Wow, what a month. Its been busy, crazily busy actually.
And yes, I’ve been lax in writing. Sorry. My bad.
Why have I been busy? Simple. Vacation. Woot!!!
Lets do this chronologically.
December 24th. Teaching at school. Luckily they let us go an hour early so we could jump the bus from Taebaek to Incheon Airport. Of course, being the day before xmas the roads were crazy. What is usually a 4 and a half hour bus trip turned into 6 hours, but thats why we usually travel the day before flying. Our wonderful hotel managed to screw up our bookings so we ended up staying at a much more expensive (and nice) hotel next to the airport.
December 25th. Christmas. Didn’t feel like it. Checked in, had coffee, jumped our plane to Beijing. 6 hours layover in Beijing? Check. 6 hours of boredom in Beijing airport? Check. Beijing airport is huge, empty and extremely disappointing? Check. We actually wanted to have some decent food, being xmas and all, and were prepared with a large wad of Chinese cash. Could we spend it? Nope. Ended up eating in a crappy takeaway style restaurant that was reminiscent of bad australian food court chinese. Not Ideal. Still, onward onto the next leg of the trip, Beijing to Sydney. The flight was pretty uneventful, so not much to say.
December 26th – January 10th. Australia. Sure it was 2 weeks, but it didn’t feel like it. Lots of stuff to do, people to see, things to eat, places to visit.
We visited Susie’s Mum in Wodonga (6 hours from Sydney), Susie’s Sis in Ulladulla (3 hours from Sydney), people all over Sydney and around. We had birthday parties, christmas parties, New Years parties. You name it, we did it.
Still, 2 weeks was not long enough and far too long at the same time. Its difficult. Its not really a vacation as its kinda home, but its not home as we are visitors. Very awkward, but fun.
January 10th – January 16th. Beijing. The real vacation within the vacation. No commitments, no family or friends to visit, no guilt. What did we do? Well, 3 days was a “tour” with Fernando the guide, and Mr Grumpy the driver. 3 day tour is what we paid for, however the grumpy driver, in a fit of grumpiness decided that 2 days was all we would get. Something to do with us not spending money in the enforced shopping spots, meaning he didn’t get his kickbacks. Meh, we were up front about it from the beginning, no shopping. Still, Beijing is great. Big, big and enormous. I think we covered most of the usual sights.
The Forbidden City
Olympic Sights
Kool stuff in and around town and much much more.
Yes, even Jeombagee came along for a vacation.
Back in Korea, after the coldest bus ride ever (no heating on our bus) we managed to arrive back in Taebaek.
Susie’s Dad and Brother beat us to Korea by over a week and they met up with us a few days later.
Lots of doing the things of Taebaek and around. We had our snow festival (still ongoing) so there is plenty going on.
Mike and Ron left a few days ago, now back safe in Aus. Us? I’ve got over my cold, Susie’s come down with her own.
We drove down to Daegu (3 hours) just to go to the movies. Sherlock Holmes is brilliant.
Now? I’m drooling over the iPad,
and cleaning up in preparation of rebuilding my laptop (again).
Still, big things are afoot, plans are being made, Jeombagee is getting excited.
More to come soon. Really. I promise. For real this time. Truly. I mean it. I think. I hope. Fun fun fun.
