Around the sun

"They traveled lightly, the Gillayleys, not loaded down with trivia.  But then, in the end we all travel lightly indeed.  Nothing to carry more substantial than memories...and maybe that's the heaviest baggage of all..."

A full spin around the sun is a long time.
A year, in fact.
I must say, I have learned an awful lot, and what better way to numerically categorize my learnings than by a list.

The 30 things I've learned from my year living and traveling abroad:

1. The best time of the day to fly is during sunset when the plane is level with an exloding sun.  The colours are a breathless beauty.  Golds, reds, blues and thick clouds bubbling white.  All you see outside those tiny squared windows waiting for takeoff is a sun you can stare straight at.  I cant imagine even the most anxious flier feeling nervous while looking at that.
2. You can never come home again.
3.  The things that will stay the same, guaranteed, are the soap operas you've left behind.  Actors, storylines, settings seemed to have paused for you.
4. Don't miss your airplane.
5. A moment can change everything.
6. Fly over the Rockies at least once in this lifetime.  Natural beauty.
7. You and I, we really are going to live forever.
8. Christmas commercials in November is not too early afterall.
9. In Asia, if you walk in front of a car, (jaywalk) cars will accelerate. Just saying.
10. Language is only one form of communication.  People are still people, unified by that one commonality. It is incredible how much you can live without knowing how to speak your neighbour's language.
11. But when you find that one Word you both understand...brilliance.
12. If you ask a Kiwi if they know Bret or Jermaine, 98 per cent of the time, the answer is yes.
13. Dinner with someone, anyone, is almost always better than dinner alone.
14. Dogs, abused from all corners of the world, forgive genuinely and instantaneously.
15. Find something to say. Then write it.
16. Don't be a home wrecker.  Relationships are sufficiently self-descructive all on their own.
17. Passion. Anything else is irrelevant.
18. Steal airline spoons. They make great souvenirs of the places you've been.  Give the money you were going to spend on souvenirs to the tons of grinning young girls that will beg from you.  Help prevent their eventual descent into trafficking.
19. It's the people, not the place.
20. Take a train ride over a plane ride any chance you get.
21. Wear sunscreen. Really. Come on guys.
22. Drink where the locals drink at least once.
23. When drinking with a group of people, stand up, clink your glass, and make a speech on the spot. You're a helluva lot braver afterwards.
24. Red wine at the end of the day is how the French do it.
25. Eating brunch really does make you more refine.
26. Don't forget the place you came from and the person you were.
27. They may not speak English, but they speak soccer and cars.
28. The air is always thicker and sweeter next to the water
29. Make eye contact first. Then smile.
30. At the end. Canada will always be home. Even if home is gone, you still got brothers and sisters and parents and land.

The Year in Pictures:

Teaching my favourite class, 2-2

The view on the train coming back from Boryeong, SK

A school trip to Lotte World, SK

The best kinda ride. Hands down.

My first Christmas away from home. SK

Driving through the countryside. Vinh, Vietnam

Babies, smiles, family. Vinh, VN

Downtown Nha Trang, Vietnam, magic.

Cuddling with a baby tiger in Thailand.

A train ride through Malaysia and Southern Thailand.

Where the travel bug bit, clenched teeth into soft flesh.

Paragliding to feel the rush. SK

Airplane riding. Danyang, SK

Climbed Palbongsan Mountain with mates for kicks. SK

A beautiful sunrise in a coastal town way down south in Tongyeong. SK

Meeting my idol at St. Patrick's Day, SK

Watching people unite during the World Cup, Seoul.

Being forever young at Boryeong's Mud Festival.SK

Elephants in northern Bangkok, Thailand.

Sunsets on Palawan Island, Philippines

Adopting a stray kitten and a rescue dog to complete my family.

Year One is over.

Now I embark on Year Two.

Autumn in Suburbia

Simply.

Don't tell me your country has four seasons until you've lived four seasons in mine.

From a frigid snowy winter to a hot moldy summer, your country has merely two extremes.

Being back home during autumn, as the last leaves drop, has made my homecoming worth it.  I have always loved the fall, the bright colours, the shades of orange, the hoodie and scarf combo, the rosy cheeks when you come back inside, even the silhouette of bare branches and naked trees.  But I never did realize just how wondrous Ontario autumns are.

I have been back home for just over a week now.  What have I done?  Well, I have been lazy and sloppy.  I had so many plans and people I wanted to see, but since I got here, all I've felt like doing is reading books on the reclining sofa by  the window, feel the mid morning sun on my face (I will always hate nine to five), walk the dog around the neighbourhood when the streets are clear of people at work and in school, and drink all my dad's red wine. 

Oh, and play with the dog.  Wrestle her to the ground, play tug of war with her leash, strangle her cushioned neck with my bare hands, drag her by the paws around the house, and wrap my arms around her body and try to squeeze the life out of her. Literally.

"What is it? My dear?"

"Ah, how can we bear it?"

"Bear what?"

"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"

"We can be quiet together, and pretend--since it is only the beginning--that we have all the time in the world."

"And every day we shall have less. and then none."

"Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"

"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run.  

But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere."

My kids

...so I just don't forget :)

An Ending

This one is going to be abrupt.
Loose ends will still fly in the bitter South Korean cold. 
I'm a handful of days away from finishing my year long contract teaching middle school students in the northern rural outskirts of South Korea.

November always seems to dictate the time for change.  Sitting on the cusp of winter and desperately trying to cling on to a fleeting fall, there is a sense of urgency with November.  With the onset of coldness, of darker days and longer nights,  I need a new task, challenge, or adventure to distract me from the sadness of winter.

As with most endings, you start to ponder the beginning.
The differences between the me of last year to the me sitting here on this day trying to figure out what this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache is caused from, is as apparent as the black Michael Jackson and the white Michael Jackson.

I have noticed the first six months of this blog were posts  filled with new traveling experiences, festivals I celebrated, mountains I've climbed, new places I've seen, people I have met, and food I have eaten.

The last six months of posts focused on me, a growing me, a me losing faith, hope, and happiness in that which makes up living. 
I have reached some really horrific lows since being here, mostly the result of learning things I didnt know about myself (including the easy capacity in which I can hurt people and let myself be hurt by them), the people in this world, and the state of superficiality in Asia. 
But lets not fail to mention the many moments of euphoria that have so powerfully changed the shape and content of my soul.

Just short of a year ago, I stepped into Pearson International with a scared as shit dog and one suitcase, never having left the country where I had, despite my best adolescent efforts, had a pretty sheltered upbringing.  That me then, the untravelled me, the surrounded me, the me who's happiness was so easily vaccumed away with boredom seems lost to a version of me thats now a bit more travelled, a lot more unsheltered, but seemingly, still a lot bored with a lot more unanswered questions.

I am brought back to this quote time and time again: "the journey of discovery is not in seeing different landscapes, but in seeing with different eyes."

Yeah, my eyes are different now.  They keep changing.  All the time and so fast. And its changing the me I've known all of my life.  Its hard for me to keep up.

Cheers

"Wouldn't you like to get away?
                               Sometimes you want to go,
                                                                Where everyone knows your name"
                                                                                                     

The catchy lyrics to the popular 80's show Cheers, based at a Boston bar, warms your heart a little every time you hear it, just like that first swig of whisky you down at 9pm on a Friday night.

Bars are a lot like boyfriends I have realized. 

There are endless bars to spend your evenings in.  There are the glamourous ones, pretentious and expensive ones, the dingy hazy ones, the old ones, young ones, college ones, ones without chairs but with floormats and hookahs, sports obsessed ones, specialized ones,  patriotic ones,  the morally lacking ones, the after club ones, and the live music ones .  Although there are many to test out, not every bar you order a pint from is going to be the right fit for you. 

You can't help but be picky when searching for "your bar."  Everything has to align.
The atmosphere has to be right for your taste. The music must coincide with what's in your Ipod, the volume of the music versus the volume of the bar noises must balance. The crowd that frequents the bar must be to your liking; you should be able to strike up a conversation at anytime with anyone who walks in and be in common company.  Other things to consider are location for when you stumble home, the quality of the drinks and food on the menu, the awesomeness of the bartenders, the coolness of the owner, and the fact that whenever you need it most, it is always available to you.  There is always a seat for you with good company nearby.

So after searching high and low for the better part of a year, I have found "my bar."  Stuck in an impossible-to-find alley surrounded by a surplus of galbi restaurants that all look the same, and an always faint aroma of vomit in the air sits Beer O'Clock, a Canadian owned bar not too far from Sinchon Station.  Ladies and gents, this is my bar.  I am not going to say other bars didn't come close, there are a few in Itaewon that tickle my fancy; Wolfhound (a bit too eclectic these days), Scrooge (a bit on the sportsy side), and good old Zen in Hongdae (a bit too grungy pretentious) do a good job of occupying my time during the darker portion of the day, but Beer O'Clock has sealed my committment.

But just like boyfriends, good bars come and go in your life.  You move away, you begin to frequent it less, and then when you do return on those nights when you're in the neighbourhood, you discover, unexpectedly, that it has changed.  The place you once felt so good in now has a foreign atmosphere to it.  The crowds are different, the noise and music, which was once eloquent is now just noise and murmer, and you realized just as the bar changed, so did you.

So you finish the last gulp of that beer and you move on.
In search for the next bar to call your own.

But you'll always have the good old memories made at the one you left behind. So cheers!

(*Photo Credit: Beer O'Clock website, NOT my photo*)

3,000

It might not be considered much in the world of professional journalism, but my blog reached three thousand hits this week. 

I average about ten hits a day .This could just be the result of one person clicking on the link,  browsing through the pages, checking out my photos and scanning some of my writing, but I still consider it an accomplishment.

I wanted to be a journalist since ninth grade, but after graduating from J-school last year, my career was definitely not on the forefront of my thoughts. I wanted to travel.  The idea of traveling so effortlessly lured me away from family, friends, money, and my future.

My work will always be there.  Maybe as a beat reporter, as a magazine correspondent, as a travel writer, a critic, or even a goddamn columnist.  I think I have two decades left to give my journalism career a go, from whatever city, country, nook, cranny, or shithole I end up living in to achieve it.

But right now, just having one person a day be interested in the shit that spurs from my head, out of my fingertips, and into this blog is for me, enough.

Thank you those who have visited.

***

"I don't know if I can stand another hand upon you.
All I know is that I should.
...she who dares to stand where I stood."

The Ocean

"If the world's at large, why should I remain?
Walked away to another plan.
Gonna find another place, maybe one I can stand.
I move onto another day,
to a whole new town with a whole new way."

Have you ever been in a place for far too long?
By the end, you are not the same person you were when you got there.
You begin to realize how much you have grown and have changed and you think back and try to see where those changes subtley occurred.  Could you have prevented them?
You begin to hate the person you are, the scenes you see, and the people around you.
You begin to feel small, tiny, meaningless, compressed, ordinary, the most alone you've ever been even though your cramped into a peanut-sized country with fifty million people that look just like you.

I have never felt so inconsequential in such a place before. 

"We'll float on maybe would you understand?
Gonna float on maybe would you understand?
We'll float on maybe would you understand?"

When you get to a new place, you are filled with monstrous dreams and goals, big enough to inflate you, to make you fearless, and fuel low moments in your days.

And then that darn thing called time plays its part and the monotony of life and routine makes you forget.  You forget why you came here. You forget what you wanted. You wonder how you got to the place you are now. 

In two months, I will have the ocean waves lapping onto my toes and nothing else, not you, not this place, not anything will matter in comparison.

"The days get shorter and the nights get cold.
I like the autumn but this place is getting old.
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast.
It might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most."

I have always been jealous of people who are born near water, who get to grow up and live next to the ocean.  The Californians that I have met have this easy going air about them, this casual nonchalant, surferdude quality about them, down to the way they talk and the way they walk.  What worry in the world could you possibly have when the sound of the roaring ocean crashing onto the shore is apart of your everday?

Is it the same reason why everyone I know in Ontario who has travelled to British Columbia vow never to come back. Do these ocean dwellers even realize that some people only step foot in the ocean maybe once a year?

"I know that starting over is not what life's about.
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxTmftNiDs8

Names

Living and traveling in Asia, I have begun to notice how things are increasingly becoming more "American/Western."  I find this common here in South Korea as well as in touristy areas in Southeast Asia.

One particular thing I have noticed is the "Americanization" of names.

I met an Archie, who was really an Archibald.
Over the weekend, I met a Joe, who was really Joachim, from Austria.
There was a Nic once upon a time, who was really Nicolai.
And I've met a June, who was really Junyeong.

"Hi, my name is Joe" has a personal history entirely different from "Hi, my name is Joachim."

I know people shorten a name, make it more "English", so its easier to pronounce for people outside the language it was given in, but I feel it also loses so much of its meaning, it strips away a part of the person's identity, apart of the family history.

After all, it is the one thing your parents gave you before they knew you.  It meant something to them.  Besides your genes and physical appearance, and outside of the moral and value system they may have tried to instill in you afterwards as you grew up, it was your name that came first.

"We'll just have to remember it then...
Remember that you and I made the journey, and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go." -The Namesake

Some sweetness

Sometimes the sweetest things you hear arent from romance movies or love stories, but from your friends.  And sometimes they come at moments when you really need a smile:

3:38pm Me
Tell me the last romantic thing you did for Rose

3:39pm Joe
I picked her a bouquet of fresh herbs from my friends garden yesterday.

Today i bought her far too many comic books.

I kicked a cat the size of R2D2 that attacked her dog yesterday.

Lil things.

But all in the name of love.

3:40pm Me
Thats the most romantic thing I've ever heard.

3:41pm Joe

It was a huge cat.

Train Journeys and Time Travel, Summer Adventure Part 4

"Alright, alright.  Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay? And you're married.  Only, your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, you know.  You start to blame your husband.  You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right?  Well, I'm one of those guys.  That's me you know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on.  See, what this really could be is a gigantic favour to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything.  I'm just a big loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy."

"Let me get my bag."

Perhaps it is because my favourite movie is Before Sunrise. 
Maybe it is because the book found lying in a hotel room in Manila was the Namesake. 
It could be because I am a believer in fate and a romanticist deep in my soul. 
Maybe a combination of all of these things, but I find train journeys are sometimes the best part of a traveling experience. 

Like standing at the tip of an ocean with waves lapping up onto your feet, and all you hear is roaring, and all you see is blue as far as the heavens, you get to thinking.  You can come up with some of your best stuff, your best writing, ideas, dreams, oceanside.

Like when you are driving up that nearly deserted path to El Nido in the darkness and you see the sky exploded in stars, its something magical that rattles you inside.  You can think some of your best shit staring up into the heavens.

The same goes with train rides.  I was looking forward to taking a choo-choo train all the way from Kuala Lumpar to Bangkok far more than actual events.  Does it surprise anyone why trains always play some key role in a book's story: where an epiphany occurs, where violence is (deaths, vagrants, thieves, crashes), and of course, in the best romances, its where people find love! 
Didn't Anna Karenina jump in front of an ongoing train?  The beginning of the Namesake tells the story of how a son is born and named Gogol after train journey in India that nearly takes his father's life.  And in Before Sunrise, thats where Jessie and Celine meet.

"Train journeys are about possibilities."

So after landing in Kuala Lumpar on the last leg of my journey, I took a seven hour train from KL to Butterworth, right near the southern border of Thailand.  After an eight our layover in the early morning at Butterworth, where I hopped onto a ferry and explored some areas of Malaysia, I got onto another train, a second class sleeper, which was very comfortable, private, and affordable (50$USD).

I headed up through all of Thailand until I reached Bangkok in a nineteen hour train journey.  I got to share  this journey with a funny friend, a couple of books, some warm beer rattling in a cup holde, some card games, shadows of leafy trees dancing past the windows, and the cling clang sound of metal and tracks. 

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Finally into Bangkok!

If I had it my way, which next time I will, I would have spent the entire time in Thailand as it was my top destination.  As it turned out, I only had a couple days instead of the planned eight days.  Anyways, only another reason and motivation to head back soon!

Jeepneys and tricycles rule the Philippines, but in Bangkok, its Tuk-Tuks!

Too much excitement after 19 hours of train travel.

I ate pad thai almost every day at every meal.

The fishes LOVED the dead skin on my feet. It was a worthy feast :S

The first night in Bangkok was the Queen's birthday!

Some very pretty dutch ladies to past the time with.

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Cheetahs, Tigers, Lions, Oh My!

My favourite part of the day had to be snuggling up with a two month old baby tiger and an eight month old baby cheetah who licked my leg and ate pieces of pork off my hand. 

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Elephant Riding and Bamboo Rafting 

Time Travel
Being in Asia is a lot like time travel.  After all, I can tell my kids "you know, back when I visited S.E Asia, I could get a beer and a meal for only 100 pesos!"

Anyways, I have exhausted myself in documented this vacation, but I am glad I did so I can revisit it later down the road.  I hope you all have enjoyed my adventures and storytelling also.
Comments, opinions, or just some plain loving is very much appreciated and encourage and highly sought after.
Cheers to being back safe, a little wiser, a lot more travel hungry!