My vacation, and my mom's here!

Well, I've been on vacation for a couple weeks now, and it is greeeeat!  Seriously, what job other than a teacher gets the summers off?  Maybe the only problem with the Korean summers, is that they are hot and humid, but after a little getting use to it, it's really not all that bad.

My first week of vacation consisted of a big trip with my girlfriend from
Seoul---(via train)-->Geongju--(via train)-->Busan--(via BOAT!)-->Jeju Island---(via BIG BOAT)-->Seoul

It was really pretty spectacular, and if you check out the pictures I loaded onto facebook, you'll be able to see aaaaalll about it!

Geongju-- This is a really historic part of southeastern Korea, where lots of Kings use to live.  Theres a lot of temples and it was really pretty sweet.  Especially the big mound tombs!  Picture 4 story mounds of dirt that are stacked on top of kings' tombs.  We rented bikes and went all around the main city, and it was really fun.

Busan--
I'd been to Busan once before with my friend Mark when he came to visit.  So this time I wanted to make sure we hit the things I forgot to do before.  Namely going to the huuuuuge fish market!  It goes on for like a mile, and you can just walk up to some of the vendors and say, "I want that one!" and they'll chop it's head off, cook it for you, and then you eat it!  Pretty sweet.
Also, I attempted to teach my girlfriend how to swim.  There aren't that many swimming pools in Korea, so not that many people know how to swim.  It went pretty well, and now she is sort of able to swim 10 or 15 meters totally by herself!

Jeju--
Jeju Island is really pretty!  It's sort of like Korea's version of Hawaii.  They have lots of stuff to do there, but it is really hot.  Like, around 100+ degrees, and the worst humidity I've ever felt :-(  It was alright though, because the first thing we did was rent a scooter and start touring the island next to the ocean!  It was pretty much like driving through paradise, and the wind from the scooter kept us cool.  Unfortunately, the wind from the scooter kept us too cool to realize we were developing nasty sunburns, so the next day I looked kind of like a lobster, and Eunhye looked like an Indian person.  After riding the scooter 1/2 way around the island (100ish km) we went to the beach, swam a bit, and then I went surfing!  I've been wanting to surf for the better part of 10 years, but whenever I've been at the beach, the conditions have always sucked.  Finally they cooperated, and I was able to use my windsurfing experience to actually get out and ride a bunch of waves!  It's really fun!

On the Ferry Boats--
So I'd never taken any boat trip before, but on this vacation, I took two!  And we're talking really big, 1000 passenger boats!  These things are great!  They have a restaurant, a bar, a convenience store, and then different types of rooms.  The rooms we stayed in, were really just a massive room where 100 people would sleep on the floor together.  No beds, but they did provide blankets and pillows!  It's actually much more comfortable than it sounds! 
The first night on the boat (there were 2 nights spent on the boat all together) we met these really drunk old guys who only spoke Korean (really difficult accented korean too... ) and wouldn't stop talking for 3 hours!  It worked out though, because after the conversation, they decided to give us their room in 1st class!  It was like a 200 dollar bump up in accomidations!  Yes!!

So all in all we had a really awesome weeklong trip!  It was fun to only speak Korean for an entire week (because Eunhye doesn't speak english), and I can't wait to go out on other trips in Korea! 

Right now, my mom just flew in from Chicago for two weeks, so I think we're going to go on some more trips soon.  Word.