good places and great friends

Since Chuseok I mentioned that Andrew and I got sick.  I was sick for over 5 weeks, but that didn't stop us from doing some great stuff.  I'm done editing all my photos and below are the 5 sets that I have recently uploaded to flickr. 

Next up: we talked to the new teachers that are going to replace us at our school and they are getting excited to move here.  They will arrive next Friday night.  We also talked to Becky and Nick who are planning to rent a car and come visit us next weekend.  One last goodbye before we go to our separate continents.  We don't have much planned for their visit yet, but it is Becky's birthday weekend so it shall be lots of fun. 

We have ten days of teaching left and then Andrew and I are going to Jeju Island, often referred to as Korea's Hawaii, for 5 days before we take a long trip back to the states. We are very excited to be home with our families and friends for the holidays, something we missed out on last year. 
Enjoy the photos below! Click on the yellow title to go to the flickr set.

somaemuldo and deungdaeseom 

We drove to an island and then took a ferry to another island.  When we got there we hiked straight up the mountain and then back down to where the sea parts every so often.  We could cross to an even smaller island.  When we left the tide was starting to rise and the path was being close.  How COOL is that!

When we got back to the main land we walked around a really popular neighborhood that has murals on the buildings.  There was this cute little van selling ice cream.  Note that Andrew is taller than the van, and this is a typical sized van for Korea.

This is one of the murals on the buildings.  I believe that the paintings were done by the University of Korea's Art department.  Some of the paintings were quite entertaining.

cosmos flower festival 

We were planning to go to the Jinju Lantern Festival this day and found out there was also a cosmos festival 30 minutes north of Jinju.  The traffic to the festivals were really bad.  It took us four hours to get there and 3 hours to get home.  It's typically a 1- 1 1/2 hour drive.

jinju lantern festival 

I already wrote a post about the Jinju festival.  It was really big and busy.  It was one of my number one things to see while we were in Korea.  I'm really glad it worked out for us to go, and that Kang invited us to go with his family.

iris

More recently Iris invited us to have a picnic with her family.  It was really peaceful and relaxing.  Her parents own a piece of land off of some rice land that her mom grows all of their vegetables at.  We cooked sam gip sal on the grill served with all the fixings from their land.  Behind their land is a big water reservoir that you can walk along built paths.  It was quite a surprise to have such a relaxing day.

Iris and her younger brother Kay.  They are very tall.

Iris' dad.  It was actually his birthday.  I think he was turning 56.

dancing rain set

Last weekend we went to a horse track and played with the kids. While we were walking around I spotted a weird looking bird in a nest under a Mongolian tent roof overhang.  I pulled out my camera to take a picture and as I got closer the bird slid down the window flap pulled open and hit the railing and fell to the floor.  I then realized it was a baby kitten.  It took a second or two for me to realize that there was another one laying right next to it which probably also had the traumatic experience of sliding out of the tent and falling a few feet to the deck .  I was really hesitant to touch them because I didn't want to get any diseases they might of had or for the mom to see me and attack.  But there was no mom so I ran to find Andrew.  He didn't think twice about picking them up and handing them to me.  While he was doing that I saw the tent roof moving around and I guessed there was another one up there.  Andrew lifted it open and found a third kitten and pulled it out after it hissed at him.  The kittens were maybe one  or 2 weeks old.  They were not safe where we found them. The staff workers swooped in and took them from us almost instantly.  I was so worried about them for a few days because they never said what they did with them.  But they probably weren't old enough to be without their mother, who would come back to find her three babies gone.  All very sad.  I like to think the mother found them in the horse barns or the staff are nursing them to health to take home.