Hey All! Sorry it's been so long.
Albeit a long while since we've blogged, it has mostly been due to lack of time rather than lack of blogable activities. One of our first excursions happened weeks ago when we had a few extra days off for Buddha's birthday and Children's Day. We decided to join a bunch of our co-workers on an island excursion. The island was called Deokjeokdo and was located off Inchon where the airport is.
It took a while to get to Inchon via bus and then we had to take a ferry to the island. This trip was a few weeks after the tragic ferry incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_MV_Sewol) so we made sure to sit on top of the boat. It was a very pleasant trip there where you could buy ramen and beer from a snack stand inside.
The island itself was beautiful. Note some pictures we took:
We stayed in a "pension" which consisted of a room and two floor mats to sleep on. In Korea floor mats are very common to have instead of beds. Here, the heating in many buildings is done via floor heating so people just sleep in floor beds. With a warm blanket on top and it is like being in snuggely buggely pita pocket that is nearly impossible to escape. It also some sort of kitchenette where we had a beautiful view of a broken down toilet in the lot beneath our window. It appeared to have been used just before it was disconnected.
Despite being frigid at the time we hung out at the beach nearly every day. We did a ton of grilling of samgipsal (which is essentially 3 fat bacon).
There was also a ton of opportunities to hike all over the island. Chayla and I went hicking one day as well as me and one of our co-workers, Rory.
It was a pretty intense hike at points...
...but the views were beautiful.
We really enjoyed our time on the island. On the way back some of the kids were being super rowdy and, being teachers trying to get away from that aspect in our lives for a weekend, this was unacceptable. So Rory whipped into Pied Piper mode and played the "Let it Go" song from the movie Frozen, on his guitar and serenaded the kids into a comatose state. Over here, Frozen is still being sung by kids in school despite being over 12 months old. I've added a bonus picture that one of my kids drew.
