I've been back from vacation now for over 2 weeks. It already feels like forever though. From now until the end of July I only have 2 days off, so it's gonna be a long haul.
The first weekend I was back I decided to pick up my Korean traveling weekends again. Rebecca and I decided to go to a national park area in the middle of the country. We took a bus on Saturday morning and it took around 2 hours, when we got there we found a hotel and then
headed out on our adventures. First, we went to a cave and took the tour, which was cool. We were headed out of the cave when we noticed a sign for clay shooting so we of course were
intrigued. In Korea, a civilian owning a gun is illegal so they have a certain fascination with them. My dad has shotguns in Michigan and I have shot them before, but Rebecca had never shot a gun. We got to the range and the Koreans who worked there probably thought we were
crazy... i mean, just imagine two American girls walking into a gun shooting range in Korea. But we got right down to business. The guns in Korea and the whole process was definitely different than in America. First of all, the guns had no safeties on them, you loaded them, shut it, and it was loaded and ready to be fired. I hit 4 out of 10 clay pigeons which is a personal rec
ord for me. haha. After we shot the guns the men even took pictures of Rebecca pointing the barrel at the camera, which I knew my dad would NEVER let happen with his guns.
After the shotguns we decided to head to a temple nearby.... nearby being what we thought. We got in a taxi and after about 15 minutes started to count the money we had on us. We counted out 26,000 won which was including all of our coins. We started freaking out once the meter hit around 23,000 and eventually had to tell the cab driver to stop and explain to him in
broken Korean that we didn't have enough money to keep going. The cab driver laughed at us and told us he would take us the rest of the way. Nice people do exist! We got to the temple and were a little freaked out since we had spent every last won (literally) to get there. We joked in the cab that we would have to go to "Buddha's ATM" at the temple to take out money so we
wouldn't be stranded. As we walked into the temple we looked to our right and inside the
temple walls was A BANK! We were so lucky that this Buddhist temple was apparently a
modern one and had a bank inside. So random! Anyways we took out cash, and with the
newfound assurance we wouldn't be stranded in a random Korean Buddhist temple or walking home we headed in. This temple is one of the coolest ones I have seen so far in Korea. It is built into a valley and you had to walk up steep hills to get to the top buildings. The view from the top, therefore, is really stunning with the rest of the temple below you.
The next morning we had planned on going paragliding, but the weather was kinda crappy so we decided against it. We want to go back to this area once it's warmer out. Instead we took a walk across a huge bridge near the hotel, and then we went to a place called Aqualand.
Aqualand is an indoor waterpark/sauna and it was really funny. We spent most of our time there sitting in the hot tubs outside, since the actual waterpark was literally crawling with Korean children.
After our day at the waterpark we went out for some pizza and beer and then watched Indiana Jones in our hotel. We went to bed and I woke up at 5AM to watch the USA vs. Canada hockey game, which was really exciting, but sadly we lost. We headed back to Seoul that morning and went to our favorite spot - Myeongdong - and met up with our friends John and Q. The first ever H&M had opened in Seoul 2 days prior and we wanted to check it out. There was a red carpet, line, and the whole shabang but just like H&M in America it was kinda lame. Q is Korean and knows some of the better spots to shop so he introduced us to some new stores off the beaten path which was fun. We went out for sushi and then went home. School started officially the next day.
Hopefully I'll be doing more traveling and interesting things like this instead of just going out in Seoul every weekend now that it's getting warmer out. Chao for now.
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