Teaser pic of stuff to come in this post...massive palm trees in Seogwipo (south Jeju Island)
Anyhoo...not much is new with me here, I'm going for runs/weights every night after work and eating much, much healthier (gone are the nights of chips for dinner...nifty, crunchy, fatty things have, for the most part, been replaced by fruits and veggies, which are becoming more and more delicious to me every day). I must say I feel much better...I had a goal weight in mind for the Wando beach party weekend that I managed to reach a week early, so I'm pretty stoked and I find myself craving exercise and healthy foods and walking through the junk food aisle and having no desire to fill my basket with goodies from it.
Today at school we have parents' day, which means that I'll have two "open classes"...parents can come in and observe me teach. The other teachers keep asking me if I'm nervous and I keep telling them that no, I'm not. Not because I'm oh-so brave, but because I'm thoroughly ignorant of what's around the corner. I have no idea what these parent days are like, so I'm not scared of them. Ask me next year, though, and I might give a different answer haha. Anyway, the way I look at it is the parents won't understand a word I'm saying, so even if I royally mess up it's not going to be a big deal.
Okay...onto Jeju...the volcano was pretty sweet, the top (I have a panorama I have to get to one of these days) was kind of boring, it was just a big green field, but still sweet to know you're looking at a volcano's cone.
On the way down, I took a quick video from the beach/base of the volcano...check it out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamasv/5746438340/in/photostream
That night, I bumped into a couple of women (one my age, one a little older) at a bus stop and we started talking...they were journalists from Hong Kong and the younger one spoke English incredibly well...we chatted the whole hour-plus long bus ride to Seogwipo (the major city on the south side of Jeju Island) and they invited me for dinner, but I declined...didn't want to butt in on their holiday and there is not much for me at most Korean restaurants anyways.
I got myself another cheap motel (30,000 won this time) and went to bed fairly early...the next morning I headed off to check out the waterfalls in the area. There are 3 main ones, so I decided to see at least two of them.
The first one was Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, a few kilometres from downtown Seogwipo and it was beautiful (though hard to take pictures of, there must have been thousands of high school students there!)...anyway, here is a quick unedited snapshot of it...I'll get better pics of it when I get around to going through my pictures:
It was pretty dang nice! While at the falls I must have had at least a dozen groups of high school girls come up to me to take their pictures with me...they even photobombed me haha
And...since I don't have too many pics of myself...I asked one of them to take a picture of me with the Stone Grandfathers...yay
Leaving Cheonjiyeon Falls...famous bridge in Seogwipo half-covered in the morning mist...on my way to the falls you couldn't even see the bridge:
After those falls, I headed off to Jeongbang Waterfall, which has the distinction of being the only waterfall in Asia that drops right into the ocean. I got there at low tide, so it didn't quite make it to the sea, but it was still pretty neat!
The walk to Jeongbang Waterfall was awesome...can't complain with random scenery like this:
I apologize, I don't have any shots of the waterfall right now (gotta go through them, I'll have one up in a few days), but the beach around Jeongbang was pretty amazing too:
While at the waterfall, I met a really nice couple from America (Uhriel and Jannie) and we chatted for...I don't know...well over an hour, I think. Jannie had a pretty cool story...she was born in Korea, but adopted into the States as a baby. This was her first time back to Korea, which must have been a pretty trippy experience. Anyhoo, they were both awesome and I wish I had more time to hang out and chat with them...if I ever make it to Florida I'm definitely looking them up :)
On the way back to Seogwipo from Jeongbang, I bought a famous Jeju orange. They're one of the island's biggest exports and reputed to be delicious, so I didn't mind spending the 2,000 won for ONE orange haha. I gotta say...it was well worth it! It was probably the most delicious orange I've ever had! Best consumed while walking under palm trees too ;) I offered a slice to a stone grandfather, but he declined :(
Ack...the bell just went...I have 4 classes in a row now, so I'll continue this tomorrow (and let you guys know how the parents' day thing went!)
Take care, guys...glad to see the weather back home is finally starting to look half-decent!
T
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