Namhae Island Vacation

Last Wednesday was election day in Korea, and Friday was memorial day. All the schools had Wednesday and Friday off, but some schools also gave Thursday off as well. I had Thursday off, but Gianni didn't. One of my coteacher asked me to go to a movie with her on Thursday, which was really nice. It's funny because I never really think that my coteachers want to hang out with me in a social way, so I'm always surprised when they ask me to do something. We say the new Tom Cruise movie called Edge of Tomorrow and went to a traditional Korean restaurant beforehand. It was a really nice afternoon, even though it was raining a bit. The movie was better than I expected it to be. Tom Cruise hasn't been making good movies for a while, but this one had a really cool story, and I like the lead actress in it also. After the movie, Mi-Sook helped me figure out where to get one of the stamps for my book. I have been hiking at Apsan twice now, and that's one of the locations, but I never can never go during the day, when the stamp booth is actually open, so I had to cheat a little on this stamp. I thought Thursday would be a perfect day to get it, and it's on my way home from downtown. Mi-Sook told me what to say to the taxi driver, and he got me to where I needed to be. I'm glad I asked her about it though because I never would have found this place on my own. I got the stamp in what looked like an office building at the base of the mountain, but the building was at another entrance to some of the other hiking trails, and I had never been there before. The hike I've done both times has been the steep one of the observatory, and it's around the other side of the mountain. This hiking trail entrance was in a really nice, forested area, and the trails looked like they'd be more of an enjoyable hike than the one I've done before. I'll have to go back.

Cliff Side by the Rice terraces

Gianni and I have been attending a lot of the tours and events hosted by Enjoy Korea, one of the many tour companies for foreigners in Korea. We went to Jindo and Jinhae already, and, this past long weekend, we took a trip with them to Namhae Island. Namhae is a big island on the southern coast of Korea in the East China Sea. There's a bridge that connects it to the mainland, so we didn't have to take a ferry or anything like that. This is our second island trip, and I though Namhae was more beautiful than Seonyudo. We went to Seonyudo when the weather was still a bit chilly, and it was really great

Rice growing in the terraces

getting to bike around the island, but Seonyudo had a lot of trash around. Namhae was pretty clean (at

 least the beach we stayed near was), and there were tons of rice paddies and fields for farming. It's about three hours outside of Daegu, although it took us longer to get there due to the holiday traffic. Gianni and I brought bagels for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and ground beef for burgers for one night's dinner. I think we were pretty well-prepared. I didn't even get too badly burned! Before checking in to our pension, we stopped at a small village on the island called Darengi Village. It's a really beautiful location on a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. Rice terraces are built into the cliff side, so we got a better understanding for how rice is grown. It's a really beautiful place, but the cliff is really steep, and it was very hot that day. I could never live on that cliff, but there were houses and

Sangju Beach

everything. I'm always astonished by the way that some people live here. I often feel like I'm transported back to the Korea from 70 years ago when I get out of the big cities. We spent a few hours at the rice terraces before heading to the pension that was located 5 minutes walk away from Sangju Beach. There was a camping option on this trip, but we opted for the pension. The pension was the best one I've stayed at in Korea so far. It was really clean and new-looking. We still had to sleep on the floor, but the sleeping mats were really comfortable. The pension even had a pool table and meeting room inside, and

BBQ with friends

barbecues and picnic tables for rent outside. They also had a few cats roaming around, and one cat had recently had a litter of kittens, so we got to play with them! We shared a room with our friends Marie, Ben, Sian, and Colette. Our room had a bedroom (no bed) and a main living space with a kitchen, TV, and porch. There were a few restaurants in the area, but also some convenience stores. It was really lovely and comfortable. The rest of the day we could do whatever we wanted, so most people decided to get some lunch and head down to the beach. Some people from our group, as well as a lot of Koreans, were camping out down by the beach. The Koreans definitely know how to camp. They come prepared! Although some people were definitely not "roughing it." We saw one family with a projector screen and TV playing! The tents were all really close to one another, packed in. It's really different than what camping is like at home, and another reminder that personal space is not a thing here. I collected sea

memorial day fireworks

 shells (found some nice pink ones with spotted patterns), and we hung out with our friends for a bit before dinner. We all decided to do some grilling on the first night, so we rented a barbecue from the pension. After dinner, we headed back to the beach and hung out there watching people shoot off fireworks. On Memorial Day in Korea, a lot of the major city have sirens that go off to signify a moment of silence. On the island though, the Koreans that were camping by the beach used fireworks to mark the occasion instead. They sell all kinds of fireworks at the convenience store, and they are really fun to play with.

On the next day, there were a few options. It's nice that we weren't forced to do anything that we didn't want to. It made the weekend more relaxing. We decided to get up early for a visit to a nearby temple, Boriam Temple. To get to the temple, we took our bus to the base of a mountain where we then got a shuttle bus up the mountain a bit. From there, it's still a 15 minute walk up the mountain to get to the temple. The hike wasn't quite as steep as Apsan is, so we handled it alright. Unfortunately, it was really foggy that morning, so we couldn't see anything when we actually got the temple. It would have been a beautiful view, I'm sure. The temple itself was built into the mountain, and when we arrived, there was some sort of service happening and a monk was chanting. It was interesting to listen to. We took some nice pictures and headed back down to get on the bus. At the base of the mountain, Gianni and I bought some fried seaweed snacks. They are basically seaweed chips, and they were so tasty! The bus went back to the hostel to pick up those who didn't want to go to the temple. The second stop was either another beach, Songjeong Beach, or German Village. German Village was built by a few Koreans who moved to Germany for a bit and really enjoyed living there.

The boys made a sandcastle

 when they came back to Korea, they built homes in the German-style, but they didn't expect it to be a tourist destination. It turned into one, and they sell German beers and some food. There's also an American Village on the island that was built because the German one got popular. We drove past it on the bus. It has a statue of liberty and everything! It
looked hilarious, actually. We decided not to go to the German Village because there isn't a whole lot to do there. Instead, we relaxed on the beach. The boys built a sand castle with the sand castle toy set Jake bought. I

Songjeong Beach

 forgot my book, unfortunately, but Gianni and I took a nice walk along the beach. The water was kind of cold, but not as cold as in Maine in the summer. I was a chicken though and didn't really swim. We were supposed to stay on the beach until sunset, but people were ready to go back to the pension early. Stacey Kim, the woman who runs the tour company, is really flexible with plans and very accommodating, so we took the bus back early. Songjeong Beach wasn't as nice as the beach we were staying near. There was a lot of trash along it. We got dinner with our friends at a barbecue restaurant near the pension and headed back to the pension. We meant to get up and go for a walk on the beach, but it had been a late night and an early morning, so we all ended up hanging out in the room and watching James Bond movies on TV before going to bed early. I had a headache too, so I wasn't really in the mood for going out.

kayaking champs

The last day of our trip was a bit more active. We got up semi-early to check out of the hostel. We were part of the second bus, so we had a few hours to wait after checking out before going kayaking. While the first bus was kayaking, we loaded our things on to the bus and played UNO for a bit. I don't think it's very easy for foreigners to arrange boating activities, like kayaking, on their own. This dock was kind of randomly placed with not much else in the area. We got our snorkel and flippers and hopped in our two-person kayaks. The kayaks were a little strange because there wasn't really a hole. you just sit on top of it in the seats. I think Gianni and I impressed some of our friends with our kayaking abilities--that's what a summer spent at Charles River Kayaking Camp does! The first part of the kayak was kind of lame. We were in a bay area, and it wasn't the nicest of spots. But when we got out to the nearby island, it got better. It wasn't a long kayak, but it was fun. We kayaked all around this rocky island that had a lot of inlets and cave-type things. We went into crack/cave in the island that was only wide

The cave we went into

enough to fit two boats. You couldn't even turn around inside it. It wasn't very long, but it was pretty cool. We stopped on a little, rocky beach on the island to try out our snorkels. Gianni couldn't get used to his, and the water was freezing. It was a chilly day already, so neither of us felt too much like swimming. Our friends tried for a little while, and they said they saw some cool things out by the rocks, but I didn't want to go without Gianni. Also, they said they saw a jelly fish, which made them turn around, and I didn't feel like encountering one of those by accident. We decided to get back in the kayak and keep paddling instead. When it was time to head back, we got together with our friends and went in together. The people who run the kayak rental were great because they even have showers you can use! We all rinsed off in the showers and got changed out of our bathing suits. Gianni and I ate our lunch, and the bus headed back to the pension to pick up the first bus of people and then go back to Daegu. We didn't run into too much traffic on the way home, which was great.

 It was both an active and relaxing long weekend, and it was much needed! We had a great time, and we can't wait for our next trip with Enjoy
Korea to a mud festival in July!