Happy Birthday Bucheonim!

Warning: this blog post contains material that some people would potentially consider inappropriate.

We had two days off for Buddha's Birthday so KK and I rolled to Samcheok.

B-day party preparations at the local temple.








Lonely Planet informed us that we should go see this. So we did.





We pretended that the weather was pleasanter than it was.





Slightly more realistic.





Our beautiful love motel.



omg slumber party!!!!!!!





Day two. Haeshindang Penis park. It was windy.




Penises.








The whole park is dedicated to this girl who died a virgin.



Trying to get seaweed on a rock (like this lady) when a wave came and swept her away.



The seaweed of someone who didn't die.



After her death, the fishing got bad until someone peed into the sea and realized that she was just angry to have died a virgin. So they started throwing phallus carvings into the water and the fishing got good again. Now there is a whole park full of penis statues etc.



After the penis park, we went to see Hwanseongul Cave. The hike up to the cave was lovely. Here is an old fashioned mill. It was really cool.



And the weather was lovely.





You weren't allowed to take pictures inside the cave. But we sneaked this one on the Bridge to Hell. The whole cave was huge and took us maybe an hour and a half to walk through. I was kind of freaked out the whole time but it was still fun. No bats were spotted.



Here we are outside the cave.



After the cave we ate at this outdoor restaurant that served mountain food. I don't really know how I feel about mountain food after the experience.




The whole area was bat-themed.



That night we went to the local hot springs spa thing. It wasn't nearly as nice as the one next to my apartment.



Then back in the love motel for some more slumber party fun.



All-in-all a nice getaway from Seoul and an interesting experience.

Red Ginseng Spa

Last weekend a couple of my friends and I headed to a small town a four-hour bus ride south of Seoul to go to the Jinan Red Ginseng Spa. It was an excellent time.

Things are so much prettier outside of Seoul-this is the view from the roof of the spa. I stole the next three pictures from their website because I didn't want to ruin my camera by getting it wet.



The whole thing was like a program where you went from room to room having weird life experiences.

Here is the room where you lie wrapped in a sheet in a box full of hay. This room taught me just how incapable I am of relaxing. I just don't understand why you would be awake and not doing something.



This was my favorite weird life experience. The bubble room! You sat in a room that had fountains of red ginseng-scented bubbles.



Marina and Jiyoung on the bus there.



Kelly Katharine and Becky.



Outside the spa.



Group shot.



KK and Becky relaxing in the lobby post-spa.



With the red ginseng.



And again.



We ate at a really nice restaurant that even had a vegan option! This was some sort of spicy stir-fry of root vegetables. It was sooo good.



The non-vegans had roast-duck skewers.



It's really weird to be able to afford things like going to spas and especially staying in spa hotels. But our room was lovely and only cost like $100 for the five of us.



Nature. Jinan smelled so much better than Seoul.

Vinyl

So every week I meet up with a Korean girl to have a language exchange. We usually go out for dinner and speak English and then get drinks and I practice my terrible Korean. Last week we met in Hongdae, had tacos for dinner and then went to this little sidewalk bar that sells cocktails in a bag.

It's a really cute little shop.





Peach crush! My favorite sugary girly drink in Korea.



And this is Jaeyeon with her long island iced tea.

Deokjeokdo

So, this weekend I went to Deokjeokdo, an island off the west coast of Korea, with a bunch of people as a going-away party for a coworker of mine and his wife. The weather was supposed to be terrible but ended up being quite nice, so that was lucky and a pleasant surprise.

We brought enough stuff to stay for a month it would seem:



The ferry ride there was a bit chilly...



Once there, the people from the pension we were staying at came to pick us up in their vans. It was quite the cozy ride.



This is about half of the group enjoying day one in front of our tent community.



Jason (the host of the party) in charge of the grill.



Part of the crowd around the fire on night one.



Barbeque!



More campfire.



The next day we had lovely weather so we spent the day lounging on the beach (don't worry mom, I wore sunscreen....but I got burnt anyway).



I clearly don't belong on beaches.



More beach chilling.



The tide was out, so a few of us walked the maybe half mile out to the sea. It was sandy and not muddy at least, though.





Then we climbed the mountain up to sea this abandoned Korean War bunker and I pretended to do something adventurous. This photo isn't particularly convincing...



The view from up the mountain was lovely.



The view from our tents was lovely as well actually.



That night our fire burned the craziest colors. It was really cool but slightly disconcerting.







I almost stepped on this beautiful moth in front of our pension. It was like the size of my fist.



Proof that I had a tent--and I even assembled it myself. And slept without a nightlight!



Here is the tent community being disassembled. Note that almost everyone has the same $20 Tesco tent that would have been miserable had there actually been inclement weather. There were actually quite a few us who camped...I think maybe 3 or 4 other tents had already been taken down by the time I remembered to take this photograph.



This dog was so cute!



The sign for our beach.



I look so happy to be out in nature.



There was the craziest fog on the day we were leaving...I couldn't really capture in on film but this gives you at least a bit of an idea.



Heidi and I posing with a statue of a fisherman...which is apparently what Koreans do when they go to Deokjeokdo. Oops.



Chilling outside the convenience store while waiting on the ferry home.



The ferry home. :(



Goodbye Deokjeokdo!!