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!!