Beautiful Busan!

Hey! Three day weekend was  coming up and Jenn and I had no idea what we were going to do. So we figured we'd go to Busan, which is the 2nd largest city in Korea, and right next to the coast. This is a little late of an update, but the three day weekend that we are referring to is the June 6th,7th,8th. At least thats what I remember. Korea had a Veterans Day too so we had no school Monday. Regardless, on to our trip. A little background info on Busan, its BIG! Not nearly as big as Seoul, but bigger than Daegu. It is also a very popular place to visit among Koreans, and tourists. Since it's right by the coast, it has a lot of great beaches, and the weather is a lot cooler. Anyways, we are lucky enough to live 45 minutes by KTX from Busan. And we can take this high speed rail for the low cost of 24 dollars round trip. It was great. The KTX is always a great train ride. Quiet, fast, and just...dang, its a high speed train! These things are awesome! But yeah, we took an early KTX to Busan at 8ish in the morning, with the idea of staying in Busan if we found a cheap enough place, or just taking the late train back to Daegu if we didn't want to spend the extra dough. But I'll get to that later.

Outside the Subway station

So we arrived in Busan around 9, and thought about our next option. First thing we had to do was get subway cards. Subway cards are different in each city, but I think they have plans to make them compatible anywhere in Korea eventually. At least I hope so. But yeah, we bought our subway cards and decided to head to Haundae Beach. This weekend, there was a Sand Festival at Hauendae, so we thought we'd check it out. We get there after about an hour on the subway (like I said, Busan is huge!) and instantly Jenn and I could smell the ocean breeze. It was nice to be reminded of how good we had it going to school down in SoCal. We headed toward the beach, and walked past a---gasp---Mexican restaurant! Busan was amazing already. Anyways, we ended up eating there later, but first, we had to check out this sand festival. It was pretty awesome. They had a bunch of sand sculptures, and some huge sand castles. They even had some sand...paintings? I'll put up some pics of them so you can check it out. We kept walking along the beach, and eventually we got to this roped off area with a big stage. Apparently not only was there a Sand Festival, there was also an International Dance Festival! And it was free, so we got some seats, and watched some contemporary dancers (from China I think). 

Fuzzy Navel Mexican Food!

After their dance we went back to that Mexican place, Fuzzy Navel. It was there that I realized that I didn't have my wallet. Yes. My wallet with 60 bucks or so, Alien Registration Card (like Korea's version of a Green card), two credit cards, and my coupon card to Star Kebab (hey, I'm like three stamps away from getting a free kebab, its' important! hehe). So I pretty much did what anyone would do. I curled up on the ground and started crying. Just kidding! That's what I felt like doing, but we traced our steps all the way back to the dance festival stage. It was there that I saw one of my tourism pamphlets, so I knew that my wallet must have fallen out when I was sitting down. So when my wallet wasn't there, I pretty much lost hope. But keep reading, there is a good ending! We talked to some of the staff members, and they said they would call me if anyone found it. We headed back to the restaurant to meet our friends, and I pretty much was I dunno, just thinking of how I couldn't imagine having any fun for the rest of the weekend if our trip started off like this. BUT, then I get a call from this Korean guy that we asked to help us, and he's behind us waving my wallet in his hand!!! I got my wallet back (apparently he just asked around the stage area), and it had all of my money, all of my credit cards, and nothing was stolen. I checked online later, and there were no charges on any of my banking accounts. I went from despair, to extreme happiness. And I pretty much locked my wallet into my shorts for the rest of the trip. We went back to Fuzzy Navel, had some pretty good Mexican food, and talked about how honest Korean people were. It was a good start to our trip :)


After lunch, we went back to the beach and walked around some more. We looked at a sand castle competition, and saw some pretty good sculptures forming up. We also wanted to go and take a look at the Aquarium. Busan has a pretty famous aquarium, and lucky for us, it was right on Haundae Beach. Well, not on the beach, but imagine a boardwalk, and the aquarium on the opposite side of it. It was all underground too. Anyways, we went into the aquarium, and looked at some pretty cool sea creatures. It was pretty fun, highlights though were definitely the otters, the penguins, the sharks, and the see through underwater tunnel. The Aquarium was pretty dark, so unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of good pics. Sorry!

After the aquarium, we went to get dinner. We got some grilled pork, and by the time we were done, it was pretty late outside. So we grabbed some dessert and drinks, and went to relax on the beach. It was nice to just relax on the beach at night. There were no bonfires allowed, but a lot of people had mini fireworks. We sat, ate, and drank, and generally had a good time. After a while, a drunk Korean guy came to join our group. He was basically kind of a creeper, so after awkwardly trying to be polite, we just got up and left. By this time it was about 12 or so, so we headed over to check out a bar that a bunch of foreigners liked to go to. It was nice I guess, but I dunno, didn't come to Korea to go to a bar with a bunch of English speakers. I can do that back home. Haha. We also met up with some of our friends from orientation. It was nice to see them, and we made plans to see them again soon. After the bar and some dancing, we decided to hit up a Norebang. Which is a place that has Karaoke rooms that you can rent out with your friends. And it was fun! We sang some K-pop, sang a lot of American pop songs, and even tried some rap songs. Their song selection was incredible.  By this time, it was 3 or 4 o'clock. But...the amazing thing was that, when we got out of the Norebang, there were still people everywhere. I might even say that it was more crowded than before! It's like Koreans don't sleep! (But I hate to generalize, so I'm just going to say that we were in a pretty popular night area). 


Anyways, we headed back to our hotel, oh forgot to mention. We found a hotel earlier right next to the beach. 200 dollars for one night, but split between 5 people, it was only 40. We knew it was going to be somewhat expensive b/c of the holiday weekend, but 40 bucks a night per person is actually very cheap. Oh, and it was like a two room area. With a huge living room that could probably fit 10 people easily, and a connecting room with 2 queen size beds and a bathroom. It was nice! And it came with a lot of blankets and pillows. but yeah, we headed back to our hotel room, and called it a night.

Early Morning Beach Walk!

The next day, Jenn and I woke up early (around 9 am or so) and went to walk on the beach. It was already packed with families enjoying the 2nd day of the Sand Festival, but it was really nice to grab a coffee and walk on the beach. One of our favorite moments of the trip. Then we met with our slower waking friends for lunch, and decided to head over and check out Hadong Yongungsa temple. It took forever to get there, but the temple was definitely one of a kind. It literally is right next to the ocean, and you can get some pretty cool views there. It was also packed full of people (first time I had to wait in line to get into a temple), but definitely worth the trip. This was kind of a whole day thing, and we decided we weren't going to stay another night, and just headed back to Daegu. Long story short, we got back to Daegu around 8ish. We ate dinner (I think), and then got home. We did a lot in just two days, and we definitely want to go back to Busan. Especially because now we know how easy it is to get there! Sorry if this seems a little rushed, I'm tired! Until next time friends and family! 

Seoul Day 3! (finally...)

Let's talk about Day 3 of Seoul! Ya, I know...took me long enough to write about it. We've been really busy! After this, we have a blog post about our weekend in Busan, a city on the east coast of Korea! Anyway, back to Seoul!


Lotte World
After our breakfast of peanut butter and jelly toast with a cup of coffee, we headed to Lotte World! An amusement park outside the center of Seoul. It took us awhile to get there and then when we did, we saw an ENORMOUS line of people waiting to enter the park. After a quick chat with a woman in the information booth, we learned that it was too crowded and too long of a line to enter the part of Lotte World that required admission. Instead, we went exploring! We found an ice rink. Debated waiting in the line and then left. We found an arcade! So we played the basketball shooting game and the alligator hit-their-heads game. It was awesome. Next, we found a bowling alley and a shooting range! By this time, our friends were almost there and it was lunch time. So...we headed to the food court area in the Lotte department store. Yes, there is an enormous department store connected to a large amusement park. After lunch, we tried to go bowling but it was too crowded. We decided to leave Lotte World and head back to Dongdaemun to hang out before our dinner plans with our friend, Christa. 

Playing the alligator game!

One of the parts that required admission. We took it from the ice rink and restaurant area. 

A random fountain in a lobby area. Reminded us of Caesar's Palace in Vegas.

At one of the entrances. 

Dongdaemun
It started raining! So of course, our next idea was to go see a movie! We reserved our seats for Source code (movie theatres do assigned seating--it's awesome) and then spent a little over an hour shopping. In this time, Fluke bought 2 shirts, a pair of pants and a wallet. I bought a dress, a shirt and a wallet. There was so much to choose from and so much to look at! We still have to get his pants hemmed and I have not worn the dress yet. But...the weather is just now starting to get warm, so I'll be wearing it soon! After our mini shopping spree, we went to the movie! Source Code was an amazing movie. I highly recommend it to everyone. 


Dinner with Christa!
Christa took Fluke and me to a Mexican restaurant (of course haha) called Dos Tacos. We shared a plate of nachos and each got a burrito. It was definitely good Mexican food! The owners took a polaroid of us to put on their wall and Christa really wanted our copy, so she kept it. After dinner, we headed to the dog cafe! Please refer to our earlier post for more details on that! After the dog cafe, it was still early, so we headed to a norebang! Norebang is like karaoke. They had an incredible selection of English pop songs and we had trouble choosing which ones we really wanted to do. After singing for an hour and laughing a lot, we decided to call it a night!

Christa and me with a dog in the Dog Cafe!

We had an amazing weekend in Seoul and will definitely go back sometime. Phew, this concludes our blog posts on Seoul! Hope you enjoyed reading!

love and miss you,

Jenn

Herb Hillz in Daegu!

Phew, long time no update! Jenn and I had our open classes the last two weeks. Which is a class where the VP, Principal, other teachers, and co-workers come and observe us and evaluate us. So we were really busy preparing for it, and getting it over with! It went well though, and we both got pretty solid reviews. It's more of a show anyways, but I don't really feel like talking about it to be honest. Anyways, lets talk about the weekend after. Let's talk about Herb Hillz in Daegu. An amazingly awesome...eco-park? Yup!

Entrance to Herb Hillz

Herb Hillz is like a big...park? It's hard to describe, so I guess eco-park would be the right word. It cost us about 19,000 won (19 bucks-ish) to get in. Walking into Herb Hillz was awesome. Everything around us was so...green. And we went there as soon as it opened, so it was very quiet and peaceful. There was nature all around us. We walked past a hobbit house (inspired by Lord of the Rings) and eventually wandered up into the main area. The main area had so many cutesy naturey things. I'm not much of a describer, I know, but I will post pics. They also had a ton of herbs planted. We got to see a lot of herbs that go right into making our teas! (Jasmine, Chamomile, Peppermint). So we walked around the area, enjoyed the sights, there was a waterfall, some flowers, etc. But we eventually got to the main reason we wanted to come here...ZIPLINING! That was why it cost us an extra 10 dollars to get in. We showed them our tickets, suited up, and got a crash course entirely in Korean, with a little bit of broken English thrown in. But we were ready! And it was awesome. 

We picked the King Kong course, I forgot what the difficulty was, but it was so much fun. First we started out by climbing this big, webbed rope ladder and made our way to the first zipline. The course consisted of 3-4 ziplines and a bunch of ways to get to each one. One minute we were swinging ourselves from wooden board to wooden board, the next minute we were riding a bike across a wooden bridge. Sometimes we had to climb ladders (don't look down!) and other times we inched our way slowly across razor thin steel wires. How to describe ziplining? Fast, exhilarating, and incredibly fun. The whole experience was physical, tiring, and took us a solid two hours.

After we were done, we were super hungry. We walked around the park until we found a fried chicken place. Fried chicken places are very popular in Korea. They can usually be found anywhere, and are very tasty, if a little bit expensive. Jenn and I got a big plate of chicken tenders, and some sweet and sour sauce. It was good! After our lunch, we walked around Herb Hillz even more. We took a look at another waterfall, watched part of a magic show, took pictures of some statues, and wandered further and further into the park. We walked upwards, and through a couples "love path". It was obviously for couples, because we were the only group of people. I thought it was kinda funny, b/c they had signs along the path. The signs basically got more and more romantic as you went down the path, and at the end, there was a sign indicating that this was the part where you proposed! Haha. 

Couples Path

Eventually, we walked down past a rabbit patch (with real rabbits!), and got some ice cream. Then, we heard from our friend who was there earlier (or maybe even at the same time) about these little water bubble things. Needless to say, Jenn and I had to do it. I was a little reluctant at first b/c of how it seemed like it was only for kids. But then I stopped caring. I won't say much, I'd rather just show you, but I will say that yes, it was incredibly difficult to stand up, and that the inside of the bubble was a cold and welcome respite from the hot weather outside. After the water bubble thing, we walked around a little more. We eventually just sat and talked for a while, and then got on the bus for home. We did make a stop at Downtown for some burgers and mac and cheese before we went home though! Anyways, that was our day at Herb Hillz. It was really fun, and we will definitely be making a return visit. Bye!

Directions to Herb Hillz: (Updated 9/12/2012)

DAEGU BANK stop on the green line (NOT Daegu Station). Take Exit 2. A Paris Baguette is on the corner and the bus stop is right there. Take Express bus 2 (It's red) to Herb Hillz. It will take about 15-20 minutes without traffic. The stop is called 허브힐지 which is Herb Hillz in Hangul. However, the English translation of the name is NOT Herb Hillz. It is something completely different. So you have to read the Hangul to know it is the Herb Hillz stop. (It's the stop right before Spa Valley.) The bus drops you off in what seems to be nowhere. You can see Herb Hillz up the hill on your right. Just walk up that small street and you will see the parking lot in front of the ticket office. The sign that used to say, "this way to Herb Hillz" isn't there because they recently (??) changed the bus stop location.

Day 2 of Seoul!!

Hi everyone! Here's what we did Sunday, Day 2 of our trip in Seoul. Of course, the day began with peanut butter and jelly toast with coffee! and a subway ride...

63 City

We started at a place called 63 City. It is one of the tallest buildings in Seoul with lots to do inside and an observation level at the top. We had a nice walk from the subway and when we finally walked inside, the entryway had the feeling of a luxurious hotel. Since they did not have a map in English, we asked someone at the help desk where the food court was. He personally escorted us to part of the building, where another man escorted us to another part, and finally we entered an escalator. They took us to the extremely expensive French restaurant! We politely looked at the menu for maybe 30 seconds and turned around haha. (On a side note, everyone is always willing to help/direct/guide us to wherever we need to go. What happened at 63 City with the escorts is not unusual.) We ended up finding the food court on our own as well as the entrance to get to the observation level. After buying tickets, we took an amazingly fast glass elevator ride to the top. The views were incredible! The skyline of Seoul is unbelievable. Even though it was not a completely clear day, we got some good pictures and flip video. Oh, and the walls were covered with art. Not my taste exactly, but they were interesting. We saw a worker with a polariod camera so we figured she was there to take pictures with the Seoul skyline in the background. We awkwardly found out that was not the case. We now have a picture of us (actually pretty good), with a big picture of a baby crying in the background! It's pretty funny. We spent a good amount of time on this level before we returned to the food court and left 63 City for the next part of our adventure!

We found this when we were trying to find the food court.

View from the observation level in 63 City!

One of our favorite art pieces!

Original that we used as inspiration in our pose :)

 Han River

We walked by the Han River on our way back to the subway. We discovered a large park area with a small festival! We relaxed while looking out on the water, people watched (of course), and decided what to do next.

The Han River

 Myeongdong and Dongdaemun

 Back to Myeongdong we went! We walked around the large shopping area, bought Fluke a belt in Daiso, and decided we wanted to buy new wallets. We didn't buy any...yet! Then we made our way to Dongdaemun, the other main shopping area. We found Fluke an awesome pair of brown shoes to wear to work when the weather gets hot. (I think they are called boat shoes??) and don't worry--I did my shopping on Monday!

Namsan Seoul Tower

 At this point, we decided to take the bus to Namsan Seoul Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world! We saw views of Seoul during the day at 63 City, and now we wanted night views. Plus, Namsan Seoul Tower is super famous and one of those tourist-y things we had to do. We bought our tickets and ate dinner. We had a couple of options, but of course, we went to the burger place! We ordered burgers and chili cheese fries...they were soooo good!!! We wandered around the base of the tower and noticed all the Love Locks. We went to the gift shop to buy a lock so we could have one too! We carefully chose our lock location--it has a beautiful view of the city while still facing the tower. Next, we got churros! They were amazing and the perfect dessert since it was too cold for Cold Stone ice cream (the other option). When the sun went down, we went up to the top level of the tower. The views were amazing, but our cameras did not take amazing photos. Good thing they had professional photographers to take our picture! (Like they did at the Stratosphere in Vegas where you take the photo, look at it later, choose the background and buy it). We bought the pictures, spent a little more time at the top, then waited in a long line to go back down. When we got to the bus stop, we noticed a couple that looked like Adam and Ashley (Ashley was my roommate at orientation and Adam graduated from UCI). When we called out their names, the couple turned around!! We did not plan to meet up with them, but it was nice chatting for a bit. The bus came and we said goodbye, but we hope to see them when we go to Busan in a couple weeks.

View from the bottom.

Our lock!

Dinner!

Us with our lock!

View from Namsan Tower!

Back to Hongdae

By now we were exhausted, so we went back to Hongdae. Before heading to the room, we stopped at taco bell so Fluke could have his late-second dinner! When we went to sleep, we knew our plans for Monday, Day 3! Hope you enjoy our day-by-day entries and photos!

First Day in Seoul!!!

Hey all!

Jenn and I had a four day weekend last week, so we decided to go up and visit Seoul! We did so many things there, that we are going to have to split up the posts, just like Jinhae! So without further ado, here is what we did during our first day in Seoul.

A little background first, last Tuesday (May 10th) was Buddha's Birthday. Our schools also gave us the Monday off. So Jenn and I booked our train tickets, and left Friday night. We got to Seoul from Daegu in about an hour and forty minutes. After checking into our room, we decided to walk around the area. We were in a really good location. We were near a University I think, so there were a bunch of restaurants, clubs, and college students walking around and having a good time. After about 5 minutes or so of just soaking in the city, we found a...Taco Bell. So of course we went in and got some food! First Taco Bell in Korea, and I gotta say, it was good! It was just nice being able to get a burrito! After that, we walked around for a little longer, then decided to call it a night. Anyways, Saturday, the real trip began!

We woke up in the morning around 930, and got our free breakfast. Toast with peanut butter and jelly! And real Folgers coffee! Koreans really like instant coffee, like that kind where you pour a mix into a cup and fill it with hot water. I am slowly getting used to it, and by that I mean, I don't hate it nearly as much as I used to. So...getting real coffee was great! And why haven't we bought a coffee maker? We're thinking about it, but we're also thinking about when we leave, and how much of a hassle it would be to bring back home. Coffee makers aren't cheap here. Anyways, then our day began. We got out our subway guide, and basically decided to do anything and everything we could in one day. First on our list was Gyeongbokgung Royal Palace. We took the subway there and it was amazing. For 3 bucks, we were able to walk all around the area, and it was huge! What I really liked about it was how there was this amazing palace, filled with a lot of Korea's history, culture and tradition, right in the middle of the city. We wandered the grounds for an hour or so, and even got free admission into the Seoul Folk Museum (which was right next to the palace). Then we left the palace and boom, right in front of us was this long plaza. And there was a statue of a man sitting in a chair. I think he was one of Korea's first kings. Anyways, we were really excited, because we saw this statue all the time in commercials of Korea, and Seoul tourism videos. And we had found it! On accident! So we walked over there and took some pictures. All of this, and it wasn't even 12 yet!

Gyeungbokgung Palace!

The King guy!

The guy with the sword in front of the king. If you look closely, you can see the palace behind the king!

The next place we went to (side note: thanks to Seouls amazing subway system, the whole city was literally at our fingertips) was famous Itaewon! It is a pretty famous area known for its foreigner friendly stores, souvenir shops, and most importantly of all, restaurants. Yes, Jenn and I were on a quest. We were going to find a Mexican restaurant, and Itaewon seemed like our best bet. So after some random exploring, we found a taco shop! We were so happy, and we ordered a ton of food, and it was AMAZING. Best Mexican yet, and closest thing we've had to real Mexican food. It had pico de gallo, avocado, and cilantro on all of their dishes. After Itaewon, we decided to visit some famous shopping areas of Seoul. So back to the subway we went!

Our first shopping area was Myeong-Dong. Which is basically like a huge outdoor mall? I don't know how to describe it, because there isn't anything in the US like it! Let's just say that there were hundreds of stores to choose from, along with your outdoor stalls selling wallets, cell phone cases, shoes, and more. It was a really cool place, and of course, jam-packed with people. We didn't buy anything...yet. We then decided to go and look at another shopping area. Dongdaemun. At this point, we had probably ridden the subway at least 8 or 9 times. And spent less than 10 bucks doing so. Traveling around Seoul is cheap! Dongdaemun was just as big, but more spread out. It consisted of maybe 5-6 huge buildings, with up to 15 floors of shopping, movie theatres, restaurants, and more. We thought it was cool, but it also seemed a bit more pricey than Myeong-Dong. We still didn't buy anything though. Not yet at least...Anyways, it was a long day, but we weren't finished yet. I mean, it was only about 4 pm! We seriously felt like we had traveled all over the city at this point, and we were ready to sit down and relax. The Lotus Lantern parade was going to start at 7 pm, and we wanted to get good seats for that. So we took the subway to a stop nearby, and found some good seats around 6 pm. The street we were going to watch the parade on was like a main street of Seoul. The staff had set up chairs on both sides of the street for everyone and we found some good seats near them. The parade began, and it was just...wow. It was so awesome! There were lanterns of dragons, elephants, helicopters, the list goes on and on. There were drummers with lanterns, children with lanterns, men and women with lanterns, monks with lanterns, and more. The parade lasted for 2 hours. We lost track of all the lanterns that went by us, and even ran out of memory on our camera because we were taking so many pictures! After the parade finally ended, we headed back to our room.

Myeong-Dong Shopping Area!

One of the huge buildings in Dongdaemun

On the way back, we stopped at a Pho place to eat dinner. It was our first Pho in Korea! It was delicious, but I do have to say that I was disappointed because they had no Sriracha sauce! It was still a spicy sauce, but it felt like they mixed it with ketchup or something. Anyways, didn't like the sauce, but the soup and the noodles were spot on! After that, we went back to our room, and got ready to go out with some of our friends! We met up with them and went clubbing! The club we went to was packed, but the music was good, and we had a really good time. Anyways, after the club we went back to our room. We were completely exhausted. We seriously left our room at 10 am, came back around 10 pm to get changed, and then didn't get back until 2 or 3 in the morning. Phew! Needless to say, we were asleep as soon as we hit the pillow. I can't believe we did all that in one day! 

Jenn at the end of the parade, we rushed the street!

All that light behind us are the last of the lanterns!

4 day Weekend to Seoul Update!

Well...you know how they say everything is bigger in Texas??? Everything is BIGGER in Seoul. Crazy. Jenn and I are going to write all about our trip, but we're going to unpack now, and get ready for our 3 day week! Until then, check out this vid of quite possibly one of the best ideas ever thought of...if you're a dog lover. :)

This is the most awesome idea ever. Korea has a ton of coffee shops, and a huge "cafe" culture. There are literally coffee shops everywhere. Our friend Christa took us to a Dog cafe. And that is literally what it is. You have to order a drink, and then you can just hang out in the cafe and pet the dogs, etc. This video shows some of the many dogs there. It was really great if you love dogs. We had some guests on our table, and there was a dog sleeping in between Jenn and Christa the whole time. One of the highlights of our trips for SURE!

I want that husky!!!

Service!!

The one word that every foreigner in Korea should love to hear. To be more specific, when a Korean says to you, "service," what he or she really means is that they are about to give you something. For free. And surprisingly (or maybe not), we get a lot of "service!"

Let's make a list of the free things that me or Jenn have received so far...
1. After buying my bike, the guy kept saying service...and I ended up with a new bike, and  a brand new bike lock.
2. After buying tangerines from the very friendly fruit stand man (who we go to all the time), he gave us a big smile, said service, and added some extra tangerines to our bag.
3. Bought me and Jenn our usual order of donuts, and the nice lady insisted on giving me one more. With a friendly service thrown in there.
4. Every time we eat out: Service drinks (non-alcoholic...), service bread, service salad, service dessert, service coffee, FREE FREE FREE :)
5. Every time we go to Hi-Mart (an electronics store), we get free popcorn. I'm not sure if its service, but its free. So I'm going to count it.
6. Daegu Immigration Office, free coffee. Cell phone store. Free coffee. Any place where you're trying to buy something...usually has free coffee.


Ummm, well, I'd add more if I could think of some. But I can't. All I know is that when I hear the word "service," I know that I'm about to get something free. And did I mention no tipping? I LOVE SERVICE!!! (and now some completely unrelated pictures of me and Jenn with statues!!)