As promised...

Finally, here are our pictures from our Suwon trip.  I hope you enjoy!

 Here we are at the start of the day.  We still have energy and we are completely oblivious to the fact that we are about to walk the length of the city...like three times.

 First stop, lunch!  We ate at a little restaurant that is famous for it's mandu-aka dumplings.  Even though there is meat in the dumplings, I gave them a try.  I must say they were pretty delicious.  And I got to sit across from this handsome guy.. I'm a lucky girl :)

 

Here is our lunch.  I pretty much always order bibimbap when we eat Korean food (if I have the option).  It is easily made vegetarian if it isn't already vegetarian, it's filling, and it's fresh and healthy.  It never disappoints.  

 After lunch we headed towards the entrance of the fortress to start our tour.  Here, the boys, have already bought ice cream.  It seemed like these three bought some sort of snack every time we stopped.  Il Joon (left) and Yumin (right) are two of my very favorite students.  They're best friends and are precious. 

Here is a typical scene in any Korean park on a beautiful day.  A group of older men, called ajeoshis, or women, called ajummas, sitting around playing games, eating, drinking, and talking.  

 One view of the lovely fortress wall.  

 Typical temple and fortress paintings.

 Fortress flags that marked the defensive look-out places along the wall. 

Four of my third grade girls: Jenny, Lucy, Alice and Emma.  I love these girls.

 Here we are walking up to the highest point along the wall.  This was just the start of it. After this picture, some of the students seriously started to lag behind. 

 Isn't Korea beautiful?

 One of the offensive towers looking over Suwon.

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 The dragon train.  I was praying that we would take this train down the mountain after we walked to the top.  I was wrong.

We made it!  It was such a beautiful day spent with the great company of my students, my co-teacher, and Doug.

Sunday in Suwon.

This Sunday, Doug and I went on a trip to Suwon with one of my co-teachers and 13 of my students.  Normally, I wouldn't be too excited about going on a field trip over the weekend.  Come Friday I am in dire need to not see an energetic, hormone-ridden teenager for at least 48 hours.  But, these students are pretty much my all time favorites, so I was pretty excited to get to spend the day with them.

I was also really looking forward to it because the students researched different parts of Suwon and acted as our travel guides throughout the trip.  They were the cutest travel guides ever. Period.  My co-teacher, Jasmine, even brought a little clip-on mic for them to wear as they acted as the travel guide.  Also, Doug was invited to go! So, instead of spending our Sundays apart, he got to come and spend the day with me and get to know my favorite students.  And of course, I love seeing how middle school girls act around Doug.  They get really excited and nervous to talk to him and it's so funny to watch.  I'm almost positive that my students were more excited for Doug to come on the trip than they were for me.

So, we went to Suwon, which is about forty-five minutes north of Cheonan by train.  Both Doug and I were really surprised to see how beautiful it was.  Since Korea is such a small country, a lot of the cities and provinces look similar and have the same attractions (lots of temples, mountains, street food and shopping).  But, Suwon is unique because it has the Hwaseong fortress with a 5km wall around it.  We ate a Korean lunch together of bibimbap, noodles, and dumplings and then walked along the wall stopping at different points to listen to our adorable tour guides.

What I didn't realize was that we would be walking the whole wall, which included going to the top of a small mountain.  I wore flats that day.  The flats aren't uncomfortable or anything, but they definitely are not Hwaseong fortress wall walking shoes.  Bad decision on my part.  At one point, one student said to, "Miss Kaitlin, your shoes, so hard."  My interpretation of that was "Miss Kaitlin, why are you wearing those shoes? You must be in pain." And yes, it was slightly painful.  But, even the lack of support from my flats couldn't ruin the day for me.

The weather couldn't have been better that day and we were able to get some amazing views of the city by walking to the highest fortress.  Doug and I want to go back soon to do some exploring of our own.  We got some really good pictures of the day, too.  Stay posted, I'll share them soon!