TV has thrown a wrench into the honeymoon Euro-trip plan

When we first started plotting, figuring, dreaming, and whatnot about how long our honeymoon in Europe could be, how much money we could save during our last year in Korea, and where we wanted to go, we thought "hey, we could make this a three month thing, live cheap, and visit lots of places." We could probably still do that but I think both of us have come to the point where after spending 2 years overseas we might want to get home, find jobs, and get settled a little bit sooner than that.

Our first draft of this plan was to get married in New York, fly to Paris, and start the honeymoon there. The first draft didn't get very far though, mainly just a list of cities and places we wanted to visit. Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, München, Rome, Prague, and so on and so forth. We watched lots of TV shows about traveling in France and Germany and the Czech Republic, and got pretty excited about the whole prospect.

Of course, right now we have the great opportunity to live in Asia and have cheap flights to lots of places in Asia that we want to visit, so it's pretty important to mention that we don't want to save so aggressively that we have regrets about not visiting places here. Our trip to Japan got booked first, and we understand it's going to be somewhat expensive, but I think we'd really kick ourselves if we lived next door to one of the most iconic countries in Asia for two years and never made a proper visit. Our trip to Thailand for summer vacation will probably end up costing less than the shorter trip to Japan in the end, but after a winter in Korea we both want to be somewhere nice and hot with a beach, and Thailand is yet another of the most iconic countries in Asia. We're also kicking around ideas for our winter vacation, because there's a few other "must-see" places on our list and we have a bit more time to work with this winter.

Anyhow, the point of the previous tangent of a paragraph is that we are planning on a somewhat shorter honeymoon, perhaps 6 weeks or so. Where do we start our travel planning then? Well, for one, we like guidebooks. Although it's cool among travel circles to berate guidebooks and the people that use them, I think scoffing at the idea of carrying some information about places you might want to see or visit, things you might want to eat, and a few useful phrases is short-sighted. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I think that disliking things just because other people like them is kinda crazy.

Anyhow, our Lonely Planet or Rough Guide Europe guides, one of them, had an interesting looking itinerary that started in Rome and ended in Scotland. We both thought "hey, that sounds awesome." It even started to look like we might start the process of figuring out how to make it work. We usually do travel and wedding planning at a cafe near our little apartment, but this weekend we didn't make it due to disruption from my kidney.

Last night, as we laid down to go to sleep I put on an epsiode of No Reservations in which Anthony Bourdain (another person some people hate, some people love) traveled through Istanbul. All of the sudden Turkey just turned into a wrench that has lodged itself right in the middle of my mind's "where do I want to go" engine. I think it got stuck in Carolyn's too. I mean, it looked so foreign, yet clean and familiar, and the food looked amazing. How could we not want to go there, right?

That's just how it is I guess, there's always going to be more places that we want to go...but maybe, just maybe we can plan Turkey into our honeymoon.

Summer Vacation: So close, yet so far.

Here's a short little ditty about the old "Dynamic Korea" situation. Today I asked about summer vacation. There's really only one set of days I can possibly use thanks to scheduled summer camps. I asked if I could use those days, and my coteacher said "Yes" so I asked if it was safe to book the flights. Surprisingly, she said "yes." After this I started looking at getting flights booked and got to the last screen, last click, and decided to ask again. This time the answer was "give me one day so I can ask the Vice Principal." I hope the flights aren't way more expensive tomorrow.

Ugh. Dynamic Korea strikes again!

The good news is that this can hopefully be resolved by tomorrow and we'll have another trip to plan at the cafe on Saturday. Woot!

Busy Busy Busy

Carolyn and I have been on quite a fitness kick for a while. About 2 or 3 weeks ago she decided she wanted to start running and of course I joined in. Then one of her friends from the dog shelter started a running group and we've joined in there too. We've been doing about 4 runs a week in addition to our other workouts. I think I successfully maxed out the value of the Men's Health book of body weight exercises, and  bought a new book. The new workout program comes from Mark Lauren, a former Air Force physical fitness dude, and it's all body weight exercises. I'm surprised that I've never thought about using things like doors and beds and tables and such to increase resistance and provide the right positioning. It's pretty challenging. I'm having to change up one exercise to avoid destroying the dining room table, and the accompanying iPod app won't let you change the workout while it's in progress, so I missed a set today (but damn, I was kind of relieved anyway because my muscles got blasted this week.)

So why are we trying so hard to get into tip top shape? Because it's time to start planning for vacation! This summer we're planning to head down to Phuket in Thailand and get a boat load of beach and ocean time. We ordered a couple of travel guides from The Book Depository a couple weeks ago, and they finally showed up at the end of this week. Looking at the guides makes me really really excited.

There's a huge Korean holiday the last weekend of September/first few days of October, and we're also planning a trip to Japan for those days. Japan is like the promised land of everything that's cool in Asia that's been sitting just out of reach for the whole time we've been here, and I can't wait to visit. Hopefully we'll get in and spend our time mostly in Kyoto to see everything cultural that we can in just a few days. We might book the flights over this weekend to get a decent price. It's gotta be better than last year's trip to the Daegu Art Museum for the long weekend. I can't wait to have sushi, soba, yakitori, takoyaki, and all of that great stuff.

Sunday morning we're planning a little vacation/wedding planning date over at one of our many coffee shops on the block. There could be an update after that.

Self-Serve Bar, and WTF happened here?

This weekend was pretty interesting. We went out for a friend's birthday, and caught up with the party (okay, we beat them there by nearly an hour and a half) at a self-serve beer bar in downtown Daegu. The idea is you go into the bar, pick a table, go over to one of the 6 or 8 refrigerators, pick whatever you want, and drink it. Then at the end of your visit you pick up a little shopping basket, take it all to the cash register, and they scan the bottles and bill you. GENIUS. I love it, you don't have to wait for a bartender to look at you OR leave a tip.

I might have gotten a new favorite beer out of it. I really liked Edelweiss from Austria, and Maisel's Weiß from Germany. Maisel's might have been my favorite between the two but it's hard to tell, so I might just have to go back and give it another shot.

Yesterday I joined a ukulele group. I met them downtown at about 7:30, and we jammed on Iz Kamakawiwo'ole's Somewhere Over the Rainbow and a song from Spongebob Square Pants. It was a lot of fun to meet a couple of new people and make some music. We played right outside the Hyundai Department Store, so afterwards I snuck in and bought a Dr. Pepper (such a treat) and a bag of Peanut M&M's (HELLO).

When I got home from work today I was greeted by two Korean men who said that a pipe had burst underneath our floorboard and rained on the apartment below us. They've been fixing it for about 3.5 hours now. We can't use our shower until tomorrow night. Wonderful. Now they're looking at a problem with the water heater. I can't wait for them to get finished up so I can use the restroom and put on pajama pants.

Anyhow, that's the deal for now. Not a whole lot exciting here. We did decide on a destination for our summer vacation, and I can't wait to get on an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur to connect to our final destination of...wait for it...wait for it...




...let it hang there...




...building suspense...



Phuket!


It's going to be legendary.