Jeju Island

At the end of July, I had three days off from school for summer vacation. Fortunately, those days were a Friday, a Monday, and a Tuesday, so I was able to do some traveling. Dan and I decided to make a trip to Jeju Island, off the southern coast of South Korea, since it was close, inexpensive, and because it's still within Korea, no new visas were required. We left late Friday morning to fly down to Jeju. The flight was only about 45 minutes, which was another plus. When we arrived in Jeju, our first order of business was to get some food and decide where to sleep that night, since my contribution to planning for this trip was to book a hostel for two of the five nights we were staying in Jeju, and the first night was not one of them. Fortunately, Dan had done some research and had found several beaches that permitted camping for free or for a very small campsite fee. "Awesome!" we thought. "We have a tent, we like to camp, and we like inexpensive accommodations". Unfortunately, while we had been basking in the air conditioned coolness of my apartment for the past two weeks, we had neglected to notice how incredibly hot it was outside. Still blissfully unaware of what the camping conditions would be like, we hopped on a bus headed out of Jeju City and found one of the beaches with a free campground.

(This is where we camped)

We spent Friday night camping on the beach, but at any given point during the night, one of us was lying awake sweating, cursing the lack of ventilation in the tent and the street lights keeping the beach (and our tent) well lit, and contemplating the possibility of packing everything up and finding a motel with air conditioning. I finally got up around 6 on Saturday morning to try and figure out when the shower houses opened. I wandered around in the sun for a good half an hour without learning anything conclusive, and by the time I got back to the campsite, Dan was awake too. I'm guessing the guy using the field right next to our campsite as a mini runway for his paraglider had something to with that. Between the sun, the heat, and the paraglider that was (apparently) powered by a lawn mower engine, we decided that no more sleep was happening, so we went to the nearest convenience store and drank coffee for the next four hours until the shower house opened.

(This is a campsite. Or a place to set up your paraglider.)

Saturday afternoon, we hopped on a bus and went to a huge lava tube system that was about half an hour away from the Hamdeok Beach, where we had camped the night before. We spent an hour or so wandering around in the blissfully cool underground lava tubes before heading back out to the heat and humidity. After making our way back to our campsite, we packed up and hopped on a bus headed back in to Jeju City to find more comfortable sleeping arrangements and stumbled upon Yeha Guesthouse, a relatively new hostel near the Jeju City Bus Terminal. The staff at the front desk was incredibly helpful, not only with setting us up with a room at the last minute with no reservation, but also with helping to confirm our reservation at a different hostel for the next night, as well as putting us in a taxi to the airport the next morning to catch the shuttle to the southern part of the island to arrive at said hostel.

On Sunday morning, we headed for the southern part of the island. We caught a shuttle bus almost all the way to our next destination, the Jeju Hiking Inn. After checking in, we went to see a couple of waterfalls that the owner of the Inn suggested, and then we set off to the ritzier section of the island to see what we could see. We ended up seeing a teddy bear museum (cute) and a chocolate museum (delicious). We headed back early that night, because we had big plans the next day.

(Jeongbang Waterfall)

We woke up early on Monday morning to go climb the tallest mountain in South Korea. At 6,398 feet, Halla Mountain is not that tall, but it was definitely on our list of things to do while in Jeju. Fortunately, this was not our first hiking experience in Korea, so the massive amount of people on the trail that day was not a surprise. It was a beautiful day, and one of the clearest days of our trip, so the trail were packed with people wanting to get a nice view from the top. Everything was going along well until I realized halfway up the mountain that I had forgotten to pack sunscreen. Nothing could be done at that point, so I stuck it out and hoped that the sunburn wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately, for the last nine hundred meters or so before we reached the top, there was no shade. Three months later, I still have tan lines from climbing Halla-san.

(The top of Halla Mountain)

(Also the top of Halla Mountain. People weren't allowed to wander in to this area.)

We hadn't planned much for Tuesday, mostly because we weren't sure how we'd be feeling after our mountain climbing adventure. That was probably a good thing, because I, for one, was not feeling amazing. We slept in as late as possible before we had to get up and check out of the hostel, and then returned to one of the waterfalls we visited on Sunday and walked around a small island near one of the ports on Jeju. That afternoon we hopped back on the bus to go back to Jeju city. We had decided to stay at Yeha Guesthouse again on Tuesday night in order to make our 8:30 am flight back to Seoul. On the bus ride on the way back, we had a conversation that went something like this:

"Hey, did you get those chocolates that we bought at the chocolate museum out of the refrigerator?"
"No...did you?"
"No..."

So, we made it to Yeha Guesthouse, checked in, and turned around to go back to Jeju Hiking Inn for the gifts we had bought for our co-workers and bosses. Yet another reason it was a good thing we hadn't planned anything for Tuesday. We made it back to relax at Yeha Guesthouse for a little bit, and the next morning we headed back to the airport to catch our flight home, since I had to be back at work that afternoon.

All in all, it was a really great trip, even if we did come home from vacation more exhausted than when we left.

Long time, no update

I didn't realize how long it had been since my last update until someone brought it to my attention on facebook, so I will try to do a quick summary of all of the happenings in Korea since my last post. When I finish putting pictures on my computer, I'll post a few pictures from each trip here and put the rest on facebook.

The months of June and July were both pretty uneventful...teaching during the week, and not doing much on the weekends. I was pretty excited to break out of my routine come the end of July when I had three whole days of summer vacation to use. Fortunately, those three days were a Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, so I had a total of five days to go do something exciting. After looking a couple of options outside of Korea, we settled on taking a trip to Jeju Island, which is a subtropical island off the southern coast of Korea. It's also part of Korea, so we were able to take a nice trip without having to deal with visa requirements for another country.

After we returned from Jeju, we went on an organized trip to the DMZ. We didn't actually go in to the DMZ, but we visited several sites near the DMZ, including an observatory where we could see North Korea, a tunnel that North Korea dug in an attempt to invade South Korea, and a subway station that South Korea hopes will eventually connect to several major train lines in Asia via North Korea.

Once summer vacation was over, I began preparing to take the GRE. My intent was to begin studying for it while I was here, and take it within a week or two of returning to the States. After emailing a couple of graduate programs, I decided to try and take the GRE here, which proved to be an interesting experience. I began researching the possibility of taking the GRE at the beginning of September and discovered that Korea has a unique procedure for administering the test. The writing section is taken separately from the math and verbal sections, and must be taken before the math and verbal sections. The math and verbal sections are offered twice a year, so everyone who takes the writing section during the first six months of the year goes to one math and verbal test taking session, and everyone who takes it during the second six months goes to the next math and verbal test taking session. By the time I figured all of this out, I had one week to register for and take the writing section. If I hadn't taken the writing section when I did, I wouldn't have been able to take the GRE in Korea, because I would have missed the deadline for the math and verbal section, and it wouldn't have been offered again until after I had returned to the States. Anyway, I took the writing section of the GRE on a Friday morning before school, and fortunately I had the next week of school off thanks to a generous director and a three day Korean holiday called Chuseok, which is a harvest celebration.

Because Chuseok is such an important holiday, people travel to their hometowns to pay respects to their ancestors and the roads can get pretty crowded. Our original plan for the holiday was to take a hiking trip in Seoraksan National Park, which is about a three hour bus ride away from Seoul. We had planned on leaving before Chuseok traffic picked up and returning on Chuseok day, when traffic would (hopefully) be at it lightest. In the end, we adjusted our travel days slightly, but we did make it to Seoraksan National park and had a nice three day trip, two days of which we spent hiking. When we returned to Seoul, it appeared that fall had finally arrived after a long, hot, humid summer. The arrival of fall was fantastic, even if it did bring another month long sinus infection along with it. At the rate I'm going, I have a sinking feeling that I'll be spending the next four months in and out of the doctor's office.

I had five weeks from the end of Chuseok vacation until the GRE, so the remainder of September and most of October were spent either teaching or studying. I took the math and verbal sections of the GRE on October 23rd and went in to a two week sleep coma immediately afterward, where I went from doing nothing but studying and teaching to doing nothing but sleeping and teaching. That pretty much brings be to today...or yesterday, rather, when I attempted to drag myself out of my sleep coma and start some graduate school applications, since that was the whole point of taking the GRE in the first place.

It's hard to believe that I've been here for over 8 months, and that I only have a few months left before I'll be heading home. I didn't come to Korea with any real travel goals in mind, but I have seen a few of the places the Koreans consider to be important places to visit, as well as gotten to know Seoul pretty well from frequent weekend trips. I have another seven days of vacation to take advantage of before my contract is up, so I'm hoping to plan a trip outside of Korea while I have the opportunity to do so. I'm also looking to make more of my weekends now that I only have three and a half months worth of them left, and I still have a list of places in and around Seoul that I would like to see. With that in mind, I'm going to work harder to update this blog once a week. It should be easier to do when I have more travel adventures to share...I've been caught up in my GRE adventures and my doctor adventures and my 5K training adventures (which I'm back to square one on, thanks to cutting back on running while studying for the GRE and doctors orders to take it easy on the exercise until I've had a chance to fully recover), but I didn't think any of those really warranted their own blog post.

Stay tuned for posts about Jeju Island and Seoraksan National Park, coming next week! I even put it on my to do list, so you know it will definitely happen...eventually.