Jeju Island

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.