When in Korea

On one of the days off Michael and I went to Taejongdae national park. We took the bus there for about an hour and when we arrived... holy cow.. we just happened upon the boat cruse! So we decided to splurge the $7.00 and boat cruse it!

The beautiful Korean or Japanese straight (depends if your talking to a Korean or a Japanese person) :p

Here are the little restaurants on the water where you can get seafood BBQ with buckets of fresh seafood. Including free full buckets of free muscles.

Here I am with all the shipping boats in the background.

A further away view of the restaurants.

On our beautiful boat cruse. We got such a beautiful day the weather was wonderful!

going around a curve... at this point I said "oh wow, its really smooth on the water today..." and as soon as we went around this curve I was proved seriously wrong. It was quite rocky and wavy, good thing neither of us get sea sick!

Here's a cute little shanty built on the side of the cliffs.

They first view of the light house. The light house was one of the first in Korea and it was built in the early 19th century.

and the pretty light house.

more beautiful cliffs

lol, some times I'm not sure how to caption the random pictures I take... well here's another water cliff photo. Lol

At this place we could have gotten off of the boat to go up to the lighthouse but Michael and I must have listened wrong because we missed this stop and missed going up to the lighthouse. Apparently from the cliffs by the lighthouse you can see an island in Japan. Well we could see it from the boat so we win!

The sun on the mountains.

Do you see those tall buildings??? Those are right by my house in Haeundae! :)

A better photo of the nice boat cruise!

Oh, and again! This time with the city in the background.

loads and loads of shipping boats.

So that was the end of the boat cruse and we didn't really feel the need to hike up the lighthouse when we had just passed it so we decided to go walk around Nampo market. Its pretty sweet... ally after ally after ally of stuff to buy. Shoes, clothes, Korean crafts, furniture, pretty much anything you need you can find at the market! I also wanted to check out the food car vendors because there's a ton in the area and Korea is pretty known for their street food.

Heck yes, Green Bay Packers "make educated moves"

I need to go back to buy this sweater I mean does it get more epic than that!??

Now its street food picture time!

fish cakes on a stick

dried squid stand and assorted other dried seafood

Mmmmmmmmm mondu, Korean dumplings

Here's some potato pancake thing

They make these sausages on a stick with potato slices in between. This kids looks excited to eat it.

more things on a stick... you can find these pretty much anywhere... fried squid, fried rice cakes, chicken all sorts of stuff.... all on a stick... kinda like the Wisconsin state fair. Lol.

Chuseok is the Korean holiday that is similar to Thanksgiving... On the lunar calendar, Korean thanksgiving is on August 15 and on the solar calendar, it is on September 25. 추석 (Choo-suk) is one of Korea's biggest holidays. This holiday is different than the American Thanksgiving. On the American holiday, people traditionally eat turkey. In Korea, people eat rice cake called 송편 (Song-Pryun). On Choo-suk, people celebrates and enjoys harvest. They pick new crops and fruits and give an ancestor memorial service in the morning. Then they visit their hometown to see their family and relatives. A long time ago, on Choo-suk, in the village at night when the moon was bright, girls played a game called 강강수월레 (Gang-gang soo-wall leh).

At school we celebrated by having the kids dress in their Hanbok (which is a traditional Korea outfit that they wear on holidays) they practiced bowing to receive presents, and we played two games: one like hacky sack and the other one you throw sticks into a basket.

I even wore a hanbok and received some baller gifts from my students.