Category — Korea

Our last full day of orientation in Yang Yang was a full one filled with Korean culture. . . mostly. The day began with a bus trip to Mount Sorak, one of the most beautiful mountains in the northern part of South Korea.

We were hoping for a little more of a hike than we got. Koreans love to hike but all of their trails are paved and there are restaurants every few steps. Not true for all mountains but I know its not that far off. Despite the paved path, it was absolutely beautiful and we hope to get back to get onto the not paved trails soon.

This is a huge Buddha statue before the trail heads. Chad caught a few extra couples in this snap shot. We didn’t get their names to email it to them.

A nice view from our little hike. There are supposedly some not so plush cabins we could rent if we wanted to get really crazy and do a two day hike. We’ll see if we can squeeze that in before it gets to chilly.

Okay, Mt, Sorak was stop one of this adventure filled day. We travelled back to our Resortel (which like to pronounce “resortle“), had lunch, and boarded the buses for our next stop, our Korean cultural experience. . . . the GRAMOPHONE MUSEUM! How Korean can you get?!

The museum was interesting. First we went into a screening room chalk full of speakers which Chad go talk about for days. We watched some music videos on a large screen tv and listened to the speakers.

The museum was started from a Korean man’s collection of gramophones. He received his first when he was 6 and I think he got up to multiple thousands in his collection.

Chad is pictured above with the first iPod!


Blending in with the scene.

Checking the acoustics.

After the museum we headed back to the Resortel for dinner. After dinner we saw a traditional Korean mask performance which was interesting. We wern’t ready to go to bed so Chad and I headed to downtown Yang Yang (tiny). We bumped into a couple of friends and stumbled upon and almost deserted carnival.

This lovely young woman pictured with me bargained with her friend so that I could play the dart game for a discounted price. I hit some balloons which means I got a pink rubber ducky like toy!

Our friend Alex (far left) played another game and won. His prize was a furry pink pillow with “I love you” written on it. Also with us in the picture between Alex and Chad is our friend Hai.

Thanks for checking in!

K

We’ve been in Korea about two weeks now… and I’ve made a video with a lot of our pictures from that time. It feels like we’ve been here a lot longer, but that is probably because everything we do is a new discovery and takes a lot more energy and time. Everything from buying trashbags to getting a cell phone has been an adventure. We will be posting more details about the past two weeks soon, but I wanted to post this as an update and also mention our other updates… I’ve added a picture feed with our picasa album of photos and a video feed from our viddler page to the blog. Check them out!
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Here’s “Two Weeks – Part One”

The few weeks before we left for Korea were pretty intense. Lots of driving, packing, and stress… Kate spent some time back in Virginia, then a week in Michigan with her family. I left Aspen on the 15th and drove to Michigan in two days – with a stop at both grandparents houses. We spent a day and a half with Kate’s family, and celebrated her Grandmother’s birthday. Kate repacked for the 3rd time and finally got down to just 4 bags – the max. Then we drove down to Kokomo so I could pack. While there (for 4 days) we went to Indy to see Christa and Michael. Below is a picture from our dinner in Broadripple. Michael was sharing his wisdom on Korean Cuisine and told us a story which inspired this blog… or at least its title. He and his friend went to a Korean restaurant for dinner one night and as is traditional in Korean meals, the main dish was accompanied by lots of small dishes which everyone shares. This can be anything from raw crab (in its shell) covered with hot spicy pepper sauce to slabs of tofu and radishes. Everyone reaches around the table with their chopsticks snatching up whatever they’d like to eat. At this particular restaurant there were this small chunks of something… (a usual sight at a korean meal and they tried it. It was very spicy and kind of fish-like. They liked it a lot and the next time they went out to a Korean restaurant they didn’t get the mystery food. This “Spicy Fish” was intriguing to them and they really wanted to be able to order it again so they asked the waitress if she knew what it was… describing it in as much detail as they could. She then replied… “Ohhh Spicy Fishy!!” and brought some out Michael and his friend. Hence the name… (It’s funnier when Michael tells the story – and I’m not sure if I got the story even right…) nonetheless – it’s a great title and we’re excited to keep posting about our adventures, both with cuisine, and this amazing country.
After we spent a few days in Indiana we went up to Chicago with my parents and stayed with Julie and Zane. We went out to a Thai restaurant with a bunch of friends and had a great last night in the US. The next day we drove out to Ohare and took off for the other side of the world… EEP!