The summer months seemed to have passed me by this year. After the three day bike trip in June we had plenty more adventures on the bike. Since the summer months in Korea bring monsoons and horrible heat, some of our microadventures had to be cancelled because of the weather. We were still able to have fun throwing Typhoon parties, running half marathons, and partaking in the summer tradition of Mud Fest.
We have been up to a lot this summer, which has made me busy and thus I have been lacking at my blog updates. In the spirit of catching everyone up on what has been happing on the Korean Peninsula without too much boredom, I am going to tell the story of my last few months in pictures.
The two most exciting things of the summer would have to have been my two week trip home and mine and Jared’s trip to Hong Kong. Since I had signed on with my school for a second year, they gave me an extra week of paid vacation. Since I wanted to get the most out of my time at home, I decided to back my extra week with our week off for summer vacation. Since I did this, I was able to have 16 full days at home. It was incredible to have so much time at home and it was more than brilliant to see my family again! I can’t even explain how overcome with emotion I was when I finally saw my nephews, nieces, brothers, sister, and parents after so much time away from them. I spent the two weeks soaking up every minute I could with family and friends. I was able to spend much of my time with Toby, my smallest nephew, and C.J. and Lu, my twin nieces that were 3 weeks old when I left. It was so great to get to be part of their everyday lives and not just a face on the computer screen. In the end, the two weeks went by way too fast and before I knew it I was back on a plane heading to my second home in Korea. It was hard to say goodbye again but knowing I had Jared to come home to was my saving grace.
I didn’t have much time to be homesick because four days after I landed in Korea I was off again. Jared and I had a three day weekend so we decided to make the most of it and head to Hong Kong. Originally we were going there to visit one of his friends but after we had booked the tickets we found out his friend wasn’t going to be there. It didn’t matter too much to us, we were still going and we were still planning on staying at his friends place, seeing as though it was free and all. We landed in Hong Kong early Saturday morning and we hit the ground running. We started our sightseeing right away with the giant Buddha that was right by the airport. The afternoon was hot and long but well worth it, the Buddha was pretty cool. After we had our fill, we got on the bus and headed into the city. I had thought we were staying out at Jared’s friends place in the country but Jared told me we had to go into the city to pick something up, and then we would head into the country for the night. Well I was in for a big surprise. After Jared learned his friends would not be in the country, he decided to book a hotel in downtown Hong Kong, but he didn’t tell me. So I was just following blindly as we made our way into the city, thinking we just had to turn right around and head back to the country. We got off the bus and started walking through the city, and then we turned off the main road and into a luxury hotel. I was baffled. I had no idea what was going on. I thought we were at the hotel to pick up the package Jared told me we had to get. It wasn’t until we were checking in that I realized we were staying there for the weekend!! I was shocked! Jared had to keep telling me that it wasn’t a joke and that we were really staying there. The lady checking us in thought it was so cool that I didn’t know that she upgraded us to a suite! It was a great surprise!
The whole weekend was a blast. We were full on tourists and did all the tourist things. I was glad to be able to see the city and play tourist for a weekend. We were pretty much go, go, go the whole weekend and in the end I felt like I needed a vacation from both of my vacations.
Even though our Hong Kong experience ended when we left, our travels took an unexpected turn on our way home. Our flight out of Hong Kong was delayed and this made us miss our connecting flight in Manila. Now, most of the time this would not be a huge deal but our flight was at 10pm Monday night and we both had to work on Tuesday morning. Since we missed the flight, there wasn’t another flight out of Manila until Tuesday afternoon at 4:00pm!! This meant we would have to stay the night in Manila, somehow get a hold of our employers and tell them we would not be at work the next day. Not the ideal situation. Fortunately the airline put us up in the hotel and paid for everything for us. We both e-mailed our work from the hotel and got things somewhat sorted out before going to bed.
In the end, everything worked out. We had an unplanned vacation in Manila, a day of stressing about what our employers would say, but since there was nothing we could do about it, we just went with it.
The next day I talked to my boss and explained to her what happened, she was cool with it and just glad I was back at work.
After Hong Kong, we traded in our plan tickets for our bike pedals. The weather was starting to cool down and that meant it was time to do some serious cycling.
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