Now that summer is over for the kids, I'm having a little more time because I'm not teaching so many extra classes. So here's an update about my summer vacation.
Ryan came to visit for the summer for two weeks. He came right after a quarantine scare. One of my friends went home for a week, she had swine flu when she came back and got a couple of other foreigners sick and a few of her students. I somehow got caught up in all of it and wasn't able to work for a week and a half... even though I had no symptoms. It was a real pain. I was told that I wasn't going to be able to see Ryan for a whole week when he was here. I fought it and eventually my boss gave in. So everything was alright.
Ryan's visit was really nice. It was like having a piece of home in Korea.
We did a lot of hiking, shopping, and had a visit to Seoul.
We went to Seorakssan. Its a really beautiful park.
We took two paths, the first one led to a little temple in a rock.
The other one was a grueling climb up about a million steps to a tiny "cave" up on a mountain peek. At the top, there was a lady monk sitting around, talking on her phone, and a man peddling wears.
There was a man climbing on that peek, can you see him? crazy!
The cave was almost up in the clouds.
Another hike we went on was to a place called Mureung Valley. Another really beautiful place. Unfortunately, Ryan lost his shoes while we were fording the river so we had to go back early.
They had a huge flat rock that many Korean families were picnicking on and swimming in the small pools.
There was also a pleasant little temple.
Another naturey thing we did was go to Hwanseongul, the biggest cave in Korea and one of the biggest in Asia. It was amazing. I've never seen anything like it. The hike to the cave was intense, like 45 minutes walk straight up and with about 500 stairs thrown in. We were also the only foreigners in the whole place, got a ton of stares and friendly hellos.
In Seoul we did waaaaaaaay too much shopping, I bought a ridiculous amount of shoes. We also went to the kimchi museum and learned so many delicious facts about the Korean pickled cabbage icon.
Silly photo -op.
Around Gangneung we mostly went out to eat and went to noraebang (karaoke) with my friends.
I also played my first open mic, I did my version of 'house of the rising sun' and 'waltzing to mongolia.' It was terrifying.
I'm glad I did it. I'm playing again tomorrow. I'm doing a goofy song about soju with one of my friends and I'm playing 'mad world.' Hoping I won't be as nervous this time.Things with school are so-so. We had some trouble getting paid the past 2 paychecks, I think it was just because of having a slow summer enrollment. Its been straightened out. I also finally signed insurance papers, it took getting my agency involved to get them though.
One of the ladies at my school did my nails in a traditional Korea way called bung shu ah(?). Its done with a paste from the forget-me-not flower. Its applied to the nails then wrapped in plastic and left overnight. Or in my case, a full day of teaching. Boy was it hard to work with one hand wrapped up and leaking orange juice everywhere. My kids kept crying "teaachaah ugh guh" and pointed to stains on their books/papers. haha.
My fingers were stained orange for over a week. The color on my nails is supposed to stay till the first snow, if it does.. than it means that my "first love" will be forever. Its also supposed to be good for the nails and good luck. The kids and other Koreans really get a kick out of seeing a foreigner with it, so its also pretty fun and a good conversation starter.
The week before last I went on a trip through adventurekorea.com, so that's going to be the next big post.. stay tuned.
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