Muiido makes a mark.

So Chuseok weekend at Muiido Island was absolute hit. Check out the photos below and to see my full album click here. And WISH ME LUCK on my half marathon tomorrow!


The weekend started with a 2 minute ferry ride...














Hooray, the beach!!!







































The water is really muddy when the tide is in. (But not muddy enough to stop us from swimming...)












The little huts we stayed in! With a great view of the ocean!





















Rocks...










...rocks...



















...rocks...














...more rocks...











Go Joy!




















Our view from the hut...










FRESH clams. Straight from the ocean. Along with Korean rice wine, soju, and cass!













Just a casual pose by the sunset...
















Go sunsets...











Horseback riding anyone?












In the morning, the ocean turned into miles of mud flats. A very fun hike, despite the crabs we squashed with every step...












The mud flats.











The group! Top: Adam, Rob, Ali, Kristin, Jason
Bottom: Joy, me, Natalie, Harriet

Chuseok

It’s nearing the end of my work week, and I’m getting ready for a 4-day weekend. It’s Chuseok here in Korea, so while Koreans are celebrating the Harvest and giving thanks to their ancestors, I’ll be snuggled on the beach around fire with friends eating fresh sea food and making smores (with flavored marshmallows and the closest Korean replacement to the graham cracker we can find.) A group of us are heading out tomorrow morning to spend the weekend at Muiido Island, on the West coast of Korea. It’s not tropical or touristy, more a fishing harbor, and it will most likely be deserted considering everything completely shuts down over Chuseok, and I couldn’t be more excited for some peaceful, low-key, relaxing seaside fun. We’re staying in little bungalow hut thingies right on the beach, right by the water, so hopefully the mosquitos don’t eat me alive, and I can enjoy falling asleep to the sound of the ocean.

It’s been a busy week here at Kookje English Village. I had a surge of adrenaline Monday morning when I realized in my music class that I was putting in far too little effort and I needed to spice things up. So I’ve been getting all new songs ready for the next couple of months—complete with several songs about the different colored leaves of fall, raking, and general autumny stuff. I have successfully prepared almost everything I will need for the next 3 months of music class. I’ve even got my December schedule finished, complete with laminated snowflakes and bells. I wasn’t kidding about the adrenaline thing…

I’ve been teaching the adult TEOFL writing class every Tuesday, and it’s going really well. It’s nice to deal with people age 20 and up after a day of screaming at crying children, wiping dirty mouths after lunch, and telling little Tommy, for the 17th time, stop calling James a bunny. I also met with my favorite girl who’s just finished the TEOFL class this week because she wanted to talk to me about taking private lessons. I’m really excited! She’s 20 and absolutely the sweetest person ever. She’s hoping to go to school in Hawaii next year, so from now on I’ll be teaching her private classes at my apartment two nights a week—speaking and writing class. That makes 3 nights of extra teaching a week! And on top of that, Ali and I are still heading up the Adventure Teaching Korea facebook and blog project, as well as planning a big Adventure Teaching Korea event for the 3rd week of October (a day of Retro Olympics, carnival games, bbq, and an afterparty to follow…no biggy…YA RIGHT!!!). All in all, it’s going to be a busy month for yours truly.

But before the busyness takes over, I get a weekend sleeping by the ocean and eating fresh fish. Hooray. J

Gyeongbokgung Palace

On Sunday, Ali and I venture to one of the biggest palaces in Seoul, Gyeongbokgung Palace. Here's a few of the shots. For the full album, click here.




If you flip this picture upside down, it looks really cool. Try it.




















Very beautiful lake with Bukhan mountain in the distance.















The King and Queen of the palace grounds.












One of the lakes on the palace grounds.
















Very cool hallway.

















I want that colorful drum...
















The changing of the guard.












Palace grounds.















I look so tall! Actually, the doorway is just midget-sized. :(












A little cafe we stumbled on outside of the palace.

Here Kitty Kitty.

I’m having a slight case of the Moooooondays (only funny if you’ve seen Office Space), so I’ll try not to let my post reflect the shadow of gloom and depression that I’m feeling. I’m not sure a person has a choice to feel anything BUT gloom and depression when they wake up on a Monday morning that came way too fast, and poke their head between the curtains through slinted eyes only to be greeted by a dark, dreary, rain-hitting-the windows sorta day.

To liven things up, I’ll stop dwelling on my rotten Monday mood and tell about the funny thing that happened last week. I was taking my trash out to the trash designated area in the parking lot of my building (taking the trash out is my LEAST favorite thing to do EVER because you have to sort every piece out—food goes in one bin, plastic in another, glass, tin, paper, styrafoam…good for the environment, disgusting for us poor people who have to dig our hands into our old garbage and pull out the tin of tomato sauce that has been sitting on the bottom of the bag for a week and a half, molding up and getting infested with the worst trash-smell you’ve ever experienced…) and as I threw the bag of non-recyclable items in the big metal bin, I nearly had a heart attack as 4 frightening, angry-looking flashes of white and gray flew out shrieking and lunging for my face at the exact moment my trash bag hit the bottom of the bin. I covered my face, let out a loud cry of shock and distress and bolted backwards just in time to avoid the wrath of 4 horrified cats who had most-likely been enjoying a relaxing meal of garbage when they were disturbed by a large unidentified flying object that sent them jumping for their lives. They just happened to jump right at the poor innocent victim of this situation: me.

Needless to say, I throw my garbage in the bin from about 20 feet away ever since.

On the road to recovery.

I'm feeling slightly better--I literally slept all weekend. Saturday I woke up at about noon, then took about 3 naps during the afternoon, got Vietnamese take-out, and watched The Outsiders with Ali, for the first time since 8th grade English Class. (I swooned over Patrick
Swayze and Tom Cruise now as much as I did then.) The Sunday we went to Lake Park and met Natalie and Jason for a relaxing afternoon in the shade of a small tree. Then I ran 12 miles. Which most would say is not conducive to recovering from a week long illness, but the Half is in two weeks, and it was my last long run before the race, and I just had to get it done. And it went fine (despite my normal couple hours of extreme nausea I get about 30 minutes after I do a long run for some reason), and I still feel like I'm on the road to recovery, so no worries there!






Last weekend, Ali and I ventured to Sincheon, which where Yongsei University is located, hence making it a cool chilled out University-feeling part of Seoul. We found a great little Indian resturaunt on one of these side streets. We also did a

little shopping in UNIQLO, which is a more Western style clothing chain here, because I was hoping to find jeans, but I was disappointed to find that the biggest size they carried was a 28. BOOOOOOO.

Dr. Carolyn

it's been a whirlwind of a week. like, literally a whirlwind. as in, the world has been whirling around me as if i'm on one of those nausea-inducing amusement park rides. this is not a metaphor people, i'm talking a serious actual case of extreme vertigo. have any of you ever experienced vertigo? the U2 song makes it sound like a lot of fun, but it's not.

it all started about a week ago when i started to feel like everything was moving, no matter how hard i tried to focus my eyes on something, causing an intense headache and eye sensitivity. i thought maybe my eyes were just tired but it progressed to the point where Monday morning, i went to school and told them I needed to go to the doctor. so my korean teacher friend at my school traslated on paper what my symptoms were (terribly headache, dizziness, imbalance, eye pain) and since the doctor spoke some English, I also tried to explain. naturally, his diagnosis was food poisoning. wait, what? clearly something was lost in translation here. when i tried to explain further, he simply said it was a tension headache, gave me a whole bunch of pills of which were not explained to me, and sent me on my way.

i was not at all convinced this was just a headache, and i had to take the rest of the day off to sleep in my bed, with the lights off, shades drawn, and covers over my eyes, trying to avoid all light and movement. tuesday i slept in, went to school after lunch, then headed to the hospital to the neurologist, where i made my way through two floors of giggling nurses and staff trying to give me directions and instructions. apparently it is just HILLARIOUS watching a white girl in serious pain try to understand what to do and where to go in a hospital where no one speaks english. anyway, the neurologist also looked clueless and told me it was just a headache, and gave me more painkillers.

my symptoms persisted and the neurologist wanted me to get a CAT scan, which is expensive and seemed extreme to me. so i did some research of my own, with some suggestions from the fam, and diagnosed myself with an inner ear infection. top symptoms are vertigo, headache, nausea, and trouble hearing. all of which i had. so good ole dad called the doctor back home who told me what antibiotics i needed, and i marched into the doctor Friday morning, handed him my print out of inner ear infection symptoms, with the exact medication i needed, and after about 20 minutes of mumbling under his breath in Korean and pulling out books and doing some clicking on his computer, he begrudgingly gave me the prescription.

however, despite the frustration with the language barrier and a different way of doing medicine, I have to say that the Korean health system rocks in that going to the doctor costs about $2, and getting a full 10 day treatment of antibiotics cost me $5. and that's expensive compared to all the other pills i got.

so i really hope these antibiotics do the trick. i've had two sleepless in a row now due to all the pain in my head and behind my eyes. :( these painkillers just aren't doing it for me.

on a brighter note, it was my Grandma Sybesma's 88th birthday yesterday. Happy birthday Grandma! She's the spunkiest 88 year old I know!

First Semester: CHECK!

Happy first of September! I hate to be cliché but…where has summer gone!?!?!? I can’t believe I’ve already been back here for over 3 months. We’ve just completed the summer semester at school (there’s 4 semesters of 3 months each at Korean hagwons) and it feels really good to have an entire semester under my belt. I feel like I now fully understand how things work here, and how the semester begins, progresses, and ends, and I can make this semester better than the last. It feels really nice to have a fresh start!

It only seems fitting that the start of a new semester coincides with the weather getting cooler and that smell in the air of summer’s lurking end. Last weekend while sitting out on a local rooftop bar in Ali’s neighborhood, I had goose bumps for the first time in 3 months! It feels good not to be absolutely covered in sweat all day, but I’m sad that summer is on its way out. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE fall (scarfs, beautiful leaves, Christmas shopping, PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES!!!), but it’s been such a great summer—reuniting with Korea and my friends here, making new friends, feeling relief from all the stress and instability of the past year—sometimes I just wish I could hit the pause button in life!

On Sunday afternoon, we were wandering around Ganghwamun to hit up the English bookstore and we ended up in Insadong (one of the markets here) and found ourselves wandering off a side alley and stumbling upon this most amazing little café, complete with different levels of outdoor patios, surrounded by gardens, and created out of recycled materials. It was the coolest place I’ve come across in awhile! There was a little cross bridge connected one outdoor seating area to another made of old fire hydrants, and there was a large area covered in old neon yellow spray painted tires. And to top things off, the food was AMAZING Italian done absolutely right—big portions and free garlic bread. J It was such a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I also reconnected with The Sopranos this weekend—I bought all 6 seasons a year and a half ago in China, and have been working my way though them ever since. I watched two episodes Saturday night to finish up season 5, and consequently couldn’t sleep for two nights. A very main character got killed and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. They need to put something on the case like: “WARNING: not for viewers who get emotionally attached to characters and prefer happy endings.”