NICE!

Rabbits for sale

Cute

Seodaemun Prison

On 6th February we went to visit Seodaemun Prison. It was a place we had been meaning to go to for a while. It was very interesting and I'm glad we finally took the time to visit such a thought provoking place.

Winter fun!

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We spent our third THREE day weekend with Andrea and Brian. We went skiing at Vivaldi Park and rented ATV's in Gangchon. We also stayed in a Minbak. A minbak is a private resistance you can stay in. They are normally cheaper that motels and they are cuter as they are normally traditional Korean style accommodation.

Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice festival

On our second THREE day weekend we went to Hwacheon Sancheoneo Ice festival in Gangwon-do. It was so much fun! We went ice fishing and ice sledding, bob sleighing and snow sledding. We also played ice football and visited an ice room which contained amazing sculptures of varies monuments.

Muse!

On our first THREE day weekend we went to see MUSE at Seoul Olympic Park. It was awesome!

Random things I have made...

Soap

Lantern

Plaque

January 2010 SNOW SNOW SNOW!

Monday 5th January was the second snowy day of the year. We woke to a half a metre of snow! I have never ever seen so much snow. It was such a fun day. I took many photographs and fell over a lot! The 5th was also the beginning of winter vacation intensive programme, VIP. The first day was delayed due to the snow storm and as David and I were on the weekend shift we only had a two day week. Yippeee for snowy days!

Happy New Year!

For New Year we went to Seoul Tower to watch the last sunset of the decade! After that we headed to Imjingak and watched a live concert. Many Korean pop bands were performing. It was -20c so it was funny watching the singers struggling to move! We also watched whilst the peace bell was being rung. The Peace Bell is significant because it is only rung on extremely special occasions.

Christmas season

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December was busy with visitors. David's friend Owen came to Korea at the beginning of the month and his sister Rachel arrived on the 23rd. We showed them the usually tourist attractions and introduced them to a WIDE RANGE of Korea food. We visited the DMZ at Imjingak, and the 3rd tunnel. We went to DeokSungung Palace and Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul. We also visited a cute tea shop in Insadong that Rachel discovered in the lonely planet. It had little canneries flying around as we drank our tea. We used our biscuits to lure them closer to us. It worked and we took some great photographs.

For Christmas day Rachel went on a packaged tour to Jeju island. David and I went to an Indian restaurant named Asia Asia for our Christmas dinner. It was delicious. After dinner it started to snow for the first time. Our drive back home was very pretty but we saw about seven different accidents. I guess nobody was prepared for the slippery roads!

When Rachel returned, we headed to Gangwondo and went skiing at Vivaldi Park. David and I went skiing and Rachel went snowboarding. I was extremely pleased with myself as I made it onto the upper intermediate slopes! After our ski trip we went to a very traditional jimjill bang in Paju. It was extremely strange but relaxing. I think Rachel liked it!

November...Soy Bean Festival.

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We also went to a Soy Bean Festival with Andrea and Brian at Imjingak. It wasn't as cool as the lantern festival but it was very strange and strange equals fun. There was another Hite beer van giving away free beer. Around the van was a queue of old men really drunk. Some dancing to the live music being played. At first it was funny but then one man started to dance inappropriately. It was wrong because young children were present but it was really funny! At the festival we watched Jang-gu nori traditional dances, tried some different forms of tofu, soy bean and kimchi, ate sausage, chicken and beef all on a stick and had the chance to beat some wheat. We made a wish to the giant kimchi pot and tied a ribbon to a stack of hay for long longevity. I made a soap in the shape of a temple, painted a classy porcelain Korean figure and we all got a free massages and our aura cleansed. We also went on a pirate ship and Andrea and I rode on some giant tulips and David and Brian rode on a giant panda and a mini train. In addition we bought a sword, a wax hand and a massive bag of potatoes.

November... Lantern Festival.

In November there was a Lantern Festival near Insadong which was really cool! I took soooooooooo many photographs! I also made not one but three lanterns at the craft stalls. They were all free. I would have loved to make more but I thought I would let the kids have a turn!

October.. Korea vs Senegal.

On the 14th October we went to Seoul football stadium to watch South Korea Vs Senegal. It was such a nice day. We arrived a little bit early and took advantage of the freebies Korean events have to offer. Free face paints we available, which we both got! We also go a sports blanket and a lot of free Hite beer from a beer van. We liked the free beer the most! We both bought Korean football shirts so we really did look the part!

October...Autumn

In the middle of October David and I went to explore Lake Park in Ilsan. It was really good because it was the middle of autumn and the different coloured leaves were very pretty to see. The day after visiting Lake Park we went for a small hike up a mountain close to English Village. It took around an hour each way. It had exercise machines on the way up to do, which was interesting. The mountain had a couple of cute pagodas at the top. The view was pretty but it would have been more spectacular if it wasn't so cloudy. We are planning to walk up it again on a clearer day!

October...

Let's see, my mum went home in late September. After she left I made her a photo book from snap fish. It contained a lot for photographs from all the exploring and sightseeing we done around Korea. It took me HOURS AND HOURS to complete but it was worth it!

At the beginning of October, David and I went to Lotte World Theme Park in Seoul. It was amazing! As it was Halloween at the end of the month the entire theme park was decorated with Halloween themed decorations, American style. It was awesome! I thought it was much better than any of the themes parks in England but David thinks Alton Towers is better.

October-February...Ooops I forgot all about this blog!

It's Sunday 7th February 2010. It's been around four months since we last wrote an entry in this blog. This is my fault as it was my turn, ooops! I have no excuse for my forgetfulness because during October, November and most of December we still had no students at our school. As a result of this our work days consisted of random training, menial tasks, YouTube, bumarcade.com and a lot of naps!

Free Hug

Jimjilbang

Insadong Bird Tea Shop

 

Swine Flu

H1N1 prevention advert on the subway...were everybody is squished together!

ICE INSIDE!

Apartment

Lots of Shampoo- A gift from our Boss!

Chuseok- Korean Thanksgiving

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Better late than never... A few weeks ago it was Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok, we had a couple of weeks off of school so we decided to go on a road trip around Korea. This vacation was well timed as Becky's Mum and her boyfriend, Ben, were in the country, so they came with us.

We started our vacation sightseeing around our local area. We went to lots of places we had been meaning to visit since we arrived. We particularly enjoyed our trip to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), here we got to have a closer look at North Korea but also got to have a look down in the infiltration tunnels which were dug as a route for the north to sneakily invade Seoul. It had a very eerie atmosphere. We also visited a few landmarks in Seoul, such as the tower and a few palaces. So after a few days of sightseeing around Paju and Seoul we began our road trip!

Our first stop was a nights camping near Mogok, we had previously found a really nice campsite which is by a river and is surrounded by mountains. We had a campfire and lots and lots of soju! We woke up dreary the next morning to find the car had a puncture, this delayed us slightly but once it was fixed we had a celebratory McDonalds in the nearest city. After a night of camping and a day of nursing our sore heads we decided to head to the nearest beach resort, Naksan.

In Naksan we found a really cheap 'condotel', this is just like a hotel but with a small balcony and kitchen. It turned out to be such a good deal that we ended up staying there for over a week! Naksan is close to Seoraksan National Park, which is home to the tallest mountain in Korea, but our resort was just on the beach about 20 minutes away from the park. Naksan is a great place to stay, on the beach you could rent tandems, quad bikes and small electric motorcycles, we opted for the latter and cruised up and down the seafront on our first night. Then we had some beers and set off some fireworks.

The next day we decided to rent some bikes and have a bike ride, after this we went into the National park and attempted to climb the mountain. The mountain, almost twice the height of Snowdon, was too big so we cheated and took the cable car most of the way up, the views should have been amazing, but it was quite a cloudy day and at times you couldn't even see 6 feet infront of you.

After a few days in Naksan Becky's mum and Ben headed in Incheon and we stayed behind. It was the end of the month so we tried to conserve our money but we still had a great time, on the first day alone we stopped off at Daepo harbour, a very famous port in Korea with a fish market, buts its real delicacy is deep fried prawns, we had to try these, so we bought a bag and ate them on the benches by the harbour, they were amazing, shortly after this we went to a mountain spa and had a very relaxing time. Once we were sufficiently relaxed we went back to daepo harbour to visit one of the restaurants we had spied earlier in the day. This restaurant was on a jetty over the harbour and served only sushi, so we chose a couple of fish from the tanks near the entrance and ate these with some hot sauce and salad. Then we ordered our favorite part of the meal, fish head soup! We didn't really know what we were ordering but it came with 7 or 8 fish heads looking up at us, despite this it was really tasty and we ate most of it. We definitely want to go back to it.

After a few days of sun bathing and taking it easy we finally got paid! We treated ourselves to a trip to 'Waterpia', one of Korea's best water parks, it was a really nice day and it wasn't too busy, we had a great time once we sorted out the problems of not being told we had to wear swimming caps. We also went in a pool of 'Dr Fish', these are small fish which feed off of your dead skin, they were so ticklish, but I managed to completely submerge myself and at one point you couldn't see my skin for all of the fish eating my dead skin. After the water park we decided to head back home so we could spend a few days at home before we had to go to work again.

Once home we met up with Becky's mum and Ben again and spent the last couple of days in and around Seoul. Overall everyone had a good break and we felt sad that we had to go back to work.

Photo with Han Ji Hye- Korean Actress