Spring Cleaning

I know it's been quite a long time since we've posted anything to this blog, almost a whole month! A lot of things have gone into this slacker pie but mostly we've mixed 2 parts super busy with teaching with 1 cup of granulated laziness and a large dollop of actually living in Korea and doing less touristy stuff. We've had a fair share of weekend adventures mind you. In the last month we've seen Buddha's Birthday, explored Seogwipo on the other side of the island, seen an incredible air show put on by none other than Korea's Black Eagles, took an ATV around the island of Udo and eaten at some pretty spectacular restaurants. It sounds like a lot, but really most of our weekends have been spent shopping for groceries and other necessities at our local E-mart and watching the very limited selection of American movies here to stave off home sickness and culture shock. Plus I love me some salted popcorn -- a rare delicacy here in Korea.

 Let me tell you a little about where we are right now before we time travel through the next month. Summertime in in full swing in Jeju and it feels like someone has just washed their winter bedding and laid it out to dry over the whole island.  The humidity is a familiar bedfellow to Floridians like Lance and myself, but Koreans seem impervious to the stickiness. Deodorant as American's know it doesn't exist here or has, at the very least, a very limited selection. Koreans don't sweat and they don't smell. Lance and I need to take three showers a day to keep up with them.

The women also wear way more clothing than any tropical climate should allow. Much of my wardrobe and my beloved summer dresses can only be worn indoors away from the wrinkled noses and harsh "waygooken" murmurs of angry ajumma's and prevy stares of old Korean men amazed by my American bosom. Korean women tend to wear their skirts shorter than anything that would be deemed respectable in the United States, but as Korean women aren't nearly as curvy as Americans this trend isn't even slightly scandalous. It's just a lot of leg. However, and this is as literal as the word itself was before gasping teeny boppers got a hold of it a few years ago, women wear their tops to their collar bones. In the winter and spring I was able to, very fashionably, conceal myself with a scarf but now it's too hot. If I wear a scarf outside now it'll be drenched in sweat within half an hour. I'm not wearing triangle bikini tops and I didn't bring any halter anything to Korea. The tops I am wearing are modest by American standards, I promise. Clothing in America is just not built to Korean standards and Korean Clothing simply isn't built for me. Korea will just have to get over it. I'm sure some of the things that are said about me are the equivalent of  "American Hussy" and that's when I comfort myself my not being able to speak Korean. I remain blissfully unscathed by their comments.

The weather here is hot and sticky, but we've also been hit by an early bought of Monsoon season. In Florida we have a saying: If you don't like the weather just give it 10 minutes and it'll change. Florida get's hit by short-lived, sporadic and terrifyingly beautiful thunderstorms at about 3 pm every afternoon in the summer.  The rain will huff and puff in all directions and the thunder and lightening will try to blow your house down but after about 45 minutes the whole thing will have blown over and the sunshine for which my beautiful state is known will be back at it's full blown brutally-hot glory. In Korea it rains for days, only taking short breathers so you think that just maybe you can go to school without an umbrella so that it can be down pouring again when you leave.  It's been cloudy here all week and I'm sick of it, can you tell?

With the summer Lance and I are also battling the greatest battle we've encountered yet. Our enemies are stealthy and only attack at night. They have broken through all our defenses and inhabit inner sanctum of our fortress. In the morning we awake with the itchy reminders that they have yet again broken down our defenses and stolen something precious to us: our blood. Seriously though, these are mutant mosquitoes of epic proportion and I think I have the authority to say that as an Alumni of a university that pridefully calls its campus "The Swamp."  The problem here is that Korea does not know how to deal with mosquitoes at all. We think we have a problem with mosquitoes in Florida but we spray for the buggers and we put out advisories telling people to dump out standing water. We seal our houses air tight and as such we can escape mosquitoes. The housing here is not built to be air tight and that probably has to to more with the fact that in Korea air-conditioning is not nearly as prevalent as what it is in Florida. There are plenty of ways for mosquitoes to get in from windows that don't completely seal shut and tears in some of our screens. We could seal our inner house up (watch the video of our apartment to see what we mean) but it would mean that our apartment would be stiflingly hot. I don't particularly want to live in an oven. Our sink is also designed in such a way that it has standing water in it ALL THE TIME. Someone fire the guy who decided to add that feature in a part of the world that already struggles with mosquitoes. Today we're going to go and spend an exorbitant amount of money to buy a mosquito death trap and maybe one of those nifty electrified tennis rackets. We will show no mercy!

I think I've probably written enough, so if you all haven't already skipped to the picture portion of todays show, let's get on with the good stuff:

I was fortunate enough to have a commander of the Korean Black Eagle's. He usually takes English classes in Seoul but I was lucky enough to host him for a couple days while he was in Jeju because the Black Eagle's were putting on a show. He invited us to the show and gave us plenty of awesome swag. Here's the best clip of the show I was able to get:

Buddha's Birthday was on May 17th this year and due to some unfortunate rescheduling (that took place a few year ago and no one ever told us!) we missed the lantern parade which has been held the Saturday before Buddha's birthday the last few years. I was a little sad, but at least we still got to enjoy Buddha's actual B-day at one of his temples called Namguksa 남국사. This temple is actually pretty small compared to others we've sense discovered but it boasted truly beautiful garden. Buddha's birthday is kinda similar to Christmas, in that it gets an entire month of celebration ( we're that I were a deity myself and could claim the month of June). Starting May 1st all the buddhist temples and a lot of the public spaces in Korea et decorated with these beautiful brightly colored lanterns. There's usually a fantastic lantern parade, a couple of which we saw pictures of from friends scattered around the country, and then on the day of Buddha's birthday you can go to temple to pray, get free bimbibap and tea. We had a great time and Lance posed (reluctantly) for some great pictures.

We went to Seogwipo one weekend a couple weeks ago. Seogwipo is a smaller town on the other side of the Island and it's emptiness really contributes to it beauty. To get to Seogwipo you have to go over Halla Mountain. Being carless, we took the bus. Bus rides here are normally pretty terrifying, but while twisting and turning around a steep and narrow volcanic Mountain while it's raining? That's a special kind of wet your pants scary.  We took the journey so we could see one of Seogwipo's two spectacular waterfalls. The one we got to see, 정방폭포, empties directly into the ocean. You start at the very top of a the cliff and climb down to the waterfall before crossing some slippery and perilous rocks to get close enough to take some good pictures. Closer to the beach some little old ladies were selling raw seafood and soju and Lance and I decided to give it a try. It really says something about a meal when you think the raw octopus tentacles are the most palatable thing on your plate.

 Last weekend Lance and I visited Udo. Do means Island so really we just visited U Island. Udo is a small Island off the east side of Jeju. It takes about 15 minutes to get there by ferry. Though it took us an hour and a half to get to the port by bus. Once we arrived on Udo we got some lunch. Lance ordered some hairtail fish that was the most delicious fish I've ever had and I had abalone soup which is just a shell fish soup. Both were delicious. We then walked over to a guy who was renting out scooters, bicycles and ATVs. I really wanted an ATV but we were cautious because we heard you couldn't rent them without a Korean license. Lucky for us the gentlemen spoke a good amount of English and was more than willing to get us onto on ATV. He was especially generous because even though he didn't take card he let us borrow the ATV for two hours just asking us to stop by the ATM on the way back and pay when we returned the ATV.  The little adventure only cost us KRW 25,000 or about $25. On they way we stopped for Ice Cream, saw a few landmarks, took some pictures of some horses and walked on the beach. The beach, strangely enough, doesn't seem to be a place for swimming in Korea. Nor do they really wear swim clothes. It's more of a roll up your pants and stick your toes in situation.

Last night was Friday night for us. Our Friday's are particularly special because SDA celebrates the sabbath from sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday which means we get Friday afternoon off. Thanks Jesus! We pretty much slept all afternoon when we got back from class at 11 am because we can, and woke up around 5 pm. We were hungry and the kitchen was clean so I wasn't cooking. We decided that we should head out to get dinner. A new friend had shown us this wonderful little sushi restaurant earlier in the week and we decided to go back for dinner. When we arrived there were a couple people already waiting. They had a board outside the door where we wrote our name so it could be called when someone left. We waited for about 20 minutes and in that time about 10 people showed up to get into the cue line. It doesn't seem like a lot of an American restaurant, but this place probably held 25 people max. It has two booths and one long counter all arranged along a conveyor belt. We were lucky enough to get seats at the counter right across from one of the Sushi Chefs so we got all the good stuff right as he made it. The system is brilliant and I'm not sure why we don't do it back home. We were seated and given our water pitcher and each a steaming bowl of miso soup (which was refilled as soon as you could drink it). The conveyor belt had two types of plates, ones that cost KRW 1,300 and ones that cost KRW 1,500, so about $1.30 and $1.50 respectively. You take what you want from the belt and let your plates stack until your stuffed. When you're finally ready to go (and get ice cream at the Baskin Robbin's downstairs ) you signal to your waiter who will come and count your plates and give you the check. We ate like gluttons but still only payed about $28.00. After we left we each got an ice cream cone and walked around some of the back streets in City Hall. City Hall is kinda the party area in Jeju-Si our current home. We walked by bars and little boutiques and we played at a claw machine trying to win a stuffed animal until we realized there was a crowd of Korean's gawking at the waygooks. We had a good time all in all.