Seoul.

Last weekend, Doug, Jessica, and I went to Seoul. We spent the day getting a few last souvenirs, buying gifts to bring home, eating yummy food we only get to eat when we are in Seoul, and enjoying each others company.  I am so thankful to have met a friend like Jessica.  I know that this would have been an awfully long and lonely year without some of the friends we have made, like Jess.  Here our some photos from our day:

Getting a little pick-me-up after some serious souvenir shopping.  Jess got a free drink. By the looks of it, she was happy about it.

It started sprinkling when we were watching this man play the sax.  He did not even skip a beat and kept playing.  He was getting so into it, even shimmying his shoulders.

Last stop of the day, a pub so that Doug and Jess could get a good ol' American cheeseburger.  And, of course, so Doug could get a beer on tap!

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.

.

 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!

Busan, day 2.

Onto day two.  One thing that we were both excited to see in Busan was Yonggungsa Temple.  It is a beautiful Buddhist temple located up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. To get to the temple, we walked up a large hill to make our way to the cliffs.  Once we got closer, there were a few booths of food and souvenirs lining the road.  I got a cute jade green bead bracelet and a little Asian cat charm that I may use as an ornament when we get back.  After the street shops, we came to the entrance.  There were two middle-aged Korean women rubbing the golden Buddha's belly by the entrance.  I was waiting to get a photo rubbing Buddha's belly, when the Korean women told me to rub his belly seven times, touch his nose, and then rub his hand.  They were really excited to be talking to me so I went ahead and rubbed the belly while they counted to seven for me.  They were so cute and definitely excited to show me how to rub Buddha's belly.

After that, we walked through a tunnel that took us to the cliffs.  Once we got to that side, we could see the stunning temple, ocean and view.  We've been to a few temples throughout Korea and Yonggungsa has definitely been my favorite.  There were these amazing rock formations off in the distance behind the temple area.  We walked around to tall the different statues and temple areas.  There was even a neat grotto where Buddhists go to to drink a sip of ocean water and light candles.  It was such a crystal clear, sunny day, which was so refreshing after some of the grey weather we've been having here in Cheonan.

When we were finishing exploring Yonggungsa, we went to Haeundae beach.   This is the first beach we have been to in Korea.  It reminded me a lot of Huntington, except it was winter so not many people were there on the main street.  I could tell Haeundae was a tourist place because of the many pubs and bars.  But, we were lucky enough to find a Mexican restaurant for lunch!  The place was called Fuzzy Navel Taco, which sounds sketchy, but it was actually pretty good.  Doug, of course, got a burrito and I got vegetarian tacos and a little side of guacamole.  It wasn't as good as real Mexican food that we get back home, but it did satisfy our Mexican food craving!

One thing that surprised me about the beach here was the large amount of people on the beach even though it was winter.  I feel like the beaches in Southern California in the winter are pretty dead.  Here, however, the were groups of students, families, and friends were down on the sand just hanging out and admiring the ocean.  

Busan, day 1.

Doug and I just got  back from our three day mini vacation to Busan. Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and is located on the southeast side of the country.  Since Busan is located on the coast, it is famous for its seafood and fish markets.  It's also kind of like the Hollywood of Korea.  They hold their international film festivals in Busan and on certain streets we saw golden hand prints similar to those in Hollywood.

We left for Busan Thursday morning and got on a four hour train south!  During the train ride, I finally was able to finish a scarf that I have been knitting.  It's actually the second scarf I've worked on, but the first one turned out horrible and was way to short and thick; it kind of looks like a cape!  So, I'll give that "scarf" to Yeppi for sleeping.  My second scarf turned out really well and is cozy and warm!

We arrived in Busan at around one o'clock in the afternoon.  For our first day their, we decided to check out Busan Tower, which has some pretty awesome views of the city.

Busan Tower is a really popular place for couple to take a lock with their initials on it and lock it to the fence at the base of the tower.  So, of course Doug and I had to take our lock up to the tower and take some Asian-inspired photos!

This is how a lot of my middle school students pose in pictures.  I thought it was an appropriate moment to test it out. 

After placing our lock on the fence, we got on the elevator for the top of the tower.  We got to see great views of the Pacific Ocean and of the city.

Next, we went to the Nampo and Jalgachi. Nampo is the big shopping district of Busan and Jalgachi is the fish market just a few blocks away.  The shopping was really great!  It was alleys and alleys of good knock-off wallets, purses, jewelry, shoes, clothing, dog sweaters, etc.

The sun was almost finished setting, so we decided to walk to the fish market.  It was really....interesting.  At first, we were walking along the outdoor market.  I'm always a little grossed out by the Korean food markets because the food is so close to the ground and it just doesn't seem clean.  Plus, the smells are always really, really strong.  I guess it's cultural, but to me it just doesn't seem sanitary.

Then, we went into the indoor market.  The indoor market seemed a lot cleaner, but it was still overwhelming.  Fish were falling out of the buckets and one wrong step and you could end up in with the octopuses!  Well, maybe I'm over-exaggerating a bit, but I still didn't think it was a good idea to have them in open containers.

Not surprisingly, Doug was pretty hungry by this point.  We went back to Nampo and got some street food.  I was really excited because some booths had corn on the cob, so there was something vegetarian I could get.  However, when I got my corn it was like chewing rubber!  It must have been sitting out for awhile.  I had to throw it away because it was so disgusting.  I ended up just having two doughy "pancakes" that were stuffed with a little bit of red bean paste and sunflower seeds.  It seems like a weird combination, but they were delicious!

This lady knows what she is doing!  I can't wait to go back to Busan and get another little pancake thing.  Doug went to another stall and got some dumpling and a chicken dish.  He said the chicken was gross because it had all the bones in it and you had to chew around it and spit them out.  They don't de-bone anything here.  I'm always amazed when I watch my students meticulously get the meat of their fish at lunch with their chopsticks.

Here is a picture of the stall where Doug ate.  Street food and snacks like this are really popular. The most popular dished are fish cake skewers seen at the bottom of the picture and tteokbokki. Tteokbokki is a rice cake spicy noodle that is extremely chewy.  It's nasty.

So, that was our first day in Busan.  Overall, I really like the city.  It had a much different vibe from the others cities we've been to in Korea.  I think since it was on the coast, it had a more relaxed atmosphere.  I'll post more about our trip later today and tomorrow!