Last week was summer vacation for our academy, which meant we had a five day weekend. We left on Thursday morning for Jeju Island, Korea's version of Hawaii. We took a bus to the airport in Busan and took a 40 minute plane ride to Jeju. When we arrived, we took another bus to the southern part of the island where our inn was located.
The best part of our trip was our stay at Tae Gong Gak Inn, a small 15 room hostel-type inn. The owners were very personable and remembered our names throughout our entire stay. They spoke fluent English and were very helpful in giving suggestions and directions for what we wanted to do.
On our first full day, we decided to hike Mount Halla, which was a total of about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles). It was a beautiful hike, but very difficult on our feet as we did not have proper hiking gear. Parts of the hike were jagged, slippery rock, so it was a long process and our feet and legs were sore for the rest of the trip.
The next day, we were sore and exhausted so we tried to have a relaxing day at the beach. Unfortunately, it was hot, humid, and there was absolutely no breeze, so we ended up pretending to be guests at the Hyatt hotel (right by the beach) in order to enjoy their air conditioning. In the evening, we took a walk to a waterfall near our inn. It was quite pretty and the mist from the waterfall was cool and refreshing.
On our third and last full day in Jeju, we took a long (hour and a half) bus ride around to the eastern side of the Island and took a ferry to Udo Island, a very small island near Jeju. We rented an ATV and spent a few hours riding around the circumference of the Island. It was quite beautiful with many green fields and open spaces, and the coast line was gorgeous. It's atmosphere is surprisingly very similar to that of the Irish coast.
Our trip home the next day was very smooth, which we were very thankful for after our experience in Seoul.
We had a nice summer vacation and are looking forward to more travels when we have more vacation time.
Last week marked the end of our second month teaching in Korea, and the time has been going very slowly. It feels as though we have been here more like 6 months rather than 2. Teaching is very hard work: though sometimes rewarding, it is often frustrating as the curriculum we are teaching the children is of little to no value. We have also encountered some ridiculous rules and micromanaging at our hagwans which make the whole experience even more frustrating. It is difficult to take this job seriously, but we are doing our best to find the good and at least teach the children something of value.
We will write more later.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
I know it's been awhile. We haven't done a good job keeping you updated, but here's what's happened in the past few weeks.
Scott's birthday was on Monday July 19th. Amy cooked him birthday pancakes for breakfast and we had macaroni and cheese for dinner, which was sent to us from Amy's parents. Scott also received a cake at work, great gifts, and cards from my family. All in all it was a good day. Unfortunately the same could not be said for our weekend trip to Seoul.
When we arrived it was raining quite hard and Scott did not have an umbrella because it was accidentally taken by one of the students at his school the day before. Also we found out that the rain jacket that Scott bought from H&M, was not actually water proof. Needless to say Scott got very wet. It continued to rain hard most of the day making it hard for us to really do anything or see much. We were able to grab a decent lunch at a Thai restaurant, hang out at a coffee shop, and buy some books from an English bookstore in the foreigner section of Seoul. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing in our nice hotel room; one of the few highlights of the trip.
The next day was extremely humid. Our only goals for Sunday were to go to Seoul tower which shows you a great view of the city and get some Mexican food from the foreigner part of town. It should be mentioned here that Amy started getting sick on Friday and had a nice cold during this trip. So we set out for Seoul Tower via subway, got off at the correct subway, and continued to walk. Unfortunately Seoul Tower is located on a hill in a large park that has twenty foot high walls surrounding it, with no visible entrance that Amy or Scott could see. With it being so hot and humid and Amy not feeling well, we gave up frustrated and hungry for Mexican food. We were disappointed once again as the Mexican food was sub par. We ordered enchiladas and what we got were not enchiladas. After that we decided to give up and catch the earlier train home.
Of course we did not budget enough time to get back to the hotel grab our bags and make it to the station in time for the train and we missed it by one minute. It was either wait another couple of hours for the next train or take the express train which was a little more expensive. Scott decided to take the express train, but in order to take that train we had to go to another station to catch it. We got our tickets and waited for the connecting train to come. However, it came late and by the time we got to the station the express train was leaving. So we marched up to the counter and tried to tell the ticket counter attendant in very basic English what happened. As result of our efforts we got only half of a refund and had to pay for two more tickets. We finally got on a train headed towards the direction of home. We arrived in Busan found out no trains leave from that station going to Ulsan, so we took a subway to another train station waited another hour and finally got on a train going to Ulsan. After an hour and a half train ride we made it back to our apartment in Ulsan at 11:00.
All in all it was a terrible trip, but we definitely learned a lot from the experience.
Scott's birthday was on Monday July 19th. Amy cooked him birthday pancakes for breakfast and we had macaroni and cheese for dinner, which was sent to us from Amy's parents. Scott also received a cake at work, great gifts, and cards from my family. All in all it was a good day. Unfortunately the same could not be said for our weekend trip to Seoul.
When we arrived it was raining quite hard and Scott did not have an umbrella because it was accidentally taken by one of the students at his school the day before. Also we found out that the rain jacket that Scott bought from H&M, was not actually water proof. Needless to say Scott got very wet. It continued to rain hard most of the day making it hard for us to really do anything or see much. We were able to grab a decent lunch at a Thai restaurant, hang out at a coffee shop, and buy some books from an English bookstore in the foreigner section of Seoul. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing in our nice hotel room; one of the few highlights of the trip.
The next day was extremely humid. Our only goals for Sunday were to go to Seoul tower which shows you a great view of the city and get some Mexican food from the foreigner part of town. It should be mentioned here that Amy started getting sick on Friday and had a nice cold during this trip. So we set out for Seoul Tower via subway, got off at the correct subway, and continued to walk. Unfortunately Seoul Tower is located on a hill in a large park that has twenty foot high walls surrounding it, with no visible entrance that Amy or Scott could see. With it being so hot and humid and Amy not feeling well, we gave up frustrated and hungry for Mexican food. We were disappointed once again as the Mexican food was sub par. We ordered enchiladas and what we got were not enchiladas. After that we decided to give up and catch the earlier train home.
Of course we did not budget enough time to get back to the hotel grab our bags and make it to the station in time for the train and we missed it by one minute. It was either wait another couple of hours for the next train or take the express train which was a little more expensive. Scott decided to take the express train, but in order to take that train we had to go to another station to catch it. We got our tickets and waited for the connecting train to come. However, it came late and by the time we got to the station the express train was leaving. So we marched up to the counter and tried to tell the ticket counter attendant in very basic English what happened. As result of our efforts we got only half of a refund and had to pay for two more tickets. We finally got on a train headed towards the direction of home. We arrived in Busan found out no trains leave from that station going to Ulsan, so we took a subway to another train station waited another hour and finally got on a train going to Ulsan. After an hour and a half train ride we made it back to our apartment in Ulsan at 11:00.
All in all it was a terrible trip, but we definitely learned a lot from the experience.
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