Friday, July 27, 2012

Camping in Washington

Before leaving for South Korea my mom and I went camping in the San Juan Islands.  What I've always loved about Washington state is the huge variety of terrain and wildlife that you get to experience.  It was truly one of my favorite birthdays.  The week started off with a Sounders game in Seattle on Wednesday.  It's truly amazing how full the stadium was on a weekday!







GO SOUNDERS!
(It was a tie but still awesome to watch!)






The view from CenturyLink field is incredible.  You can see the space needle and the sunset is outstanding!  Definitely a great sports venue.






Look at the teeny tiny space needle...
(Why is it orange?!?)







After the game we spent the night outside of Seattle.  The ferry to the San Juan Islands only leaves from Anacortes which is about 2 hours from Seattle.  Bright and early (well for me anyway my mom gets up insanely early naturally) we drove to the ferry terminal but missed our boat and had to wait 2 hours!







Finally we're on the ferry and off to adventure!







The ferry to Friday Harbor from Anacortes takes about an hour.  In my opinion it is one of the most beautiful trips you can take!  I love standing outside staring off the observation deck.... even if I start to lose feeling in my extremities!






I realized when I came home I must have a subconscious desire to be a sailor....
(most of my photos were of boats!)












The fog on the water was incredible!
(I imagine the pirates were lurking in there....)












Nope not pirates just another ferry....
(Slightly disappointed...)













I really wanted this guys sailboat! 












Little windblown yes?  Ferries seem to move surprisingly fast...











I declare this island mine!  I told my mom that I needed my own island and that sea mines would be distributed for the safety of others.  I'm dangerous.... Like a koala....
(What those bastards are scary....)











This guy had a BBQ on the back of his boat....
(Totally approve...)












He proceeded to race us into the island...
(We let him win, I bet we coulda taken him...)






Thus ends my first installment of useless pictures I took that other people should stare at.  If I kept posting photos this post would be insanely long!  My next batch of photos will be from Friday Harbor which I always love and Orcas Island.  Mom and I kinda felt that Orcas Island was the inspiration for that horror TV show Harper's Island.  The people there were a little sketchy and frankly I kinda thought we might get murdered.  It was beautiful though...

Saturday, July 7, 2012

TEFL Homework...

Really sucks.  No not really, I find the course interesting but truthfully my brain really wants to check out.  It's summer and my mind had definitely gone on vacation!  This is making the essays that I should be writing infinitely more difficult...

I will be flying out of SEATAC on July 30th.  The school wants me to be there August 1st.  From the sounds of it no earlier and no later as the previous English teacher will be living in the apartment until the 31st.  Less than one month and I will be on the other side of the world...  In a country where I still don't speak any of the language...  I really need to get on that...

I have been looking into various Masters programs and honestly the only online programs I could see myself enrolling in would probably be TESL/TEFL.  There are only two programs I've really looked into so far that seem flexible enough for me to do while working on another continent.  I am thinking of taking this year off and applying for September 2013.  That will give me a chance hopefully to get used to Korea and enjoy at least a year off.  With a Masters in TESL I could then apply to teach English at foreign universities or apply to teach international students attending American universities.

Right so next time I really will post some actual pictures.  My blog seems to be vastly lacking picture goodness.  I was looking through my camping photos and came to the realization however that I really like sailboats.  Over half my vacation photos had a boat somewhere in them...