Fun Adventures in November

Over the past couple of weeks I have gone of a few fun adventures. One night we went out to eat at the fish market. It was an amazing place but also very sad. Sooooo many sea creatures that were there to be sold to eat. We picked out 2 giant kind crabs and took them downstairs where they cooked them for us. It was quite delicious but I was kind of sad during the whole dinner.

Another night I wandered with a friend down to Banpo Bridge to watch the light show. Banpo bridge is the longest fountain in the world. They have nightly shows displaying the jets of water put to lights and music.

I also ventured to another town for some authentic BBQ where everything was cooked on a gigantic skewer and cooked over a fire pit outside of the restaurant. It was quite delicious.

I also discovered the very new and impressive science museum of Seoul. It is a brand new place that is actually very scientific and had some very cool hands-on learning activities. There was a fun Dinosaur park outside along with other things to look and play on. We were able to only see the first couple of exhibits so many more trips will be made there.

Lastly I went hiking yesterday (November 16th) on an island just West of Seoul. It was a beautiful hike with amazing views of the Yellow Sea. A couple of places it got pretty intense where we had to use ropes an rappel ourselves down certain spots. All in all I have been having an amazing time and see

Over the weekend of October 31st I headed down to Andong, which is in the Southeast area of Korea. We drove through the night and got to an ancient man-made lake so we could watch the sunrise. It was quite beautiful and located among apple orchards which had delicious apples. We then headed to the base of the mountain we were going to hike. At the base of the trail was a temple and people getting ready for the "apple festival" We headed up the mountain through the mist. The trail was beautiful and the trees were full of fall colors. We got to the look out spot and saw an absolutely beautiful view. The mountain peaks were rising out of the valley and it was absolutely breathtaking. We continued our hike up to the peak and then started our decent to the bottom. Here there were hoards of people walking along the bottom portion of the trail. After getting back into the bus we headed to the folk village of Andong to watch a mask dance. This was a very cool performance which ended in quite an embarrassing event. The dancers pulled people out of the audience to participate. I was one of the lucky ones along with some of the other friends. We got to make complete fools of ourselves and dance along with the performers...it was pretty fun but a bit embarrassing. After the dance we wandered into the folk village to find the house we were staying at. The village was amazing. It is a folk village but people actually live full-time in the houses, it's their home. We spent the evening wandering and cooking dinner. After that we headed to bed in our folk village rooms and woke up the next morning to wander the village more and then head to one of the biggest limestone caves in Korea. It was pretty amazing and filled with impressive geological features. We then started heading back to Seoul with a few more stops along the way. We stopped along the Han River to look at rocks protruding from the surface and then to a town famous for it's beef. We had a delicious dinner of Korea bbq and then finally made it back to Seoul. It was an amazing fall weekend!!

Gyeongju Weekend

The weekend that Scott was here we decided to head down to Gyeongju, which is a smaller city in the Southeastern area of Korea. It was where the kindom of the Silla Dynasty was located. You couldn't walk 100 meters without running into some sort of burial mound, temple, palace, shrine, or other artifact of some sorts.
We got up super early on Saturday and caught the first bullet train heading South out of Seoul. We changed trains and took another train into Gyeongju. We stashed our bags at the train station and wandered over to Tumi park...a park full of gigantic burial mounds for the royal families of the Silla kingdom. After wandering throught park we went outside and rented bikes so we could see the rest of the sights in the town. We rode all over and even headed to Bulguska (a bit further on our bikes than we expected) to see the temples there. We also went up to see an amazingly large Budda carved out of granite. It was amazing! It was a beautiful day and we saw all sorts of amazing pieces of Korean history.










After a wonderful nights sleep we got up and decided to go on a hike through namsan mountain to see the numerous Buddhist temples, shrines, and carvings. The guide book gave us directions according to the busses that we would need to take to get to the less-known trail head but after much gesturing and pointing from a kind gentleman at the bus stop, we found that the buses were really not running due to a marathon going on in town today. So we decided to walk along the would-be bus rout to try and find the trail head. Along the way we passed the marathon path and saw some of the runners! After wandering through numerous rice patties, farm lands, along streams, and over very busy streets we think we found the trail head. It was a wonderful hike and did see many interesting and amazing things along the way. It also had some incredible vies of the mountains and valleys in the area.

After heading down the mountain and making it back to town we decided to take a bus to the lake-resort area closeby to wander around and find some dinner. We arrived in town and after finding our way to the lake we were greated by about a hundred kids on motorized kid-sized vehicals riding around the plaza area. It was hilarious. The parents could rent cars, bikes, motorcycles, etc for the kids to ride around on. And amazingly we never saw a collision! It was pertty funny. We also witnessed the duck paddel boats and full sized duck-tour boat-quite literaly a boat shaped like a duck. We also were ablel to see the famed matching-shirts-couples. Every young we saw were wearing matchign shirts...quite funny. After being entertained by true Korean culture Scott and I headed to a reataurant to eat. Howerver, on the way over we heard so great K-pop (Korean Pop music) and decided to check it out. It turns out that the Hip Hop Academy was haivng a performance. It was quite entertaining. We finally did get a delicious meal and headed back into the main city to catch our train back home.

October in Korea

Well I have been bad for the past month of updating what I have done so here goes...

The first weekend after I came back from Tsushima I went to the DMZ. It was pretty amazing to see. I didn't do the tour with the US military so it wasn't as in-depth as Ian's tour but still very interesting. There is a definite sense of hope and "when" we get reunited instead of "if" we are reunited. Here are a couple of pictures.

Then on Tuesday the 13th Scott came to visit me!! It was so great to have him here. After I can to find him at the subway station (he kind of found the wrong university stop) I brought him back to my place and we spend the next week and a half touring around Seoul. I took Scott to Banpo Bridge and somehow walked all the way to Itaewon! We also went to the National Museum, Anguk area to find a very small travel agency in a very large /no English building, and Namdaemun. We ate a bunch of good meals and had a ton of fun. Scott would spend the afternoons touring while I was teaching. He finally departed on Fiday morning so he could take the ferry over to Japan.

After Scott left I spent the week relazing and catching up on sleep...it is quite exhausting playing tourguide and teaching full time!!

Tsushima Bike Trip!!!

Last weekend (October 1st-3rd) I went on a bike trip through Tsushima Japan. It was wonderful!!

(Picture #1 - Bikes at the Ferry Terminal)

We all met at a subway stop very South of Seoul to avoid the Chuseok traffic...although traffic was still ridiculous. Cheoseok is the Korean Thanksgiving...very major holiday here. Anyway...we boarded a bus at midnight and drove down to Busan. It was a very long night without much sleep and we arrived in Busan early in the morning. It was a rainy morning and we were all pretty groggy. Two little trucks arrived with our bicycles. Over 30 bicycles for all of us on the trip!! We all grabbed a bike and then trucked our bikes through the Ferry terminal...by trucked I mean up escalators, down stairs, through doors, etc. We finally got on the boat and headed to Tsushima. It is the closest island of Japan to Korea. After we arrived we went through immigration which was quite the process...very thorough. When we finally got out of the building it had stopped raining and we headed out into the town to find lunch.

(Picture #2- In front of a palace gate)

It was a bigger town on the island but still pretty small. We grabbed some udon noodles for lunch and then hit the road.

(Picture #3- In a small little village)

We biked along and saw a few little temples but mostly just climbed a mountain for about two hours on the bikes. It was exhausting. We finally got to the top of the mountain and were able to fly down the hill. Unfortunately one of the guys slid out of control and we had to take him to the hospital. Two very nice gentlemen stopped and drove him to the hospital and we all followed on our bikes. The support car came and got him while the rest of us went grocery shopping and continued onto the campsite. By this time it was getting dark so we spent about an hour riding in the pitch dark. There were 2 lights for about 15 of us in the group...it was an interesting little ride...especially since we were riding with the traffic. Once we got to the campsite we were able to relax and head to bed.

(Picture #4-View from going up the mountain)

The next day we got up early and had some breakfast. I went on a hike with a friend along the shoreline next to the campsite. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we then got a pretty early start. We didn't realize how sore we were from the past day and being that Tsushima is nothing but small rolling hills along the coast we took it pretty slow and walked up most of the hills...our poor legs just didn't have it in them! It was a beautiful bike ride and we did the majority of the island that day...needed to get from one side to the other! Along the way we rode by cute coastal fishing villages and also a few small villages in the hills that relied mostly on agriculture. We also rode through this incredible forest of huge cedar trees and bamboo groves...it was beautiful!!

(Picture #5-Biking along the coast)

Once we got to the town where our hotel was we got pretty lost. I was with three other people while we were trying to find the hotel and being that none of us could speak Japanese we drove all the way out of town and started our way to the next village. We stopped an man in his car and he told us that is was back the other way. We still couldn't find it but biked by the hot springs bath house and stopped there knowing that other people from the group would be coming by at some point. The bath house was the absolutely perfect end to the day...lounging in warm water with beautiful vies of the full moon over the ocean...it was amazing!!

(Picture #6-Sunrise)

We did end up meeting some people from our group and we followed them back to the hotel. The hotel was beautiful. We all had ocean view rooms with traditional Japanese style sleeping mats on the floor. After riding into town for some very yummy Japanese food we headed to bed so we could be up for the sunrise.

(Picture #7 - Shinto Temple)

The sunrise was incredible...we had a perfect view of it from the balconies of our rooms. After the sunrise we went down for a great Japanese breakfast..complete with a whole fish, miso soup, rice, and a couple of side dishes, eggs, and some other yummy things. After the breakfast my friend and I wanted to do some more exploring so we took off on our bikes and biked along the rode that went around the tip of the island. It was a great bike ride. We saw lots of cute towns, took a dip in the ocean, and came into town right as the town was having it's track game day for the elementary students. It was very cute.

(Taking a break at the ocean)

We had a great lunch and kind of just hung around the town until our ferry left to take us back to Busan. Once back to Busan we gave back our bikes and got standing tickets for the bullet train back. After three hours of standing between cars on the train we were all ready for a nice hot shower and to sleep in our own beds.

All in all it was an amazing trip and I can not wait to visit Japan again!!!

Weekend Hike

I went for a great hike this past weekend. It was so nice to get out of the city for a bit and go up into the mountains. We started by visiting Seodaemun Prison which was used by the Japanese during the Japanese occupation in the early 1900's. It was a horribly depressing and an awful place but I learned a lot. The Japanese basically used the prison to imprison, interrogate, torture, and execute Korean independence fighters. And of course they don't just tell and explain about the torture used...they had mannequins and wax figures displaying the horrible torture techniques and living conditions of the prisoners. It was awful...but a very effective way to tell this part of their history I guess.

(Picture #1 - Prison grounds)

After the prison we headed over to a little whole-in-the-wall restaurant for some traditional bulgolgi which was very yummy. From there we wound our way through a bunch of streets and alleys and found ourselves at the base of In Wang Sun mountain. In true Korean style most of the way up was stone steps...so I basically climbed hundreds of uneven stone stairs to the top of the mountain. On the way up there was exercise equipment so in case you didn't have enough exercise you can stop along the way and work out your legs, abs, or arms :) Once at the top there were beautiful views of the city on three sides and the mountains to the North.

(Picture #2 - First mountain we hiked and the trail)

(Picture #3 - Overlooking Seoul)

From there we hiked down slightly and then to the official military entrance to the second mountain, Buk Ak San. The mountain is behind the Blue House, the President's house, so security was very tight. We had to register at the base of the mountain and wear a little ID badge while we hiked and then turn in again at the end of the hike. All along the trail/stairs were little guard post and tons of guards. There was also a double barbed wire fence running along most of the trail. Nevertheless it was beautiful as well. We don't have a ton of pictures from that part of the hike because we were very limited as to where we could take pictures.

(Picture #4 - On top of the Mountain)

We ended the hike by hiking down into Insadong which was very cute and touristy (Korean tourists, not foreigners which was nice). We ate at this great restaurant which was also very very yummy. All in all it was a great day and and a very fun hike!!

My Weekend

Well this weekend I managed to be officially lost for the first time. I was suppose to meets some people at the Bonpo Bridge light show but I somehow got the directions wrong and wandered for awhile...I managed to make it to another metro station and then tried again but there was no exit #9...so I gave up and headed home. It was pretty fun :)








Today I went to the National Museum and loved it!! I spent over two hours there and only got through the first floor...so I guess I will be taking a few more trips. Like Ian said..the building is amazing...huge and made completely of marble on the inside. Today I spent the day exploring ALL of Korea's history. It is amazing that they can track their entire history in detail from the paleolithic era (cavemen) up to present day. Being that I love anthropology I had a great time looking at all the artifacts and following the history up to the Joseon dynasty. My favorite part was that in all the rooms they had these videos running on these huge plasma tv's except the shows were all made specifically for the museum depicting important events that happened in that time or explaining how the artifacts were used. However, these videos were all in animae style! It was pretty funny...yet informative (they had English subtitles)








My favorite part of the museum was the outside gardens in front of the building. They were beautiful and filled with actual artifacts from temples, tombs, etc. They had different paths that led to different artifacts...like a temple bell, lanterns from temples, and a garden of Buddhist pagodas, and my favorite...a little waterfall and pond area that was beautiful. Outside of the gardens led to a public park. It was very typical Korean with an "exercise area" included. It had a huge area with all sorts of different equipment to exercise with...very funny.








All in all it was a fun weekend!!

Settling In

Well I have been here for almost a month now and it is starting to feel like home. I have been teaching for two weeks and love it. It is so much fun!! The kids are adorable and really well behaved. I teach three groups of kids on Monday and Wednesdays and another three groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can't believe how smart they are...they are reading all these books and writing papers on them and it is their second language!! It is pretty amazing.
My school is in this nice area and takes me about a half hour-maybe a little less to get to school each day. It is only a couple of metro stops away. My school is located on the second and third floors of the building in the picture. I have my own little classroom where I teach my classes...only 6 kids maximum in the classes so the small classroom works just fine. I have all my curriculum already made up and even all the copies made already. All I have to do is make sure the I understand the grammar lessons and have read the stories...it is pretty nice!!
I also have figured out things such as getting a cell phone...which was actually kind of complicated, got a gym membership, have a pretty regular routine each day, found most of the groceries I need, and even found people who play Catan!!! Well that is about it...After this weekend I will try and post some more pictures!!

Videos!!

So I figured out how to get videos onto my blog (kind of and with Scott's help) I have to post them to youtube and then put a link in my blog.

First video is of my apartment - at the botom of the "My Apartment" section

The next three are from the Folk Village - they are at the very bottom of the blog under the "First Weekend in Korea" section

Enjoy!!

Ian's Last Day in Korea

Ian and I spent Wednesday afternoon in downtown Seoul. We walked around the city hall area and saw a bunch of cool buildings. It was a pretty area with lots of trees and lots of art on the streets. The Seoul Museum of Art and a big theater was there too. We then wandered down to see Namdaemun gate and market. However, the Namdaemun gate is gone!!! It was destroyed in a fire last year. They are working on restoring it but it was quite a shock not to see the iconic Namdaeumun gate...very sad. Namdaemun Market was insane as always. Everything you could ever possibly want to buy you could find here. We wandered through the streets until it started to rain and then headed back home.

Picture 1 - Namdaemun Gate restoration

Picture 2 - Ian in Namdaemun market

We picked up a few groceries and a few last things for my apartment. We also discovered that McDonalds delivers here...order over the phone and the McDonalds scooter will deliver to your apartment...pretty amazing.


Picture 3 - McDonalds delivery

My New Home!!!

So I am finally settled into my appartment. It took most of the weekend to have it cleaned and get the few things I needed (dishes, bedding, etc.) But I am finally settled and it feels like home.

My apartment is located on a major street in the Seoucho-Gu area of Seoul. It is a newer building and in a great location.

Picture 1 - My street infront of my apartment

Picture 2 - My apartment building

My apartment is very nice on the inside. It is fairly modern

and has a lot of great features (like a rice storage bin/dispenser) It is pretty small but has a lot of closets and cabinets so I have had no problems with storage.

It has a large regrigerator and even a freezer, which is much more than I expected. There is a small stovetop but no oven or microwave...which could make cooking a bit trickier.

Picture 3 - My kitchen

My bathroom is pretty typical for Korea. No actual shower but a shower head that just drains into the drain between the sink and toilet. needless to say, shower shoes are requred since the entire bathroom floor is usually kind of wet. It is a nice bathroom though and is very modern.

Picture 4 - my bathroom

My windows look at the apartment building next to me so there is not much of a view but atleast I have a wall of windows!!

Picture 5 - apartment again

And Mom, my apartment is very secure...no need to worry. The entrance to it is locked and you need a magnetic "key" to get in or get buzzed in by the security guard. Then the door to my apartment has a key pad so you have to enter the code to get in. Once inside it automatically locks behind you. You even have to press a button once inside if you want the door to unlock again. There is also a security camera attached to my doorbell. I can look at my monitor in my apartment at whoever is out in the hallway. Pretty cool stuff!! My favorite safty feature is the large hook in my concrete wall (all the walls are concrete...no noisy neighbor issues!!) If I need to escape out my 8th floor window, I have a large safty harness and rope to rapel myself down the the apartment building from the hook...pretty cool.

My only complaint is that my washing machine is not the super cool one with the drying feature I thought. It does extra spin cycles for clothes come out not soaking wet but I still had to instal a clothesline to dry my clothes from.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QutDMJ5-ue8

This is a video of my apartment (I can't post video's directly to my blog so I have to post them on youtube.)

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Ian and I visited the Gyongbokgung Palace today. It was absolutely beautiful. When we arrived we just happened to be right on time for the English tour that was about to start. We joined the tour group which was actually quite interesting...we also got our fill of Westerners.

Gyongbokgung was built by King Taejo, the founder of the Joseon dynasty and was the principle palace until 1592 when it was burned down during Japanese invasions. It was in

ruins for 300 years until it was rebuilt by Heugseon Daewongun started to rebuild it in 1865. However, during the Japanese colonial rule (early 1900's) 90% of the palace grounds and buildings were destroyed.

Well, today when we went it was like stepping back into the 1600's. The place is a vast area full of beautiful traditional Korean buildings and many ponds, pretty trees, and shaded walkways. It is so amazing how much status and hierarchy plays a role in Korean history and even present day Korea. Every walk way, building entrance, building, etc. had separate areas for the King, the royal family, and then the officials. Event he officials had to stand and walk according to rank. It is quite amazing.

Everyone also had their own buildings. There was the main building where official ceremonies took place, the King's living quarters, the King's studying building, the Queen's living quarters, the concubines' living quarters, the King's mother's building, etc. Everyone had their own space and never really went into buildings that were not intended for them.

Also, the queen had the worst job ever! She was chosen by the King's mother (via an application process of sorts) and then had to take care of everyone in the palace and could never leave or really even go outside. She had to care for the children, the King's concubines, and be the "lady of Korea." If she did not have any boys, she would have to raise the male child the King had with one of his concubines. The poor woman!! However, once she became the mother of the King, then she had a lot more power and a pretty nice building all to herself.

My favorite place in the palace was the Hyangwonjeong. It is a little pond with a beautiful little pavilion on and island in the middle. It is where the royal family go to hang out. Ian and I took several pictures here to add to my family's collection of pictures taken from the same site. All in all it was a pretty fun day.