bring on vaca!!!

i'm on vacation!!! whoop whoop!!!

this is the first time i've actually had a vacation in korea and STAYED in the country. this is partially due to the fact that ali and i don't have summer break at the same time, but mostly due to the fact that i have no money. :) but fear not, my week has been thus far eventful, relaxing, and full of some MUCH-needed sleeping in.

i feel like there's so much to tell i can barely do it in one blog. i hate it when one entry gets really long because if it were me, i would stop reading part way through. (in fact, that is what i do to all those blog entries that hit the 'too-long-for-casual-reading' mark.) so i may split it up.

last saturday, a group of us went on THE COOLEST hike i've been on in awhile. we went to bukhansan (very famous mountain right here in seoul--i went a few times last year...BIG rock formations, remember?), with the goal of finding the ginormous budha tucked away in some hidden place in the mountain. one of my friends here stumbled upon it accidentally one day and was hoping to share the amazingness. and let me tell you, it was AMAZING! we were climbing up this completely hidden and off-the-beaten-path trail and suddenly, through the brush is the biggest budha i've ever seen. in fact, it IS the tallest budha in all of southeast asia. the craziest part is that there was NOBODY THERE. we were completely alone. somehow, this enormous budha surrounded with 10,000 smaller budhas in glass cages has completely slid under the "tourist destination" radar. we spent the whole day reaching the very top of the mountain, and finished things off with some beer and korean style seafood pizza at the bottom. i promise pictures will follow sometime this week.

and speaking of pictures, I FINALLY GOT A NEW CAMERA!!! mine hasn't been able to upload pictures to my computer for awhile (hence the lack of pictures) and last week it finally just quit on me. the lense went out and never came back in. it was finished. so my new camera is the fujifilm finepix J150. ali and i went to the electronics market yesterday (biggest electronics market in asia...ali's dream come true, my worst nightmare...) and this is what i ended up with. we nearly got scammed--ok we totally thought we got scammed for about 30 minutes and i was practially in tears--but it turns out i got a pretty good deal because mine isn't a rip-off like the other $150 cheaper one that i found at the next booth right after i had paid for mine. :) anyway, wohooo! bring on pictures!

that is only the tip of the iceberg in news! i'll continue later!