To give you a quick idea of what we did I'll sum it up this way... We flew to Hungary for 10 days, stayed in Hong Kong for a day and night on our way back, went back to Korea for a day, then caught our flight to Malaysia the next day where we stayed for 3 days or so. We're now back in Korea for a total of four days before flying home to the US tomorrow morning. Phew, that's a lot of flight time.
We had a good time in Hungary. We were there for our friends' wedding and we were able to stay with them the whole time. We had a lot of good conversations and made some good memories together. I'm really grateful that we were able to go and that they let us stay with them.
During our time in Hungary, I made some observations about the country.
1.) The people (at least customer service in particular) were not friendly and sometimes even outright rude.
At St. Stephen's Basilica, for example,
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St. Stephen's Basilica |
2.) The food is very rich. Lots of cheese, breaded items, and sauces to go with every meal. It was quite the change coming from the Korean diet.
3.) The clothing that people wore (men and women) was much more liberal. I saw men walking around shirtless and even saw a few mowing their lawn in nothing more than a speedo. I saw women with low cut shirts and midriffs showing. Coming from a country whose citizens swim in their full clothes, it was sometimes hard not to stare.


5.) Much of the technology in Hungary seems to lag a couple decades behind. A lot of what I saw resembled what you would find perhaps in the 90's.
6.) It was always assumed that I could speak Hungarian unless proven otherwise. Quite the contrast to Korea where it's assumed I CAN'T speak Korean unless proven otherwise. Even better was Malaysia where it was obvious that we couldn't speak Malay but no one cared and they treated us as though we could anyways.
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Nan Lian Garden |
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Nan Lian Garden |
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Chin Lin Monastery |
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Victoria Harbor as seen from the Peak |
Pork buns from Caterking Dim Sum |
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Jet Li's handprints at the Avenue of Stars |
It's generally advised to be at the airport two hours before your flight, especially if it's an international flight. Alan and I were incredibly fortunate to have made it to our flight that next morning. My alarm never went off. Our plane was due to take off at 10am....We didn't even wake up until 8am. By some miracle, we made it through buses, trains, check-in, security, and all the way to our gate just as the plane was boarding a little before 9:30am. And then we sat on the plane for THREE and a HALF HOURS. We sat on the plane at our gate for about as long as the flight to Korea was supposed to take. The contrast between our morning panic and the afternoon drudgery was comical. Frankly, I think we were both too tired to really care about our essentially doubled plane time.
We had less than 24 hours in Korea before we were in the air again. We got into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia late at night and made it to our hotel. Compared to US prices, hotels in Kuala Lumpur are pretty darn cheap. We were able to stay in a 4 star hotel without even a wince for our wallets.
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Javi and Samantha professional zouk dancers |
Having been a part of the salsa community for many years, the contrast with the international zouk community was stark. It's not uncommon for the salsa community to be a bit uppity and beginner unfriendly, so I was somewhat anxious about going to a zouk festival as a complete noob to the dance. I was surprised how misplaced my apprehension was. Most of the dancers there were relatively advanced and I warned a lot of them that I was a zouk beginner whenever asked out onto the floor. But I stopped after a while, because no one seemed to care. It wasn't about the moves you could do. Zouk is about something more. It's about unity. It certainly is a very intimate dance but its intimacy differs from that of say rumba or anything I've ever danced, really. And while the dance may look very "sexy" it doesn't feel overtly sexual in nature. Perhaps this article can give you an idea of what I mean. Zouk is about connection and its connection is of a much more subtle variety. I fell in love with zouk from the moment I first laid eyes on it and it took me a long time to figure out why. I started dancing because I enjoy the connection and communication that dancing can bring. So much can be expressed physically that words become superfluous. Awareness of people and their emotions or intentions expands. Zouk is the embodiment of this. It's about listening, understanding, and unity. And it's now my favorite dance.
After we got back from Malaysia, I went right back into work for the next three days. They were pretty typical days and I just finished up my last day today. It feels incredibly odd to be done. This has been my life for the past year. It doesn't really feel like I'm actually going back to the US tomorrow morning. And I'm going to miss my kids. I've watched them grow and they've helped me grow through all this time together. I'll miss my coworkers as well. They've been really kind and always helpful to me and they've been my role models for teaching this last year. It feels like yesterday that we stepped off our plane in Seoul and blundered around trying to find our way. I really can't believe it's over.
Here's to the many adventures Alan and I had together on the other side of the world.