Hwanseongul Cave, Samcheok, and Others

We didn't have class this past Friday at my institute so my director decided to take the foreign teachers and staff on an excursion.  And on an excursion we went!

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We left Friday morning at around 9:30 to begin our road trip.  It took about three and half hours to get to our destination.  There were 9 of us crammed into a Korean style van.  To say the least, it was a very uncomfortable ride for my aging knees :p  When we got there it was sprinkling a little bit, but it was ok because we were going into a cave anyway.  The cave was pretty awesome.  I tried to take pictures but it was just too dark.  There were a variety of lights along the railing in the cave.  Lot's of stairs too (which I'm really starting to get tired of)!  We spent a little over an hour in the cave.


After the cave it was time to head over to the coast to use some rail bikes.  I've never seen nor used a rail bike before but it's a fantastic way to view a landscape!  It was a little cold to enjoy the beach, so we stayed off of the sand and looked from a distance.

The beautiful coast

And then is what I did last weekend.  On Saturday night I enjoyed some fireworks on an island with some of my new Korean friends.  They aren't students at SDA, but I met them through a mutual friend.  One Korean is from Argentina, another is from Brazil, and another spent over 10 years in the U.S.  So we had several things to talk about and I was also able to brush up on my Spanish.  Then on Sunday I was able to attend my first Korean wedding.  It was definitely more westernized in it's appearance and process but not nearly as long.  It was about 30 minutes in all!!

The bride is a Korean Junior teacher here at Seongbuk.  She looked beautiful.

After the wedding there was a buffet...and boy was it a spread!  There were at least 5 different kinds of chicken!  Baby (tiny) octopus, squid, shrimp, crab, beef, and an assortment of other things.  Any meat eater would have been thoroughly pleased.  Aww...the life of a picky vegetarian!  I actually found some rice and vegetables to nibble on.  My plate must have looked very odd to all those sitting around me.

Rail bikes

  

The Crew

That is all for now.  I hope to update soon.  Thanks again to all my readers!