Travel Memories Tuesday: Modern Toilet Restaurant, Taipei

Last week Rich showed me an article about the worlds weirdest restaurants - on the list was the "Modern Toilet Restaurant" in Taipei. When we spend three months in Taipei the Modern Toilet Restaurant was on the top of my list of placed to visit. In the restaurant the seats are shaped like toilets, all the meals are served in either toilets or other bathroom themed items, like a urinal or a soap dish. Rich decided to get the curry and it was served in a toilet. Good times.  As we were leaving, I posed with one of the restaurants characters/mascots - a pink poo. I love Asia so much!

Travel Memories Tuesday - Scooter Kitty, Taipei

Travel is my favourite thing and I'm lucky to have seen so much of the world already, however Rich and I are currently saving for an "epic" trip to Europe in 2014 which means I don't have any spare cash for holidays (as Europe is a LONG way from New Zealand, so I have to save a lot of money to make it there and we are also planning on spending at least a month there).

So I thought I'd do a post each week looking back on some travel adventures I have had to date - travel memories Tuesay!

Taipei in Taiwan - We lived here for around three months and there were scooters EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES. Whole families traveled on scooters and also pets traveled on scooters, I seen a guy with a German Shephard on a scooter once.

I snapped a picture of this kitty one day resting on a scooter as I couldn't help but wonder if he had been traveling on the scooter or that the seat just a warm place to sleep in the sun. In Taipei both seemed possible options.

Cutie Cutie Owl

Here's one of my first completed projects in Taiwan - a cute little softie Owl. But he's not a making of my own creation - recently when I visited a museum I bought a postcard, which you could make a softie out of.

It's pretty cool - they company that makes these little guys has all kinds of cool kits on their website.

Just for fun - here's a photo of my little owl hanging out with all the other softies at our apartment. Rich made all the robots (actually there is only one softie robot - the rest are Russian doll robots).

Also, if you want to see just how I made my little owl there are detailed instructions here from the monkey design website.

I've finally returned to Korea!

After an eight day holiday that included visiting three countries - Rich and I are finally home!

We visited Vietnam (Hanoi and Halong Bay), Hong Kong and made a day trip to Macau. It was a lot of fun but also very tiring. You know the old saying, I think I need a holiday to recover from my holiday.

I have so many pictures to post and stories to tell, but for now, I will leave you with a picture of a Kuromi cake (in case you don't know, Kuromi is my favourite character in the Hello Kitty "universe") I saw in a bakery in Hong Kong.
In other news it's now officially less than ONE MONTH until we leave Korea which is pretty crazy. The last year has gone so quickly. We have now started packing up our apartment and will soon buy our tickets for Taipei - we're due there mid September, some very busy times ahead.

Impressive birthday present

I received a whole bunch of great birthday presents this year from my friends, family, workmates, Rich and even my students.

But the most impressive birthday present I received was a new job in Taipei!

Just last week one of the recruiters I have been dealing with in Taiwan told me that Taipei is too competitive and I wouldn't get a job there before I arrived, so I was feeling a little disheartened as I really wanted to live in the greater Taipei area.

Then when I opened my e-mails yesterday I discovered that I had received a job offer from one of the two big language schools in Taiwan in Taipei!

So it's happy birthday to me! I'll have more birthday related posts soon.

Happy Friday everybody xoxox

What a week!

This week has been a very long week, tomorrow I have what I sincerely hope will be my last open class in Korea. This time both Korean and Native English Speaking teachers are coming along. You would think that seen as this is my fifth open class I would be less nervous - but that's not the case at all.

My co-teachers and I made a seriously cheesy video to go along with the lesson too - if I can get a copy of the video I will post it here. I'm sure Rich and the other native teachers that are coming along will find it hilarous.

Because of the open class and all sorts of other work that has piled up on me (I still have to plan a 1 week summer camp for my extra class and I am not sure where I will find time to do that!) I am incredibly tired right now. The humid heat of the Korean summer isn't helping - although I would take the heat of this summer over a Wellington winter any day!

I also had some bad news in regard to our summer trip to China.

Any foriegner living and working in Korea you must apply for an Alien Resident Card (ARC) to show that you can legally work here and have the correct visa.

I have been in contact with a Korean travel agent over the past little while to book our trip, the agent asked me yesterday how much longer our ARC's were valid for as the Chinese Government is now refusing to grant visa's to foriegn workers from South Korea if their ARC is due to expire in less than six months.

Because our contract finish on 31 August our ARC's will expire on 1 September so we cannot get Chinese visa's and we cannot travel to China.

I feel so disappointed about this, I'm not sure why this decision has been made by Chinese customs either? I have had my heart set on going to China again since winter and I just feel so bummed out about it.

Rich and I have to replan our whole summer vacation which sucks a lot seen as we were hoping to book flights this week. I think now we will go from Vietnam to Hong Kong then back to Korea but I am really not sure - I will keep you all posted. One thing is certain - I will be going to Hong Kong!

However, this week hasn't been all bad, for one thing I got to be a judge an English Language Speech contest. I heard speeches about everything from deep sea creatures, the perils of having little sisters, The Korean War, how Korean can become a multicultural society and the joy of the jijilbang's.

It is incredible how well some of these kids can speak in English, especially the younger kids that are only 8 or 9 years old. I was seriously impressed.

Also, for those of you who don't know, Rich and I are planning on moving to Taiwan later this year. Our contract's will expire here in Korea on 31 August, after that we will go home for a week or two (or possibly longer depending on the new jobs). Then's it's off to live in Taiwan with all kinds of new challenges and adventures.This week, I had a really positive skype interview with a very large Taiwanese school and a couple of other recruiters are also very interested in me. So here's hoping I will have a new job soon!