Blogs from Gangwon-do, South Korea, Asia - page 5

After talking about it for about a year, we finally planned a rafting trip to Northern Korea, and it came to pass last weekend. A group of 8 of us met in Inje, a small town that seems to make most of its money from outdoor sports activities—there was rafting, bungee jumping, and hiking (Seoraksan National Park) nearby. It was a long journey from Daegu. We left from Bukbu Bus Terminal at 8:40, transferred buses at Wonju, and finally arrived in Inje around 1pm. The scenery was beautiful, but the weather wasn't encouraging. After about 2 weeks of muggy 85 degree Daegu weather, we were unpleasantly surprised to end up in rainy, 70-degree Inje. Our Seoul friends got in about the same time, and then a Korean-speaking friend called the rafting company to pick us up ... read more

I had two holidays in the last few weeks, and I think I used them well. The first holiday was Buddha’s Birthday, and we had a three-day weekend. Some friends and I decided to go to Samcheok (pronounced Sam-chuck), a large town/small city on the coast, to the northeast of Daegu. Our bus ride was 4½ hours (from Dongbu bus terminal), so it took a while. I had never been to that area of the country, but the scenery is really nice—there are lots of pine-forested mountains next to rocky coastlines. One of the friends I went with is Korean, and he told us that people from that area are known in Korea as ‘potato-eaters’, a pretty negative description. Because of the landscape, people there couldn’t grow a lot of rice and had to eat potatoes. ... read more

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a good Christmas and that Santa brought you everything you asked for. Thought I'd give a little update to fill you all in on what's been going on here over Christmas. The last week of school before Christmas was pretty fun, nice and easygoing. The week ended on Friday with a school trip to a chocolate making factory with the little kids. You can imagine the carnage that 50 little kids armed with tubes of liquid chocolate would cause. It was all over their faces, clothes, the floor, but luckily some of it made it to actual solid chocolate form which they could take home. Back at school we had a big buffet lunch with them all, after which Santa Claus (or Santa haraboji in Korean) paid a visit. ... read more

Do something everyday that scares you. That’s the motto of my 18 year old daughter, Jessica. Luckily for me, as an American living in Asia, accomplishing that is no problem! There’s the little things, like riding a subway throughout a new city without being able to speak or read the language. Or perhaps it’s simply getting lost in the markets – again with no language skills. Then there’s the biggies. The ones you look back on and say, hmmm, now that was a little crazy, but now that I’ve done it, I feel like I can handle traveling the world. For me, that’s just a handful of things. Included in that list would be using a squatty potty – over troughs, mountains of s*#t, or open air behind a rock. Also included would be the art ... read more

For many of us foreigners living in South Korea, there’s something about Sunday night. It’s that one night you occasionally find yourself missing the comforts of home. More so, the Sunday night dinner tradition that many expats are used to back home. For me, Sunday night is “roast night” with my family, so moving to a place where the idea of a roast was virtually nonexistent took a bit of getting used to. So you can imagine my surprise and delight last Sunday, when things took a turn for the better. My friends and I had been hanging out at Chuncheon’s famous Gongjicheon Park, sunbathing, playing in the fountain, and even running through it because the weather was so warm. We suddenly received a call from our Korean friend who invited us to Hongcheon River for ... read more