I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

The last two weeks have been chock full of amazing experiences and people.  Alan and I may both be zombies at the moment, but I think we're rather happy zombies.

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,

St. Stephen's Basilica

we were attempting to get change for one of our bills.  I went up to the lady at the museum entrance and asked her but I think she thought I was asking for a ticket.  I was trying to talk to Alan about how best to get change at the same time and I pulled my hand back as she reached for the bill.  As it slipped out of her grasp, she slapped her hand on the table, rolled her eyes, and sighed at me. I was so taken aback that I may have sort of run away.








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.

4.)  All of the buildings in Budapest were beautiful.  I saw fast food joints that looked like mansions.






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.

Nan Lian Garden

Nan Lian Garden

Chin Lin Monastery

Victoria Harbor as seen from the Peak

Hong Kong is kind of a blur.  We only spent a day there and with the zero sleep we were both running on I'm surprised we made it through.  We were able to see the Nan Lian Garden and Chin Lin Monastery and then made it up the Peak for a sunset view of Victoria Harbor.  Generally people take the Peak Tram to the top, but it was a two hour wait...and since we only had one day to spend in the city, we took a bus to the top.  We made it across the harbor on Star Ferry in time to see the Symphony of Lights from the Avenue of Stars and then had dim sum for dinner at Caterking Dim Sum.

Pork buns from Caterking Dim Sum

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.

Javi and Samantha professional zouk dancers

I loved our trip to Malaysia.  We didn't really see any of the country or even the city...but that's not why we were there.  We were there for the 2014 South East Asia Zouk Festival and it was an absolute blast.   Two 9 hour days of zouk dancing did a number on both of our bodies with Alan ending up sick and me barely able to move the morning we left.  But it was definitely worth it.  There were four hours of workshops and lessons during the day followed by a social dance party and performances or competitions in the evening.  We met people from all over the planet and met and received instruction from some of the world's best zouk dancers.  I even unwittingly danced with one of said renowned dancers...and it might have been a good thing that I didn't know who he was at the time.  My jaw dropped when I showed up for a workshop with James Anthanassiou and Sonia Starosta only to see the very man with whom I had danced the night before.

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.