Hangul Day Weekend

Okay I'm finally going to write a blog post about something that happened two months ago. Hey! Don't act so surprised.

October 9th is a national holiday in Korea called Hangul day. Hangul is the Korean alphabet and Hangul day is a time to celebrate the creation of Hangul. While I enjoy Korean, I especially enjoy three day weekends, which is what I got thanks to Hangul day.

It was a pretty eventful weekend with lots of travel time. I started by going north to Seoul for a Kpop concert, then back down close to my part of the country, then way down south to Jinju for a lantern festival, and finally back home to the middle area of Korea.

My first Kpop concert

The concert was so much fun. It was only 15,000 won per ticket and I got to see about 30 different Kpop groups perform at the world cup stadium. The audience was huge and loud! We were surrounded by screaming fangirls wearing light-up headbands that had the names of their favorite group and member. When the most popular male kpop group, EXO, came out on stage, the reaction was unreal. It was how I've imagined it must have been like when the Beatles came to America.

My friend and I stayed at a jimjilbang (bath house) in Seoul that night. Unfortunately it was packed. I ended up sleeping in the locker room area because there was just no space left in any of the sleeping spaces. Regardless of the rough night's sleep we had, we knew the next day would be fantastic.

In the morning we took a train from Seoul to Daejeon, where a friend of mine picked us up and drove us to a city called Nonsan. Nonsan is well known for Daedunsan mountain. What's so special about this mountain?

 This! I'm not sure how it looks to you, but since I've seen it in real life, it's pretty impressive. There are two suspension bridges you can cross on this hike but one of them is a fairly intimidating set of stairs. It was a great hike, even though we opted for taking the cable car half the distance!

Here comes the cable car!

In the cable car with my friends

Beautiful view!

First suspension bridge

View from the bridge

Up, up, up

View from the top of the floating stairs

On our way back down, we spotted this lovely rainbow off in the distance

Right when we finished hiking, we hopped in the car and headed towards Jinju, traveling through a torrential downpour! Really, the rain was horrible and I was super stressed. But we made it to Jinju in one piece and enjoyed the lantern festival for a little while before the rain caught up to us again. I hear this is a very famous festival in Korea and I would like to have enjoyed it more but unfortunately the weather just want being very agreeable. I did get a few pictures in the short amount of time we were there.

 It was a super full and fun weekend. Thank you, King Sejong for inventing Hangul so I could have a great three day weekend!

Wolmyeong Park

A couple weekends ago my friends and I went for a little hike at Wolmyeong park, close to where we live. At the top of the mountain, there was a tower we could climb to get what would've been an amazing panoramic view of the city had it not been so hazy that day. Regardless, we were super excited that we could see the sea from the tower. It's still difficult for me to process how close I live to the ocean now!

 We continued to hike around for a while until we discovered a park area with outdoor exercise equipment where many older people were getting some exercise. These exercise parks are very common in Korea but usually I don't see ones this big. My friends and I decided to play around on the equipment for a while because hey, why not?

We were ready for some lunch after our fun morning. While walking around the city, we came across this random Totoro so that was fun.

  We decided to have lunch at "Pizza School." Our pizza was DELICIOUS--chicken quesadilla! We also got baked spaghetti because when we saw it on the menu, we knew we had to have it.

I am happy there are many fun places to go and fun people to hang out with in Gunsan!

Summer Vacation!

Summer vacation was short buy very sweet! My summer vacation was July 30th-August 3rd and I am finally in the mood to make time for a blog post. Yes!

My students began vacation from public school the same time mine started. However, students still attend their academies during break so it's business as usual here at Raffles...well, aside from the addition of morning "camp" classes and major schedule changes...but I'll save summer camp for another post!

Day one out of my five vacation days was fairly lazy. It was a good day to simply read, rest, and relax. Casey and I did go downtown in the afternoon to see Gwangju's Art Street. Unfortunately we were there at a weird time so it was kind of dead. The street is lined with galleries and shops but not many people were out and about.

Casey and I found an ice cream shop that serves honeycomb on soft serve

It was so good!

Crazy subway

Dak galbi!

On day two, Casey and I ventured to Mount Mudeung! We saw a Buddhist temple and reached a peak, where the air was so clear and the sky was so blue--we didn't want to leave! When we finally convinced ourselves that we did not bring adequate supplies to permanently stay, we traveled back home and met a couple friends (Molly and Perry) downtown for dinner. Our dinner location was named Oh My Burrito, a little restaurant that serves decent Mexican food. Of course I can't even compare it to Chipotle or Qdoba but if you ever find yourself craving Mexican food in Gwangju, South Korea then Oh My Burrito will do the trick!

 CLICK HERE FOR MORE MUDEUNG TRIP PICTURES!

Early the next morning, Casey, Molly, Perry, and I left for Mokpo--a city on the southwest coast. We got a great trip deal with a company called Adventure Korea for the weekend.

Unfortunately, a typhoon was rolling into Mokpo the same time we were so, alas, many of the Adventure Korea plans changed, BUT we still had a lot of fun despite the intense rain and wind. For example, on Friday we were supposed to ride on a yacht, have dinner, and jump off into the ocean. Well, they let us go on the yacht but we couldn't sail it anywhere. The best parts of the trip were simply seeing another Korean city and being around so many foreigners! Meeting new people and making new connections was incredible. Activities included: canoeing, cutting a ribbon to open a fish market (we were all very confused as to why this happened), watching the opening ceremony of a festival, staying in a Korean motel for the first time (I'll save this for another post), riding on a sweet limousine bus, typhoon weather, making new friends from all over the world, eating freaking delicious Korean food, seeing not one but two museums (one was a natural history museum, the other a water science museum), two 4-D movies, seeing the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movie!, Quiznos, more typhoon weather, Korean BBQ, disgusting "cheedle potato" fries, seeing green tea fields, making my own green tea, and did I mention the typhoon?

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ADVENTURE KOREA TRIP PICTURES!
(Click on the first picture and scroll through the album to see captions. If you pick the "View as Slideshow" option, I don't think captions will show).

Perry, Molly, Chloe, Casey

Go forth, noble steed

Adventure Korea travelers on the yacht

Making green tea

Thanks for reading! I am excited to share future adventures with you. I have some footage for a couple videos I will edit and hopefully post within the next week. This includes me trying Korean fast food for the first time and a tour of a Korean motel room. Stay tuned!

Also, this post took a loooong time. Mostly because I had so many pictures to share and I wanted to put a description on each one. Just for funsies, this is the music I listened to while updating my blog today: Not a Trampoline by Rob Cantor. You can listen to the whole album for free on bandcamp. My favorite songs on the album are All I Need is You and Perfect. Rob Cantor is quite talented and I really dig his music. Give it a listen if you'd like!

Okay I love you bye bye!

For the Beauty of the Earth

After a Sunday afternoon nap yesterday, I ventured outside to explore the natural beauty of my city. My location is ideal because my apartment is a half hour walk from downtown and a 40 minute walk from the base of Mount Mudeung--a lovely mountain with several trails, a handful of waterfalls, and a few Buddhist temples. Yesterday was the first (of many, I'm sure) time wandering the trails. It is so beautiful and green on Mount Mudeung. Many people do not find nature landscape pictures to be the most exciting pictures, but I have a few to share. As with most things, pictures cannot do such a gorgeous place justice.

I remember seeing pictures of places like Mount Mudeung throughout my life and wondering what it would be like to see a place like that in real life--or if I ever would. I remember wishing the pictures could capture the whole experience of witnessing such a beautiful place on Earth, so different from the natural beauties I had the honor of admiring in Colorado.

On the way to Mudeung

Not sure what this is but thought it was lovely.

I brought my trusty GPS with me! I really wished my dad could be there with me geocaching.

Not sure what these trees are called but for now I shall call them Truffula trees!

Of course I brought my trusty CamelBak as well!

You can see the city in the distance. So much air pollution. Boo.

Temple