But before I get into any details, I'd like to take this moment to congratulate myself on finishing ALL of my required reading for my student David. In addition to that, I have succeeded in meeting one out of two of my new year's resolutions, which was to finish reading my 흥부전 and 심청전 book before 2009. The other resolution was to finish learning my 1000 Korean vocabulary words. I only have 600 left. Only.
EM SUMMER RETREAT
Joanne and her amazing youth ministry.
While Evelyn was scared for her life, her mother was busy capturing this Kodak moment with my camera.
What a mom!
I actually had the privilege of washing Yom's feet.
Jesus Rangers!
Speech Contest
This boy always wins second or third place.
Our awesome AWESOME 실장님...
with the most awesome AWESOME stress.
My female coworkers.
고성
I've been meaning to visit 종성's place for a long time, but I finally got a chance to squeeze in a few days in my vacation. He first took me to where they have the famous Dinosaur Expo. I used to LOVE dinosaurs!
He was going to show me this really cool cave area, but then these not-so-cool waves surprised us and destroyed our shoes and pants.
회's expensive, but 종성's a good guy.
His father's church.
Their old church.
Their dope pad.
고성
was
very
beautiful!
종성's Sunday School
One of the best things I got to do was go bike riding in the open fields of the countryside.
Reminded me of the childhood scenes from 가을 동화.
Crazy big tombs.
Very high.
Doesn't this remind you of the standard Windows XP desktop picture?
Along with bike riding, I thoroughly enjoyed playing pingpong with 종성!
The wonderful thing about the countryside is that there's nothing to do. Living in Seoul, I'm ALWAYS doing something, even for leisure. However, what I wanted to do more than anything during this vacation was to DO NOTHING. My favorite time in 고성 was whenever I just sat on the floor in 종성's room just looking outside his window. Thank you for the real vacation, friend.
제주도 (my not so relaxing vacation)
My dad and I first took the KTX all the way down to 목포, which is as far south of Korea as you can get.
Couldn't even fit in all the 반찬 in the picture.
From 목포, we took a ferry down to 제주도.
Everyone just chose a spot on the floor and did whatever to pass the time for 5 hours.
So we have this family friend who took care of us so well. On the way to our first meal, he called the restaurant and just told them to "get it ready." So gangster.
Amazing 볶음.
His phone was blowing up 24/7, making plans for golf and rescheduling flight plans for important people. Crazy busy.
Breakfast.
한라산, the highlight for my dad. This monster is 1900m tall, which would make it the tallest mountain in South Korea.
I was fairly happy before we started.
The power of Jeju typhoons!
Very beautiful day.
Cup ramen, the thing to do at one of the high points of the mountain.
Look how focused I am.
There were SO MANY STAIRS.
Oh yeah, and there were SO MANY STAIRS.
Did I mention to you that there were SO MANY STAIRS?
The top! This is the huge valley/crater in the middle of the mountain. I noticed that there wasn't too much water on any part of this mountain...probably because it's a volcano.
Still happy.
Very clear day.
I was so sweaty that I had to change shirts. Unfortunately, I jacked up the second one too. It was crazy windy up there!
Going back down. This was when my smile slowly turned upside down.
I was so tired that I just stopped taking pictures. I also grew an incredible hate for rocks.
I gathered up all my energy to take one last picture. As you can see, my dad had zero problems coming down. I, on the other hand, was cursing all of creation. Freaking 7+ hours! I officially quit hiking.
Out of all the things in Jeju, I was looking forward to the 흑돼지 삼겹살 the most.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. 돌돌이 still holds the gold in my heart.
This gave me a good laugh.
More breakfast.
This was the cleanest water I've ever seen in my life.
Lots of seafood since we were on an island.
I was actually very bitter during this part of the trip because my legs were killing me after 한라산. My dad kept taking us to places that required walking up and down stairs no matter how many times I groaned with every step. The man knows nothing of compassion.
But after taking a short nap with some shade and scenery, I felt much better.
성산일출봉. My personal favorite place in Jeju.
MORE STAIRS!!!
AHHH!!!
At the top, there was this carpet of trees. Very beautiful.
For our grand finale, we got invited to a bbq party where there was so much meat and alcohol.
The youngest person there was this 39-year-old mom who was only drinking 소맥s (소주 + 맥주) the whole night. Amazing Koreans.
This 흑돼지 did so much more justice.
Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery after a couple of pictures after this one. After all the eating and drinking, these three 아줌마s busted out guitars as they started performing all these old school Korean songs from their college days. It was so much fun! It was really funny watching them sing their clumsy "You Are My Sunshine." Such a great way to end Jeju.
"Get ready, Tank. We're gonna blow up cities tonight." I'm really going to miss Yom.
Dude, August was nuts!
Thought of the Day: Overrated.
Song of the Day: 거북이-비행기
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