Well it's official, I'm a terrible blogger. Two months is no excuse since I have been up to some pretty fun things lately. Can't say I'm getting any better at exploring Seoul, unless I accidentally run into something....such as this cool building and nearby temple like structure nearby that I bumped into earlier this Sunday afternoon.....
Anyways things have been going pretty well here. I had a great birthday two weekends ago, and continue to enjoy my experiences here on the other side. This weekend I went on a party cruise off the coast of Incheon with about 900 other foreigners all dressed up for Halloween, it was a lot of fun! I enjoyed being a secret service agent and being able to act like I was an agent all day.....
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| Me with peeps Michelle, Becky, and Lisa |
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| Party Boat!! |
Halloween isn't really celebrated here, they do know of it though. So everyone enjoyed laughing at all of us on the subway ride to the ferry. It was especially fun when the giant mob of dressed up foreigners was waiting for one car ferry to unload so ours could pull up. We treated every car going by like they were celebrities, it was funny! But anywho, we do celebrate it at the the hogwons, so on Thursday and Friday I got a break from teaching and just played games with my classes and the school was a little dressed up for the day:
So in the past few months I've been doing some travelling, but since mid September it's died down. In August I went to the city of Busan for a beach/party weekend. Took the KTX, Korea's high speed train to make it to Busan in only 2 hours. Small country, eh? (Canadian friend's are rubbing off on me...) Anyways I think of it kind of as Korea's Miami, lots of beautiful beaches. I went with a big group of people, and we spent the time on the beaches and the nearby bars. Sunday night of this 3 day weekend was on the beach the ENTIRE night, which was a great idea at the time, but by 6pm on Monday I could barely keep my eyes open and was really regretting getting a late train back to Seoul. That day I did make it to a temple right on the coast, which was very cool to see. But here are some pictures form Busan!:
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| Statues on the walk up to the temple.. |
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| A neat looking dragon statue |
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| The temple complex |
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| Haeundae Beach! the famous beach of Busan |
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| Gwangalli Beach...this is the beach with a bridge as the background, that is what I have at the very top of this blog.. |
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| Haeundae |
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| more Haeundae |
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| Gwangalli again... |
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| A fun and exciting city, great night life, like all of Korea! |
In September I spent my Chuseok holiday (comparable to America's Thanksgiving) with a couple of friends and many other tourist on a trip with Adventure Korea to Ulleung-do. It's a smaller volcanic island in the East Sea (NOT the Sea of Japan, Korean's don't take to that name very well...) It took about 3 hours by ferry to get to the island, and it was quite beautiful. The weather unfortunately didn't cooperate, as it was mostly raining and overcast. But I still got a chance to hike to the 1,000 meter high summit of the island's highest peak, and enjoyed the rock formations throughout the trip. We were there for three days and two nights, stayed in a pension. We accidentally turned the heat on in our room while turning on the air conditioning. Heating Korea is done by pumping hot water through pipes located under the floor, and in pensions you sleep on mats on the floor (as most Koreans do at home). IT IS AMAZING to lay down on a heated wood floor for a nap, and to have the aircon on cooling you down at the same time. A great nap that day indeed. We took a bus tour to all sides of the island, and had a fun tour guide. His English was rusty but he definitely gets an A+ for effort. Ulleung-do is very close to Dokdo island, a pretty big territory dispute between Korea and Japan. It's basically a large rock, and it's currently in Korea's possession. I'm sure its argued for the fishing rights around it. One Korean family does live on the island, tax free of course. I didn't make it to Dokdo, and since the ferry ride to it made everyone throw up that went, I'm glad I did not. Ulleung-do was beautiful enough. Enough of my rambling, here the pictures!:
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| The harbor the ferry brings you to... |
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This trail is carved into the rock along the ocean, great views and cool rocks. There's a bridge we jumped off and into the water, the water's temperature was perfect!! No pictures of me jumping though :(
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| A Korean home from the late 1800s |
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| just a cool waterway along a sidewalk that ducks under a bridge here for a moment... |
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| The beginning of our hike up Seonginbong Peak...down below is the main city Dodong, where the ferry port is and our pension... |
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| Please do not be fooled by this photo, this makes the hike look easy. Most of it was intense climbing, especially the beginning part that seriously must have risen up at a 45 degree angle... |
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| decent view from a little gazebo |
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| The top! Looking down into the crater left by the volcano...the ocean is in the background.. |
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| Looking the other way, you can see the other side of the island. |
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| Dongdo by night, it took us awhile to get back down the mountain! |
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| The port town of Dongdo on Ulleung-do |
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| the island's well known for it fresh, dried squid... |
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and yes, it tastes delicious! like beef jerkey with a distinct fishy flavor to it...
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Teaching's becoming more and more of a drag, but that was kind of expected. After November we start a new semester again and hopefully fresh classes will rejuvinate me, and hopefully my kids won't be as problematic as most of them seem to be this currect semester. The later half of this month I have open houses in 5 different classes, where I teach my lesson with the students AND there parents in the room, so they can observe. Problem is, this is anything but a normal lesson, and I will spend the first half of this month stressed out and prepping my kids for this one lesson, in the hopes of making it "perfect" so the parents continue to send there kids to the our hogwon. Hopefully the parents of the girl who has not talked to a teacher in her year and a half at the school upstairs will realize how pointless her being there is and save some of their money!
So Korea continues on. I love hearing from everyone back home, so please feel free to email me, I miss you all! I cannot believe its been 5 months now that I've been here, the time flies by so quickly. I'm hoping winter time doesn't get too cold for me, so far the fall has been mostly beautiful and the weather is staying in the upper 40s/50s even through the night, so not too cold here yet. I'm hoping to do a temple stay sometime in the next few months, but I'm also hoping to update this blog more frequently. Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween! and enjoy this 8 year old girl's take on the movie Shrek....:
