Weekend kiddie hike and vacation day Cherry Blossoms

Sometimes on Saturdays we have sparring classes at our taekwondo studio that absolutely kick our butts.  But, now spring is in the air and our taekwondo teacher decided that it was time to go for a hike with his kids that usually attend the morning English camp at the studio.  He dropped us off at our house on Friday morning and called out to us at the last minute that he needed us tomorrow and that he would be at our house to pick us up at 8am, which he later changed to around 10, which was much more manageable for a Saturday morning for foreigners in Korea.

We woke up Saturday morning and prepared for our hike with children.  We really don't get enough of children during the week at our teaching jobs. . .but it was a beautiful day and we are always glad when we start Saturdays early because we tend to discover something like an extra day tucked into the weekend :-)

We went to the studio and met all our new hiking partners and headed out into the morning sunshine (after stopping for proper rations)

Annie and our new awesome friend Julie, ready for the outing.  

Part of our entourage with our fearless leader.

 We walked through the town until we got to the bottom of a little mountain that we had hiked once before.  It was a lovely day :-)  The kids ran up the hill full blast and scattered off into the woods.  We were left with two of them.

 But we found them again when it was snack time.  :-)

He's explaining something very important, I'm sure ^^

Wee!

Annie has an awesome camera ^^

Lovely place

Kimchi!

Break time.

Too cool.

Our vicious protector and his air soft WMD

 At the end of the trail was a lake with a natural water spring that you could drink from if you so desired.  We will have to come back to this little lake later in the Spring because there were little water flower beds planted along most of the boardwalk and in the middle was a little bed shaped like a whale that wasn't in bloom yet, and that I'm sure would be something to see :-)

Looking for giant tadpoles.

Cherry blossoms :-)

We stayed there for just a little while and then it was time to head back and get some lunch, after we dropped off the kids, of course.  This was walking distance more or less from our house, and all of the kids lived around the studio, so we just walked along and the kids would just run off home (which really threw off our head count. . .)  But eventually they all found their homes and we ran back to the studio.

The street right outside of our studio, absolutely lined with cherry blossom trees.

Aren't they amazing?

We had gone to a Chinese place with Master Jack a few months back or so and decided that we absolutely needed some of that orange glazed pork today.  So, we drove around for a while trying to find it, finally got it and ordered some with sides of rice and ja jjang, which is home made noodles with a beefy, soy bean sauce.

It's colorful AND delicious!  What more could you possibly want??

I couldn't wait for the photo shoot to finish.  I needed it.  ^^

 We were too busy inhaling that amazing food to take any more pictures.  We finished and headed back to our houses to put some crazy colors in our hair and meet up again with Julie for a Saturday night in Mugeo-dong with Julie.

~Election Day, Wednesday, April 11~


We get precious few days off as academy teachers here in Korea.  Seriously.  But, fortunately for us, there was a big election here this past week and we got the day off for election day ^^  Well, some foreign teachers did, not all of them, but thankfully we did.  And we decided the very best thing to do would be to go to Gyeonju, visit some temples, and see some cherry blossoms in one of the most famous cities in Korea for them.

You may remember last year around this time we went to Gyeonju for the cherry blossom festival with the English Fun Table where we took Korean lessons and rode bikes for 26 hours and saw the whole city from the backs of those bikes.  Which was awesome, don't get me wrong, but this time we wanted a little more of a relaxed approach.
We were planning on going with Julie, and new guy named Ian who just joined our morning class, and maybe Master Jack, but our plan was to meet at the train station at 8am so the two guys weren't able to make it, so it was a girls trip to Gyeonju.

We met at the train station, bought our tickets, and headed off on our very favorite form of transportation.  (I'm seriously going to miss trains.  Easy, cheap, fast, what more could you ask for?)

Julie and Anriette chillin

We got the the Bulgoksa stop and took a taxi to the temple.  It was raining a little bit, but it still made for some pretty photos.  These are all Anriette's, and I'm just going to steal them and post them.

The lake in front of the main entrance to the main temple gate.

You can see the rain :-)

These are, I think, some sort of guardians.

Pretty cool, huh?

A little stand where you could buy and write on roof tiles.  We thought about it for a second, but then couldn't really think of anything to write.

Front entrance.

Inside the first part of the grounds.

This was in a walled section of the temple complex.  There were a few buildings with huge golden statues in them and people joined the monks for ceremonies.

Giant drum on a turtle.  ^^

Very steep staircases :-)  Going to another section of the temple grounds.

We tried pretty hard to get pictures of the insides of these buildings, but they REALLY didn't want us to.

Just talking to monks, you know, like ya do.  They were really explaining to me that there was a golden pig hiding behind the sign, and so there was.

It was the perfect day for cherry blossoms.  Now, just a few days later, they're already almost just leaves.

Isn't it beautiful??

Little mini pagodas that people built out of little stones.  

After we walked around here for a couple of hours we found a souvenir shop and a traditional Korean tea shop and decided to stop in for a bit.

Five Taste Tea and Lotus Leaf Tea :-)

They gave us a thermos filled with hot water and then we just decanted it into the pot with the lotus leaf loose tea, then you filtered that into another little glass tea pot, then poured it into the little tea cups, then repeat ^^

Cheers!

The lotus tea.

Little pottery for sale :-)

Kimchi!

These next pictures are from the grounds all around the other entrance to Bulgoksa Temple. It was just covered with cherry blossom trees!

Trinkets for sale!

One interesting phenomenon in Korea, especially in the Spring and Summer time in touristy areas, is that in strips where there are a lot of restaurants there are an equal number of elderly women (who run them) who stand out in front of their places and shout at people to come to their places.  They will come up and latch on to you, list off their menus, and brag about different things they will give us for free.  I don't think they really care how much of a group they get, and if three different women came and each only got one of us, I don't think they would care so much.  But this is something that happens with restaurants and rooms for rent for the night this time of year. :-)

We ended up at one called "Ulsan Restaurant" and were seated outside. . .perhaps as advertisement?  :-)

Korean "pizza" kind of flour doughish stuff around kimchi and scallions.  Pretty awesome, actually.

Soft tofu with some red pepper, leaves, carrots, and sauce.  Another freebie.

One of my VERY favorite dishes: dolsot bibimbap.  Regular bibimbap is cooked warm rice served with raw veggies, usually cucumber, carrots, and things like that, with some red pepper paste.  Dolsot bibimbap is a little different because it's served in a scalding hot pottery bowl which makes the rice on the edges all crispy and is served with a raw egg on top, which obviously cooks when you stir it, and this one also had mushrooms and seaweed.  Not sure why, but I absolutely LOVE this and crave it at least once a week.

After we finished eating we headed off for our other destination in Gyeonju which was a national treasure giant Buddha statue that was carved into the granite of a cave on the very, very top on a mountain, surrounded by, of course, a temple.  So, we grabbed another cab and began our journey into the clouds.

Fun fact to know and tell.  The road that we took to the temple was one of those switch back roads, just giant curves winding all the way up, and here those sort of curves are indicated on street signs by a trumpet, instead of just a curvy arrow.

We got to the temple grounds and the taxi driver asked if we wanted him to wait.  We said no.  He said that we wouldn't be able to get a ride down because there were no buses and all the taxis that were up there were standing by for other people already there.  So, we decided to let him wait.  And babysit our bags, after his offer.  We really hoped that he would still be there by the time we got back. . .

This temple was right in the clouds.  Pretty cool.

We went to see the statue but unfortunately unable to take pictures of it.  It was pretty impressive, just a giant Buddha statue inside of a cave surrounded by various important people carved into the cave walls.  It is one of the most famous statues in Korea, so I'm glad that we were able to see it.

We were there for maybe an hour or so, but it was raining and we were worried that our driver might have abandoned us and taken off with our stuff so we headed back.  Or, thought we were heading back. . .

We were actually dead tired.  But, unfortunately going the wrong way, even though we were literally hand placed on that very train.

Anriette figured out first, while talking to (or perhaps trying not to talk to) a guy who sat down next to her and started pouring himself maccoli and offering it to her.  He informed us that the train that we were on did in fact not go back to Ulsan and that we would have to get off and get on another train.  So we did.  In the middle of no where.  Which was a huge mission.  We tried to trade in our tickets to the guy working at the counter, but he acted like he didn't know what we could possible want.  (This is, by the way EXTREMELY unusual for the train/KTX outfit.  They usually literally bend over backwards to help us out, even if we were just being stupid and missed out train because we were busy drinking coffee or something, and they never charge us again) This guy let us struggle and struggle before finally breaking out in perfect English that the train was coming at such and such a time and to make sure that we got on going this direction, and blah blah.  So, we had 20 minutes to kill.  We ran out and got something to snack on and then waited in the lobby again.  When they called for boarding time we walked out to the platform.  We were there for five minutes or so, the train was due in about 45 seconds and here comes the desk guy.  "Do you have tickets?"  Man, you saw our tickets, handed them back to us and told us to get on the train that was coming that very moment.
So, he dragged us back inside and as slowly as was physically possible printed us new tickets and painstakingly explained every little detail of them.  Needless to say, we missed that train.  And had to wait another 20 minutes or so.

But, you'll be happy to know that we did eventually make it back home.  And fell asleep after about five seconds.

Good times.