A few stray photos

A few weeks ago we noticed a bunch of flowers popped up along the walkway by our apartment.

Any guesses?

Last weekend it was two of our friend's birthdays. Friday night we celebrated Chil Young's birthday with dinner, drinks, and darts.

Then Saturday we celebrated Lacey's birthday. 

We celebrated by playing euchre all afternoon.

The weather looked like this all day.

But we had fun.

On Sunday, since ultimate frisbee practice was canceled, we got in some badminton during the typhoon.

Remember what we thought was a cherry tree outside our apartment?

Turns out, it's an apricot tree.

Wall outside our apartment that does a great job of blocking the noise from the busy street.  Thank you wall!

Fungi

Two weekends ago John and I played in our second and third,(two tournaments, two days) Ultimate Frisbee tournaments.  I think our team had the most fun out of all the teams at the1st tournament, and after 10 hours on the field and 4 games, we won!  Yipppeee!

Here's a quote from one of our teammates, "The Green Team (A.K.A "Fungus Amongus") was such a joy to play with and really made me feel like I was making fast friends at summer camp or some other innocent time of life. Thanks y'all for the wonderful experience. Wining the day was the icing."  I couldn't have said it better myself.


I don't have any photos of us playing but here are a quick assortment from the weekend.

This is us getting ready to board the train to get to the tournament.

This was painted on one of the motels we inquired about getting a room.  A-mazing.

I just thought these two were the most stylish couple.  Too bad that guy is sitting in the way.

Bijindo

We checked out of our overnight sauna about 8 AM and hurried to the ferry, worrying that the 11 AM ferry would sell out because there were so many people in town.  Thankfully, we got two 11AM ferry tickets and grabbed breakfast.

Yummy breakfast of ramen and yogurt drink.

Woo hoo ferry!

I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but there are no seats on the ferry, instead we all sat on the ground. 

View from the top of the mountain we hiked.  Bijindo is actually 2 islands connected by a man made sandbar.

The view from the place we stayed.

We took a fishing boat back to the mainland, then a city bus, inter-city bus, subway and finally a taxi.

Tongyeong

After finishing Saturday school at 6:00 PM on Saturday the June 4th, John and I set out to officially begin our 3 day weekend.  We were heading to Bijindo, an island off the coast of Busan.  Our friends were already there and while we had missed the last ferry for the day, our plan was to find a cheap motel to stay Saturday night, and then take the ferry to the island Sunday morning.

After getting our train ticket destination wrong (we were able to fix that easily) we boarded a quick 1.5 bus ride to Tongyeong (our port city).  We were told that there would be plenty of "love motels" (cheap motels intended for couples looking for a short bit of privacy) in which we could spend the night.

However, we quickly learned the word for "full/no vacancy" when motel after motel told us, sorry but they were full up.  Luckily, as so often happens when you're traveling, a kindly motel owner managed to relay to us the name of a jimjilbang that was open 24 hours a day.

I could (and will) do an entire post on jimjilbangs, but for now suffice it to say, a jimjilbang is basically an awesome spa with separate men and women areas for bathing, soaking, and scrubbing.  Additionally, almost all have a co-ed area for general relaxing.  We had heard tell that this area is a cheap place to spend a night.

And so we did.

About an hour after we checked in to "Waterpia" at 10:30 on Saturday night, they actually started turning people away because it was so full.  It looked about like this:

This photo is not from our trip, but it helps to give you an idea.

Yep, we were this close to everyone, sleeping on a hard floor with a blanket and a wooden block for a pillow. Actually, we slept in a sauna because all the floor space was taken.  Thankfully they opened the door to the sauna, but let me tell you, I was very sweaty by the time morning came.

Also not a photo from our trip, but just to help you get a sense.

But then after a fitful night of sleep, we woke up, took a shower, had a soak, and were on our merry way, having spent $8/each for our accommodation.

While we're not planning on making it a habit, and I slept better than John, it was totally worth it.  I'll post soon about the island paradise we made it to.

Sand Festival

Last Friday night John and I went to the local Sand Festival.  The main activities of the weekend were Saturday and Sunday, but since we were working and heading out of town, we figured night time sand sculptures were better than no sand sculptures.  And indeed we were right.  Plus we also stumbled upon an international dance performance.  Go figure.

The gates to the festival.