What do North Korea and Boracay Have in Common?

Sometimes I like to re-share posts from the blog I kept when I was living in Japan.  In this one I’m rambling on about going to Korea with my sister and complaining about my work as an English teacher. I guess there’s nothing that great or interesting here, just that 1) I talk about hosting pictures on photobucket (lol!) and 2) It made me remember that I went to Boracay before it got so overrun with trash that they had to shut it down.  #feelingspecial

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It’s a S…trange World After All

Originally Posted April 7, 2007 (edited Nov 2018 to add photos)

My sissy left today.  She was here for three whole weeks!  Much fun.

We went to Seoul and took a tour to the DMZ.  It was really scary!  So…technically we can say we’ve been to both South AND North Korea.  (Even if our trip to North Korea was just the other side of a building that straddles the line).  I’ll try to put up some pics of the soldiers and stuff there.  But I’m really lazy about adding stuff to my photobucket site so don’t hold your breath.  😀

Look ma! I’m in North Korea! After this pic I ran back to safety in South Korea (the other side of the room)

View of North Korea looking out from the DMZ

Some North Korean buildings, one of which looks like a guard house.

Guarding the building or in time out? You decide.

I have been on a break from school for the last couple of weeks but am starting the new school year on Monday!  I will be working with some new teachers so hopefully they will be easy to work with.  I was sad about a lot of the current teachers being transferred (the Board of Education transfers teachers every year at a whim…) but I am hopeful about the one bane-of-my-existence teacher being transferred.  So far it’s looking like she’ll be gone! yeah! Now I just have to cross my fingers that they don’t replace her with someone even more aggravating.

I’ve only got a few weeks to struggle through at school before my next trip!  The last week in April is “Golden Week” here–the equivalent of Spring Break I suppose.  So we are planning a trip to Hong Kong with a hop to some island.  Right now it’s lookin’ like we’ll go to Boracay Island in the Philippines.

Boracay, Philippines then: May 2007

Boracay in the evening, 2007: the calm before the storm (of trash)

Boracay now; from an article earlier this year right before Duterte shut the island down. 

 

After that I guess I just gotta hunker down and prepare for a soggy rainy season.  There is nothing like riding your bike to school in the rain/wind/humidity to put you in a baaaaaaaaaad mood!  rrrrrrarrrgh!  Woe to those students in my first period classes.

Well…that’s all for now.  Maybe something exciting will happen at school this week and I can post something more amusing. 🙂

Korean nachos: just like TexMex nachos but you eat them with chopsticks.

Real Korean bbq in Seoul! Fun fact: Darryl Hannah wore this shirt.  It’s a hand-me-down from the wardrobe department on a film I worked on. (“fun fact” is a relative term)

P.S. The answer to the question in my post’s title? You tell me! 😀