Around school

Happy Halloween! Today was just another day for us as they don't really get into the whole trick-or-treat thing here. Altough, my co-teacher got a new hairstyle so today she came with makeup and a new outfit and the kids thought she had done it as a costume. Cute. It's cooling off here but the leaves are still on most of the trees and looking great! I brought my camera to school to snap a few shots, see below. (B has yet to snap shots at his school).
This weekend our friend from Tongyeong is coming to visit us, so we're pretty excited. I've started a traditional paper crafts class with a co-worker on Tuesday nights, and I'm enjoying it so far. We use "hanji" paper to make crafts, so it's pretty cool. We made our 1st project on Tuesday, a coaster-type thing, but I'm planning on hanging it on the wall. I'll attach photos soon. Other than that, not too much going on here. Hope all's well for everyone, thanks for checking in.




In front of my boys' school.

View from the Middle school looking onto the playground and new gym.


Gwirae Middle School: My small country school. I go here every Friday.(48 students)

Fall Fun

We started Saturday on the bus to Seoul, thinking that the Canon Service Center was open until 12 on Saturdays (they were last weekend when we called). We arrived only to be greeted by a sign stating that they were closed every 2nd and 4th Sat. We figured since we were in the big city, we might as well take advantage of it. We checked out a palace we hadn't seen before, and soaked in the fall sunshine! We also headed down to Itaewon, the foreigner's section of town. We ran into our friend fom Incheon who was also checking out Itaewon! What a coincidence.
In the afternoon, we decided to take the train back so enjoy the beautiful fall colors, and ran into our EPIK boss. He was heading into Seoul for the Halloween party, and we were headed back to our city. That night we went to the foreigner bar, "WA Bar" for the Halloween party. It was a lot of fun, B was a Viking and H was Minnie Mouse. We got to chat with a lot of our new friends.
Today we met our friends Dayle and Hee-Kyung for lunch. After our meal, we all caught the bus and headed to Yonsei University, just outside of Wonju. The leaves were so bright and great to take in. Lots of towns-people head to the campus during fall to enjoy the walking trails, and we did the same. It was a lovely day and for the rest of the evening we'll relax and get ready for another busy week of classes!

10-27: Deok Su Gung Palace in Seoul.

10-27: Deok Su Gung, the lil boy posing with a famous Korean in history. (free costumes on site)

10-28: Yonsei University, fall edition.



Hee Kyung, Dayle, H and B.


On the walking trail on campus. The family walked out to the little island.

Mt. Seorak Photos

Back to Sokcho (속초)

You may remember that back in March we took a trip up to the northeastern tip of South Korea. While there we went into Seorak Mountain to see snow and a lot of fog. During orientation in August we stayed near the mountain but were plagued with rain and clouds for a week. On Saturday we returned to Seoraksan in another attempt to get a clear view of the mountain and see the autumn foliage. B spent three gloomy hours on the bus watching the sky cloud up and begin to rain (H was sleeping of course). We met up with the foreigners that we had met on top of Chiaksan and their Korean friend. Together we went into Seorak National Park and hiked along the waterfall trail since there was no view from any of the peaks. Later in the afternoon the sky did open up so we high-tailed to the top of Ulsan-bawi to get our first glimpse of the area from above. The rock formations were astounding but the 808 metal stairs to the top were agonizing. We've told ourselves that we should go to this mountain at least once every season because it is heralded as the most beautiful in Korea and it looks completely different every time. As always we will get pictures on here as soon as possible. Sunday we came back to Wonju, did the grocery shopping we'd been putting off for a week and met some friends for a movie. The movie Shoot em Up was awful so we all walked out and went to a bar to talk.

Today begins the first week where we both have full class schedules, until now there have been sports days, mid-terms, observations, cancellations, field trips and other various interferences in either one or both of our schedules. Holiday and test season are over so we should both be in business until early December. That's all for now, we'll get more pictures uploaded soon....

Long Way Up

October 3rd was Foundation Day, a Natl holiday in Korea. Since there was no school, we made plans with B's co-teacher to climb Mt. Chiak-the highest mountain in our province. We started our day at 9am, when we met Mrs. Ban and her husband; they decided to take the bus since we'd be using two different paths on the mountain. The bus didn't come until 10am, and we finally started our ascent at 11am. The first 45 minutes were a breeze. After that, it was pretty much straight up. One way was marked as 4.6 kilomters, but it sure seemed longer than 2 miles to the top. We bumped into a fellow EPIK teacher on our way up, which was fun. We reached the top at 2pm, only to realize that it was quite cloudy/foggy and our view was non-existant! We had lunch on top, and met two nice teachers who work in Incheon.

Our way down was almost more difficult, as the path was littered with slippery rocks. I went sliding a few times but nothing serious. By the time we made it to the bottom, we had spent 5 hours on the mountain! Unfortunately, the place where we came down doesn't have many buses passing thru, so we waited for an hour for the bus to take us back into town. While we were waiting, we had a small meal of tofu and various sidedishes. This was our 1st such meal, so it was a good experience for us.

This weekend we've made plans to go to Suwon to meet up with friends we met in Tongyeong.It promises to be another busy weekend!

B, H, Mrs. Ban and her husband Mr. Hyun at the top!!

1288 meters, and we made it!!!

Wonju Address

We just realized that no one has our new address so this is where you can send lots of goodies:

Magnuson
Gukje Apt 101-107, Ilsan-dong
Wonju-si, Gangwon-do 220-050
South Korea