there, so the views were a little limited, but whenever the winds blew the clouds away, it was breathtaking! The guides told us that the area sees only about 10 clear days a year!! Insane!! But since Kim Jung Il controls the weather, we know who to blame for that one!!! Another quest for Team America??? Could be, could be...

So, the majority of the weekend was spent hiking with a guide infront of us and behind us, and tons of North Korean soldiers in the bush ready to attack!! No joke. It was pretty creepy.

In the evening, we stayed at a really nice hotel, with an enormous painting of Kim Jung Il and Kim Il Sung in front of it (see below). Photos taken of the two men- staues, paintings, etc, muct be taken in a specific way, so there are people there who take the photos for you to make sure that you get their entire bodies in the photos. Very weird. Like the rest of the country.


Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any North Korean villages, or talk to any North Koreans. Generally, there are South Koreans working in the tourist area, who pretty much serve all of the needs of the tourists. We did speak to a couple of North Koreans who were our guides for the hike, but it was really limited. I was surprised ot find out that they do learn English at school- seems like it would have very limited use in a country that forbids the travel of its citizens, and severely limits tourism. But what do I know.

Anyways, the weekend was fantastic- great hiking and great people! And we can rest easy knowing that we have done our part to fund Kim Jung Il's crazy plans for world takeover. Hahaha.

But no, in all seriousness it is such an insane regime up there, and being here,it has been sad to see what occurs to a country divided- Korea is the only divided country at the moment, and it's so sad how drastically different the lives are of the people in the South compared with the people in the North. I read a book a little while ago called "The Aquariums of PyongYang", which is an autobiography about a young boy's experience living in a North Korean gulag for 10 years, and his subsequent escape from the country. A heartbreaking, but eye-opening read. Anyways, I'd definitely recommend it.

Fire Festival at Jeju-do

This weekend we took off to an island south of the mainland called Jeju-do. This trip was offered through another English tour company, and given the massive language barrier, we figured that it was easier to stick with the guided option. (As of yet, all I can do is ask for things in a restaurant, and say please and ‘mandarin orange’- the latter of which I’ve found most useful). The group met at Seoul’s smaller airport (still 3x larger than Winnipeg) Saturday morning. Everyone seemed nice from the preliminary chatting, and shortly after we boarded the plane.

We landed in Jeju-do 50 minutes later, boarded the bus and headed off the Fire Festival. The festival was in celebration of the first full moon of the lunar New Year. The festival grounds were pretty cool- lots of tents set up with shops and weird Korean food, a ring for pony fighting, a stage, and a really steep hill with huge pyres decorating its face. We hiked up the hill, and walked around the surrounding area, being careful not to trip on the cords attached to the fireworks.

Only after we felt like we had spent a sufficient portion of the 7 hours allotted to the festival, did we venture back to the festival grounds, hoping to meet up with some of the others from our trip. We bumped into a British guy we met on the plane and shared a bottle of Soju (Korean alcohol), before heading over to the stage.

Things were finally getting rolling, and there was enough dancing and singing and Korean pop music to go around. In the crush of people on the field we also found another guy from our trip, so the four of us watched as huge torches were handed out to the audience. The torch bearers marched happily over to the large pyres built at the bottom at the hill, and on cue with the fireworks, everything was lit at once. It was pretty amazing- huge amounts of fireworks were being shot off from the top of the hill, while the bonfires raged all over its face. It looked like the whole hill was burning and exploding with fireworks; we were all very impressed! A couple of girls from our group were among the torch carries, and they said it felt like they were in the middle of WWIII up there. Things finally cooled down an hour later, and we made our way back to the bus, along with the 10,000 Koreans at the festival.

We drove to the cabins where we would be spending the night, tossed our stuff in our rooms, and headed out to the courtyard for a barbeque and drinks. I was ravenous at that point, since lunch at the festival had consisted of fried pork. Unfortunately, dinner was a repeat performance, so myself and the other vegetarians/choose-itarians were relegated to the drink and canned fruit-cocktail table. Needless to say, the effects of the alcohol were not exactly dampened by the fruity syrup mix. We were all rowdy, playing games and chatting late into the night. I engaged in some kind of chase with a dog and another group member which resulted in large bruises, and a tear in my jeans, but unfortunately, no one really knows that details of that. All I can say is the next day we all paid for our night of hitting the sauce.

Sunday morning was ushered in by the glorious sounds of our group leader, yelling at us in an all-too-cheerful voice to get up and embrace the day. Unfortunately there were no tasty treats for breakfast; the only options to nurse our hangovers were the sour oranges from the trees in the back. This was cool though, since I’ve never eaten an orange off an orange tree.
We all boarded the bus, hungry, hung-over, and a little tired, but excited about our first adventure of the day; horseback riding. The ranch was a close drive from our “Bed and breakfast” (which actually offered neither bed nor breakfast), and had a beautiful view. Since all of have grown accustomed to the lack of grass, trees, and animal life within Seoul ( I actually had a student tell me that if she could see any animal it would be a squirrel), we were all quite shocked to see green pastures and trees, and a view of Mount Halla in the background. Mount Halla is Korea’s tallest mountain/dormant volcano, and can be seen from all parts of Jeju-do.
We were herded into the changing area, where we were all forcibly dressed in matching outfits; cowboy boots, red jackets, and cowboy hats. Korea seriously has a need to make everything uniform- conformity’s the thing here. So, fully clad in our Texas Star ensemble, we climbed onto our horses.

The horseback riding wasn’t as fun as I had envisioned. Actually, what I had envisioned was me riding bareback on a galloping stallion, and my hair streaming behind me, over the moors of England, with Colin Firth on a horse beside me, so needless to say, trotting around a little ring was a little bit disappointing. But being the optimist I am, I reminded myself that Tom almost looks like Colin, and that a cowboy hat and boots was way better than galloping off into the country anyways. Plus, I’m not even really sure what a moor is, so really, this might have been way better. Once we did start trotting, that actually was quite scary, and by the end I was clinging onto the saddle, begging to be let off. Unfortunately, the horse-back riding did nothing to improve the state of our hangovers, so many of us felt a little sickly in the bus afterwards.

After the horseback riding we visited a traditional Korean village, but we were apparently short on time, and only stayed for 12 minutes. So I really have nothing to say about it. Surprisingly.

We headed over to the eastern coast of the island for a ferry ride. The coast line here was fantastic- a huge rocky outcropping dominated the area, which we visited next. We only had 15 minutes again, which some people used to run to the top (it was really high) but we wandered down to the water. Jeju-do is actually renowned for 3 things: wind, rock, and women. We had only seen the first two so far, which had disappointed some of the men. Apparently there are a lot of women there who were widowed during the Korean war (I think this is the story) and now they are skin-divers living on Jeju-do. These women dive deep into the ocean apparently all year to collect shellfish.

The ferry ride was our next stop. We tried two times to get on the ferry- but the first time they just denied us for no apparent reason. All I knew was that we were moving forward, and then someone yelled “Retreat, retreat” and we all had to shuffle backwards off the ferry. The next time, we did manage to fight our way on. It wasn’t much of a victory, however, since the top of the ship was freezing and way too windy, and the bottom was sickly warm and smelled like fish, but we managed. The ride was pretty cool though- we went out to a nearby island that was all carved out by the wind and water, and then turned into this inlet, that was really high and echo-y. Then we turned around and headed back to the mainland where (we think) we saw some of the skin-diving women diving off a really high ledge of the cliff.

Back on land, we got back on the bus to head to the airport. By this time we were shaky with hunger, but fortunately we had a pit stop at a restaurant before heading home. And, lucky for us, once again they served fried pork. Mmmmmm! We did manage to find a small convenience store after the meal, which we almost completely bought out of all its chips and ice cream bars- it was seriously my life saver.

Hwacheon Ice-Fishing Festival

Well, after many consecutive weekends spent glued to the computer screen, playing Warcraft (yes, I know- I whined about Tom playing, but he got me addicted!!), Tom and I finally tore ourselves away and signed up for a trip with a travel group to a winter festival in Hwacheon, Korea. Our wake up call was at 6:00, and we were very tempted to ignore it and continue sleeping, since we had been up late the night before with some friends. After a couple of rounds with the snooze button, we dragged ourselves out of bed to catch the subway to the meeting place. The bus ride out was a fairly uneventful 3 hours- most people slept. I played FreeCell on our sweet Korean cell-phone, which Tom has somehow made to sound like a sword being pulled out of it's scabbard when it opens (it's his new favourite toy).

Hwacheon is close to the Eastern side of Korea, and it's about 30km south of the DMZ. The town has a population of 30,000- 12,000 of which are people in the army!! It was kind of like a cold Folk Fest, with a few modifications; ice replaced the gross mud, clean Koreans replaced the dirty hippies, and speakers blaring weird Korean pop songs and the odd Kenny G. tune replaced the folkie alternative music. So really, you can see the many similarities.

So, we started off our eventful day ice fishing. No one in our group was particularly successful, although I did see a few fish swimming. Eventually a Korean man came with a cooler full of fish and told everyone in the group to take a fish and put it on their hook and get their photo taken. I guess that they had little faith in our fishing skills. Not that we exactly proved them wrong, but whatever.

We spent the next few hours riding on these crazy ice bikes with skis instead of wheels in the back, and walking around the festival grounds, before we met back up with the group for our main event. On the Adventure Korea website, the activity had been advertised as bare hands fishing, and I had pictured us standing beside a tank with our sleeves rolled up, trying to grab a fish. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. When they gave us shorts, T-shirts and sandals and pointed us in the direction of the change room, I was worried. Our group of 20 foreigners left the change room together, shyly staying close to the other group members. There were many Koreans gathered around us and the tank which we were apparently supposed to be jumping into in a few minutes, who looked as though they never missed this event for the world. We were definitely the hit show at the circus. So, we all edged around this freezing cold, icy pool, and jumped in when the gong was hit.

After posing for some pictures, trying to keep as much of our body our of the water as possible, we began the bare hands fishing even. It was somewhat of a mad scramble. They told us we couldn’t get out until we had caught two fish, which we were supposed to store in our pocket. I’m not sure if they were being serious. Once I started I got really into it, and I ended up catching 6 fish!!!! With my hands!!!! Keep in mind that Tom (who grew up living by a lake) caught 2, and no one else caught more than 4! I guess I’ll never go hungry (Although I was somewhat disgusted at the thought of eating it). I threw them out to the eager spectators, but my hands were so cold that I could barely throw- I ended up hitting one woman in the face with a fish, knocking her camera out of her hands. Woops. With the remaining movement we had in our hands and feet, we all scampered out of the water and into the sauna/change room, when we huddled for the next 25 minutes to get warm.

After our body temperature had warmed to sufficiently above hypothermic, Tom and I decided to hike up the nearby mountain. The path was ridiculously icy and slippery, but we got out of the crush of people that is Korea, which was definitely worth sacrificing our safety. The view was worth the effort, anyways. We began the treacherous walk down, and emerged safely to meet up with our group for the drive home.

Thanksgiving Dinner

So, a friend of ours invited us to a Thanksgiving dinner at her church a few weeks ago. We were very excited by the prospect of free dinner, but we didn't really consider the possibility that we were probably being coerced into a huge church service. When we arrived, we found out that this was in fact the case. The service started out very harmless- there was a little orchestra and piano player playing Christmas music, a theater group, and a dance group. The dance group was pretty hilarious- it was a group of 25-30 year olds, dancing to a Christian pop song- the dance was a similar a caliber to what my grade 5 lunch hour dance group was capable of (a lot like Napeleon Dynamite's sign language dance).


Then the service morphed into an hour long speech about the importance of accepting Jesus into our lives, from an intense, self-righteous pastor. He told us how bloodshed is the only way to true salvation, and that Jews, Muslims, and Hindis are all banished from heaven because their leaders did not sacrifice themselves to save their followers. The pastor then asked the audience some supposedly rhetorical questions "What have Mohammed and Buddah done for their followers? No blood was shed. No sacrifice was made. Therefore, there is no room for them in heaven!” to which a protesting member of the congregation answered, “They give their people hope and love!”. This reply was quickly dismissed by the pastor, who cried, “Yes, but there was no blood!” He then asked everyone to open their hearts to Jesus, and asked everyone who believed in Jesus as their personal saviour to stand and acknowledge one another, while the heathens remained sitting. I was a bit worried, listening to the chairs creaking that everyone was standing, but actually the whole room remained sitting. At least there was nice pianist playing in the background.

After this exhausting sermon, we were finally released and allowed to go eat dinner. I had about 5 pieces of apple and pumpkin pie to compensate for the past hour. I also won a free dinner for two at this Mexican restaurant, and a free chap stick, which raised my spirits! After dinner, we quickly escaped to a pub across the street. It was snowing- our first snow of the season- and everyone was outside, throwing snowballs, slipping on the sidewalks, or hiding under a protective awning. After unwinding with a couple of drinks and discussing the evening for a couple of hours, we walked our friend Becky back to her place.

By the time we left, it was about 11:30, giving us ample time to get home before the subway stopped at 12:30. Unfortunately, they shut the subways down at 12:00 on the weekends, which we found out when we were kicked off the train at its last stop, still relatively far away from our apartment. So, along with several hundred other passengers, we climbed the stairs out to the street, to try and compete with everyone else to catch one of the few available cabs. After about 45 minutes of standing in the snow, watching many full cabs drive by us, a sympathetic man came over to offer us a ride with his brother in law, to an area close to our place. He told us he was going to a hotel, so we could easily catch a cab from there. So, we waited with this man for another 45 minutes. It turned out that he was the Korean diplomat to Central and South America, in Seoul for a conference on the reunification of Korea. Interesting to talk to, but I couldn’t really hear him over the chattering of my teeth. His brother finally arrived at about 1:20 (only 80 minutes after we got out of the subway terminal), and he drove us to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel at 2:00, only to find out that the last guy had been waiting for a cab for over an hour, so we decided to walk to 40 minutes home. We arrived home soaking and cold, and put our shoes and pants in the dryer.

The next morning, when I got our stuff out of the dryer, I found the remains of my melted plastic container of chap stick, and my coupon, in tatters. So, it’s true: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. No matter. I saved $5 on the cab ride home.

Movin' to Korea...gonna eat a lot of Kimchi

Summer 2005

After graduating from the University of Manitoba in May 2005, I had an exciting summer, including a research position which brought me to Colorado for several weeks, my brother Kyle's marriage and the subsequent cruise ship honeymoon that my entire family attended with my bother’s new wife’s family, followed by a bike trip from Vancouver to San Francisco, with Tom. In October, after returning home from the cycling adventure, I left Canada on a much longer adventure- destination: Seoul, South Korea!

Fall 2005

Tom and I arrived in Korea in October 2005. After lugging about 500 pounds of luggage (yeah, I have no discretion I guess when it comes to packing for a year away) from Osaka, Japan to Seoul, Korea in one day (no joke) I found my new apartment and started a new chapter of my life as an English teacher in Seoul.

Too much luggage??

There are approximately 250,000 foreigners living in Korea teaching English. It’s pretty insane how much time and money parents and children funnel into the whole academy system, from an extremely early age, primarily to give them a competitive edge when applying for university- 12 years later!! I mean, children who are enrolled in extracurricular academic programs will undoubtedly benefit form the extra help, but the quantity of time that these kids are required to spend is truly mind boggling- I have a feeling that a 6-year-old Korean’s schedule is sadly a lot more rigorous than the average Canadian university student! Anyways, one of the kids’ many academies is English, and for the lucky ones, they get to spend their parent-mandated daily hour of English class with me!

From November 2005-6 I worked at an English academy called Michigan Campus, where I taught kids ages 6-18 various levels of English. Other than the 75 minute commute each way, I loved this job- the kids were wonderful, and generally extremely well-behaved, and I had a lot of freedom, in terms of class content, reading material, and student evaluation. I heard a lot of horror stories about my boss from other employees, including how he spit in one man’s face, but I later found out that his reaction way in response to the employee pinning my boss against the wall with a desk- yeah, there are a lot of weirdos here... Other than a sketchy boss, which is apparently all too common, my three Korean co-workers, the secretary, and my students made for a great year at the school.

Highlights from Korea this year were....

• Gorgeous fall colours in Seoul
• Ice-fishing festival in a northern Korean town
• Fire festival on Jeju Island, south of mainland Korea
• Singing at nori bang (private karaoke)
• Hiking in Seoraksan National Park
• River hiking
• Trip to Geumgung (Diamond) Mountains in North Korea!
• Trip to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea)
• Night skiing at Yongpyong Ski Resort

Tom and I doing some hiking in Bukhansan

Skiing at YongPyong in January 2007

Sketchiness

Ahoy from San Francisco!! I'm pretty pumped about being here-it feels like it's a major landmark that we've been striving towards for a while now, so it's satisfying to have finally reached it.

We hada good ride this morning to get here- not too long, but the area is very cyclist friendly. Well, friendly in that there are plenty of paved bike paths and bike lanes, but completely unfriendly in that the hills were steep and long. Yuck. But we made it to the Golden Gate Bridge- it was a bit unceremonious, since the bridge was completely covered with fog, so we could only see about the first 200 meters,which weren't all that exciting. After Tom expertly nagivated us through the city- ensuring that we covered as much elevation changes as possible- we made it to our hostel.

It's a bit sketchy. Well, maybe not a bit- maybe more like alot. But that's ok. We're getting used to the sketchiness of California already. Most people that we have met have been complete psychos, so I guess the entirety of the Northern Californian coast has been an effective desensitizing experience with regard to sketchiness.

For example...

1: The guy we met last night- so, he walks over to where Tom, Jason, and I were eating dinner, and offers us some wine- he had a huge story about how he got the wine from some guy who he gave a bike lock to. The bottle was already opened, but he seemed nice enough, so I guess that we weren't really worried about the possibility that he did anything to it at the beginning. However, as he started to talk we became much more wary. He told us how he was a declared homeless person, who thought that he was the first person to experience an enlightment which allowed him to be the last avant garde artist, and the first person to be able to relate this enlightenment to tennis. He ranted for awhile about how he was going to make tennis a mind-body-soul experience, and so on- I think we had all successfully blocked out his spiel by that point, so his later comments are now lost to the world.

2: The guy we met this morning- we come upon him when we stepped out of our tent. He was sleeping in front of one of our food boxes in a sleeping bag. He looked kind of like a disshevelled version of Sean Connery, but didn't say much other than asking us for the time, and telling us about the raccoons who were fighting all night (there was a crapload of raccoons at this site- we). So, he left all of his stuff shortly after waking up-he walked off with a little briefcase, and i was a little worried thatthere was a bomb or something in the pile of stuff that he had left (I think that I am really paranoid because I have been listening to a lot of books on tape by american left- and right-wing political activists, so I have been hearing about the Bush administration and the war inIraq for 6-8 hours every day. A person can only listen to so much Michael Moore before going insane...). Fortunately, there was no bomb. The guy came back about 45 minutes later (he had no vehicle, and there was no town around for miles), then packed up his stuff and left.

3: All of the Americans who think that we're from either New Zealand orAustralia based on our accent.

4: Ninja biker- this guy we met was covering crazy long distances daily- he did our last 3 days in one day! He bikes about 250-320km/day! Ridiculous. Mind boggling, even!!!

5: The general population of the town of Garberville- this one guy randomly approached Tom, and explained the entire genealogical background of his two mutts. (one was half rottweiller, half wolf). Another woman greeted us as if we were old friends, which totally caught me off guard. When we looked a little uncertain of who she was, she asked us if we were in fact the couple who was there earlier in the spring. ( There are seriously hundreds of people who do this ride every month) She figured that since we were on a bike, we must be the same people. Another lady was trying to start a fire in the parking lot to cook food. Another drunk guy randomly started giving us directions to who knows where. Hmmm, well i guess that that gives you the general picture.

Fiddler's Green

I made it to California!!!! We've biked about 1,500 km, and it's been about 2 1/2 weeks, so I'm really excited about our progress. We'll be stopping in San Francisco for a few days early next week, and then heading on down the coast to LA, which I'm sure will be a very busy road.

We just did our highest hill today so far, and for the whole trip- 2000 feet. It wasn't as hard as I had expected, but it had a killer downhill- definitely worth it!!

We've been biking through Avenue of the Giants for the past few days- a winding road leading through the Redwood forests. The trees are so massive, you can't help but feel insignificant standing at their base.

Last night we stayed in this freaky campsite for hikers and bikers- it was about 3 km from the regular campsite. The area was nice and secluded- very quiet- but it seriously looked like it was the set of some freaky horror movie. Really freaky. I held my pee in all night because I really didn't want to go out there alone in the middle of the night. But luckily we awoke the next morning unscathed, and lived to tell. But really - if there are any amateur film producers out there, this would really be the perfect set! It even has a creepy bathroom with a skylight that you could fling a dead body over to scare the unknowing bathroom occupant.Brilliant plot line. (I'll post a photo of it once I get back to Canada and have access to all my photos- until then, you'll just have to trust me....)

Ok, well the library is closing- 5pm and this town apparently shuts down. Later gators...

Windy rides

I'm writing from the library computer of Port Orford- a little town about 100km from the Oregon-California border. It's crazy how fast Oregon went by. I guess I had a huge misconception about the sizes of the states- California's about 3x bigger than I though. It's going to take up 2/3 of our trip. I'm sure it's really beautiful though.

Well since my last email, I think that we've covered the hardest leg of the trip so far. We had some big climbs a couple of days back, but what was hard was that we're right on the ocean- the road is so exposed, and the wind whips by so fast that it really felt like i was going to be blown away. I was so scared, I wanted to just sit there and cry. Actually, that's what i did, but Tom suggested that it wasn't a particularly good way of dealing with the problem, so we walked our bike through a really sketchy area that was super windy with a super big drop on the other side, and then it was at least somewhat safely navigable after that. It's just the huge RV's, being driven by really old people that are the worst- it fells like we're being driven off the road sometimes. But usually it feels very safe, and the road is fairly quiet and not so windy.

Where's the road??

There haven't really been any notable bike problems in the last few days, which has been great. The camping along the way has been fantastic-the sites here are gorgeous and really cheap- $4/person. Unfortunately the hiker biker sites give you little to no privacy, but the social aspect is great.

Oh yeah- I forgot to mention our escapade yesterday. We were both so tired after a long tough day, and we saw a sign that said we were 2 miles from the campsite. After about 4 miles we figured that we had gone the wrong way, so i looked at our guidebook, and we realized that we had missed a turnoff. So, we biked back 3 miles, and biked up a super super steep hill- I couldn't make it- I had to walk it, it was so ridiculous. Then we get to the top and had a super steep downhill. After a few miles in the fog and rain, we came to a junction that wasn't in our directions to the camppsite. So again we realized that we had gone the wrong way again, and really we were on the right path to begin with!!!! Ahh!! So, i swore a lot, and then we biked back and found the place an hour later. It was so frustrating. Oh well, now it's over, and i'll read the map more closely!!!

Welcome to Oregon

Tom and I are now in central Oregon!! We've been really pushing it for a few days now, and I am really starting to feel a lot stronger and more comfortable with hills, which are becoming more and more frequent.

Our two biggest have been today- 700 and 900 feet. I guess it doesn't sound all that huge, but it's tough lugging all of the gear up. We rejoiced at the top of each hill though with snacks of sweedish berries and doritos to keep us motivated. We are actually going for the record of unhealthiest bike team doing this trek right now (we're somewhat in sync with several other couples and solo bikers). But you have to understand- to achieve this record is quite difficult, so we have to avidly consume large amounts of the above foods, as well as chocolate and other goodies on a regular basis. It's crazy how constantly hungry I am, though. Unfortunately our cooking ability is more of a disability, so our dinners are more similar to a vomity mush than an edible meal (see below). Oh well.

Recipe: 1 part nasties. 2 parts pasta.

We've actually just had some more troubles with Tom's bike- it's getting really frustrating!! Another spoke broke, that definitely wasn't damaged before, so right now the whole back wheel is getting completely new spokes put in. It sucks though, because we finally got into a good groove of biking and setting up/taking down camp, and then another problem arises. We were only about 10 miles outside of a city when it happened (that we were told had a bike shop) but it didn't. But this amaing couple that we met in that city offered to give us a ride into Newport, a larger town that did have a bike shop, so we got a ride with them, which was so great!! It was only about 35km, so It didn't feel too disappointing to have to get a ride. Plus we had no other option at that point because Tom couldn't ride on it anymore. So it'll be fixed soon, and we're heading on to what looks like a gorgeous state park to camp for the night 10 miles south of here.
The area is completely gorgeous- the ride floows right along the coastand the beaches are all beautiful!!

Ok, well my time is running out so I've got to go. I miss you all lots, and hope that you're having as much fun wherever you are as we're having out here!