포도 Farm.

On Friday we went to a grape farm with the kids. It was hot but smelled really good. Grapes in Korea both smell and taste precisely like fruit snacks. Amazing!

Field trips are for photos. Here I am with Gold Class!

Max.

Sally.

Sunny.

Chuseok 2011

For Chuseok, all of the kids come dressed up in their Hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing. Then we do as many things as we can to get their Hanboks dirty right before they have to go to their grandparents' houses to bow.

Here's Jeniffer. She had the coolest headgear.

Sophie.

Samuel.

Evan.

Denis.

Max.

Here is Sally making songpyeon, a traditional Chuseok food made of rice flour and stuffed with red beans or sugar and sesame.

Sunny hard at work.

All of Gold Class!

The girls all tickled each other instead of lining up to be photographed.

Then we played tug-of-war in their expensive clothes! Gold Class lost every time....but it seems like they had fun anyway.

Heidi and I.

Katharine and I.

I forced all of the teachers to take a group photograph. We all look pretty cool in my opinion.

Busan to Seoul

This Monday was Korean Thanksgiving, so we had Monday and Tuesday off of school. To celebrate, a friend and I flew from Seoul to Busan, a city on the Southern coast of South Korea, and then rode our bikes back up to Seoul. It was a rainy, mountainous 300+ mile journey and we somehow managed to complete it in 3 and a half days. My legs hurt like crazy.

Look how far that is!

I didn't actually manage to take many pictures, because we were booking it pretty much as fast as we could the whole time, but I will post the ones I did manage to take soon.

Here they are:

Jiyoung didn't want to be photgraphed with the field of kimchi pots but too bad. Here we are like 10 miles in. I really wish I had pictures from the spectacle that was us assembling our bikes in the airport but was too busy at the time to think to take any.

Things are so much greener when you aren't in Seoul.

There are so many mountains in Korea. They are really beautiful until you have to ride your bike up them.

Jiyoung at the sweet ship restaurant we were too scared to eat at at the end of day one, because it looked so couply and expensive and because we were disgusting after having ridden all day in the rain.

I made it too!

Seriously who built this? Absurd.

Jiyoung ready for day two!

The mountains were all covered in mystical fog on day two.

More mountains. Ugh.

Day Three: Chuseok breakfast at the 7-11. If only they'd had songpyeon...

This is what rice looks like if you get close to it:

It's just so green!

We spent a lot of time doing this. Thank you Navigator Jiyoung.

We had to cross the continental divide on Day 3. This involved riding uphill at like 10% inclines for 5.5 km. Never doing this again.

But we made it!!!!

I'm tired.

Jiyoung still has plenty of energy apparently.

The last day involved like 190 km of riding. It was intense. But somehow we made it back to Seoul by sunset and I made it home in time to get to Madigans for tacos.

No better way to end a long ride than ramyeon and beer at a riverside convenience store!

Jiyoung's less excited about it than I am I guess.

Anyway, all-in-all a success and I'm really glad I did it and really amazed I survived!

Kyoto

Here is the final Japan post.

The third city we visited was Kyoto, a city I've wanted to go to since I was like ten. So, dreams come true I guess.

We got in at about noon after our train ride from Nara and headed to our hostel to drop off our gear and game plan. From our hostel we walked over in the lovely sunny weather to Kiyomizu Temple.

The walk there was full of lovely old architecture.

And the temple itself was lovely!

Kiyomizu means "pure water" I guess, so we drank from this spring whose waters somehow grant your wishes. I'm not sure that mine has come true yet, though. Time will tell if its magical powers are real.

I think this is the only picture Josh and I managed to have taken of us the whole trip.

I like this.

And these.

I love markets!!!

And soybeans!

And dead fish!

It seems that Kyoto is about as into pickling things as Korea!

Look: sushi popsicles!

And so many other things I had no idea what were!

Philosopher's Path.
So much sake.

Pontocho Alley.

We stopped and ate at this soba restaurant on Pontocho Alley.

The soba was good and was kind of a process to eat, which I always enjoy.

Gion, the Geisha district, at night. This is like two seconds before I saw two real geisha (maiko really) but was too afraid to take a picture because I didn't want to be rude.

A teahouse in Gion. These are where geisha entertain.

Kinkaku-ji Temple: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. This is one of Kyoto's most famous sights and I will admit that it was pretty cool. Rumor has it that's all real gold.

Close-up.
Ryōan-ji is another temple famous for its giant zen garden. This was my favorite thing we visited in Kyoto. It was beautiful and very relaxing.

The gardens on the other side of the temple were also beautiful. I think lush is the right word here.

Lotus blossoms are seriously so cool.

I'm not sure who this guy was, but I like his eyebrows.

The bamboo forest was also one of the highlights of the trip. Who knew bamboo got this big?

After the bamboo we walked into some temple/shrine whose name I don't remember and there were huge colorful paper chains of origami cranes!

It was beautiful there.

This was the only sushi I had the whole trip and it was from a roadside sushi vendor. I wanted conveyor belt sushi so bad, but I suppose that will have to wait until my next Japan trip. ㅠㅠ

Fushimi Inari Taisha: This was a really cool shrine we saw late in the afternoon on our final day.

The shrine is apparently dedicated to Inari, the Japanese fox goddess.

The coolest part of this shrine, though, was the thousands of torii gates lining the hiking path. It was super pretty and shaded from the sun....but also full of the most vicious mosquitoes I have ever encountered.

More of the wish tablet things, here in the shape of a fox for Inari. So cute.

On our final night in Kyoto, Josh and I met up with Marina, who was also spending her break travelling around Japan, and went to a very cute little dingy vegetarian restaurant next to Josh's and my hostel. All of the food was delicious and there were so many different things to try! Something about the atmosphere also reminded me of Minneapolis coffeeshops.