In case you hadn't heard

We are back in the U.S. now, we had a 10 hour flight from Tokyo that went smooth and got us in 30 minutes early. We left Wednesday at 3:40pm and got to Minneapolis Wednesday at 12:00pm. Currently we are at Brandon's mom's house but are going to be moving about often trying to see everyone we can. Both of our cell phones are turned back on so you can call us at our old numbers. We will leave again the last week of August so our time here is short, but we will make the most of it. Thanks for reading our blog and if you're interested you can check back in a few weeks when we've returned to South Korea.

Still Safe

Well, the weather in Japan just doesn't want to cooperate with us! Today we found out that a large (6.8) earthquake rocked central Japan. We were not affected and only learned of it when our tour guide told us. We visited Mt. Fuji today, but it was quite cloudy all day and we didn't get to see very much. The clouds did part for about 3 minutes so we were able to get a few shots, so that's good. The tour would have been awesome had it been a bit more clear.
Tomorrow we're going to Nikko, an ancient city that's been preserved. It's about 2 hours outside of Tokyo, and we're scheduled for another tour. They're quite convenient. We leave Wed, the 18th from Tokyo at 3.40pm, and get into MSp at 12.40pm that same day! How fun. We're not really looking forward to the 11 hour flight, but we can't wait to see everyone!! The internet is a bit touch and go, so I'll try to upload a few pics if possible.

No Worries

There's a typhoon approaching Japan right now, but it's going to miss Tokyo. Today we experienced a lot of rain, and they say that tomorrow will bring more, but we're not in danger and we're just wet! We're having fun here, and will post more later!

Tokyo

We're in Tokyo, Japan! We took off from Tongyeong this AM at 7.30am, and after a bit of discomfort at the Busan Airport, we were on the plane. For some reason, NWA wasw conducting "security interviews" with some of their passengers. We arrived with 7 bags, and were naturally a good choice for said interview. Also, right before we boarded the plane, all passengers had to go thru a security pat-down once again. We're not sure exactly what caused this heightened security. Luckily, we made it to Japan about 30 minutes early. It took us about 2 hours to get to our hostel, and we made it with no problems (we checked some of our bags at the airport). It's rainy this evening so we're staying close to the hostel. Everything's quite expensive here so we've opted for a hostel. We met one of our roommates, and he's a very nice fellow. He's a sports reporter from Quebec and told us some interesting stories.
We've got no set plans for the next two days; but we've scheduled a trip to Mt. Fuji one day and a famous old city Nikko another. Hopefully we'll meet up with our friend Min who now lives here! Nothing else for now. Hope all is well!

Friday: We visited a beautiful floral island an hour from Tongyeong with our friends!

Sunday: We took this Jeepney from Manila to the pier to catch our ship to Puerto Galera.

Sunday: We hired a man to take us to 2 spots to go snorkeling: 3 hours f0r $11.


Monday morn: B found a friend on the beach, who liked to fetch rocks!

Last Day

We've arrived in Korea from the Philippines. We had a wonderful trip, and although it was short it was fun and worth it. Today we're busy packing up our last things in Tongyeong, taking care of a few loose ends, and keeping our sunburn moisturized! Tomorrow we leave from Busan to Tokyo at 11.40am, and get there around 1.30pm. We're looking forward to exploring Japan for a week, and can't wait to get home. We'll try to put a few pics up if we have time! Can't wait to see everyone!!!

One More Trip!

We've just learned that we have the chance to go to the Philippines next week! Heather's director takes students there every vacation to study at English Camps, and we'll be able to go with!
We leave July 6th after work and will stay in Manila for three full days! Then we'll come back to Korea, get our stuff, and head for Tokyo the next day, July 11th! We're pretty excited and it should be a fun time! Now we're super busying getting our last-minute packing done! YAY!

Jeju Island 5-26 Illchulbong

Jeju 5-26: Stone Grandfathers

DMZ 6-2: Standing in North Korea.

Suwon Fortress 6-3:Traditional Guard near the wall.

The Link to the photos of when our friends visited:

http://uwrf.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2039284&l=c6a81&id=184902869

The link to our Jeju Island photos:

http://uwrf.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038490&l=c48dd&id=184902869

Slackers

We haven't been keeping up with our postings lately, but we haven't done that much either! It's officially Monsoon Season, so it rains pretty much every day. It's quite humid, too, so we've learned to seal our food air-tight!
Last Saturday we met up with B's former co-workers. We had a nice dinner, and then had a few beers! It was really great to hang out with them one last time. We are now setting up plans to meet with people who we hope to see again b4 we return to the States.
Hopefully we'll get to visit a few more cool places near the Tongyeong area over the next two weekends, and if we don't get rained out we'll hopefully have some good shots!
We really appreciate everyone who's checked our blog this year, we can't wait to see you all very soon!

21 Days

Well, we've officially got three weeks left in Korea. Some things will be missed, but we're looking forward to seeing family and friends again! Plus, we'll be back in September, so no worries.

On Saturday, H visited a friend who just had a baby. We attended her wedding in September, and now we've been able to see her baby. It was a girl, but no name has been given yet. It's common for that to happen here:the family must choose a name that they think is fitting for the child. Many visit fortune tellers, who instruct them on good names for the baby. It's supposed to be a busy year for child births in 2007, as it's the year of the Golden Pig, and it's supposed to be very good to have a baby during that time. My friend's sister and sister-in-law have both had babies within the past 6 months!!

This weekend we plan to celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary at a beautiful beach near Tongyeong. We've not yet been there, but have heard great things about it! Pictures will follow if we don't get rained out. It's the beginning of the rainy season here, so we've got to play some things by ear.

A Nice Vacation

My two best friends visited us for 10 days, and we had a blast. They got to experience a lot of interesting things, and fun was had by all. We visited Seoul this past weekend, and pics will follow soon. These are a few shots from around Tongyeong.

5-28: H, Emily, and Tara at a tasty restaurant!

5-29: Em & Tara with one of my classes.

5-30:The girls visit Hansando shrine.

5-31:We climb Mireuk Mountain in the early AM.

Jeju (재주), the Schmidt and the Museus

Our four day excursion to Jeju Island was just what we needed. We packed as much into every day as we could. Lots of waterfalls, palm trees and volcanic formations. It's hard to get tickets to and fro because travel agents buy all of them and then sell tour packages so we were forced to return early Sunday morning but all we had to do was kill the day in Busan and wait for the Tara and Emily to arrive. They walked out the gates at 9pm and we were off to Tongyeong. They're gradually getting the feel of the city, people, culture and time zone. Everyone wants to meet them so we're all getting a lot of free meals. This weekend we'll head to Seoul and the DMZ.

Briefly

Over the weekend we ventured up to Seoul, the four and half hours feel shorter every time, for the Birth of Buddha Lantern Parade. The parade was Sunday night so we spent Saturday and most of Sunday exploring. We met one of Brandon ex-coworkers for lunch and did some catching up. The parade was unlike any we've seen in terms of size and theme. For two hour solid lines of people marched down one of Seoul's main corridors carrying lanterns with larger lanterns on wheels interspersed amongst them. The monks and other marchers were all smiles and the street crowd cheered, clapped and occasionally got sucked into the parade.

We leave for Jeju Island bright and early Wednesday morning so we're busy packing and cleaning and won't get pictures on for at least a week (we had to take the night bus home so we got home at 4am Monday morning, cutting our prep ane recovery time short). The Schmidt girls have less than a week before they meet Asia and Heather may be just as excited as they are (Brandon doesn't get excited). If we get internet service while in Jeju we'll post and try to slip a pic or two on here.

Feel free to leave comments...

The group from "Hero" Taekwondo school. Some of the little guys were testing for their 3rd degree belts!


B and I awaiting our birg test. Notice the sea of white in the background!

Since the last time...

After our trip to the English Village Brandon got pretty sick, he missed a day of work and went to the hospital twice ($35 the first time, $15 the second [total: drugs and doctor visit]). They said he had bronchitis/acute tonsilitis but apparently that's what they tell everybody with a fever. The next weekend we tried to go to a Buttterfly festival a few hours away, but we made the mistake of going on Children's Day so we saw a few hundred thousand people and a dozen or so butterflies. We didn't stay long because the lines to the exhibits were huge and just trying to walk around took a lot of effort and patience.
Last weekend we devoted to Taekwondo and tested for Black Belts. Saturday we trained for three hours, making sure we knew our Poomse (choreographed movements) and sparred for a few minutes. Sunday we started at 10am with more review, then we had lunch and headed to Jinju where the testing was taking place for all of Gyeongnam province. We had to wait our turn amongst the other 6,000 people taking tests so we didn't get in until 5pm. It looked like an army of children in white uniforms. We'll get pictures on a little later. For the test the judges picked one of four Poomse and we had to do it, then we sparred with a partner for about 30 seconds just to prove that we were willing to kick and be kicked. We won't know for sure if we passed for a few weeks but our fingers are crossed. Neither of us really wants to go through that again, it was pretty nerve racking to wait seven hours in anticipation and you can believe we were the only foreigners around so all eyes were on us.
A few more days and then we'll be back in Seoul for Buddha's birthday, there will be a big lantern parade through the streets Sunday evening. A few days later and we'll take a trip down to Jeju-do for an island getaway. We'll be there four days and then come back to Busan to meet our friends Tara and Emily at the airport. They'll be here about 10 days and we'll do our best to give them as complete an overview of Korea as possible.
We've got just two months left before we come home. We'll stopover in Tokyo and look around the largest megalopolis in the world for a week. We've got a visit to Mt Fuji planned and expect to have a very memorable experience. We'll get back to MSP on July 18th and probably be stateside until September, when we'll come back here for another year. So anybody who didn't get the chance to come has another opportunity to expand their horizons. That's all for now, we'll get those pictures on ASAP.

Ansan English Village

This past weekend we traveled with B's school to an English Camp. We took 25 elementary-aged children, and the bus ride was a long 6.5 hour ride! Once we got to the camp, it was pretty interesting. We ended up being assigned 6 students to care for. Mine were older and quite well-behaved. B's, on the other hand, were a bit too rowdy for their own good. He spent the majority of the time keeping them out of trouble or apologizing for their mis-deeds. The older girls walked away with some good memories and learned some important things along the way.

We got home Sun at 10pm, and the next day B wasn't feeling well. Tonight (Wed.) he had afever of 102.8 so we figured it was time for a visit to the hospital. Roundtrip it took us an hour, and we learned that he has an acute case of tonsilitis, for which he received 2 shots and a bunch of pills. Total cost: $30, including the taxi rides. His temp has already dropped 2 degrees and it's only been an hour.

Here are a few shots from our Ansan Adventure!

B's boys working on a science experiment.

Amy, Lisa, Lucy, Lauren, H, Victorie, and Michelle.

B and Emily, his most playful student!

Jindo Sea Parting Festival.

Thursday, looking at the people from a bird's eye view!

Our nice new friend, Mr. Park and Brandon.

http://uwrf.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035704&l=df547&id=184902869

Sea Parting Festival

On Wed. and Thurs, we took vacation and headed to the west coast. There was a sea parting festival going on, and we thought we should check it out. It took us over 6 hours to get there, as the town is on an island and it quite small. We changed buses 3 times and finally made it there around 2pm. The festival itself was outside of town, so we hopped on a city bus and made it to the grounds around 4pm. Luckily for us, the actual parting occurred at 5pm, so we timed it perfectly. We grabbed some rubber boots and started marching across the sea from one island to the next. It was a really amazing experience and we're glad we had the chance to participate.
On Thursday, we ended up being shown around the whole island by a government official who works in Seoul but is from Jindo(the island). We were with him for over 5 hours, and he took us on a ferry boat cruise, out to lunch, a temple, a museum, and finally back to the Sea Parting Festival. We were very lucky to have met him, as we would not have been able to get to all those places without a car. He was a very friendly man and we learned lots of interesting things.
Saturday we had TKD for 2 hours. It's closely approaching our black belt test date, May 13, and our teacher is having Saturday classes for all the students to fine tune their skills.
Next weekend we're going with B's school to Seoul to visit an English Village. That should be fun.

The path leading to the temple.


One row of the famous wooden scripts.

The rarely decorated outer hall.

Daegu (대구) & Haeinsa (해인사)

Yesterday we visited the 3rd largest city in Korea: Daegu. We'd been there b4 but only to the famous amusement park there. H's school had a meeting there, so we hitched a free ride in the van. While the teachers were in the meeting, we checked out downtown. Unfortunately for us, the city is pretty spread out and we spent more time trying to get places than we did actually enjoying them. At 4pm we met up with our group again, and were pleasantly surprised when they decided to visit Haeinsa, a famous temple.
This temple is famous as it holds the "Koreana Tripitaka" the oldest Buddhist scripts in Korea. They have been preserved for at least a thousand years in their original storage place! Another interesting thing is that the temple had just finished holding a festival, so there were colorful banners everywhere! We'd never seen that at a temple before. It was a beautiful spring day and we had a great time. When we got home around 10pm we were greeted by our new camera that we won from the contest! It's pretty sweet!!
Yesterday was also an important day as Emily Schmidt and Trent Museus were married in Brainderd, MN. We're really sorry to have missed their special day. We wish them the best!