roy (back) in canada

HWANG Time

Last weekend, we all managed to take time out for a little family outing. Click on the pic below for more.

Birthdays

Birthday pics from K-town and Montana's

Football

Bills vs. Patriots!!! American fans are too funny. Buffalo lost a close one in the 4th. Click the pic for more.

Philly!!!

Here's a link to the pics from our ROAD TRIP!! to Philadelphia. Philly was the birthplace of the "EXTREEEEME picture" which we've gone way too far with these days. Click on the pic below.

the Great White North!

So my year of relaxing officially expired 2 weeks ago. It's been a month and a half since i got back from Korea and i'm now writing to you from a library in London, ON. School's been not too bad so far though, classes have been interesting up to now but readings are starting to get heavy.

To recap since the last post (a LONG time ago), 2 weeks in China was hectic and stressfull but an amazing experience; very different from the rest of SE asia. I met up with Andy and we managed to hit 7 different towns/cities over land from southern China to Beijing. China looked a lot less communist than we expected. Beijing represented though, and the food was incredible. (pictures up!)

From Beijing, I said farewell to backpacking and hopped on a boat to S. Korea. It turned out feeling almost like a cruise, the ship was HUGE. the food was pretty hurting though. I got back to Seoul and had about a week and a half to say goodbye to my home for the past 10 months. I was excited about coming back to Canada, but I knew I was gonna miss all the friends and family I was leaving behind.

Culture shock hit me Canadian style in weird ways. You notice the smallest differences in every part of a normal day. No more food stands on every corner; having to drive everywhere; not seeing a million strangers a day; tipping when you eat out; seeing green grass on a daily basis... the effects of re-adjusting were more significant than i thought.

August was low-key. I helped out at the store and prepared for school. Went on a road trip with the guys to Philly and then started school. You can find philly pics on Jon's website (jmills.netfirms.com).

That pretty much brings things up to date.

Backpacking

hello everybody, This update's been a long time coming. It's been almost a month since i embarked on my trip through South East Asia and so much has happened that it's kinda hard to write down in one sitting. This trip has been an eye opener in a million different ways. Meeting people, seeing some crazy sights, and eating the food from all the places down here has definitely been a worthwhile experience. I've been sitting at this computer writing e-mails for way too long now so i'm gonna keep this short. I've added a bunch of pics so check them out. They're either pics of food, random buildings or temples, or me with food, random buildings or temples, so i don't blame you if you can't make it through them all. I think i like this picture best. I'll try to update pics once more when i'm in China, so until then i'll try to keep up the mass-mails. I miss everyone back home a ton.

Back from HK

Got back from Hong Kong last night. Just to recap the last part of the trip, Days 4 and 5 were a lot less hectic. I woke up on Day 4 and i was buuurnned out. I spent the day dragging myself everywhere in a trance-like state. I managed to get on a bus to some beach but the bus stop was a little off so I had to rent a bike and cycle up some steep hill. It felt like i was doing the Ironman. I guess Days 4 and 5 were when the traveling alone thing wore a little thin. The longest conversation i had on those days was the lady who owned the guest house. But overall, it was a good trip. Hong Kong is a really cool city and traveling alone was a new experience.

Pictures coming soon.

Doin' It

It's nearing the end of Day 3 here in HK, and travelling alone has ended up being alright. It turns out that i'm not really a take-my-time-and-enjoy-the-sights person, but more of a gotta-see-it-all-can't-stop-to-rest type so being on my own has its advantages. It's almost kinda stressful though. Something has come over me and i've become obsessed with my Lonely Planet guide. It's like i can't rest peacefully knowing there's more to see.

I spent Day 1 covering a few of the major sights. I went up "the peak" and tried to climb down which was a bad move cus i fell down part of the hill and then smelled like crap all day. Afterwards I walked around the central core and then took a ferry out to the mainland to check out the HK island skyline. It's really impressive.

On day 2 i visited some more landmarks, temples and a museum and then took a ferry out to one of the smaller islands surrounding HK island. The island was pretty cool. Felt like a tropical getaway with its own little community. I was able to find a cheap room at a guesthoust that was waay nicer than the previous night's meat locker in the backpacker's ghetto.

This morning I got up as early as possible so I could check out the various beaches, one especially that the LP guide HIGHLY recommended. Now let me tell you, the LP guide is verry reliable so without question I made the hour hike enduring massively sweat-enducing heat and an attack by dogs. Man did this beach suck. They should've called it "decaying drift-wood bay".

I eventually got over being angry with LP and came back to the main island to see more stuff. Tonight i'm gonna force myself to relax and get some rest. I'll update again when i get home

HONG KONG!!!!

I'm off to HONG KONG!! WOOO HOOO!! I'm at Incheon Airport just about to take off for HK for 4.5 days! With a little inspiration from Bruno and Josh, I decided to be spontaneous for once. I realized yesterday that i could pull it off if just a few people covered for me at work on Friday. so i called around at got a cheap ticket! I'll update large when i get back with lots of pics for you folks back home.

Nei How Ma!!!

Back from the dead

It's been a while since I last updated.. Everything's pretty normal and routine over here but i'm still having a good time hanging out with friends and seeing the sights. I've posted some new pics from doing some mountain climbing and a trip to the horse races. The races were a blast. We had no idea what we were doing so we just went with names of the horses. I was going nuts and let it ride when "Royale" stepped up but he came in second last out of like 12 horses, just narrowly beating out the one Dennis bet on. Nevertheless, we still had a good time and Dennis even came out up a couple bucks. It looks like his luck has run out as of late though cus he got the chicken pox last week. We've been calling him "outbreak monkey" and have been finding it unusaully funny despite the fact he was in pretty bad shape for a while (he's doing alot better now).

I moved to a new place with Andy recently. My room is huge and the place is nice and clean. It's also close to a PC room with internet so hopefully i'll step up the updates.

New Camera

I got my first paycheck from working at the school. 1 CAD dollar is equivalent to a little under 1000 won, so now i'm a meeelionaire! (i promise this is the last time i will use that joke). So last Sunday I went to Techno Mart and bought a digital camera. Since then I've been going a little overboard with the picture taking. Alot of the teachers at school have already stopped posing for my pictures and just ignore me. However, I will persevere for the sake of your viewing pleasure! I just uploaded some pics of the kids I teach and pics from an outing with teachers to see "The Last Samurai". (good movie, but what's with whitey being the only survivor?)

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year everybody! It feels weird not being able to party with you guys back home. This was the first time in SEVEN years I didn't party with Denny. Just like you said though Den, we'll make up for it next year. Hope everyone had a good time.

For New Year's Eve over here, I went to a hotel party featuring Carl Cox. It was pretty amazing. Crowd was huge and the venue was pretty cool. At midnight they had these traditional Korean drum guys show up out of nowhere on a suspended catwalk going nuts on their drums. I caught a clip of it so check it out. Pictures are up too.

Insa-dong

Went sight-seeing in the Art / Antique district in Seoul. It was pretty fun. Checked out a bunch of contemporary art exhibits and caught some kind of street production. Check out the pics in the photogallery.

Here's a cool video clip of a little kid singing traditional Korean folk music. I haven't tried to figure out video streaming yet, so you have to download it. I think it's around 7 megs.

Download file

Korean Christmas

I somehow got conned into being Santa Clause for the kids at my school on Christmas Eve. Man.. it was hard. I had to hand out personalized gifts to every single student. Each gift had a little message written in Korean by the kids' mom and one of the Korean teachers would read it to me and I would have to translate to the kid. The messages were sooo crackhead. They would read like: "Tommy, you've been a good boy cus you go to sleep early and listen to your parents... but stop eating so much! You're getting tubby. nobody likes fat children!" or "How bout next year, you grow a little taller, ok buddy?" I guess it's not as harsh when it's said in Korean, but daamn.. for sure these kids have a little surpressed resentment for Santa. The looks on some of the kids' faces were like "give me the present already asshole." On top of that, for each class, this one nazi korean teacher would wait for every kid to get their present except for a couple of the bad kids and then say I was out of presents. She'd let that sink in for a minute and wait for the kids to breakdown and then finally let them get a present if they promised to be good. I guess it seems like a reasonable tactic in theory, but i dunno.. that's gotta mess you up somehow.

Aside from psychologically damaging a few kids, the experience was hard but fun. Some of the kids wrote me cards afterwards that are pretty funny. I'll post pics soon.

Christmas itself was pretty good. It's a totally imported tradition, so over here it's more about partying rather than spending it with family. I spent the afternoon at my aunt's and then watched a movie with friends. Pretty low key.

Christmas Party & Everland

Friday was the Christmas party at the school I work at and ohh man.. it was like those christmas work parties you always hear about but have never been to. The school hooked us up with a ton of food and alcohol, so alot of drinking went down. After a couple hours in the school caf, we all headed out to a club, where a bunch of drunken make-out sessions ensued between some of the teachers. It was textbook. I didn't have to work on Saturday so i missed out on all the shame and gossip the next day, but other than that it was a blast. I took some pictures on my ghetto (non-digital) camera that i'll scan and post soon.

On Sunday a bunch of us went to Everland. At first, I thought the original plan was to just go tobogganing, but it turned out that we were going to theme park that has a tobaggining section. It turned out to be pretty ghetto. The five of us were amongst a sea of 10 year olds waitng in line to slide down a weak-ass hill on an inner tube. On top of that, me and Dennis kinda smelled like alcohol from drinking the night before, so we were looking extra sketchy. We went down it once and then checked out the rest of the park. The park itself is pretty weird. The front entrance is pimped out to make it look like Disneyland, but after walking 5 minutes further you realize that the rides are all pretty crappy-looking. Like CNE styles. We ended up going on a bunch of cheesy rides and a couple roller coasters that were decent. At around 6 we went back to the tobogganing since was empty and it was a lot more fun. Me and Andy decided that knocking down this one employee (who was looking like the biggest turd standing around dancing in the middle of the hill) was our main objective. We got him on our second run. I had just barely missed him, but some other Korean dude finished him off after he dodged me. I didn't see it but Andy said it was pretty hilarious.

I posted just a few pics I could get my hands on from Everland. I'll post the rest soon.

journals aren't gay

ALright. It's easy to get lazy with the mass mails, and i want to avoid sparking further in-fighting between the dirty koreans, so I started this weblog (a la scott). I think it's probably the easiest way to keep you guys updated with what's going on. I'll try to post often and i'm gonna store most of my pics here as well, so check it out every once in a while.