Long overdue...

Hello, friends. I am trying to play catch up cause as you may have noticed I have been MIA for a bit. As part of my quest to reconnect to the world I have added captioned pictures to both my facebook and my shutterfly accounts (the shutterfly account is more thorough). However, more exciting than the day to day work life is my vacation: I just got back from my Chusok break trip to Jeju-do island. Jeju is a tropical island located off the southern tip of Korea. I went with a huge group of my coworkers (some of whom I knew well, others I barely knew). I'll share the "short" version of our itinerary below:

Monday:
Our flight was not until mid-afternoon. But because Monday was the first day of Chusok break and people had been warning us that everything was going to be shut (and that tickets would be sold out) we left hours before we normally would to take the bus to the airport. In reality, there was no extra traffic. The result: us at the airport 5 1/2 hours early. That's a new record for me. See us bored below:




We finally made it do the island which was beautiful and took a long walk to a good dinner. After dinner we went to this, for lack of better word-- reserve, and saw a pretty waterfall. A nice way to end day 1.


Monday night we stayed at Nikole's married friends' apartment while the boys crashed with her friend Tim. I lucked out and got the couch that others were too tall for. Being short pays off sometimes.

Tuesday:
Tuesday was Chusok (Korea's thanksgivinng equivalent). Most people visit their relatives and eat together. We on the other hand, played on the beach and walked around town. We saw these kids on the street and asked their parents if we could photograph their traditional clothes:


The majority of Tuesday was a beach day (made me SOO happy). We had perfect weather for beach football and swimming. We went on a sand beach by the fancy resorts (if only we had enough money to stay at the Hyatt!). Check out the view from the Hyatt:


In the afternoon we went banana boating. It was so much fun...reminded me of houseboat trips. Some of our people went parasailing too. Tuesday night four of us decided to skip the apartment life and sleep on the beach. We had a bonfire with a bunch of strangers from all around the world. Then we slept on the sand listening to the waves crash. It was all lovely minus the million and two bug bites I acquired. I am just too sweet tasting I guess. The beach we slept on:


Wed:
We woke up Monday morning smelling like bonfire, sweat, bugspray, and beach. A shower was in high order. So we went to the Jimjilbang for a scrub down. For those unfamiliar with the term, jimjilbangs are basically saunas/spas where you soak/scrub/etc naked (single sex). At first it was really odd to hang out naked with all my coworkers. But everyone else is doing it and I got comfortable with it pretty fast. It's a little weird hanging out with a ton of old naked Korean ladies, but if they can flaunt their stuff, so can I.

The rest of Wednesday was filled with travelling to O-do island (a small island off the northeastern coast of Cheju-do). We took taxis to buses to a ferry... missed a ferry... finally made it...it was worth the hassle. We basically hung out in a sweet pension right on the water and relaxed, played pool, played spoons, learned some Korean slapping game, and got to sleep in real beds.
Here's some of us waiting for the ferry:


Here is the pension we stayed in:


Thursday:
We hiked to the east side of the island to watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous!


Then I took a nap to recover from my 5:30 AM hike. Once we were all up and ready we rented scooters to check out the whole island. Let me tell you, I was one quality biker chick. I was not the smoothest starter or stopper (and by not smooth I mean incredibly jerky) but I had a lot of fun riding around. We checked out some cliffs that were impressive and had a blast. Then we took a ferry and bused it back down to Seogwipo (where we were staying the first two nights).


one of the views:


Once we got back, we did another group jimjilbang trip. My skin has never been smoother! Then Thursday night we went to a nice Italian place for dinner and enjoyed the views and company. That night we slept in a Korean hostel. It had private rooms and I got to sleep in a bed. Not the highest quality, but for 10,000 won a night I was completely satisfied.
Almost the entire group (missing Tim, Emily, and Nikole)


Friday (today):
We woke up this morning and spent a good three quarters of an hour at Dunkin' Donuts waiting for 3 coffees and 3 toasted bagels (who knew it took so long here!). Then we booked it over to a large Budhist temple. Well, first we took a detour in a cab to a tiny allyway with a mini budhist sanctuary upstairs in a building... we had a slight miscommunication with our driver. Alas, we eventually found the correct Budhist building. It was beautiful (sooo tropical!). The place had a waterfall and tropical plants everywhere. Not what I pictured a temple looking like. On a different note--I have never seen so many Buddhas in one place. The main temple had an upstairs with thousands of mini statues. There was also another building that housed hundreds of larger statues depicting the many human emotions. A view of the temple:


After numerous adventures and mishaps we got our stuff and made it back to the airport side of the island. We were determined to find a specific Indian restraunt before we left and wandered tiny roads until we found it. We must have looked like so ridiculous--- a dozen white people dragging luggage back and forth with maps and confused looks. Awesome. We were finally successful and made it back to the airport just in time.

All in all-- a good and incredibly random trip. Now, back to reality. SAD.