can't sing but i've got seoul

All credit goes to Bobby Wermus for the title... he in fact recommended that I go to Seoul rather than Hong Kong for visa resetting purposes solely because of the punny possibilities with the name. That didn't make my decision, but I can't pretend it didn't have any impact.

So, i've been in China for a month, actually as of yesterday. It's been great. I'm really happy to be there, if only for a relatively short time (this first month went by so quickly). Not only did the month fly by, it was packed full of things like the Chinese new year, a brief battle with the common cold and some temporary voice loss, some sightseeing, some Chinese acrobats, some making new friends, some eating rice, a job translating cultural elements of the Oscars (assisting a linguistic translator, that is, and getting more money than I maybe should have for two hours of easy work), getting my name writ large on CCTV credits for said translating job, and more. I actually feel like it wasn't really until the last week or two that I've had a lot of time to look for some more steady work, and that search is going ok. I've had a couple of English teaching/tutoring agencies offer me work, but have been sort of picky because I've been encouraged by friends who know that I can be picky, and not accept anything below a certain hourly rate, etc. So things are going well. I guess things are still a little uncertain on the work front, but I'm really happy I made the decision to come to China.

Right now I'm in Seoul, commemorating my one-month anniversary of arriving in China by renewing my visa here. My visa is good for a year but just requires me to leave the country once every 30 days, which is annoying, but so it goes. There are ways around this, and there are various ways to leave the country (train/bus to Mongolia, train/flight to Hong Kong, flight to Korea, etc.), but I'm glad I decided to come to Seoul this time. I'm only here 24 hours, and don't have a lot of time or money to do a lot of sightseeing, but I've enjoying exploring the Hyehwa area where I'm staying. It's REALLY different from Beijing, almost reminiscent of Europe in ways, with narrow winding cobblestone streets and tons of little cafes. I have no idea what the rest of the city is like, but this area is nice, and I feel sort of surrounded by America (Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Subway, McDonald's, Smoothie King, KFC, etc.) - more so than in Beijing. It's also expensive, so I'm glad to only be in the area 24 hours or less, but it's been nice just walking around. Today it was raining in the morning, and really humid and sticky, which was an unfamiliar feeling coming from dry Beijing, but in midafternoon the rain stopped and the sun came out, and it was so nice and warm (mid-50's... it was in the 30's across the water in Beijing today) and I walked around and enjoyed the sun and walking without a coat on! Seoul also seems SO much less crowded than Beijing, although I just learned from Wikipedia that it's the second largest metropolitan area in the world (behind Tokyo), so I can't imagine where all those people are. In Beijing they're all in my subway car.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw a little update out there while I can - I can't access my blog from China without using a proxy server, so want to get this up while I'm in Korea. Thanks for reading!