In Which We Return to U-do

So, last time when we went to U-do for Nancy's birthday, we had an awesome time. It was super fun renting a scooter and scooting around the island and seeing all the different things. However, I felt like we didn't see everything the island had to offer, foremost among them the peak (which isn't really that high, but is still a peak) and the view it had to offer. In preface to this actual story, I'd like to point out that every time a weekend is coming up (so, like, every Wednesday) we ask each other, "So, what are we going to do this weekend?" Back home, about every other week I would say, "Let's just relax this weekend, we went canyoneering last weekend" or something like that. However, here, since there's so much to do and we're only going to be here for a year, I don't think that's possible. So, if you're reading this and you're thinking to yourself, "Holy crap, these guys do a lot of stuff!" that's because we don't feel like we can let a weekend go to waste. That being said, I continue with our story.

We ended up having to wait quite a while for the inter-city bus at the terminal, but when we did finally get on, it took a different route out to the port than it took last time, which I thought was faster. It also had better views out over the ocean. It was a perfect day to visit U-do. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it wasn't even hazy! People always talk about how the air is so clean here, but when I got here, I was like, "Really? The air is clean?" Then I went to Seoul and I realized what they were talking about. Anyway, a lot of days here are pretty hazy, but Saturday was awesome with great visibility. We had a pleasant ferry ride with only one problem: we got on the ferry going to the wrong port on U-do. We didn't realize this for sure until we saw the port we wanted going by and said, "Well, crap." This upended our plans a little bit. We had been planning to walk from the port to the peak, because it was quite close. But we thought it would be too far to walk from this port. We waited for a bus for about twenty minutes, because there is a bus that runs on U-do, but it came and drove straight past the bus stop. Our final decision was just to walk. Turns out that U-do is smaller than we thought. We got to the "trailhead" (I put that in quotation marks because it's not much of a trail or a hike to the peak.), which was on the completely opposite side of the island, in about twenty minutes of walking, even when we had to move over to the side of the road for tour buses that seemed determined to run us over about every two minutes. We also saw a really cute puppy that Nancy almost stole. Here are a couple pictures.

Looking back at Jeju-do from the port. The big mountain is Hallasan, the tallest mountain in Korea.

Nancy totally wanted to steal this puppy. He was pretty cute.

Once we got to the trailhead, we decided it was lunchtime. We ended up buying a corn dog and a bag of potato sticks (which are like french fries, only with the consistency of Styrofoam, but they're surprisingly good). Then we headed up the trail for the peak. It was super pretty, and not too busy, which also made it pretty nice. Here are some pictures from that.

Looking over at Jeju-do. This is supposed to be the best view of Mt. Halla. I'm not complaining.

Seongsan Ilchulbong, also known as Sunrise Peak.

Us with U-do peak (Udobong) in the background. You may notice in this picture and in the preceding one that my hair has developed even more fantastic wings.

Cool lava rock formations on the side of the peak.

Nancy on the peak! And some random people's bags in the foreground.

Looking across the island. So green!

Yeah, it's a pretty small island. 

Nancy on her way back down.

I took another picture of the mountain. Also, the boats in the foreground of this one are pretty cool.

After we came down from the peak, we decided to go up to the other side of the peak, where they have a lighthouse?

Entrance to lighthouse park. Like I said, I have fantastic hair wings.

Cows!

Artistic shadow shot.

They had a cool "lighthouse village" that had a whole bunch of model lighthouses. They had historic lighthouses as well as current ones, including models of all of the lighthouses that are currently operating in South Korea. We only took pictures of a couple of them.

This is a model of the lighthouse at Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
I thought that was pretty awesome.

The actual lighthouse.

This is a Chinese lighthouse that I don't think is actually there anymore, but it's the one we chose to take a picture with.

It wouldn't be Southeast Asia without a whole crapload of stairs!

Current U-do lighthouse.

Old U-do lighthouse, which looked perfectly good to me.

Another picture of the island.

And a picture of another island. And the small communities on U-do. Pretty cool. Nancy says, "That's so cute."

So, that was our most recent adventure. We both had a pretty good time, and I got another opportunity to wear my Korean hiking pants! What more could I ask for? Anyway, that's about all I have to say about this experience. This is Captain Danger out.

Hiking Olle Trail 18

     Well, we did another of the island's Olle hiking trails.  Seeing that they are all at least 18 km long and I don't always feel like walking 18 km straight, we decided to do half of this trail last Saturday.  Then, when our plans for Wednesday's national holiday fell through because of the typhoon, it was the perfect opportunity to do the second half.  The trail was beautiful with lots of different scenery and Cliff and I agree that the first half was probably one of our very favorite trails so far.  

     It starts in town right near the Daiso store where they sell lots of foreign candy.  We loaded up with some trolley gummies and chocolate covered jelly bellies and headed on our way.  

     

The start of the trail along a river in town.

Stopped to do some exercises?  Until an old man came over and started yelling (mostly with hand signals actually) at us about an airplane coming. Still have no idea what that was about.  Never saw the airplane.

Going up to Sarabong Oreum.  Wouldn't be an asian hike without stairs.

At the top of the Oreum.  Right before Cliff had a great conversations with a Korean minister who was surprisingly kind and open minded. 

The most beautiful part of the trail was a path right on the edge of Sarabong.  It had the lovely green hill on one side and the beautiful coastline  on the other side.  

The ocean to our left

Grassy hills to the right.

We have to remind ourselves it is fall and in fact, not spring.

Now we begin Wednesday's section.  This part started at Samyeong beach, went up one oreum with a couple temples on it (one of them containing one of the treasures of Jeju), through some farmland, and along the coast for a lot of it.  It was really nice but not as nice or well maintained as the first half.

We finished the day with a trip to Ashley salad bar... This time we weren't disappointed as the brownies and cheesecake was available (this is one of the few places to get real cheesecake and not cake flavored like cheese and labeled cheesecake.)

In Which I Get a Round of Applause

So I've mentioned before that Nancy and I work at the same school. We have the same class schedule (with different classes) but we have breaks at the same time, etc. It's pretty awesome. At any rate, today we were going to class together and Nancy stopped me in the hall to tell me something, and my students were watching me through the hole in the frosted glass on the classroom door. When I went into class of seven third graders and said hello they all giggled and asked, "Teacher, you come together with girlfriend?" (I'd like to point out that at this point I'm pretty awesome at deciphering broken English.) I said, "I came down to class with my wife, yes." The students all gasped and said, "WIIIFE?" I said, "Yes, I am married, after all. I'm pretty sure I've told you this." At that, they all started clapping their hands in rhythm and singing, "Congratulation! Congratulation!" (Not to be confused with "Congratulations," because that is not what they were saying.) It was pretty awesome. I explained that I have been married for more than a year, but they just kept on congratulating me. So there you have it, more than a year later and I'm still getting congratulated on getting married.

I've realized that this is a pretty good opportunity to talk a little bit about our job, since I really haven't said much about it, aside from saying that it's easy. It is, but there's more to it. I remember when we were coming here, we found a blog that was written by a couple who worked at our school, and while they said a lot about Jeju, they hardly said anything about their school. That's pretty easy to do, as Jeju is so much cooler than school. But we wanted to know about the school, so maybe this will be useful to someone in the future. Anyway, overall we enjoy working at ILS. It's a pretty laid-back work environment. They let you wear pretty much whatever you want to teach in and there isn't a lot of supervision, so you can kind of use whatever style you like, though you do have to teach a pretty set material. As far as curriculum goes, you just teach out of books and workbooks. Planning is pretty unnecessary, outside of making the necessary copies. The students range from kindergartners (who are cute, and probably the best at English, besides the middle school students, but some of them tend to cry a lot) up to 8th graders. I have the whole range, though most of my students (outside the kindergartners and the 8th graders) are very much beginners. That can be fun a lot of the time, though, because they tend to say some funny things. Also, the lower-level workbooks have more fun songs that you get to sing. At any rate, I think that's about all I've got to say about school. I mean, there really isn't that much to tell. It's pretty easy.

And, that's all I've got for the day. Nancy should be getting on here and posting about our most recent hike soon, so look forward to that! I'll post a teaser photo.

Me in my Hulk T-shirt and my Korean hiking pants. I'd like to point out that there are good things and bad things about climbing on lava rock next to the ocean. The good thing is that the rock is rough, so even though it's wet you don't slip much. The bad thing is that it tends to be crawling with very large cockroaches. I managed, though.

This is Captain Danger out.