Lunar New Year Korean Style

Lunar New Year for Koreans is one of the two biggest celebrations of the year. It is a time for all to return to their hometowns and spend time with their families. As well they go to the graves of their ancestors to show their respects by bowing to them. At my school I got the opportunity to dress up in traditional clothing (Hanboks), play traditional games and eat traditional food. It was super fun and really interesting. All the kids wore their Hanboks, they were soooo cute!!

Because of this celebration I got a few days off. In Korea you don't get many days off so you have to take advantage of every minute. So, five of my friends and I went to Jeju Island. It's the furthest South you can get in Korea although that doesn't mean that it is hot but definitely a little warmer.

It was fantastic!! We took the Ferry from a small town called Wando to the port in Jeju-Do. The islands along the way were beautiful and the water was that really nice blue that I love so much! The Ferry experience was great as the waters weren't too rough, but I've heard that if you get a windy day it can be pretty terrible.

Once we arrived in Jeju-Si (the biggest city on the Island) we found a Mexican restaurant!! I haven't been eating too much western food since I arrived in Korea so this was a nice treat. Once we had filled our belly's we took a city bus for about 45 minutes to our resort. We scored big time! Our accommodations were right on the beach with tonnes of beautiful nature including palm trees, a small stream and a really wicked rocky shoreline. The first night we stayed at the hotel and rocked the Nori-Bang (Karaoke) rooms.
On our second day we had a driver with a minivan to tour us around the island. I had been reading lots about the island so I got voted as the team leader for awhile which meant I got shotgun (yup still winning shot gun across the world Court, Mahal and Meag! :) ) Here are some of the highlights:

• Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak- an extinct volcano from about 100,000 years ago. We climbed to the top were we saw an amazing view! It was interesting as I had never thought about what the inside of an extinct volcano looked like. It basically looks like a big shallow field that you would want to frolic in (well I would).


• Random Korean grocery store- We were hungry after the hike so we wanted to get some food, but as it was the actual day of Sollal (New Years) everything was closed. We managed to find a grocery store that was open and decided on Ramen (noodles) which sounds boring doesn't it? However, we ended up eating in the back of this grocery store and the grocery store worker made us rice and gave us kimchie and other side dishes! It was delicious she even handed us some bananas as we left. Koreans are so very accommodating and caring (sometimes).


• Lava Tube and more random things- We walked through a really big cave where lava had once been flowing. In Korea they tend to take something really natural and add more things to make it more of a tourist attraction. So at this same place we saw an amazing cactus exhibition (I took lots of pictures for my aunt who loves cactuses), crazy ostriches, wicked trees and many more randomly cool things.


• Orange Farm- We stopped at an orange farm where we were able to pick oranges from the tree and wander around.
• 2nd Volcano Site- It wasn`t on the tourist map so we had the entire volcano to ourselves. We were inland and we could see to the coast where we had climbed the original volcano. We walked up the side and then around and finally down into it. It was really cool.


• Mystery Road- Basically some taxi driver was trying to find an address a couple years ago and he noticed that although he was going up a hill he appeared to actually be going down! It's pretty wild! We poured some water on the road and it worked it should have been going down the hill but it was going up! Wild!

The next day we took it real easy and went to the beach. We collected seashells, played a little football, threw a Frisbee around and just took in everything around us. We then returned to our hotel and had a Barbeque and then a campfire beside the ocean. It felt like home for awhile with everybody just sitting around the fire shooting the breeze. Hearing the ocean waves come in at the same time as the fire was amazing!

For our last day we were going to rent scooters but that didn't work out so we went back to the beach to play some soccer and take in all the sun. It was so nice out!! Then we left the boys for a bit and went to the saunas for some girl talk time J. We ended up meeting four other foreigners which was a nice surprise. That night we all went out for a great supper and then out for one to many drinks ;) .

It was a great trip balanced with both adventure and relaxation. Thanks for checking out my blog, love you all and sending you smiles wherever you are in the world! MUAHH!