Hello everybody back home and abroad, yes I am still alive and kicking. So sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated my blog. So much has gone on in the last months I will try and catch you all up to speed on everything that is going on in my wild and crazy adventure they call life. So here we GOOOO….

Korea was where I left off and its seems so long ago now, but to make a long story short Korea didn’t think too kindly of me working in Korea teaching without my proper paper work. So when I went to apply for my actual visa they denied it and I had only another week left on my holiday visa so I decided to head back down to Australia to figure things out.

I had already arranged a vacation to Thailand a couple weeks later so I didn’t really think much of it but an extension to my vacation. It was with a heavy heart that I left Korea, I really loved it there: the people, the friends and co-workers I had become close too, and all the delicious food! It was an abrupt end for my time in Korea, especially since it was finally starting to get warm. But as always I just took it in stride and started my next adventure…

I spent 2 amazing weeks in Thailand, and spent over a month back in Australia before I left again to New Zealand. This time it wasn’t all play though, I was on a mission in New Zealand.

I had to leave Australia to apply for my working holiday visa that would allow me to work and travel in Australia for up to a year. The weather wasn’t so great but the few nice days that I got were spent hiking and exploring the cities.

I spent just over 2 weeks in New Zealand, traveling around spending most my time in the city of Christchurch which was my base, which everybody around the world knows by now after the 2 devastating earthquakes that have hit city, the last one being so recent.

Here is a picture of mine on top of the famous Church in the middle of the city when I was there and what it looks like now after the earthquake. I hope any friends and fellow travelers that are still over there are safe. After the 2 weeks I was granted my Visa and booked my ticket back to OZ.

When I returned to OZ I picked up 2 jobs. One was a morning job at a café and the second was an evening job at a Balinese restaurant. I worked both for a while then dropped the evening job when I became full time at the café. Abby and I were able to find some time to take a few weekends off, one of the trips being a 3 hour road trip up the coast to Hervey Bay. We spent our time whale watching, watching the Aussie PBR (Professional Bull Riding), and some time camping on the beach.

So After I had been back in OZ for about 2 months I worked at the café full time until Abby and I left Brisbane to come back home. Abby was coming back to do her medical elective back in Chico with a Orthopedic surgeon. While I was coming back for one of my best friends CJ’s wedding Oct. 30th.

It’s a long flight back from Australia, but we knew we were home when we got into LAX and over the loud speaker we could hear instructions where to go by a person with a strong Mexican accent. “We were home….”

The first week of being back in the states felt like a blur. Abby only had 2 days to get unpacked and repacked to move down to Chico and start her elective. While I was busy getting stuff done for the wedding like: getting my suit sized up, going to the rehearsal dinner, watching the Giants win the World Series (whoop, whoop), and many other wedding party duties… The big day came and went for CJ and Jessica. The wedding was amazing, so many familiar faces showed up and it was great to see a lot of old friends and meeting new ones.

Before Abby and I came home we thought that being home for 2 months seemed like a long time but in reality it went by way too quickly. Thanksgiving came and went this year swiftly as our Carpenter Thanksgiving had our lowest number of attendees this year with only 36 showing up because of a big storm that hit that weekend.

But we made due and there was plenty of food for everyone as usual. As the weeks went by, I spent most of my time: cutting wood with my dad, golfing, hunting, going on road trips, and seeing old friends.

Highlights of the trip back home had to be: Going down to Marysville and duck hunting with Abby’s cousin Michael and catching the Kings playing the Mav’s that night. The next week going down and watching the San Jose Sharks play and meeting up with our Erik and Brie our friends from Brisbane. CJ and Jessica’s Wedding and all the shenanigans that went along with it. The Giants winning the WORLD SERIES!!!

The Oasis ugly Christmas party, 2nd year in a row. My sister finally getting engaged ;). New Years Eve road trip to San Fran with Abby, Kenny, Spoon, and myself. Flying down to Phoenix to see some old friends and watching the Heat play the Suns! (best present ever!). Another highlight of my trip was meeting a good amount of Abby’s relatives.

I was very fortunate to meet and spend time with all the relatives that I did meet. I can see why Abby has turned out so amazing. Mostly the biggest highlight of all was seeing all my family and getting to spend the holidays with them all. It’s very rare that I get to spend so much time at home with my family over the holidays and I had missed it considerably.

Like I said though, the time came and went faster than I had expected it too and before we knew it Abby and I were back in LAX waiting for a flight that would take us back half way around the world. That wait lasted a little longer than we thought with a 4 ½ hour delay so we didn’t end up leaving LAX tell about 2:30 am, which was terrible because the pub closed at midnight. So we had to suffer for 2 ½ hours before we were able to get on our flight and sleep.

So here we go again on my second entry here in Australia. It seems like that last few weeks have been extremely long in a good way. I have just been trying to pack as much fun and sun into my last few days as much as possible. Over the last few days I have been all over the coast. One day I went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary which is the largest Koala Sanctuary in the world. I met Abby after her classes in the afternoon and we took the bus about a half hour to the zoo. The sanctuary was great with lots of great animals. We watched a hawk demonstration and sheep dog demonstration neither of which seemed to impress us that much because it seemed like we could have seen those same demonstrations back home at the Inter Mountain Fair. I think that I have actually seen both those demonstrations conducted by members of my family but the end results of the demonstrations were quite a bit different and with a few more explicit lyrics (I don’t think I have ever seen Lady move fast enough to become a sheep dog, more like a sheep rug ….). Then after that we went and fed the Kangaroos and that was lots of fun and there were tons of them all over the place. So towards the end the day at the Sanctuary with went by quickly and saw the: wombats, dingo’s, Tasmanian devils, Alligators and of course “heaps” of Koalas. Aussies love to use the word “heaps” instead of “a lot” of something. Before we left there were these white birds that said hello and goodbye to people passing by which we had to play with first. We stayed for awhile playing with them and go figure they sure loved their Pepsi, the Coke-cola people were so jealous because the birds wouldn’t talk to them. So all in all the sanctuary was really nice and I got to see lots of cool animals.

That weekend I wanted to head off south down the coast about an hour south of Brisbane to Surfers Paradise which is one of the main vacation get away places in all of Australia. So Abby and I took the train down on Saturday afternoon and it was a little tuff to find a room, because it was one of the last weekends before most of the schools and Universities were going back into session so it was pretty busy. We ended up finding a good deal on a room right next to the beach that ended up working out great for the night. That night we went to the Casino which was a big hit. We walked around a bit then sat down and played some blackjack. There games are a little different from the ones back in the states for a little over an hour. Unfortunately there was no Pai Gow Brody, I guess I will have to wait tell I’m inving just a little bit up so it was a successful trip in my book. The next day before we switched hotels we made it a point to go to one of the very few Mexican restaurants in Australia that afternoon. I had to get some, because it might be a long time till my next good Mexican meal. So we switched hotels and I had a good skype session with my parent’s pool side at the hotel which was nice. Then headed off to the beach again and just hung out in the sun and body surfed in the waves that where actually pretty big in some parts. That night we went to the movies and then had Indian food to top of an amazing day.

Monday we took off early so Abby could get back for her classes and I needed to start packing for my flight to Korea. Well…. when I got back I talked to my recruiter that had placed me with the school and she advised that the school had gone and just hired somebody else and so the job opening was no longer available. So, I got to learn that signed contracts in the US do not have the same meanings as signed contracts in other countries (lesson learned, haha). So all the next week I worked on posting my resume again and sorting through all of the different job offers again which wasn’t too hard to do. So by Thursday I had narrowed my job offers down to 3 and by the weekend I had a new contract with another really good school just west of Seoul in Bucheon, Korea.

So Friday I had pretty much everything rapped up for work so I joined the Queensland Med program for the day for their yearly sports day. So for the events of sports day the whole Med school program gets the day off to get wasted and do games. Seems like a Med school is a real drag right…haha. So the day starts with all the 4^th years at a bar in the city at 8am and at 9am they all run to another bar closer to Campus and pick up the 3^rdst years and drink for an hour and so on and so on, tell all the Med school kids are at one bar and race to Campus from the 1 years bar. All this is done with the students dressed in their scrubs with Sharpe written all them. At the school they had a roped off section with beer tents, jumping houses, and just games to play. Needless to say; after starting so early, having a camelback full of vodka, and it being 90 degrees outside we went back and crashed around that afternoon but only had a short one because after that we went into the city to watch my first Professional Rugby Union game. I pretty much sat and watched and distracted Abby by asking questions the whole time about the game. The weekend was just a blur of watching movies and recovering from sports day. The recovering was not really for me as much as it was for the co-captain of “Team Fun”. The following week I just got all my stuff ready for Korea because I still wasn’t sure when they were going to be flying me out and it kept changing. The final week in Australia was just more relaxing at the south bank beach catching some final rays before I headed off to Korea. My last day in Australia was raining all day when a big storm came and didn’t stop raining tell Abby and I decided to go get my last meal of….. “Indian Food”, yum! The rain let up just enough to trick us into going all the way to the restaurant and on our way back with our take-out deciding to just start pouring down rain on us on our walk back… perfect timing! So I left Monday morning to Korea at 8:30am and I am here now so I will have lots to talk about soon. Hope everyone back home is well and everybody overseas. Miss you all!

So here I go again, another new adventure in a new year, but on a few different continents this time. If you haven’t heard I am heading off to Australia for 10 days then to South Korea for a 12 month contract where I will be teaching Physical Education mostly and a little English. I will be living in the Gangnam-gu part of Seoul, South Korea.
Well here we go on my adventure, my parents on my last night in Redding decided to take me to the Outback before I left for Australia, (which I thought was a little ironic haha) but I guess it was there way of sending me off. The next day my parents drove me down to Sacramento and we had Mexican food one last time with my sister before I left because it will be awhile before I can have it again. I jumped on my plane that evening from Sacramento to LAX then that night flew out of LAX at 10:30pm Wednesday bound for Brisbane, Australia. The flight was as good as a 14 ½ flight could be. V Australia was amazing and the service and options of movies and games and everything was great! I arrived in Brisbane on Friday at 6:30am because I lost a day going over the Pacific time line. I am staying with my friend Abby who was at the airport waiting for me very impatiently….haha. No it was great to see her that early because I know how hard it was to get up that early especially when she had school later that day. Day one consisted of going back to Abby’s to drop off all my bags that consist of all my clothes and shoes and everything for the next 12 months. From there I tagged along with Abby to school to take a look around. We took the ferry down the Brisbane river back to Abby’s house. That night we meet up with a few other Americans that go to Queensland University Medical School as well and went to a few different pubs around the city. The day we spent in the city and we also went down to the beach which is more like a pool alongside the river next to the all the hotels. The pool has been a favorite of mine here so far because I have been missing the sun for a long time. The weather here has been a little like when I lived in Phoenix. It has been really hot but then the monsoons will roll in usually in the afternoons and just dump rain for 10-20 minutes then clear up and get sunny again and its gets really humid usually around 90%. All of Sunday we spent at Abby’s house because there was a storm that rolled in that just poured all day long. I forgot to mention that I got to watch Super Bowl Sunday on Monday morning at 9am. Which was a a big change for myself because I usually start my Super Bowl that early anyways, but being Monday was for sure different. Abby got to enjoy the first half with me until she had to go to class and it was just long enough for her to think that her Colts had a chance, haha! I spent the second half of the game meeting others around the bar and by the end of the game I had a wolf pack of about 9 people at my table and it couldn’t have been any sweeter one because the Saints won and second that one of the older men decided that he would take it upon himself to make sure everyone was having a good time by buying drinks for the remainder of the game and a little while afterwards as well.The week so far has been pretty much the same as far as weather, off and on rain during the middle of the day. I am looking forward to Friday because I am going to be heading down to the Gold Coast for the weekend. Hope all is well back home I am going to try and make sure I am keeping everything up to date as possible. Much love.