A Very Successful Coffee Morning

Mum and Dad, aka Ann & Charlie Russell, put on a coffee morning of epic proportions in their home in Dalkey, a little under two weeks ago. They put a huge amount of work and effort into organising the day, and along with a few helpers and an unbelievable turnout of people on the day, they raised a whopping €2,925! 

So from Nick and I, a huge thank you to you both, as well as everyone who came along and donated on the day. We are constantly amazed at the level of interest, generosity and support shown to us on our ‪#BikeBackHome adventure.

I've put a few photos from the day up on Facebook but for any of you that don't have it, here's a link to them...

10 days to go....

I landed back in Korea on Thursday morning after a lovely few days in the sun!  After meeting Nick in central Seoul, we set about booking the flights we needed for the Chinese Visa Application.  After years of living here and being well used to the language and cultural barriers that exists in all tasks, no matter how trivial, we had ourselves well built up for a difficult day.  It turned out to be surprisingly easy and the first travel agency we tried was massively helpful and did exactly what we were asking without even charging us!  We were in and out with what we needed in under 15 minutes.

We went back to the hostel to go over our application documents to make sure everything was in order.  "Eh Nick, where are all the rest of the documents we need? Where's the white envelope clearly marked "Chinese Visa Application?"  "The what?" came his reply.  Disaster.

Luckily for us our neighbour Paul was at home and he has spare keys to our apartment.  He took the envelope to the bus station and put it on the next bus to Seoul, paying the driver for his efforts!  Panic averted.  At this, Nick let out a visible sigh of relief because otherwise it would have meant a pretty long day for him - two hours on the train back home, collect the envelope and then two hours back up to Seoul again.

It wasn't exactly the stress free, nice evening before our one year wedding anniversary, welcome home that I was anticipating.  (I may have thrown a bit of a strop!).  Anyway all's well that ends well and the next morning, after a few minor hiccups at the embassy our application was accepted and now we wait, and hope, that when we go to collect it on Thursday we'll have been granted a 90 day visa!

Oh, I just realised that I never posted any pictures of our Head Shave Event in Daejeon so here they are....

Before the Shave - over 40cm of hair in that pony tail!

The crowd on the night, a great turn out by all accounts!

Conor won the honours to chop off my plait!

Gordon had an inordinate amount of fun shaving my head!

Me not so sure that he really knows what he's doing!

The reality starting to set in for me!

The new hair!