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Mountains, Gramaphones, and Carnivals, OH MY!

by Kate


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

September 8, 2008   Comments Off

Up and Down

by Kate

Drive. Take off. Land. Drive.
Saturday morning (the 23rd) we loaded up into Julie and Zane’s civic (THANK YOU!) and headed off to O’Hare. When we got to O’hare we drove to the international terminal, Delta was not listed there so Julie dropped us off at the Domestic Delta terminal. WRONG! We were right the first time. Julie was gone so we slowly arranged oursleves (2 large bags, 1 camping back-pack and one purse/computer bag each) and made our way up down over and around back to the international terminal. No big deal, just bags, bags and bags.
Speaking of bags, our bags were perfect. The night before we left Kokomo we loaded into the car and drove to Chad’s Dad’s church to weigh our bags. After some shifting around and some major adding to our carry on, all of the bags became about 2 lbs under the weight limit, wiggle room is always good. When we checked our bags the woman asked us if we had weighed ahead of time. We were that spot on!
Okay, big bags gone, we made our way to security. I took off my jewlery, chad got rid of his belt, no problem! I went through, no beeps. My bags went though, no beeps. Chad went through, no beeps. Chad’s backpack went through, BEEP BEEP BEEP. Okay, no beeps, actually a security oficer’s face became incredibly stern and staring at the monitor he uttered, “Oh. My. God.” Seriously, I watched the man. I felt like I was in some hoaky police movie and I was going to lose Chad to a white room and lots of men in uniforms. Bomb, no, but close to it on a computer screen in the international terminal at O’Hare. As most of you know, Chad likes electronics. One of his carry on bacgs became harddrive mecca (this was due to the check-in pounds explained above.) He got through fine. :)
After a helter-skelter experience at O’Hare we made it onto the plane safe and sound. The plane gently transported us for 14 hours over Canada, Alaska and Russia (that what I can remember) we landed in Incheon (and island slightly west of Seoul). At Incheon we got through customs with no bumps.
Lunch on the plane. So yummy!
Lunch instructions! Due ot the fact that we do not look Korea, the flight attendant took some pitty on us and handed us an instruction sheet for our lunch!
This is Chad eating his lunch. Along with the Bibimbap there was seaweed soup, a roll, two side dishes of vegtables and wine. I am getting a little ahead of myself but I just want to mention that our meal on the plane was the last meal we had before we ate Korean’s version of Western food in a caffeteria for about 5 days. We should have taken more pictures.

This picure is not that interesting but the little man we saw when we took this picture was. As we drove through the toll booth we were sternly greeted by figures in orange militant looking uniforms. Each figure was adorned with a tan face mask complete with eye holes.
Maybe my favorite picture so far, the first scultpure we found in Korea! It was right outside of the airport.

Some apatment buldings on our drive toward Yang Yang.

This is our “plane bling” video. Chad also took videos of us taking off. Panic! :)

Well everyone, thanks for reading. Some time in the near future (assuming home internet is in our near future) I will set up the blog so you can get emails everytime we post instead of you having to check all of the time.
Happy first day of school to everyone starting up soon!
K

August 30, 2008   1 Comment

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