Cultural Experience: Jeju-do!

Wednesday morning I got up to get ready for my trip to Jeju. I had started packing a few days before because I was so excited. This turned out to be a good thing because one of the POE people had made a mistake and we had to meet 40 minutes earlier than we were told. I got the call just after I woke up and had to hurry to be there on time. It was about an hour trip to the Gunsan airport. We checked in at the airport and our pottery that we made at the Hanok Village was finally passed back.
There was a hurricane (actually just a normal thunderstorms but Koreans are quite dramatic) on Jeju so our plane was delayed for a few hours. We had sandwiches while waiting in the tiny airport. It was nice to see everybody again because I hadn't seen some people since the end of Jeonju orientation.
The actual flight to Jeju lasted 35~ minutes! I didn't have time to fall asleep.

The first thing I saw in Jeju was palm trees. Here's a pic of Lindsey with them. You can see that it was still overcast that first day but we were lucky to not have any rain.

















The first place we went was Dragon Head Rock or Yongdoam. The wind was intense, but we had a great time climbing the rocks along the shore.

 We went around one of the walls of rocks and found a fish market right there along the coast

 After that we went to Illusion road which is a road that apears to go uphill, but when the car's engine it turned off it moved along the road by itself UPHILL. Really the road has a slight downhill angle and it's just an illusion. Across from this is Loveland park. All the statues in the park are of an.....erotic nature. The museum is full of .... toys. It's interesting, but I'm not going to post many photos from there because of their upsetting? nature. All I'll say is that the arrows have very unique shapes for a park. These are the only innocent statues in the entire place.

We spent that night at a pension. I slept in a room with Brittany, Jenny, Becky and Ratna. We had some crazy conversations and had a strange conversation with the person who accidently texted my phone. The next morning we went to Mt. Sungsan or Sunrise Peak. It's quite a hike up. Ratna, Jenny and I went to the observation planform partway for photos then went down one of the alternate paths. There we found a huge rock with a little cave in it. We had a nice time in the sun watching the people hike by.

On the way back down the mountain we saw another path that took you down to the coast. This was one of the places where the women divers of Jeju work. They were selling live seafood. The Sea and rocks were gorgeous! We had a fun time talking to some of the other Koreans there. The mentor teachers who came with us and Rira were all there, but no other foreigners. We felt special that we'd found the Korean hot spot. I used the bathroom there and found this fun sign. I guess if you're used to squaty potties, you don't know how to use a seated toilet.

Next we went to the house that was used for filming one of the scenes in the Korean Drama All In. You have to pay to go inside so Jenny, Ratna and I just explored the tide pools along the shore. We found a starfish, snails, miniature horseshoe crabs and lots of empty sea shells.







Next we went to the Teddy Bear museum. There were different scenes made with the bears including the Titanic, Berlin wall falling, Snow White, Tarzan, a fashion show, historical figures and more. Another section had famous works of art, like the Mona Lisa or The Thinker, with bears replacing the humans.

Above is an historical Korean wedding with Teddy bears.

 Teddy Ghandi was more life-like than the wax figure at the 63 museum.

 Then we went to the Jeju botanical gardens. There were different rooms: Jungle, fruit tree, flower and water gardens. 

 We walked a short way to the nearby bridge which has figures of goddesses or muses of some kind on it. It was lined with stone carvings of the same figures. Upstream was a gorgeous waterfall that took a bit of hiking to get too.

 We got 1,000won pineapple slice on a stick. It was like a delicious Popsicle.

 Me and my Eastern Peeps at the Cheonjiyeon Falls.

I have a slight fear of waterfalls now because of my experience in Mexico so I was anxious when two of the guys jumped the fence and stood at the top of the fall. Since they weren't me, they didn't fall :)

The rest of the trip was talking all night with my roommates, sleeping, souvenir shopping, busing, chocolate buying, air-planing, eating in Gunsan, busing, taxiing and finally posting here! I'm exhausted from all my fun. I'm going to sleep for the whole weekend (or just part of it). I hope you like the photos. Jovenes Vamanos! Oh... wrong foreigners trip :)