Another Year Comes with More Adventures and More Wisdom!

"You can't expect to be old and wise if you were never young and crazy."

For the wondering minds... "Are you still in South Korea?" Yes, I'm still in South Korea, living good. I know it's been a couple of months since I shared a story... so, I'm going to share about my birthday celebration(s) for now. I'll fill you in on the past 4 months next time.

"Did you travel for your birthday?" Ummm... no, I didn't leave the country if that's what you're wondering. I've been lazy, and wanted to stay put; trying to do things locally.  Since my birthday is a national holiday in Korea, I decided to check off a couple places that I've wanted to go to while living here.

First, let me shout out my students for the love during the week of my birthday. Since, there wasn't any school on my birthday, students sang happy birthday to me on all the other days.  So, in some of my classes, I didn't give them work; I let them watch movies, and gave them snacks. (I felt like I shouldn't have been working "hard" during the week of my birthday.🙃) My students are thoughtful...I was given milk, pencils, and a sniper key chain as gifts.  It's the thought that counts, right?🤔🙃

Anyways, as an "adult," I didn't plan to go out on my birthday eve...just sleep. But, I was dragged out by my friend Matt. He showed me to this bar where I had some good cocktails (cause I don't do Korean alcohol), good music, watch the bar tenders put on a show, receive a free cocktail for my birthday and receive a lot of birthday love from some of the Koreans. 00:30 is way past my bed time.

June 6: My good friends, James and YunHye, spent the day with me as we ventured to different "museums" in the area. First stop,

Seogwang Tea Garden (제주 서광 다원)

I don't drink tea, but I thought would be nice to see one of the "most well managed and largest tea plantation(s) in Korea." It wasn't on my to-do list then, but I think next time, I'll make some natural tea soap and buy some tea for family.

Glass Castle (제주유리의성)

I always like to do something "memorable" for my birthday. Something I'd never forget and can always remember about my birthday. A friend told me about glass art, and how I could make my own glass art. So, I went to the Glass Castle to make glass art. (Technically, I just "assisted", but I did a major part in glass blowing.) Now, my art piece is glowing beautifully on my window stool as the city sits in the background.

Love Land (제주러브랜드)

And finally, I made it to the "famous" Love Land. But, I'm sure you already expect the unexpected from me. I said a while back after my visit to Penis Park I had to visit this one. It was my entertainment for the day. Lolz. It was good seeing other foreigners (and Koreans) laughing, joking around but most importantly, enjoying the museum and approaching it all with a mature mindset. I'll post only a select few pictures☺. Laughter is good for the soul! 

To close out my day, I took myself to the movies to watch Jurassic World. Funny thing, I'm that "extra" foreigner in movies while abroad. So, I try to avoid people who know in public places, especially my students. I saw one of my students near the concession stand. He didn't notice me. I walk in the theater, I'm sitting right next to him and his mother.😐 But, I did a marvelous job of not embarrassing myself and not showing out like I did watching Infinity War.🙃

Feeling blessed and thankful as always, it's good to see another year. I look forward to the many adventures ahead, while sharing my stories with you. 

P.S. Thank you to all those who sent me birthday wishes. I really do appreciate it!

Until next time, 

My First Ski Trip was at an Olympic Venue!

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” - Ellen DeGeneres

 

It’s crazy to say that I went skiing on the slopes next to the ones that will be used for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. But, like my grandmother said when I told her I was on a ski trip, “You’ve never been skiing a day in your life!” I was gone learn that day!

So, here’s the story… my friend, Dom, and I decided that we wanted to do a ski trip as my going away celebration. We’re both from different areas of the U.S. where skiing is not available. Heck, there would barely be enough snow to build a snowman. As I mentioned before, the 2018 Winter Olympics will be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea. We thought it would be a smart idea to spend time in the area before everyone else makes there way up. We stayed at the Yongpyong Resort, which I highly recommend, and had several activities and opportunities to do things. Mind you, we’re travelers on a budget. About two weeks from our trip, we spent hours trying to figure out transportation options to and from the destination that would be cost efficient and excursions that would be cheap, so we could enjoy our time not worrying about money. [If ever traveling to Pyeongchang Olympic venue, the closest bus station is Hoenggye (횡계).] Neither one of us had ever gone skiing before, so we thought about taking lessons. We looked online and saw that English lessons were about $300.🙅‍♀️  That’s a negative. We saw an option for group lessons, 1:7, for about $70. We decided to go with that. We get there early Saturday afternoon, to plan out our time and search the area. We found so many Olympic souvenir shops, that we had to window shop to make sure were saving our coins for the other purchases we needed to make the next day. We had been planning to go bowling for the longest, so we decided to do some late-night bowling games and called it a night.
 

Sunday, the day we were going to learn how to ski… EPIK FAIL! We wake up around 10, because the afternoon sessions start at 12:30, to get prepared and get some type of food in our system. Come to find out, breakfast ended at 10:30,😑 so we had to order lunch. We were content with our meals and ready for our skiing adventures. We get there a little before 12:30 and was told to wait a bit. We saw others waiting as well, so we were so excited to join a group. 12:30. We get to the counter and was told that we were on a waiting list and to come back in about 45 minutes; we come back, as was told only three people signed up so they had to cancel. 😣I looked in the corner of the sheet and saw that she wrote “English lesson” in Korean. AHHHHHH!! I don’t understand why it’s not understood that we were not about to spend extra money for broken English. Since we missed about 1.5 hours for the afternoon ski session, we decided to go to the night session. Let me tell you, YOUTUBE works miracles. 🙌

We get back to the room and watch YouTube videos on “learning how to ski.” We watch about a good 45 minutes worth of lessons, so we felt a little confident. Since we had to wait til 18:00, we decided to go into the city and check out the nearby venues, souvenir shops, and search for the Olympic mascots in the area. We found this frozen lake and was brave enough to walk on part of it.😅 Because we saved an extra $70, we went Olympic souvenir shopping. We may have gone a little overboard on the shopping. 🙄But, who cares. I think we will have some of the good stuff before everyone else comes over and snatches it up. Walking around the city (Hoenggye is very small), we started to discover the Olympic mascots around by accident; it turned into a game of iSpy, to see how many we could find before the end of our trip. We found a lot!

 

Fast-forward past dinner…18:30. We got our hot packs, gloves, thermal leggings and shirt, googles, boots, rented our ski gear and pants. WE READY!! (This is the part of the story Dom and my grandmother found hilarious.) I got all my gear on, quicker than Dom, and were on the ski lift. WE MADE IT TO THE TOP! I’m trying to angle myself on the slope, because we learned from YouTube to stay in “the pizza stance.” I was in a narrow pizza stance and next thing you know, I go flying down the slopes not able to stop myself. My life flashed quickly before my eyes. I literally threw myself backwards to fall so that I didn’t crash. Literally everyone was watching, even instructors… 😒. NO ONE tried to help me. Dom came scooting along laughing, trying to help me up. I lost my ski pole and one of my ski. I was sliding like crazy trying to connect my ski to my boot; it slid down the hill. GAHHHHH!! I took off my other ski to make it easier to get the other one. Dom got my pole for me and I was set to try this thing out again. FAIL! AGAIN! I went flying down the slope and somehow my ski detached from my boot. Fast-forward to after my small tutorial from Dom. I KNOW HOW TO SKI and control my speed and direction. The other 3 tries were 100% successful. I do say I was proud of myself. I think the next time I go skiing I may do some lessons.

 

Next time, I’ll be closing out chapter 1!

      

Making Goals to Acheive

“The bottom can only be accepted by those who aren't hungry enough for the top.”

― Edmond Mbiaka

 

I’m back on the scene, sharing my stories and adventures. I’ve still been exploring and getting around South Korea with spontaneous adventures. I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to post them. This month I’ll be sharing some stories. I want to show you how beautiful and wonderful South Korea is, hopefully convincing you to visit one day.

So, I’m pretty sure by now you’ve recognized that I enjoy the outdoors, nature, and love being adventurous and spontaneous. I recently made a goal to hike the highest mountains in South Korean, as well as mountains in surrounding areas, regardless of the size. In November, I decided to do something that sounded great in thought, but had me rethinking my decision in actual time. I came across a zip-line ad that claims to be Asia’s longest and steepest zip-line, with wonderful views of mountains to see as you go down. I thought I needed other things to do during my time in that province, so I thought I could find some mountains to hike during my weekend there. I did my research and came across a couple mountains to hike. With hiking, you never know how long it may take to complete, so I have to figure out a range of times for transportation.

Anyways, so my first leg of the trip from my city to the zip-line went okay. I took the train (amazing views during the ride) and arrived with perfect timing. I was able to go out on the skywalk (Jeongseons Skywalk), which is made of glass and sticks out over the cliff. I’ve been to one similar in Busan, Oryukdo Skywalk. I wanted to record my ride, but I didn’t want to lose my phone in mid-air. (A GoPro for Christmas would be awesome! 😉)

  

After that, I made my way towards the city I was staying in. I went to Mindungsan Mountain for a trek that I thought would be casual, but wasn’t that casual. See, I've prepared myself for hiking in the cold, but I wasn’t prepared for the snow. It threw me off. It got to a point were I was so tired that I dropped my backpack down somewhere and hiked the last kilometer I had. Once I made it to the top, I took my few little pictures and immediately trekked back down. My body was sore, and I just wanted to fall in a bed. I made it to my hotel and spent an hour in the spa, trying to revive my body…
  

Because on day two, I planned to hike another mountain. 😊 (smile of sarcasm) I’m dragging to mountain two and rethinking the idea to hike. When I got off the train, I didn’t know how to read the bus schedule, so I hopped in a taxi. I think the taxi driver was blown by me wanting to be taken to the mountains. He dropped me off at this bus stop and told me to catch the bus there when I finished. So, I’m walking trying to find the entrance; 20 minutes later, I find it. Mind you, it snowed during the night. I have to trek my way through about a foot of snow. An hour and a half in, I wanted to quit. I was tired, I couldn’t see the finish line, I saw animal tracks (0_0) … 2 hours later after I pushed through…

I made it through the trail; I came out with frozen pants, cold fingers, and I lost my hot packs along the way. During my hike, I thought I could use Korea’s version of Uber once I made it to the end. -__- Little did I know; the taxis didn’t reach that area. SOOO, my GPS had me walking 20 minutes to a bus stop. I get to the bus stop and realized that this is the place where the taxi driver dropped me off. Best be believed I learned how to read the bus schedule in that moment. Long story almost finished, these Koreans from a nearby restaurant picked my freezing butt up and dropped me off at the bus station. THE END.

Until next time,