Teachers Share their Experiences While Living Abroad!

Wow. I just got back from my Chuseok vacation to Hong Kong, and I have nothing but great things to say about it. Chuseok- as you may or may not know is Korea's annual Thanksgiving celebration. During Chuseok, almost everything closes down, while many Korean people migrate to their hometowns outside of Seoul, to spend time with family. I had heard from many friends that are also teaching English in Korea that Seoul turns into a ghost town, and that there isn't much to do. Staying in Seoul didn't appeal to me whatsoever, and I immediately started scouring the internet for flight deals leaving from Incheon. Needless to say, since Chuseok is a major holiday, flight prices are not the greatest. Please, learn from my mistake: when making travel plans during Chuseok, do everything as far in advance as possible. I booked my flights about a month in advance (in a post Hweshik stupor) and could have saved quite a bit had I booked earlier on.   

In my third and final installment of my hard-hitting blog series on my magical Chinese Lunar New Year adventure, I will be covering the food and overall dining experience of Hong Kong. Although still obviously part of Asian cuisine, Hong Kong has been influenced heavily by foreign cultures, and of course this is going to be reflected in its food as well.  While I have gotten used to eating many of the exotic foods in Asia teaching English in Korea, Hong Kong was still a bit different from what I was used to. 

Last week I talked about my trip to Hong Kong, which was a long overdue break from my teaching labors. Yes, I love teaching English in Korea but even people who enjoy their job still need a break to recharge the batteries from time to time. Anyway, while in Hong Kong, my friends and I also made a day trip over to Macau, a special administrative region of China.

For those of you unfamiliar with Macau, it is the largest gambling mecca in the world. I have heard some people say it is five times larger than Las Vegas, but I don’t know exactly how they quantify that, since in my opinion it seemed like Las Vegas has a lot more casinos. Either way, being the degenerates that we are, of course we were going to check out the the casinos in Macau. Along with visiting the casinos, I quickly found out there is a lot more to do in Macau than I previously thought. 

This past weekend was significant on many levels as a English Teacher in Korea at ChungDahm. For one, it was the weekend before a new term at ChungDahm began and secondly and probably most importantly it was the Lunar New Year holiday.  As a result of the holiday we had a four day weekend which meant a few friends and I decided to travel to Hong Kong to refresh before the new term began.  Now squeezing the contents of a 4-day Chinese whirlwind adventure into a single blog seems like an injustice, so this week I will give you three must-see attractions to visit in Asia’s most dynamic and multi-cultural cities.

The Lunar New Year holiday (Seollal) is one of the two major holidays that most ChungDahm teachers will be able to take off. Because of that, most teachers will try to vacation outside of the country. Last year, while I was on my Lunar New Year break, I met up with my parents and we went to two popular destination in Asia - Hong Kong and Macau.