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Shanghai Shenanigans

Piping-hot, fried, soup dumplings were the afternoon reward for a meandering, coffee-fueled morning spent walking all over Shanghai to conclude our week spent in China. As is our tradition, we had spent the previous 30 minutes or so searching around, indecisively evaluating various food options in the area, steadily increasing our hunger levels, which somehow …

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Huangshan Mountains

While Mandi and I definitely enjoyed living our big-city lifestyle in Seoul (I don’t exactly know what that means, but I assume that’s how cool, big-city people talk, right?), we were pretty excited to leave the crowds of Beijing and head to the Huangshan mountains for the second stop of our week-long trip in China. …

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Little Things 2: Coming Back

Ok, so you know how when you’re a kid and 15 minutes feels like a long time, and an hour is for-ev-er, and, seriously, what even is a year? And then some random older person says something like, “when you’re older like me, time just flies by,” and then the child version of you thinks, …

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Beijing-ing

The little dot on the AirBnB map said we were going in the right direction, so that was good... Waiting for our taxi After a flight delay leaving Seoul in September, we got through customs in Beijing at 1am, waited in line for a taxi, and showed the address to the driver, who began navigating …

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Bali and The Legend of Chuck the Gecko

Ahhh procrastination, that beautiful double-edged sword, offering the sweet, sweet satisfaction of avoiding the dreary task of doing something productive while simultaneously doing something decidedly unproductive and significantly more entertaining. It’s truly a beautiful thing. Most of the time...until that useful thing, you know, really needs to be done. At that point, shockingly, it seems …

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Attack of the Futuristic Appliances

We had finally gotten our bags from the carousel at Incheon airport outside of Seoul, after what seemed like an eternity of watching bag after bag take their personal victory lap around the metal merry-go-round, and were trying to find our way to the exit when we came across what was assuredly the fully-realized physical …

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Kyoto and Osaka Part II: Chicken and Waffles

A few years ago, May 2nd, 2014 to be exact, Mandi and I were sitting nervously in the corner of Sun Ray Cafe, a popular post-mountain-bike-ride spot in the charming Hyde Park neighborhood of Boise. On this particular day, their garage doors were thrown open, inviting the warm spring air to filter into the building …

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Kyoto and Osaka Part I: Sake in Osaka

The other day I was talking to someone who asked why Mandi and I intentionally applied for a job that sent us over to South Korea (versus getting assigned there). It’s a pretty common question when you move to a new country, I suppose. Did we have some prior connection with South Korea? (nope). Were …

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Sports Fandom in Korea

On many evenings throughout the winter months, you’ll find me sitting on a couch, tense, perhaps with my hands on my face, as I nervously await the outcome of a Gonzaga basketball game that shouldn’t have been close but has somehow turned into a nailbiter (our game against University of Washington this past season comes …

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