Well here we are again...blogging. Hopefully we can keep up the good work (I know, two posts in almost a week? Yes, we are crazy). Well here is the second part of our too short vacation (but then who's isn't?).
So we left from Jeju city on a Saturday afternoon and flew to Seoul, arriving at Gimpo airport. The flight was great, only 50 minutes, and no one lost their passport! After an immediate stop at Starbucks, we headed for the information booth to find how to get to our hotel. There is an amazing amount of people who speak English in Seoul and almost all of the information booths we found cater to English speakers. So we got the skinny on how to get to our hotel and were off on a bus.
Our hotel was a nice change from where we were staying in Jeju. We decided to "splurge" a little on our hotel in Seoul, and we were nicely rewarded. The hotel had central air (something often to be desired in Korea), two beds (also not that common), a balcony, a huge shower (no shower shoes needed) and even a bidet (what a treat). Only Shawn had the courage to try the bidet, and for those of you who really "know" Steph you can understand why she would never try it.
Well on to more interesting subjects...the events of Seoul. The first night we kept it pretty low key, just visiting Itaewon (a major foreigner hang out) for dinner. For this trip we made a strict vow to eat no Korean food (not that we don't like it, but come on we get enough!). So for our first night we enjoyed a nice, romantic Thai meal. Well, alright it wasn't that romantic for us, but the restaurant sure tried. After dinner we just visited a few of the local "hot spots" to check out the Seoul night life...no more on this subject.
The next day we roused ourselves in the early afternoon for a little shopping, which Seoul is so famous for. We were completely underwhelmed by the Namdaemun shopping district (supposed to be the largest open air market in Korea). Not that they didn't have a lot for sale, just not a lot we wanted. We emerged from this shopping trip with only one purchase: a dog costume for Steph's old dog. After shopping there was only one obvious choice, a visit to a palace. Deoksugung Palace, is located right in the heart of Seoul next to city hall. This palace was originally built as a home for King Seongjong's older brother, but then became the home of the King after the Japanese invaded (one of the many times) and burnt the King's Palace. Didn't know you were going to get a history lesson did ya? This was a good first choice for us, as it is one of the smaller palaces and not nearly as overwhelming as our next palace. After our first palace experience we needed a little rest and relaxation, before we ventured to Seoul tower that night.
Seoul tower was an experience in and of itself. Really if you have visited one tower, you have visited them all...but that didn't stop us from being the tourists we are and including it as a "must see." This was a long ordeal. The wait just to take the cable car to the Seoul tower base was almost 1/2 an hour and then you are stuffed in for your ride up. Once you get there you then have to purchase an elevator ride to the top of Seoul tower and wait again for your turn. When your turn comes around you are crammed into an elevator with as many people as they can safely fit and up you go. The view from the top of the tower was pretty much what we expected... lots of lights from the city below. Not that it wasn't pretty, we're not sure that it merited the wait required. After a quick stroll around the tower, we made the long trek back to the bottom.
The next day was filled with more shopping and more palaces. This time we visited Insadong, which is famous for it's Korean souvenirs. We spent a couple hours browsing the selection, which all started to look the same after a couple shops. We both had intentions on buying gifts for people, but both went away empty-handed. Sorry guys, maybe next time. After our shopping trip, we visited Gyeongbokgung Palace. This was the main palace during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). I believe this is the largest of the palaces, measuring in at 5.4 million square feet. It definitely was a beautiful palace, but like we said, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. So after milling around for an hour, we decided to head back to our hotel. This was our last night in Seoul so we went out for a nice Italian dinner and even had ice cream for dessert. After a long day of walking around Seoul, we decided to call it a night.
The next day we were up and off, back to our "lovely" town of Chilwon. Shawn had never taken a train before and wanted to pretend he was Harry Potter for a few hours so we headed off to the KTX station. Unfortunately, the trains in Korea are nothing like the ones on Harry Potter so he was slightly disappointed. But nevertheless, we managed to get home in one piece. All in all, it was a very nice vacation.
Stay tuned for pictures from Seoul.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Vacation Pics from Jeju Island
Beautiful scenery in Seogwipo City
This is Seogwipo City where we stayed for 4/5 nights in Jeju
Jungmun Beach where we did our suntanning... or in Steph's case sunburning
Shawn's senior picture... On a cliff near Seogwipo
A beautiful waterfall!
Next installment: Seoul vacation....stay tuned!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
We're back!
Yes, we are still alive! Sorry it has been so long since our last post...we've had a busy summer with school, English camps, and vacation, but we're back and we'll update you on our lives.
School vacation started on July 25th. No, we haven't been on vacation this whole time. We were lucky enough to teach 3 weeks of summer English camps. English summer camp was an experience to say the least. What it involves is students from all over the county come to our school and we teach them English. Our first two weeks of camp were the 4th and 5th graders, who we taught for 4 hours a day. It was actually pretty fun. We played a lot of games and did fun activities. Then our last week of camp we had the 6th graders... dun dun dun. This was quite possibly one of the worst weeks of our lives thus far in Korea. This week of camp started at 9:00 and went until 4:10, with no breaks. We even had to round up all 30 students and take them to a restaurant everyday for lunch. Basically, to sum up the week, I think our school recruited the 30 worst, most misbehaved students from our county. Just writing about it is bringing up too many bad memories so I need to stop...Let's move on to our vacation!
The first half of our vacation was spent on Jeju Island. This is Korea's "vacation" island. We spent 6 glorious days basking in the sun, or at least partial sun. The highlights of the trip included scuba diving, laying on the beach, and for Shawn, Asia's largest hedge maze.
The beach is pretty self explanatory so we'll give you the details on scuba and the hedge maze.
For those of you who didn't know, this was our SECOND scuba dive. Yeah, that's right, we're kind of a big deal. We got to the scuba place in the morning, greeted by the stoic German scuba instructor, wearing his speedos. We signed our life away and off we went. He told us we would have "down time" on the "beach" so we brought along books and music to entertain ourselves. We loaded all of our gear into the boat and sailed off to the island we would be diving off of. Well this "island" turned out to be a giant rock, sticking out of the ocean. The beach turned out to be rock. Funny how this sounded much more appealing when it was being explained to us. We were then informed, since we were not certified, we would have to dive one on one with Mr. Speedo. What this meant for us, is we each got a 2o minute dive, and 6 hours of sitting on the giant rock. Now, let me tell you a little something about high tide. This rock kept getting smaller and smaller, so it turned out that on this trip we not only got to scuba dive, but also rock climb. The rock was not only occupied by us, but also by thousands of nasty water bugs. They too were trying to escape the high tide so we ended up getting pretty close and personal.
As for the actual dive part, I mean, what can we say? It was a pretty coral, and there were some interesting fish, but when your ears feel like they are bleeding from the pressure, these things are harder to focus on. The one good thing about this trip was that no sea turtles were spotted. See previous posts if you don't understand.
Shawn's one wish on this trip was to go to Asia's largest hedge maze. It was actually pretty interesting, and by the end, half the people there were following us. Apparently we looked like we knew where we were going. Little did they know it was Shawn that was leading us. But after many wrong turns, we made it to the end and Shawn waited in line amongst the little kids so he could ring the bell at the end.
Most every night was spent enjoying a nice dinner next to the water. Steph and Kristen usually polished off a bottle of red wine or two each night, while Shawn sipped on his beloved beer, or for one moment in time, a Manhattan. I know, classy right? After our summer camp from hell, this was the perfect vacation to relax and unwind.
We have not had a chance to upload our pictures yet, so you will have to wait. ( Don't worry, we won't make you wait almost 2 months again!). And stay tuned to hear about the 2nd part of our trip!
School vacation started on July 25th. No, we haven't been on vacation this whole time. We were lucky enough to teach 3 weeks of summer English camps. English summer camp was an experience to say the least. What it involves is students from all over the county come to our school and we teach them English. Our first two weeks of camp were the 4th and 5th graders, who we taught for 4 hours a day. It was actually pretty fun. We played a lot of games and did fun activities. Then our last week of camp we had the 6th graders... dun dun dun. This was quite possibly one of the worst weeks of our lives thus far in Korea. This week of camp started at 9:00 and went until 4:10, with no breaks. We even had to round up all 30 students and take them to a restaurant everyday for lunch. Basically, to sum up the week, I think our school recruited the 30 worst, most misbehaved students from our county. Just writing about it is bringing up too many bad memories so I need to stop...Let's move on to our vacation!
The first half of our vacation was spent on Jeju Island. This is Korea's "vacation" island. We spent 6 glorious days basking in the sun, or at least partial sun. The highlights of the trip included scuba diving, laying on the beach, and for Shawn, Asia's largest hedge maze.
The beach is pretty self explanatory so we'll give you the details on scuba and the hedge maze.
For those of you who didn't know, this was our SECOND scuba dive. Yeah, that's right, we're kind of a big deal. We got to the scuba place in the morning, greeted by the stoic German scuba instructor, wearing his speedos. We signed our life away and off we went. He told us we would have "down time" on the "beach" so we brought along books and music to entertain ourselves. We loaded all of our gear into the boat and sailed off to the island we would be diving off of. Well this "island" turned out to be a giant rock, sticking out of the ocean. The beach turned out to be rock. Funny how this sounded much more appealing when it was being explained to us. We were then informed, since we were not certified, we would have to dive one on one with Mr. Speedo. What this meant for us, is we each got a 2o minute dive, and 6 hours of sitting on the giant rock. Now, let me tell you a little something about high tide. This rock kept getting smaller and smaller, so it turned out that on this trip we not only got to scuba dive, but also rock climb. The rock was not only occupied by us, but also by thousands of nasty water bugs. They too were trying to escape the high tide so we ended up getting pretty close and personal.
As for the actual dive part, I mean, what can we say? It was a pretty coral, and there were some interesting fish, but when your ears feel like they are bleeding from the pressure, these things are harder to focus on. The one good thing about this trip was that no sea turtles were spotted. See previous posts if you don't understand.
Shawn's one wish on this trip was to go to Asia's largest hedge maze. It was actually pretty interesting, and by the end, half the people there were following us. Apparently we looked like we knew where we were going. Little did they know it was Shawn that was leading us. But after many wrong turns, we made it to the end and Shawn waited in line amongst the little kids so he could ring the bell at the end.
Most every night was spent enjoying a nice dinner next to the water. Steph and Kristen usually polished off a bottle of red wine or two each night, while Shawn sipped on his beloved beer, or for one moment in time, a Manhattan. I know, classy right? After our summer camp from hell, this was the perfect vacation to relax and unwind.
We have not had a chance to upload our pictures yet, so you will have to wait. ( Don't worry, we won't make you wait almost 2 months again!). And stay tuned to hear about the 2nd part of our trip!
Monday, July 7, 2008
CRASH!
Well, we knew it would happen eventually.... we've been in a car accident. We've referenced many times how crazy the drivers are here in Korea, and last night only proved it.
We were in a taxi last night with our friend Kristen. We were on our way to her house. We were in a taxi and not a bus because we had went shopping at Home Plus (the Wal-Mart of Korea) so we had many sacks and boxes and it was just easier to take a taxi. Well, we were almost to Kristen's apartment and our taxi driver was making a left turn, when all of a sudden another taxi came swerving around the corner, it's tires screeching, and slammed right into our taxi. Nice, huh. Shawn was sitting in the passenger side front seat of the car and had his seat belt on (what a good boy!). Stephanie was sitting directly behind him and Kristen was sitting behind the driver. These two girls did not have their seat belts on (naughty!) due to the fact that they had many sacks in their lap and a huge box sitting between them. I know, excuses excuses. Well, the other taxi slammed directly the back door of the passenger side, yep, that's right, right where Steph was sitting. Since there was a big box next to her, she flew into that, and that prevented her from hitting Kristen. Kristen, on the other hand, slammed into the door frame, and Shawn hit his head on the back of his seat. We were all pretty shook up, and very sore from the whiplash effect that happened. What a spectacle that accident scene was! Three foreigners in an accident, there were many spectators standing around. One even came up to us and pointed at our taxi driver and said, "bad driver!" Yeah, thanks buddy for that information.
After talking to some friends (one of them being a Korean doctor), they convinced us 3 to go to the hospital the next day to get everything checked out. The visit would be covered under the taxi driver's insurance. Since we're both nurses we were very interested in how this visit was going to turn out. We went and saw the doctor first and the first thing he asked us (before even figuring out what happened) was if we wanted to stay over night in the hospital. We were like, really? You don't even know what's wrong with us yet, and your asking if we want to stay overnight. That would never happen in America. Anyway, he finally did ask what was wrong. We told him (well our co-teacher translated for us) that we were in an accident and we both had pain in our necks and Steph in her back. He asked us to point to where, so we did. Then he sent us downstairs to get X-rays. We thought that was kind of odd. He didn't ask us anything else about the pain, just where it was. So we got Xrays of our necks and backs. Then we got sent back to the doctor. He looked at our Xrays and told us we have no broken bones (obviously, right?) and said it was just a muscle sprain. He then told Steph that she needed to get a shot of pain medication in her ass (can I say that word on here?). She adamantly refused that, to which the doctor just laughed. Next stop was physical therapy. They had us lay on a table with a hot pack under our necks for 20 minutes. Then they wanted to hook up a TENS unit to us. For those of you non-medical people out there, a TENS unit is a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator which basically means it uses electrical currents to help relieve pain. Google it if you want to learn more. Once again, Steph was adamantly refusing this treatment option, but the physical therapist said she had to, so she begrudgingly obliged. So, we were hooked up to some voltage and away we went! It felt very weird, and neither of us thought it did much good. Shawn even had a nice little visitor come over to him during his treatment. Yep, you guessed it, a cockroach. There are EVERYWHERE over here!
Well, needless to say, it's been an eventful 24 hours over here in Korea. Not to worry, we are both doing ok. They said the pain should subside in 1-2 weeks. Until then.......
We were in a taxi last night with our friend Kristen. We were on our way to her house. We were in a taxi and not a bus because we had went shopping at Home Plus (the Wal-Mart of Korea) so we had many sacks and boxes and it was just easier to take a taxi. Well, we were almost to Kristen's apartment and our taxi driver was making a left turn, when all of a sudden another taxi came swerving around the corner, it's tires screeching, and slammed right into our taxi. Nice, huh. Shawn was sitting in the passenger side front seat of the car and had his seat belt on (what a good boy!). Stephanie was sitting directly behind him and Kristen was sitting behind the driver. These two girls did not have their seat belts on (naughty!) due to the fact that they had many sacks in their lap and a huge box sitting between them. I know, excuses excuses. Well, the other taxi slammed directly the back door of the passenger side, yep, that's right, right where Steph was sitting. Since there was a big box next to her, she flew into that, and that prevented her from hitting Kristen. Kristen, on the other hand, slammed into the door frame, and Shawn hit his head on the back of his seat. We were all pretty shook up, and very sore from the whiplash effect that happened. What a spectacle that accident scene was! Three foreigners in an accident, there were many spectators standing around. One even came up to us and pointed at our taxi driver and said, "bad driver!" Yeah, thanks buddy for that information.
After talking to some friends (one of them being a Korean doctor), they convinced us 3 to go to the hospital the next day to get everything checked out. The visit would be covered under the taxi driver's insurance. Since we're both nurses we were very interested in how this visit was going to turn out. We went and saw the doctor first and the first thing he asked us (before even figuring out what happened) was if we wanted to stay over night in the hospital. We were like, really? You don't even know what's wrong with us yet, and your asking if we want to stay overnight. That would never happen in America. Anyway, he finally did ask what was wrong. We told him (well our co-teacher translated for us) that we were in an accident and we both had pain in our necks and Steph in her back. He asked us to point to where, so we did. Then he sent us downstairs to get X-rays. We thought that was kind of odd. He didn't ask us anything else about the pain, just where it was. So we got Xrays of our necks and backs. Then we got sent back to the doctor. He looked at our Xrays and told us we have no broken bones (obviously, right?) and said it was just a muscle sprain. He then told Steph that she needed to get a shot of pain medication in her ass (can I say that word on here?). She adamantly refused that, to which the doctor just laughed. Next stop was physical therapy. They had us lay on a table with a hot pack under our necks for 20 minutes. Then they wanted to hook up a TENS unit to us. For those of you non-medical people out there, a TENS unit is a Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator which basically means it uses electrical currents to help relieve pain. Google it if you want to learn more. Once again, Steph was adamantly refusing this treatment option, but the physical therapist said she had to, so she begrudgingly obliged. So, we were hooked up to some voltage and away we went! It felt very weird, and neither of us thought it did much good. Shawn even had a nice little visitor come over to him during his treatment. Yep, you guessed it, a cockroach. There are EVERYWHERE over here!
Well, needless to say, it's been an eventful 24 hours over here in Korea. Not to worry, we are both doing ok. They said the pain should subside in 1-2 weeks. Until then.......
Thursday, June 26, 2008
20,000 Leagues Under The...Aquarium
Sorry it has been awhile since our last update, but...we have been busy with our FRIENDS (yeah that's right...FRIENDS). I know it may be a strange concept for you people, but we are capable of making friends. Anyway on to the blog!
We had the great pleasure of taking part in a shark diving experience at the Busan Aquarium this past weekend. Well, Shawn had a good time, Steph only had a good time in between moments of sheer terror. Steph was surprised and horrified to find out that there would be underwater animals in the aquarium that we would be diving with, I mean who knew? (P.S. Steph hates underwater animals, especially turtles).
The dive was on a rainy Saturday in the afternoon. We arrived at the aquarium ready for our orientation. This was the first time for both of us to go scuba diving, so it took a little longer for us to be oriented. First, we had to fill out all the forms saying we wouldn't sue the aquarium if we lost a limb or died. After they get your signature they show a video to scare the pants off of you about what could happen while you are scuba diving (good plan huh?). Well we made it through the videos and were off to training and our first dive.
Turns out scuba diving is a little work. First you have to shimmy your way into a skin tight wet suit, then they put weights and an oxygen tank on your back to further inhibit your movement. The result is barely being able to walk and you are on a wet slippery floor (again, good idea huh?). Once in the water things start to get a little better though (thank god for buoyancy). Breathing underwater is a little tricky though. The regulator (which is the piece that gives you oxygen that you hold in your mouth...yeah just listen to that scuba jargon) is actually really heavy. Plus if it is your first time, you are terrified of drowning and have your mouth clamped on it as it is your life support. The result from this was very sore jaws following our dive. Also the water is REALLY cold, so that isn't great either. But all in all the experience was worth it. Getting to see those animals that close up was a really cool experience. Plus, what better way to do it then in a safe controlled environment? Enjoy the selected pictures below from our experience!
We had the great pleasure of taking part in a shark diving experience at the Busan Aquarium this past weekend. Well, Shawn had a good time, Steph only had a good time in between moments of sheer terror. Steph was surprised and horrified to find out that there would be underwater animals in the aquarium that we would be diving with, I mean who knew? (P.S. Steph hates underwater animals, especially turtles).
The dive was on a rainy Saturday in the afternoon. We arrived at the aquarium ready for our orientation. This was the first time for both of us to go scuba diving, so it took a little longer for us to be oriented. First, we had to fill out all the forms saying we wouldn't sue the aquarium if we lost a limb or died. After they get your signature they show a video to scare the pants off of you about what could happen while you are scuba diving (good plan huh?). Well we made it through the videos and were off to training and our first dive.
Turns out scuba diving is a little work. First you have to shimmy your way into a skin tight wet suit, then they put weights and an oxygen tank on your back to further inhibit your movement. The result is barely being able to walk and you are on a wet slippery floor (again, good idea huh?). Once in the water things start to get a little better though (thank god for buoyancy). Breathing underwater is a little tricky though. The regulator (which is the piece that gives you oxygen that you hold in your mouth...yeah just listen to that scuba jargon) is actually really heavy. Plus if it is your first time, you are terrified of drowning and have your mouth clamped on it as it is your life support. The result from this was very sore jaws following our dive. Also the water is REALLY cold, so that isn't great either. But all in all the experience was worth it. Getting to see those animals that close up was a really cool experience. Plus, what better way to do it then in a safe controlled environment? Enjoy the selected pictures below from our experience!
Before the Dive
The Deadliest Creature of Them All
SHARK!
The group...underwater
Peace Out!
Monday, June 9, 2008
ROAD TRIP!
Over Memorial Day (for Korea) we had a three day weekend, in which we went for a road trip with some friends! If any of you have spoken with us about how crazy driving here is in Korea, rest assured that neither of us drove on this road trip!
We started our adventure on a Friday morning. Leaving town proved to be more difficult than we had planned (it took us almost an hour!), which should have been a warning to us about the rest of the trip. Navigating in Korea is an interesting experience. There are very few road signs until you get on to the interstate system. The problem often is just that, getting on the interstate. We drove around our little country area trying desperately to find an on ramp, which we later found are pretty sparse. Once we found our way onto the interstate we had to pass through a toll booth to get our toll ticket. This should have been easy, I mean the hard part was finding the on ramp, but we made a minor mistake. We entered the toll through the "Hi-Pass" only lane, and the sirens began to sound. We were going to stop and admit fault for choosing the wrong lane, but there were too many cars behind us to stop in the middle of the interstate. So even though some Korean road worker was running behind our car while the sirens were still blowing, we just kept going. Don't worry though, we explained our situation when we got off the toll road and payed the appropriate fee, so we really didn't cheat the Korean toll system.
Our first stop on the trip was Namhae Island, the home of the "most beautiful" bridge in Korea. This bridge (there is a picture below) is supposed to be the "Golden Gate Bridge" of South Korea. Well, we will let you be the judge of that one...but we should mention that everything in Korea is famous when explained by a Korean person.
After seeing this amazing bridge we did a lot of scenic road tours to see the beauty of the island. While cruising around we stumbled upon the "Garlic Land of Treasures", an odd museum dedicated to garlic. This area is "famous" for garlic and apparently really proud of it. The museum was something to see, but still pretty strange. The building itself was shaped like a garlic bulb! Well, now we know more about garlic anyway.
That night all of the hotels were booked up at Yulpo beach (our stop for the night), so our friend suggested we stay at the Jimjilbang. A Jimjilbang is a popular spot in Korea and can best be described as a bath house where you can also spend the night. Of course when you spend the night you sleep on the floor in extremely hot stuffy rooms. But it only costs about $7.00 a night, so it's a cheap fix to a lodging situation. The bath house portion of the Jimjilbang is just that...a public bath. Yes, for only $7.00 you get to sleep on the floor in a hot room, and bathe NAKED with a bunch of other people! It is a pretty cool experience though all in all. There are all different kinds of baths at the Jimjilbang. They have a bath of all different temperatures and steam rooms, and even some mud baths at this particular one. At first Shawn was terrified of the idea of being naked with all of those men, taking a bath and a shower...but after he tried it, it really wasn't so bad.
The next day it was a sleepy start and on to the Green Tea Plantation (you can imagine we didn't sleep too well on the floor). The Boseong Green Tea Plantation is definitely something cool to see. There is row after row of green tea bushes and the smell is amazing. To top it all off there is all the green tea products you could want to buy there. Seriously, if you can think of it these people make it green tea flavored. Everything from our favorite of green tea ice cream to green tea noodles and rice. It is crazy, but delicious.
After the Green Tea Plantation we were off to the Celadon Museum. This is a museum that is built on the site of the famous Goryeo Dynasty's Kilns. This dynasty was famous for the Celadon Pottery that was produced during their reign. The kilns were huge, the art work was amazing, what else can we say?
After the Museum it was on to Mokpo, a coastal city on the southwest side of Korea. Here we enjoyed a little pizza and R&R for the night. The next day we took a stroll along the water front and hit up a museum dedicated to the maritime history of Korea. It was an interesting follow up to our other stops as most of the artifact were found from the Goryeo period of Korea (kinda their "Golden Age" I guess). After the museum it was on to a long trek back to the other side of the country to return the rental car and prepare for Monday....BOO! Enjoy the pics below!
The "Silver Bullet" (AKA our ride!)
The "Golden Gate" bridge of South Korea
Dinner with new friends we found on the road!
The green tea fields of Boseong
A sculpture of a celadon potter from the celadon museumWednesday, June 4, 2008
Muhak-san
This past weekend we took a hike up Muhak mountain. After 1 1/2 hours of pretty much straight incline, we got to the top. It was totally worth the hard work because the view was absolutely amazing. We thought we'd share some of the pictures with you.
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