bigeum-do

Almost two weeks ago, Andrew and I set out for Mokpo to join our friends Becky and Nick for our summer vacation.  We traveled by slow train, a long 6 + hours, then took a taxi to the boat ferry, hopped on the slow ferry, another 2 hours, missed the bus to the beach, waited another hour for a crazy restaurant owner with a long knife to drive us in the back of her truck to the beach and walked about 10 minutes to a nice place to set up camp.  From the time we left Jinyeong to the time we got to the beach it was well past 12 hours of traveling.  We had a really good time though for only camping for less than one day.  It was cloudy the next day but we all managed to get instantly fried.  Unfortunately it started to look rainy so we had to pack up camp about 3:30 in the afternoon to take the ferry back to Mokpo.  And we almost missed the boat ferry leaving at 6:30 because we had opened a bottle of wine and the ferry came a little early.  I'll soon have the rest of my photos and blog caught up on what we did after we returned to Mokpo.

These are my favorite photos + fun in the sun below.  You can check them all out on flickr.  

ice in the heat

A couple of weekends ago we went hiking at Miryang. Miryang is a mountain not far from Jinyeong.  It produces a strong icy wind even when it's 80+ degrees outside.  The hotter it is the colder the mountain is.  You can even see the ice in the rocks. We were told that in the winter the rocks are warm. Scientists can't explain how it works, but if someone did figure it out it would make for a good natural cooling/heating system for homes and buildings.
  Here is the flickr set to all of the photos. Below are a few favorites.

fun in the sun

I'm in the process of editing 500 photos from our weekend vacation to Mokpo and back.  Here is some fun in the sun and a preview of our trip.

bada bing bada boom

I finished all of my photos!  Here are three of my favorites from the last three sets.

 

Seomun Market in Deagu. Silver ballerina statues at a vendor: flickr deagu market

 

archclay museum in Kimhea. flat brick stone arch with modern structural influence:

flickr archclay

 

Gyeongju ancient tombs.  William and Xavier killing ants.: flickr gyeongju

geoje island... from may

Meow Meow... I am slowly catching up with my photos.  There is so much to be done as the season turns and the rain starts to fall, steady and hard.  These photos are from May, and wow has time flown since then.  IT'S ALMOST JULY! 

My plans for this mid-summer:
Finish editing and post my photos. 
Update my Korea book files. 
Research grad school application requirements. 
Edit my portfolio files and make my portfolio. 
Get grad school paperwork together. 
Book our September vacation trip. For the moment we are going to Hong Kong, but our possibilities change almost daily.

Most of these are long term goals, mostly finish it all before we come home in late fall.  Here is my inspirational palette of the set, see flickr to view them all.

haircut 2

Getting a haircut in Korea is always fun because they don't speak English and we both have to act out what it is we are talking about.  Luckily I had Glen transfer a few words for me before I went, "trim and layer".  When I got there I thought she kept asking me if I wanted another perm, and I was like "no, no, cut, cut!" while making the scissors action with my fingers.  After about 10 minutes I figured out she was asking if she had permed my hair 2 months ago.  Then it all made sense.  The best apart: the haircuts are really cheap, about $8.50.  It's safe to say I'm not going to want to dish out $30 every time I want a good haircut when I come back to the states.  The photo below makes it look shorter than it really is.  I even had her thin it. It feels like I don't have any hair at all :). Being that I have the thickest hair known to mankind, after my mom, this is a great thing!

ship yard

On one of our holidays we went to a ship yard with Kang, Choi, and the kids.  They had a Korean battle ship that was made in the U.S. and a fossil museum with a huge gallery of real pearls.
 flickr album

henry

Henry is Kang's 3rd son.  He just turned 1, which is actually 2 in Korea.  He gets his own album on flickr because he is so darn cute and I took many photos of just him learning how to walk. 

fish mountain from ... April??

I found myself staring at 5 or 6 folders of unedited photos last week.  I better get crack'n!!  here's round one:  fish mountain.  check flickr for all the photos uploaded.

Ps.

Ps. I'm going to Seoul this weekend for a girls weekend with Becky. It's been so hot and mucky here I am going to get some summer dresses for work.

Andrew is very happy to finally get rid of me!