vagabond

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 22:07:18 GMT

Back now
I think I could sleep for about a week
I really needed that though
I will write about tour after everyone leaves tomorrow and I have gotten some sleep
Until then, caffeine is my friend.

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:51:36 GMT

Previous GRE scores
Verbal - 500
Quantitative - 570

Today's scores
Verbal - 560
Quantitative - 650

Thank you guys for all the good vibes and luck. They definately helped. :)

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:59:58 GMT

I'm about to leave to go take the GRE. I'm really nervous. Any positive/calming vibes sent my way between now and about 4pm would be much appreciated.

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:34:58 GMT

So I'm kinda freaking out here.

Just went looking at application dates for grad school to double check whether I need GRE test scores sent directly to them. Turns out I've already missed the deadline for University of Colorado because when I was looking before I didn't realize I was looking at their distance learning program and not the regular grad school. The more I look at all these places with their GPA requirements and requested letters of recommendation that I can't get since I was such a screw up in the college, the more I think no one is ever going to accept me.

Taking the GRE again on Wednesday. I really don't feel prepared. I've been poring over this damn math book for weeks, but I realized that I haven't done anything to prepare for the analytical section. Just really nervous.

Still need to do my taxes by tomorrow (these would be 2004 taxes that I got an extention on since I was in korea...but the extension is only until the 31st of January).

Also, getting involved in something new. Seems to be going well, but my track record is none too good. The prospect of letting anyone get close is making me nervous. I'm tired of being alone, but at the same time, it's a whole lot harder for someone to hurt you from far away.

I could really use a drink, but it's not even noon, and somehow I don't think alcohol is going to help with any of the things I have to do.

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:16:13 GMT

This stupid web terminal won't let me look at my own entries because apparenty they are "adult". I have no idea what I've written that would put it into that category. Oh well.

A. In case you can't check you voicemail....my flight is going to be 40 mins late. See you then :)

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 06:59:17 GMT

The Taipei airport has big shiny floors and not a whole lot of furniture. I'm here for 2 1/2 hours and right now really wish I had a pair of rollerskates.

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:57:28 GMT

So I'm feeling a bit better today. The sun actually came out and a guy and girl (not a couple so no third wheel feeling) that I've run into and hung out with in several cities on this trip emailed me and told me they're on Koh Tao and I should come over. So that's where I am now. They're taking a diving course so they're busy during the day, but at least I'll have good people to hang out with at night.

The boat ride over was a bit brutal though. When I bought my ticket, they assured me it would be a big boat and wouldn't rock a lot (I get sea sick). They lied! It was like a speedboat and basically was bouncing over waves the whole time. I spent the whole hour (luckily it was only that long) curled in a little ball with my mouth about 3 inches from a plastic bag. I fly from Koh Samui to Bangkok on saturday though which means I have to take another boat from Koh Tao to Koh Samui (2 1/2 hours) and I really hope it's better than this one was.

7 days till I get home :)

A. - are you still good to pick me up at the airport and did you get my email with all the flight info?

Thailand

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 06:46:33 GMT

It's still raining. I've been on Koh-Phangan for a week and there have been about 5 hours of sun the entire time. Not just drizzle either...full on rain to the point where the streets are flooding and some of the roads have washed out. This sucks.

Thailand

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:03:29 GMT

Well, my desire for fruity drinks and suntanning on the beach have been slightly thwarted by the fact that it's been raining since I arrived on the island of Koh-Phangan. I've found myself some good company for indoor activities though so it's not so bad.

I can't believe it's been 2 months since I finished working in Korea. It seems so much longer. And I can't believe I'll be home in a little over two weeks. For good. :)

CD's in Thailand are 100 baht ($2.50) so if anyone wants me to pick them up anything (I'm looking at particularly at you blueeyedsoul, virusshoes and hacked) let me know. They don't have anything particularly obscure, but they've got quite a few.

Also, virusshoes and lethe555, you should tell me what size shoes you wear. (don't get too excited, I'm not getting you silk boots like the ones I almost bought in hoi an....unfortunately they don't have them here).

Send sun vibes in Thailand for me. :)

Bangkok

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 04:09:57 GMT

Bangkok is nuts. There's just no other word to describe it. It's like the hedonistic center of the universe.

The place I'm staying has a dryer and so for the first time in 6 months, my clothing is soft and has shrunk back to fitting the way it should. Ah the simple pleasures of life. :)

Headed down to the beach tonight for some good quality lying in the sun and swimming time. I've been reading what everyone keeps writing about the holidays and since I'm in a Buddhist country that doesn't really do xmas and certainly not thanksgiving, and it's hot, the idea of winter holidays is just such a strange thought.

more phnom penh

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 10:23:41 GMT

Went to the killing fields today and the S-21 museum. For those of you that are thinking "what?", S-21 was a school until pol pot took over the country and turned it into a very nasty prison. Pol pot as a whole wasn't a very nice guy (think hitler-esque) and had about 2 million people killed in the 4 years he was in power in an attempt to turn the country into an uneducated agrarian society. He emptied the cities and made everyone work in the fields and killed anyone with education or a conflicting view. S-21 had about 20,000 people go through it and only 7 survived. The killing fields are where they took the people after S-21 and mostly bludgeoned them to death to save bullets and buried them in mass graves.

It was a very contemplative and moving day. I think I need some prozac or a stiff drink now.

Oh, extra note.....because of what happend in the 70's and how many people were killed under pol pot, 50% of cambodia is now people under the age of 15. That's even stranger than vietnam where 70% of the population is under 30 becasue of how many people died in the american war in vietnam.

Thus concludes the history lesson for today. :)

Phnom Penh

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:51:03 GMT

So I just flew into Phnom Penh (cambodia) today and so far I'm less than thrilled. They forgot to put my luggage on the plane so when I got here my pack was still in the airport in Saigon. They put in on the next plane but frankly I was a bit nervous that all my belongings had been lost in southeast asia.
My mum booked us at a posh hotel where they expect everyone to be rich and it therefor would cost me more to wash my clothing than it would for me to go buy entirely new clothing. Needless to say I'm going to find a better place tonight where there will be less snobby people and cheaper laundry service.

I was really sad to leave Vietnam. I had an absolute blast there. My mum and I parted ways for a bit and I ended up traveling with this british girl who could drink as much as I could and was totally up for doing crazy things. I got stuck in Hoi An with her for a while which was this nice beachy town and for 65 cents you could get a fruit smoothy with vodka in it. It was also where all the tailors in vietnam are so you walk a around town and everywhere you go in they'll make you anything you want (clothing, shoes, suits, etc) for absolutely dirt cheap prices. I got a bit sucked in and now my pack weighs 20 kilos. I almost had big stompy boots covered in black and red dragon design silk made (for $10), but then I rememberd I'd have to carry them for the next month. I'll have to see if they can do something like it in Thailand.

I have no idea what I'm going to do when I get home. It will be the middle of winter and right now, where I am, it is HOT. Middle of the summer, 90% humidity hot. I'm going to be standing outside the airport in a t-shirt cause I have no long clothes left. hehehe.

On that note....I may need a pickup at the airport in the afternoon on the 15th of december. Would anyone be able to do that?

I hope everyone is doing well. I got your emails A., but since they seemed to cancel each other out, I didn't bother to repond. I'm not actually going to make it to Japan (I fly home out of bangkok), but I'm still looking for combs and ma jong for you. (I've actually seen nice ma jong sets, but they're heavy and I'm assuming they'll have them in bankok).

I hope everyone is doing well. I'll be thinking about ya'll while I sit on the beach in thailand with a fruity cocktail :)

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:41:42 GMT

6 1/2 billion people in the world
83 million people in Vietnam
1,200 students at Guilford (at least when I was there)
25 students per class

Someone who likes math please tell me what the mathematical chance is that I would meet someone that I had a class with in a bar in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Man it's a small world

Vietnam

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 22:25:03 GMT

So I just got back to Hanoi from Sapa. Sapa is supposed to be a beautiful hill village with rice paddies, colorfully dressed locals and nice treks through the mountains. Unfortunately it rained the entire time I was there. As I discovered, it's hard enough to seem cool when you're traveling with your mum in tow. It's even harder when you've got your mum in tow and you're wearing a clear plastic rain poncho.

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:13:01 GMT

Ahh....finally somewhere warm. China was getting a bit cold for me but Hanoi is nice and warm.

Mum is driving me a bit nuts. It's extremely hard to freewheel it when you're traveling with someone who wants to make plans ahead of time and thinks that all the bad things she's ever read about will happen to her. The situation is rapidly degrading to the point where she's not having fun because she thought this trip would be all about "sharing experiences and bonding" and I'm becoming frustrated and bitchy because I want to bounce around and check things out and instead I'm feeling like I'm a teenager again having to check in with my mum every time I want to do something.

Maybe this situation is indicitive of why I never have sucessful relationships. Maybe I'm just fundamentally a "me" person and not a "we" person.

Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:24:59 GMT

So there's a glass case in my dorm room here at the hostel that has gas masks in it. I feel as though that should be slightly worrying.

Went to the Shanghai museum today and then walked around for a bit. The rest of china seems to have very boring block architecture, but Shanghai has quite a few cool building. Some of them feel as though they should be shining the batman light from them. It's pretty neat.

Went to see the chinese acrobats tonight as well. Damn! I have no idea how people can do that with their bodies. Especially after martial arts, I have an even greater appreciation for what they can do since I know just how difficult it is.

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 19:44:42 GMT

Drunk

In Shanghai

There are are way too many chinese people in this country

There is a line between a nicely packed club and not being able to move and the place I went tonight was definately one of the latter

Must sleep now

Love to all those that matter (and you know who you are)

Goodnight

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:14:23 GMT

Hehe.....Livejournal in chinese is strange

So here I am in china - Luoyang to be specific (It's a town really close to the Shaolin monks temple which is the only reason I'm here). China is very very dirty, but very interesting. Definately not a communist country anymore though. Capitalism is alive, kicking and chasing you down the street trying to sell you things.

I got to stand on the great wall on my birthday (yay!) which was really cool. And the other travelers in the hostel in Beijing sang to me and bought me drinks and M&M's. Definately a better birthday than last year. :)

I'm so happy to be out of Korea and especially to be on the road again. It's an even exchange to give up my own apartment in favor of living in a room with 3 other people and bathrooms and showers down the hall, just for the sights I get to see and the company of other travelers like me.

Anyway, limited time on the internet and many things to do, so I hope you are all well and happy. Anyone with things they want me to know should email me since I won't really be checking LJ except to update for the next two months or so.

Next stop - Xi'an and big warrior guys made of clay.

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 16:14:30 GMT

I'M FINISHED!!!!!

I am now happily unemployed. Yay!!

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 15:50:16 GMT

So go figure that I finally find out where all the foreigners in daegu hang out the weekend before I finish work. After my rant on saturday, I went to school, finished printing reports cards and came home breathing a huge sigh of relief that I had one less thing to deal with.

Sherry knocked on my door on here way home (she lives two floors up) and invited me out with a bunch of people. Went to the Ariana hotel and saw a pretty good cover band, talked to people, met a cute boy, went to the Thunderbird bar downtown after the band finished and then ended up at Itaewon Crew (another bar - which was packed and filled entirely with foreigners - I don't think I've seen this many non-koreans in one place since I came to korea). Between mike and the cute boy, didn't have to pay for any drinks after the Ariana (nice plus). Got home somewhere in the wee hours of the morning and didn't make it to sleep till after 7.

It was actually a lot of fun. I'm hoping I can russle up some people to go out this weekend to celebrate finishing my contract.

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 05:42:05 GMT

Ahhhh!! Stupid Korean idiots. The whole way this country is set up just sucks and some of the people are just incompetent.

Example #1
I need to change my work visa to a tourist visa so I can stay in the country for longer than 24 hours when my work visa expires. Eun-Jung (liason person for my school) says I have to go to immigration on my last day of work to do this. I insist that I need to go earlier so I have enough time to send my passport to the chinese consulate to get my visa to go to china. She insists that it has to be the last day. I tell her that doesn't make any sense. What if my last day of work was on a saturday when immigration isn't open. She says that then I would have to go on friday. I go home and look on line and find an EFL-Law website that says I don't have to do it on the last day just do it prior to finishing. I show it to her and she calls immigration and says, oh yeah, you're right.

Example #2
I have been using a travel agency to get tickets to fly around china. I have a ticket to Beijing and then am wait listed for one from Xi'an to Shanghai. I call them and tell them I need to come pay for and pick up the ticket to Beijing so that I can take it to immigration on monday and show proof of my departure date. So I go in there today and they have not only that ticket but one from Xi'an to Shanghai on a different date than I had requested. I tell them no, that's not the day I want to do that and all I need right now is the ticket to Beijing. They deliberate a whole lot and finally let me just buy the ticket to Beijing (at about $50 more than they had origionally told me). The ticket I was supposed to get left Seoul at 1:05 PM - plenty of time to get from the hotel in Seoul out to the airport (about an hour on the bus) and get there 2 hours early for international flights. I get home and look at the ticket - they've changed my flight to the one that leaves at 9:40 AM. They didn't bother to tell me this and it would mean having to get up at the ass crack of dawn to get out to the airport in time. So I called and complained and they say, oh, well the morning fligh is OK, right? I tell them that it would mean getting up ridiculously early in the morning and that they had changed it without telling me and I'm ticked off. They said they'll call me back. So now I'm waiting for them to call me back.

Is it really too much to ask people to do their jobs correctly and know how to do things that are presumably in their job description. What the fuck!

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 06:08:38 GMT

Today is one of those dreary overcast rainy days where all I want to do is curl up in bed with a book. Normally I could do this, at least for a little while, since it's wednesday which is my short day and I don't have to be at work until 6:30. Not today though. Instead I have to walk to the post office to mail yet another box of stuff home and then go in to work early (like 4:00) so I can print all my report cards. I'm still not even done writing them all either. 10 classes finished, but still 2 classes to write. Blech.

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:42:13 GMT

Well, it's that time again. Writing report cards. We have a four day weekend for korean thanksgiving and it's looking like I'm going to spend the whole time writing reports. At least this is the last time I have to do it.

5 classes finished
7 to do
9 days of work left

I'm so close to finished here. I can't wait!

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 06:30:03 GMT

So the other night I had Mike translate the stuff on the wall for me at hapkido. I'm not sure exactly how it works, (since the grand master still wants me to improve my sparring), but apparently, I am officially a black belt. :)

I was riding home from hapkido the other night in the van (the grandmaster drives us home after class) and I realized that even though I really don't like korea as a whole, I'm really going to miss two things - My apartment (this is the first time I've ever lived alone and even though the apartment is tiny, I love having my own place) and hapkido.

I know that martial arts will be easier back in the US where I actually speak the same language as the instructor, but I've been going to the same place 3-5 nights a week for 8 months and even though I can't talk to anyone there, it's such a nice friendly group of kids (most of them are in high school). I'm going to miss hanging out with them ever night. Even without the ability to communicate with words, it was the closest thing I found to a real community here in korea.

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:57:29 GMT

Can't sleep. It's 4 am and I got in bed at 2. I have this nonstop list of things I need to do in the next four week running through my head and it won't turn off. Doesn't help that I can't actually do any of them in the middle of the night.

Something's going on with my black belt at hapkido. I thought I had only taken part of the black belt test and was going to have the rest later but there's a big list on the wall at the dojo and aparently (I can't read it cause it's in korean) it says black belt next to my name and today the grand master wanted to know my height and weight for my new uniform. (you get a new uniform that's red & black instead of black & yellow when you get your black belt).

The mosquitos have once again infiltrated my apartment. They went away for a little while during the blistering heat in the middle of the summer, but now it appears that they have returned in force. I'm less than pleased about this.

Too much to do......stress

20 days of work left