Chuseuk holiday and beautiful Jeju-do

Hello all! It's back to work again after a relaxing (sort of) 4 days off for the Chuseuk Holiday. Chuseuk is the Korean version of Thanksgiving with family gathering and lots of delicious food, or so I hear! We left mainland Korea to head to Jeju, the island off the southern peninsula of Korea comparable to Hawaii. Before I jump into that, some Chuseuk pictures:




Katie and I in the morning- we had an LCI Chuseuk Event and all the female foreign teachers had to wear Hanboks, the traditional Korean dress. A Korean woman typically receives her Hanbok at marriage, presented to her by the groom's mother. I am wearing Sue's Hanbok, she is all about fashion and style and supposedly black is a rare color! All of the students came to school in tradional dress also, it was too cute.



Clara and I



Alan, the little prince.



Mickael and Clara- boyfriend and girlfriend :)



Most of the LCI kids, all lined up and ready to go outside for the event. Look at all the little princes' and princesses!



Friendly game of Tug-Of-War for the little kiddies dressed all nice in their outfits! I felt bad when they would fall and scrape their beautiful clothes on the ground!



Kathy and Daisy looking beautiful



Mia- posing like always.



Abby- the pretty princess! Supposedly this Hanbok, the design and colors, are of one typically worn by a fortune teller. haha!



She caught a dragonfly!



My favorite teacher from Bugeum class, she is so sweet. One day, when we came to pick up our kids for the afternoon classes, we noticed that 30 or so of them were crying! It happened to be right before our summer break, and the kids were crying because they had found out that they wouldn't be seeing their teacher for 3 weeks. We were on summer break for a week, and then she would be doing a training class for 2 weeks after that. She is so sweet with her kids and was always extremely helpful when I was teaching in that class.



Ceasar, the cool kid :)



Andy helping Clara jump rope, it looks like she's flying!!



All the little girls looked so gorgeous! How cute is she?!



Running circles aroung Sarah, she was trying to take a picture but somehow got caught up in a game of chase.

Overall, the Chuseuk event was a success. All the kids love to get outside and play for a while and they were all exhausted by the time we went back inside! The only downer was the heat, I felt bad sweating so much in Sue's beautiful Hanbok. But man, those things are warm!!

So after the Chuseuk event, we had the weekend, one day of work on Monday, and then the rest of the week and following weekend off work. Brianna's brother was here visiting, as well as Amy's brother and his fiance. We had a crowded apartment building for a while! So the seven of us (Amy, Kyle, Crystal, Brianna and Brandon, Katie and I) headed to Jeju on Wednesday afternoon.



Our flight was supposed to leave in the morning, but it ended up being delayed 4 hours so we didn't get into Jeju until late evening. We were counting on having 2 and a half days in Jeju, but it ended up only being 2 full days. We made the most of those 2 days though! We rented a taxi driver for 9 hours for the first day, it was a flat fee and he took us all over the East side of the island. Here's a pictorial of Day 1:



Katie and Amy at dinner the first night, DELICIOUS chicken bulgogi!!



View from the roof of our Guesthouse, Tae Gong Gak Inn.



Another view.



Beautiful walk through the woods to get to Oedolgae Rock, first stop on the tour!



Above Oedolgae Rock, on the way to the viewpoint.



The crew: Kyle, Crystal, Amy , Brandon, Bri, Katie and I in front of Oedolgae Rock.



Oedolgae Rock on the left







Second stop: Jeongbang Waterfall












Fourth stop: Samyang black sand beach



Look what I found: heart shaped rock! There was a lot of beach glass and unique rocks and shells on this beach.



Fifth stop: Soesokkak Estuary. The name is interesting: 'soe' mean and ox, 'so' means a pool of water, and 'kkak' means the end. This area is at the mouth of the Hyodoncheon stream and is the area where the fresh water meets the ocean, creating a really beautiful scene amidst lava columns and overhanging pine trees.



Traditional Korean kayak




Sixth stop: hike to Seongsan Ilchubong or Sunrise Peak. Sunrise Peak is a huge crater that was formed by hydrovolcanic eruptions thousands and thousand of year ago. We hiked to the top, which was exhausting, but it sure was worth it! This picture is the outside of the crater and beginning to the hike. If you look close you can see the pathway with hundreds of people on it.



Views on the way up....





The crater: we made it to the top!



Yours truly, just wandering around barefoot on Seongsan Ilchubang, no big deal! :)

Next stop: Manjanggul Caves: one of the longest lava tubes in the world! Unfortunantly, I couldn't quite figure out how to take great pictures in the darkness, so I only have a few of this area.



Lava column



Interesting lava deposit, some say it looks like Jeju island. Either that or a turtle, depends how you look at it!



Crater #2 at the top of the hike to view Mt. Halla. We did this hike just as dusk was approaching and the view was beautiful. The clouds had parted to let the last of the sun in and it was like the mountain had a halo! Mt. Halla stands at the center of Jeju island and is a dormat volcano and inside is a crater Baeknok Lake.







The beginning of Day 2- the group split up for the day, Katie Bri and Brandon to hike Mt Halla and the rest of us were on a mission to find something fun to do in the sunny and very undexpected nice weather! I took this picture on the way to find the snorkeling shop, before getting lost for a good hour and a half only to discover the dive shop 20 minutes too late, they had left without us! This is the harbor on the east side of the island, near our guesthouse. In the distance is Gapado Island.



Jungmun viewpoint, formed by lava! There were different lava formations, deposits, columns, etc.





Close up of the tops of the lava columns



Jeju 'harubang' symbol of the garden deities and a representation of the three characteristics of Jeju: rocks, wind, and females! These statues are found all over Jeju island.



Kyle, Crystal, Amy and I out front of the Green Tea Museum. Not the most exciting museum I've been to, but seeing the fields was pretty cool.



Green tea fields



Korea Straight in the background



Wild Horses



Biggest Buddha ever! Sanbanggulsa Temple



Sanbanggulsa Temple



Atop 200 meters of stairs at Sanbanggulsa is a cave temple dating back hundreds of years, handcarved out of the rock walls and created as a place of worship. Was worth the hike!



Yakcheonsa Temple



Yakcheonsa Temple at dusk- one of those moments that almost takes your breath away it was so beautiful





Beautiful bridge on the walk to Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, it changed colors!



Walk to Cheonjiyeon Waterfall



Walk to Cheonjiyeon Waterfall



Cheonjiyeon Waterfall lit up at night



Most of the crew in front of Cheonjiyeon Waterfall: Katie, Brandon, Bri, Amy and I



Gorgeous Jeju sunrise before heading out on Saturday morning! Yes, I was in fact up for the sunrise :) This picture marks the beginning of a 12 hour day of travel. Taxi to ferry to taxi to bus to taxi to home! I had a great time in Jeju and what it lacked in relaxation it made up for in beauty. Back to reality now, I did miss my little student Clara!

My girl, Clara

I mentioned in my last entry that my schedule changed and I now teach my own class in the mornings, here are some pictures of my student! I only have one right now but will hopefully be getting more as the year goes on. Here is my girl Clara, she is so adorable and I just love getting to hang out with her every morning!





















Random picture of a square near school, I was testing out the panorama setting on my new camera. Turned out pretty neat!

End of August / Beginning of September Update! (Spoiler Alert: I BUNGEE JUMPED!)

As we roll through the end of yet another month, I find myself with lots of things to report! I have been travelling out of town for the past few weekends into the eastern provinces of South Korea. The weekend of the 14-15 we were in a couple different cities, Inje and Yanggu, in the Gangwon-do province. This past weekend (21-22) we were on the border of the Chungcheongbuk-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do provinces right by Soebaksan mountain. Here's a pic to help understand!



So the first weekend I went on a trip through Adventure Korea, a company here that organizes adventure trips for foreigners and Koreans and provides a good opportunity to meet other people here. I went with two other teachers from my school, Amy and Nick, but met a lot of other interesting people on the trip. The title of the weekend was "Camping and Wilderness Trekking", although we didn't really do much of either one! After just BARELY making the bus on Saturday morning, we travelled east to the more mountainous area of Korea. We had to sit on the bus for around 4 hours to get to the destination but the scenery was beautiful:









How huge are these butterflies?! All the bugs in Korea are super-sized for some reason. The grasshoppers are HUGE and they have locusts all over here, the fields and mountains are alive with those creatures they are so loud!



Praying Mantis staring right at me!!



Thanks for the rain boots mom and dad!!

Our first stop on the itinerary was the Eulji Observatory at the DMZ- Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.



We were at a different part of the DMZ than the normal tours, right above the 4th infiltration tunnel. There are 4 tunnels total and they're believed to be military invasion routes by North Korea. The 4th tunnel is the one that was most recently discovered in 1990 when South Korea picked up the vibrations on a radar. They intercepted the tunnel's construction and later blocked it off. We toured the observatory and tried to take a peek into North Korea but unfortunantly it was a cloudy day and you couldn't see much. There is a village right next to the DMZ that I was really looking forward to checking out, the Punchbowl City that sits in a huge valley of the mountains.



We couldn't see much of the Punchbowl City, it was way too cloudy! This is what I did see of North Korea:





After listening to a presentation (in Korean) and watching an informational video on the DMZ (in Korean) at the observatory, we went under and got to walk through a bit of the actual tunnel. We walked through a couple hundred feet of the South Korean-built tunnel to the point where it intercepted with the North Korean-built tunnel. You could walk through the SK tunnel standing up with plenty of room, but the NK tunnel was significantly smaller and we had to sit in a little mine car thing to go through the NK part. It was pretty cool, and now I can say I've been in the middle of the DMZ! Granted, we were underground.

Anyway, I am well and alive after our trip to the DMZ so no need to worry or come rescue me from North Korea!

After the stop at the Eulji Observatory, we went on to Yongsin city where there was a big summer festival going on and a campsite set up for us to spend the night. We roamed around the festival for while and did some of the various activities they had set up:





After pottery making, fan painting, tye dyeing, mud painting, and swimming we had a delicious traditional galbi bbq for dinner and went to check out the campsite. We set up all the tents and got settled in for the night.

Remember when I mentioned we didn't do much camping or trekking? Well, about 2 hours after getting settled into our tents the Korean heavens opened up and just DUMPED rain on Yongsin city! I was awoken from my half-sleep at 2am but one of those emergency blow horns and some Korean men running around yelling "hurricane! hurricane!" I'm not sure it would have been considered a hurrican back home, but it was definitely the most intense rain and wind combination I've been a part of for a while. And I wasn't watching it from inside, we were IN it! Whoever set up our tents failed to put any tarp under the tent to protect it from the ground. An expert-camper such as myself would not have made such a rookie mistake, :) and I was not surprised when I was eventually laying in a pool of dirt and mud. We had to gather all our goods and run through the rain and wind into the nearest building where all 45 of us on the trip slept in a huge open gym area. At least 5 of the 45 people were eventually snoring and I slept no more than 15 minutes that whole night. We woke to a new day and beautiful sunny weather, although the ground outside was basically a mudflat. So now on to the trekking portion of the trip, which also ended up not happeneing. The river had apparently washed out our trails and was too high and dangerous to hike anywhere else.
I did manage to get this gem of a picture before we left the area:



The world is your fashion show! The Koreans get incredibly dressed up for whatever outdoor sport they are doing: the bikers have the full one-piece spandex suits and the helmets with the built in visors, the hikers have the backpacks, floppy hats, collapsible chairs, and hiking poles, and I hear the snow sports are just hilarious! They dress the part, that is for sure.

Overall a fun weekend, even though we didn't get to do much of what the trip was all about. I still had a great time travelling Korea, getting to see a new city, and getting into the fresh mountain air!

The next weekend we headed east again to the border of the other provinces, Chungcheongbuk-do and Gyeongsangbuk-do, for a rafting and bungee jumping extreme adventure weekend! This weekend went according to plan, unlike the previous one. I am still a little in shock that I actually bungee jumped, I get a little nauseous thinking about it. That was by far the single most terrifying thing I have ever done or thought about doing. My goodness, standing on that platform with your toes dangling off the edge looking down at the little ants of people is a whole different feeling and prompted a lot of natural responses. My whole body started to shake, I got nauseous, and I cried! I mean I knew I would be scared, but not THAT scared. I usually like the adrenaline adventure activities, but this is in a league of its own. The guy behind me started the count down "5...4...3...2...1..." and I swear as hard as I willed my body to do it and just jump, I didn't move. I couldn't make myself jump off the platform. I couldn't take my eyes off the ground and all I could think is we as humans are not supposed to do things like this! Who jumpes off an extremely high structure for fun, is that fun? Am I supposed to be having fun right now? Haha, anyway I finally thought alright Tia what else are you going to do, and I JUMPED! It was an unreal feeling, free falling with my life dangling by my feet from a crane. Would I do it again?! Nayyyy! (That means 'yes' in Korean) The freedom of falling through the sky like that is unbelieveable and almost worth the sheer terror! Here are some pics to prove it:


















So I survived the big jump, althought my vocal cords are shot I screamed the whole way down and while I was just dangling there. Next day we went rafting which was a blast, and had lunch and dinner at a nice little cabin area they had arranged for us.





Well since the adventurous end to August, I have been getting back into the swing of things with work and actually had a huge schedule change the other day. I now teach my own class in the mornings instead of doing the singing and dancing 25-minute classes I had been teaching. I have ONE student, her name is Clara, she is 4 years old and just absolutely adorable. I will take pictures soon and post them so you all can see, she's the cutest!

Also survived the typhoon this past week, there were three different ones that made their way through our area. I only really noticed it one night when the winds were whipping and woke me at 4am. Other than that it was just normal rainy-season weather!

I have to run but until next time,

Tia Teacher

A shot of a little section of the beach at Mudfest- as they day went on the people multiplied until you could barely even see the beach!




A few of the Sunday afternoon stragglers utilizing the mud's "healing powers"




Katelan had sparklers! The extent of our July 4th pyrotechnics.




With one of my favorites Lucy! She's too cute :)



A couple Fridays back, we have a "summer camp" for all the 7 years. They had a huge soccer tournament and here is the LCI team! This is all the foreign teachers and kids in LCI- not the ones that I teach in the morning.





We already get stared at all the time, we might as well give them a reason! Oh I forgot to mention! We all went out in animal suits one night....




..... and then proceeded to scare everyone else in the bar by our amazing rendition of "Piano Man"




Lookin good right!

Almost my birthday!

We are now into full swing in the month of JULY, what... July?! When did it become July? Where did May and June go? Time has been flying here, like usual. In a little over week, we will have been here for 6 months. 7 more months to go! I just can't believe how long I've been away from home for! I am still liking it here, much more than I did when we first arrived. With the change of seasons, the heat has brought beautiful flowers and green rolling hills. The landscape is no longer a brown and desolate (and quite dirty) expanse I actually live in a very pretty city! I have also recently discovered Central Park, which I will put pictures up later. Central Park is a HUGE area in the middle of Dongtan just filled with anything you could possibly want to do outside. There is a rock climbing wall, several soccer fields, jungle gyms, tennis courts, badmitten courts, basketball courts, fountains with water shows that change colors and play music, little streams and water areas for the kids to play in, sculptures, etc etc! There is always a huge crowd of people wandering through and just a million little kids running around everywhere having a great time. It really makes Dongtan such a cooler city now that I know Central Park exists. I will be spending a lot of my future summer days there!

As I type, there are various car alarms going off from the relentless thundering!! We are in the middle of monsoon season here, and I have never been in such crazy and volatile weather. The storms here last for hours or the majority of the day. Usually back home, if we have unusually nasty weather, it doesn't last longer than and hour or two. I woke up this morning and it was uncharacteristically dark for 7:45am, and I looked out my balcony window just in time to see the heavens open and dump all the water in the world on Dongtan! We even had to take a cab to school it has been such bad downpour. The thunder and lightning has not stopped since 8am and its now almost lunch time! I can hear all the little kids screaming each time the thunder cracks, they are so scared. :)

We are about 24 hours away from our flight to Bali! Our first vacation starts this evening (well I'm pretty checked out already...) and I have not been this happy for a Friday in a while! I mean I love the weekends but IM GOING TO BALI!!! I am so pumped. I could really use this relaxing week off work, tensions are at another high around here lately. We have started having weekly meetings with Sue, which lasted for ohhh about a week. There is still a huge communication gap that needs to be sinched up or LCI will continue to have extremely unhappy employees who aren't willing to do any extra work for them. They ask A LOT of us here, usually at the last minute, and we get zero positive reinforcement. For example, the classes I teach in the morning are different than the other LCI teachers. The kids I see for the first half of my day have a longer summer vacation than LCI. So in theory, I wouldn't have any morning classes for the first 2 weeks we get back from our vacation. Instead, LCI has decided to hold a "summer free trial session" for the 3 days. I will be teaching it. The curriculum they want me to teach has NOTHING to do with the curriculum I've been teaching for the past 6 months. I now have to go back and learn 7 different subjects and 3 different books that I have never touched before, and teach random students that I don't know. Who, by the way, are less than 6 years old and have no English names or previous English experience. I start the Tuesday we get back from break, I was told about this TODAY! I have to prepare lesson plans, find activities, scan books, plans songs and games, etc to get ready to dazzle these new students so their parents decide to enroll them in LCI. Sorry about the rant, it just another day in the life working for a Korean boss who doesn't care much about employee morale.

Anyway, to come back to my original thought, I'm going to Bali! I mean sorry guys I don't want to rub it in, but my feet will be in the Indian Ocean in t-minus 24 hours! :) I want to have a relaxing week but there are also lots of activities I have planned. We all agree that we want to see a temple and some sort of traditional dance while were there. Katie is also REALLY excited to see monkeys so I found this cool place called Uluwatu Temple. It is situated atop a peak on the SW Bukit peninsula of Bali. Supposedly you go in the early evening and catch the amazing sunset before the traditional Balinese dance starts (dance:check). It is also in the middle of Monkey Forest (monkeys:check) which you're not supposed to bring any of your belongings into because the mischevious monkeys will steal them! The Pura Uluwatu temple is one of the oldest in Bali and is off limits to anyone not practicing the Hindu-Dharma religion. You can however walk the grounds and explore the temple without actually going inside (temple/cultural experience:check!). In addition to the temple, I want to do lots of adventure activies and have lots of fun in the sun! Surf lesson, paragliding, MAYBE bungee jumping (sorry mom!), Sea Walker (check it out online- pretty cool!), and a kayak tour. I found this company that offers a day-long kayak and snorkeling tour with a lunch break on the beach! Ok I will stop going on an on about Bali I know it is probably hard for you guys to read being stuck at home and everything :). Haha! I am just joking, I know I am very lucky to be doing these things and that I am working hard for the money to be able to do so (even though some of my pictures probably make it look like I am working hard and playing even harder!). I feel fortunate to have help from home, but it is so satisfying to take a vacation on your own money! I like searching for flights, reading up on the food and culture, and planning activities. And I really believe I appreciate the experiences that much more. Anyway, I will have lots more pictures to post soon after this next week!

Another big event of July: the Independence of America! As you can imagine, this glorious holiday is not so much celebrated here. No TnT value packs, black cats, roman candles, or growing pagodas (my favorite!). I couldn't so much as find a sparkler! But we still had to celebrate somehow. A group of us went on a boat cruise on Friday evening. It was a small-ish ferry boat (mom & dad- it reminded me of Das Boata!!) that was rented by a couple friends of ours who are starting up an event promotions company here. They are Jam ROK (Republic of Korea- clever huh!) and they have been putting on events for a couple of weeks now for Koreans and foreigners to do together. So there were a few hundred people on the boat and we just cruised the Han River for a few hours. And when I say we cruised, let me clarify- we floated down about 5 blocks to a bridge, turned around, floated back to where we started, turned around and floated back to the bridge, and continued on this cycle for a couple hours. Haha! Besides the lack of distance, there was no shortage of scenery! We had a different view of Seoul on either side of the bridge, one perspective I had yet to see. We were also endlessly entertained by the various harlesses (I swear 'harless' should be in the next edition of Websters Dictionary) on jetskis and our game of counting the dead fish. The Han River is DISGUSTING- I saw over 40 dead fish in the 15 minutes I was standing out by the railing. Overall it was a really fun time and a good opportunity to get our various groups of friends together. I even met some Koreans! On Saturday evening a bunch of us got together in Pyeongtaek (where Katelan, Chase, and Chris live) for a good ol' fashioned all American BBQ.... with pork belly and kimchi. Haha I'm only half joking, Katelan made some delicious cookies and we managed to find some salmon and beef at the grocery store. We even had corndogs! Those are American, right? No burgers though, couldn't find those anywhere. It was a fun evening with everyone complete with a sing-off of the Canadians there vs. us Americans. O Canada vs. The Star Spangled Banner, they let us win because it was our holiday. :)

We just got home last weekend from Mudfest. I don't even know how to begin explaining this one! check it out here: http://www.mudfestival.or.kr/english/festival/festival1.php

I will post a few pictures from friends. I didn't even take my camera out because I didn't want to ruin it!

Well I have to end this post now, I actually have to get to work and go teach! Today we are having a "snack party" in our afternoon elementary class. I hope Chris doesn't eat it all before I show up (mom, dad, tyler- remember Chris? HAHA!). I will post a few pictures and write more after Bali!

Until later,
Tia Teacher


“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller