Long time, no see!

Things are still going well, and I'm still doing a lot of great things when I'm not teaching fun kids to speak English. Here have been some of the highlights.

#1. A few weeks ago, we went to Gyeong Ju, an important historical city on the east coast of the country. We left at 7am on Saturday morning (death) and spent 5.5 hours driving across the country in a 12-passenger van. It was pretty small and crowded, but we had a good group. We went to Shilla Millenium Park, a park that celebrated the Shilla dynasty (57 BC – 935 AD). Here's a picture of one of the palace houses. It was beautiful.



It was kinda like a Korean Medieval Times. It was pretty sweet to see the show of horse acrobatics and martial arts. There's a video clip of some pretty sweet stuff that I'll upload when I have time. (It takes forever...) I was totally impressed. After the park, Eddie suggested that we go on ATVs. No one else seemed too game, so I kinda dragged people along, and it ended up being great! ATVs are awesome!



Here's a group shot after our 30 minute ride of awesomeness. We had fun. Can you tell?



We had a really nice dinner and stayed up late talking. We got up the next morning to visit a beautiful temple...



And then we went to the Seokguram Grotto, one of UNESCOs cultural heritage sites. This beautiful statue of Buddha ...



...is set inside a hill on the side of a beautiful mountain overlooking the ocean. Gorgeous.



#2. The weekend after Gyeong Ju, I scored free tickets to see a dress rehearsal for an opera show at the Korean National Theater. So this was my Saturday...



And then on Sunday, we went to Everland! This is basically the DisneyWorld of Korea. What a great day! It's smaller and a bit less exciting than Disney parks, but it was still a great day. AND it was raining and everyone is afraid of H1N1, so there were NO LINES. Perfect.



This was the Halloween parade. Haha. And in the background, you can see the steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world! Yeah, that's right. 77° angle drop. SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREE DROP. Crazy! Renee bought the shot of the three of us on it... and photographed it for us. Awesome!



It was a good day!



Oh, and in the huge zoo that they have in the park, we saw this:



Yeah, that's right. It's a liger. Yeah, like Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal.

#3. I've made a commitment to myself to get out at least one morning each week to go see some historical place in Seoul. Today I went to see the Jong Myo Ancestral Shrine. It was pretty nice. This Great Hall was huge... and it was built in 1395 to house ancestral tablets and other important cultural artifacts. It's a larger version of the "Hall of Everlasting Peace". Pretty cool.



#4. It's been a lot of fun getting to know my Korean coworkers. On Tuesday, Soo and Soojin took me and Renee out for a traditional Korean lunch. It was a really nice time! The food was delicious! In Korea, there are really just a lot of side dishes. Meals are generally communal... which is fun. :D And chopsticks are essential.



And don't worry. I still get to eat entire fish as much as I want!



My coworkers are great, too! They may be nearly twice my age, but you would never know. They're so youthful! And they're so nice.



Yeah, this whole Korea thing is still pretty cool. :D Never a dull moment.