Nicole's Adventures

Hmm, writing about Vietnam is something that I find harder so far than other things. As I mentioned in my frienship village post, I'm currently reading a book titled, The Girl in the Picture which I've been learning more and more about which has made me kind of change the way I think about my experience in Vietnam. I arrived in Vietnam via an 31 hour overnight/ day bus leaving from Vang Vieng, Laos at 1pm. Arriving in Hanoi around 6pm the next day. It was an interesting bus journey for sure. Thank goodness there were two dutch girls on the journey with me. But i'll save the rest of that story for the Laos blog.. I decided to tag along with the girls from the bus journey to the hostel they had booked. Turned out to be an excellent one where you could meet tons of people but it was huge! I think, 7 or 8 stories, a huge lounge, computer lab, outside hang out, a bar downstairs, luggage storage, etc. The next morning the girls and I went on a walking tour of the Old...

I have had several problems with my other blog site, so have decided to go with tried and true google.  I will continue to try and post blogs about the rest of my trip throughout the month.  ENJOY and sorry to make you change your saved links!  Sooo I pretty much would consider documenting my trip as far as photographs and blogging goes a complete fail.. but such is life when you are on the adventure of a life time and don't really want to make time to hit up the internet cafe or borrow computers.  As far as the photos go.. obviously now I wish I had more photos, you always wish you had more afterwards.. but I enjoyed living in the moment and just soaking things in as they came to me. As mentioned in that little mini post, November 7th I started volunteering with Vietnam Friendship Village. I didn't know a whole lot about the organization besides a few things I could read about online. Because Hanoi was my first stop in Vietnam I also wasn't sure what ...

  Winter Vaca to The Land of Mangoes March 13, 2013 Nicole FINALLY! It was vacation time for this girl, after a long long long winter! I dont’ even know where to begin on this post! I guess from the beginning.. Manila! Is a very very busy, dirty, and not nice city where we were anyways. The hotel we booked was near the airport and was supposed to pick us up and they weren’t there.. soo we took a taxi and Chinese New Year was just ringing in so there were fireworks and all kinds of stuff. The taxi driver spoke decent English but wasn’t really that friendly. The hotel, was prettty sketchy.. haha. The room looked clean but just dingy.. but it was late so we went to sleep right away. Next morning, we picked a new hotel, and then went to explore “Intramuros” the original settlement of Manila, and a few parks surrounding the area. It was very eye opening, but nothing really was very interesting.   We decided instead of taking a taxi to the MRT to take a Jeepney h...

  20 Apr The last few months I have spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not I will stay in Korea another year as contract renewal is upon us very soon. Or at least a verbal commitment followed by signing of the contract about a month later.   At this point I think I want to move schools. Some of my friends are leaving so I would request to take their position. They are closer to downtown, and are in a really nice neighborhood with lots of foreigners and near the University.  Anyways here is the list. If you have any guidance or ideas about what I write here, please feel free to advise! Why Korea is Great and I should stay.  Friends in Korea .  I know it’s not the same as my friends that I grew up with back at home. but my friends here who are in the same situation, similar type of adventurous people, and people who are always up for anything, are a blast to be around. They have really made my time here fly by. Bond...

  Springy Spring!        16 Apr Last weekend we had a nice adventure trying to get to Seoul! I’ve never had a problem getting a bus ticket on a Friday night but I usually go earlier then when we went  because it takes Nichole a bit to get home from school in the mountains.  I wanted to just hop on a bus from the express bus terminal and go from there. It takes us much closer to Shane’s house than the other bus terminal. Marlene had come from Gyeongju to meet us and taken the bus in Pohang to switch bus terminals! We got there and tickets were sold out until 9. So we rush back to the other bus terminal to find their tickets are sold out until 9 as well. I whip out my phone and try and figure out if there are KTX tickets available. There are. So we hop on a bus to get to the KTX station. I asked the driver several times before sitting down because we were in a rush. Each time I asked he said yes, Gyeongju KTX.. We get about 5 minutes down th...

  Weekend!         6 Apr  I feel like I haven’t stopped running since last Friday when I sat down and wrote last week.. I can’t wait until next weekend to sleep in! Last Friday afterschool I went to the bus terminal to pick up Lucy. From there we headed downtown to hang out with a few friends then got dinner at a little Italian place. I had this cheesy bacon risotto thing which was delicious! After that we met up with Michael to go Salsa dancing, I wanted to catch up since I had missed class the week before. However it was a salsa party soo they were doing some other kind of beat and really didn’t get a ton of practice but Lucy had fun trying to dance and laughing. After that we all went and got some coffee then headed back to get some sleep. As soon as we got up Sat we headed to Ulsan to meet Lucy’s friend from her Phillipines trip named Janna. She was such a sweetheart and we had a delicious lunch. Afterwards Lucy & and wandered around Ulsan...