Our Apartment, Our School and a Mud Festival Trip

I have been snapping a lot of photos with my iPad and iPod touch lately but have been neglecting to put them on the blog until now.
Here is a video of our apartment before we had furniture. I will upload a video soon of it now

Pictures of our apartment now.

There are so many chicken and beer places here. I was very surprised.

Don't worry dad, I brought the seashell you gave me four years ago to Korea!

 I am slowly making you a collection of seashells from Korea!

The entrance to our school is on the right...the door on the left is a bank. The school is on the second and third floor.

The school bus. I have not once seen a yellow bus like we have in the States....they are just small vans.

My desk at work. Bobby's is right next to mine.

The kindergarten classes are divided into classroom with animals games. I teach Bee class, Otter class and Elephant class. They are all really cute classes with murals of animals on the walls. This is Huni from my Bee class. We were learning about animals and he was coloring his monkey...turns our he likes Seahawks colors!!

The women on the left is one of my co-teachers. But she barley speaks English. Sometimes I feel like I am teaching her and the kids. She even takes notes on what I am saying to the kids so she can learn more. Lol. The kids names are Sally and Tony.

Here are some of the kids in Elephant class

Shiloh, Abigail and Ashley's drawings of ocean animals

My older students reading "A Horse Named Seabiscuit".

One of my older students, Min

Every month the kindergartens get to go to Kids Cafe (a very large play area) to celebrate birthdays.

I see this all the time here. I think they do it to get rid of extra items. 

But here you buy a coke and sprite and get a bag of laundry detergent for free...

More pictures of the mud festival.

This is Julia and I. We met her and her boyfriend while waiting for the bus to the mud festival.

This beach is the most popular beach in South Korea...and even better, it is a half hour subway ride away!.

At supermarkets you put in 100 won (9 cents) and you get a shopping cart..
.when you return the cart you get your money back!

We are started to formulate a list of things we LOVE about Korea so far.

 Here is what we have:

• It is cheap to eat out (only Korean food.. There are a lot of places to eat American food.. but it is spendy)


• When most Koreans drink they just go to a restaurant and order soju which is some sort of watered down vodka. Soju is very cheap and when you order it at a restaurant you have to order food with it. Most restaurants and bars stay open as long as there are people there (6am , 8am, whenever)


• Korean men in the 20s carry their girlfriends purse and they also carry some sort of purse for themselves


• You can drink any sort of alcohol at any time anywhere. 


• Transportation is very affordable


• They have a  GREAT subway system


• You can get a card and load money on it and use to pay for busses, subway and TAXIS! It is great!


• There are no locks on peoples doors, they just have a keypad type lock.


• The wifi here is ten times after than USA.


• It is impolite to let someones drink get empty.


• Many Koreas think Bobby looks like Matt Damon


• The produce can be very expensive in the supermarkets.. but there are local markets everywhere in Busan where you can buy very cheap, locally grown fruits and vegetables.


• Stop lights are a suggestion, especially at night with taxi drivers. 


• Taxi drivers HALL ASS through streets at night


• American movies are released here before they are in USA and are only $7


• School busses look like small vans


• They recycle EVERYTHING. At our apartment there are 10 bins each for something different. It is great because after you recycle everything there is not much left to actually throw away!


• You have to buy a special bag to put your garbage in that you can't recycle. By purchasing a special bag, there is no garbage tax in the city.

Thank you for reading, 

-Jestine

Summer Vacation & Love Land

Last week, we had our Summer vacation. These nine days we had off is the longest vacation we receive during our 19 month contract.  Needless to say, we were determined to make the most of it. 

We booked a trip that was named the "4-Day Relaxing Jeju Trip by Ferry" through a travel agency based in Seoul called Adventure Korea. The itinerary was chock-full of events including festivals, museums, hiking, sightseeing, shopping, and meals. We stayed in a very lavish hotel relative to what we've been accustomed to so far (including our night in a "Mongolian tent"). We had a tour guide so entertaining, caring, and effective. Much to our delight, we got all of this for a very reasonable price!

Since we took our photographs in bursts, much of the trip was not documented and the parts that were are superfluous, but you'll get the gist. So without further adieu, please enjoy the sporadic photo chronology of our vacation.

After a few missing a few buses in Busan, we were relieved to meet our group. We began our journey by spending a day together on the mainland at the annual Water Festival.

After Bobby got scolded for premature-elevation, we set up the rockets again and blasted off!

There were water slides reserved specifically for our group when we arrived!

If you think this looks fun you are severely mistaken. You ride the swing while an obnoxious man with a microphone aggressively shoots water from a hose in your face. The goal is to land in the furthest kiddy-pool. The prize for doing so, which only Jestine accomplished, was a bag of dried mushrooms.

Look at that form!

I guess Jestine was more aerodynamic?  Whats not to love about kayaking? Afterwards, we were asked to do an interview for Korean national news coverage of the festival. We were prompted to say how much the kayaking experience made us bond and furthered our love for one another. Bobby was appropriately inappropriate.
Our accommodations for our first night of this "relaxing" trip. A "Mongolian tent" AKA wooden cot with a mosquito net draped over it. On the bright side, it did have an electrical outlet.

After our night of "roughing it" at the water festival, we gathered our belongings, ate breakfast, and took a bus to the ferry terminal. Jeju-Do welcomed us with open arms (not to mention utopian weather).
The view while loading the ferry to Jeju

The ferry looked like seating on an airplane

 

We finally made it to Jeju after an 1 1/2 hour boat ride

On this day of trekking the beach we saw an abundance of trash.

Bobby got in trouble for sitting in on the military/lifeguard training.

Some of the trash was slightly more noteworthy.

Here are some photos from another day of trekking. Our tour guide told us there would be a very flat hike, which turned out to be a sweat-inducing gauntlet that weeded out the majority of our group.

At the beginning of our hike, we went down to the black sand beach and visited holes in the mountain created by the Korean military to house artillery. 

We found one Local washed up on the beach!

View from inside the holes.

Jestine posed for the camera inside the holes.

Many posed at the sign at the beginning of our hike...

...Few attempted to climb...

...But there can only be one.

These are called "The Brother Islands" because of the way they face each other.

There were plenty of gorgeous viewpoints along the trail.

Of course Bobby had to sprint to the summit.

View from the top.

The survivors. Some of us were a little upset with Max (who was taking the picture) for dubbing this a "very flat hike".

After our hike, we visited the O'Sulloc green tea museum. Korea gets all of its domestic green tea from Jeju because of its ideal climate and topography. It was a quick and rather uneventful visit, but the tea samples were bomb.

We began our last day in Jeju with a maze. We won. 

To be completely transparent, Bobby did some rather impressive climbing over a few obstacles, made his way to the finish line. and backtracked to get the rest of the group. Call it ninja skills, call it craftiness, call it cheating, call it whatever you want. All is fair in shrubs and war.

We also visited the largest lava tube in Asia. Our apologies that our camera skill gives it no justice. It was astonishing.

After the lava tubes, we visited a famous setting for many Korean films.

We got the chance to see "Lion Mountain"

The Adventure Korea group atop Lion Mountain

Warning: 

Contains pictures that some views may find disturbing.

Viewer discretion advised

Intended for mature audiences only

Contains pictures of a sexual nature.

The following are photos from Love Land-only found in South Korea.
It opened in 2004 and is a sex themed museum. 

 The entrances to the bathroom

 Even the signs were dirty

There was a special room in the exhibit that included clay figures

 Every high school boys dream

It was a wonderful trip full of adventure and meeting new people.

More to come.

-Jestine and Bobby