vacation part 3!!!

soo here is my picture blog/take of our vacation. a little different twist on what tova has done, hope you enjoy!

First day on vacation we walked around the lake, and here is my impersionation of the sokcho dude!

we then visited a traditional village


we then when to sokcho beach:

we then hiked all the way up to a cave on the side of a mountain. CRAZY!

more views of seoraksan:

probably the coolest picture i've taken. (this was a sign for a coffee shop though :-p)

we then went to seoul, and the DMZ. here is a picture of me IN North Korea standing next to a south korean military officer. dude was INTENSE!

i found it a little unnerving that right when i went to take a picture of the north korean military officer he immediatley picked up his binoculars and looked RIGHT AT ME! YIKES!

We then visited a beautiful palace in seoul:

random bush animal :-p

final view of seoul:

and my favorite:

seu-ta-buk-seu caw-pe :-)

From vacation...

Yes, I'm still stuck on vacation. It was fun! I just got pictures from my fabulous coteacher from August 2nd - the day we went all around to a million different places. I saw a theme in her pictures - I'm making a goofy face in every single one!! Mind you, it was NOT intentional. I guess I should stop making these faces. It seems to be true - my face HAS gotten stuck like that!!!!!!

Oh, Vacation... How I miss you...

So our vacation was AMAZING. I'm going to sum up vacation in 7 pictures (one for each day of events). Here goes!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3


Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Yup, I think that's about it. We had a BLAST. If you want to see more pics from our vacation, there are PLENTY on our Picasa site. :-)

Now we're back at work, and it's life as usual.

I can't wait till our next vacation! :-)

vacation!

so vacation is almost over :-(

here is what we did on our vacation . . .
friday - met up with dale
saturday - walked to e-mart, and walked the lake
sunday - went to the dmz, and kim jong il's childhood summer home
monday - walked to the pavilions and lighthouse and also visited my school (11 miles of walking!)
tuseday - went atv'ing and went to sokcho beach
wednesday - climbed a couple of mountains, and went to seorkasan
thursday - recupperated from the mountain climbing :-p
friday - went to fish market, ate fresh squid sundae (they pulled the squid out of the fish tank and prepared them in front of us, talk about FRESH!) visited tovas school and then left for seoul
saturday - we went to the uso dmz tour and actually went to north korea, also went to a temple, and met up with friends at a HUGE mall
sunday - went to a HUGE palace (even though it was a billion degrees out)
monday - dale left and tova and i went to the aquarium!

we have a bazillion pictures on the picasa site, and they will be up shortly, here is a short video on top of the side of the mountain that had a temple in a cave . . .

so thats a short recap, we'll put some pictures up over the next couple of days as highlights!

talk to you soon!

Dale's Visit

We've had fun with Dale here.

The best was going to Seoraksan on August 5th. It was a blast.

The best part was climbing up to the HUGE high places.

(You can see me and Daniel on the rock!)

The scariest part was rappelling down.

(Look closely - we're there!)

But luckily we had Sherpa Dale to help us.

There will be tons of pics on Picasa as soon as we can get them all captioned.

ATV-ing

So this is a SUPER late post.

We have some wonderful friends in Korea. I think the couple we're getting closest to is R&A. They are absolutely fantastic, and we have a great time with them.

A few weeks ago, they took us out for a Sunday afternoon adventure. We went to an ATV place in Yang Yang. We were a TAD skeptical.

We had no reason to be nervous - this place was the COOLEST! There were three courses that were kind of interwoven. The outer course was just a big circle. It was for kids, and of course was my favorite. There were no major bumps - just minor parts that had worn down a little. There was an S course in the middle which was just a curvy part. It was fun though - there was a HUGE part that was completely soaked in water. Of course, everyone (except me) went through at top speeds, ensuring a complete mud shower. Then there was the advanced course. It was INSANE! There were parts where I was sure I was going to die! There were MAJOR hills - no MOUNTAINS - no HIS EYE WAS THIS BIG!! Oops, got carried way on that last one... Anyway...

Daniel took to it like a fish to water. He was ready to tear up some dirt!

Thankfully, Daniel was kind enough to stop caring about safety every now and then and take some videos of our adventure. While driving one-handed. Over the crazy hills. Enjoy!

(The advanced course.)

And here is another video:

(The S course.)

Of course, no adventure is complete without some kind of lasting momento.

We're having a blast in Korea, that's for sure!!!!! :-)

design and function collide :-p

so as a cultural experience we went to a hotel/resort that was in our province.

we just spent a couple of hours there. it was rather nice.

the interesting think about the hotel is that it was shaped like a boat, but on a mountain side. . .

dont believe me here is a picture to proove it:

they did a lot to make the resort look like a hotel, even with the port holes in the side of the boat.

here is where design and function collide:

i thought it was humorous . . .

oh and did i mention that there was an ecclipse?

thats all for now, more to come . . .

fun stories

so in korea you get in to some very interesting situations and you dont know how you got in to them, and how you can get out of them because you are a foreigner, and there is that whole language barrier thing.

last week my kiddos had an english camp, where they spent three days at a hotel going to english classes and EVERYTHING being in english. it was a major thing for my school and for the kids. here are two of my favorite kiddos retelling "the princess and the pea"

one of the overnites my school graciously put tova and i up in a SUPER NICE hotel. it was a beach front hotel, and really nice . . .

it was very nice of them. the boys stayed at a hostel and the rooms looked like this:

yes, its just a floor. its a typical hostel room in korea.

my school felt like tova and i worked so much that we deserved a nicer place. we would have gladly stayed at the hostel. but were very happy with their genorosity.

so anyways . . . . on to the fun part of the story

we didnt finish teaching until 10:30 pm or so. and my co-teacher gave us a ride to the hotel.

in korea to save electricity when you get in to the hotel room you put your room key in a special slot by the door that looks like this :

the electricity ONLY works when the key is in the slot. (this is a very important detail in the upcoming story :-p )

we were exhausted (we hadnt slept much the previous nights, only 4-5 hours a night for three straight nights) so we got ready for bed and turned off the lights, and turned on the a.c. (a nice bonus when you arent the one paying for the electricity!)

we turned off hte lights around 11:30'ish . . .

then at 12:27, right when we were really starting to fall in to that deep sleep . . .

ALL THE LIGHTS IN THE HOTEL TURNED ON!

first this woke us both up

second . . . it scared the EVERYTHING out of us!

we both looked at each other and tried to figure out what was going on.

i got up and looked around the room, and to my delight no intruders were in. but EVERY light in the hotel was on. we were even more exhausted. so i tried to turn off the lights and go back to bed . . .

i gots nothin'! seriously, i tried to turn off the lights and the switches werent doing anything!

i tried for about 10 minutes and nothing.

at this point i thought about calling my co-teacher but decided against it cause he was so tired too, and it was for something small like a light being on.

then we thought about going to the front desk, but at one in the morning now, and with the language barrier we thought it might be more trouble then anything else. also we didnt want to be rude and just point to a light and repeat "on, on, off, off" that is really condescending and rude in our minds.

so we decided that the lights would eventually turn off, so we tried to go back to bed.

10 minutes later, i am still awake, and have a flash of genius!

why dont i take out the key from the wall? that would turn off the a.c. but at least i could have the lights off.

so i took the key out of the wall, thereby canceling ALL electricity in the hotel room, and went back to bed and waited.

again, i gots NOTHIN'!

we waited and waited and the lights and a.c. still stayed on :-(

so we decided to hunker down for the night and try to sleep with the lights on. eventually we fell asleep, close to 1:30-2:00 a.m. it was a terrible sleep cause every light was on. (seriously this hotel room had about 500 lights in it!)

then at 5:32 ALL THE LIGHTS TURNED OFF! and so did the a.c.!

that woke us up, we tried to figure out what was going on. by this point the sun was up and our room was rather bright as well. we tried to go back to sleep, but barely did.

in the end we got the worst night sleep EVER, even though the hotel was very beautiful.

we also were going to go for a walk on the beach in the morning, but with the terrible sleep that was canceled as well.

all in all another experience for us in korea!

(the only reason that we came up with for the lights being on is that the hotel forgot that the room was booked and turned on some hotel lights to make the hotel look fuller and more inviting. other than that the second best option is that aliens were coming to invade and if your room lights were on they would ignore your room and move on to someone elses room :-p )