Tuesday, February 23, 2010

parents visit to korea

Last week my parents visited me here in Korea! It was really fun we visited a lot of places, met lots of my friends and tried lots of new foods. We went to the DMZ and stepped in to North Korea and saw real north korean soldiers!!! We went to Seoul several times took a tour of a palace there and saw some famous markets. Sorry for the lack of pictures on the blog I did put some up on facebook though! Other than my parents visit nothing else too exciting has happened except the weather getting really warm (like 40-50s) which is melting all the snow at the ski resort pretty quickly it looks like ski season is almost over for me and it might be time to start riding my bike again. Once the mud is gone I can't wait to get back on the trails and hopefully get in some decent shape for some mountain bike races. I checked a schedule and it looks like there is almost no road racing here except the tour of korea which I can't do because its during school!

Monday, February 8, 2010

2 road trips and getting sick in between!

2 weeks ago I took a road trip with my friends SangMi and Kyung to Hwacheon County in northern South Korea. It was a blast we went to an ice fishing festival and ate a lot of raw fresh fish. Sang Mi and I didn't catch any fish but Kyung caught 2. After that we went and drove around the boarder with North Korea looking at historical stuff. It was really cool!! We went into a tunnel that put us just 300 meters from the north korean border.
Monday morning I woke up to my stomach being in pain. Basically I had some sort of stomach virus thing and ever time I ate I felt like my stomach was gonna explode. Other than that I was fine so I didnj't take any days off work but I didn't eat for 3 out of 5 days last week and the days I did eat I couldn't eat much. I went to a normal doctor and to a korean doctor where I got some acupunture and other traditional chinese/korean medicine stuff. That made my stomach feel a lot better and finally on friday night I was able to eat with out feeling horrible.
That was good news since Saturday morning was time for another road trip. This time to Andong and Uljin in the North Gyeongsan province. It was awesome Steve, SangMi, Liz, Seo Young and I drove there and went to a traditional korean village. We ate some famous foods and drank the famous drinks. Then we went shopping in the Andong City market. After that we decided since we appeared to be close to the east sea on the map we should go. We weren't as close as we thought actually but after 2 hours of crazy mountain road driving we arrived in Uljin and to a Min Bak(like a motel) with a beach ocean view that was 40 dollars a night! The next morning we got up walked and explored the beach! then Sangmi and I went swimming!!!!! It was really fun but really cold. Next up was the 4 hour drive home again over a crazy mountain road but this time in the daylight. There was amazing views everywhere and we kept stopping to climb around on rocks near creeks or take a look at the view. I definitely need to go back to Uljin this summer for some bike riding and better swimming weather. Up for this weekend! Korean Lunar new year which means a 4 day weekend and MY PARENTS ARE COMING ON SUNDAY FOR A WEEK!!! I am really excited and I'm busy planning everything we are going to do.