Blogs from Ulsan, South Korea, Asia

Before we start the day's entry, we should give you a mini lesson on Korean toilets - at least the Ladies' Room. #1 - Almost all restrooms have the standard toilet, but some have both standard and squatting versions. Check before you enter stall if no picture is indicated on the stall door. #2 - Some standard toilets come with fancy buttons. Don't press unless you can figure out what they are. One's a bidet, one's to wipe your butt in lieu of toilet paper and one air dries. For the curious or those who don't mind adventure in the nether regions, go ahead and press away! #3 - Some restrooms have a common area for toilet paper. i.e. Stalls don't come equipped with paper. Check before you enter stall. #4 - Almost all restrooms have ... read more

This weekend was one for the memory books! But first, Saturday. Saturday we went to Haeundae beach for the Sand Festival where they had all kinds of activities involving sand, the highlight of which was sand sculptures. It's amazing what people can carve in the sand! They had 3 professionals from Korea and USA and they carved a real sand castle, the Eiffel Tower, Christ the Redeemer, Statue of Liberty and many other things that were simply amazing! We saw one artist hard at work on his piece when we arrived and when we left later on he was still working and STILL not finished! Now that's dedication, considering we were told that the sculptures get taken down every day and re-done the next day! Let me just tell you about the beach phenomenon in Korea ... read more

Wow! So this is the most pictures I've ever taken for Christmas, but, in my defense, there were a lot of festivities :) Needless to say, the whole apple pie thing didn't quite work out...but Garret made some rockin' egg nog from scratch and along with some delicious chocolate covered strawberries! Very delic! Our Christmas dinner at Dee and Nicci's was great! So much fun...what started out as a sad, un-Christmas-like Christmas turned into a blast with great people and new friends :) What did we eat for dinner in Korea you might ask??? Well, let me just tell you...Dee and Nicci cooked an AMAZING turkey, Andrea and Nicole made mashed potatoes and pumpkin galore...sauteed veggies, homemade stuffing, christmas pudding (which Mitch lit on fire by the way...very cool...it was my first experience with Christmas pudding, ... read more

So, in typical Katie and Garret fashion, we started a blog...but both of us completely forgot the website, the name of our blog and any passwords we used to access the pages...so somewhere floating around on the internet is a Katie and Garret blog with 2 entries Garret wrote soon after we arrived. If you come across it, enjoy! But for the rest of us, here is a new blog I've decided to start :) Today is December 24th. However, it is quite surreal to imagine that it is actually Christmas Eve. Today at school, we had a Christmas Concert for all of the Kindergarteners and Elementary students. We assumed it would be a fun day...and it absolutely was!!!!! The kids were SO adorable!!!! But we are exhausted, and have found ourselves just lounging on our ... read more

This is my first travel blog on this website. The idea to start keeping a travel blog came about when I realized that I was sending update emails to my friends and family that basically all said the same things. It was getting really annoying typing the same things over and over again. By keeping this up to date, hopefully this will make it easier for people to get updates of how I am doing. So I suppose I will just start typing about my current trip and see where this takes me...here goes: Right now I am on a business trip to South Korea. This is my second visit to Korea in the past 3 months. Without going into too much detail about the nature of this business trip, lets just say that I am ... read more