whew! i made it! after 27 hours of travelling by ferry, train and taxi.. i have arrived at fred's town in japan. well, actually. not quite. i'm in the port city that actually has things, before taking another ferry to get to the island fred lives on. i think we're staying in town till sunday.
i am very, very tired. tsukareteimasu yo. oyasumi! (goodnight!)

alright. so i know it has been over a week. it's been a nutso week. we went to a mud festival last weekend.. it was amazing. right now i am packing to leave korea tomorrow (eek!) for two weeks in japan (HOORAY!!). not sure exactly when i will be uploading more pictures.. give me time. i'll get there. i have a TON of new ones. for now, entertain yourself with this: transformers goodness from penny arcade.

wow. so, another crazy weekend come and gone.. here come the pictures!
saturday we went to a place called naminara island. it's an island in the middle of a river, with all sorts of fun paths and random little picture-perfect places.

this is probably my favorite picture of tim from this summer..


this path is super famous in korea. a movie was filmed on the island and the town nearby, and apparently they used images of the path a fair bit.


there were lots of these flowers around the island.


voltron in the gift shop?!


as we started travelling on saturday, michelle and i both bought new hats! yayy hats! the piles of rocks behind me are wish-piles. there is a korean tradition that if you pile rocks on top of each other like that and make a wish, your wish will come true.


as we left the island saturday, we saw a tethered hot air balloon.. it took me almost 10 minutes to finally catch it lit up. pretty cool.


neat little guy.


pizza dispenser in the bathroom? hehehe


i took a picture as we left sunday.. this is the hallway in our sketchy mc-sketcherson motel.


this would be me juggling on the spot where i qualified 5 balls!! yayy!!


we spent sunday hiking up a mountain to a buddhist temple. along the way were lots of gorgeous waterfalls and nature-y spots.






this is the grave of a famous monk who served at the temple.


and this is from the interior of the temple.


each one of these globes has a wish for someone's family to have good health for a year.




here are more stone piles of people's wishes.. so many wishes.. i added two.


sunday night we ate dakgalbi.. aka korean chicken bbq. it was quite good. the place we went is in a city that is famous for its chicken bbq - they even have a street dedicated to it.


and there you go! the weekend, briefly, in pictures. it's time to go teach. only one more week!

so the adventure for the weekend involves wandering (maybe biking?) around on an island and visiting a temple. yup, i will take lots of pictures, and yup i plan on eating yummy food. some korean tea perhaps? and all for around $100 for the weekend. man i love this place.

oh. and, of course, questing, for those of you who are involved with that ;) forge on, brave soldiers!

happy fourth of july! weird that there are no fireworks this year. i plan on doing an activity with my little ones about the 4th, involving lots of coloring :D i think our celebrations will probably involve escanaba in da moonlight and some japanese lime alcohol scott brought.

so, scott came to visit me last weekend! yayy!! for those who don't know, scott is a good friend from juggling in madison who is currently teaching english in japan. so he just hopped a plane and came for the weekend :D we had lots of adventures. first off was just finding him.. he had an adventure with the bus involving not being allowed to get off at the correct stop, getting off at the next one and taking a cab back to where he had already been. wasn't too bad though. i only waited about 10 minutes till he arrived. so we went back to my house, cleaned up after travelling, and headed out to suwon station for some revelry with my friends.



this is our bartender, unmi. silly girl! hehehe


scott brought me a couple of presents, one of which was this gorgeous yukata. freaking cool ^^


on saturday we went to the korean folk village with still more friends. we stayed for six hours, and i'm pretty sure i could do an entire separate post on all the cool stuff we saw there. among the cool things were...

this cool little statue guy. he got lots of attention from our group.


a rather ineffective looking table..


lots of gorgeous little ponds and watery areas.


very hungry horses.


a super fun board jumping game. picture me squeeking there.


pretty flowers in the rain..


exercises in squishing into small spaces.


and an oldfashioned korean jail cell.


saturday night we went out dancing in itaewon, but i don't actually have any pictures from that. sunday morning we went shopping for souvenirs and both had quite good luck :D

i think that's a pretty good deluge of pictures from me today. but always remember: take care the drop, and watch out your step, please.

alright. so.. pictures, eh? the last couple of weekends have been pretty fun. lots of dancing and relaxing and hanging out with cool people. yesterday we went to a sauna. which is basically $6 to spend as long as you want at a day spa. you have to pay for more specialized things like massages or skin treatments, but the basic stuff includes sauna rooms, a gym and this wonderful bathing room. it's a communal nekkid experience, so i couldn't take any pictures. but basically it's a huge room with six different bathtubs, each having a different temperature and herbal treatment. some of the tubs were really hot, with bubbles whirlpool style, and others were big cold pools that the little kids would splash and swim in. we stayed at the sauna for almost 3 hours.. when i got home i was so relaxed i just curled up on the couch and didn't move for ages. and today my skin is so happy! the friend i went with and i have decided that sauna is going to be a weekly experience. for both relaxation and being nice to our skin purposes.

here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

last weekend i went shopping at insadong with some friends. talk about somewhere that it's easy to blow cash!! it's all sorts of random traditional and somewhat stereotypical korean stuff. got some stuff for me, some souvenirs for others.. good times. i need to go back again so i can finish souvenir shopping. all around insadong they have these stone benches with lillypad gardens in them. super neat, but you have to be careful where you sit, or you'll end up with a wet spot on the butt of your skirt. *ahem*


we also saw an interesting display of a way to accomplish stress relief. apparently people could pay and just knock around the guy with head gear on. he could only defend himself, no striking out. the guy he's fighting here really wailed on him!


here are me and the girls outside a club where we saw a drag show. definitely not the best drag show i've ever seen. but as always it was fun to hang out with everyone :)


friday night we had a birthday party with everyone from work. mia (pictured here) and another coworker both have birthdays this week.


i went wandering for a couple of hours on saturday. found a nice big hill to climb around on, and snapped a few pics looking out over the city. i'm pretty sure i was in someone's backyard. thankfully they didn't say anything. :P


from the same walk, a flight of stairs you would *not* want to have to stumble up while drunk. i only say that because a few steps higher than what you can see, there is evidence that someone did just that.


and on that note, i'm off to get ready for work.
happy birthday last week sam and roomie! and happy birthday this week mia and betty!