Nic Trips

The first classes I ever taught independently (with out a co-teacher or any sort of guidance for subject material), in my first few months in Korea back in 2014, were a mess. I had lots of big ideas for sure, but I know now my execution of them was poor and overall they were generally unorganized. After a year of teaching regular classes, after school classes, 2 camps, and several Saturday classes, I was ready to make my last Winter English Camp the best of all. Not only did I collect a plethora of great ideas for this 2 week camp from my year of experience and from my other teacher friends, I was able to finally put everything I've learned about teaching together without any outside assistance and create a camp itinerary, system and syllabus I was proud of. For starters, the theme of my camp this year was "America". I wanted to take the students to the USA in terms of teaching about the country, culture and language. I told them that while we were in English ...

We arrived in Hong Kong after a short flight from Beijing at about 11 pm. By the time we made it to our hostel at around 1 am, we were exhausted and passed out immediately to regain our energy for the long day ahead of us. To start our day we met up with my mom's boss' niece, who is currently living and teaching English in Hong Kong. She took us to "Tim Ho Wan" a famous Chinese dim sum chain restuarant that originated in Hong Kong. The food was amazing, but also ridiculously cheap! We were stuffed by the time we left and only spent about $18 (for  three  people!). The restaurant has been dubbed "the world's cheapest Michelin-stared restaurant." Our hostel was in an area called Mong Kok, which is filled with famous markets and great shopping. Including: the ladies market, the flower market, the bird market, and the goldfish market. There's also the Temple Street night market a couple subway stops south. The streets are filled with vendors and a...

We returned to our hostel late that evening from our trip to the wall. As we started scouting out some dinner (which would end up consisting of tomato and egg soup with fried noodles), we decided to walk from our hostel all the way down to the Forbidden City in hopes of seeing the gate lit up at night. We were not disappointed. Although freezing, and we could barely stand to remove our hands from our gloves for more than a few seconds to snap some pictures, it was well worth the long walk. The following morning, we got an early start to the day, leaving our hostel at nearly 9 am. Our plan was to see as many things as possible, starting with the National Museum of China. To our dismay, however, we found that almost all of the popular tourist destinations in Beijing are  closed  on Mondays. Although the city itself was closed on Monday, the tourists are allowed to enter the front gate, called Tiananmen, which is the monumental entrance to the city that we saw lit up th...

The biggest reason I planned my winter vacation trip to Beijing, China (to a place even colder than Korea), was because I wanted to cross off one of the things on my top 3 places I wanted to see most in the world: The Pyramids of Giza (Egpyt) Machu Picchu (Peru) The Great Wall of China  -  CHECK! We had a big decision ahead of us when choosing which tour to the great wall to do. There are several sections open to tourist in Beijing, and some are more famous than others. Badaling and Mutianyu are the most visited because they are the most restored and closest to the city (only an hour away). We ended up choosing Jinshanling, for a few reasons. Much of Jinshanling has been restored (like the other well known sections), but not as much as Badaling and Mutianyu, meaning we got to see a few sections of the wall that look original: old and crumbling. Also, Jinshanling is very far away from the city. It's normally about a 3 hour drive, so it attracts much few tourists. O...