Hi all.
Just thought it was about time for another update. I'll take some time to tell you about something that slipped through the cracks a while ago, and then give you the lowdown on recent doings.
Back at the beginning of August, our school closed down for a whopping three-day summer vacation, so we got some unexpected holiday time, which was nice. We tossed around some ideas about what we could do or where we could go, but ultimately it was decided that Becca needed a bit of recharge time before heading into our second contract, so she went home for about a week, on a whirlwind family-only tour of the motherland. She enjoyed herself thoroughly and returned fully recuperated and recharged. Also, she brought back loads of delicious Canadian snacks, which were awesome. Yes, they're all LONG gone by now.
While she was at home, I decided to do a little more exploring around Korea, so after going up to the airport to see her off I stayed overnight in Seoul, then took an early morning train down to Mokpo, a little city on the extreme bottom-left (or South-West for the map/compass-savvy) corner of Korea. I've always been somwhat curious about this little town, because way back when we were first trying to find jobs here, we were about to sign a contract with a couple schools in that selfsame city. This happened and we decided on Cheongju and haven't regretted it one bit, but as a result, I've always wanted to at least see the city in which we almost ended up... wait.... that still ends with a preposition.....
I've always wanted to at least see the city up in which we almost ended.
That's better.
Grammar is awesome.
Moving on...
So, I arrived in Mokpo at around 9:45am after about 2.5 hours on the KTX (Korea's bullet train) and it was a beautiful day. Extremely hot, but beautiful. I took some time to explore the town.
It's much smaller than Cheongju, but pretty nice. It's right on the coast, has a Marine Product Town:
a nice little beach:
and a random completely unexplained statue of a mermaid on a rock by the side of the ocean-view highway:
From there I caught a ferry out to an island called Heuksando, about 125ish kilometers off the coast. It was amazing. Completely unlike anything I've seen in Korea. Clean blue ocean water, relatively quiet streets, an almost total absense of neon lights. Just amazing. Here's a couple shots of my first impressions, and one of me, to prove that I didn't just get the picures out of a magazine.
The last one is taken from the top of one of the peaks on the island. I went for a hike up along one of the roads that the Lonely Planet guide assured me would lead me to another village (wrong) for about an hour and a half and ended up with some pretty impressive views and about ten pounds less sweat.
Anyway, by the time I got back to the first village where the ferry dropped us off, I found out to my delight (wrong) that there wasn't a single motel room available. I decided to mosey back to the ferry terminal to see if there was any way to get back to Mokpo for the night, and there wasn't, but the guy working the ticket booth was really helpful and called someone at the hotel that can just be seen in the top picture just above and found out that they had rooms open. Now these rooms were about 4 times as expensive as the ones that I originally wanted, but since the other option was sleepin on the street or in the ferry terminal, I decided not to quibble too much.
And the room was awesome. It actually had a bathtub. And a really great shower. And a comfy bed. And a balcony with a view like this:
I had a 30 minute shower then a two hour cold bath and then a three hour nap in the awesomely air conditioned room (had I mentioned that I had only had a short crappy night's sleep in a ratty Seoul yeogwan in the last 48 hours? and it had been stupidly hot the whole time?).
The downside to all this was that by the time I woke up, there weren't any restaurants open in the village, and the shuttle buses to the main village on the island had stopped running. It was about 10pm. Luckily the front desk people were awesome and within about 15 minutes of eventually getting the point across that I needed food sometime tonight, they had found me a bowl of rice, two kinds of kimchi and some ramyeon, which was delicious. Incidentally, kimchi made from onions makes the regular cabbage stuff just taste like un-dressed salad. It's intense.
Anyway, I ate my fill of the food that they didn't charge me anything for and went back to my room to enjoy (wrong) the amazing thespian talents of one Mr. Steven Seagal in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory on tv.
The next morning I hopped back on the ferry, explored a little more of Mokpo and got back on the train to Cheongju. All in all, really good times, although travelling solo is something of a let-down after being spoilt so thoroughly over the last couple years. Ah well.
Anyway, that brings you up to speed on that little missed story. Recently not a whole lot has been going on around here. I've now started the MTS program at Wycliffe College on a VERY part-time basis, being enrolled in a single online course. I'm actually quite looking forward to getting back into schooling mode, so it's pretty cool.
Anyway, if anything else exciting happens, I'll be sure to let you all know.
peace out, blog posse.