The Things You See

Part of the fun of traveling is that you get to see some pretty weird and wonderful things along the way. Here's just some of what we saw on the North East coast of South Korea.

Our day at the beach was met with an unexpected obstacle! Puts a bit of a dampener on your day when you have to walk for countless kilometers to find a hole in the fence so you can get to the beach.








As you drive along the coast you can't escape the smell, and the sight, of drying cuttle fish. Once dried, this makes a significant portion of the staple diet.

As you enter one small town, you are awestruck by the sight of two large ships up on the hill. At first glance you get the impression that these were once floating ships that were decommissioned and placed on the hill for prosperity. This would be misleading however, because these ships were actually never meant to be in the water! The luxury cruise liner is a resort, complete with loud speakers that pump out the sounds of seagulls, rolling waves, and the obligatory fog horn at regular intervals. The sailing ship is actually home to a Gramaphone Museum?? I'm not sure what the link is here, but then any excuse to build a life-size sailing ship model will do I suppose.



Up on the DMZ you will find some little tourist stalls that sell all kinds of tacky memorabilia, gifts, and of course toys for the kids. At one stall they were selling these bottles of wine - not sure what they are promising, but by the looks of things you'd better lock up the cat if you are planning on having a few glasses of this stuff.

Each year in September, Koreans celebrate Chuseok – a time for families to get together and exchange gifts, albeit some very strange ones!

Nothing says I love you like a Spam and olive oil gift pack!

There's aisles of the stuff!

Speaking of strange things that go on, check out these little beauties.

Make sure you never run short of Tuna again

Nothin' like mashed potatoes straight from the can

I guess they couldn't find anyone to fill this job - hard to get directions from these guys

We love the fact that even after being here for one year, this place still manages to amaze us.

Eyes front soldier!

Well we’ve been back in Korea for 6 weeks now, and they have been 6 of the busiest weeks of our lives. Work is keeping us extremely busy, and there have been a lot of Saturday and/or weekend activities that we have been involved in as well.

One of these weekend activities was our staff retreat – a weekend where the schools takes all the staff to a resort for an all expenses paid weekend of food, fun, and seminars. this year we went to the Miranda Hotel in Inchon, about 1hr from Suwon.

The hotel was nice, and we enjoyed the fact that there was a water park in the complex, although getting to the pools was an experience in itself. Koreans love their public saunas/spas/baths or whatever you want to call them. Basically they just love getting naked and plunging themselves into a number of different pools of varying temperatures and colours. So to get to the pools we had to walk through the bath area first, where we were met by a large number of naked men of various sizes (I’m talking about body size only) and in various positions. There were men showering, shaving, sitting in the pools, lying flat out on their backs, and some even had their knees pulled up to their chests and were rocking back and forward. Talk about not knowing where to look! Of course Jenene and Promise went through the ladies side, where they were faced with a similar situation, only different.

After finally negotiating our way through the sausage factory, we made it out to the pools for the clothed people. There were 3 different pools, and about 2000 people for each pool – ok, there weren’t that many people, but it certainly was crowded. The word capacity does not seem to exist in the Korean language, so as long as people are willing to pay, they keep letting them in. We have become accustomed to crowds, and we are even beginning to accept that personal space is more of a luxury than an expectation.

We are heading to a national park in the north east next week, so it might be an opportunity for us to rediscover that feeling of walking without a sea of people surrounding us – and some of the trees might actually be taller than me, so that should be nice too.