Blogs from Taejon, South Korea, Asia - page 9

We have been pretty busy at school with report cards and preparing for parent teacher interviews, so we decided to take a break and check out Ppuri park on the other side of Daejon. It is fairly new park designed to honour the family names present in Korea, and so honour their roots. There are a series of monuments honouring family names (there are like 4 different Kim families originating from different places). So you walk around and look at the statues. It is on a hillside, and it is getting colder so the leaves are changing colour; it reminded us of fall back home. It was really nice to walk around. There were different paths through the woods and we walked, and they lead up to a a pagoda and a lookout, which were really ... read more

The outskirts of Daejon are surrounded by mountains, giving us a great view from our balcony. We set out to climb one called Kegyoksan, which translated means “chicken foot”. We set out in taxis, which took us halfway up the mountain to where the trail started. Taxis are the mode of transportation of choice here - they are incredibly cheap and there are always a ton of them driving around. A little ways up there was a clearing with ancient exercise equipment and a stone path. The stones are all smooth but cemented in so they stand straight up. The idea is that walking on these stones massages the reflexology centers in your feet, thus relaxing and rejuvenating the rest of your body. For the first 30 seconds it actually felt kinda nice, but after that ... read more

Just a quick entry tonight, seeing as it's already 11:30pm and I NEED more sleep! We received our bank account info today. A bankbook, a bank card and the money should be in there tomorrow. I think a group of us are planning to go to the bank on our lunch hour tomorrow so that we can check to see that the money got there safely and retrieve it. I could use the bank account while I'm here and take it out only when I need it, but who knows what the bank fees are like or what restrictions there are. Also, if I encounter any problems, I'd rather find out now, with Koreans I can ask for help from, rather than try to deal with bureaucrasy all on my own..... Report cards are finally done. ... read more

Our morning started off fine. We worked on some vocab words using pictures and then copying down the word into the workbooks beside the pictures they'd glued in. We went over some of the workbook sections, practised our cheer, sang "Hey Juliet" (which they learned at Pop Song on Saturday) and went over our group presentation. Then it was off to the pool after a quick lunch! The rule there is, if you do not wear a swimming cap, you are not allowed to swim. I thought it was pretty stupid considering my hair is all of an inch long right now. I sat on the edge of the pool, dangled my legs in, and dunked my body a couple of times because it was SO HOT today! We actually ended up going to an amusement ... read more

After a very long flight we arrived an Incheon Airport in Seoul. We got through immigration without a hitch, which was great because I had envisioned some miscommunication where we would be held and not be able to understand why (ok I'm crazy). We were greeted when we exited the luggage area by 4 enthusiastic hands waving (Make fun of our shirts all you want Ben, they served their purpose!). We were greeted by Helen Jang and Jackie Lee who work in the Admin office. They were so sweet and friendly. We were the first to arrive (noon their time) so we had to wait around for the others to arrive before we could load the bus. It was a crazy time of introductions and the realities of jet lag started kicking in, I was so ... read more