Ultra Korea and other updates: June 14th-23rd, 2013

I remember buying our tickets for Korea's Ultra Music Festival way back in January, and thinking about how far away this weekend seemed, but sure enough it finally arrived! Ian and I, along with a group of friends went to this two-day music event in Seoul.  To minimize travel time, we stayed in a hostel in Itaewon both nights. In short, it was a fantastic weekend filled with lots of dancing, crazy neon outfits, fun, great music and friends. We agreed it was definitely one of our best weekends in Korea!

On Sunday, after a little bit of a slower start, we had a delicious brunch at The Frying Pan. This meal was amazing! There are definite perks in staying at a hostel in the area for foreigners in Seoul. After lunch, we also ventured to the Foreign Food Mart. This was our first time checking out all the foreign food that is available in Korea (besides what's at Cosco). Thankfully, we only purchased a small container of hummus, because that store was dangerously expensive. Our attitude now, is that we have made it almost 10 months, so we can last til we move back home. 

Overall, it was a perfect weekend with friends. Below are some pictures from Ultra and other little updates :)  

Isabelle, Emily, and I at Ultra

Group shot on the Saturday of Ultra

Adam, Ryan, and Ian

Ian and I ready for day two!

At the end of Saturday night.

The delicious Sunday brunch (Ian's)

The amazing french toast I ordered. I can't wait to go here again! 

This past week, a girl in grade 3 handed me this handmade envelope with a gift. She gave me 3 bracelets and a picture she had printed from the day Larissa and Teresa came to visit. This was such a sweet and thoughtful present. 

My kindergarten class!

My k class during their Animal Lesson. We made elephant finger puppets.

The goofy and always matching twins :)

Lounging by a rooftop pool in Seoul. Ian, Emily, Ryan and I went on Saturday afternoon.

On the way home from the pool, Emily captured this funny moment. The guy beside me kept falling asleep and teetering back and forth. People sleeping on the subway is very common, we just felt bad waking him up. 

Weekend getaway to Chuncheon: June 8-9, 2013

We have done a fair amount of traveling around Korea, and one thing I have noticed is that every region is famous for some type of food. It seems like every time I tell my co-teachers we are going away, they always say "oh (place) is famous for (some kind of Korean food), you should try it!" Gyeongju is famous for this special bread, Sokcho has its seafood, etc. So this time round, we decided to pick a food and go to the best location. This led us to Chuncheon this weekend!

One of our favourite Korean dishes is dak galbi - a delicious chicken, veggie, rice noodles and hot sauce stir fry that is cooked in front of you. One of our friends, Isabelle told us about how Chuncheon was known for dak galbi, so a group of 7 of us decided to make the trek there, and it really was quite the mission to get there. After taking a subway for two hours and forty five minutes eastbound, we arrived in Chuncheon which is about half-way to Sokcho. We walked around the small town, and of course had dak galbi for lunch, before heading to a river. We searched for the ferry to the island, but even after getting in a taxi and translating 'ferry', and asking many locals, we weren't able to find it. Once you leave a big city and venture to the smaller towns, there is less and less English. Not finding the ferry definitely didn't affect our afternoon, since it led us to the swan boats. Renting swan boats, and paddling around the river was a great way to spend the afternoon. After drinks on a patio near the water, and a bit more walking, we worked up an appetite for dak galbi round two! Although, I admit it was a lot of dak galbi for one day, how often are we in Chuncheon, right? 

That night, we stayed at a jimjalbang, which is a bath house where you can sleep the night as well. For a mere 8,000 Won (~6$ CAN) we were given pjs, went to the saunas and baths, and were given a mat and pillow in the common area. I was surprised as to how many Korean families stayed at the jimjalbang. It was our first time staying over at a jimjalbang, and it wasn't actually that bad of a sleep.

Sunday morning we opted to take the train back to Seoul, where we did a little shopping in Myeong Dong, before eating lunch on the Cheonggyecheon stream that goes through Seoul. We found a Pita Pit in Seoul which was very exciting, but sadly it wasn't quite the same as home, still pretty good.

Overall, it was a fun weekend with friends. Next weekend is Ultra, a music festival that Ian and I are both very excited about! Here are some pictures from Chuncheon and our Sunday afternoon in Seoul.

Traveling from Incheon to Chuncheon.

Entering Dak Galbi Street in Chuncheon. 

Delicious dak galbi - one of our favourite dishes in Korea! 

Walking around Chuncheon

Finding the swan boats, bets way to spend an afternoon in Chuncheon.

Swaning around.

Boys in their swan. 

Girls in our swan boat.

In the ice box at the jimjalbang. (Nadia, Ian, Patrick, Leana)

Girls in the ice box.

Sunday afternoon in Seoul, walking along the Cheonggyecheon Stream and finding a place to have our lunch.

Even on this gorgeous day, there was plenty of great places to stop along the stream. We later realized why, when we saw so many Koreans under the bridge avoiding being out in the sun. 

Weekend trip to Busan! May 31st- June 2nd, 2013

It's mind boggling how we are now three quarters of the way done our contracts! We will be back home in less than three months, and although we have both been talking about how much we will miss Canadian summers, we have a lot of exciting things planned to make our Korean summer just as fun. With limited weekends left, Ian and I decided to check another item off our Korean bucket list and took a mini vacation this past weekend. We traveled south east to Busan.

After school, on Friday May 31st I had to go straight to the bus terminal because our bus left at 5:40pm. Ian found out the day before that he was going on a field trip to Seoul on Friday. We didn't anticipate this causing problems as they said he would have enough time to come back to Incheon and catch the bus. Well, it wasn't until 5:37pm when I finally saw Ian running from the subway to the bus terminal. The entire time I was thinking of ways to stall the bus. If you have ever taken a bus in Korea, you know they leave on time, or sometimes even early! Crisis averted, we made it on the bus with 2 minutes to spare, and we were off on our weekend get-a-way trip!

I really liked Busan, as the city had a fun, relaxed, beach life atmosphere. We jokingly were calling it "Little Busan" as the subway system seems very basic compared to Seoul's mess of lines, but in fact Busan is Korea's second biggest city, and is no where close to 'little.' It was nice and convenient that we could use the same subway card in Seoul and in Busan. Here are the highlights from our weekend.

1. Busan Aquarium: On Saturday morning, we checked out the aquarium located on the famous Haeundae beach, the area where our hostel was also located. The weather was mostly cloudy that day, so this was a great way to start our day. It was a really cool aquarium, and maybe it is my inner-bio-nerd coming out, but I had a lot of fun walking around. There was a cool tunnel where we could walk and sharks and sting rays would swim over and beside us. We also touched shark eggs and baby sharks.

Ian with a penguin.

Nadia with an electric eel.

Life guard on duty on Haeundae Beach near the aquarium.

2. UN Memorial Cemetery: After the aquarium, we went to walk around this memorial park and cemetery for the soldiers that fought in the Korean War. There was a guard working at the entrance that saluted us on our way in and out. There were areas dedicated to each country. The Canadian area had a really nice statue in remembrance.

3. Jagalchi Fish Market: After the cemetery and a quick lunch, we headed to Jagalchi Fish Market, Korea's largest fish market. It was great we went on Saturday because it was quite busy. We walked around for a while but the smell quickly became overwhelming.

Walking around the market.

Korean style take-out. You get real bowls and plates and then an hour later someone comes to pick up the dishes. 

Squid and octopus for sale!

Rays the length of my arm, if not longer!

Woman selling sea cucumbers.

4. Busan International Film Festival (BIFF): The festival was not on then, but we walked around this area for a long time. There are lots of food stands, clothing/everything markets, coffee shops, and great people-watching.

The only thing we bought in the markets were funky socks!

5. Yongdusan Park and Busan Tower: In the late afternoon, we came across Yongdusan park, and hiked up the stairs to the tower. There were love locks and a nice view of the city. We decided not to go up the tower, but it was still nice to walk around the park.

6. Gwangali Beach: After a delicious hamburger and french fries dinner near Haeundae Beach, we went to see the other famous beach, Gwangali. It was nice to sit and watch people light fireworks with the lit up bridge in the background. We even managed to fit in a quick skype time with Ian's parents.

7. Haeundae Beach: Sunday morning and early afternoon were spent lounging on Haeundae Beach. It was sunnier that day, so we decided to soak up some sun on the beach before our bus home. I thought the beach was busy, but apparently in high season you can't even see the sand because of the sea of umbrellas that line the beach.

Haeundae Beach

The funny socks we bought in Busan.

Overall, our trip was a lot of fun! I am happy we got to check out Busan. Other updates for now include us booking our Vietnam flights for August, me finding a place to live in Montreal, and Ian being invited to two more weddings! Tomorrow is Korea's Remembrance Day and so we have a day off school. We are planning on heading to one of Incheon's beaches with some friends.